ailor had torn a ribbon bearing the motto "_Italia o Morte_!" from the
breast of a woman of the town. They did not seem to regret the affair or
to realize that it is just such occurrences which lead the Peace
Conference to question the wisdom of subjecting the city's Slav minority
to that sort of rule. As a result of the tense atmosphere which
prevailed in the city, the nerves of the population were so on edge that
when my car back-fired with a series of violent explosions, the loungers
in front of a near-by cafe jumped as though a bomb had been thrown among
them. The patron saint of Fiume is, appropriately enough, St. Vitus.

In discussing the question of Fiume the mistake is almost invariably
made of considering it as a single city, whereas it really consists of
two distinct communities, Fiume and Sussak, bitterly antagonistic and
differing in race, religion, language, politics, customs, and thought.
A small river, the Rieka, no wider than the Erie Canal, divides the city
into two parts, one Latin the other Slav, very much as the Rio Grande
separates the American city of El Paso from the Mexican town of Ciudad
Juarez. On the left or west bank of the river is Fiume, with
approximately 40,000 inhabitants, of whom very nearly three-fourths are
Italian. Here are the wharfs, the harbor works, the rail-head, the
municipal buildings, the hotels, and the business districts. But cross
the Rieka by the single wooden bridge which connects Fiume with Sussak
and you find yourself in a wholly different atmosphere. In a hundred
paces you pass from a city which is three-quarters Italian to a town
which is overwhelmingly Slav. There are about 4,500 people in Sussak, of
whom only one-eighth are Italian. But let it be perfectly clear that
Sussak is not Fiume. In proclaiming its annexation to Italy on the
ground of self-determination, the National Council of Fiume did not
include Sussak, which is a Croatian village in historically Croatian
territory. It will be seen, therefore, that Sussak, which is not a part
of Fiume but an entirely separate municipality, does not enter into the
question at all. As for the territory immediately adjacent to Fiume on
the north and east, it is as Slav as though it were in the heart of
Serbia. To put it briefly, Fiume is an Italian island entirely
surrounded by Slavs.

The violent self-assertiveness of the Fumani may be attributed to the
large measure of autonomy which they have always enjoyed, Fiume's sta