n the Croat text of the _Nagodba_, which had received the Emperor's
sanction on November 8, a piece of paper, the famous "Krpitsa," was
glued; and on this paper were the words Rieka knew of old--_Corpus
separatum sacrae coronae Hungaricae_. They had been put forward by the
Hungarian delegates and approved by the Emperor on November 17. This
rather melodramatic affair would have been thought worthy of at any
rate a few lines by most of us if we had written a whole book, nay two
books, about Rieka. But our friend Mr. Edoardo Susmel glides, as
gracefully as possible, over it. In his _Fiume Italiana_ he is as _peu
communicatif_ as a carp. His other book,[51] written in French,
simply and beautifully says of this law of 1868 that it is "a precious
heritage transmitted from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in
which period there was condensed"--or shall we say made
palpable?--"the spirit which is jealous of the municipal liberties."
"Down to this day," says he, "Rieka is in complete possession of her
charter. Rieka has to-day still got her great charter. This
constitutional charter ..." and so on and so on. But these modern
coryphees of Rieka and Dalmatia are so forgetful.

RIEKA'S HISTORY, AS TWO PEOPLE SEE IT

Mr. Susmel begins by saying that the origins of the Italianity of
Rieka lose themselves in the story of Rome. He knows--none
better--that the Romans came to these parts. They disappeared--but of
course one can't put in every detail. Anyhow, they left an arch, a lot
of coins, some vases, etc.; and a few of these are depicted in Mr.
Susmel's book. What a relief it must have been to innumerable people
as they turned his pages and discovered that he had forgotten to
include the illustrations of our Roman Wall, of the Pont du Gard and
of the glorious aqueduct that traverses Segovia! From the time of the
"Krpitsa" onwards a regular colonization began. Italians were urged to
come from their own country--but if Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who studied
the question on the spot, is accurate in his diagnosis that Fiume is
Italian "with that intensity of feeling bred by alien rule and the
sudden victorious liberation therefrom" (_Land and Water_, May 29,
1919), it certainly does seem a little strange that the Italians
should think in this way of the Magyars who invited them and were so
good to them. They were told, no doubt, by the Magyars that the Croats
would not hurt them, that the city council would always be Italian,
that if