art of the agrarian population. The surprise and disillusion of
our troops were very great, for they expected from our unredeemed
brothers, who all speak our language, a joyous reception." This
frigidity may, however, have been due to the influence of Austrian
priests and gendarmes. What are we to say, though, when we come to the
more enlightened classes? The Italians in Austria were represented by
twelve deputies who were devoted to the Austrian Government and
hostile to Italy, and by six national-liberals and one socialist who
were animated with pro-Italian sentiments. In electing such deputies,
however, the peasants may not have simply allowed the priests and the
gendarmes to command them; it is also possible that they were moved by
the fear that the Trentino would economically be ruined if it were to
become Italian and had to compete with the agricultural products of
the Kingdom. As a matter of fact it was the Trentino _intelligentsia_
which looked forward to annexation, and not, as a class, the peasants.
And, during the War, Italian deputies of various parties overflowed
with loyal Austrian sentiments; unlike the Yugoslav deputies, who
refused in a body to vote the budget and the war credits, the Italian
deputies never even ventured on a national pronouncement. Pittoni,
chief of the Italian socialists at Triest, Faidutti (who was born in
Italy) and Bugatto, the chiefs of the Italian Catholic party of
Gradi[vs]ca, uttered not a few words of hate against the Madre Patria.
The Italians praise always, and with excellent reason, their three
heroes: Battisti, Rismondo and Sauro. But the Yugoslavs, in the course
of the late War, lost in the unredeemed provinces so many hundreds of
thousands who were hanged in Bosnia, who were dragged away--centenarians
and infants--to the prison camps, were spat upon and stoned and
treated in the most barbaric fashion, that they look upon those
Yugoslavs who, like Battisti, fled from Austria and afterwards were
slain by Austrians, as rather to be envied, since at any rate they
struck a blow. But anyhow the names of all these volunteers could not
be celebrated, on account of their great number. "There is nothing in
fact," wired Mr. Beaumont on December 31, 1919, from Milan for the
blameless readers of the _Daily Telegraph_, "there is nothing that
creates such terrible exasperation in Italy as the persistent
repetition of this patent falsehood that the Yugoslavs--meaning
thereby the Croats--