he Turk, who would possibly have been more nefarious than
themselves?... When troops were needed to fight the Turk these were
for the most part provided, in the several long campaigns, by the
Croats and Serbs of Dalmatia.

And what has been the fruit of all this? Let us take an Italian
writer's observations on the people of the interior, the Morlaks.[21]
In his book _I Morlacchi_ (Rome, 1890), Signor Francesco Majnoni
D'Intignano says that they are "endowed with courage and, like all
courageous people, with frankness. They say what they think and their
sentiments are openly displayed. Thus, for example, they do not
attempt to conceal their antipathy against the Italians. They are no
longer mindful of the benefits which they received in the past nor of
the fact that the Venetians freed them from the Turkish yoke; and this
is so not only because of the lapse of years, but because under the
Venetian rule they did not feel themselves independent; they saw in
the Italian merely that astuteness which knows how to profit from
other people's toil, and which has no thought of making any payment.
In the Italian they have no faith, and so their 'Lazmansko Viro'
(Italian fidelity) is equivalent to the Romans' expression 'Greek
fidelity.' But all this does not prevent them, when they have occasion
to offer hospitality to an Italian, from offering it with every
courtesy."

It is hardly worth while inquiring whether the Venetians or the Turks
wrought more evil against their Yugoslav subjects. But though the
modern Italian claim to Dalmatia and the islands may appear to us--in
so far as it is based on historical grounds--to have small weight,
nevertheless we must not allow it to make us insensible to the
Venetian's good qualities. It may not nowadays be reckoned as
meritorious that, after her own interests had been safeguarded, she
did not interfere with the privileges of the small class of nobles,
the "magnifica communita nobile," but at any rate it could be said of
her that she left intact the local privileges. One must also bear in
mind that the majority of her subjects in those parts had, through one
cause or another, a prejudice against innovations which could only be
broken down very gradually.

Nor were the Turks altogether vicious. Those who came first into the
Yugoslav lands were under a severe discipline, and, preserving the
austere habits of a warlike race, they were not guilty--generally
speaking--of excesses. As the fi