(Written by Antonio Cippico, taken from “The Fortnightly Review”, Volume 104, 1915.)
(...) Some, very few happily, have dared to express the opinion even in this country that Italy’s intervention, belated and undesirable, was due to sheer imperialistic motives. Never a statement has carried within itself such an evident contradiction. If Italy had really been moved by selfish and grasping reasons, her neutrality, openly declared at the beginning of August, would have been offered to the highest bidder; and Italy would have spared herself all the ghastly miseries and uncertainties of war. A French writer said, with reason, that by her present intervention Italy could hardly do more for the cause of justice and civilisation than what she had done already by her declaration of neutrality, which saved not only Paris but the whole of Europe.
The reasons of Italy’s neutrality as well as the reasons of her present intervention spring from the same source. Never has a source been purer, and never a neutrality and a war have been inspired by loftier aspirations and interests, than those which have guided the Italian Government and are guiding now the fortunes of the Italian Army and Navy towards the Alps and the sea, towards the barriers that nature and history have given her. The German and Austrian statesmen, as well as the very few mischief-makers who are trying new to misinterpret Italy's aims and ideals, are denouncing her as the violator of the principle of nationality upon which her first Risorgimento was based, just because she wishes to liberate those of her children who are now under Austrian tyrannic rule. “The constant policy of Austria has aimed for many years at the destruction of Italian nationality and civilisation along the Adriatic coast.” These words by Baron Sonnino, the Italian Foreign Minister, are from the circular despatch sent on May 23rd to the representatives of Italy abroad. Very seldom a war has been declared upon a clearer and graver indictment. This is supported in the official document by a short quotation of facts and tendencies which ought already to be well known to the whole world, and which ought to be seriously meditated upon by German statesmen and Pan-Slav agents all over Europe.
“The progressive replacing,” wrote Baron Sonnino, “of officials of Italian race by officials of other nationality, and the artificial immigration of hundreds of families of other nationalities, which have taken place at Trieste, the decrees aiming at exclusion from the town of Trieste and the industries exploited by the town of Italian employees, the denationalisation of the principal services of the town of Trieste and the diminution of municipal powers; the obstacles of all sorts placed in the way of the institution of new national schools; the denationalisation of the judicial administration; the question of a university which formed the subject of diplomatic negotiations; and the denationalisation of shipping companies, were preparing intensively policies tending to favour another nationality to the detriment of the Italians. The unjustified and constantly increasing methodical expulsion of Italian subjects and the constant policy of Austria towards her Italian populations were not solely due to internal reasons or reasons connected with the different nationalities struggling in the monarchy. It, on the contrary, appeared to be largely inspired by a strong sentiment of hostility and hatred towards Italy which prevailed in some circles close to the Austrian Government, and had a determining influence upon its decisions.”
This constant policy of “the destruction of Italian nationality and civilisation along the Adriatic coasts,” so solemnly stated by the Italian Consults, although being the gravest point of accusation in the long list of grievances against her hereditary foe, Austria, for which Italy is now waging her war, has been frequently, and sometimes even intentionally, overlooked by some overzealous champions of the boundless aspirations of minor nationalities, which in their past, and especially in the present, history have not always revealed themselves as the too scrupulous champions of the principle of nationality.
The disclosures of the official Green Book ought to have cleared up any possible uncertainties or misconstructions as to Italy’s motives and as to the highmindedness that has once more inspired Italian statesmanship.
Italy has never once, through all the thirty-two years of her alliance with the Central Empires, swerved from the path of duty and faith towards her obligations. Nor was this limited to an adherence to the letter of the Triple Alliance. It carried out the spirit with which it was formed, namely, the preservation of the peace and of the political equilibrium of Europe, and she has carried out her mission by firmness and moderation, by a firmness which has not been shaken even in the face of the most painful sacrifices.
These “most painful sacrifices” to which Italy has submitted herself for nearly fifty years of her recent history ought not to be lost sight of. The reasons of the present Italian war, as well as the open affirmation of the Italian aspirations and rights, are deeply rooted in those “sacrifices” of the new and not yet completed nation, as well as in the long and indescribable sufferings of the Italians of the eastern shore of the Adriatic—and more especially of the Italians of Dalmatia—through the iniquitous denationalising policy pursued by Austria.
Of all the problems which had been left unsolved by the unification of the country in 1870, and especially those concerning its present unnatural and most dangerous frontiers on the Alps and across the Adriatic (frontiers imposed upon Italy by Austria after her cession of Lombardy and Venetia, in 1859 and 1866), the historical problem of the Adriatic has proved to be the most deeply felt by the whole nation. After having submitted with resignation to the yoke of the Triple Alliance, which through its intimate combination of Berlin with Vienna has always appeared to the eyes of some of us as the continuation of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire, the Italians felt that the time had come to settle it once and for all by restoring Italy’s position in that narrow sea which had been hers for twenty centuries until Campoformio (1797), or even until July, 1866, when Italy's fleet was beaten by Tegethoff at Lissa, and the Austrians, in order to exclude Italy from her sea and Russia from the Balkans, had begun to denationalise Dalmatia and Istria by pursuing their policy of oppressing Italians in favour of the Croatians. Real Croatians, Croatians of Croatia, having been the strenuous supporters of Austria and of the Hapsburg dynasty in 1848 against the Hungarian struggle for national independence, have bitterly felt in the last decades what racial oppression meant. Their brethren or cousins, however, the Croatians of Dalmatia, faithful and blind tools of Austrian dynastic policy of the denationalisation of the Adriatic, have made Italians of the eastern coast of that sea feel what national hatred and tyranny meant. Without the unfortunate result of the battle of Lissa, without the Austrian defeat of Sadowa, Austrian policy of the Drang nach Osten, as the unconscious forerunner of Germany towards Salonika and the Aegean Sea, would have never probably tempted the shrewd and far-reaching mind of Bismarck. And as the national existence of the Italians of Dalmatia and Istria has most bitterly been tried in consequence of Lissa and of the still unaccomplished unity of Italy, the relations between Italians and Slavs on those Adriatic shores—where there have always been two nationalities and two languages at least since the seventh century, and where the Latin and Italian element is the sole and autochthonous element of the country and of the country’s history, civilisation, and art—would have probably continued to be the most cordial and close, as they have always been throughout the past centuries. Without Austria’s venomous policy of the divide et impera, the Slavs, we are sure, will prove loyal and friendly in the future, as they have always proved before Austrian interference, towards the Italian natives of those shores, who have—even if they are, as in Dalmatia, for instance, a minority—national rights as well as the Slavs.
But Austria, after Koniggraetz, had turned her attention from the north to the south and the east. Prussia and the Hohenzollerns, having barred her influence for ever in her former provinces, Austria with her Hapsburg dynasty began to pursue the Drang nach Osten policy. This policy meant the total exclusion of Italy from her historic sea; but it meant especially the violent denationalisation of Dalmatia, of Fiume, of Istria, and of Trieste. Croatians and Slovenes, the people loyal to Hapsburg and to the Catholicism, had to become under Austrian rule the new masters of the Italian Sea. An Austrian emissary, the Baron von Pfluck, was sent from Vienna to Dalmatia in 1870 in order to start the new order of things planned by Vienna. The Italian majority of the Dalmatian representatives in the Viennese Parliament and in the Diet of Zara was upset from one day to the other. All the Italian municipalities fell into the hands of the Croatians. All the Italian schools (and this was the biggest crime) were unscrupulously suppressed from one day to the other. Only Zara was allowed to keep one; and this is the only reason, perhaps, why Zara, my native town, has been able to remain, notwithstanding her many Slav schools, the most Italian of all the Italian towns.
With the abolition of all the political rights of the Italians, with the suppression of all the Italian schools, with the total elimination of the Italian language, which was the official one till only three years ago, from all the offices, it is not surprising if Austria’s statistics of the population in Dalmatia and in Istria have dared to reduce the figures of the Italians to an extraordinarily low percentage. The Austrian statistical lies, ad usum Croatorium, however, have not only been accepted without reserve by the few jealous authorities on the Jugo-Slav question in this country, but have been very carefully exaggerated in order to impress more deeply the British public opinion.
Statistics and census, however, count very little if manipulated by notorious forgers of the truth, as is the case with the Austrian officials. They count even less in countries in which, like Dalmatia and Istria, every sign of civilisation belongs to the autochthonous population of the very narrow coast between the sea and the Dinaric Alps, in countries in which the Italian language and the Venetian dialect are nearly exclusively spoken in every civilised family, even in those belonging to the most fanatic haters of Italians, in countries in which the powerful resistance of the martyred Italians of those provinces is clearly proving to-day to the whole world that Austrian mission of hatred and tyranny has finished for ever, if Italy be victorious, in the Adriatic.
Men of every party in Italy are resolved to-day therefore that Italy’s national, geographical, and strategical unity should finally be accomplished. Without restoring her position in Dalmatia and Istria, it is universally felt Italy would perpetuate her present conditions of unrest and insecurity in the Adriatic, where her actual frontiers, from Venice down to Brindisi and Santa Maria d’Leuca, are indefensible and purely artificial, where every town and village on the opposite shore is a harmonic imitation and continuation in the architecture as well as in the language and the costumes of Venice.
Dalmatia and Istria have never, neither in geography nor in history, belonged to the Balkans. Those two provinces, secluded by the three nearly impervious chains of the Carso, of the Velebit, and of the Dinaric Alps, from the Slav lands of the Balkans, will be, as they have always been, the natural bridges between Italy and the Balkan people, between the Western civilisation and the East.
With feelings of dismay and surprise, therefore, Italians, to whatever party they may belong, have recently seen the unfair and hostile attitude of a very small band of British writers with regard to their legitimate and vital interests in the Adriatic. The want of understanding and sympathy towards their most sacred aspirations, towards their martyred brothers of Dalmatia and Istria, has puzzled and upset them. It is inconceivable for them that even a few in this country, which we love so much and which is bound to Italy as no other nation is by ties of close, natural, more even than diplomatic, friendship, should have represented these interests and aspirations as grasping; should have totally ignored or misinterpreted that hard national suffering of the Italians of the eastern shore of the Adriatic, victims of Austria’s dynastic policy of Croatisation. All sorts of historical falsehoods have been circulated in order to deceive the unwary into crediting the legend that Italy wishes to deny the Slavs an outlet in the Adriatic. And while the case of the Southern Slavs, and even of those Croatians who have been the tools of Austrian tyranny in the last fifty years, has been exploited and accepted with sympathy, Italy's rights have been not only ignored, but even violently attacked.
Italy, as everyone knows, is a highly liberal and democratic nation. Every Englishman ought to be convinced that her return to the countries which have always belonged to her, and which Austria has wantonly tried to denationalise, will not endanger the free national development and liberties of the Slavs who, mixed with Italians, compose the population of those countries. Serbia at the end of the war will get probably ten times as much as Italy, and in some territories allotted to her (as, for instance, in Albania, and even in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the most Serbian of all Serbian provinces, where there are more than eight hundred thousand of Mussulmans) she may find many more non-Serbians than the Slavs Italy will have to rule in Istria and her portion of Dalmatia, who do not even altogether amount to the number of inhabitants of a London suburb.
Italy has now entered the war, and is ready to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of human lives and milliards of francs, and to stake the immortal beauty and art treasures of Venice, of Ravenna, of Rimini, of Bari, and her other most beautiful Adriatic towns, and to stake even her very national existence. It would be sheer madness to think that she will renounce her claim to the Adriatic, or encourage the further denationalisation of its eastern shores, after having strenuously fought for it and for her own existence. We do not yet know in what fashion the Italian Army is likely to proceed through the Alps and the plains in its invasion of Austria, in its firm will to reach the Austrian capital. We know only that the war in the Adriatic will be the most difficult task for our nation.
This is, therefore, the wish of the Italians that everybody, especially in this country, should try to understand Italy’s enormous difficulties, the incalculable value of her present intervention, and her very modest aspirations. Such a serene understanding will prove at the end most beneficial to the ever closer friendship between their country and the Entente.
Italy at this hour wishes, as I said, to safeguard herself and to accomplish that unity which circumstances had prevented her from doing before—that is, the union of all Italians under the Italian flag. Nor can this in any way clash with the principle of nationality, of which, as all know, Italy has always been a warm supporter. The restoration of the Trentino, Trieste, Istria, Fiume, and part of Dalmatia to Italy is not territorial aggrandisement, for Italy is recovering what she has been mistress of for twenty centuries. Since the days of the first Risorgimento, Italy has stood for freedom and justice and for the highest democratic ideals. They are those for which she is now fighting, those which bind her so closely to the British people.
It is very important, especially at this juncture, that there should be no possible ground or loophole for misunderstandings. It is of supreme and vital interest that the English should fully understand Italy's position and her aims, which are identical with those of her other Allies.
In an interview in the Den, a few days ago, M. Sazonoff dwelt upon the tremendous importance and value of Italy’s intervention in helping materially to shorten the war. He also pointed out that Serbo-Italian relations are of the most friendly kind, and that Serbia would receive good ports and her desire for access to the “sea of Venice” would be fully satisfied.
This statement, coupled with that of M. Pasich to the effect that Serbia was willing to accept the agreement come to between Russia and Italy with regard to the eastern coast of the Adriatic, should once and for all set at rest unfounded fears which some worthy ultra-Pan-Slavists have had as to Italy's programme in the Adriatic.
Moreover, this is incorporated in the agreement signed on April 27th by the Entente Powers.
Any further discussion of this matter, based on more or less inaccurate information, can only be of harm to the united cause of the Allies, and lead to harmful and useless friction between the now united Italian and Serbian peoples—a unity which all Italians and all Englishmen have always sincerely desired.
Italy does not belong to those nations whose most instinctive habit is the violation of agreements. Anybody daring to discuss or proposing to violate the agreement between Italy and the Entente, which has brought Italy on the side of the Allies, fighting for the cause of justice and freedom, would prove to be an enemy not only of Italy, but of his own country, and, what is even worse, of justice and freedom.
England and Italy’s war has, however, definitely frustrated the vain attempts of the apostles of Pan-German and Pan-Slav imperialisms. Cordial, fair, and straightforward compromise is the unique way of settling for long time—and let us hope for ever —the restless and selfish instincts of humanity.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
The Adriatic Irredenta
(Written by Amy. A. Bernardy, taken from the Italy Number of “The Journal of American History”, First Quarter, Number 1, January-February-March 1919.)
There lies to the east of the Venetian plain a region which since Roman times was considered the tenth region or district of Italy proper, and as such known by the name of Venetia Julia. It is nothing but an actual and organic part of the former Italian borderland of Friuli, and how in mischief anybody but an Austro-German coalition could draw a line through that region (and call it a boundary and the western part of it Italy and the eastern part of it Austria) beats the unfairness of the Alsatian boundary by the mile. To meet anything like a natural boundary line you must travel eastward, cross the Isonzo and, coming down from Tarvis, follow the watershed of the Julian Alps and reach the Monte Albio or Nevoso, known in German as Schneeberg, and considered from time immemorial as a basic point in the determination of the Italian boundary. Thence a fairly straight and clear line does bring you down to the sea and the city of Fiume, a junction point between the province of Istria, a peninsular appendage of the Italian mainland on the west, and the mainland of Croatia on the east. It will be noted that the line thus formed, and clearly indicated by all geologic tests and by the geographic structure of the land, is practically the same that was set for immediate Austrian evacuation by the terms of the armistice of November last. Coming down the Adriatic coast, the coastline very clearly splits itself in two, the Croatian mainland, and the ridge of islands which curve outward along the Morlacca channel and are generally known in bulk as the islands of the Quarnero.
Then comes the actual Dalmatian region, which by a common misapprehension is sometimes taken to embrace the whole of the eastern Adriatic coast. Let it be very clearly understood, therefore, that Dalmatia proper extends from north of Zara to the Bay of Cattaro, but the typically and fundamentally Italian Dalmatia reaches from north of Zara to south of Spalato. After this, the coast up to Ragusa, though teeming with Italian memories and showing Italian influence, loses some of what can be called the intensity of the Italian spirit; Ragusa on the other hand shows much of it, but Ragusa has always been a rather curious autonomous entity, and was an independent republic while Dalmatia was a Venetian province. We may add, that all geographic and geologic tests from the structure of the subsoil to the flora and fauna of the surface, show the close connection of the Dalmatian borderland with the Italian coast, while its stony differentiation from the mainland behind it is proved by the fact that the Adriatic watershed is as abrupt and precipitous as a mountain lake watershed, whereas the other side of the thick mountain chain offers a broad and easy declivity toward a depression that finally leads to the Aegean.
So much for geography. History in the Adriatic is written all over the sea and the land, the city and the village, the church and the tower. And it is written in Italian. Whoever has traveled from Trieste to Ragusa can remember the lettering, in marble, in bronze, in stone; I am not speaking of Roman history. And though the arena of Pola and the palace of Diocletian at Spalato and the ruins of Salona and the aqueduct of Fiume and the Lapidarium of Trieste and the museum of Aquileia present to the archaeologist and the aesthete, in a shorter space of land, a nobler array of Roman glory than is to be seen anywhere in Italy with the exception of Rome; and though they concentrate within those few miles, one may say, beauty and majesty enough to outrival the Roman theatres of Orange or Seville, the arches of Rimini, Ancona and Salonika, and a few of the Roman traces in Asia Minor, Germany and Great Britain besides—yet the glory and the antiquity being remote it may be held none too significant. But the point is this, that whereas in other countries the native element came up and began building things and history of its own, in Istria and Dalmatia the same Latin element kept on, and the following monuments are Italian,—Italian and Venetian they remain throughout the Renaissance, that gives some of its best artists' efforts to the cathedrals, the “logge,” the “municipii” of the coast. Giorgio Orsini, the architect of Sebenico and Luciano Laurana, the architect of the ducal palace of Urbino in Italy, were natives of this coast. Humanists as Fortunio da Sebenico, historians as Giovani Lucio, scientists as Marcantonio de Dominis, admirals as Coriolano Cippico, were given to Venice and to Europe by these coasts. Once the Venetian Senate was called upon to decide whether it wouldn't be expedient to set the capital of the Venetian republic in Zara, and as late as 1797, when a Venetian patriot deplored the slackening of the old spirit in Venice, he was advised thus: “Tole su ei corno e ande a Zara” [take up the ducal cap and go to Zara], where the old spirit remained. And that it was there all right Zara proved by burying under the altar of her cathedral the banners of St. Mark, to await there the day of redemption, after the fall of the Republic of Venice was announced. At the same time the citizens of a small Istrian town, Isola, killed their “podesta,” believing him to be a traitor when he announced their coming subjection to Austria. If you happen to be in any of the small cities of Istria you will see an Italian church and an Italian campanile; Zara has such good examples of Romanic architecture that Pisa, Lucca and Pistoia can hardly compete with her; the steeples of the cathedrals of Arbe, Spalato and Trau are purest Italian style. The city halls of Capodistria, Curzola, Pola (you see I am quoting at random) could grace any Italian city. Trieste, although so largely modern and commercial, is unmistakably Italian in her modernity: Milan is her prototype, and there is no admixture of Austrian or German to her stately rows of green-blinded, square-lined, square-built Italian houses.
When Napoleon in 1797 traded off to Austria the Venetian republic, the Adriatic coastland followed her fate and passed into Austrian subjection. It was somehow tacitly understood, as it was historically logical, that if a rearrangement of the map ever happened the fate of those lands would be determined again by the fate of Venice. Instead, when in 1866 Austria was forced to return Venice to Italy, she retained the Adriatic provinces for herself, which Italy was not in a position to reclaim at the time, but which considered themselves Venetian and Italian throughout.
Where, then, did the Jugo-Slavs come in? They came in in the course of centuries, peeping over that very tall ridge of mountains that divides Dalmatia from the Balkanic world, quite close to the coast, much as the enclosing hills come steeply down to the shore of a mountain lake. They came quite early in history, in more or less large groups, sometimes pushed by natural expansion, sometimes prodded by Turkish pressure on the rear. Venice made them welcome as immigrants, and it is recorded that most of them were as loyal to Venice as the best Americanized immigrant or American of foreign descent can be to America. They had no special monuments or civilization of their own, but rather absorbed that of Venice and often settled down as Venetians. Toward the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they showed some literary ambition, and there was some interchange of literary courtesy between Italians who composed Slavic verse and Slavs who attempted Italian strains. When Venice fell, they became with the Italians fellow-subjects of Austria. Italy as a national entity was not yet, and it was only toward the second half of the nineteenth century that Austria became keenly alive to the things that began happening in her Italian possessions. Up to that time, Austria had been rather exploiting than oppressing her Adriatic subjects, and rather favored than otherwise the traditions of the Italian civilization and the use of the Italian language along the Adriatic, because she realized how great the influence of Venice had been all over it and way out into the east, and she hoped to reap for her benefit all the. advantages that could be reaped from the substitution of the twinheaded eagle for the lion of St. Mark as its rightful heir all along the millennial trade-routes from Venice to the Aegean Sea and thence to Constantinople. It was the “drang nach osten” in its pre-natal stage.
But when in 1866 Austria lost Venice to Italy she became keenly aware of the fact that the severance of Venice from the Adriatic provinces would naturally leave in the heart of these provinces a desire for reunion with Venice and consequently union with Italy, which as a body politic was daily achieving completion of its unity and proportionately growing as a menace to Austria.
Now, Austria always was noted in history for having the logic of the devil. She instantly knew what to do: destroy Italian nationality in her Adriatic dominions so that all desires of the said nationality should incidentally, along with the nationality, disappear from the world. To do this, she needed a tool; the Slavs were there. By the way, in using the Slavs she achieved another good turn for herself; she gave them something to do and trusted that their natural gratitude toward one who gave them of the fill of Italian land and flattered their demographic powers of expansion would keep them from eventually turning to thoughts of liberty for themselves. She guessed right. The denationalization of the Italian Adriatic was as good as achieved.
It would be hard to even attempt a review of the means, systems and procedure with which the Italian denationalization and the dehistoriation of the Italian-Adriatic provinces was planned and ultimately all but achieved. Wholesale importation and deportation of human beings, dumping of literally hundreds of inland alien families, with their thousands of children, to transform the character of some typically Italian district and show up both in the election and in the school returns; a policy of boycott and resistance, of obstructionism and partiality; a constant vexation of all that was Italian and encouragement of all that was alien; municipal and electoral corruption erected to a standard of government; internal espionage ennobled to the standing of government service; the hounding and the crushing not only of words but of feelings; wholesale persecution, beginning with fines and ending with gaol and death; every means that can be imagined, and some of them too brutal for words, were in order against the Italians of Dalmatia. Government agitators actually mingled among the Slavic peasantry, encouraging them to cut down or burn the vines and the crops of their Italian employers.
Many Italians, weary of the long struggle, left their ancestral homes and went to earn a modest living in Italy, thus falling in by necessity with Austria's desire for their absence. Many of them served and died for Italy in this war.
In this way, while on one hand the depletion of the Italian element was being secured, on the other the land was being rapidly filled with alien element. Some of it was there, as I said, as an immigration element in the course of history. Some was dumped, and a large part of it was attracted by the extra favorable conditions made to Slavs by Austria in the Italian provinces, so that it is no wonder that they soon became a numerical majority in a number of districts.
That is largely how and why Italy is confronted to-day by the fact, chiefly “made in Austria,” that the Jugo-Slavic conglomeration of peoples, which has found itself suddenly blessed with freedom of motion, expression and ambition, through the action of Italy that brought about the disgregation of Austria, regards itself not only as naturally entitled to the solid mass of southern Slav mainland thus liberated from Austrian control, but to the Italian part of the Adriatic shores as well; and even includes, in an extreme sweep of desire, cities and districts where the Italian majority is indisputable, on the ground that there is heavy Slavic admixture in their surroundings. And, moreover, on the ground that Italy claims for herself in the final peace settlement, and as an integral part of “Italia Irredenta,” certain districts and territories of the eastern Adriatic coast where there is an actual numerical majority of Slavic inhabitants, it brings against Italy an accusation of “imperialism” and blames Italy's “ambitions” on the Pact of London.
Before we proceed further in our attempt to make plain the situation, it is well to state, therefore, that even the much-abused “pact of London” (as every fair-minded reader of published news must know by this time, and as others always forget to remember), does not by any means claim for Italy the whole of the Adriatic or insist upon making it a closed sea. (...) Thus the three racial branches of the Slavic people, Croats and Slovenes in the northern Adriatic, Serbians in the southern, are fairly dealt with and fully protected and provided for in the terms of the pact of London, which represents actually a minimum of Italian rights and necessities in the Adriatic. This will readily be seen by anyone remembering that by such an agreement the stronghold of Cattaro, the strongest naval base not only of the Adriatic but of the Mediterranean, would remain out of Italian hands. If Italy wanted to be imperialistic, she would ask for Cattaro first. Instead, she asks for Zara, which, if anything, is sentimental. Also, with what seems almost too much of a renunciation even for the sake of peace and good will to neighbors, the city of Fiume had not been considered, it appears, in the London agreements. And yet the city of Fiume has just recently and very explicitly made known her desire to join Italy on grounds of population (26,000 Italians and 6,000 citizens of Italy against 12,000 Slavonians and 6,400 Magyars), and asked for allied ratification of her act of self-determination at proper time.
All of these cities had Italian mayors and councils (as the intellectual and civic leadership is Italian everywhere) which had been suspended from office at the outbreak of the war, and who have been reinstated by the people as soon as the breakdown of Austria allowed.
More could be said, and in fact ought to be said, but we will content ourselves with recalling here the clear language of Roman law: ''Quod subreptum erit, eins rei aeterna auctoritas esto” [The right of the owner over the thing that has been stolen is enduring]. Similarly, all the former Austrian territories now reclaimed were once Italian, “once” including the very recent past, we might say, the “present” of yesterday. What they are “now” is the result of Austrian malpractice with them. A considerable portion of non-Italian elements included in them to-day represents, in other words, the colonization of Austria, a colonization designed and achieved with non-Austrian elements for definitely Austrian purposes, namely, the eviction of Italians from their racial and ancestral homes and the accomplishment of the final destruction of Italian nationality within Austrian borders as a political consequence of the Austrian system of domination: a system against which, we may incidentally remember, this war has been fought and won; a system against which Italian martyrs in the Trentino as well as in Istria and Dalmatia have been protesting for years with the sacrifice of life and of all that life holds dearest in moral and material values.
That the Slavic elements of yesterday, the Slovenes, Croatians, etc., of the Austrian period, the Jugo-Slavs of to-day, were only too often the chosen retainers and the willing instruments of Austria in her enterprise, is a fact which Italy may agree to consider foreclosed to-day in view of present events, but which cannot, unfortunately, be blotted out of history, even though we place it to the discredit of the last years of Austria rather than to that of the pre-history of Jugoslavia.
Italy, whose human sympathies have been broadened by suffering, and who least of all could wish the perpetuation of iniquity, is willing to let bygones be bygones and meet the Jugo-Slavs in a friendly spirit. But to her the tragedy of Dalmatia is a tragedy of her national life, and the redemption of the Irredenta and the freedom of the Adriatic are essentials of her very existence. She cannot, therefore, admit or consent to wholesale ratification of Austria's misdeeds, such as the Jugo-Slav extremists and their supporters would impose upon her with the outcry they raise against the legitimate assertion of her rights on the Adriatic Sea.
“Something is rotten” somewhere in the would-be-accusing formula of “Italian imperialism,” and in the intentionally confusing statements that are being scattered around by more or less irresponsible agencies. As, unless she be expected to betray the highest ideals of her national life and the most essential responsibilities of history and civilization, Italy cannot be expected to submit to and ratify the results arrived at by procedure of this kind; she cannot accept a test by statistics that have been made to order by such means; she cannot, after having been compelled for thirty years by the unfortunate situation of the triple alliance to watch in silence the sufferings of her children who were being dispossessed and decimated, refuse to help them now and restore for them the ancestral homes which they defended with such heroism and from which they were all but ousted by foul means when the war began. No other nation has a longer list of actual martyrs for the idea of liberty, not men whose words, to use a brilliant recent phrase, did cut like swords, but men who were actually cut by swords because of the words of freedom they said. If other men cannot sleep in Flanders fields unless the sacred pledge be kept by those who survive, what of the men — and the women, and the children, for Austria did not balk at that — what of the martyrs from Gorizia, from Trieste, from Fiume, from Spalato, from Zara, among whom Sauro, Battisti, Rismondo, Chiesa, Filzi and their comrades are but a few?
There lies to the east of the Venetian plain a region which since Roman times was considered the tenth region or district of Italy proper, and as such known by the name of Venetia Julia. It is nothing but an actual and organic part of the former Italian borderland of Friuli, and how in mischief anybody but an Austro-German coalition could draw a line through that region (and call it a boundary and the western part of it Italy and the eastern part of it Austria) beats the unfairness of the Alsatian boundary by the mile. To meet anything like a natural boundary line you must travel eastward, cross the Isonzo and, coming down from Tarvis, follow the watershed of the Julian Alps and reach the Monte Albio or Nevoso, known in German as Schneeberg, and considered from time immemorial as a basic point in the determination of the Italian boundary. Thence a fairly straight and clear line does bring you down to the sea and the city of Fiume, a junction point between the province of Istria, a peninsular appendage of the Italian mainland on the west, and the mainland of Croatia on the east. It will be noted that the line thus formed, and clearly indicated by all geologic tests and by the geographic structure of the land, is practically the same that was set for immediate Austrian evacuation by the terms of the armistice of November last. Coming down the Adriatic coast, the coastline very clearly splits itself in two, the Croatian mainland, and the ridge of islands which curve outward along the Morlacca channel and are generally known in bulk as the islands of the Quarnero.
Then comes the actual Dalmatian region, which by a common misapprehension is sometimes taken to embrace the whole of the eastern Adriatic coast. Let it be very clearly understood, therefore, that Dalmatia proper extends from north of Zara to the Bay of Cattaro, but the typically and fundamentally Italian Dalmatia reaches from north of Zara to south of Spalato. After this, the coast up to Ragusa, though teeming with Italian memories and showing Italian influence, loses some of what can be called the intensity of the Italian spirit; Ragusa on the other hand shows much of it, but Ragusa has always been a rather curious autonomous entity, and was an independent republic while Dalmatia was a Venetian province. We may add, that all geographic and geologic tests from the structure of the subsoil to the flora and fauna of the surface, show the close connection of the Dalmatian borderland with the Italian coast, while its stony differentiation from the mainland behind it is proved by the fact that the Adriatic watershed is as abrupt and precipitous as a mountain lake watershed, whereas the other side of the thick mountain chain offers a broad and easy declivity toward a depression that finally leads to the Aegean.
So much for geography. History in the Adriatic is written all over the sea and the land, the city and the village, the church and the tower. And it is written in Italian. Whoever has traveled from Trieste to Ragusa can remember the lettering, in marble, in bronze, in stone; I am not speaking of Roman history. And though the arena of Pola and the palace of Diocletian at Spalato and the ruins of Salona and the aqueduct of Fiume and the Lapidarium of Trieste and the museum of Aquileia present to the archaeologist and the aesthete, in a shorter space of land, a nobler array of Roman glory than is to be seen anywhere in Italy with the exception of Rome; and though they concentrate within those few miles, one may say, beauty and majesty enough to outrival the Roman theatres of Orange or Seville, the arches of Rimini, Ancona and Salonika, and a few of the Roman traces in Asia Minor, Germany and Great Britain besides—yet the glory and the antiquity being remote it may be held none too significant. But the point is this, that whereas in other countries the native element came up and began building things and history of its own, in Istria and Dalmatia the same Latin element kept on, and the following monuments are Italian,—Italian and Venetian they remain throughout the Renaissance, that gives some of its best artists' efforts to the cathedrals, the “logge,” the “municipii” of the coast. Giorgio Orsini, the architect of Sebenico and Luciano Laurana, the architect of the ducal palace of Urbino in Italy, were natives of this coast. Humanists as Fortunio da Sebenico, historians as Giovani Lucio, scientists as Marcantonio de Dominis, admirals as Coriolano Cippico, were given to Venice and to Europe by these coasts. Once the Venetian Senate was called upon to decide whether it wouldn't be expedient to set the capital of the Venetian republic in Zara, and as late as 1797, when a Venetian patriot deplored the slackening of the old spirit in Venice, he was advised thus: “Tole su ei corno e ande a Zara” [take up the ducal cap and go to Zara], where the old spirit remained. And that it was there all right Zara proved by burying under the altar of her cathedral the banners of St. Mark, to await there the day of redemption, after the fall of the Republic of Venice was announced. At the same time the citizens of a small Istrian town, Isola, killed their “podesta,” believing him to be a traitor when he announced their coming subjection to Austria. If you happen to be in any of the small cities of Istria you will see an Italian church and an Italian campanile; Zara has such good examples of Romanic architecture that Pisa, Lucca and Pistoia can hardly compete with her; the steeples of the cathedrals of Arbe, Spalato and Trau are purest Italian style. The city halls of Capodistria, Curzola, Pola (you see I am quoting at random) could grace any Italian city. Trieste, although so largely modern and commercial, is unmistakably Italian in her modernity: Milan is her prototype, and there is no admixture of Austrian or German to her stately rows of green-blinded, square-lined, square-built Italian houses.
When Napoleon in 1797 traded off to Austria the Venetian republic, the Adriatic coastland followed her fate and passed into Austrian subjection. It was somehow tacitly understood, as it was historically logical, that if a rearrangement of the map ever happened the fate of those lands would be determined again by the fate of Venice. Instead, when in 1866 Austria was forced to return Venice to Italy, she retained the Adriatic provinces for herself, which Italy was not in a position to reclaim at the time, but which considered themselves Venetian and Italian throughout.
Where, then, did the Jugo-Slavs come in? They came in in the course of centuries, peeping over that very tall ridge of mountains that divides Dalmatia from the Balkanic world, quite close to the coast, much as the enclosing hills come steeply down to the shore of a mountain lake. They came quite early in history, in more or less large groups, sometimes pushed by natural expansion, sometimes prodded by Turkish pressure on the rear. Venice made them welcome as immigrants, and it is recorded that most of them were as loyal to Venice as the best Americanized immigrant or American of foreign descent can be to America. They had no special monuments or civilization of their own, but rather absorbed that of Venice and often settled down as Venetians. Toward the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they showed some literary ambition, and there was some interchange of literary courtesy between Italians who composed Slavic verse and Slavs who attempted Italian strains. When Venice fell, they became with the Italians fellow-subjects of Austria. Italy as a national entity was not yet, and it was only toward the second half of the nineteenth century that Austria became keenly alive to the things that began happening in her Italian possessions. Up to that time, Austria had been rather exploiting than oppressing her Adriatic subjects, and rather favored than otherwise the traditions of the Italian civilization and the use of the Italian language along the Adriatic, because she realized how great the influence of Venice had been all over it and way out into the east, and she hoped to reap for her benefit all the. advantages that could be reaped from the substitution of the twinheaded eagle for the lion of St. Mark as its rightful heir all along the millennial trade-routes from Venice to the Aegean Sea and thence to Constantinople. It was the “drang nach osten” in its pre-natal stage.
But when in 1866 Austria lost Venice to Italy she became keenly aware of the fact that the severance of Venice from the Adriatic provinces would naturally leave in the heart of these provinces a desire for reunion with Venice and consequently union with Italy, which as a body politic was daily achieving completion of its unity and proportionately growing as a menace to Austria.
Now, Austria always was noted in history for having the logic of the devil. She instantly knew what to do: destroy Italian nationality in her Adriatic dominions so that all desires of the said nationality should incidentally, along with the nationality, disappear from the world. To do this, she needed a tool; the Slavs were there. By the way, in using the Slavs she achieved another good turn for herself; she gave them something to do and trusted that their natural gratitude toward one who gave them of the fill of Italian land and flattered their demographic powers of expansion would keep them from eventually turning to thoughts of liberty for themselves. She guessed right. The denationalization of the Italian Adriatic was as good as achieved.
It would be hard to even attempt a review of the means, systems and procedure with which the Italian denationalization and the dehistoriation of the Italian-Adriatic provinces was planned and ultimately all but achieved. Wholesale importation and deportation of human beings, dumping of literally hundreds of inland alien families, with their thousands of children, to transform the character of some typically Italian district and show up both in the election and in the school returns; a policy of boycott and resistance, of obstructionism and partiality; a constant vexation of all that was Italian and encouragement of all that was alien; municipal and electoral corruption erected to a standard of government; internal espionage ennobled to the standing of government service; the hounding and the crushing not only of words but of feelings; wholesale persecution, beginning with fines and ending with gaol and death; every means that can be imagined, and some of them too brutal for words, were in order against the Italians of Dalmatia. Government agitators actually mingled among the Slavic peasantry, encouraging them to cut down or burn the vines and the crops of their Italian employers.
Many Italians, weary of the long struggle, left their ancestral homes and went to earn a modest living in Italy, thus falling in by necessity with Austria's desire for their absence. Many of them served and died for Italy in this war.
In this way, while on one hand the depletion of the Italian element was being secured, on the other the land was being rapidly filled with alien element. Some of it was there, as I said, as an immigration element in the course of history. Some was dumped, and a large part of it was attracted by the extra favorable conditions made to Slavs by Austria in the Italian provinces, so that it is no wonder that they soon became a numerical majority in a number of districts.
That is largely how and why Italy is confronted to-day by the fact, chiefly “made in Austria,” that the Jugo-Slavic conglomeration of peoples, which has found itself suddenly blessed with freedom of motion, expression and ambition, through the action of Italy that brought about the disgregation of Austria, regards itself not only as naturally entitled to the solid mass of southern Slav mainland thus liberated from Austrian control, but to the Italian part of the Adriatic shores as well; and even includes, in an extreme sweep of desire, cities and districts where the Italian majority is indisputable, on the ground that there is heavy Slavic admixture in their surroundings. And, moreover, on the ground that Italy claims for herself in the final peace settlement, and as an integral part of “Italia Irredenta,” certain districts and territories of the eastern Adriatic coast where there is an actual numerical majority of Slavic inhabitants, it brings against Italy an accusation of “imperialism” and blames Italy's “ambitions” on the Pact of London.
Before we proceed further in our attempt to make plain the situation, it is well to state, therefore, that even the much-abused “pact of London” (as every fair-minded reader of published news must know by this time, and as others always forget to remember), does not by any means claim for Italy the whole of the Adriatic or insist upon making it a closed sea. (...) Thus the three racial branches of the Slavic people, Croats and Slovenes in the northern Adriatic, Serbians in the southern, are fairly dealt with and fully protected and provided for in the terms of the pact of London, which represents actually a minimum of Italian rights and necessities in the Adriatic. This will readily be seen by anyone remembering that by such an agreement the stronghold of Cattaro, the strongest naval base not only of the Adriatic but of the Mediterranean, would remain out of Italian hands. If Italy wanted to be imperialistic, she would ask for Cattaro first. Instead, she asks for Zara, which, if anything, is sentimental. Also, with what seems almost too much of a renunciation even for the sake of peace and good will to neighbors, the city of Fiume had not been considered, it appears, in the London agreements. And yet the city of Fiume has just recently and very explicitly made known her desire to join Italy on grounds of population (26,000 Italians and 6,000 citizens of Italy against 12,000 Slavonians and 6,400 Magyars), and asked for allied ratification of her act of self-determination at proper time.
All of these cities had Italian mayors and councils (as the intellectual and civic leadership is Italian everywhere) which had been suspended from office at the outbreak of the war, and who have been reinstated by the people as soon as the breakdown of Austria allowed.
More could be said, and in fact ought to be said, but we will content ourselves with recalling here the clear language of Roman law: ''Quod subreptum erit, eins rei aeterna auctoritas esto” [The right of the owner over the thing that has been stolen is enduring]. Similarly, all the former Austrian territories now reclaimed were once Italian, “once” including the very recent past, we might say, the “present” of yesterday. What they are “now” is the result of Austrian malpractice with them. A considerable portion of non-Italian elements included in them to-day represents, in other words, the colonization of Austria, a colonization designed and achieved with non-Austrian elements for definitely Austrian purposes, namely, the eviction of Italians from their racial and ancestral homes and the accomplishment of the final destruction of Italian nationality within Austrian borders as a political consequence of the Austrian system of domination: a system against which, we may incidentally remember, this war has been fought and won; a system against which Italian martyrs in the Trentino as well as in Istria and Dalmatia have been protesting for years with the sacrifice of life and of all that life holds dearest in moral and material values.
That the Slavic elements of yesterday, the Slovenes, Croatians, etc., of the Austrian period, the Jugo-Slavs of to-day, were only too often the chosen retainers and the willing instruments of Austria in her enterprise, is a fact which Italy may agree to consider foreclosed to-day in view of present events, but which cannot, unfortunately, be blotted out of history, even though we place it to the discredit of the last years of Austria rather than to that of the pre-history of Jugoslavia.
Italy, whose human sympathies have been broadened by suffering, and who least of all could wish the perpetuation of iniquity, is willing to let bygones be bygones and meet the Jugo-Slavs in a friendly spirit. But to her the tragedy of Dalmatia is a tragedy of her national life, and the redemption of the Irredenta and the freedom of the Adriatic are essentials of her very existence. She cannot, therefore, admit or consent to wholesale ratification of Austria's misdeeds, such as the Jugo-Slav extremists and their supporters would impose upon her with the outcry they raise against the legitimate assertion of her rights on the Adriatic Sea.
“Something is rotten” somewhere in the would-be-accusing formula of “Italian imperialism,” and in the intentionally confusing statements that are being scattered around by more or less irresponsible agencies. As, unless she be expected to betray the highest ideals of her national life and the most essential responsibilities of history and civilization, Italy cannot be expected to submit to and ratify the results arrived at by procedure of this kind; she cannot accept a test by statistics that have been made to order by such means; she cannot, after having been compelled for thirty years by the unfortunate situation of the triple alliance to watch in silence the sufferings of her children who were being dispossessed and decimated, refuse to help them now and restore for them the ancestral homes which they defended with such heroism and from which they were all but ousted by foul means when the war began. No other nation has a longer list of actual martyrs for the idea of liberty, not men whose words, to use a brilliant recent phrase, did cut like swords, but men who were actually cut by swords because of the words of freedom they said. If other men cannot sleep in Flanders fields unless the sacred pledge be kept by those who survive, what of the men — and the women, and the children, for Austria did not balk at that — what of the martyrs from Gorizia, from Trieste, from Fiume, from Spalato, from Zara, among whom Sauro, Battisti, Rismondo, Chiesa, Filzi and their comrades are but a few?
Italian Dalmatia
(Written by Arundel del Re, taken from the review “The New Age: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature and Art”, 1915.)
Sir, — It was, I believe, an English diplomat who once said, "First comes a fib, then a lie, and lastly Austrian statistics." The Imperial Royal Government has, however, set great store by this branch of statesmanship, and has used it to blind its anti-national policy in Bosnia, as also in Trieste and Dalmatia.
As I have said in this paper on another occasion, Dalmatia is Italian historically as well as racially and culturally. So late as Campoformio, Napoleon, while robbing Venice of her liberty, for strategic and political reasons incorporated Istria and Dalmatia into the newly formed kingdom of Italy. The tradition is clear and unassailable, from whatever point of view one may look at it.
Dalmatia was first conquered by Rome in the second century B.C., so as to free the Adriatic from the Illyrian pirates who occupied it, and were called respectively Dalmatians in the north and Liburnians in the south. These Illyrians had nothing whatsoever to do with the Slavs, and had been completely absorbed by Latinity when the Slavs broke into Dalmatia in the seventh century A.D. This invasion pushed the native population to the coast and the islands, where they definitely settled as Latin municipia under the nominal suzerainty of Byzantium, the successor of Rome in the Adriatic, until its place was later taken by the Republic of Venice. About the eleventh century, Doge Pietro Orseolo II conquered the whole of the coast-line as far as Le Bocche di Cattaro, with the exception of the territory of the Republic of Ragusa, to protect the Adriatic from the pirates of the Narenta. In 1409 Venice acquired all the rights that Ladislaus of Naples and King of Hungary claimed over Dalmatia.
During the whole of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the dealings between Hungary and Serbia and Dalmatia were of a friendly nature, the cities of the latter being considered as equals and sovereign States. The collection of statutes and ordinances were either written in Latin or translated into Italian, and were essentially Roman in character. These covered a period of 500 years (until 1808). One case alone has been found of a statute translated into the Serbian language and bearing traces of Serbian law. This is that of the little mountain Republic of Poglizza, where many Serbs and Croatians fled during the Turkish invasion. Each and every detail of the life, the language, the customs, the place-names, the religion, and the arts of Dalmatia, as well as its people, prove it to be Latin and Italian, just as are the cities and the people on the other side of the Adriatic. There are many, however, who will question this statement as not being true at the present, though it may have been in the past. Dalmatia, they say, is Serbian; the Italians are in a great minority. Furthermore, Serbia and Croatia need an outlet. As to the latter argument, Italy does not make any objection. It is a case for mutual understanding and goodwill. (...)
Since the defeat of Sadowa and other unfortunate Western ventures, Austria determined at all costs to force her way eastward towards Salonika. An immediate result of this Drang nach Osten policy was the Croatisation and the Slavicisation of Dalmatia. It commenced by attempting to awake a national spirit among the Croatians and Slavs at the expense of the Italians, and in order to accomplish this it started, among other things, to prove the Slavic character and origin of Dalmatia by misreading and even deliberately misinterpreting the documents and remains in the archives. It attempted further to Slavicise Italian culture by assuming that Dalmatian poets and writers of the Renaissance, such as Flora Zuzzeri (Zuzzerich), Giovanni Gondola (Gundulich), who happened to have translated several Italian classics into Croatian, were ipso facto not Italian but Croatians, and accordingly modified their names. Had they lived to-day, they would doubtlessly have been counted as Croatians in the census of Dalmatia. I know personally of cases in which families who are wholly Italian even in name, and violently anti-Austrian to wit, but who happen to occupy important Government posts, are put down as Croatians or Serbs. It is frequent in Dalmatia to find families of Italian parents whose children are put down as Croatians or Serbs.
The official statistics of 1910, duly tampered with by the Croatian communes of Dalmatia, gave only 20,000 Italian inhabitants, while the Italians in reality amount at least to 60,000. In support of this statement Prof. Dudan points out that during the last general election (1911) with universal suffrage, the Italian candidates in the eleven electoral districts received 6,000 votes. The percentage of voters was 50 per cent., so that the voters may roughly be taken to be 12,000. As in Austria each voter under universal suffrage is calculated as representing five inhabitants (women, children, and men up to 24 years of age), the total of Italian inhabitants would amount to 60,000. Another striking instance of Austrian malpractice is given by the Island of Lesina. In 1880 it had 314 Italian inhabitants per 1,000. Ten years later the whole island had only 27 Italians left, and this without any epidemic or sudden emigration. Now as to actual figures. The total population of Dalmatia is 600,000 inhabitants. Of these, 400,000 are totally uncivilised, and live in the Carsus and the Dinaric Alps, and take no part in the life of the country; 100,000 are mixed Slav and Italian in equal degree. As regards the remainder, 60,000 are pure Italian and 40,000 pure Slavs and Croatians. So much for the validity of this argument.
There is, however, another and directer way of ousting the Italians from Dalmatia: the forced importation of Serbs and Croatians from the countryside. In connection with this, it may be interesting to observe that until 50 years ago the Italian coast-dwellers and the inland agricultural Slav population were very friendly, neither infringing the other's domains. Austrian domination, however, has modified these conditions. It has sought by every means to sow dissension and to awaken racial antagonism. This policy is in itself one of the best proofs of the purely Italian character of Dalmatia. As in Bosnia-Herzegovina since Austrian annexation, so here the Catholic Church, subsidised by the Government, has been a powerful ally in the work of denationalisation. But whereas in Bosnia it tried to destroy the Orthodox Church and so strike at the heart of the Serbian race, in Dalmatia it has been used to create a schism in the Church. Until very recently the parish priests and the bishops were Italians; few of the Slav population were sufficiently cultured to enter the priesthood, hence in some parishes the Latin language was replaced by special dispensation by the native dialect (Glagolitic). At present, wherever a vacancy occurs, it is filled by Slavs and Croatians who are anti-Italian and have gone so far as to refuse baptism and burial in consecrated ground to Italian Catholics. They have also disregarded the papal decrees limiting the use of Glagolitic to those churches where the custom has prevailed for over ten years.
The same policy has been adopted with regard to the administrative side of Dalmatian life. Until 1883 the whole local government was managed by Italians. Intellectually and economically superior — the agricultural population around the towns and inland had no culture to speak of, and what they had, as in the case of Bosnia, was Latin and Italian — Italian civilisation absorbed any element that came into contact with it; Italian money endowed schools and commercial enterprises; Italian, too, were the ideals and aspirations of the people to whom the Adriatic was, and is, not a barrier but a link. The life of the coast towns of the peninsula and Venice is in constant and immediate touch with those on the coast of Dalmatia. The boundaries of Italy lie across this, that might be compared to an Italian lake, in the Dinaric Alps and the Carsus. Nor is it a physical and technical frontier, but a natural one. Without Dalmatia, the whole coast-line from the Po to the Cape Sta Maria di Leuca lies open to the Power that happens to control the Adriatic.
Since 1883 the Slav invasion, stimulated and aided by Austria, has slowly been making headway. In that year the comune of Spalato, the largest town in Dalmatia, through incredible electioneering fraud and actual violence — during the elections the city was placed under martial law, Italian voters were arrested so as to prevent them voting, or their votes annulled — fell into Croatian hands. The same thing occurred in other important towns. Not only according to law, the official language was Italian, Serb or Croatian being only allowed for external purposes, but any foreigner wishing to settle in the Dalmatian towns had to learn it in order to be admitted into polite society or to trade with the Italians. In 1912 this law was revoked by a ministerial decree (sic)! This work of forced Croatisation has been further helped through the establishment of numerous Croatian schools in which the Italian language is not taught or spoken, while, on the other hand, the Government has suppressed and as far as possible prohibited Italian schools, even though self-supporting. Thus on all sides Austria is carrying on her intensive campaign of denationalisation in Dalmatia, imposing violently a new, forced, and unnatural Slav civilisation. Italy has no desire to prevent or to hinder the natural expansion of the Croatians or the Serbs, but can no longer stand by and watch a part of her people being strangled inch by inch by an artificial force which under the cloak of nationalism violates the elementary principles of the rights of nationality.
Sir, — It was, I believe, an English diplomat who once said, "First comes a fib, then a lie, and lastly Austrian statistics." The Imperial Royal Government has, however, set great store by this branch of statesmanship, and has used it to blind its anti-national policy in Bosnia, as also in Trieste and Dalmatia.
As I have said in this paper on another occasion, Dalmatia is Italian historically as well as racially and culturally. So late as Campoformio, Napoleon, while robbing Venice of her liberty, for strategic and political reasons incorporated Istria and Dalmatia into the newly formed kingdom of Italy. The tradition is clear and unassailable, from whatever point of view one may look at it.
Dalmatia was first conquered by Rome in the second century B.C., so as to free the Adriatic from the Illyrian pirates who occupied it, and were called respectively Dalmatians in the north and Liburnians in the south. These Illyrians had nothing whatsoever to do with the Slavs, and had been completely absorbed by Latinity when the Slavs broke into Dalmatia in the seventh century A.D. This invasion pushed the native population to the coast and the islands, where they definitely settled as Latin municipia under the nominal suzerainty of Byzantium, the successor of Rome in the Adriatic, until its place was later taken by the Republic of Venice. About the eleventh century, Doge Pietro Orseolo II conquered the whole of the coast-line as far as Le Bocche di Cattaro, with the exception of the territory of the Republic of Ragusa, to protect the Adriatic from the pirates of the Narenta. In 1409 Venice acquired all the rights that Ladislaus of Naples and King of Hungary claimed over Dalmatia.
During the whole of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the dealings between Hungary and Serbia and Dalmatia were of a friendly nature, the cities of the latter being considered as equals and sovereign States. The collection of statutes and ordinances were either written in Latin or translated into Italian, and were essentially Roman in character. These covered a period of 500 years (until 1808). One case alone has been found of a statute translated into the Serbian language and bearing traces of Serbian law. This is that of the little mountain Republic of Poglizza, where many Serbs and Croatians fled during the Turkish invasion. Each and every detail of the life, the language, the customs, the place-names, the religion, and the arts of Dalmatia, as well as its people, prove it to be Latin and Italian, just as are the cities and the people on the other side of the Adriatic. There are many, however, who will question this statement as not being true at the present, though it may have been in the past. Dalmatia, they say, is Serbian; the Italians are in a great minority. Furthermore, Serbia and Croatia need an outlet. As to the latter argument, Italy does not make any objection. It is a case for mutual understanding and goodwill. (...)
Since the defeat of Sadowa and other unfortunate Western ventures, Austria determined at all costs to force her way eastward towards Salonika. An immediate result of this Drang nach Osten policy was the Croatisation and the Slavicisation of Dalmatia. It commenced by attempting to awake a national spirit among the Croatians and Slavs at the expense of the Italians, and in order to accomplish this it started, among other things, to prove the Slavic character and origin of Dalmatia by misreading and even deliberately misinterpreting the documents and remains in the archives. It attempted further to Slavicise Italian culture by assuming that Dalmatian poets and writers of the Renaissance, such as Flora Zuzzeri (Zuzzerich), Giovanni Gondola (Gundulich), who happened to have translated several Italian classics into Croatian, were ipso facto not Italian but Croatians, and accordingly modified their names. Had they lived to-day, they would doubtlessly have been counted as Croatians in the census of Dalmatia. I know personally of cases in which families who are wholly Italian even in name, and violently anti-Austrian to wit, but who happen to occupy important Government posts, are put down as Croatians or Serbs. It is frequent in Dalmatia to find families of Italian parents whose children are put down as Croatians or Serbs.
The official statistics of 1910, duly tampered with by the Croatian communes of Dalmatia, gave only 20,000 Italian inhabitants, while the Italians in reality amount at least to 60,000. In support of this statement Prof. Dudan points out that during the last general election (1911) with universal suffrage, the Italian candidates in the eleven electoral districts received 6,000 votes. The percentage of voters was 50 per cent., so that the voters may roughly be taken to be 12,000. As in Austria each voter under universal suffrage is calculated as representing five inhabitants (women, children, and men up to 24 years of age), the total of Italian inhabitants would amount to 60,000. Another striking instance of Austrian malpractice is given by the Island of Lesina. In 1880 it had 314 Italian inhabitants per 1,000. Ten years later the whole island had only 27 Italians left, and this without any epidemic or sudden emigration. Now as to actual figures. The total population of Dalmatia is 600,000 inhabitants. Of these, 400,000 are totally uncivilised, and live in the Carsus and the Dinaric Alps, and take no part in the life of the country; 100,000 are mixed Slav and Italian in equal degree. As regards the remainder, 60,000 are pure Italian and 40,000 pure Slavs and Croatians. So much for the validity of this argument.
There is, however, another and directer way of ousting the Italians from Dalmatia: the forced importation of Serbs and Croatians from the countryside. In connection with this, it may be interesting to observe that until 50 years ago the Italian coast-dwellers and the inland agricultural Slav population were very friendly, neither infringing the other's domains. Austrian domination, however, has modified these conditions. It has sought by every means to sow dissension and to awaken racial antagonism. This policy is in itself one of the best proofs of the purely Italian character of Dalmatia. As in Bosnia-Herzegovina since Austrian annexation, so here the Catholic Church, subsidised by the Government, has been a powerful ally in the work of denationalisation. But whereas in Bosnia it tried to destroy the Orthodox Church and so strike at the heart of the Serbian race, in Dalmatia it has been used to create a schism in the Church. Until very recently the parish priests and the bishops were Italians; few of the Slav population were sufficiently cultured to enter the priesthood, hence in some parishes the Latin language was replaced by special dispensation by the native dialect (Glagolitic). At present, wherever a vacancy occurs, it is filled by Slavs and Croatians who are anti-Italian and have gone so far as to refuse baptism and burial in consecrated ground to Italian Catholics. They have also disregarded the papal decrees limiting the use of Glagolitic to those churches where the custom has prevailed for over ten years.
The same policy has been adopted with regard to the administrative side of Dalmatian life. Until 1883 the whole local government was managed by Italians. Intellectually and economically superior — the agricultural population around the towns and inland had no culture to speak of, and what they had, as in the case of Bosnia, was Latin and Italian — Italian civilisation absorbed any element that came into contact with it; Italian money endowed schools and commercial enterprises; Italian, too, were the ideals and aspirations of the people to whom the Adriatic was, and is, not a barrier but a link. The life of the coast towns of the peninsula and Venice is in constant and immediate touch with those on the coast of Dalmatia. The boundaries of Italy lie across this, that might be compared to an Italian lake, in the Dinaric Alps and the Carsus. Nor is it a physical and technical frontier, but a natural one. Without Dalmatia, the whole coast-line from the Po to the Cape Sta Maria di Leuca lies open to the Power that happens to control the Adriatic.
Since 1883 the Slav invasion, stimulated and aided by Austria, has slowly been making headway. In that year the comune of Spalato, the largest town in Dalmatia, through incredible electioneering fraud and actual violence — during the elections the city was placed under martial law, Italian voters were arrested so as to prevent them voting, or their votes annulled — fell into Croatian hands. The same thing occurred in other important towns. Not only according to law, the official language was Italian, Serb or Croatian being only allowed for external purposes, but any foreigner wishing to settle in the Dalmatian towns had to learn it in order to be admitted into polite society or to trade with the Italians. In 1912 this law was revoked by a ministerial decree (sic)! This work of forced Croatisation has been further helped through the establishment of numerous Croatian schools in which the Italian language is not taught or spoken, while, on the other hand, the Government has suppressed and as far as possible prohibited Italian schools, even though self-supporting. Thus on all sides Austria is carrying on her intensive campaign of denationalisation in Dalmatia, imposing violently a new, forced, and unnatural Slav civilisation. Italy has no desire to prevent or to hinder the natural expansion of the Croatians or the Serbs, but can no longer stand by and watch a part of her people being strangled inch by inch by an artificial force which under the cloak of nationalism violates the elementary principles of the rights of nationality.
How Dalmatian Names Became Slav
(Taken from the journal “Modern Italy”, Volume 2, Issue 17, 1919.)
Those who are accustomed to read books and articles and reviews and newspaper letters written by Yugo-Slavophil propagandists must have been bewildered at the manner of spelling adopted in the case of the well-known Dalmatian cities. For instance a certain Review published in London speaks of Spalato as Split and Ragusa as Dubrovnik. What a cacophonous travesty of the musical and historic Italian names. But I know why it is done and how it came to be popularised. It was ordered by Austria.
I have before me a copy of a document recently found in the archives of the Hydrographic Institute at Pola. It is a document issued by the Austrian General Staff in July, 1916, and is numbered K.N.R. 13486. The document lays down the following rules:
Those who are accustomed to read books and articles and reviews and newspaper letters written by Yugo-Slavophil propagandists must have been bewildered at the manner of spelling adopted in the case of the well-known Dalmatian cities. For instance a certain Review published in London speaks of Spalato as Split and Ragusa as Dubrovnik. What a cacophonous travesty of the musical and historic Italian names. But I know why it is done and how it came to be popularised. It was ordered by Austria.
I have before me a copy of a document recently found in the archives of the Hydrographic Institute at Pola. It is a document issued by the Austrian General Staff in July, 1916, and is numbered K.N.R. 13486. The document lays down the following rules:
“All the commands, the military authorities and their dependants together with the civil authorities, will use Croat names instead of the Italian names hitherto used in referring to places in Dalmatia: Zadar instead of Zara, Tijesno instead of Stretto, Trogir instead of Trau, Split instead of Spalato, Omis instead of Almissa, Dubrovnik instead of Ragusa, Ston instead of Stagno, Kotor instead of Cattaro, Budva instead of Budua, Perast instead of Perasto, Sibenik instead of Sebenico, Skradine instead of Scardona, Solin instead of Salona, Vis instead of Lissa, Opuzen instead of Fort'Opus, Cavtat instead of Ragusa Vecchia, Ercegnovi instead of Castelnuovo, Tivat instead of Teodo, Risan instead of Risano. The Command Headquarters hitherto called Cattaro will be called Kotor. For the naming of the other districts of Dalmatia a list of official names will contain the necessary explanations. To avoid confusion and misunderstanding the names which have up to the present been used will be printed in brackets up to June 30th, 1917. After that these names within brackets shall be omitted.”By this official declaration even the Austrian authorities acknowledge that up to 1916 the people of Dalmatia had not thought of Croatising their place-names and that they could not recognise the Croat names unless the Italian names accompanied them.
(Signed) Conrad.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
St. Jerome - September 1
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| ‘San Girolamo nello studio’ (1480) by Domenico Ghirlandaio |
St. Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymus in Latin; San Girolamo in Italian) was an Italian saint, one of the great Latin Fathers of the Church, one of the original four Doctors of the Church, the translator of the Latin Vulgate, and the author of numerous biblical commentaries, treatises, biographies and epistles. As one of the most prominent and prolific early Christian writers of the Western world, his popularity and influence is matched only by St. Augustine.
St. Jerome was a Roman, of Latin background and culture, born in 347 AD, in the city of Stridon (Strido in Latin), which was located on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia, near the Roman cities of Aquileia and Emona (modern Ljubljana; today the capital of Slovenia, then the easternmost city of Italy). It is most commonly accepted that Stridon was located on the site of the current village of Stridone (also called Sdregna) in Istria, which was then part of Italy, but today is part of Croatia. St. Jerome was born into a wealthy family which owned both land and slaves—most characteristic of a family descended from Roman colonists. His father was Eusebius and his brother was Paulinianus; the names of his mother and sister are unknown. The family was Christian.
St. Jerome was educated in Rome where he was taught by Aelius Donatus and baptized by Pope Liberius. He lived for a few years in Augusta Treverorum (Trier) where he met the exiled St. Athanasius. He then spent time in Aquileia as an ascetic before retiring to the desert of Chalcis where he lived a rigorous life as a hermit. He then went to Antioch where he was ordained a priest by Paulinus, bishop of Antioch. Next he went to Constantinople and studied Greek under St. Gregory of Nazianzus. He returned to Rome in 382 and became the secretary of Pope Damasus I. Here he became the spiritual father of a group of ascetic virgins and widows that included St. Marcella, St. Paula and St. Eustochium Julia.
St. Jerome was regarded as the most likely candidate to succeed Pope Damasus I as bishop of Rome, however his election was blocked by the Roman curia on the ground that they considered him responsible for the death of Blaesilla, a noble Roman woman and daughter of St. Paula to whom St. Jerome had given spiritual guidance. In 384 Jerome was forced to leave Rome. He sailed to Bethlehem where he founded a monastery and lived as a monk for the remainder of his life. He died in Bethlehem on September 30, 420 AD.
Slavic and Albanian misappropriation of St. Jerome
It is not uncommon for many Slavs today (particularly Croats, Slovenes and Serbs) to claim that St. Jerome was Slavic, despite the fact that St. Jerome lived and died centuries before the Slavs first arrived in Istria, Dalmatia and the Balkans. Many Albanians, in a similar attempt to appropriate historical figures that do not belong to them, likewise claim St. Jerome as their own. To read more about this, see the article: St. Jerome and Slavic Myth-Making (Revisionism)
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Pope Sixtus V: Another Victim of Slavic Revisionism
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| Pope Sixtus V |
August 27th marks the anniversary of the death of Pope Sixtus V, who was Pope of the Catholic Church from April 24, 1585 until his death in 1590.
Pope Sixtus V was born Felice Piergentile in Le Grotte (today Grottammare), a comune in the Marche region of Italy. His parents were Piergentile Peretti (nicknamed Peretto, meaning “little pear”) and Mariana da Frontillo, both from the region of Marche. At an early age, Sixtus became a Franciscan friar. He was ordained a priest in 1547 and in 1548 became a magister of the Franciscan order. In 1557 he was appointed Inquisitor of Venice and named Vicar General of the Franciscans in 1566. He was consecrated a bishop in 1567 and made a cardinal by Pope Pius V in 1570, before finally being elected pope on April 24, 1585. He died of malaria five years later on August 27, 1590.
Sixtus V is remembered as one of the most important popes of the Counter Reformation. During his reign as pope he revised the Latin Vulgate; reformed the College of Cardinals; founded the Vatican Printing House; renovated the Lateran Palace; built a hospice for the poor; constructed the first aqueduct in Rome since the end of the Roman Empire; opposed Protestantism; supported the Catholic League of France; strengthened the Inquisition; condemned astrology and magic; beatified St. Simon of Trent; and declared abortion to be an excommunicable crime punishable by death.
Aside from this, Sixtus V has become an important figure among Slavs, who have taken a personal interest in the pope due to his support of the Church of St. Jerome of the Illyrians (today St. Jerome of the Croats) and the College of St. Jerome of the Illyrians (today the Pontifical Croatian College). Sixtus had been the Cardinal Priest of St. Jerome of the Illyrians since 1570, and after he became pope he rebuilt the Church of St. Jerome, which was established as a church for the Dalmatian and Slavic refugees in Rome who had previously fled the Ottoman Turks and as the primary location of the Illyrian College.
Not surprisingly, these facts have led Slavic revisionists to forge history once again and claim that Sixtus V was a Slav, and not an Italian as is universally believed. Also not surprisingly, Serbian revisionists claim he was a Serb, while Croatian revisionists claim he was a Croat.
According to the first and official biography of Pope Sixtus V written by Antonio Maria Graziani (1537-1611), the secretary and original biographer of Pope Sixtus V, whose work was edited by Pope Sixtus himself, both parents of the pope were born in the Marche region of Italy (his father being from the village of Montalto; his mother being from the village of Frontillo), and therefore were of Italian origin. Unfortunately, this has not prevented certain prideful Slavs from creating their own version of history.
The claim that Pope Sixtus V was of Slavic origin is based on the later chronicle of Andrija Zmajevic (1624-1694), a 17th century Slavic writer who worked in the Republic of Venice. Zmajevic – writing several decades after the official papal biography – claimed that Piergentile Peretti, the father of the pope, was born to the Šišić family in the village of Kruševice near Bijela (San Pietro de Albis) in modern-day Montenegro; he supposedly fled to Italy during the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans and then changed his name to Peretti. There is zero historical evidence for any of these claims; the story was entirely unknown prior to the publication of this chronicle, and is the pure fanciful invention of Zmajevic.
Later Slavic revisionists, relying on Zmajevic's fables, adopted these same unfounded claims, adding their own twist and details to the story at whim. The 18th/19th century Serbian Orthodox priest Savo Nakićenović, for example, claimed that the father of Pope Sixtus was actually born to the Serbian Svilanović family, while other revisionists claim that Pope Sixtus himself was born in Montenegro and raised in the Eastern Orthodox religion before converting to Catholicism and moving to Italy (an entirely baseless claim without historical foundation or evidence).
These and countless other tales are the delusional fantasies of Slavic extremists and revisionists, who are painfully desperate to attach themselves to histories, accomplishments and personages which do not belong to them. Pope Sixtus V is yet another man in the long list of men who have fallen victim to Slavic revisionism, being kidnapped by the Slavs in their falsified rewriting of history.
See also:
Artists, Navigators, Popes, Scientists... “Croats”
Ivan Golub Claims Pope Sixtus V was “Croatian”
The Unfounded “Croatian” Origin of Pope Sixtus V
Saturday, August 22, 2015
The History of Pelagosa
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| Great Pelagosa (Pelagosa Grande), the largest island of Pelagosa |
Pelagosa is a small archipelago in the Adriatic Sea, situated between the Italian peninsula and the Dalmatian coast. The archipelago is composed of two islands: Great Pelagosa (Pelagosa Grande) and Little Pelagosa (Pelagosa Piccola). Additionally there are a dozen other minor islets and rocks, including Caiola, Sasso di Tramontana and Sasso d'Ostro.
Geography
The geological structure of the archipelago is such that it forms a natural continuation of the Tremiti Islands (Isole Tremiti) and the Gargano Peninsula, and therefore is regarded as belonging geographically to Italy, rather than to Croatia. The islands are also closer to Italy than to the Croatian mainland, being only 53 km (33 mi) away from the Gargano Peninsula, and more than twice that distance away from Croatia.
Prehistory and Legend
Archeological evidence suggests that the islands of Pelagosa were inhabited in prehistoric times, but nothing else is known of its prehistory. Based on archeological findings it is believed that the paleolithic inhabitants were the same as those inhabiting the rest of ancient Italy.
According to legend, Diomedes – a veteran of the Trojan War – is said to have landed on Pelagosa and to have been buried there. Ancient Greek pottery has been discovered on Pelagosa, however no tomb belonging to Diomedes has ever been found and the legend is considered unhistorical.
Romans and Middle Ages
The official history of Pelagosa begins with the Romans, who colonized the islands and built a temple. The islands belonged to Rome for several centuries and was home to an early Latin Christian community. However, the islands were uninhabited during the Middle Ages.
At an unknown date Pelagosa became part of the Republic of Venice, but the islands did not maintain any permanent population.
Pelagosa was visited by Pope Alexander III on Ash Wednesday, March 9, 1177.
In the 13th century a Lusignan noble, exiled from Venice, occupied the island of Great Pelagosa. He and a band of pirates transformed the island into an armed fortress, from which they engaged in acts of piracy and terrorized local fishermen until being defeated by the Venetians.
Modern History
Pelagosa then belonged to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In 1843 it was repopulated for the first time since the Roman period, and was settled by fishermen from the island of Ischia near Naples. However, by the end of the 19th century the population had migrated back to the Italian mainland.
In 1861 the islands of Pelagosa became part of the Kingdom of Italy.
In 1873 the Austro-Hungarian Empire began to militarily occupy Pelagosa, thereby violating Italian sovereignty, but without protest from the Italian government. In 1875, during the occupation, a lighthouse was erected which still stands today. The question of Pelagosa, and its illegal occupation by Austria, was raised in an Italian parliamentary debate in 1891 but was ignored by the government.
Pelagosa was finally recaptured by Italy on July 11, 1915 during the First World War. The Italian military held and defended the island for the full duration of the war. On August 5, 1915 the Italian submarine Nereide was sunk by the Austrians near Pelagosa, killing all crew members. The captain, Lieutenant-Commander Carlo del Greco, was later awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour.
In 1920, after the end of the war, Pelagosa was reincorporated into Italy, officially ending the Austro-Hungarian occupation. In the 1920's Pelagosa was settled by Italian fishermen from the nearby Tremiti Islands. A meteorological observatory, the church of San Michele, and two other buildings were constructed during this period. The islands initially formed part of the Italian province of Zara, but in 1941 were incorporated into the Italian province of Spalato.
Annexation to Yugoslavia
In 1947, after the end of the Second World War, Pelagosa was ceded to Communist Yugoslavia, together with the whole of Dalmatia, merely because it administratively formed part of the Italian provinces of Dalmatia. Thus it was that an entirely Italian archipelago, inhabited exclusively by Italians, located just off the Italian peninsula, and belonging to Italy for over 2,000 years, was arbitrarily torn from Italy and given to Yugoslavia – renamed “Palagruža” and artificially annexed to a Slavic state for the first time in history, despite never having any connection whatsoever to the Slavs, neither ethnically, nor politically, nor geographically, nor historically.
Today
In 1991, after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the islands of Pelagosa were occupied by the newly-independent country of Croatia. Today the islands are once again uninhibited, except by temporary visitors, and remains part of the Republic of Croatia.
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| “Our brave sailors ejecting the Austrian fleet that attempted to capture the island of Pelagosa” |
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