n capital 19.37 per cent.
and Slav capital 31.80 per cent. One of these Dalmatian Slavs,
Mihanovi['c], going out in poverty to the Argentine, has followed with
such success the shipbuilding of his ancestors that he is now among the
chief millionaires of Buenos Aires. With regard to fishing, there are
along the Istrian and Dalmatian coast more than 5000 small vessels which
give employment to 19,000 fishermen, of whom only 1000 are citizens of
Italy. But Mr. Belloc says that these Slav people have only tentatively
approached the sea, that its traffic was never native to them, and that
they are not mariners. It is marvellous that you can be paid for writing
that sort of stuff.... By Mr. Belloc's side is the Marchese Donghi, who
in the _Fortnightly Review_ of June 1922 says: "It is superfluous to add
that everything which has to do with navigation [in Dalmatia] is
entirely in the hands of the Italians." But I think it is superfluous to
contradict a gentleman who ingenuously believes that Dalmatia is largely
Italian because on our maps we have hitherto used Italian place-names.
Will he say that the population of Praha is not Czech because on our
maps that capital is commonly called Prague? It pleases the Marchese to
be facetious about what he describes as "that queer thing called the
Srba Hrvata i Slovenca Kralji (Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes)"; he should have said "Kraljevina Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca."
He says that in Serbia "no industry is possible," whereas in one single
town, Lescovac, there are no less than eleven textile besides other
factories. He says that one-third of the population of Dalmatia is
Italian, and "almost exclusively the nobility and the upper
_bourgeoisie_." I suppose that is why more than 700 of Dalmatia's
leading citizens were deported by the Italians after the Great War. He
says many other nonsensical things, and sums it all up by telling us of
the "bewildered incomprehension" of the Adriatic problem!
WHO SET A STANDARD THAT WAS TOO HIGH
Whether rightly or wrongly, the Yugoslavs had formed their opinion of
the Italian sailors, an opinion which dated from the time of Tegetthoff
and had not undergone much modification by the incidents of this War.
They remembered what had happened when they cruised outside Italian
ports; they knew very probably that the British had on more than one
occasion to break through the boom outside Taranto harbour, and they may
have read[8] of the experience
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