FIUME-THE MARTYR OF UNIVERSAL BLUNDERS SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE BY BRUNO ROSELLI IF you have traveled at all in Musso- ^ lini's own Italy, where the railway officials have been ordered to stop presenting a yearly deficit of one bill­ ion lire to the Italian taxpayers "under penalty of fine or imprisonment," and have therefore met the increasing de­ mand for space by decreasing supply, you are probably acquainted with that tempestuous performance of assault­ ing a train in search of an elusive seat, which is daily repeated at Flor­ ence, Bologna, and Venice when the express bound for Austria, Jugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia thunders in under the re-echoing glass dome. For there is a tradition that on an unnamed day of an unnamed year one of the cars of the train marked "Roman-Wien," "Roman-Belgrad," and "Roman-Pra- THE PORT OF FIUME AND THE TROUBLESOME DELTA ha" had one seat which was not fully and legally occupied when the express perhaps of their last whitewash of Governor, then of d'Annurizio, the steamed out of the Eternal City. Such nine years ago; the enormous ware­ mythical comandante. How well I re­ legends, you know, are difficult to re­ houses, fast asleep; the idle cranes; member seeing it in 1920 surrounded fute, even by the most hardened the barred windows of the world- by the stout-hearted young Arditi, facchino. renowned Armstrong torpedo factory, spiritual ancestors of to-day's Fas- But it was exactly one of those oldest and best in the world. To the cisti, mounting guard by the thickets hardened porters who taught me how left, a row of picturesque Istrian vil­ of laurel trees to protect their inde­ to find a seat in that very train—if lages—Italy. To the right, a row of fatigable and increasingly irresponsi­ not quite to destination, at least for picturesque Croatian villages—Jugo­ ble leader, who had defied the world the whole night—by attacking the last slavia. Just like two terra-cotta dogs and robbed Italy of an empire in order car of the train marked "Roman- facing each other right and left of a to present her with this little town, Fiume." "Take this, and change at gate. And between them the Gate—a which she was not allowed to accept, San Pietro del Carso to-morrow morn­ time-honored, history-making Gate— after all! And now I was made to ing," ordered my mentor; and I found shut tight. live once more the tragedy of the myself in a car far from overloaded, The Moschiena passed close to a "Bloody Christmas" of 1920, when the since I had only fifty-five fellow- Italian regulars had to shell the Ital­ passengers in a car seating fifty-six buoy on her right—a buoy sur­ mounted by a large Jugoslav flag. A ian irregulars out of Fiume; for the people. And what a pretty collection Fiumani have purposely left the pal­ of multicolored labels, forms, stamped Fiumano spat at it, with an oath and a horrible grin. That flag continues, ace untouched after the bombardment, permits, and passes did they show to barely covering with boards the ugly the conductor when he came through! exactly three miles out at sea, the boundary between Jugoslavia and the gaping holes; while above the tragic I believe I was the only passenger who building the Tricolor of Italy, waved was not a Fiuman oificial, an Italian Free State of Fiume, and if an Italian or a Fiuman boat by mistake enters by both sides in the fraternal combat, official, or a Jugoslav official in that floats solemnly, not even accompanied car; for such a life the former com­ the intervening waters the Croat town of Susak begins to shoot. It is a bat­ by the official Fiume flag. And in mercial metropolis of the northeastern order to legalize this apparent ille­ Adriatic lives, or pretends to live. tle without quarter between these two civilizations. And it began over two gality, the Fiumani have given those When I changed cars at San Pietro rooms in the palace which are still del Carso, I had vowed that I would thousand years ago, when this town, which now takes its name from the habitable to the Italian Legation, once more revisit Fiume, which I had which of course enjoys the usual dip­ not seen since the days of d'Annun- fiume (or river) Eneo, which sepa­ rates it from Jugoslavia, was called lomatic privilege of flying its home zio's colorful adventure; and it was flag unaccompanied by local emblems. with envy that I bade adieu to the Tarsatica, and became the outpost of Rome in her campaigns against the A clever arrangement. But then prosaic car and its untalkative cargo Fiume, denied a hearing by the Allies as it sped toward the town which I Liburnian pirates. The city itself (let not love be and a seat by the League of Nations, had hailed three years ago as "The has become a pa:st-master in ruse and Citadel of Heroic Unreality." blind!) is hopelessly ugly. Still, this weird town, with its Italian popula­ expediency. Her own little uniformed Twenty days later I fulfilled my force must be distinguishable from vow. I reached Fiume from the sea— tion, its Austrian belief in the omnip­ otence of government, its Hungarian that of Italy? Very well, she has a sea not less glorious and far more given them complete Italian infantry invigorating than that around Naples, architecture, and its Slav hinterland, is a most fascinating place to visit for uniforms except for the tiny mostrine, but, alas! totally deserted. The little or strips of silk, one inch by three, on Moschiena, carrying its handful of any one who can read the elusive les­ sons of history on the leaves scattered the collar, which vary with every Italian mail from Zara, advanced Italian brigade and which here hap­ plaintively in the immense Bay of the sybil-like by any genius loci or presid­ ing local divinity. Take the palazzo pen to have the Fiume colors. She is Quarnero. In front of us spread the not allowed to, use ^ Italian postage- pretentious whitish palaces, dreaming or former residence of the Hungarian 403 PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 4(M TTfE QfU^TIityWir f November stempg? V«ry well. She will have her own set, with the following pic­ tures: 2 centeeimi, the head of Italia; 5 centesimi, the Capitoline wolf suck­ ling Romulus and Remus; 10 cen­ tesimi, the hoisting of the Italian flag on the municipal palace when the Armistice was signed; 15 centesimi, d'Annunzio's bony and hairless skull; 25 centesimi, the Roman Arch of Fiume; 50 centesimi, a distant view of the city, with a child waving a huge Italian flag just outside of the three- mile limit; 1 lira, the Piazza San Marco of Venice, with the words "Fiume proclaimed her annexation to .Italy on October 30th, 1918." I have laid stress upon the various values because they prove, incidentally, that Fiume uses the Italian currency now, 'W^i^'.i^y • while during the d'Annunzian period .WN- V she used the Austrian crown sur­ charged Cittd cli Fiume, and before that the unstamped Austrian crown. THE BLOODY CHRISTMAS OF 1920 IN FIUME BRIDGES BLOWN UP BY THE D'ANNUNZIANS She has consistently refused to use TO STOP THE ITALIAN REGULARS Jugoslav currency, which in fact is now liable to confiscation there. but leaving her still chained to the refusing to submit to the Allies' will. How does Fiume live? It is a mys­ rock. And the first of the Allies to test tery to me. An explanation may be And how she does love her mother Flume's obstinacy had been France, found in the fact that her ante-bellum Italy also! One of the first things you who had sent her little yellow An- population of forty thousand souls (of notice when you stroll through the namites to establish a naval base, but whom about thirty thousand were town is that most peculiar monument had had fifty of them slaughtered in Italians and the rest Croats and Hun­ in the imposing and central Piazza one day. Blind to realities, the Allies, garians) included no less than fifty Dante, consisting of a pedestal sup­ instead of using some of their Italian millionaires. Also, the Italians have porting the anchor and chain of the units there, thought that they might fed the children of Fiume for years, Emanuele Filiberto, the first Italian keep order in the town with British and the words emigrato Fiumano are man-of-war to reach Fiume after her "bobbies;" and on being reminded that an "open sesame" for any one who will formal act of annexation to Italy on English-speaking guards could not move to Italy and look for a job. But October 30, 1918, or five days before well police an Italian-speaking city, most of the people are still here, the Armistice—^a date which indicates they volunteered that, while British soured, suspicious, haggard, defiant, the anarchy then prevailing in the policemen from England might not do like tigers pacing their little cage six Hapsburg Empire. And the flags it, British policemen from Malta could. miles by three. "Thou shalt not which flew at half-mast from almost Now Malta has ever been a thorn in pass!" everybody seems to say to every house in Fiume (as everywhere the side of nationalistic Italy; and the them. If they stroll toward the Eneo, in Italy) while the remains of Presi­ decision to import those dis-Italianized they stare just across the ditch at dent Harding were brought across the Maltese to keep order in an ultra- some such sign as Hotel Balkan or continent were mainly Italian flags, Italian city made the Fiumani foam at Cafe Panslavia, or they hear the bi­ with only a sprinkling of the (hor­ the mouth.