Note 15 — VI

The supplies for the Austro-Hungarian army in Albania had been concentrated at Rieka. These had to be guarded by Yugoslav troops, as the Hungarian watchmen at the port had disappeared, and the Russian prisoners employed there—about 500 men—had also vanished. In order to keep off nocturnal plunderers, the Yugoslav troops were told to fire a few shots now and then into the air. Is it not possible that the two Italian boys who, as Mr. Beaumont reported, were hit during the night by stray bullets and succumbed in hospital to their injuries—is it not possible that they were out for plunder and that this incident should not be used to illustrate what Mr. Beaumont (of the Daily Telegraph) calls "the worst characteristics of Balkan terrorism" on the part of the troops? During the twenty days of the Yugoslav régime their authorities sold, as they were justified in doing, tobacco from these warehouses to the value of 120,000 crowns. It was generally said in Rieka that the Italians in four days had given away six million crowns' worth, that large quantities of flour were removed until the British put a stop to this, and that the robberies were flagrant. These allegations may have been untrue or exaggerated, but individuals were pointed out who in a mysterious manner had suddenly become affluent; it would at any rate have been as well if the I.N.C. had ordered some investigation. Since they failed to do so, it is natural that gossip flourished. In Triest, by the way, even the Italian population is reputed to have been disgusted when about forty waggon-loads of flour and twenty of sugar were taken from the stores of the former Austrian army and shipped to Italy.