Just behind the very tip of the peninsula, on the edge of a superb
natural harbor, the entrance to which is masked by the Brioni Islands,
is the great naval base of Pola, from the shelter of whose
fortifications and mined approaches the Austrian fleet was able to
terrorize the defenseless towns along Italy's unprotected eastern
seaboard and to menace the commerce of the northern Adriatic. Pola Is a
strange mélange of the ancient and the modern, for from the topmost
tiers of the great Roman Arena--scarcely less imposing than the Coliseum
at Rome--we looked down upon a harbor dotted with the fighting monsters
of the Italian navy, while all day long Italian seaplanes swooped and
circled over the splendid arch, erected by a Roman emperor in the dim
dawn of European history, to commemorate his triumph over the
barbarians.

It is just such anomalies as these that make almost impossible the
solution, on a basis of strict justice to the inhabitants, of the
Adriatic problem. Here you see a city that, in history, in population,
in language, is as characteristically Italian as though it were under
the shadow of the Apennines, yet encircling that city is a countryside
whose inhabitants are wholly Slav, who are intensely hostile to Italian
institutions, and many of whom have no knowledge whatsoever of the
Italian tongue. The Italians claim that Istria should be theirs because
of the undoubted Latin character of the towns along its coasts, because
their Roman and Venetian ancestors established their outposts here long
centuries ago, because the only culture that the region possesses is
Italian, and, above all else, because its possession is essential to the
safety of Italy herself. The Slavs, on the other hand, lay claim to
Istria on the ground that its first inhabitants, whether barbarians or
not, were Slavs, that the Italians who settled on its shores were but