filibusters and adventurers, and that its inhabitants, by blood, by
language, and by sentiment, are overwhelmingly Slav to-day. The only
thing on which both races agree is that the peninsula should not be
divided. It was no easy problem, you see, which the peace-makers were
expected to solve with strict justice for all. If my memory serves me
right, King Solomon was once called upon by two mothers to settle a
somewhat similar dispute, though in that case it was a child instead of
a country whose ownership was in question. So, though both Latins and
Slavs may continue to assert their rights to the peninsula in its
entirety, I imagine that the Istrian problem will eventually be settled
by the judgment of Solomon.




CHAPTER II

THE BORDERLAND OF SLAV AND LATIN


It was the same along the entire line of the Armistice from the Brenner
down to Istria. Whenever the officials with whom we talked heard that we
were going to Fiume, they shook their heads pessimistically. "It's a
good place to stay away from just now," said one. "They won't let you
enter the city," another warned us. Or, "You mustn't think of taking the
_signora_ with you." But the representative of an American oil company
whom I met in the American consulate in Trieste regarded the excursion
from a different view-point altogether.

"Be sure to stop at the Europa," he urged me. "It's right on the