Lancings WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1919. FROM COMIC OPERA TO TRAGEDY.

Free Lance, Volume XIX, Issue 1013, 26 November 1919, Page 10

Lancings

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1919. FROM COMIC OPERA TO TRAGEDY.

Here shall the Press the people s right maintain, Unawed by principle and unbtibed by gam ; Here patriot Truth her glorious precepts draw. Pledged to Religion, Liberty and Law. , ' '

The D'Annunzio Nuisance. UNLESS, the Allies take prompt steps to squash D'Annunzio, poet, playwright, aviator, national hero, and, present-day ruler of Fiume, there will soon be a pretty kettle of fish to fry in the Adriatic. D'Annunzio began with a comic opera seizure of Fiume, but if he persists with his new and extended adventure in Dalmatia, iie will soon have a combined mob of enraged Jugo-Slavs and Montenegrins on his track. As a matter of fact, whatever justice there may be in Italy's, or rather D'Annunzio's claim to _Fiume, the Italians have no more rignt to either Dalmatia or Montenegro than Germany had in 1871 to mop up AlsaceLorraine. It is true there is a large Italian population on the eastern shores of the Adriatic, but'they are practically immigrants. The country properly belongs) to the Jugo-Slav group. As for Montenegro, if D'Annunzio is audacious enough to go filibustering in that country, he may run the risk of losing a number of his ;»en< for the sturdy patriots of the ''Black Mountains" will pay no "need to the flamboyant oratory of this excitable Latin, but will shoot him "on sight." « • ' '■*. «

The new Italian Government may restrain D'Annunzio from further adventures on the Dalmatian coast, and agree , to the reasonable compromise offered by the Allies with regard to Fiume. "If not, then disagreeable as may bp the task of interference in the Adriatic, France and Great Britain will have to - undertake; it. As things are going at present, it is long odds upon Italy and Jugo-Slavia embarking upon -a new and bloody war all on their own. That is the tragedy to which the comic opera position at Fiume may only too probably lead.