The car, with its exhaust wide open, for your Italian driver delights in noise, roared down the grade at express-train speed, took the hairpin curve at the bottom on two wheels, to be brought to an abrupt halt with an agonized squealing of brakes, our further progress being barred by a six-inch tree-trunk which had been lowered across the road like a barrier at an old-time country toll-gate.  At one side of the road was a picket of Italian carabinieri in field-gray uniforms, their huge cocked hats rendered a shade less anachronistic by covers of gray linen, with carbines slung over their shoulders, hunter fashion.  On the opposite side of the highway was a patrol of British sailors in white drill landing-kit, their rosy, smiling faces in striking contrast to the saturnine countenances of the Italians. (I might explain, parenthetically, that Fiume, being in theory under the jurisdiction of the Peace Conference, was at this time occupied by about a thousand French troops, the same number of British, a few score American blue-jackets, and nearly 10,000 Italians.) The sergeant in command of the carabinieri stepped up to the car, saluted, and curtly asked for our papers.  I produced them.  Among them was a pass authorizing us to go when and where we pleased in the territory occupied by the Italian forces.  It had been given to me by the Minister of War himself, but it made about as much impression on the sergeant as though it had been signed by Charlie Chaplin.

“This is good only for Italy,” he said.  “It will not take you across the line of the Armistice.”

[Illustration:  AT THE GATES OF FIUME

Major Powell (second from left), Mrs. Powell, Captain Tron of the Italian Comando Supremo, and the car in which they travelled 1,000 miles]

Thereupon I played my last trump.  I produced an imposing document which had been given me by the Italian peace delegation in Paris.  It had originally been issued by the Orlando-Sonnino cabinet, but upon the fall of that government I had had it countersigned, before leaving Rome, by the Nitti cabinet.  It was addressed to all the military, naval, and civil authorities of Italy, and was so flatteringly worded that it would have satisfied St. Peter himself.  But the sergeant was not in the least impressed.  He read it through deliberately, scrutinized the official seals, examined the watermark, and then disappeared into a sentry-box on the roadside.  I could hear him talking, evidently over a telephone.  Presently he emerged and signaled to his men to raise the barrier.  “Passo,” he said grudgingly, in a tone which intimated that he was letting us enter the jealously guarded portals of Fiume against his better judgment, the bar swung upward, the big car leaped forward like a race-horse that feels the spur, and in another moment we were rolling through the tree-arched, stone-paved streets of the most-talked-of city in the world.  As we sped down the Corsia Deak we passed a large hotel which, as was quite evident, had recently been renamed, for the words “Albergo d’Annunzio” were fresh and staring.  But underneath was the former name, which had been so imperfectly obliterated that it could still easily be deciphered.  It was “Hotel Wilson.”