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Calmly waiting to make sure that the public reaction was good, the new Cabinet of Giuseppe Pella met to vote its "unanimous pleasure," and. to thundering cheers, Premier Pella announced the Cabinet's acceptance to the newly convened Italian Parliament. It was a big boost for Pella (see below). Still, he was careful to regard the offer as only a down payment on Italy's claims. "I can declare in the most formal way," said Pella to Parliament, "that acceptance of ... Zone A does not imply any abandonment of Italian claims on Zone B."
Horse Artillery. Across the Adriatic in the land of Tito, the reaction was more violent and menacing than the Western powers had anticipated. Yugoslavs rolled onto the streets of Belgrade swinging placards (WE WILL GIVE OUR LIVES, BUT NOT AN INCH OF TRIESTE! TRIESTE IS OURS!) and chanting slogans ("Trieste or death!" "Down with Britain and America!"). At the U.S. and British embassies and the Italian legation, crowds cascaded stones and bricks through windows and doorways.
At first, hardheaded Marshal Tito reacted with comparative mildness. The Anglo-American plan was, in fact, almost identical to one the British say Tito approved privately less than a year ago in talks with Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, except that the new plan does not try to freeze the division of territory. Tito called on his cops to quiet the street crowds, but the marching, chanting demonstrations spread. In his manipulation of the touchy Trieste issue, Tito had apparently whipped his people to a higher emotional pitch than he recognized, and intermixed the issue with his own prestige —a serious mistake for a dictator caught precariously between a people he is not sure of, a Soviet government that hates him for a heretic, and cautious Western friends who mistrust him for being a passionate Communist. The public reaction now stirred Dictator Tito to a more dangerous course.
Belgrade rushed troops, tanks and horse artillery to Zone B. Before a rally of 100,000 Yugoslavs, Tito fired tempers further: he demanded a different Trieste solution—one which would entrust to Italy only the city and give all the rest to Yugoslavia—and warned that, unless it is accepted, "there will be no peace in this part of Europe." "We would give up [Western] aid," said Tito, "but we will never give up these interests." Then he vowed that if Italy sends in troops to occupy Zone A, Yugoslavia will consider it "an act of aggression" and send the Yugoslav army to drive them out.
Tito's Deputy Foreign Minister, Koca Popovic, rushed to Washington from the United Nations to discuss the situation with U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, told reporters that the matter looks "very grave." Moscow chimed in with formal notes to Washington and London calling the Trieste move a "grave violation" of the six-year-old Italian peace treaty.
Admittedly worried by the violence of Yugoslavia's reaction and the limb Tito had climbed out on, Western diplomats nonetheless held fast, figuring that, given time. Tito will cool himself and his people down. They do not believe, in other words, that the dictator of Yugoslavia is willing or able to go to war for Trieste.