Europe-Whither Bound? Part 4

Vienna and Berlin may be on black bread, Budapest without b.u.t.ter, but Sofia does not lack. And sugar seems plentiful, and meat is not dear.

Oranges are cheap, and the wine of the country is accessible.

Manufactures, of course, depend on the exchange, and are expensive.

There is cheap entertainment, the inexpensive tedium of the cinema and the use of a theatre. Once more Russia in exile affords some cultural help with performances of the Theatre of Art, concerts, and ballet.

Peter Struve has taken up his abode, and now makes bold to re-issue one of Russia's princ.i.p.al critical reviews, the "Russkaya Misl." Here in Sofia is a Russian publishing house, which has printed a translation of Wells' impressions of Bolshevik Russia, and "At the Feast of the G.o.ds,"

by Bulgakof, and Struve's "Thoughts on the Revolution," new books of value which suggest that the old Russia still lives.

Asked how the Bulgars behaved toward the Russians, a foreign and therefore perhaps neutral diplomat replied: "The Bulgar will not do anything for people in distress. He is an egoist. He'll let his own father starve rather than sacrifice anything of his own. He has cause to be eternally grateful to the Russians, and now he has a chance to pay back something of what he owes, but not he. He treats the Russian as a beggar and an inferior, just because he sees him in a state of failure and misery."

A Serbian, asked whether Bulgars and Serbs could come to an understanding, said "No, because when the Bulgars were put in power over Serbs by the strength of German arms they set about abolishing the Serbian nation. In a cold-blooded way they went through the whole of Serbia, murdering and destroying. A nation like the Bulgars," said he, "is incapable of friendship."

A Greek, asked, "Could there not be an entente between Greece and Bulgaria, a burying of the hatchet," replied: "No, there is a mortal vendetta between us. There is something in the Bulgarian which makes our people see red."

When these matters were referred to a Bulgarian, he smiled, and said: "We shall obtain the protection of England or France; that will be enough. Bulgaria is impregnable against enemies. Let any nation try and take Bulgaria and her mountains, see what it would cost in human lives. But these wars, what is the use of them: does anyone ever gain anything by them?"

Bulgaria gained her freedom by a war. But of that it seemed untactful to remind this denizen of Sofia. Besides, he was a kind of Bolshevik.

If Bolshevism were to sweep Europe, he would not be put out of doors.

Bulgaria also would be in the political advance-guard of world-progress.

"You do compulsory communal labour in the fields every year, do you not?"

"Such a law has been pa.s.sed. You see, we are an agricultural people.

Food is our life. The war greatly disturbed our population, and it was not easy to get labour, or to get it at a reasonable price. So compulsory labour was introduced--every man to do his share in producing the daily bread."

So Bulgaria has met the peace. She was our enemy. But her money is at least worth more than that of one of our Allies, and compares favourably with that of another. The cost of living is low. Wages have gone up to a considerable extent, and the able-bodied working-man has enough for himself and his family. One saw how much more stable is an agricultural state than an industrial one. If our Europe goes down in economic ruin it does not at all follow that little states like Bulgaria will be engulfed. On the contrary, Bulgaria as she is const.i.tuted to-day would almost certainly survive. It is industrialism and large business upon which our Western superstructures depend, not on the tilling of the soil.

"Humanity, however, first depends on bread," said a Bulgarian in a restaurant. "If civilization falls, it does not follow that humanity will fall."

There was plenty of bread on the table in front of us.

"Well, thanks for the bread. But you know the text. There are some of us who still want to live by the Word."

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

V. FROM BELGRADE (I)

A personal friendship with Bishop Nicholas of Zicca brought the gift of his rooms in the Patriarchia, opposite the Cathedral. Nicholas, better known during the war years as Father Nicholas Velimirovic, being on a mission to the United States, his simple white-walled rooms hung with bright-coloured ikons were free, and could be a home for a wanderer in an over-crowded city. Kostya Lukovic, who during the war graduated at Cambridge, treated me as if I were the England to whom he could repay the grat.i.tude he owed for our hospitality to him. Dr. Yannic, also known to us in England, then a priest, now temporarily secretary to the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, was also very kind. A recommendation from Balugdic, the Minister at Athens, opened many doors and obtained a separate carriage for me at night on some wild trains. Archimandrites and Abbots entertained me lavishly at the shrines of the Frushta Gora.

It can therefore be said that the Serbs know how to treat an Englishman well when he pa.s.ses through their country. Salutations therefore, and thanks! They fought like lions, and they suffered as none others suffered in Europe's terrible ordeal. A Serbian spark at Sarajevo fired the a.r.s.enal of European militarism, and a common ungenerous thought sometimes blames the spark instead of blaming the recklessness of those who allowed Europe to be enkindled. And there used to be some who could not forget Serbia's dynastic history. But that has been forgiven, and Serbia has purchased a good name by a shedding of blood and a national unhappiness unparalleled in the war. People said, "Serbia is no more, Serbia can never be again." Yet after complete loss of country to the most malevolent of foes, and after the agony of Corfu, behold still Serbia fighting. And was it not the vigour of Serbia's reconst.i.tuted army in 1918 which, under Misio and a French Marshal, struck the critical blow at the Bulgar which ruined the whole German confederation--brought about the surrender of Bulgaria and Austria, and led infallibly to the Armistice! Whatever happens in the new political turmoil, Serbia has won our admiration and grat.i.tude in the West.

The impression which one obtains in pa.s.sing through the towns and villages of Macedonia is very painful. Ghevgeli, on the Greek frontier, and such places, remind one of the shattered areas of Western Europe. You realize, if you did not do so before, that the deadly disease of war ravaged this empty country as greedily as it did the fullness of Flanders and France. Ruin stares from thousands of lost homes, and from many you realize the inhabitants have been destroyed also. There is recovery. Like convalescent maimed creatures, Skoplye and Nish creep into the sunlight and show signs of animation. Not nearly so many fields are ploughed as in Bulgaria. Why? Because the labouring hands are lost. You see many jolly, laughing Turks in Skoplye. They can laugh. Their manhood survives plentifully, but death has gleaned in every Serbian family down there. The trains go at a snail's pace through Serbia. One day we went all day and part of the night at an average of five kilometres the hour. In Bulgaria and Greece the trains go slowly, but they are express compared with the trains from Ghevgeli to Skoplye. The reason is because the permanent way has been almost ruined and will need years of work upon it, and all bridges have been blown up. The train halts now and then, and then most fearfully budges forward, scarcely moves, budges, budges upon temporary wooden structures of bridges, and the workmen down below seem veritably holding the bridges up whilst the trains go over them.

You stop hours at little villages, the exhausted and damaged engines surrendered to Serbia by her ex-enemies being hopelessly out of repair and always in trouble. And in these villages you see the bare-footed war-waifs, skulking about in bits of old ruins, children who have lost father and mother and kith and kin, the kind care at best of American relief societies. There is said to be no actual want anywhere in Serbia now, but no nation ever had so many orphans.

At Belgrade, despite many foreign elements, the most constant impression is one of a multiplied body politic. Belgrade is said to have more cripples than any other capital of Europe. And Berlin comes second. It is a one-eyed city, a city of one-legged men, a city of men with beetling brows and contracted eyes, a city of unrelenting cobble-stones and broken houses.

You go into the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and the door-keeper cannot write; you go to the Foreign Office and are shown about laboriously by a one-legged man. In fact, the one-legged man might be taken as the type and symbol of the new Serbia. In commerce it is as in politics. Shop windows are one-third full of goods, the most ill-a.s.sorted goods, mostly coming through the old channels from Austria and Germany. There has not been enough energy left in the nation to find the means of making new trade connexions--as for instance, with England. A curious anomaly, surely, that there should be a glut of our own products on the home market whilst in Serbia, even taking our exchange into account, prices range much higher. Thus politics and trade. You see the new recruits of the conscripted army struggling along in sixes and sevens, men of all shapes and sizes apparently in one shape and size of war boot, causing such sufferings to young men.

There are no feather-bed soldiers here. In the schools and universities, however, you see the rare earnestness of the Slav.

Such is Serbia. And if Germany had won it would have been impossible to have seen her even in as fair terms as that. But some one outside of the machine has intervened and the dead has come to life. Serbia still lives.

One has to show a difference between Serbia and Jugo-Slavia, or the Kingdom of Serbs, Hrvats,[1] and Slovenes, "S.H.S." as it is commonly called. The new country is three times as large as the old one, and the two new parts of Croatia and Slovenia are well-built, fruitful, prosperous, with all the glamour of Austrian civilization resting on them. On the one side of the old frontier the wild homelessness of the mountains, on the other side park-like country, model towns, and broad, fruitful plains. Hard-bitten, bookless Serbs, and softened bookish Croats. As a responsibility of the peace Serbia has taken over large tracts of smitten Austria. Looking at the new territory, one might reckon it a rich spoil of war. But comparing Serbia as she is with this ex-Austria, one cannot but be struck with the disparity between them.

Croats and Slovenes are Slav by race, but strongly Austrian by education. They were glad to come into the new confederation and escape some of the penalties of defeated Austria. But once they were definitely absorbed into the new State they did not feel so comfortable. The vanity and quarrelsomeness of the Slav soon began to speak. They hated Austria. But modern Austrian civilization was a comfortable and well-oiled machine. The Slavs derived enormous material benefits from their citizenship of the Austrian empire. Here despite all the feuds was a well-kept home of nations.

Left to themselves the Croats would not have made a better State than the Slavs usually make. But it is easy for them to imagine that the good schools, good trains and railway service, and good munic.i.p.al administration, and the rest, were due to their own genius and not to that of the German.

Between Serbia and the new territories stands Belgrade, the capital of the whole. It is strikingly situated on the cliffs above the winding Save which glimmers like silver in the evening. From the sh.e.l.l-splintered fortress one looks forth over the vast fruitful plain that was southernmost Austria. Here the Kaiser had a seat made for himself in 1915 that he might look homeward in the evening. Thus he turned his back on the Balkans and his scheme of the world.

Belgrade below the fortress wall is extensive but poor. Its tired main street stretches out a long way with flabby houses on each side of its cobbled wildness. There are as yet no buildings corresponding to the dignity of a great capital. The old Parliament House is a little place like a town-school, the temporary one is a converted whitewashed barracks; the Cathedral is a parish church on a site suitable for a mighty edifice; the Moscow Hotel looks like a seaside boarding establishment; the Franco-Serbian Bank is housed in a place which might pa.s.s for an old clothes warehouse in Whitechapel. There is a pleasant little white stone Post-office. But the Foreign Office, the Education Office, and other Government Departments are in buildings that might well be blocks of flats or _pensions_ kept by respectable widows.

The population, if we rule out the Austrians, is mostly "the peasant come to town"--a proletarian crowd, though not governed by proletarians but by a small educated cla.s.s plus an obedient army. You can see by the women that it is a peasant people--not a jumper or a short skirt in the whole of Belgrade. They are quiet-eyed and modest. The Serbs are much harder than the Russians, and bear deeper in their souls the marks of their historic chains. A tortured look in the face and a certain dreadful impa.s.sivity of countenance are not uncommon. There is a mixture of geniuses and of people who have not yet begun to live. They have their Mestrovic, Velimirovic, Petronievic. Is there not in London a certain M---- made not for our civilization but for two or three grades higher in world development. Of those who have not yet begun to live many are suspicious, violent, melancholy, with little instinct for making life more or fuller, for living and letting live; in business unenterprising and indisposed for work. The Serbs are potentially gifted for literature, art, and thought; they are sincere and real in temperament, but despite their efforts probably not gifted for modern civilization as we know it.

As regards Belgrade, when prosperity returns we may see the growth of a fine new city, not a complete town-planned Austrian city, supplied as it were whole and in every part from a department store, but something expressive of a new people. All these buildings we look upon to-day are bound to pa.s.s into obscurity. The rising pillars of the Skupstchina, Serbia's new Parliament House at the foot of Kossovo Street, point to the future of some great new State.

The Croats say "When you go to Zagreb you will see the difference. Ah, there is a city; there is civilization." They kiss their hands to show what they mean. The Croats are Home Rulers. Like the Irish, they are Catholics. Some of them look forward to the transfer of the capital to Zagreb, and the changing of the letters of the kingdom to H.S.S. and putting Hrvats first. Croats insist on the t.i.tle Jugo-Slavia; Serbs are inclined to drop it and revert to the name Serbia. The Germans during the war are said to have promised the Croats to form the German counterpart of the Allies' idea of Jugo-Slavia, and had Germany and Austria won, a new const.i.tuent of Central Europe was to have been inaugurated with its capital of Zagreb. The name Jugo-Slavia was familiar to the Croats and popular with them before the Serbs adopted it. The Croats think that because they are more educated than the Serbs they should be the dominant party in the government of the new State. The quarrel is aggravated by religious difference, Croats being Roman Catholics and Serbs Orthodox. A number of the separatist leaders, the chief of whom is Radic, an ex-bookseller, languish in gaol. These are evidently self-centred people. If they think that Europe would tolerate another independent Slav State with pa.s.sports, frontiers, tariffs, armies, and the rest, surely they are mad. And if on the other hand, they would like to revert to ruined Austria and have the value of all their money reduced ten times, surely they are not very sane. Or if they think that they who suffered little should reap the major benefits of the war-victory, they are certainly pitiable egoists.

What is lacking in the new State is goodwill and the spirit of co-operation. Serbia is terribly hampered by lack of loyalty in her const.i.tuent elements. There is an impression of great uncertainty and instability. The general bad health of Europe shows sharply at Belgrade. The cost of living is irrationally high. There is something of the atmosphere of Russia in 1916. Beggars swarm about the restaurants and cafes. Cabmen, hawkers, and the poor hold one up for absurd prices. The shops have odd sets of goods which seldom correspond to one's desires. The value of the dinar fluctuates violently, and offers golden opportunities to the many speculators.

The commonest trade-establishments are small banks and bucket-shops; they range in fours and fives before the eyes. The Government is very poor, and never feels out of financial difficulties. "We are always faced with bankruptcy in three months," said Dr. Yannic in conversation. The Government has been very hospitable to the Russians, of whom it has almost 60,000 on its hands. It feeds them and tries to place them where they can do work. It treated with Wrangel for the establishment of 20,000 Cossacks to be planted along the marches of Albania, and would have loved to have them, but has not as yet been able to take them for lack of money. Serbia has done more for Russia than any other nation.

"We've received not a mark of the indemnity," says M. Ribor, the chairman of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. "And we do not receive financial aid. On the other hand, is not France financing Hungary--the eternal potential enemy of Jugo-Slavia?"

There is no certainty about the att.i.tude of France and England.

England is felt to have cooled a little towards Serbia. France is a source of bewilderment. The decoration of Belgrade with the Cross of the Legion of Honour was accepted in very good part, and the French Marshal who brought it was lauded to the skies. But the after-thought was, when he went away--What did he come for? Was it not perhaps to flatter Serbia into undertaking a part in some new war, perhaps against the German, perhaps against the Soviets?

Suspicion is a marked characteristic of political life in Belgrade, suspicion and fear. They are afraid of the Croat for his separatism, of the Magyar for his malevolence, of the French for their intrigues, of the Russians for their numbers and their superior gifts, of the Austrians for their commercial enterprise. Secret agents abound, and are evidently excellent. An enormous amount of information is collected--information too disquieting and too voluminous to be coped with.

The Serbs, however, have evidently tried hard to accommodate all talents and all opinions in the new State. In the new Const.i.tution complete freedom of religion is being guaranteed to all sects; the monarchy will be strictly const.i.tutional; and all political ideas except separatism and Bolshevism will be tolerated. Regarding Bolshevism the Serbs have taken a strong line. It is a criminal offence, and propagandists are liable to swift arrest. No discrimination of any kind will be made against subjects of the kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes on the ground of race.

Serbia by herself has not a large educated cla.s.s. She has not enough of her own to administer Jugoslavia, and consequently she looks naturally to the employment of the Croat and Slovene educated cla.s.s, and also to the refugee Russians. Many Russian professors in exile have found posts; Russian engineers and technicians are readily accepted in the hope that their services may be used. In the Ministry and in the Government offices the other races are amply represented.

Ribor himself, the Speaker of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, is a Croat.

The previous obligations of the Austrian Government have in many cases been taken over. Those who received pensions or subsidies from Austria are provided for by Serbia. Not that that always gives content.

A characteristic case is that of Kossor, the well-known dramatist, an Austrian Croat. In the Austrian style he received a State subsidy of three hundred crowns in encouragement of his talent. The Serbs have continued that, and given him the equivalent in dinars. But he is attached to the Art Department of the Ministry of Education and has to put in an appearance every day--a duty which goes a long way to stultify one's inspirations.

Kossor is characteristically unhappy in Belgrade. The cobblestones have a psychological effect on the soul. He feels restricted, and would like to travel: especially would he like to return to England, for which, like many others who were refugees among us, he retains the warmest feelings.

The English in Belgrade are inclined to say that all the Serbian students who went to England returned atheists and Bolshevists. A personal impression is, however, contrary. S---- and Y---- who took their bachelorates of divinity at Oxford, and Lukovic, who graduated at Cambridge, are warmly devoted to England, and stand for our culture where by far the most of the young educated people are frankly ignorant or entirely misinformed regarding England and England's ideals.

Whatever trouble we took and whatever we spent on giving education to Serbian boys in England was not misapplied and will bear a good fruit of friendship by and by. That the students of new Belgrade are free-thinkers, and chased Dr. Mott from the lecture hall is not of much importance--students usually do behave in that way nowadays. A university of students all believers would be edifying if it were not amusing. The modern way to real belief and understanding lies through denial and agnosticism and free-thinking of all kinds, and Serbia is in a state of transit from peasant Christianity to modern positive Christianity. Her need is for well-guided transitional education.

There is no bridge from the simple piety of the peasant to instructed belief. The peasant marches to a precipice and then falls headlong into atheism. Strangely enough, the Church even when it realizes this danger seems unable to build the bridge. Its only remedy is to try and stop the march of the peasant. This is dangerous, for in time the peasant can then push his obstruction also over the precipice.

"If only we were as strong spiritually as we are militarily and economically I should feel happy about Serbia," says Bishop Nicholas on his return from America. But Jugo-Slavia--one must think of the whole new State--is not strong in any way yet. Her strength is very great and mysterious but is still potential. Some day In the future perhaps five years hence, or ten, if Jugo-Slavia still holds together, we shall have a great State here with Belgrade as a worthy capital. Austria will have moved south. There are at least prospects of enormous commercial prosperity, and on that basis the Arts will surely flourish.

All depends on the Slavs holding together and forgetting their differences. The Spirit will blow where it listeth, and one day it will be with Serbia and on another it will be gone.

[1] Slav name for Croats.