The Birth Of Yugoslavia Volume I Part 1

The Birth of Yugoslavia.

Volume 1.

by Henry Baerlein.

Portions of this book which deal with Yugoslav-Albanian affairs have appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ and, expanded from there, in a volume ent.i.tled _A Difficult Frontier_.

NAMES AND p.r.o.nUNCIATION

The original Serbo-Croat names of the Dalmatian towns and islands have been commonly supplanted on the German-made maps by later Italian names. But as the older ones are those which are at present used in daily speech by the vast majority of the inhabitants, we shall not be accused of pedanticism or of political bias if we prefer them to the later versions. We therefore in this book do not speak of Fiume but of Rieka, not of Cattaro but of Kotor, and so forth. In other parts a greater laxity is permissible, since no false impression is conveyed by using the non-Slav version. Thus we have preferred the more habitual Belgrade to the more correct Beograd, and the Italian Scutari to the Albanian Shqodra. The Yugoslavs themselves are too deferential towards the foreign nomenclature of their towns. Thus if one of them is talking to you of Novi Sad he will almost invariably add, until it grows rather wearisome, the German and the Magyar forms: Neu Satz and Uj Videk.

These names and those of persons have been generally spelt in accordance with Croat orthography--that is to say, with the Latin alphabet modified in order to reproduce all the sounds of the Serbo-Croatian language. This script, with its diacritic marks, was scientifically evolved at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The chief points about it that we have to remember are that c is p.r.o.nounced as if written ts, c as if written tch, c is p.r.o.nounced ch, is p.r.o.nounced sh, and j is p.r.o.nounced y. So the Montenegrin towns Cetinje, Podgorica and Nikic are p.r.o.nounced as if written Tsetinye, Podgoritsa and Niks.h.i.tch, while Pancevo is p.r.o.nounced Panchevo. It will be seen that this matter is not very complicated. But we have not in every case employed the Croat script.

We have not spoken in this book of Jugoslavia but of Yugoslavia, since that has come to be the more familiar form.

The full list of Croat letters, in so far as they differ from the English alphabet, is as follows:

c, whose English value is ts.

c, " " " tch.

c, " " " ch, as in church.

, " " " sh.

, " " " s, as in measure.

d, " " " j, as in James.

gj (or dj), " " " j, " "

j, " " " y, as in you.

lj, " " " li, as in million.

nj, " " " ni, as in opinion.

PREFACE

On a mild February afternoon I was waiting for the train at a wayside station in north-western Banat. So unimportant was that station that it was connected neither by telegraph nor telephone with any other station, and thus there was no means of knowing how long I would have to wait. The movements of the train in those parts could never, so I gathered, be foretold, and on that afternoon it was uncertain whether a strike had prevented it from leaving New-Arad, the starting-point.

Occasionally the rather elegant stationmaster, and occasionally the porter with the round, disarming face, raised their voices in prophecy, but they were increasingly unable--so far, at least, as I was concerned--to modify the feelings of dullness that were caused by the circ.u.mstances and by the dreary nature of the surroundings: a plain with several uninteresting little lakes upon it. There was time enough for meditation--I was wondering if I would ever understand the people of the Balkans. One hour and then another slipped away, and the lakes began to be illuminated by the setting sun. A handful of prospective travellers and their friends were also waiting, and as one of them produced a violin we all began to dance the Serbian Kolo, which is performed by an indefinite number of people who have to be hand-in-hand, irrespective of s.e.x, forming in this way a straight line or a circle or a serpent-like series of curves. They go through certain simple evolutions, into which more or less energy and sprightliness are introduced. The stationmaster looked on approvingly and then decided to join us, and after a little time he was followed by the porter. Our violinist was in excellent form, so that we continued dancing until some of us were as crimson as the sun, and presently, while I was resting, what with the beauty of the scene and the exhilaration of the dance, I found myself thinking that, after all, I might within a reasonable time understand these people. Then a new arrival, a middle-aged, benevolent-looking woman with a basket on her arm, came past me.

"Dobro vece," said I. ["Good-evening."]

"ivio," said she. ["May you live long."]

Nevertheless, I hope in this book to give a description of how the Yugoslavs, brothers and neighbours and tragically separated from one another for so many centuries, made various efforts to unite, at least in some degree. But for about fifteen centuries the greater number of Yugoslavs were unable to liberate themselves from their alien rulers; not until the end of the Great War were these dominations overthrown, and the kindred peoples, the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, put at last before the realization of their dreams--the dreams, that is to say, of some of their poets and statesmen and bishops and philologists, as well as of certain foreigners. But listen to this, by the censorious literateur who contributes the "Musings without Method" to _Maga_: "We do not envy the ingenious gentlemen," says he, "who invented the two new States Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia. Their composite names prove their composite characters. That they will last long beneath the fanciful masks which have been put upon them we do not believe." Even so might some uninstructed person in Yugoslavia or South Slavia proceed to wash his hands of that ingenious man who invented _Maga's_ home, North Britain. I see that our friend in the following number of _Maga_ (March 1920) says that foreign affairs are "a province far beyond his powers or understanding." But he is talking of Mr. Lloyd George.

Our account of mediaeval times will be brief, only so much in fact as is needed for a comprehension of the present. In approaching our own day, the story will become more and more detailed. If it be objected that the details, in so far as they detract from the conduct of Yugoslavia's neighbours, might with advantage have been painted with the hazy, quiet colours that you give to the excursions and alarms of long ago, one may reply that this book is intended to depict the world in which the Yugoslavs have, after all these centuries, joined one another and the frame of mind which consequently glows in them.

One cannot on this earth expect that a new State, however belated and however inevitable, will be formed without a considerable amount of friction, both external and internal. Perhaps, owing to the number of not over-friendly States with which they are encompa.s.sed, the Yugoslavs will manage to waive some of their internal differences, and to show that they are capable, despite the confident a.s.sertions of some of their neighbours and the croakings of some of themselves, of establishing a State that will weather for many a year the storms which even the League of Nations may not be competent to banish from South-Eastern Europe. A certain number of people, who seem to expect us to take them seriously, a.s.sert that an English writer is disqualified from pa.s.sing adverse comment on Italy's imperialistic aims because the British Empire has received, as a result of the War, some Turkish provinces and German colonies. It is said that, in view of these notorious facts, the Italian Nationalists and their friends cannot bear to be criticized by the pens of British authors and journalists. The fallacy in logic known as the _argumentum ad hominem_ becomes a pale thing in comparison with this new _argumentum ad terram_. If a pa.s.sionless historian of the Eskimos had given his attention to the Adriatic, I believe he would have come to my conclusions. But then it might be said of him that as for half the year his land is swathed in darkness, it would be unseemly for him to discuss a country which is basking in the sun.

Another consummation--though this will to-day find, especially in Serbia, a great many opponents, whose att.i.tude, following the deplorable events of the Great War, can cause us no surprise--is the adhesion, after certain years, of Bulgaria to the Yugoslav State. I wrote these words a few months ago; they are already out of date. The general opinion in Serbia is voiced by a Serbian war-widow, who, writing in _Politika_, one of the newspapers of Belgrade, replied to Stamboulusky, the Bulgarian peasant Premier, who was always uncompromisingly opposed to the fratricidal war with Serbia. He had been saying that the Serbs and other Yugoslavs prefer to postpone the reconciliation until "the gra.s.s grows over the graves of their women and children whom our officials destroyed"; and this war-widow answered that it was not necessary for the gra.s.s to grow, but that they should condemn the culprits by a regular court, as prescribed in the treaty. "Fulfil the undertaking you have a.s.sumed, for only so shall we know that you will fulfil other undertakings in the future."

If it had not been for the Great Powers, especially Russia and Austria, the union of Serbia and Bulgaria might have occurred long ago. Wise persons, such as Prince Michael of Serbia and the British travellers, Miss Irby (Bosnia's lifelong benefactress) and her relative, Miss Muir Mackenzie, had this aim in view during the sixties of last century. So had a number of other excellent folk, who recognized that the two people were naturally drawn to one another.

"The hatred between the two people is a fact which is as saddening in the thought for the future as in the record of the past, but it is a fact to ignore which is simply a mark of incompetence. The two nations are antipathetic ..." says Mr. A. H. E. Taylor in his _The Future of the Southern Slavs_, a painstaking if rather clumsy book (London, 1917), in which we are shown that the writer is well acquainted with general history. But in the opinion of an erudite Serb, to whom I showed this pa.s.sage, Mr. Taylor knows nothing of Serb and Bulgar under the Turks. There is no single doc.u.ment nor anything else that speaks of hatred between them. On the contrary, they were always on friendly terms. The antagonisms of the Middle Ages, as Mr. Taylor surely knows, were the work of rulers who paid no attention to the national will; there was at that time no national consciousness, and just as a Serbian would wage war with a Bulgarian prince, so would he do battle with a Croat or with another Serbian ruler. Mr. Taylor talks of "the almost constant state of warfare between Serbs and Bulgars...," but he does not mention that there were many cases during the late war in which the men showed friendliness to one another. He may argue that if a soldier calls out "Brother" to his foe and subsequently slays him there is not much to be said for his friendliness, but surely that is to draw no distinction between what is the soldier's pleasure and his business. "Nothing," observes Mr. Taylor very truly, "nothing in the Balkan Peninsula is so desirable as the laying aside of the feud." He may take it that this feud has been aroused and maintained among the _intelligentsia_ and for political reasons, with Macedonia in the forefront. I think he would not be so severe on those who are "ignorant apparently that the mutual animosity has its roots deep down in the history and historical consciousness of Serb and Bulgar" if he remembered that the Bulgars wanted Michael for their prince, and if he had been present at the siege of Adrianople, where the Serbian and Bulgarian soldiers, in their eagerness to fraternize, took to speaking their respective languages incorrectly, the Serb dropping his cases and the Bulgar his article, in the hope that they would thus make themselves more easily understood. It seems to me not only more advisable but more rational to ponder upon such incidents than upon the idle controversies as to which army was the most deserving; and I do not think it is evidence of any widespread Bulgarian animosity because a certain official decided to charge the Serbian Government a fee for conveying back to Serbia the corpses of their soldiers.

With regard to the two languages, the differences between them will matter no more than does the difference between Serbo-Croatian and Slovene. The Serb-Croat-Slovene State has been astonishingly little incommoded by the fact that the Slovene language is quite distinct, the two tongues being only in a moderate degree mutually intelligible.

The Slovenes have never been exposed to the influence either of Byzantium or of the Turks, so that their language is free from the orientalisms which abound in the southern dialects. But it is curious to note[1] that many of the Slovene archaisms of form and structure, such as the persistence of the "v" for "u" and the final -l of the past participle, which have disappeared from Serbo-Croat, have been preserved in the dialects of Macedonia. The Bulgarian language, the south-eastern Serbian dialects, as well as Roumanian and Albanian, have certain grammatical peculiarities, through being influenced by the language of the Romanized Thraco-Illyrian peoples with whom they merged. Even Montenegro was to some degree influenced by this process, having lost one or two cases, such as the locative. In Serbia one uses seven cases, the Montenegrin generally contents himself with about five, and in some dialects they are all discarded.... The amount of Turanian, Petcheneg and other undesirable blood in the Bulgars does not--let the two or three eccentric Bulgars say what they will--prevent them being far more Yugoslav than anything else.

Professor Cvijic, the famous Rector of Belgrade University, has made personal examinations in Bulgaria, and is of the opinion that a great part of that people, for instance, at Trnovo in the middle of Bulgaria, is physically and spiritually very near to the Serbs. The Mongol influence, he thinks, is so scattered that it is very difficult to see.

Unhappily, however, in the last thirty or forty years an enormous amount of hatred has been piled up between Serb and Bulgar; things have happened which we as outsiders can more easily forget than those and the orphans of those who have suffered. Atrocities have taken place; international commissions have recorded some of them and non-Balkan writers have produced a library of lurid and, almost always, strictly one-sided books about them. I suggest that these gentlemen would have been better employed in translating the pa.s.sages wherein Homer depicts precisely the same atrocities. Whatever may seem good to Balkan controversialists, let us of the West rather try, for their sake and for ours, to bring these two people together. We have good foundations on which to build; every Bulgar will tell you that he is full of admiration of the Serbian army, and the Serbs will speak in a similar strain of the Bulgars. Also the Serbs will tell you that, no matter what else they may be able to do, they are, as compared with the Bulgars, quite incompetent in the diffusion of propaganda; while the Bulgars will explain to you that in propaganda the Serbs are immensely their superiors. (Balkan propaganda does not confine itself to using, with violence, the sword and the pen. In its higher flights it will, in a disputed district, bury ancient-looking stones with suitable inscriptions. It will go beyond the simple changes in the termination of the surnames of those who come under its dominion; the name upon a tombstone will be made to end, according to circ.u.mstances, in "off" or "vitch," sometimes in the Roumanian "esco" or the Greek "opoulos." If this is known to the departed, one would like to learn how it affects them. A great deal of energy has been brought to bear in the production of official books which place on record the repugnant details of all the crimes that have ever been imagined by men or ghouls, which crimes, so say the books of nation A, have been committed by the incredible monsters of nation B. At times, from motives of economy, the same photographs have been used by both nations--an idea which in 1920 was adopted in Hungary, where an artist conceived a poster showing a child with uplifted finger saying to its mother in solemn warning: "Mother, remember me; vote for a Social Democrat." This poster was forbidden by the censor, and, a few days afterwards, appeared on all street corners as that of the Christian Socialist party. People of the Balkans found that Western Europeans were impressed by figures, so that they issued lists of schools whose pupils were more numerous than the total population of the villages in which they were situated. Frequently a village would be stated, on the sworn testimony of its most respected inmates, to be exclusively filled with persons say of nation A. Not for a moment would it be admitted that the population might perhaps be mixed. And very possibly, on going to investigate, the Western European would discover that the village was entirely uninhabited and had been so for many years.... We must also have some understanding of the old Balkan humour if we are not to resent, for example, that story which they tell of a Bulgarian Minister who happened to be sojourning last year in Yugoslavia at a time when a great memorial service was being held for ninety-nine priests whom the Bulgars had a.s.sa.s.sinated during their occupation of Serbia in the European War. This Minister cherishes the hope that his country and Yugoslavia will bury the hatchet. "How unfortunate," said he, "are these recriminations. I shall have pleasure in sending them ninety-nine priests, whom they can kill, and then we can be good friends.")

Thus we have two points of mutual esteem. The vast majority of people in Belgrade and Sofia are not chauvinist; let them close their ears to the wild professors who, in their spare time, busy themselves with writing books and discoursing on politics, a task for which they are imperfectly fitted. One must naturally make allowances for these small countries which have been so spa.r.s.ely furnished hitherto with men of education that the Government considered it must mobilize them all.

Thus the professors found themselves enlisted in the service of the State. Unluckily--to give examples would be painful--it too often happened that the poor professor damaged irretrievably his reputation and held up the State to ribald laughter. Those who belong to an old, cultured nation are not always cognizant of the petty atmosphere, to say nothing of the petty salaries, which is to-day the common lot of Balkan professors. (A really eminent man, who, for twenty years has been a professor, not merely a teacher, at Belgrade University receives a very much smaller salary than that which the deputies have voted for themselves.) Occasionally these professors must be moved by feelings similar to those that were entertained by the Serbs of 1808, who, having thrown off the Turkish yoke which they were resolved never to bear again, "earnestly expressed, and more than once," according to Count Romanzoff,[2] "their own will which induced them to beg the Emperor Alexander to admit them to the number of his subjects." A resolute old man, a Balkan savant of my acquaintance--he told me he was a savant--said one day that before all else he was a patriot, meaning by this that if in the course of his researches he came across a fact which to his mind was injurious for the past, present or future of his native land he would unhesitatingly sweep that fact into oblivion, and he seemed to be amazed that I should doubt the morality of such a procedure. Bristling with scorn, he refused to give me a definition of the word "patriotism," and I am sure that, if he knows his Th.o.r.eau, he does not for a moment believe that he is amongst those who "love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads." May the people of Serbia and Bulgaria rather listen to such men as Nicholai Velimirovic, Bishop of ica,[3]

who--to speak only of his sermons and lectures in our language--lives in the memory of so many in Great Britain and the United States on account of his wonderful eloquence, his sincerity, his profound patriotism, and the calm heights from which he surveys the future. For those who think with him, the Serbs, in uniting with the Croats, have already surmounted a more serious obstacle. They believe that for three reasons their union with the Bulgars is a more natural one: they practise the same religion, they use the same Cyrillic alphabet and their civilization, springing from Byzantium, has been identical. The two people are bound to each other by the great Serbian, Saint Sava, who strove to join them and who died at Trnovo in Bulgaria. Vladislav, the Serbian prince, asked for his body; a.s.sen begged that the Bulgars might be allowed to keep it, but, when the Serbs insisted, a most remarkable procession set out from Trnovo, bearing to his homeland the remains of him whom the Bulgars called "our Saint." ... If, then, the two people will for a few years demand that the misguided professors shall confine themselves to their original functions--and, likewise, those students who sit at the professors' feet--one may hope that in a few years the miserable past will be buried and all the Yugoslavs united in one State. The time has vanished when Serbia and Bulgaria stood, as it were in a ring, face to face with one another, paying far more attention to the disputes of the moment than to those great unifying forces which we have mentioned. But now Serbia is a part of Yugoslavia, which has to deal with a greater Italy, a greater Roumania and others. And the question as to whether a certain town or district is to be Serbian or Bulgarian sinks into the background.

Fortunately, in the Balkans--where one is nothing if not personal--you can express yourself concerning another gentleman with a degree of liberty that in Western Europe would be thought unpardonable. And so, if the Serbs and the Bulgars will in the main follow the tracks of their far-sighted leaders, they need not quite suppress their criticism of each other. No great animosity is aroused by such a statement as was made to me with regard to a dispossessed Macedonian prelate, who had told me that he had appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the hope that he would a.s.sist him to return to his diocese. I asked a member of another Balkan nationality whether he knew this ancient cleric of the extremely venerable aspect, and whether he knew what kind of political and religious propaganda had brought about his downfall. "I know all about that old ruffian," he replied. "He stole over fifty pigs and one hundred sheep, and about twenty-five cows and 200 lb. of fat." Anyhow, if his lordship had heard that these accusations had been repeated in many places, he would have been far less indignant than if they had been printed in some unread newspaper or obscure pamphlet.

Now if the local writers cease from indulging their national partisanship--and G.o.d knows they have no lack of material--then perhaps the time will come when foreign publicists and politicians, who keep one eye upon the Balkans, will be able to speak well about the particular country which they affect without speaking ill about the neighbouring countries, concerning which, it is possible, they know less. Of course, there are a number of real Balkan experts in various countries, judicious writers who will be gratefully mentioned in this book. And there are people, such as Mr. Harold E. Goad, the vehement pro-Italian writer, who are quite amusing. This gentleman said in the _Fortnightly Review_ (May 1922) that once he used to hold romantic views of Balkan politics, but now has ascertained that they are "usually plotted, move by move, in the coffee-shops of petty capitals. Intrigue, bribery and calumny, personal jealousy and racial prejudice are the ordinary means with which the game is played." How different from the rest of Europe, where intrigue, etc., are conspicuously absent; and the explanation seems to be that wine and beer are unlike coffee, which it may be quite impossible to drink without remembering the poison which so many furtive fingers have dropped into it. And it would be rank ingrat.i.tude if I omitted the Italian Admiral Millo, though he was injudicious. After he had been at his post for four months, with the resounding t.i.tle of Governor of Dalmatia and of the Dalmatian Islands and of the islands of Curzola, he told me that he had found it most fascinating to motor through Dalmatia's rocky hinterland, where the natives had the dignified air of ancient Roman senators and even greeted you in Latin. This was rather a startling statement. "Oh yes," said the Admiral, with his aristocratic, bearded face wearing an expression of even keener intelligence than usual, "I can a.s.sure you," quoth he, "that the peasants say 'Ave.' I heard them quite distinctly." It was perhaps inconsiderate of those worthy Croats not to shout with greater clearness the word "Zdravo!" ["Good luck!"] in order to prevent the Admiral from riding off with a confused hearing of the second syllable. A certain excellent dispatch of his--of which more anon--makes him a writer on the Balkans. I know not whether he addressed to his Government a dispatch on the above discovery, thus intensifying the Italian resolve to cling to Dalmatia. In that case his knowledge was unfortunate, but otherwise it is surely as delightful as, up here among the tree-clad mountains, are the glow-worms that go darting through the night.

BLAGOVETENJE MONASTERY, CENTRAL SERBIA.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Cf. _The Near East_, October 6, 1921.]

[Footnote 2: _Observations of Count Romanzoff_,--Petrograd, March 16, 1808,--Concerning the negotiations for the division of Turkey, as to which he treated with the French Amba.s.sador; being Doc.u.ment No. 263 of the Excerpts from the Paris Archives relating to the History of the first Serbian Insurrection. Collected (Belgrade, 1904) by the learned statesman and charming man, Dr. Michael Gavrilovic, now the Minister of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes at the Court of St. James.]

[Footnote 3: This, the most ancient diocese in Serbia, takes its name from the monastery of ica, near Kraljevo, which was built by St. Sava between 1222 and 1228. He made it his archiepiscopal residence, and here the Serbian sovereigns were crowned. It is now partly in a ruined condition, the encircling wall having almost entirely vanished. For each coronation a new entrance was made through this structure and was afterwards walled up. Bishop Nicholai has now been transferred to the more difficult diocese of Ochrida and is, at the same time, Bishop of the Serbs in America.]

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I

PAGE PREFACE 9

INTRODUCTION: THE TRAGEDY OF A FRONTIER 23

I. GLORY AND DISASTER (EARLIEST DAYS TO THE BATTLE OF KOSSOVO) 26

II. FIGHTING THE DARKNESS (BATTLE OF KOSSOVO TO THE APPEARANCE OF KARA GEORGE) 50

III. BUILDING THE FOUNDATIONS: NAPOLEON AND STROSSMAYER 90

IV. THE SHIFTING SANDS OF MACEDONIA (1876-1914) 165

V. THE EUROPEAN WAR (1914-1918) 225

INDEX 301