The Birth Of Yugoslavia Volume I Part 11

A HAPPY ADVENT

He started by placing the government in the hands of the Radical party and by showing that his own position would be strictly that of a const.i.tutional monarch. Numerous reforms were undertaken with respect to the finances, the exploitation of the country's resources and the reorganizing of the army, which had been debilitated by intrigue and corruption. So many tasks had simultaneously to be accomplished that the greatest Serbophil may have despaired, since the national qualities do not, as yet, include much power of organization. Is it not astonishing, therefore, that in a few years so much was done?--the army, for example, becoming so closely identified with the people that high Obrenovic officers felt that it was unpatriotic to perpetuate these dynastic divisions, and gradually they resolved to offer their swords to the State. More than one General whose abilities in the Great War gained him a high British decoration had once been conspicuous for his enmity to the Karageorgevic. With regard to Serbia's international standing we have the fact that in 1899-1900 it was impossible to arrange a loan of 40 millions at Vienna even though the entire railway system was offered as a guarantee; in a few years various loans, with relatively easy terms, were contracted for amounts of 90, 110 and 150 millions. One saw the peasant, who a short time before had sold his harvest while it was still green (zeleno) to the local usurer (hence called the "Zelenac"), now demanding every day by telegram _via_ Belgrade or Smederevo the market prices at Antwerp. In 1895 Serbia had sunk to such depths that a Dalmatian leader said openly to a German journalist that the Yugoslav idea could only be realized by Bulgaria; in 1910 the "Narodna Odbrana" (or Organization for National Defence), that was not, as the Austrians alleged, a nursery for murderers but a patriotic body--it no doubt reminded the people of their brothers in Macedonia, the Voivodina and Bosnia, but at the same time urged them to cultivate the land more rationally, to visit the doctor rather than some old woman, to dress, sleep and eat in accordance with hygiene, and to take steps against illiteracy--in 1910 the efforts of the "Narodna Odbrana" had had such success that an inquiry, in which the French partic.i.p.ated, found that out of a hundred recruits from a backward region 61 per cent. could read and write, 99 per cent. had some knowledge of the battle of Kossovo and the reign of Duan, while 82 per cent. could enumerate the provinces inhabited by their unredeemed brothers. The rise of Serbia was due to the happy direction that was now given to the virile spirit of the people; standing back to back in their own land, they were soon able to arouse the despondent hearts of their countrymen who languished under various tyrannies outside the national frontiers.

Those who in Old Serbia acknowledged their Serbian nationality were the constant victims of Albanian intolerance. One ma.s.sacre followed another--that people which, according to some of its present champions, is mild and n.o.ble and misunderstood, with a particular apt.i.tude for silver-work and embroidery--Miss Edith Durham asks that this poor nation should not be robbed of its country, its one ewe-lamb, which they love intensely and which, to everyone's admiration, they defend with great heroism; one cannot expect her, the Secretary of the Anglo-Albanian Committee, to refer to the numerous lambs, etc., which the Albanians, armed with machine guns, carried off in 1919 from a Serbian monastery near Tetovo; and in 1903 the Albanians, waiving their mildness, appear to have been more conspicuous in attacking others than in defending themselves. The monks of the old Serbian patriarchate of Pec were obliged to have Moslem and Albanian attendants, and it does not strike one as heroic when the monks themselves were murdered, so that the great monastery of Decani had perforce to be served by Russian monks from Mt.

Athos. Far distant, indeed, was the day when those Albanians, who called themselves, after a river, the Fani, went to the a.s.sistance of Duan. They had been brought to a temporary standstill by the swollen waters of the Drin--"but," exclaimed one of their chieftains, "for a hero every day is good." They crossed the river and Duan gave them the name of Mirditi, by which they are still known, "mir dit" signifying in their language "good day." Not only were the Serbs compelled to don Albanian raiment--the Orthodox priest who ministers to Djakovica had, in 1903, to put aside his Serbian head-dress on leaving his quarter of the town; when making an official visit his head-dress was Greek and always in the surrounding country it was Albanian. Mr. Brailsford found, in June 1903, that the Serb peasants were tenants at will, exposed to every caprice of their Albanian conquerors; both at Pec, he says, and at Djakovica there was no law and no court of justice. In 1903 at Murzsteg, near Vienna, Francis Joseph and the Tzar concluded their Macedonian reform scheme, this rather futile arrangement paying, as one might suppose, not much deference to the Serbs. In Bosnia also and in southern Hungary the Serbs were in a humiliating position.

But the Serbs in the little kingdom strove manfully to put their own house in order and to encourage their brethren. What is known as the "Pig War" was waged, with astonishing success, against the Austrian Empire; by sending her live-stock and meat overland to Salonica, her cereals down the Danube, Serbia managed to break down the barriers behind which the Austrians had intended to control her economic life.

The measures adopted by Stojanovic, the Minister of Commerce, were confirmed by the Skuptina and enthusiastically supported by the whole people, regardless of the accompanying privations or of any bribes held out by the Austrians. Thus when the Austrians reduced the fares on their well-equipped Save and Danube vessels, these were still boycotted in favour of the Serbian boats. One morning at abac a civil servant had embarked on the Austrian ship, while everybody else was crowding on to the much smaller, slower and less cleanly Serbian rival. The civil servant was being vigorously hissed, when he shouted across to his compatriots that as he was an official he had a free pa.s.s and he thought it a good plan to make the Austrians consume, simply for him, a certain amount of coal.... The young men of the _intelligentsia_ were not idle. erjav for the Slovenes, Krisman for the Croats, Yovanovic and Neic for the Serbs, were eagerly at work to bring about the union of the Southern Slavs. They had some sympathizers in Bulgaria, but that country was too much oppressed by Ferdinand and the Germanic influence. Both erjav and Krisman were destined to become Ministers in the South Slav Parliament, which of course does not yet include Bulgaria.

Neic, who was the diplomat of the Serbian movement, became Consul at Pritina, took part in the Balkan War, for instance at the siege of Scutari, as an artillery officer, and after some years found himself inside the town as Yugoslav Envoy. He is now Minister at Tirana, a delicate post which could not be in better hands. Ljuba Yovanovic was the idealist whose work was to arouse his fellow-countrymen by articles and poems. In the war against Bulgaria he was wounded and in hospital contracted cholera. On the day of his death he wrote to a brother of Neic, now one of Belgrade's leading lawyers; he was utterly grieved, he said, that brother-Slavs should have shed each other's blood, but he was certain that the day of union would come.

AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN WRATH

The first external result of Serbia's efforts was seen in 1905, when forty young intellectuals of Croatia, Dalmatia and Istria met at Rieka and, while accepting the union of Croatia with Hungary, called on the Serbian political parties to join them. Twenty-six Serbian deputies met at Zadar, endorsed this policy and formed with the Croats the Serbo-Croat Coalition, to which the Slovenes also subscribed. Francis Kossuth, the Magyar Opposition leader, welcomed with eloquent phrases the idea of an alliance between his party and the new Coalition; but when he came into power he forsook this att.i.tude and exhibited the ordinary Magyar ruthlessness--he himself introducing a bill to make the Magyar language obligatory on Croatia's railways, and if a prospective Croat pa.s.senger did not know what name the Magyars had given to his old home and could not ask for a ticket in the Magyar language, he was told to stop where he was until he had acquired the necessary knowledge. In general, the Magyars had no reason to be dissatisfied with the sort of knowledge that the world had of them. In 1907, when a funeral pall was spread over the liberties of the Croats, Serbs, Slovaks and Roumanians in Hungary, Mr. Roosevelt, who was making his famous tour, gave many bouquets to "immortal Hungary," the "virtuous," the "chivalrous." The Serbo-Croats tried, by every possible method, to hold out against Buda-Pest. A Ban--Baron Rauch--was appointed with the special purpose of breaking the Coalition; and when the Serbo-Croats obtained fifty-seven seats out of eighty-eight, although one-half of the electorate consisted of employees dependent on the Government, an order was issued proroguing the new Diet.

In fact the Austro-Hungarian authorities had resolved to suppress any Yugoslav union. To the Dalmatians, who were in need of schools, roads and railways, they said, "Show us first that you are patriotic subjects of the House of Habsburg." Necessities, as Hermann Bahr has pointed out[65] were thus turned into rewards, which were to be the fruit of years of toil....

THEIR MONTENEGRIN FRIEND

The a.s.sociation of the Montenegrin Royal Family and the Habsburgs, which was to culminate in the barefaced treachery of Lovcen, may be said to have begun in the year 1906, when the two heirs, Francis Ferdinand and Danilo, met at Dubrovnik. A statement was issued, after a few days, which declared that Russia was far away and that Montenegro required the support of a Power whose help would be effective. If it had not been for the disasters of the Russo-j.a.panese War, Nikita would have found it much more difficult to direct his country in this manner. The Black Mountain had always thought of Russia as all-powerful; her defeat, when they could bring themselves to realize it, was to them as if the foundations of the world were rocking; in their dazed condition they agreed that it was well to have recourse to Austria. (When the Russian Minister at Cetinje protested, some explanation was given.) The financial details of the Dubrovnik agreement are unknown, but from what one does know of Danilo it is fairly safe if we a.s.sume that the whole benefit did not accrue to the Montenegrin Government. Danilo may in other respects have been an incapable young man--the advice of his unmarried sister, Xenia, was always preferred to his; in fact, her father had such confidence in this masterful woman with the pallid face and large, black eyes--the "femme fatale," as her enemies have called her--that he never gave an audience but she was present, either openly or behind a screen.

Danilo's incapacity, however, seems to have stopped short, as we shall see, at the procuring of cash.

In that same year, 1906, Montenegro's first Skuptina a.s.sembled.

Many people wondered why the autocrat bestowed a Const.i.tution and a Skuptina upon his subjects. They for their part--at least the great majority whose knowledge of the world was gained by looking at it from their mountain fastnesses--could never for a moment doubt but that the Montenegrins were the grandest and the n.o.blest of the Serbs.

Hour after hour of peace they spent, disdaining to do any work more arduous than smoking cigarettes and drinking rakia, and talking, talking ... they would relate to one another what their ancestors had done by way of cutting Turkish noses, and unweariedly they would announce how their own blood was undiluted and heroic. If Greater Serbia was to be created it was surely they who--but Nikita, their keen-witted ruler, was not so certain. The Karageorgevic were no longer being treated by Europe as outlaws; by his const.i.tutional methods King Peter had not only effected vast and needed improvements in his country, but was gradually winning for himself and it, if not a general esteem, at all events the first approach to that condition which for so long had been lacking. And Nikita was uneasy. He must also have a Const.i.tution in his country and a Skuptina. Very well he knew that with the inexperience of his people, with their furious local rivalries and with his power of veto, he would not be greatly hampered by this Skuptina. It would be a semblance of modernity.

Nikita had no intention of allowing himself to be put in the shade by the Prime Minister. Whether it was Tomanovic, a kindly man of straw, or General Martinovic, an upright soldier, or anybody else--their function was to execute the royal orders. The differences which separate one political party from another in a Balkan State, and separate them very often into frantically hostile camps, are wont to be minute as to their principles, for it is largely a question as to whether you are a devotee of this or of that statesman. Two of the three parties which existed in Montenegro down to the Great War were both grouped round the Crown Prince Danilo, and apparently the sole difference between them was that no member of the Miukevic Cabinet had been in prison. To a western European it would be surprising that the kindred Radovic party should also be on terms of close friendship with Danilo, seeing that it consisted of Nikita's dissatisfied relatives (one of these was Radovic's powerful father-in-law) who disliked the new statute which limited the Royal Family to Nikita and his children. Danilo protected this party for personal reasons. As for the third political party, that of General Martinovic, its princ.i.p.al plank was its opposition to the other two parties. Mita Martinovic himself was not much of a politician; he was a st.u.r.dy friend of Russia. Of his rivals, Lazar Miukevic, a bearded, rather stout, medium-sized man, has a pious opinion of his own abilities, and is, or was, very proud of his friendship with Danilo. He need not be taken seriously, for he has no knowledge of administration, no political courage and no popular support. [During the Great War he was for a time the Premier, and after the War, when the other five ex-Premiers ranged themselves against Nikita, he stayed in Switzerland, where he tried for many months to make up his mind.]

Andrija Radovic, a middle-aged man, whose tall, athletic form is crowned with the head of a grave poet, was erstwhile a favourite of Nikita's. Being related to the Royal Family, Nikita called him his fourth son, and when, after the fatuous bomb conspiracy (of which more anon), Radovic was lured back from Paris and sentenced to four years' imprisonment, it was not because he was in any way guilty, but on the ground that he knew what was going to happen and should have handed on the information. The real reason was that any party which was even to a mild extent in favour of reforms did not meet with the approval of the Gospodar. In his opinion it was necessary to reduce Radovic to obedience; and Nikita used to try, without success, to force the innocent prisoner to beg for pardon. Since he declined to do so, he remained incarcerated with a large cannon-ball chained to his left leg. While he was in prison he corresponded with Danilo, and on being liberated was received by Nikita--they wept in each other's arms.

Nikita fancied he was just the man to govern a progressive modern State. When he had the famous old warrior Pero publicly flogged by a criminal for having refused to degrade himself by flogging that same criminal, Nikita might plead that he was acting in the interests of discipline. When he confined his critics in the old Turkish fortress on the small, malarial island of Grimojuri, with the water oozing into the cells, he might plead that this was precisely the same curriculum as fell to the lot, at San Juan de Ulloa, of those who incurred the displeasure of Porfirio Diaz, the Mexican President--and Diaz had been almost worshipped (till his fall) by many Europeans. When Nikita drove one afternoon with friends of his to Nikic and approvingly looked on while they destroyed the building and the whole machinery of Montenegro's weekly newspaper, which had departed from the paths of adulation--well, I see that his apologist, a certain Mr. A.

Devine,[66] says that "in 1908 political pa.s.sions resulted in the extinction of the organ of the political Opposition, _Narodna Misao_ ("The National Idea")."

In 1908 there fell the blow of Bosnia-Herzegovina's annexation to the Empire, thus placing definitely under foreign sway the central portion and ethnically among the purest of that Serbian people which was already divided into seven different administrations or States. Russia was still enfeebled by the j.a.panese War, and although she and Great Britain protested against the annexation, Count Aerenthal was able to gather this booty. It would, however, be an exaggeration to say that Russia--apart from the ultra-patriotic Press--was violently excited.

As M. Nekludoff, the able diplomat, explains,[67] his country was annoyed not so much at the Bosnian annexation as because there was for it no _quid pro quo_, no free pa.s.sage through the Dardanelles. Poor Serbia was advised by the Great Powers to accept the _fait accompli_.

She constrained herself to do so, but both she and certain folk in Austria were under no illusions as to the inevitable--a month after the annexation a Viennese newspaper announced that a conflict with Serbia and Montenegro could not be avoided. "The longer we postpone it," said the paper, "so much the more will it cost us."

One gets very weary of hearing the phrase "Divide et impera," which always occurs at least several times in the course of an exposition of Austrian policy. But we are bound to say that this principle governed her behaviour when she stage-managed in 1908 the Zagreb high-treason trial,[68] which was to drive a wedge between Serbs and Croats, in 1909 the Friedjung case, as also the Cetinje bomb affair which was to, and did in fact, alienate Nikita from his son-in-law, the Serbian King.

AUSTRIA GIVES HOSTAGES TO HISTORY

The Zagreb trial was conducted by a man who gave a good impersonation of Mr. Justice Shallow. "There is nothing to laugh at!" he cried, when a Serb doctor was asked whether he did not refuse to wear cravats because of the resemblance of that word to Croat. The whole farce resulted, not as one might have expected, in the collapse of the prosecution but in thirty-one convictions, varying in length from five to twelve years. The Croats, however, had thwarted Austria's schemes.

They remained true to the Serbs, acted as their counsel without payment and helped to support the families of the poorer prisoners. At the Friedjung trial this professor, an eminent historian, produced a series of photographs of doc.u.ments which were subsequently shown to have been fabricated at the Austro-Hungarian legation in Belgrade; he wished to prove that a political club in that town was guilty of a most extensive plot involving the Yugoslav territories of the House of Habsburg. Among those whom these proceedings and those at Zagreb brought into European prominence were the Pribicevic brothers, a very zealous family of Croatian Serbs, that is to say Croats belonging to the Orthodox Church. [The chief of these four brothers was Svetozar, a statesman whose Serbo-Croat Coalition party was, with the advent of Yugoslavia in 1918, to form the nucleus of the Democratic party. He then became for many months the all-powerful Minister of the Interior, a man with the appearance of a bull-dog in whose veins is electricity. The vehemence of his methods of centralization is supported and opposed by his countrymen with an almost equal vehemence.] ... But to return to the events of 1908 and 1909--the result of these two trials was lamentable from the Austrian point of view. More success attended her efforts in Cetinje, for Nikita was intensely roused against his son-in-law, and the European reputation of Serbia was again dragged down to the level of the day which saw the murder of Alexander and his Queen. An individual called Nastic whom, according to Professor Friedjung, one could only touch with a pair of tongs, accused the Serbian Royal Family of attempting to blow up their picturesque relative, under whose roof, by the way, Princess Helen of Serbia, his grand-daughter, happened to be staying. The bombs were carried in an ordinary portmanteau to Kotor, where they were discovered. Those who believed that Nikita, the arch-intriguer, was using this method for discrediting the Karageorgevic dynasty, can point to the fact that he never wanted a public trial, and it seems probable that Nikita--who was aware that a group of his young, discontented subjects was planning against him a demonstration, but nothing more than that, even though there are in the Balkans a certain number of people who incline to the throwing of a bomb when their British equivalents would write to the _Times_--it seems probable that Nikita may not only have stolen their thunder but have put the lightning in their pockets and have then indignantly revealed it. But the whole affair is wrapped in darkness and awaits the exploring of Austria's archives. The probability is that Aerenthal was at his work to demonstrate that Belgrade was a nest of vipers, so that Europe would not hearken to their protest when the time came for the House of Habsburg to smother them.[69] ... This same Austrian police-spy Nastic had procured for Nikita a certain "revolutionary statue"

which that personage made over to the Imperial authorities, for use against the Serbs at the Zagreb treason trial. This atrocious deed against his brother Serbs destroyed for ever the last shreds of Nikita's reputation.

THE DREAMS OF AN OLD REALIST

Nevertheless he dreamed that from the mighty castle which looks down on Prizren he would rule the Southern Slavs; his eyes were ever turned towards the famous legendary land of Old Serbia. One essential was that he should be a king, and in 1910 with the consent of the Powers he a.s.sumed this t.i.tle. The spider-webs of which he was so fond began to join Cetinje and Sofia, Cetinje and the mountains of Albania, while the master-weaver mitigated in his usual fashion the monotony of life in his poor capital. The Petrovic have such a way with them that--if you do not happen to be one of their subjects--you are in danger of being disarmed. Thus when they were basking in the goodwill of Austria and when Nikita himself, in the spring of 1911, had been splendidly received at Vienna, so that on his return to Cetinje he was welcomed by the whole diplomatic body, save for the Russian Minister, Count Giers, and General Potapoff, the Russian military attache, who were exhibiting their Government's disapproval, this appeared to Nikita a favourable moment for--as the Persians would say--blackening the face of the Austrian representative.

It was said by many of his discontented subjects that the King of Montenegro's great solicitude for his own personal affairs caused him frequently to be quite dull in recognizing other people's merit. But that day when he received the Austrian Minister he was so very much delighted with him that he there and then gave him promotion from the second to the first cla.s.s of the Order of Danilo. He had some months before conferred upon this gentleman the second cla.s.s, with diamonds of paste, and when the Austrian now told the King of his appreciation of the honour being so profound that he had ventured to replace the other diamonds with real ones--"I am enchanted," said the King, "to see that we have such a real friend in you, and I propose to grant you," said the King, as he produced another star composed of imitation diamonds, "to grant you this, the most exalted cla.s.s. Your Excellency has deserved right well of our beloved Montenegro. Give me back now that inferior decoration, and to-morrow, with due ceremony at eleven o'clock to-morrow," said the King with his paternal smile, "we will bestow on you what you deserve so richly, and it gives me every satisfaction, I a.s.sure you," said His Majesty.

The Malissori of Albania were also listening to the old man's blandishments. If they would revolt against the Turks--they were exasperated at the time against the Young Turk rule--then their families would be sheltered in Montenegro and their land, after it had been liberated, would be given independence. With the potent help of Ferdinand of Bulgaria the Turk was to be overthrown. But nothing came of all these plans; the Malissori were abandoned to the mercy of Constantinople.

However, in 1912 that which had been thought impossible was brought about: Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro were allied against the Turk. "Onamo, onamo!..."

"Yonder, yonder!--Let me see Prizren, For it is mine--I shall come to my home...."

but Nikita, who had written these famous words and who had taught them to his people for a generation, had no cavalry--in the Montenegrin mountains they would have been of no avail--and thus, while his warriors were still some hours from Prizren, they had the mortification of hearing that the Serbs had entered it. With pa.s.sionate desire they turned to Scutari. Nikita told them of the old Slav princes who were buried there--and to the simple-minded Montenegrins that seemed a good enough reason why 20,000 of them, the flower of the army, should lay down their own lives on the dreary hills that barred them from the town. It was hardly necessary for Nikita to allude to the wealth that would be theirs if they could gain possession of this outlet to the Adriatic. There in the plain at the end of the lake was the glittering white town, and if they could have seen themselves as clearly and their own inadequate resources, they would have refrained from the attempt. The minarets of Scutari, raised like so many warning fingers, failed to warn them. Their equipment was such that munitions and other supplies were frequently carried up to the lines by women--on the Bardonjolt no less than eighty of these were killed and wounded in one day. When the Serbs in October pushed through Albania to the Adriatic they offered to a.s.sist in the taking of Scutari, but Nikita shook his head. And it was not until some time after this that he accepted the co-operation of three batteries of Krupp guns, which had been meanwhile taken from the Turks at k.u.manovo.

But the Montenegrin army was not only handicapped by its lack of resources; the Crown Prince, who commanded a division, actually instigated a revolt among his own men. He had promised the Austrian Minister, Baron Giesl von Gieslingen, that the Montenegrin army would not enter Scutari, and the Government could only put a stop to Danilo's intrigues by invoking the aid of General Potapoff. The Turks were not wasting their time; they employed Austrian engineers to strengthen the fortifications, and thus the task had become far more difficult when finally the Montenegrin Court party availed itself of Serbian reinforcements. In more ways than one they were badly needed by the brave but ill-disciplined soldiers. "It is wonderful," they said to Major Temperley,[70] "their troops do not fire until an officer gives the word." Primitive men and a venal commander--according to Dr. Sekula Drljevic, who was Minister of Finance and Justice, Prince Danilo is alleged to have remembered, just before his country's entrance into the War, that money could be made on the Vienna Bourse by judicious selling and, after the declaration of war, by purchasing.

The professional financier who on this occasion, thanks to his knowledge of the Montenegrin royal plans, is alleged to have realized, with his friends, the sum of 140 million francs, was no less a person than Baron Rosenberg, whose subsequent operations in Paris at the beginning of the Great War and in Switzerland during the War received the close attention of the French authorities.[71] These financial methods of Danilo's did less material harm, at any rate to his own people than the system he employed as a motorist; it was necessary that he should obtain the latest models, and it suited him that the Government, not haggling over the price, should take over his discarded vehicles. Similar hostages to gossip were given by Mirko, his younger brother; one remembers the smiles of the diplomatic corps at Cetinje when this young man dispatched, at the cost of the Government, a telegram of about 500 words to Austria, concerning a horse which he wanted to buy. Mirko, who died during the Great War in an Austrian sanatorium, was not one of those rugged and valiant Montenegrin mountaineers whom Gladstone and Tennyson celebrated; once when his father ordered him to come back from Paris, where he was copiously spending his country's substance on an actress with whom he had decamped, leaving his wife and several young children at Naples, he dutifully returned and settled down in his palace, a large, comfortable house outside Podgorica. Since it was less amusing than in Paris he remained in bed for most of the twenty-four hours; he would often spend an hour before dinner in superintending the removal of pictures from one wall to another, and having dined he would immerse himself in State affairs, which took the form of speculating as to when he and his heirs--Danilo being childless--would be called to rule over the great Serbian kingdom of Serbia combined with Montenegro. As to the fate of the Karageorgevic dynasty, this was wont to vary from night to night, in proportion to the amount of wine that Mirko had drunk.

These events occurred in 1913, and in the same year the Montenegrins entered Scutari. It was not brought about by force of arms, but by some arrangement with Essad Pasha, the illiterate and clever Albanian who succeeded to the command of the town after Hussein Riza Bey, the Turkish leader, had been a.s.sa.s.sinated on the threshold of Essad's house, where he had been dining, by a couple of the Pasha's men, disguised as women. Scutari was not to stay for long in Montenegrin hands; an International Force arrived, under Admiral Sir Cecil Burney, and took it over. One need scarcely add that the national sentiment of the Albanians moved the Powers at this juncture as little as it moved the Albanians.

VERY HIGH POLITICS

We have seen that Prince Danilo, before flinging himself against the infidel Turk, is alleged to have transacted a little business on the Bourse--a former Montenegrin Minister of Finance says that he may well have netted between 25 and 30 million crowns--and his royal father, though his methods often had a tinge of mediaevalism, was not the man to rush, like some old knight, in succour of distress. When Serbia was attacked in 1914 he refrained from flying to her side. Montenegro "stood up spontaneously to defend the Serbian cause: she fought and she fell," says Mr. Devine. There is not the least doubt but that the vast majority of Montenegrins would have acted in this fashion. To some degree they had deteriorated under the example of Nikita--"A fish stinks from its head," says a Turkish proverb; but when their brother Serbs were in deadly peril all else was forgotten. And they were bewildered and suspicious when the Skuptina was summoned, seeing that the Const.i.tution laid it down that the declaring of war was a royal prerogative. As practically every man was thirsting for battle--after all they were Serbs and incapable of committing high treason against their brethren--they marvelled at the King's delay.

But to the politicians his manuvre explained itself; they recognized that Nikita had some secret arrangement[72] with the Austrians and that he wanted to tell Francis Joseph that the War had been forced upon him. From that moment he was playing a double role; a Serbian officer was chief of the Montenegrin staff. "They have placed my army under Serbian command," he told the Austrians. "So faithful was I," he said to the Entente, "that I even took a Serbian commander."

In view of the persistent pro-Nikita propaganda which subsequently reared its foolish head in Great Britain, it is as well to note what were the sentiments of the Montenegrins towards their own country and their brother Serbs, and on the other hand how they regarded Nikita.

Alone among the Allies the Montenegrin soldier received no decorations either in the Balkan wars or in the Great War, and yet he had formerly been so proud of such recognition that it had often been carved upon his tombstone, and when for one decoration there were two claimants a duel was frequently arranged in order to decide which was to be the recipient. But Nikita's regime of corruption and intrigue caused these marks of distinction to be conferred more and more upon police-agents and such like, so that in the Balkan War, when the heroes could no longer be counted, when more than five standard-bearers fell one after another in carrying the same standard and when it was proposed to decorate _en bloc_ the Kuci brigade, the soldiers refused to accept what had been so profaned.

THE RIDDLE OF SARAJEVO

On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was murdered at Sarajevo.

In the course of July 1914 the Austro-Hungarian Government (wherein far more influence was exerted by Count Tisza, the wealthy and incorruptible, the vastly ambitious Magyar Prime Minister, than by the Foreign Minister, Count Berchtold, the courteous, somewhat frivolous man of the world who was doomed to execute reluctantly the orders of Berlin and be swept away by the resulting storm, while the brave and brutal Tisza, fighting for the glory of the Habsburgs and the greater glory of the Magyars, rode upon the storm for years)--the Austro-Hungarian Government in July 1914 dispatched to Sarajevo a commissioner for the purpose of investigating whether the Serbian authorities had anything to do with the Archduke's a.s.sa.s.sination. This official, Baron von Weisner, a very distinguished Professor of Political Economy who was a German Bohemian[73] with staunch German sympathies, reported in the same month that he was convinced that no accusation whatever could be levelled against Belgrade. (As a matter of fact the Serbian police, who had information that a plot was being hatched in Bosnia, gave warning to the Austrian authorities; but no notice was taken of this, not even when a similar warning was uttered on June 21 by the Serbian Minister at Vienna, nor were any special precautions laid down for the Archduke's safety. It was all rather mysterious.) "Byzantium, the everlasting and unconquerable Byzantium,"

says an Austrian publicist,[74] "had won another victory.... The Habsburg Empire," says he, "only wished to defend herself against those invisible and irrepressible intrigues." And after denouncing the Serbs for throwing a spark into the powder barrel on June 28, 1914, he accounts for their conduct by writing that "it is the tradition of nomad blood to tear down ancient, n.o.ble palaces, replacing them by nomad huts." What we know is that General Potiorek, the Governor of Bosnia, who had urged Francis Ferdinand and his wife to continue their programme after the failure of the first attempt at a.s.sa.s.sination before lunch, was never invited to explain anything--unfortunately for Austria he was placed in command of the "punitive expedition" into Serbia. Other incidents on which a light may some day be thrown were the very unceremonious funeral arrangements for the murdered couple (though this may very likely have been due to the High Chamberlain's personal hatred of the Archduke), and the fact that an Imperial Commission was sent to Konopite, the Archduke's Bohemian estate, to seize his papers. It was there that he had lately been confabulating with the German Emperor; and Count Berchtold had visited the place on the day after the Kaiser's departure to try to ascertain what had occurred.... It was also at Konopite that Francis Ferdinand, who was threatened with hereditary madness, had shot a gamekeeper dead. Knowing that the Archduke was as good a shot as he was insignificant in horsemanship, this had excited great attention in the highest circles, coming as it did after other scenes of violence.... In contrast with all these semi-mysteries it is clear that Serbia had nothing whatever to gain by the Archduke's disappearance, and although Austria had time and again endeavoured to pick a quarrel with her she had managed to avoid a situation which, after the two recent wars, would be perilous in the extreme. The Serbian Press, which enjoyed a complete freedom, was naturally violent in tone when it observed that the Austro-Hungarian Government was doing little to control the demonstrations hostile to Serbia. Houses of prominent Serbs were looted and gutted at Sarajevo, while similar scenes took place--with the connivance of the authorities--in other large towns of the Monarchy. But the Belgrade populace, uninflamed by their Press, conducted themselves with great moderation. The stories circulated in Austria-Hungary of several Magyar journalists having been murdered were absolutely false. Just as false were the rumours of a demonstration against the Austrian Minister at the funeral of M.

Hartwig, his Russian colleague, although Serbian public opinion ascribed the sudden death of this powerful friend of theirs to a cup of poisoned coffee at the Austrian Legation. Hartwig has been criticized for his encouragement of Serbia's idea of expansion and for having fostered anti-Austrian propaganda--of course it was a very wicked thing, from the Austrian point of view, to think of the day when the Serbs might be joined to their unredeemed brethren; and as for the blessed word "propaganda," which covers everything from the mildest expression of opinion to a.s.sa.s.sination, there has been no responsible Austrian so reckless as to accuse the Serbs or M. Hartwig of having had recourse to methods that approached in wrong-doing their own notorious (and unsuccessful) forgeries.

Let us address three questions to those who carried on a calumnious campaign against Serbia:

(a) Why was the Sarajevo trial conducted behind a closed door? If the crime was instigated and perpetrated by Serbia, the Habsburg Monarchy, which at the time of the trial had already declared war on Serbia, had every interest in establishing with all publicity the guilt and the complicity of Serbian circles.

(b) Why were the evidence of the witnesses and the declarations of the authors of the a.s.sa.s.sination not published? It was only in 1918 that the Austrian Government, with the help of a professor of Berlin University, published a few facts taken from the proceedings of the trial.

Although in this book[75] a great deal of material importance has been omitted--for example, the declarations of the witnesses as well as the last declarations of the accused, nevertheless that which we have before us const.i.tutes one of the most terrible accusations against the Habsburg Monarchy. The young accused persons were not afraid to state, even behind closed doors in a barrack-room, some bitter truths concerning Austria-Hungary. One can have some idea of what they would have said in a public trial from the results of the famous trials of Zagreb and of Friedjung. All the accused persons, as well as their accomplices, declared that the decision to kill the Archduke was an act of their own personal will and that n.o.body incited or ordered them to make the attempt, least of all any authority of the Kingdom of Serbia. The crime was the personal act of Bosnian patriots who believed that they were serving their oppressed people. "In Bosnia," said the Minister Burian--"in Bosnia, there is no policy, there is only administration."

(c) Why did the Sarajevo police and Austro-Hungarian official circles conduct themselves so strangely with respect to the bomb-thrower Cabrinovic, a notorious anarchist and son of a Sarajevo police spy, who had on a former occasion been expelled by the police from Sarajevo?

Later on, after the Belgrade police had been obliged, owing to the intervention of the Austrian Consulate, to allow him to stay in Belgrade, he returned to Sarajevo and was quite unmolested by the police, whose precautions a few years previously, at the time of the visit of Francis Joseph, had gone so far as to expel, as suspected persons, two members of the Bosnian Parliament.

The sole charge that could be laid, not against Serbia but against a Serbian subject, concerned the relations of the subordinate officer Tankosic with the authors of the crime. It was a.s.serted that he knew of the plan and that he helped the a.s.sa.s.sins to procure money and weapons. The accused definitely said that he exercised no influence on their decision, which had been taken before conversation with him. But even supposing that he was an accomplice, it is evident that the whole Serbian nation and especially the Serbian Government is not identical with an officer who, on account of other troubles with the Ministry of War, had already been removed from the active service list.[76] When the Austrian ultimatum was transmitted to the Serbian Government, Tankosic was immediately arrested, so that his guilt and complicity might be enquired into and established. Serbia could not do more than that. But the whole Serbian people, in Serbia and out of Serbia, was declared guilty of the crime, and immediate steps were taken to carry out the sentence. The unprecedented atrocities committed by the Austro-Hungarian army in Serbia were to be the expiation of an imaginary crime, and such proceedings, which recall the times of Attila, are shielded by the ill.u.s.trious name of the aforementioned Professor Kohler, whose reputation it was to be the most democratic of German jurists. All his previous theories on crime, causality and responsibility became void; we see him adopt the monstrous theory according to which every act of private persons is the responsibility of the whole nation.

It remained for Nikita, a man of Serbian blood, a man whose verses had been laden with love for the Serbian nation, it remained for this shameless Prince to charge his brothers with the crime. So implacable was the old man's hatred of Serbia that when President Wilson arrived in Europe he immediately wrote[77] to him, in his indifferent French, for fear, he said, lest the intrigues conducted by the Serbs or their accomplices should precede him in capturing the President's sympathies. "In spite of their perfidy," said he, "I was the first to lend them a hand by being the first to declare war against Austria, although I was certain that the provocation originated on their side by the Sarajevo murders and their Black Hand.... Horrible thought that this country refuses to realize the crime it has committed, for which it is responsible to mankind no less than William!"

At last, on January 5, 1917, the _Neue Freie Presse_ acknowledged that Austria provoked the war with the intention of crushing Serbia. It is a formal and categorical confession. And it obliges us to consider seriously the thesis put forward by Jules Chopin in _Le Complot de Sarajevo_ (Paris, 1918), according to which the plot was hatched at Konopite between the German Kaiser and the man to whom the plot proved fatal. Monsieur Chopin, after a minute examination of the facts and of grave presumptions, believes that Serbia was to be held up to the world as having provoked the war that was to consolidate the Monarchy and satisfy the Archduke's paternal ambitions. The army manuvres were to be in Bosnia, the Archduke was to make his ceremonial entry into Sarajevo on Vidov dan, the day when the Serbs solemnly celebrate the battle of Kossovo, and Cabrinovic, son of the Sarajevo police-spy, was to be a.s.sisted through the Chinese Wall which then encircled Bosnia. But what did not enter into the royal calculations was the possibility that other Southern Slavs, acting on their own initiative, might strike a real blow.