The Birth Of Yugoslavia Volume Ii Part 18

Borovlje (Ferlach) 31 per cent. 69 per cent.

Grabtajn (Grafenstein) 106 " 894 "

relc (Ebenthal) 244 " 756 "

Pokrce (Poggersdorf) 13 " 987 "

Bistrica (Feistritz) 162 " 828 "

And twelve days later the official census gave these results:

Germans. Slovenes.

Borovlje 90 per cent. 10 per cent.

Grabtajn 501 " 499 "

relc 492 " 508 "

Pokrce 411 " 589 "

Bistrica 444 " 556 "

Far more trustworthy is the almanac issued every year by the Church, wherein a person's "usual language" is taken to be that in which he listens to the word of G.o.d. These ecclesiastical lists were published by German bishops, and according to them we find that the region we are considering held in 1910 some 40,000 Germans and 123,000 Slovenes.

We have seen that Celovec, like the smaller towns in this area, leans more to the Austrians than to the Yugoslavs. This is partly the effect of the Austrian Government's policy and partly of the various pan-German societies (_e.g._ the "Karntner Bauernbund," the "Verein der Alldeutschen," the "Deutscher Volksverein," etc. etc.), which, as was admitted, drew their funds to a considerable extent from Germany herself.

The German Republic was very lavish in a.s.sisting her smaller Austrian sister during the period before the plebiscite, pouring both goods and cash into the district; and after the opening of the demarcation line between the two zones at the beginning of August they were able to introduce their supplies quite openly into zone "A." Very few Germans of the north believe that the German-Austrian Republic will permanently remain separated from themselves.... Both Yugoslavs and Austrians circulated vast quant.i.ties of printed matter; for the Yugoslavs the most convincing argument lay in Austria's apparently hopeless economic position and the undesirability of belonging to a State which had to pay so huge a debt; the Austrian pamphlets denounced the Serbs as a military race, though even such a dealer in false evidence as the eminent Austrian historian, Dr. Friedjung, would find it difficult to sustain the thesis that the wars engaged in by the Serbs during the last hundred years were more of an offensive than of a defensive character. In several prettily prepared handbooks the voters were implored by the Austrians not to be so old-fashioned as to plump for a monarchy when they had such a chance of becoming republicans; one could almost see the writer of these scornful phrases stop to wipe his over-heated brow after having pushed back his old Imperial and Royal headgear. You might imagine that the Austrians in their deplorable economic condition would have avoided this topic; on the contrary, they proclaimed that several commodities which were lacking in Yugoslavia could be furnished by them in abundance. One of these, they said, was salt; and certainly the Yugoslavs purchased a good deal of it, but that was only when they did not know that it was German salt, which the Austrians bought in that country and on which they made an adequate profit. When the Yugoslavs wanted to get their supplies direct from Germany the Austrians introduced a transit tax of 1000 crowns--not the nearly worthless Austrian but Yugoslav crowns--per waggon. Later on when the Danube was thrown open and this tax could not be levied, salt was considerably cheaper in Yugoslavia than in Austria. So with plums--in 1919 Austria bought nearly the whole of the exports from Yugoslavia at six crowns per kilo and sold them to Germany at eleven to twelve crowns, the profit going, so the authorities said, to the poor.

As the day of the plebiscite approached, the Yugoslavs seemed to be more confident than the Austrians. The staunch peasants of zone "A" were not greatly impressed by the numerous appeals to their heart and brain which were handed to them by the Austrians in the Slovene language. And they were not much alarmed at the idea of being joined to their countrymen of the south, those unmitigated Serbs who thrived, if one was to believe the Austrian propaganda, on atrocities. But this warning was ridiculed by the Austrians themselves--on a market day at Velikovec you could see the Austrophils wearing their colours, which they would scarcely have done if they had been afraid of possible reprisals--and zone "A" was generally presumed to have a Yugoslav majority. On such a market day one saw very few Yugoslav colours in the farmers' b.u.t.ton-holes, for it was the wish of their leaders to avoid anything which might give rise to unnecessary conflict. The day drew near and the Austrians thought that they were making insufficient progress; for one thing, they were at a disadvantage owing to the very low value of their money. They hoped that Germany would come with more zeal than ever to the rescue, and they hoped that something fatal would occur to Yugoslavia. So they asked the Inter-Allied Commissions to put it to their Governments that it would be advisable if the plebiscite were to be postponed for several months, say until May 1921. But it was reported that the French and British representatives declined to countenance the scheme. They may also have feared that if the period of canva.s.sing were to be so long drawn out, the same pa.s.sions would come to the surface as in the plebiscite in east and west Prussia, where in many places the Poles could not display their sympathies except at great personal risk. But in that particular plebiscite it must be noted that the Allies were very imprudent in confiding the maintenance of order to the rebaptized German Security Police, a body which was entirely in the hands of the reactionary clique. Yet the military precautions of zone "A" in Carinthia were not what they should have been, for when the Yugoslavs had lost the plebiscite an unrestrained horde of Austrian sympathizers, some of them from that zone and some from outside it, some of them civilians and some of them soldiers in mufti who made for certain places where supplies of weapons had been hidden, swarmed across the land and terrorized the Yugoslavs in such a fashion that a Yugoslav military force had to come in to protect them. "But how barbaric are these Yugoslavs," sneered their enemies, "for they refuse to recognize the result of the plebiscite." More than one diplomat in Belgrade was ordered to present himself at the Foreign Office and demand an answer why, etc. But the Yugoslavs had no intention of imitating d'Annunzio.

Those who were not in the zone at the time of the voting might well be astounded at the result, which was an Austrian victory by 22,025 votes against 15,278 for Yugoslavia. In view of the undoubted Yugoslav majority, it was felt that something more than active propaganda, before and during the election, had been brought to bear. For example, in the commune of Grabtajn (Grafenstein) the Germans are said to have inscribed on the electoral list 180 persons from Celovec and Styria who had no right to vote; they also asked that seventy strangers should be inscribed. On submitting these claims to the judgment of the district council the German leaders, even as the Yugoslavs, were required to initial each request; it is alleged that these initialled papers, which were attached to the claims, were left overnight in a room the key of which was in the keeping of the German secretary, Schwarz. He is charged with having removed the initialled papers from the Slovene claims and affixed them to the German claims. There was a large amount of more usual corruption. Thus it is known that twenty-eight Slovene servants at an important landowner's were unable to resist the material arguments and voted for the Germans. And if it is true that a number of people voted twice and even three times the Inter-Allied Commission fell short of its duties. It is said that the voting was so lax that if a stranger had been inscribed and did not turn up to vote, his legitimation was used by a native. Thus we are told of one Helena Rozenzoph, aged seventy-five, who was inscribed at Grabtajn. This woman had never existed; there had been a certain Barbara Rozenzoph who died in 1919, and her vote was used by Marjeta Hanzio, aged twenty-two years. The case was so flagrant that the Commission discovered it and the woman confessed to having acted on a note which she had received from the special Austrian _gendarmerie_ force, the Heimatsdienst. The Commission seems to have been reluctant to take any steps against these frauds and it is not astonishing that the commune of Grabtajn registered 1290 votes for the Austrian Republic and only 380 for Yugoslavia, although in this commune of 3440 inhabitants there are no more than sixteen German families. A German majority was thus obtained in a province which Dr.

Renner, the Austrian Chancellor, had acknowledged to be Slovene. It seems incredible that the Commission should have so completely broken down and the mystery may yet be cleared up, if as the Yugoslavia delegate requested, all the voting papers have been preserved.... But the _Hrvat_, the organ of the Narodny Club in Croatia (the decentralizing but strongly national party) blames Monsignor Koroec, the leader of the Slovene clericals, for the disastrous plebiscite result. He would have been better employed, it says, in organizing his people than in gadding about Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Dalmatia for the purpose of extending his party. He had boasted that the Slovenes were so well organized that they were perfectly confident as to the issue. It would seem, however, says the _Hrvat_, that an unexpectedly large proportion of them are partly or entirely Germanized. And this, more than the above-mentioned irregularities, may be chiefly responsible for Yugoslavia's loss. One must also remember that many a Slovene would shrink from garrison duty in Macedonia, while it would be very natural for the Carinthian farmer to look up at the mountains that separated him from Carniola and then to recollect that Celovec (Klagenfurt), the economic centre of the whole area, would be Austrian. Nevertheless if zone "A" had been smaller--and more completely Slav--it is probable that the population would have risen superior to the various doubts which a.s.sailed them. What we have said about the Slovenes who have become Germanized is borne out by the _Koroski Slovenec_, a newspaper which appears in Vienna and which, though since its formation has been essentially hostile to the Austrians, tells us that after the plebiscite the Slovenes have only suffered real oppression from their denationalized compatriots. Difficulties arose with regard to the closing of Slovene schools, but this was largely due to the fact that many of the Slovene schoolmasters fled to Yugoslavia.

(_g_) THE ITALIAN FRONTIER

A Yugoslav barrister from Pola had gone to a neighbouring village--this was in 1920--for the purpose of encouraging the natives, who were all Southern Slavs. He asked them, in the event of their part of Istria being allotted to the Italians, not to lose heart but to wait for the day when justice would come by her own. In the middle of his exhortations a jovial old farmer approached him and slapped him on the back. "Cheer up, young man!" he exclaimed. "What is it that you are afraid of?" ... The Slav population of Istria and Gorica-Gradica, even as that of Dalmatia, has endured a great many things and is prepared to endure a great many more. Kindness would have gone a long way towards disarming them. If the Italians on the eastern Adriatic had been exponents of the Mazzini spirit rather than--which too often has been the case--of the direst Nationalist, then the Yugoslavs would have accepted--mournfully, no doubt, but _faute de mieux_--the frontier from the river Ara in Istria which President Wilson suggested. This would have been a compromise frontier, by which 400,000 Slovenes and Croats would fall to Italy and a very much smaller number of Italians would fall to Yugoslavia. It would have satisfied the great sensible ma.s.s of the Italian people, but unfortunately was rejected by Baron Sonnino and his myrmidons. Far more was claimed by him, and the succeeding Italian Governments have had to struggle with the pa.s.sions he so recklessly aroused. They have been unable to persuade the country that with the Ara frontier they would be getting by no means a bad bargain. By the Treaty of Rapallo the Italians have obtained much more: the whole of Gorica-Gradica, portions of Carniola, the whole of Istria and contiguity with Rieka (which is made a free town), the islands of Lussin, Cres and Unie, sovereignty over a strip of five miles which includes Zadar (and a few adjacent islands), finally the southern island of Lastovo and Pelagosa which lies in the middle of the Adriatic.

In November 1920 all the outside world was congratulating the Italians and the Yugoslavs on having, after many fruitless efforts of their statesmen, come to this agreement. The opinion was expressed that both of the contracting parties would henceforth be satisfied, since each of them was conscious that the other had accepted something less than his desires. It was noted that the Yugoslavs exhibited more generosity, as they gave up some half a million of their countrymen, while the Italians yielded in Dalmatia that to which they had no right. The Yugoslavs had, in the past two years, shown so much more forbearance than was usually expected of a vigorous young nation that the commentators for the most part fancied they would not waste any time in grieving over these inevitable sacrifices. It is freely said that if a liberal spirit is displayed by the Italians at the various points where they and Yugoslavia are in contact, both people will settle down, with no afterthoughts, to friendly and neighbourly relations. But it would be foolish to close our eyes to the fact that the position at Rieka and Zadar, not to speak of any other places, bristles with difficulties. At Rieka one hopes that the largest and wisest party, the Autonomists, will now come into their rights; no doubt a good many of those opportunist citizens who, at the time of the Italian occupation, developed into Italianissimi, after having previously been known as more or less platonic lovers of Italy, Hungary, or Croatia with ambitions chiefly centred on their native town, will presently a.s.sure you that in the Free State they are convinced Free Staters; but the local politicians have been living for so long in such a thoroughly oppressive atmosphere that most of those who have been prominent should for a season now retire. It will be difficult enough for this hara.s.sed port to settle down to business. As for the Zadar enclave, it is not easy to understand why an Italian majority in this little town should bring it under the Italian flag while the overwhelming Slav majorities of central and eastern Istria have been ignored. And with all the goodwill in the world the existence of this minute colony encircled by Yugoslav lands will scarcely make more easy the conduct of relations between Yugoslavia and Italy. It is naturally to the interest of both countries that misunderstandings and suspicions should be swept away. And from this point of view it is very doubtful whether the Italians were well advised in taking Zadar into their possession. Presumably the Government was forced to do so by the state of public feeling. They withstood this feeling with regard to the magnificent harbour of Vis, which even President Wilson suggested they should have, and contented themselves with the smaller Yugoslav island of Lastovo (Lagosta). The pity is that the Nationalists should have forced into their hands anything which may turn and sting them.

It may be thought that we are excessively pessimistic in pointing rather to the dangers which the Treaty places on the tapis than to the good sense of those who will deal with them. We do not say that the Italians would have permitted their Government to solve the Adriatic question in a safer and more philosophic manner; but we cannot look forward with that confidence we should have had if more sagacious counsels had prevailed.

An arrangement most agreeable to the bulk of the interested population would have been effected if two Free States, instead of one, had been created: the small one of Rieka, and a larger one embracing Triest and the western part of Istria. There would be in each of these two States a mixed population, who would think with a shudder of the time when the gra.s.s was growing on their quays. Italians and Slavs, prosperous as of old, would very cordially agree that the experiment of being included in Italy had been at any rate a commercial disaster. [D'Annunzio's administration was, of course, a mere camouflage. Without the support of the Italian Government, which paid his troops though calling them rebels, the poet-adventurer could scarcely have lasted for a day; and the swarm of officers, many of them worse adventurers than himself, would have deserted him. Nor would the population of Rieka have listened to his glowing periods if the Italian Government had not, under cover of the Red Cross, sent an adequate supply of food into the town.] Both Rieka and Triest were, therefore, living under practically the same conditions, separated from their natural hinterland, and knowing very well that as Italian towns their prospects were lamentable. It was significant that the Italian Government should after a time have studied the scheme of constructing a ca.n.a.l from Triest to the Save. Before the War one-third of the urban population (and all the surrounding country) was Yugoslav; and now, when so many Yugoslavs have departed and so many Italians have arrived, even now it is certain that in a plebiscite not 10 per cent. would vote for Italy--and this minority would be largely made up of those _leccapiatini_ (the "plate-lickers") who were the humbler servants of Austria during the War and are now begging for Italian plates. When the offices of the Socialist newspaper _Il Lavoratore_--the Socialists are by far the most important party in Triest--were taken by storm and gutted, the American Consul, Mr. Joseph Haven, and the Paris correspondent of the _New York Herald_, Mr. Eyre, happened to be in the building. They afterwards said that the attack by those ultra-nationalist bands, the fascisti--very young men, demobilized junior officers and so forth--was entirely unprovoked. The carabinieri gazed indifferently at the scene. Such is life in Triest, where the labour movement is gaining in strength every day. Its old prosperity has departed--there is hardly any trade or water or gas, since most of the coal was consumed, by order of the Italian authorities, in making electric light for illuminations. These were intended to show the city's irrepressible enthusiasm at being incorporated in the kingdom of Italy. But the inhabitants know very well that being one of Italy's many ports is worse than being the only port of Austria; they know that the most direct railways to Austria pa.s.s through Yugoslav territory, that henceforward the Danube will be much more largely used by Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Hungary (none of whom had a seaboard) and that Rieka will now be a more formidable rival than of old.... So, too, at Pola we find that a majority of the population do not wish their town to be retained in Italy; a number of Italian workmen fled from the idle shipbuilding yards and actually came in 1919 and 1920 with the Slovene refugees, their fellow-townsmen, to Ljubljana in search of employment. There are not sufficient orders to go round among such yards in Italy where, owing to the absence of coal and iron, this particular industry labours under great disadvantages. But if Rome considers that the retention of Pola is strategically essential, then in order to meet her wishes this town might be taken out of the Triest-Istrian Free State--maybe the Italians will be able to do something that will cause the citizens to cease regretting those good days of old when, as Austria's chief naval base, she flourished on the largesse of officers and men. But what can she do, and what could anybody do? Hundreds of houses are deserted; and for the year 1920 the owners of the theatre--which did not engage expensive actors but relied mainly on cinema--were faced with a deficit of 12,000 lire.

The Triest-Istrian Free State would approximately contain, without Pola, some 300,000 inhabitants, half Italian and half Yugoslav. The formation of this State would be less advantageous to the Yugoslavs, for most of the big landowners and the shop-keepers are Italians who live on the Yugoslav peasants; but Yugoslavia, for the sake of peace, would be glad to see the State come into existence. Eastern and central Istria, forming a part of Yugoslavia and lying between the two Free States, should extend to Porto di Bado, which would cause it to possess about 3,000 Italians and 280,000 Yugoslavs. If it were to be bounded by the Ara it would make the Italians in the Triest-Istrian State become a minority.

With respect to the indisputable Slav districts east of the Isonzo, _i.e._ the territory of Gorica-Gradica and an appreciable part of Carniola, which have been adjudged to Italy and which long to be joined to the Yugoslav State, there are two possible solutions. (In pa.s.sing we may observe that there is no country where the national frontier is more clearly indicated. The linguistic frontier is so strictly defined that the peasant on one side of it does not speak Italian and his neighbour on the other side does not understand the Slovene tongue. Nevertheless, Signor Colajanni, the venerable leader of the Italian Republicans, took up an undemocratic point of view and declined to admit the argument of the superiority of numbers, when he alluded to this frontier in a speech to the Republican Congress at Naples. Waving numbers aside, he preferred to appeal to history and culture, though he should have known that the ma.s.s of the Slovene people is much better educated than the Italian peasant.) The true ethnographical boundary would be the Isonzo--not many Yugoslavs live to the west and not many Italians to the east of that river. Only in the town of Gorica do we find Italians. In 1910 at the census the Italian munic.i.p.al authorities attempted to show that their town was almost entirely Italian; at a subsequent census the Austrians found that the returns had been largely falsified, and that in reality Gorica contained 14,000 Italians and 12,000 Slovenes, while it is common knowledge that if you go 500 yards from the town you meet nothing but Slovenes. The prosperity of Gorica was mostly based on the export of fruit and vegetables from the Slovene countryside. In 1898 the Slovenes awakened, formed societies, started in business on a large scale and boycotted the Italian merchants, who found themselves obliged to learn the Slovene language. Suppose that, for the sake of meeting the wishes of the Italian Nationalists, one half of the town were given to Italy, then that portion would be faced with ruin. It would, therefore, be advisable that the whole town should remain with its hinterland, and that Italy and Yugoslavia should be divided from each other by the Isonzo. But if this solution is impossible, then a large district east of the Isonzo should be entirely and permanently neutralized, which would not endanger the security of either State. Very different in character is the line Triglav-Idria-Sneznik, which the Italians hold ostensibly as a means of defence, but which is an offensive line against Yugoslavia, and primarily against Ljubljana and Karlovac.

No doubt as the Italians in the eastern Adriatic have obtained a regular position by the Treaty of Rapallo they will henceforth do their best to win the love of their new subjects. They will disavow such officers as that one on the sandy isle of Unie who accused the Slav priest of propaganda, and in fact, as we have mentioned elsewhere, expelled him for the reason that inside his church, where they had been for many years, stood monuments of the two Slav apostles, SS. Cyril and Methodus.

St. Methodus was the wise administrator of these two--but even if he takes the rulers of the eastern Adriatic under his particular protection one must be prepared for them to fail in smothering, by their enlightened rule, the discontent which in the last three years has grown among the Yugoslavs to such acute proportions. It began, as we have noted, under the aegis of Baron Sonnino; the old neighbour, Austria-Hungary, had been Italy's hereditary foe, and the Baron's school could not bring itself to regard the new neighbours in a friendly light, although their house was so much less populated than that of their predecessors, not to mention that of the Italians themselves.

There have been times during the last three years when a war between Italy and Yugoslavia seemed scarcely avoidable--the natives of the districts most concerned were looking forward to it with eagerness. At a Yugoslav a.s.sembly held in Triest in the summer of 1919 the other delegates were electrified by two priests from Istria who declared that their people were straining at the leash, anxious for the word to s.n.a.t.c.h up their weapons. (Many of these weapons, by the way, were of Italian origin, as there had been no great difficulty in purchasing them from the more pacific or the more Socialistic Italian soldiers; the usual price was ten lire for a rifle and a hundred rounds.) If there should come about a war between Italy and Yugoslavia, then it is to be supposed that the Yugoslavs will afterwards take as their western frontier the old frontier of Austria (except for the Friuli district, south of Cormons, which they do not covet, since they look upon this ancient race as Italian.)

By signing the Treaty of Rapallo the Yugoslav Government has shown that it is ready to go to very great lengths in order to establish, as securely as may be, an era of peace. It would be just as creditable on the part of the Italians if they will consent to Istria being part.i.tioned in the way we have suggested, for they have been wrongly taught to think themselves ent.i.tled to this country, and to believe that the inhabitants, as a whole, are glad to be Italian subjects. "You may suppose we are unpatriotic," the Austrian railway officials of Italian nationality used to say, "but as Austria gives much better pay than we should receive from Italy, we prefer that this part of the world should be Austrian."

The relations between Italy and Yugoslavia have been treated at some length, for it would require but little to bring a gathering of storm-clouds to the sky. One even hears of Roman Catholics in Istria and elsewhere abjuring their Church and--for the national cause--adopting the Serbian Orthodox faith. Twenty years ago it happened that two Istrian villages, Ricmanje and Log, went over to the Uniate and thence to the Orthodox Church. This was on account of a quarrel with the Bishop of Triest, who wanted, against the wishes of the people, to remove their priest, Dr. Pojar. But now we have priests in the provinces given to Italy who are openly calling on their flock to go over with them to their Orthodox brothers; and this is a movement which, it is thought, will merely be postponed by the introduction of the Slav liturgy. To take a single sermon out of many, we may mention one which in the summer of 1920 was preached in a church of the Vipava valley. The clergyman, after lamenting that the chief dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church are Italians, gave it as his opinion that there was nothing to choose in point of goodness between that particular Church and the Orthodox Church. "And," said an old peasant who came to Triest with the story of what had happened, "never in my life did I hear so fine a sermon and one that did me so much good."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 72: The Italians had originally landed a "hygienic mission" at Valona early in the European War, and this of course developed into something else. That ingenuous propagandist, Mr. H. E. Goad, tells us (in the _Fortnightly Review_ of May 1922) that while Nature had made the innumerable deep-water harbours on the eastern coast of the Adriatic practically immune from Italy's attack, a landing or raid from one of them at Ancona, Bari or Barletta would be a vital blow at Italy, severing vital communications. He therefore justifies Italy's landing at Valona in that it was a purely defensive step, made to ensure that its harbour should not be used against her. He may hold that the seizure of one town is better than the seizure of none, but from the strategic and political point of view it would seem that Mr. Goad is an injudicious advocate.]

[Footnote 73: _Albaniens Zukunft._ Munich, 1916.]

[Footnote 74: _La Sera_, August 6, 1920.]

[Footnote 75: _Giornale delle Puglie_, September 6-7, 1920.]

[Footnote 76: The delegates of the League of Nations were told, at the beginning of 1922, by the authorities in southern Albania that it was iniquitous to believe that they would employ this kind of punishment for political refugees. Did they not advertise an amnesty to all those who returned within forty-five days? And in what newspaper, they indignantly asked--in what newspaper had they published the slightest threat of arson?]

[Footnote 77: In the winter of 1921 this gentleman was expelled from his country.]

[Footnote 78: _Albanesische Studien._ Jena, 1854.]

[Footnote 79: _Albanien und die Albanesen._]

[Footnote 80: But this is less rigorously upheld in the towns if it is a question of their honour or of cash. When, to give an example, Scutari was occupied by the Montenegrins at the beginning of the Great War, a Catholic Albanian merchant came to a Montenegrin lawyer and asked him to inst.i.tute proceedings against another merchant who had gravely and publicly insulted him. The lawyer drew up the complaint, for which he charged the small sum of 20 perpers (= francs), but although his client was a wealthy man this fee appalled him; he resolved to take no further steps. In general, the Scutarenes prefer to suffer imprisonment rather than part with any money. And the willingness of the Albanians not to look a gift-horse in the mouth could often be observed at Podgorica between the years 1909 and 1912, when Nicholas of Montenegro would occasionally appear in the market-place with a supply of caps and other articles for the Albanians. These he would distribute, having first exclaimed: "Kacak Karadak Kralj Nikola barabar!" (that is to say, "The Albanian and the Montenegrin are equal in the eyes of King Nicholas!"). Kacak is a word meaning a brigand, an outlaw; the Montenegrins apply it to their neighbours, and these latter, throwing their new caps in the air and cheering for Nikita, did not mind what he called them.]

[Footnote 81: _Turkey in Europe._ London, 1900.]

[Footnote 82: _Ein Vorstoss in die Nordalbanischen Alpen._ Vienna, 1905.]

[Footnote 83: _Italy in the Balkans at this Hour._ Naples, 1913.]

[Footnote 84: _L'Albanie Independente_, by Dukagjin-Zadeh Basri Bey. Paris, 1920.]

[Footnote 85: Cf. the _New Statesman_, February 5, 1921.]

[Footnote 86: When the Serbian troops arrived at Pritina in the Balkan War they discovered among the inhabitants of that place a man who had not left his house for some fourteen years.

We are told (in _The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland_, etc., vol. v. London, 1921) of my Lord Eyre of Eyrescourt in County Galway "that not one of the windows of his castle was made to open, but luckily he had no liking for fresh air." Yet probably his lordship's countenance had not the pallor of the man of Pritina, because "from an early dinner to the hour of rest he never left his chair, nor did the claret ever quit the table."]

[Footnote 87: When this account of the incident was published in my small book, _A Difficult Frontier_, it caused a reviewer, one I. M., in _The Near East_ to observe, that I "can be jubilant when a Montenegrin in Yugoslav pay insults a British officer, Captain Brodie." Since the Editor permits such hopeless nonsense to appear in his columns one may be excused, I think, for not taking _The Near East_ very seriously. It is not worth while informing them how General Phillips of Scutari dealt with Captain Brodie.]

[Footnote 88: Referring in the _Nation and Athenaeum_ to Sir Charles's latest work, _Hinduism and Buddhism_ (3 vols.), Mr.

Edwyn Bevan says that "for a lonely student, who had done nothing in his life but study, the book would have been a sufficiently remarkable achievement. That a man who has been an active public servant and held high and responsible offices should have found time for the studies which this book presupposes is marvellous. It is a masterly survey.... There can be few men who have Sir Charles's gift of linguistic accomplishments, who can not only read Sanskrit and Pali, but know enough of the Dravidian languages of Southern India to check statements by reference to the original writings, and add to this a knowledge of Chinese and Tibetan."]

[Footnote 89: Cf. pp. 72-73, Vol. I.]

[Footnote 90: Cf. _Manchester Guardian_, February 28, 1919.]

[Footnote 91: Cf. _A Political Escapade: The Story of Fiume and D'Annunzio_, by J. N. Macdonald, O.S.B. London, 1921.]

[Footnote 92: Cf. _Tribune de Geneve_, October 13, 1921.]

[Footnote 93: Those who are curious as to the gentleman's antecedents may like to refer to my book, _Under the Acroceraunian Mountains_.]

[Footnote 94: Cf. _La Suisse_ (of Geneva), October 13, 1921.]