The Birth Of Yugoslavia Volume I Part 17

"At half-past eight in the morning we flew away in the hydroplane to Italy, I and two Poles. At ten we reached Mattinato, and I explained at the Carabineers' station why I had come and asked to be brought as soon as possible before the Commander of the District. Later I saw Captain Odo (of the Territorials) and told him all, and asked him to put me into communication with Brindisi, Taranto or Rome. He had us put under arrest. I was interviewed by two flying officers two days later, but they went off to Brindisi in my hydroplane without me.

"On February 17 I was taken under armed escort to Brindisi, where I was imprisoned in a cabin of the man-of-war _Varese_.... I told the commander of the s.h.i.+p that I was at his disposal with all my knowledge of the Austrian fleet. I asked him to put questions, because I did not know how much he knew. It was all to no purpose. On February 21 the Admiral in command at Brindisi saw me. From what he said I understood that nothing had been done about Bok Kotor and, what was more, that not one hydroplane had been sent to investigate the situation there. I learned that I was to go to Rome. They clapped me into barracks.... I again asked the Italians to allow me to speak to the Serbian Minister, whom I considered the representative of the Yugoslav people, but the request was refused on the plea that it was a question of high politics. Meanwhile the Polish representative Zamorski was allowed to visit the Poles, but from February 3 to May 25 I was unable to get into communication with any of our people."

In May there was another outbreak at Kotor, but it was overpowered, and many Yugoslav sailors were shot or imprisoned. Sesan was also kept in his Italian prison, though occasionally he was brought out, questioned and then taken back again. Thus at Ferrara he informed Captain Ciano about the whole organization of the Austrian offensive and defensive forces, and especially about Pola and Split. Sesan begged to be allowed to take part in the action against the Austrian fleet, and, at Rome, where he came before Captain Soldati, of the Bureau of Information, he made the same request. With two motor launches he undertook to organize communication between Italy and the Slavs of Dalmatia, in this way to follow events in Austria and help the revolutionary movement. It would be possible to procure the secret wireless codes which the Austrian and German submarines used--but the Italians would do nothing, because they were not willing to recognize that the Yugoslavs were fighting against Austria.... Seeing that he would never move the Italians to take serious action against the Austrian fleet, Sesan asked to be sent to the Serbian army in Macedonia, so that at Salonica he could get into touch with the French and British fleet. In this also he failed, for he was interned from June till December with Yugoslav officers at Nocera Umbra. While there he was visited by Bissolati, from whom he learned that the Chief of the Admiralty was hostile to the Yugoslavs. And at Nocera Umbra he remained until December 6, when he was liberated, owing to the efforts of Trumbic and other members of the Yugoslav Committee.

In the month of September a memorandum was drawn up by Trumbic, in which he proposed to English and American political and military circles the landing at ibenik of a force of 50,000 men. This would have been a.s.sisted by the mutinous crews of the Austro-Hungarian Fleet, whose preparations had been completed in July (at this port 90 per cent. of the sailors of the fleet were Yugoslavs, and among them there was a strong national feeling; in fact, if their political leaders had not held them back, they would have endeavoured in July to blow up the naval fortifications and sail with the s.h.i.+ps to Corfu).

The expeditionary army, once at ibenik, could have penetrated inland and, acting in consort with the many Yugoslav deserters and the insurgent population of Dalmatia and Bosnia, have accelerated the Austrian _debacle_. In this memorandum Trumbic asked that the combined Anglo-American-French fleet should support the action, but that the Italians, whom the Yugoslavs distrusted, should take no part.

He sneered at the cowardice of the Italians who, with a huge army, did not dare to start an offensive on a grand scale.

[In well-informed circles in Italy this memorandum was already known, but when it was read in the Italian Chamber in the spring of 1919 it made a considerable sensation.]

On October 3, Messrs. Frederick tepanek, Rudolph Giunio, Valentine Zic (of ibenik) and other authorized Czecho-Slovak and Yugoslav emissaries went in a sailing-boat from Vis to Italy, with a view to getting into connection with Dr. Bene (afterwards the Czecho-Slovak Foreign Minister) and Dr. Trumbic, to inform them as to the situation in the Monarchy and to obtain instructions regarding the moment of the revolution in which their soldiers and sailors were to partic.i.p.ate. On arrival in Rome on October 7, the delegates were interrogated by Major Trojani of the Bureau of Information and on the same day for three hours by the Inspector-General of Public Safety.

From then till October 20, they were interned in the Macoa barracks at the Castro Pretoris, and although they made repeated attempts to see a member of the Yugoslav Committee or Dr. Bene, who was in Rome, they were told that this "delicate" question could only be solved by the Premier himself; and when brought before him Dr. Bene had departed. The delegates had entreated that he and Trumbic should be informed of their arrival, but in spite of various a.s.surances nothing whatever was done. It is suggested that the fleet would have been in Slav hands two or three weeks earlier, which would very probably have precipitated events on the Western front, if the Italians had not acted in this inexcusable fas.h.i.+on.

ADVANCE OF THE ALLIES IN MACEDONIA

The collapse of Austria-Hungary was being hastened by the fine work of the Allies' Macedonian army. France and Great Britain had provided for the re-equipment of the Serbs. And of the variegated forces that were based on Salonica none did more magnificently than this resurrected army. A weather-beaten sergeant of the French Infanterie Coloniale told me that he had never seen an exploit such as that of Kaimatcalan, where the Serbs set themselves the task of climbing to the summit, which towers 8000 feet high, and from there dislodging the Bulgarian artillery. Over and over again the Serbs were thrown back, and with terrific losses, for the mountain-side was strewn with rocks not large enough to shelter more than a man or two. But as the Infanterie Coloniale is habitually chosen for the roughest work, so the Serbs asked for nothing better than to climb the wall that shut them out from their own country. The labyrinth of trenches on the mountain-top was taken and retaken many times, until the Bulgars--inadequately supported by their Allies--had to retreat; and this, after further ferocious fighting, enabled the Serbs and the French to liberate Monastir. The complicated story of Greek manuvres need not detain us, nor need we ask whether Mr. Leland Buxton[103] is justified in saying that the majority of that people were pro-German, "but were subsequently compelled by the Allied blockade ... to declare themselves supporters of Venizelos, on whose behalf, indeed, the British Admiralty and War Office had to carry on a sort of election campaign (by Eastern European methods) until the numerous waverers wisely decided that it was better to be a well-fed Venizelist than a hungry Royalist." Sufficient that after months of delaying, in the course of which the Russian troops had to be turned into labour battalions, Marshal Miic--whose plan of campaign had fortunately been adopted--had the satisfaction of seeing his own countrymen and their Allies racing up at last through Macedonia and Serbia to the Danube and beyond it.... What did they find? Bridges hastily blown up, tunnels rendered impa.s.sable by two locomotives laden with dynamite being made to collide in the middle of them--but the Serbs went rus.h.i.+ng on. The supply columns could not keep pace with the troops--during the first eight days of the offensive the men of the 2nd Army received but two days' rations--they continued their advance across the Vardar, though but little bread and practically no other food was obtainable. In three days they had covered sixty miles. There was only time for them to greet the women and old men--and even if they had then been told of the 130,000 horses, the 6,000,000 sheep and goats, the 2,000,000 pigs, 1,300,000 cattle and over 8,000,000 poultry which the enemy had taken; if they had learned that the losses sustained by Serbia--exclusive of her own expenses and of the war loans from her Allies--amounted to some 10,000,000,000 frs. on a pre-war valuation, what did all this matter in that joyous time?

HOW THE MAGYARS TREATED THEIR SERBIAN SUBJECTS

At the beginning of the War the dominant Magyars of the Banat had as little uncertainty about the result as Count Julius Andra.s.sy professed to have at a later period. "Victory must come to our troops," he said, "because they are better organized and more efficient, and because they are, above all, filled with unexampled enthusiasm, which makes heroes of them all." The enthusiasm which, for instance, caused the mob at Velika Kikinda to shout "Eljen a haboru!" ["Long live the War!"] while they fired revolvers in at the windows of an unilluminated house because it was the house of a Serb, a son-in-law of the well-known banker, Marko Bogdan, without stopping to ascertain that he was at the front fighting against Serbia, might be dismissed as a folly on the part of the crowd if it were not so characteristic of the whole Magyar administration. The "subject nationalities" were to be enrolled in the Magyar host and treated, at the same time, with contumely. At Verac Dr. Slavko Miletic,[104] son of the famous patriot, was suspected not only of cheris.h.i.+ng Serbian sympathies, which was natural, but of committing a felony. The authorities believed that in his medical capacity he was exempting people from their military service, and not for the advantage of the Serbian cause so much as for that of his own pocket. Several detectives were therefore put to bed in one or two of the wards of the military hospital; and the upshot of it was that three other doctors--all of them Magyars--who had given way to these practices, committed suicide; the chief of the hospital poisoned himself, one of the staff shot himself, and the third culprit hanged himself in prison. Dr.

Miletic had previously been kept for three and a half months under the shadow of a conviction for high treason: one Bonchocat, a Roumanian who did not understand the Serbian language, a.s.serted that the doctor, at a meeting held two weeks before the Archduke's a.s.sa.s.sination, must have known that war was brewing, since--so said Bonchocat--he had not confined himself to Serbian ecclesiastical affairs, which was the object of the meeting, but had uttered the remark that if the Austrians had bayonets the Serbs had axes. Although Bonchocat was a man condemned to nine years' penal servitude for murder, and although the doctor only called on his own behalf two witnesses who were not Serbs, but the head of the frontier police and the head of the town police, he was nevertheless kept in suspense for three and a half months. Afterwards, owing to the lack of Magyar doctors, he was begged to be the State doctor for the town. Similarly the Orthodox priest, Radulovic, of Pancevo, was transported to Arad and interned there for no other reason than his nationality, whereas his son, a first lieutenant of the Hungarian Honved, was expected to be very loyal. When certain rumours came to the son's ears--he was then serving on the Russian front--he inquired, and was told that his father had merely been warned. Presently he learned the truth, and in consequence deserted to the Russians and became a member of the Yugoslav brigade. Thus it will be seen that the Magyar unwisdom was on a par with that which they had shown in days of peace.

Unfortunately for their State the Magyar politicians were less honest than the Magyar peasants, so that the de-nationalizing process met with pretty firm resistance. What can be said for the honesty of a legal decision which laid it down that as two Serbian philanthropists, Barajevac and Sandulovic, at Pancevo had not specially mentioned that the funds they had bequeathed for a school were to be for a Serbian school--(this the benefactors had a.s.sumed as a matter of course)--they must be used for a Magyar establishment? Save for the officials there were practically no Magyars in Pancevo. And when the War began the remainder of the fund was invested by the Magyars in their War Loan! It is curious, by the way, to see what methods were employed to make the Loan successful. Fathers were frequently told that if their subscription was adequate their sons at the front would duly be granted leave. The Slovak village of Kovacica in the Banat was compelled to put three million crowns into War Loan, the Magyar notary making a list of the amounts which every person had to pay under penalty of being sent to the front; if he was too old for this he was threatened with internment. Kovacica, a few years before the War, had shown the Magyar fitness for governing an alien people. The population consisted of 5200 Lutheran Slovaks and 200 miscellaneous persons--Jews, Magyars and Germans. Nevertheless it was ordered that the church services must be in the Magyar and not in the Slovak language. When the paris.h.i.+oners objected, the police, with sticks and guns, expelled them from the large, lofty church, and 83 of them were sentenced to various periods of imprisonment. Serbian barristers defended them gratuitously, but the judge had himself taken an active part in turning the people out of the church; and presently the barristers were told that they had themselves been convicted--Dr.

Duan Bocovic for one year, on the ground that he had had the napkins at a banquet decorated with the Serbian colours; Dr.

Branislav Stanojevic for three years, because his visits to Belgrade, where his parents and his brother were living, stamped him, said the Magyar judge, as a traitor. The total number of Magyars at Kovacica was ten, and for a time they came to hear their language, which had thus been compulsorily introduced. Handbills were sent round to summon the Magyars from neighbouring villages, but gradually this congregation grew smaller and smaller. When two Magyars attended, then the pastor gave them a sermon; if only one was present he confined himself to prayers. The Magyars had seen to it, by the way, that there should not be much sympathy between the pastor and his bishop: of this diocese about three-quarters were Slovaks and one-quarter Germans and Magyars; but the Government vetoed the choice of Dr. Czalva, who was disqualified for being friendly to the Slovaks--his father and grandfather had both been bishops of that same diocese--and a certain Dr. Raffay was appointed, who spoke nothing but Magyar and some words of German.... However, by taking in this way a few examples of Magyar methods, one may be accused of having chosen merely those which ill.u.s.trate one's theme. It would be hazardous to draw conclusions as to Magyar officers in general because a certain Lieutenant Chaby, who, during the War, found himself quartered on a Serbian family of the name of Stejvovic at Priboj in the Sandjak, behaved differently from his predecessor, an Austrian colonel. This Austrian had been well satisfied, but the lieutenant's first night was so disturbed that he fined his hosts sixty crowns for giving him a bug-ridden bed.

Nevertheless, if large numbers of Austrian colonels and Magyar lieutenants had acted in a similar fas.h.i.+on we should be justified in deducing that several characteristics, be they good or bad, are possessed by the average Magyar subaltern. And the catalogue of Magyar limitations in the Banat, both prior to and during the War, is so voluminous that one would have thought them to be not worth discussing; if one restricts oneself to a few it is in order to avoid being tedious, and if they are ineffective among the resolute pro-Magyars of this country, then one must resign oneself to leaving these gentlemen unconvinced. They will argue that stupidity is universal, and that the Magyar authorities should not be called in question for their treatment of the priest of Crvna Crkva, a village with 1108 inhabitants--1048 Serbs, 34 Slovaks, 17 Germans and 9 Magyars. This intelligent man--he is a noted player of a complicated card game--was indicted for high treason, because on hearing that the Emperor William was alleged to have undertaken to slaughter every Serb, the priest remarked that the Emperor should have added, "if G.o.d wills it." But near the village of Zlatica there was, at the beginning of the War, one Adam Rada, who was charged with making signals to the Serbs across the Danube by means of lights, and this although the situation of Rada's mill made such a thing impossible. Before being executed he was led ceremoniously through the village, his coffin being carried in the procession. This coffin was so small that Rada's feet had to be cut off. The grave was guarded by a soldier, who kept the family away from it; Rada's servant was in the hands of the police--after having been thrashed in order to compel him to give hostile evidence, he was convicted to six years' imprisonment. But the lack of evidence does not appear to have weighed very strongly with the Magyar judges. "It is quite true," said one of them in 1915 in the town of Bela Crkva, during the trial of a young priest, Voyn Voynovic, "that there are witnesses who say he did not utter certain words in 1913, and no witnesses who say that he did; but I am convinced that he uttered them." The ferocity of the punishments may be seen from the example of Alexa Petkovic of Pancevo, the father of nine, who was condemned to hard labour for nine years because his twelve-year-old son, during the War, is alleged to have said to him: "Father, don't accept German money; it won't have any value." At the same place, in 1914, the Serbian peasants were brought in from the village of Borta; there was no proof that they were traitors, but they had been denounced and they were sentenced to be shot. With a military escort they were promenaded through the town, each one of them having to hold a Hungarian flag. At the scene of execution the Hungarian elite, together with their wives and daughters, were a.s.sembled. And after the bodies had been thrown on to a cart they were flogged, for some unknown reason, by one Blajek, a detective, while the audience cried "Eljen!" ["Hurrah!"]. But the War brought to an end the bad old days of a tyrannous minority. It will be shown, in a year or two, when a proper census is taken, that the Magyars were always much more in a minority than they ever admitted.

Instead of nine millions out of the eighteen millions--which was the pre-war population of Hungary--it will be found that the Magyars themselves numbered barely six millions, though in their efforts to obtain recruits they charged only one crown and afterwards nothing at all for a naturalization paper. The day has gone by when a father could be interned for being a Serb, while his son, an a.s.sistant notary, was reckoned a Magyar--only Magyars being eligible for that office. The day has gone when the Buda-Pest Government could order its officials while taking a census to swell the Magyars' numbers as much as possible: the officials at Subotica confessed on oath, after the War, that they had received orders to this effect. One of their practices was to put down as "uncertain" those Serbian children who were too young to speak. Even those who were most willing to be absorbed into magyardom were often indigested: one finds in the statistics cases of converted Jews who, being asked to state their religion and nationality, replied to the former question "Catholic"

and to the latter "Jew."

THE SOUTHERN SLAVS PAY PART OF THEIR DEBT TO THE HABSBURG MONARCHY

If the practices of Buda-Pest had been less flagrant one would write of Hungary's decomposition with a certain sympathy. It is conceivable that in the British Empire there are anti-British elements whose aims would commonly be cla.s.sed by the authorities as "mad ambitions," which is what Count Apponyi called the separatist tendencies of the Southern Slavs in Austria-Hungary. But--may the plat.i.tude be pardoned!--there is all the difference between the spirit in which the alien rule of the one government was, and of the other is, administered. No doubt there are portions of the British Empire in which a plebiscite would have the same disintegrating result as it would have had in most of the regions that have been lopped from Hungary. We, with our Allies, declined to permit a plebiscite in Hungary's late territories, since we believed that the population had overwhelmingly displayed its wishes at the end of the War; and an Englishman may hope to escape the charge of hypocrisy if he does not permit the withholding of a plebiscite from certain of his fellow-subjects to prevent him from alluding with satisfaction to those who have been liberated from the sway of Buda-Pest.

(a) IN SYRMIA

Everywhere the dawn was breaking for the Habsburg's Southern Slavs. At Vukovar in Syrmia--to take an example--there was formed, as elsewhere, a National Council. Under Baron Joseph Rajacsich, a grandson of the Patriarch and--to all appearances--a brother of Falstaff, the Council maintained order until the coming of the Serbian army. An Austrian naval captain with a floating a.r.s.enal, four steamers and twenty-two drifters, was held up, as he proposed to sail towards Buda-Pest, by being told of a battery at Dalja, higher up the Danube. However, the Vukovar townsfolk, in view of a possible explosion, begged that the prisoner, who had wept at being stopped, should be sent on his way.

The German harbour-master, a lieutenant, a.s.sured the Baron that he would a.s.sist him if he were allowed to keep his liberty. But he was tempted, in the middle of a night, to a.s.sist two German captains who were trying to get through, each with a string of drifters. Rajacsich, whose armed force consisted of forty Serbian ex-prisoners and fifty of his own workmen--he armed them with what he found on the drifters--had no means of stopping the German boats. But after telephoning in vain to the ex-harbour-master, he fired a shot into one of the boats, which fortunately found the kitchen, and made such a terrible noise among the pots and pans that the Germans considered it more prudent to remain. The Baron succeeded in sending back to Belgrade altogether 39 steamers and 217 loaded drifters, which contained booty, even from the Ukraine, that was valued at about a milliard crowns; ... but the Austro-Hungarians managed to get away with a considerable amount of plunder. The people of Buda-Pest were surprised, on the morning of November 5, to find the _Sophie_, one of the most luxurious pa.s.senger steamers on the Danube, lying at their quay, with her decks groaning under such a pile of packing-cases and parcels and furniture and all kinds of objects heaped upon each other as almost to make the boat unrecognizable. A lieutenant with a dozen soldiers was sent to investigate, and the captain showed him an order from the Minister of War, commanding that the _Sophie_ should take on board the Military Government in Serbia and transport it to Vienna. But the Buda-Pest authorities insisted on removing all the articles whose owners.h.i.+p the pa.s.sengers were unable to prove; and it took a whole day to unload the enormous quant.i.ties of flour, leather, clothing, poultry, sugar, fats, etc. General Rhemen, the former military governor of Serbia, related that on October 5 he received the order to begin the military evacuation of Serbia. This was carried on day by day, and on October 28 it was completed. "We sent by the railway and by boats," said Colonel Kerchnaive to the Hungarian journalists, "4000 carloads of wheat, 10,000 fat oxen, 10,000 transport oxen, 10,000 pigs, 4000 sheep, 15 carloads of wine, 400 carloads of jam, enormous quant.i.ties of wood, of telephone material, of arms, munitions and 16 million crowns in silver." Such was the "military evacuation" of Serbia....

And at the beginning of the same month, when the whole Austro-Hungarian monarchy was in a state of collapse, Baron Hussarek stood up in the Reichsrath and said that "the task will arise for the Government carefully to prepare and inaugurate the difficult but hopeful work of reconstructing the monarchy on the basis of national autonomy." The imperturbable Prime Minister announced that "we shall have to go to work and set our house in order." But you will say that the Baron was a futile Mrs. Partington, an isolated antagonist of the inevitable, and only mentioned here for the sake of dramatic effect. Not at all!

So far from being laughed at everywhere as an absurd reactionary he was held in the highest Buda-Pest circles to be a perilous innovator.

He actually spoke about conciliating the Austro-Hungarian Slavs: not so Count Tisza. "What is happening in Austria," exclaimed the grim Calvinist a few months before, "are strange, grotesque displays of the ridiculous symptoms of the presumptuous mentality of people of no importance."

(b) IN SLOVENIA

One further example of Southern Slav activity may be given, as it will show us what was happening among the pious and industrious Slovenes.

It would have been unnatural if the Clerical party had longed for Austria's downfall, and a large number of priests would still have been Austrophil[105] if Dr. Jeglic, the eminent Prince-Bishop of Ljubljana, had not summoned all the political parties and caused them to adopt a patriotic Yugoslav att.i.tude. (His retirement was in consequence demanded; but the Pope, who asked him for an explanation of the whole movement, was quite satisfied. Nor would Vienna have been able to take any serious steps against the Bishop, seeing that most of the Slovenes were behind him.) But the small Slovene people could, until November 1, 1918, offer nothing more than a pa.s.sive resistance to their masters. They did not dare to speak Slovene in public. "What is the easiest language in the world?" was being asked in Maribor on the 1st of November. It was the language which so many people had apparently learned in a single night. The people were Slovenes, the officials were Austrian--though one or two of the officials were Slovenes and a minority of the people claimed to be Austrians, this being more marked in the town of Maribor (where the German-Austrians were as many as 35 per cent.) than in the surrounding district (where 95 per cent. are Yugoslav). Dr. Jeglic had prepared the forces that were going to break their bonds on that fateful day. At 7 a.m. Dr.

Srecko Lajnic--one of the rare Slovene officials--he had been denounced by two of his colleagues and imprisoned at the beginning of the War, for having, as they said, "laughed maliciously"

at Great Britain resolving to fight--Dr. Lajnic and his friend General Maister took over the administration in the name of the Yugoslav State. General Maister had been till then a Major, employed--as he was a political suspect--on depot work. And when the eight or nine Austrian colonels appeared on November 1 before Lajnic, the genial official, and Maister, they were informed by the latter that he was a General--he looks like a swarthy Viking--and they were asked to surrender their swords. As they did not know how many men the General had behind him--as a matter of fact he had nine--they acted on his suggestion; one of them wept as he did so. At 11 a.m. Lajnic deposed all the chief civil officials in that part of Styria, and the General persuaded the 47th Regiment to leave by train. They were influenced by a notice in the papers which said that 100,000 Frenchmen (invented by the General and Lajnic) had just arrived at Ljubljana. After this the two companions carried on at Maribor; very little was known of them for a month at Ljubljana, Zagreb or Belgrade. But then they were confirmed in the posts they had a.s.sumed and Maister became a regular General. They were not intolerant; they expelled less than ten people, although so many of the German-Austrians had come, under the auspices of the Sudmark Verein (a colonization society) or the Deutsche Schulverein (an educational body), to propagate Germanism. One of these colonists, a doctor, who had lived a dozen years in Maribor, could only say "Good morning" in Slovene; and German women in the market-place (themselves unable to speak proper German) used to insist on the Slovene peasants speaking a language of which they knew scarcely a word. Lajnic and Maister took no steps against the Bishop of Maribor who, three months after the Austrian collapse, celebrated a Ma.s.s in honour of the ex-Emperor. This Bishop, the son of Slovene peasants, had been educated near Vienna, had been a confessor of the House of Habsburg, and he found it difficult to regard himself as a Slovene. Gradually the voice of his own people spoke in him and then, after very long and honourable mental conflict, he developed into an excellent Yugoslav.

He and Maister are, both of them, poets. Most of the General's pieces--which are all in Slovene--treat of love and nature. But he wrote at least one set of other verses, which the Austrians suppressed during the War. This is the nearest translation I can make of them:

Have pity, Christ, on Thy poor folk, For now the fields are desolate And misery and famine wait On all, the chimneys give no smoke-- Our men have marched away from us.

Soon will the village bells have gone From their dark places up on high, And we who watch will never tie Gay blossoms round them, and upon Their path no laughter will resound.

Beloved bells, when thunder rolled And lightning threatened us you swayed, Our music-censers, and you prayed That G.o.d Almighty would behold The danger and be merciful.

O bells that sang of love and joy, A foul destruction you will spread.

Once you moaned sweetly for the dead And now 'tis you that will destroy, And on their course the bullets moan.

But once again, O bells, we pray, Let the tremendous music roll.

Sing us the secrets of your soul, And then your last song of dismay And wrath and sacrilegious death.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 80: Cf. "Le Progres politique et economique sous le Regne de Pierre I.," by A. Mousset, in _Yugoslavia_, December 15, 1921.]

[Footnote 81: In all, 7130 boys and girls were removed from Bosnia-Herzegovina. And a year or two after the end of the war a good many of them were still with their foster-parents in other parts of Yugoslavia. They preferred to remain there, because of the lack of food in their own homes; the parents of many--especially in Herzegovina--had been hanged, and others had been for so long away from their parents that they had no keen desire to return to them.]

[Footnote 82: Quoted in the _Times_ of September 24, 1919.]

[Footnote 83: Cf. _Serbia's Part in the War_, vol. i., by Crawfurd Price. London, 1918.]

[Footnote 84: He intervened, for example, near Lazarevac, where he observed, with tears in his eyes, that one of the finest regiments, the 10th umadija, was giving way to overwhelming numbers. He told them that he intended to stay where he was, and he invited any soldier who wished to remain with him to do so. Every man remained. "Tres charmant," was the comment of the colonel, an eye-witness, who told me of this incident.]

[Footnote 85: Cf. _Manchester Guardian_, October 22, 1921.]

[Footnote 86: Cf. _Nineteenth Century and After_, January 1922.]

[Footnote 87: Cf. _Dok.u.menti o postanku Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca, 1914-1919_, by Ferdo iic. Zagreb, 1920.]

[Footnote 88: Cf. _International Law_, Part I. p. 321.]

[Footnote 89: _Italy and the Yugoslavs: A Question of International Law._ Paris, 1919.]

[Footnote 90: July 17, 1920.]

[Footnote 91: I think that, in so far as concerns this article in the _New Europe_ (July 8, 1920), it is fairer to describe Mr. Trevelyan as an Italian exponent rather than apologist. Although we cannot agree with various remarks of his, he makes it clear that he is out of sympathy with the Italian extremists. He deprecates also the views of those English publicists who are altogether on the side of the Yugoslavs. "The truth, perhaps," says he, "lies somewhere hid in the centre." And if that is not a very happy observation, it is at any rate much more moderate than the average views of those English writers whose spiritual home is in Italy.]

[Footnote 92: Byron, _Childe Harold_.]

[Footnote 93: About 36,000 boys--partly recruits and partly boys of more tender years--started over the mountains, and some 20,000 of them perished.]

[Footnote 94: This officer, aided by others, was charged with having organized an attempt to overthrow the Yugoslav National Council soon after its const.i.tution in the autumn of 1918. The day of the counter-revolution was to be November 25, according to the _Hrvatska Rijec_ of November 23. The General and others were arrested, but as he was able to prove his innocence he was liberated.]

[Footnote 95: _With Serbia into Exile._ New York, 1916.]