The Birth Of Yugoslavia Volume Ii Part 17

The politicians have acted as if all the border folk were as peaceful as they doubtless are themselves. In consequence, there will be panic and a.s.sa.s.sination till the politicians--unable to oppose the wishes of the majority of those who dwell in the frontier zone--proclaim that until further notice General Franchet d'Esperey's wise and prudent dispositions shall be honoured.

That is the only method by which an Albania can be brought slowly into existence. At this moment the cartographers are printing the map of the Albanians' country in accordance with the Amba.s.sadors' decision. They might spare themselves the trouble. The decision to recognize an Albania was as premature a project as, in Mr. Wells' opinion, is the League of Nations. A free, united Albania has been recognized, and in a little time the Amba.s.sadors' Conference, perceiving that such a thing does not exist, will be relieved to see the North and the South taking the steps to which we have referred. It is wonderful that the Amba.s.sadors' Conference and the League of Nations should imagine that a country, most of which is in the social state of the Gallic clans in the days of Vercingetorix, can suddenly become a modern nation by the simple contrivance of a parliament, which, as a matter of fact, has been the caricature of one. In the words of Lord Halsbury, when reversing a judgment of the Court of Appeal, I am bewildered by the absurdity of such a suggestion. Albania is in need of organizers, not of orators. A very competent French traveller,[111] one who believes that a future is reserved for this unquenchable people, warns the world against undue haste. After describing the deplorable state or the non-existence of Albanian schools, roads, ports, the monetary system and the organization of credit, he says that it is scarcely an exaggeration to a.s.sert that from the point of view of economic arrangement everything has to be created. This necessitates a Government which knows how to administer and which has funds at its command. But there is not the least likelihood of regular taxes being paid to a central Government until you have security of communication. And even then the native--except if force is used--will not pay before he sees the benefit which taxes produce. He who for the most part has never given obedience save to his village chief will require to see the local benefit. Therefore his whole outlook must be changed; slowly from being parochial it must become national.... There can be no greater folly than at this stage to aim at applying modern usages, equality of taxation, uniformity of judicial organization, and so forth. It must be a very slow advance, says M.

Jaray, taking local traditions and the feudalism, both domestic and collective, into account. Even if a central Government had all the necessary qualifications, yet that would not cause the people to regard it with grat.i.tude and loyalty. It is too remote. The clans have been accustomed to look no farther than their own chiefs. Only in serious circ.u.mstances and against an invasion have they united and chosen a common leader. To expect the Albanians rapidly to throw aside their clannishness is to prepare for oneself a disappointment. It is in the clan that they must be made fit for something more extensive. Let the country be recognized not as a nation, but as a collection of clans, and let these clans, with any outside a.s.sistance they themselves may choose, come gradually to understand the word "Albania." ... And what are the chances that this will come to pa.s.s? No country is more feudal; yet only the most thoroughgoing peasant reforms will lay a sure foundation for the State.

(_b_) THE GREEK FRONTIER

The frontier with Greece has undergone no alteration as a result of the War. It is inconvenient in certain details; it runs, for example, at such a very short distance to the south of the town of Ghevgeli that the prefect has little chance of frustrating those who actively object to the payment of import duties. Rather a large number of Slavs, some say 300,000, live on the Greek side of the frontier, while a far smaller number of Greeks live in Monastir. Both the Slavs and the Greeks have made sundry complaints, which are more or less justified, against the alien authority which governs them. However, during 1919 and 1920, the two Governments resolved, in the furtherance of their good understanding, to raise none of these questions, neither the claims of the derelict Slavs, who are mostly Exarchists, nor of the Monastir Greeks, who are mostly h.e.l.lenized Vlachs. The two countries, while Venizelos was in power, were acting on the principles of the Serbo-Greek friends.h.i.+p that used to be advocated by _L'h.e.l.lenisme_, the newspaper which Sir Anastasius Adossides, under Venizelos the enlightened Governor-General of Salonica, published for several years before the first Balkan War in Paris. Yugoslavia was to have every facility given her in Salonica, which course would naturally be the most beneficial to that place. And among the minor advantages of really amicable relations would be the impossibility of such a state of things as once prevailed at Doiran, where the masters of the Greek and Bulgarian schools were neither of them in a position to chastise their peccant pupils, who could always have the last word by threatening to transfer themselves to the rival establishment. It was, I believe, the custom of these young scoundrels to remain at one or other of the two schools on the understanding that the teacher gave them a retaining fee of so many chocolates.... One rather felt, during 1919 and 1920, that the Yugoslavs, in their willingness to take the hand of Greece, which had so shamefully refused to act upon its obligations in the first half of the War, were behaving as if Venizelos would henceforward be retained in power by his countrymen. Should the Serbs find themselves hampered in their use of the "Free Zone" at Salonica, a moment might arrive when they and the Bulgars would, to their mutual advantage, make an arrangement with regard to Salonica and her hinterland.

(_c_) THE BULGARIAN FRONTIER

There have been various modifications in the frontier line between Serbia and Bulgaria. The Bulgars acknowledge that in the case of the Struma salient, of the part near Vranja and of the villages on the bank of the Timok, it was clearly for the purpose of safeguarding the railways; and few people would be found to say that Serbia has been other than modest in her demands. Compare the Italian position on the Brenner with the Yugoslav frontier against Bulgaria and in the Baranja: against Bulgars and Magyars the Yugoslavs only secure a sound defensive frontier, whereas Italy obtains a capacity for the offensive against Austria.[112] It is rather different with regard to Tsaribrod, on the main line between Ni and Sofia. So good a friend of the Yugoslavs as Dr. Seton-Watson has deplored the cession of this small place, since it appears likely to imperil a future friends.h.i.+p between Serbia and Bulgaria. As a matter of fact the Yugoslav Peace Delegates requested, for strategic purposes, a still more southerly frontier on the Dragoman Pa.s.s, which was denied to them. But Tsaribrod, which is dominated by the heights of Dragoman, is anyhow a place of minor importance. It is much to be hoped that the inhabitants will not imitate those of the Pirot _intelligentsia_ who in 1878 shook off the dust of their town when it became Serbian and migrated to Sofia, where they never wearied of anti-Serbian agitation. One must do one's best not to r.e.t.a.r.d the arrival of that day when it will be almost a matter of indifference as to whether a village is situated in Serbia or in Bulgaria. Mr.

Stanojevic, the deputy for Zajeca, which is not far from the frontier, proposed in the Skuptina that Tsaribrod should be left to the Bulgars in exchange for a sum of money. This suggestion was opposed by the Radicals, and the far-seeing Yugoslav statesmen who would gladly have adopted it were left hoping that the Skuptina would some day decide in its favour.... This moderation on the part of the Serbs has been less in evidence at Bucharest and still less at Athens. The Peace Conference which felt itself unable to deprive its Ally of southern Dobrudja, and unable to resist the persuasive eloquence of M. Venizelos, does not seem to have contributed towards a lasting Balkan peace. A reviewer in the _Observer_, while approving of Mr. Leland Buxton's hope of a Serb-Bulgar reconciliation, asks why this should be effected to the exclusion and obvious detriment of Greece. "Why not a Balkan Federation?" he asks. In view of the very different races which inhabit the Balkans, he might just as well ask, "Why not a European Federation?"

And the statesmen of the non-Slav Balkan countries do not seem to have made serious efforts to prevent the coming of a purely Slav Federation.

It remains to be seen whether, when that comes to pa.s.s, the Greek and Roumanian people will have achieved such statesmans.h.i.+p as to make an equally small effort to keep under their control their large Slav territories.... "We should no longer think of Thrace," said M. Venizelos in the Greek Chamber in 1913, "for it is impossible to include in the Greek State all those parts where Greeks have lived; we ought to be modest and contented with what is most righteous and attainable; we ought not to let ourselves be carried away by our imagination."

(_d_) THE ROUMANIAN FRONTIER

THE STATE OF THE ROUMANIANS IN EASTERN SERBIA

A new frontier between Yugoslavia and Roumania has been drawn by the Allied Powers in the Banat. But before we consider its merits and absurdities we must examine the Serbo-Roumanian question in the several departments of eastern Serbia. During 1919 one heard a good deal, in Bucharest and in Paris, of the pitiful Roumanians whom the Serbs had always deprived of their own national schools and churches. It was claimed, chiefly by a certain Dr. Athanasius Popovitch, that the Roumanians in Serbia were longing for the day of their redemption. On March 8, 1919, two deputations of Roumanians from the Timok and from Macedonia, who had lately arrived in Paris in order to plead before the Conference, presented themselves to the Roumanian colony at 114 Avenue des Champs-Elysees. We are told that in consequence of their moving narrative, and on account of the loud appeal made by them to all their free brothers, the Roumanian colony founded, with great enthusiasm, a national league for their delivery. The Vice-President of the league was announced to be Dr. Athanasius Popovici. In a pamphlet called _Les Roumains de Serbie_ (Paris, 1919), Dr. Draghicesco, a Roumanian Senator, denounces the Serb authorities for having obliged Dr. Athanasius, while he was a schoolboy, to change his surname into the purely Serbian one of Popovitch. "Not being able to endure this regime of violence," we are informed, "he expatriated himself and established himself in Roumania."

But if Dr. Athanasius felt so strongly with regard to his name when he was a mere schoolboy, one is puzzled to understand why, being an adult and a pamphleteer in 1919, he should be hesitating between Popovitch, which is Serbian, and Popovici, which is Roumanian. The Senator does not seem to be well informed as to the early years of Dr. Athanasius, who so far from expatriating himself as an indignant schoolboy, remained in Serbia, where he went through five cla.s.ses of the gymnasium in Belgrade, after which he studied theology in the same town, with a view to succeeding his father, who was a priest at Duanovac in eastern Serbia. Later on Athanasius performed his military service at Zajeca, where he married--so one of his sisters told me--one Mileva, the daughter of Yovan Stancevic, a merchant. After his marriage he went to Jena, in order to continue his studies, and there he became a Doctor of Letters. It may be that while he was at Jena he became conscious of the regime of violence to which the Roumanians in Serbia are subjected; at any rate he decided not to return to that country, where his wife and three sisters are well satisfied to live. He launched himself into a furious anti-Serbian propaganda in favour of those who, in the words of Dr. Draghicesco, are profoundly sad and full of grief at being neither Serbian nor Roumanian, who when they meet a Roumanian brother listen to him with pleasure and, with their eyes full of tears, murmur: "How happy we should be to be with you." ... When I travelled through those parts with a view to verifying Dr. Athanasius's a.s.sertions, I was invariably told by persons of Roumanian origin that they had no complaint whatever against the Serbs, and that the last thing they desired was to be politically united to the Roumanians of the kingdom. Dr. Athanasius might reply that his wretched compatriots were impelled by fear to give such answers. But what do they fear?--one finds that among these people are deputies, priests, army officers and so forth. "To-day," says Dr. Athanasius, "all the peoples who are reduced to slavery by other people secure the right to return to their fatherland." The Roumanians of Serbia would have to be a good deal more miserable before wis.h.i.+ng to have anything to do with Roumania. Milan Soldatovic, ex-mayor of the great mining village of Bor and himself of Roumanian origin, said that he had never heard of any one who went to work in Roumania. No doubt the present generation of Roumanian landowners deeply deplore the misdeeds of their ancestors, who drove the ancestors of these peasants away from Roumania. "The peasant hovels were merely dark burrows, called _bordei_, holes dug in the ground and roofed with poles covered with earth, rising scarcely above the level of the plain.... The interior was indescribable. Neither furniture nor utensils, with the exception of the boards which served as beds or seats and the pot for cooking the _mamaliga_"[113]--his sole food, a paste consisting of maize meal cooked in water. And one cannot be astonished if the Roumanians in Serbia are chary of believing that their native land has changed for the better. "If," said a Roumanian peasant before an Agricultural Commission in 1848, "if the boyar could have laid hands upon the sun, he would have seized it and sold G.o.d's light and warmth to the peasant for money." Even in 1919 the peasant still had much reason to be dissatisfied, for where the owner parted with his land it was usually--no doubt as a stage in the transaction--made over to the village as a whole. And if the boyar no longer has the monopoly of the sale of alcohol, if he has so far improved that Vallachia is not now losing its inhabitants as it was after the Regulations of 1831, when we read that "in vain the rivers are a.s.siduously watched, as if in a state of siege; the emigrants cross at the places which are clear of troops.

Emigration is especially rife in winter, when the frozen Danube presents an ever-open bridge," yet among the Roumanians of Serbia it has been handed down from father to son what happened in the reign of Prince Milo. To take one case out of many such that are preserved in the National Archives at Belgrade, a dispatch was sent on February 11, 1831, by Vule Gligorievic, his representative in those parts, to Prince Milo, who was at Kragujevac, enclosing a supplication from the priests and other inhabitants of the large Roumanian island called Veliko Ostrvo, in the middle of the Danube, praying that they might be allowed to cross to Serbia. "We are in great misery," they wrote, "and have boyars who are very bad, and we cannot bear the misery in which we find ourselves, and in the greatest grief we beg your Highness to let us come to Serbia with our wives and children." The Prince had a special sympathy for Roumania and was therefore most reluctant to intervene in her internal affairs. He adopted a very cautious att.i.tude in this matter, but when Gligorievic sent him pet.i.tion after pet.i.tion he was finally so touched by the recital of their woes that he permitted them to cross the river; and one night, with the help of the Serbian authorities, the whole island crossed over, to wit 57 families, with 186 oxen, 70 horses, 694 sheep and 87 pigs. Milo made them a free grant of land for the building of a village, together with a vast stretch of territory for pasture and stock-raising; at his own expense he built them a church and extended to them all the liberties and advantages enjoyed in Serbia by the Serbs themselves. As a token of their grat.i.tude these Roumanian emigrants called their village Mihailovac, after the name of Michael, the Prince's son. This village is the birthplace of our friend Dr. Athanasius, whose sentiments appear to have placed him in a minority of one. When his pamphlet came into the hands of Jorge Kornic, the mayor of Mihailovac and a Roumanian by origin, he brought it to the prefect at Negotin saying that he wished to have nothing to do "with any devil's work."

As Dr. Athanasius and his chauvinist friends give a pretty lurid picture of the Roumanian villager who lives in Serbia, I visited a few places where the population is wholly Roumanian or Serbo-Roumanian. The 766 inhabitants of Ostralje are all of Roumanian descent, the mayor being one Velimir Mikovic, a sergeant of reserves who has been transferred from the army in order to carry on his munic.i.p.al duties. All the inhabitants speak Serbian and Vlach. "We were always Serbs," they said. "n.o.body told us that we had migrated to this place." And amongst those who a.s.sembled to talk with us at the schoolmaster's house there was only one who, in the Roumanian fas.h.i.+on, had drawn his socks over his white trousers. The 2221 inhabitants of the village of Grljan are about two-thirds of Roumanian and one-third of Serbian origin. Formerly they each had their own part of the village, but now they are intermingled both in the village and in the cemetery. They intermarry freely; thus Jon Jonovic, the most notable person, who used to represent this district in the Skuptina at Belgrade, has three Serbian daughters-in-law. He was a member of the Opposition Liberal group of Ribarac. "And did you ever request that your fellow-countrymen should have their own Roumanian schools and churches?" we asked. This is one of the chief demands of Dr. Athanasius. "I was not the only Roumanian who was a deputy," said the old man of the furrowed face. "There was Novak Dobromirovic of Zlot; there was Jorge Stankovic, for instance; but we never thought of asking for such a thing, since we had no need for it." The son of the wealthy Sima Yovanovic at Bor observed with a smile that the first business of Roumanian schools would have to be the teaching of Roumanian. "My father sent me to be educated at Vienna," he said, "and when I met some boys from Bucharest we found that our language was so different that we had to talk to one another in German.

And now when a commercial traveller comes here from Roumania I have to talk German to him, as I would otherwise have to converse with my hands and feet." The French mining officials, by the way, at Bor testified that they had never heard of any tension between men of Serbian and those of Roumanian origin; the Roumanians, who prefer agricultural work, are more attracted to the mines in winter, when over 40 per cent. of the 1500 employes are Roumanians.

Dr. Athanasius and his friends are agitated, as one would imagine, when they discuss with you the numbers of their countrymen. In _Le Temps_ of April 22, 1919, they declared that they could produce 500,000, for they realized that their previous claim of between 250,000 and 350,000 was not large enough to give the Roumanians in Serbia the benefit of the principle of nationality. But even this more modest figure will be found, on examination, to be exaggerated. In the four north-eastern counties of Serbia there were 159,510 Roumanians in 1895; 120,628 in 1900, and in 1910 a little over 90,000. This diminution, say the chauvinists, is due to a falsifying of statistics, for those, they say, who have attended a Serbian school are inscribed as Serbs. The truth is that everyone is entered according to his mother-tongue. And history knows countless instances of a gradual decrease in the case of people placed in foreign surroundings and exposed to foreign influences. Like the Illyrians who people Dalmatia, the Thracians of ancient Dacia and the Serbs who emigrated to Russia in the seventeenth century, the Roumanians of Serbia are undergoing this process and are inevitably becoming Serbicized. Frequently we noticed that men possessing no Serbian blood did not care to admit their Roumanian origin, which, however, is no secret to their neighbours in spite of the Serbian termination "ic" that, in the course of years, has been affixed to their names. An allusion to their origin is clearly regarded as lacking in delicacy. "Well, my ancestors were Roumanian," is often as much as they will admit. And when some enterprising agitators came over from Roumania to the department of Poarevac in 1919, the Roumanians of those parts gave up to the authorities all those who did not manage to escape. For ten years Lieut.-Colonel Gjorge Markovic commanded the 9th Regiment, which is chiefly formed of Roumanians from that region.

They used to tell him that they wanted to have nothing to do with the Roumanian boyars. "Here we are boyars ourselves," they said. All of them speak Serbian, many of them write it; and on winter evenings they have for years received instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic and singing, which compares favourably with Roumania's army, in which, as I was told at Bucharest, the plan of starting any education had to be postponed in consequence of the outbreak of the Great War. Together with the unwillingness of these people to acknowledge their origin, one observes a general vagueness as to the home of their forefathers.

Apparently these came over from southern Hungary, whence the name Ungureani,[114] or from Tara Rumaneasca, _i.e._ the Roumanian land, whence the name Tarani. Others again are descended from Roumanized Serbs who came from Kossovo and other Serb regions of the south, lived in the Banat and Transylvania among the Roumanian villages, acquired the Roumanian language and then crossed over to Serbia. These three cla.s.ses have all come to Serbia in recent times. Any attempt on the part of Dr.

Athanasius and his friends to drag in the Romans can be answered by the undoubted fact that the ancient Roman colonists had completely disappeared from Serbia as far back as the fifteenth century, leaving no trace at all, and there is no connection between them and the present Roumanian population of Serbia. No memories remain of the old Roman colonists, save certain place-names which, as Professor Georgevic remarks, strike one as surprising in the midst of a purely Serbian population. It is interesting to note that these ancient Roman place-names are very rare in the regions inhabited to-day by men of Roumanian origin.

It would not have been worth whole devoting so much s.p.a.ce to the activities of Dr. Athanasius and his adherents but for the fact that European public opinion, which has concerned itself extremely little with the Roumanians of Serbia, might possibly imagine that their advocate deserves to be taken seriously.

2. THE BANAT

Anyone who looks at an ethnological map of the Banat will recognize how difficult it is to part.i.tion that province among two or three claimants.

No matter by whom the map is painted, it must have the appearance of mosaic, with few solid ma.s.ses of colour. This fact was quickly used by the Roumanians, who argued that as the Banat had never been divided, neither politically nor economically, it should still remain one whole--of course under the Roumanian flag. The Magyars haughtily pointed out that as the Banat had never been divided, but had for a thousand years lived under the crown of St. Stephen, it should still remain one whole--of course under the Hungarian flag. The Roumanians contended that the indivisibility of the Banat was designed by Nature, since the mountainous eastern part could not exist if separated from the fertile west. The Magyars a.s.serted that it was altogether wrong to think of the radical remodelling and complete dismemberment of a territory which Nature had predestined to be one. The Yugoslavs agreed with both parties that it was not easy to draw a satisfactory frontier, but they asked that, as far as possible, the predominantly Roumanian parts should be joined to Roumania, the Slav populations to them and the Magyars to Hungary. As a matter of fact the Paris Conference did attempt to make an ethnical division, between these three States, of the Banat. Roumania tried to demonstrate the impossibility of this by turning off the water in the Bega Ca.n.a.l when the Serbs evacuated Temevar and were taking their heavily-laden barges from that town. There will have to be a central, international organization to control the network of waterways.

As soon as the Paris Conference had decided on this division it was told by the Magyars, the Roumanians and the Yugoslavs that all the numerous Germans of the Banat wished to belong to Hungary, to Roumania and to Yugoslavia. A great many of the Germans were indifferent, so long as they could peaceably carry on their prosperous agricultural operations.

Not much political solidarity is apparent among the Germans of the Banat, and seeing that both Yugoslavia and Roumania, now the princ.i.p.al possessors of this land, have elsewhere within their boundaries large German populations, their respective Banat Germans will be able to ally themselves with these in the Parliaments of Belgrade and Bucharest. The Banat Germans who are discontented with the Paris decisions are firstly those, among the aristocratic and commercial cla.s.ses, who were accustomed to enjoy under the Magyars a favoured position, and secondly those who, with more or less justification, say that Roumania has yet to show that she will treat her subject minorities in a truly liberal fas.h.i.+on. It is for this reason that the Germans of Verac and Bela Crkva--in which towns they are about as numerous as the total of Yugoslavs, Roumanians and Magyars--would give a majority in favour of Yugoslavia if they were asked to vote as to Yugoslav or Roumanian citizens.h.i.+p. _Adeverul_, which is one of the least chauvinist of Bucharest newspapers, claimed for Roumania at least the railway line: Temevar, Verac, Bela Crkva, Bazias--an argument thought to be conclusive being that the two central towns are neither Roumanian nor Serbian but German. This railway line was, as a matter of fact, bestowed by the Peace Conference on Roumania, and it required some strenuous work before this decision was modified. The French were suspected in Yugoslavia of leaning unduly towards the Roumanians, through sympathy with the Latin strain in their blood; yet it was the French who were for giving to Yugoslavia not only Bazias but the villages on the Danube down to Old Moldava, seeing that in those districts the Slavs are certainly in a majority. The Roumanian case was not a.s.sisted by Professor Candrea's ethnographical map, for in the debated country around Bela Crkva that gentleman, who told me that he had omitted every place whose population was less than a hundred, has unfortunately forgotten to include Zlatica, a village of 1346 inhabitants, which was founded at the gate of a monastery six hundred and sixty years ago. The population is according to the Hungarian census of 1910, at which time all the 1346 were Serbs, with the exception of 220 Czechs and a few gipsies.

Professor Candrea has forgotten Sokolavac, a nouris.h.i.+ng place about two hundred and fifty years old with 1800 inhabitants and practically all of them Serbs, as the Transylvanian Minister of Education admitted. Palanka with 1400 inhabitants, most Serbs; Fabian with about 1000, mostly Czechs; Duplaja with 1204, all Serbs but for 10 Slovenes; Crvena Crkva with 1108 (1048 Serbs, 34 Slovaks, 17 Germans and 9 Magyars), are every one omitted. Lescovac, with 977 inhabitants, the Professor marks as Roumanian. When I was at this picturesquely situated place I was received in the mayor's office by half a dozen burly peasants in the Serbian national costume who a.s.serted that, with the exception of the tailor (a Roumanian emigrant) and one or two other persons, the village was wholly Serb. But Lescovac was then within the Serbian sphere of occupation, and possibly if I were to go there now I would be told an appropriate story by other, or the same, peasants in Roumanian attire.

One must try to find some surer indication of nationality, and Professor Candrea told me that twenty-five years ago he took down a pure Roumanian text at that place, where the Roumanian language is the most antique in the Banat. On the other hand, the village must have contained many Serbs, for when the late notary, a powerful Magyar with Roumanian sympathies, prevented the school being conducted, as it always had been, in the Serbian language, and installed a teacher--he stayed for eight years--who could only speak Magyar and Roumanian, the villagers at their own expense procured a Serbian school-mistress. She was expelled by the notary.... This ill.u.s.trates the difficulties which the Peace Conference, in its desire to trace an ethnical frontier, was confronted with. And there was no map which did not make it obvious that Serbian villages would have to remain to the east and Roumanian villages to the west of any possible line. They did right, I think, to revise their decision as to the towns of Verac and Bela Crkva, for there the Yugoslavs and their German friends have a large and unquestioned preponderance. Bazias, with about three miles of the railway, was given to Roumania so that she should have, for the exportation of her wood and iron-ore, the only harbour in that region of the Danube which is capable of development. However, with no railway over Roumanian soil from Bazias to the mines, this port is perfectly useless, and it is to be hoped that Roumania will give it up, for compensation elsewhere, to the Yugoslavs.

The latter would otherwise be compelled to build three or four miles of railway, from Bela Crkva to Palanka, which, unless a great deal of money be spent on it, will always be one of the worst ports on the river. With a little more difficulty than to Bazias the Roumanians could construct a railway to Moldava, which also is a very good port; and in return for this accommodation, whereby the wines of Bela Crkva could be s.h.i.+pped from Bazias, their natural port, the Yugoslavs would be ready to make over to Roumania one or two villages whose population far exceeds that of little Bazias. We may also hope that facilities will be given by the two Governments for the emigration of those who wish to cross the new frontier line. Formerly the people of the Banat had no strenuous objections to being moved, lock, stock and barrel, from one district to another and without the inducement of coming under the rule of their own race. Thus the village of Zsam, to the north of Verac, was, like many others, very spa.r.s.ely inhabited when the Turks withdrew in 1716; some villages had only three or four occupied houses. So the Government in 1722 collected into one village the people of several others, and in this way Zsam, which had hitherto been Slav, became Roumanian, the Serbs being established in the neighbouring Sredite. In 1809 the Roumanians were transplanted from Zsam to Petrovasela, between Verac and Pancevo, where they entered the Pancevo Frontier Regiment; their place at Zsam was taken by Germans, who, being more industrious, were preferred by the landowners.

Some of the delineators of this frontier--French and British--have told me that they were guided throughout by the ethnical principle. But various unfortunate exceptions seem to have been made: for instance, at Koca it runs through a certain house in such a way that the lavatory alone is in Roumania; and in another village there lives a man who, since his stables are situated in Roumania, would have had his horses requisitioned if he had not been able to bring them into the other part of the house. Another village has its cemetery in Roumania, so that the Yugoslavs carry their dead friends over during the night. Perhaps the Entente officials, perceiving that their ambitious resolution to divide the country on ethnic principles was not feasible--there would always be alien islands to the right and to the left of any line--perhaps they in despair drew an arbitrary line upon a map and hoped the poor inhabitants would make the best of it. But this was rendered more difficult by the Yugoslav and Roumanian authorities, for the people who desire to cross the line are put to endless trouble. Apart from the expense, it usually involves a delay of three weeks before permission can be obtained, so that the frontier is rarely traversed save by smugglers and by those who, like the afore-mentioned man of Koca, have been driven into chronic lawlessness.

The first line agreed upon after the War, which temporarily bestowed the eastern county on Roumania, the western on Yugoslavia and the chief parts of the central (or Temevar) county also on Yugoslavia--with French co-operation--did not find favour in Paris; whether or not this decision was influenced by the frequent journeys of the Queen of Roumania and her fascinating daughters to that town I do not know. At all events another boundary was made which included the large town of Temevar and all the northern part of that county in Roumania. It is true that there are Roumanian villages in the neighbourhood of this German-Magyar-Jewish town, which is by far the largest place in the Banat. And the Roumanians, who have already annexed enormous Magyar and German populations in Transylvania, do not boggle at another 80,000 foreigners. One could, however, find very few Yugoslavs who want Temevar to be restored to them; they know that they and the Roumanians, whatever (as regards themselves) may have been the case in other days, form, each of them, only about one-thirtieth of the total population. But they are sorry that the Allies asked them to share in occupying the town, because the local Serbs, who are interested in politics, were so enthusiastic, that on the arrival of the Roumanians they were forced to leave their businesses and go to live in Yugoslavia.

Since neither Serbs nor Roumanians have any ethnical claim to the town one would suppose that, as the spoil had fallen to Roumania, the Entente would have endeavoured to give the Yugoslavs some compensation: what they did was to take away from them a good deal of that which they had--a considerable slice of their western county--which also was presented to the Roumanians. Again, the delineators excused themselves by invoking their ethnical motives, but as a matter of fact in that part of Torontal the people are predominantly German and they should have been allotted to Yugoslavia, not merely because the Temevar Germans were given to Roumania but on account of their economic existence, which certainly in the case of the departments of Nagyszentmiklos, Perjamos and Csene (to retain the Magyar spelling) is bound up with Zsombolya, their market-town, and Kikinda. According to the census that was taken in 1919, the population of these three departments now allotted to Roumania consisted of 41,109 Germans, 13,638 Yugoslavs and 19,270 Roumanians. Further, to the south-east of Torontal, in the departments of Pardany, Modos and Banlak, there is not so intimate a connection with the market-town; here the population consists of 12,209 Germans, 11,102 Yugoslavs and 8808 Roumanians. But there seems to be little reason why the whole of Torontal, following the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants, should not be given to Yugoslavia; and this would also reduce to a minimum the inconveniences produced by any frontier. For many long years there has been a county frontier between Torontal and Temevar, each of which was under an official who looked direct to Buda-Pest. The adoption of this ancient county frontier as that of the two countries would put an end to the present absurd and unjust, not to say dangerous, situation. It should, therefore, be brought about as soon as possible.

A similar rectification is needed in the country to the north and north-west. The three German villages of Komlo, Mariafeld and St.

Miklo have their fields near Velika Kikinda, in Yugoslavia, whereas they are themselves in Roumania. To bring home his maize from the land a farmer was obliged to pay, at the most favourable rate, up to 200 crowns a pound. Considering that this part of the country is an absolute plain with no river flowing through it, one would suppose that a rectification could easily be made. If these Germans had been consulted they would naturally have opted for Yugoslavia. The Peace Conference officials might, also have studied Velika Kikinda, a place with a very creditable past, which--as I was told by a Serb professional man of that town--will be completely ruined if she loses the custom of these German villages and has to depend upon the Serb peasants who make one embroidered suit and one pair of sandals last them for ten years.... It will be necessary for the Yugoslav authorities in the Banat not only to endeavour to raise their countrymen's standard of living but also in the southerly districts, where the standard is higher, to persuade them not to persist in limiting their families. The Serbs in the old kingdom have been one of the most prolific of European races--they would otherwise have been incapable of carrying on their twenty-six years of war during this last century--but in the south and south-east of the Banat, perhaps through mere love of comfort, perhaps through Magyar oppression, there has been a marked tendency not to increase. The Magyars and Germans have had normal families, the Roumanians have increased by a.s.similation (a woman marrying into a Serbian family will often cause them all to speak her easier language). The Serbs, however, will in their part of the Banat absorb the others if they show political understanding and a liberal spirit. "We will give the Germans," said Pribicevic to one of them at Verac--"we will give them everything up to a university."

The north-west corner of the Banat, which has a considerable Magyar population, has been ascribed to Hungary. Opposite the apex of this triangular tract of country lies Szeged, the second city of Hungary (118,328 inhabitants, of whom 113,380 are Magyars) and the chief centre of the grain trade of the rich southern plains. As was pointed out in _The New Europe_,[115] Szeged, which lies in flat country, would be even more defenceless than Belgrade if the lands on the other side of the river were under alien rule. If one draws a strategical frontier the nationality of the people is, of course, disregarded; it is, therefore, beside the point to mention that there seem to be far more Serbs in the angle opposite Szeged than there were Magyars in the lands opposite Belgrade. The Entente has simply made up its mind to be generous to Szeged, and let us hope that we have not left this region to Hungary on account of the activities of the extremely intelligent Baroness Gerliczy--a Roumanian lady married to a Magyar--who owns a large estate there and was much in Paris during the critical period.

The other imperfections in the Paris arrangements, whether with regard to villages or fields, are not incapable of amendment. One presumes that the Roumanians, who have no lack of other international problems, will be wise enough to discard certain dicta of their Liberal party and of Bratiano, its self-satisfied leader, to whom all subjects seem great if they have pa.s.sed through his mind. One particular dictum which the Roumanians ought to cast aside is that which insists upon the indivisibility of the Banat. Another Roumanian statesman, Take Jonescu, was more sagacious when he, during the War, drew up a memorandum whose object was that Greece, Serbia, Roumania and the Czecho-Slovak Governments should work in harmony. This idea of presenting a single diplomatic front was to the liking of Mr. Balfour, who observed to M.

Jonescu that it would be better for these States and better for Europe.

As regards an understanding between Roumania and Serbia in the Banat: "I," said Paic--"I speak for Serbia. Can you speak for Roumania?"

And Jonescu unfortunately had to shake his head.

In the fatuous policy of crying for the whole Banat--they even require the little island in the Danube between Semlin and Belgrade--Bratiano is a.s.sisted by the aged Marghiloman, who is the chief of a branch of the Conservative party. But the relations between these two do not seem destined to be cordial, since Bratiano is married to Marghiloman's divorced wife.

May the Roumanian people become reconciled to Yugoslavia's righteous possession of part of the Banat. It would be a pity if these two neighbours were to live together on such terms as, in the eastern county of the Banat, Caras-Severin, do the Bufani and the other Roumanians. The Bufani came from Roumania some hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, on account of the taxes which they found intolerable; and they have not been able to arrive at amicable relations with those countrymen of theirs who are the descendants of earlier emigrants. Very seldom do the Bufani and the others intermarry. These Bufani, so say the others, are like ivy. "They called out," complain the others, "they called out: 'Little brother, be good to us!' and then they strangled us." The Bufani, who are easily recognizable by their dialect, frequent the same church and have one priest with the others, but they have a separate cemetery.

(_e_) THE HUNGARIAN FRONTIER

North of the town of Subotica the frontier between Yugoslavia and Hungary is almost a natural one, as it runs over vast hills of s.h.i.+fting sand which are still partly in motion. Neither on foot nor on horseback, still less with loaded carts, is it possible to travel through these hills. But to the east and to the west of them the frontier is no better than that which separates Yugoslavia from Roumania, and when it came to the delimitation the Magyars thought it would be preferable if this work were done with their a.s.sistance. Otherwise, so they urged, there would be no check upon the wicked intolerance of their neighbours. It is true that they themselves had in the past been in favour of centralization, but against this one must remember that the "subject nationalities" were inferior beings. The Yugoslavs, the Roumanians and the Slovaks could not claim a glorious descent from Attila, of whom a fresco decorates the House of Parliament at Buda-Pest, and thus the Magyars had always thought it seemly that, by various devices, a limit should be put to the number of Yugoslav, Roumanian and Slovak deputies.

Count Apponyi and his colleagues told the Peace Conference very frankly at the beginning of 1920 that it really ought to take their word for it, and not persist in looking on the Yugoslavs, etc., as if they were as good as any Magyar. Surely it was obvious that Yugoslavia, Greater Roumania and Czecho-Slovakia would be "artificial and improvised creations, devoid of the traditions of political solidarity and incapable of producing any." But if the Supreme Council was resolved to allow certain Magyar territories to join themselves, if they desired, to these ephemeral States it would be necessary to ascertain by means of a plebiscite what were the real wishes of the people in these territories; and Count Apponyi was kind enough to tell the Council very definitely how this plebiscite should be conducted. The princ.i.p.al Allies were to arrange, in accordance with the Magyar Government, as to the districts in which a plebiscite was to be held, and the secret voting was to be controlled by neutral commissions and delegates of the interested Governments. This may sound rather rash on the part of the Magyars, since a plebiscite, no matter how it was arranged and controlled, would presumably detach a good many jewels from the crown of St. Stephen, and it was not astonis.h.i.+ng that Count Apponyi and his friends proposed that the Magyars should be safeguarded by further Commissions which, if requisite, would override the results of the voting. These results would indeed, as between the Magyars and the Yugoslavs, have given our Allies a larger dominion than they have actually obtained. The triangle south of Szeged, to which we have alluded, would certainly, if there had been a plebiscite, have gone to Yugoslavia. In Baranja the Yugoslavs have claimed that the census of 1910, which indicated 36,000 Serbo-Croats, should have given them 70,000; but this does not take account of the large number of okci--Slavs whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Catholicism and who came to consider themselves as one with the Catholic Magyars. This widespread phenomenon of race being superseded by religion may be noticed, for example, at Janjevo in the district of Old Serbia; it is inhabited by the descendants of Dubrovnik colonists who, being Catholic, have come to look upon themselves as Albanians. In Hungary the dominant Magyar minority was wont to clasp the subject races to its bosom, not with bonds of love but of religion. Thus in 1914 at Marmoros-Sziget they charged 100 persons with high treason, because it was their wish to leave the Uniate Church, in communion with Rome, and return to the Orthodox faith. The same charge would have been preferred against certain Ruthenians who were just as unwilling to be members of the Uniate Church; but in the case of these humble, backward people the conversion had been effected by their priests, who would thereby procure for themselves a better situation, and the Ruthenians, who had not been told of this occurrence, were under the impression that they were still Orthodox. Professor Cvijic believes that, with the help of the Catholic religion, no less than 113,000 Serbo-Croats have in Baranja been lost by their Yugoslav brethren.... When the Yugoslavs were asked by the Supreme Council to evacuate most of Baranja they did so. A republic, under the presidency of one Dobrovic, a well-known cubist painter, a native of those parts, was formed by Yugoslavs and the Magyars whose freedom had been safeguarded under their rule. But as this republic was not a.s.sisted by the Yugoslav Government it only lasted for a week.

Farther to the west is the Prekomurdje, that interesting Slovene district which extends for about 25 miles along the Mur. The rich plain that adjoins the river is mostly in the possession of large landowners, while the hilly country to the north sustains a scattered and poor population of Calvinists. There are in the whole Prekomurdje some 120,000 Yugoslavs, who are descendants of the old Pannonian Slovenes.

This healthy, honest people has indeed eighteen Catholic and eight Protestant priests, but is otherwise almost dest.i.tute of an _intelligentsia_. They speak nothing but Slovene, and yet the Magyars had for ten years previous to the War been so imperialist that only Magyar schools were tolerated. Thus it happened that the children, like so many others in the Magyar schools, were at a loss to understand what they were writing, and if their teacher chanced to learn the Slovene language he was there and then transferred to Transylvania or the Slovak country or some other province where he had to teach his pupils in the Magyar which they did not know. He was supposed to make the children feel the vast superiority of all things Magyar, so that they should be ashamed to walk with their own fathers in the streets and speak another tongue. We are told occasionally in the _Morning Post_ that consideration should be shown to the Magyars since they are a proud people, but would they not merit more consideration if they were a grateful people, grateful that the rest of Europe, overlooking their Mongolian origin, has accepted them as equals? The Magyars were so thoroughly persuaded of their own pre-eminence that when the devotees of Haydn founded in his honour a society at Eisenstadt, where he had worked, it was allowed on the condition that the statutes and the name of the society and so forth should be in the Magyar language, although Haydn was a German. Evidently the poor Slovenes of the Prekomurdje would be swamped unless they showed exceptional vigour. And when they managed to survive until after the War the Americans in Paris were for handing them to Hungary on the ground that the frontier would, if it included them in Yugoslavia, be an awkward one. Such is also the opinion of Mr.

A. H. E. Taylor in his _The Future of the Southern Slavs_; this author advocates that Yugoslavia should be bounded by the Mur, albeit in another part of the same book he says that "a small river is not usually a good frontier, except on the map"; and the Mur is so narrow that when Dr. Gaston Reverdy, of the French army, and I arrived at Ljutomir we found that a crowd of these men and boys had waded across the stream in order to lay their cause before the doctor, who represented the Entente in that region. The Bolevik Magyars were just then threatening to set all Prekomurdje on fire, and the pleasant-looking, rather shy men who stood in rows before us begged the doctor to procure them weapons--they would be able to defend themselves. It is satisfactory to know that most of this portion of the Yugoslav lands has, after all, not been lost to the mother country.

(_f_) THE AUSTRIAN FRONTIER

A considerable part of the frontier between Yugoslavia and Austria has been determined by a plebiscite which was held, under French, British and Italian control, in the autumn of 1920. The Slovenes during the previous year had pointed out that while they could no longer claim so wide a territory now that Austria had been drawn towards the Adriatic, yet the rural population of Carinthia had remained Slovene, thanks to the notable qualities of that people. The German-Austrians, on the other hand, maintained that country districts are the appanages of a town, so that the wishes of a rural population are of secondary importance. While these questions were being debated in 1919 by the two interested parties--and debated, very often, by their rifles--the Italians intervened. Sonnino's paper, the _Epoca_, made a great outcry over Klagenfurt (Celovec) which, if given to the Yugoslavs, would be an insurmountable barrier, it said, to the trade between Triest and Vienna, although it was clear that the railway connection through Tarvis remained in the hands of the Italians. (There is not a single Italian civilian in Tarvis--but no matter.) Meanwhile the French Press noted that the Italians--presumably not as traders but as benefactors--were seeing to it that the Austrians did not run short of arms and munitions.

For many months a large area was in a condition of uncertainty and turmoil, till at last the Peace Conference ordered a plebiscite.

Two zones in Carinthia--"A" to the south-east, with its centre at Velikovec (Volkermarkt), and "B" to the north-west, with its centre at Klagenfurt (Celovec)--were mapped out, and it was agreed that if the voting in "A," the larger zone, were favourable to Austria, then the other zone would automatically fall to that country. For several months before the voting day this area--a region of beautiful and prosperous valleys watered by the broad Drave and surrounded by magnificent mountain ranges--for several months this area was the scene of great activity. German-Austrians and Yugoslavs no longer, as in 1919, attacked each other with the implements of war, but with pamphlet, broadsheet, with eloquence and bribery. Austrian and Yugoslav officials took up their headquarters at various places and saw to it that every voter should be posted as to the moral and material advantage he would reap by helping to make the land Austrian or Yugoslav, as the case might be. All those were ent.i.tled to vote who, being twenty years of age in January 1919, had their habitual residence in this area; or, if not born in the district, had belonged to it or had their habitual residence there from, at least, January 1, 1912. The larger zone "A" was left under Yugoslav administration, while zone "B" was under the Austrian authorities; and the Inter-Allied officials exercised a very close supervision in order, for example, to protect the partisans of either side from undue repression at the hands of their opponents. Neither the Austrians nor the Yugoslavs lost any opportunities for saying in public that the Inter-Allied Commissions were honestly making every effort to be impartial. It was, however, unfortunate that Italy should have sent as her chief representative Prince Livio Borghese, who may have been as impartial as his colleagues, but whose reputation, whether merited or otherwise, could scarcely commend itself to the Yugoslavs. They believed that his activities in Buda-Pest, under the Bolevik regime, and afterwards in Vienna, had been very hostile to themselves. Each of the three allied commissioners had a staff of some fifty or sixty officials, whose upkeep and expenses were paid by the two interested countries.

If an average person had been asked to foretell the result of the plebiscite I suppose he would have said that in zone "A" the Yugoslavs and in zone "B" the Austrians would be successful. We have seen how the Slovene renaissance of the nineteenth century was met by the central authorities in Vienna (particularly after the German victory of 1871), and how the local functionaries a.s.sisted them. They argued that Austria with her miscellaneous races could only survive if one of them was supreme. Therefore they looked askance on every one who regarded himself as a Slovene; if he rose to be an official it had to be in another part of the Monarchy, while for the maintenance of Austria (oblivious to the argument that Austria was a perfectly unnatural affair) they favoured all those who announced themselves to be on the side of the predominant race. From 1903 onwards the Slovene language was barred from the courts of Carinthia, and if a person did not understand the language of the German magistrates he had to use an interpreter. The land was invaded by the German _intelligentsia_: professors, masters in primary and secondary schools, doctors, lawyers and so forth, excise officials and railway officials--in 1912 Carinthia possessed about 5000 of these and only 1 per cent. were Slovenes. Those among the Slovenes who were capable of serving in such positions were dispatched to Carniola, Dalmatia or preferably to the German-speaking lands of the Empire. A provincial agricultural authority was set up in 1910 which was recognized by the State and which enjoyed a monopoly. Its object was to aid the progress of agriculture by establis.h.i.+ng and supporting agricultural schools, sending experts to the farmer, distributing subsidies for the purchase of machinery, artificial manure and so on.

The council consisted of twenty-one members, of whom only one was a Slovene; the subsidies were given to those who were recognized as Germanophils, while requests were not permitted in the Slovene tongue.

As for the electoral districts, they were so manipulated that one deputy represented 120,000 Slovenes and another represented 27,000 Germans.

Const.i.tuencies in which there was a German majority were allowed to send two members, while the others only sent one. The German railway employees worked so thoroughly for pan-Germanism that various Slovenes were arrested--among them the mayor of a large village who wanted to travel from Celovec--for asking in the Slovene language for a ticket.

With regard to schools, there were throughout Carinthia in 1860 some 28 Slovene and 56 Slovene-German foundations, whereas in 1914 there were 2 Slovene, 30 German and 84 mixed schools, where the two languages were supposed to co-exist; they were indeed the home of two languages, for the children were nearly all Slovene, whereas the teacher and the language he used were German. Among 230 masters only 20 could read and write Slovene. Qualified teachers who could satisfy this test were, as we have mentioned, sent to other parts of the Empire. So far did the system go that Slovene peasants upon whom the Government had forced a German education speedily forgot the two hundred words which they had learned, but as they had been taught no other script than the German they were accustomed to write the Slovene language with German Gothic characters. These peasants were fairly impervious to Germanization; their strong sense of national consciousness was supported by the books, religious and otherwise, which they received every year from some such society as that of St. Hermagoras at Celovec, which distributed half a million books a year among its 90,000 members.

But that which princ.i.p.ally guided the peasant was the voice of his priest, and the vast majority of priests in zone "A" were Slovenes. This agricultural zone possesses no more than one or two small towns, where the priest is less regarded. The traders and artisans frequently look upon themselves as too highly cultured for the Church; they affect the "Los von Rom" and the Socialist movements. By holding these menaces over the Bishop's head a good deal of pressure could be brought to bear, and this was done by the Germans, who were of opinion that the Church unfairly encouraged the Slovenes. The Bishop of Celovec had both the zones in his diocese until some months before the plebiscite, when a temporary arrangement was made under which zone "A" was administered by a vicar. But in bygone years the Bishop, with these threats hanging over him, was wont to counsel prudence and to ask his clergy not to agitate their flock, whom they were merely telling of their rights. In zone "B," which mostly consists of the town of Celovec, the Church would naturally be more susceptible to German influence, apart from the fact that the Bishop himself is a Bavarian. For personal reasons--he is very imperfectly acquainted with the Slovene language--he wished even the clergy of zone "A" to correspond with him in German; but the priests pointed out that their faithful paris.h.i.+oners wanted to follow this correspondence and by far the greater number of them have no German....

In fact the Church has in each zone brought its help to the more powerful party--the Slovene peasants in zone "A" and the German or Germanophil townsfolk in zone "B"; and it appeared probable before the plebiscite that in both cases she would be on the victorious side.

In foretelling the result of the plebiscite one would not pay much attention to the census which the German-Austrian officials used to take. A person was inscribed according to the language he ordinarily employed, and this was, more often than not, considered to be German if his superior was a German. Before the census of 1910 the _Grazer Tagblatt_, which is the Germans' chief organ in those parts, proclaimed that the official census was a portion of the national propaganda. All the propagandist societies were entreated to do their utmost to induce the people to declare German as their usual language. Very humorous results were obtained. On December 18, 1910, the provincial council of public instruction gave out the number of German and Slovene children respectively in thirty Slovene parishes. Amongst them were the following:

German Children. Slovene Children.