While the Serbs of Serbia and Montenegro no longer placed any trust in
their princes, they had good cause to give more and more of their
confidence to Strossmayer, who remained for more than half a century
at Djakovo and never, on account of Magyar opposition, became a prince
of the Church. He saw that the Star[vc]evi['c] policy with respect to
Bosnia was a retrograde step, since it was causing the Serbs of that
province, who until the occupation had been on good terms with the
Catholic minority and the Serbs of Croatia--about 40 per cent. of the
population--to stand very much aloof from the Croats. This state of
things was naturally very pleasing to the Magyar imperialist Ban,
Count Khuen-Hedervary, whereas Strossmayer's Yugoslav idea would have,
owing to the intermingling of the two religions, a particularly
favourable ground in Bosnia. It may be that Leo XIII.'s conception of
drawing back the Slavs to Rome will remain a dream, but his and
Strossmayer's policy of an alliance would have been a blessing to the
Yugoslavs, and primarily in such provinces as Bosnia and Croatia.
Negotiations were begun in 1882, between Strossmayer and the Serbian
Government, with a view to establishing a Concordat. Serbia's Roman
Catholic subjects--who, by the way, were not very numerous--would be
placed under a patriotic priest depending not on Austria-Hungary but
directly on Rome. And thus the fence between them and their Orthodox
kindred would be gradually broken down. It would be foolish to assert
that Strossmayer and his fellow-workers were able to make all the
Yugoslavs dismiss their religious differences and remember their
national affinities. Orthodox and Catholic Slav have for so long been
divided that their approach to one another must often be slow and is
liable to be interrupted by the manoeuvres of third parties. The
Austrians were pretty successful, just before and during the Great
War, in setting the Catholic and Orthodox Bosniak at each other's
throat, and this antagonism will endure for a while in remote
districts, such as in a certain village of the Sandjak where one
found, in the summer of 1919, that the Catholic chief official and his
wife were compelled to dismiss their Orthodox maid, since the
villagers would not allow her to continue to serve in a Catholic
house. But Strossmayer's statesmanship went a long way towards
breaking down these barriers. "I have had to set my face against your
mission," said von Khevenhueller, the Austro-Hungarian Minister, to
Father Tondini when this Italian Barnabite, in whom Strossmayer had
every confidence, came to Belgrade. "It is one of our principles,
inherited from Schwarzenberg and Metternich," said the Minister, "that
we should exercise a sort of control over the Serbian Catholics by
having them under the jurisdiction of an Austrian Bishop." When
Strossmayer visited Belgrade, for the purpose of conducting
confirmations, he was driven at once, amid the booming of cannon, to
the royal palace. And if the negotiations were allowed to drag it was
obviously not due to any Orthodox fanaticism. Talking of fanaticism,
one had instances in Bosnia and in Slavonia, not long ago, of Catholic
priests who discarded Strossmayer and endeavoured to get their flock
to use a different pronunciation from that of the Orthodox. It was
because he strove to bring them together that the great bishop was so
heartily disliked in Vienna and Pest. It had been decided in 1883
that, unless he made his political submission, he was to be interned
at the Trappist monastery of Banjaluka. But if he were no longer in a
position to spend the great resources of the bishopric--to say nothing
of the removal of his personal influence--the Cause would have
suffered enormously. Therefore he listened to the prayers of his
friends and submitted. "Be glad," said he to Radi['c], the Croat
patriot--"be glad that you are not a priest." His successful efforts
to bring about the moral and intellectual awakening of the Yugoslavs
were most unpopular in those two capitals. But on the wide Slavonian
lands and far beyond them one would find the sturdy farmers imitating
his new methods--his own estate was so large that he paid 35,000
florins a year in taxes. The tall, thin prelate might be walking with
you in his garden, telling you with simple eloquence--and in Latin,
for choice--how much he regretted that Doellinger had not submitted,
as did his adored Dupanloup, to the dogma of Papal Infallibility, when
one of those painted carts would rattle round the corner and in two
minutes this father of his people would be deep in a technical
discussion with the peasant as to which of the episcopal stallions or
bulls he should borrow for the improvement of his stock. When
Strossmayer consecrated the cathedral which he had built at Djakovo he
exclaimed that in the hour of his departure from this world his last
prayer would be for the union of his people. "Almighty everlasting
God," he cried, "have mercy upon my brave people and unite them!" As a
very old man, verging on the nineties, with brilliant eyes peering out
from under a great forehead and physically so fragile that in walking
from one room to another he had to put his arm round my neck, he was
still in every direction working to this end. Six months earlier, in
June 1903, Khuen-Hedervary had been recalled and, after his twenty
years of oppression, the young men of Croatia, Catholic and Orthodox,
in harmony with the Slovenes, were forming the Serbo-Croat Coalition.
This was a great step in the direction of the Yugoslavia which
Strossmayer did not live to see.