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