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 classed 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 platitude 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 arsenal, 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, assured the Baron that he
would assist him if he were allowed to keep his liberty. But he was
tempted, in the middle of a night, to assist 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 passenger
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 ownership the
passengers were unable to prove; and it took a whole day to unload the
enormous quantities 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 quantities
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. Jegli['c], the eminent Prince-Bishop of
Ljubljana, had not summoned all the political parties and caused them
to adopt a patriotic Yugoslav attitude. (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 passive 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. Jegli['c] had prepared the forces that
were going to break their bonds on that fateful day. At 7 a.m. Dr.
Sre[vc]ko Lajn[vs]i['c]--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. Lajn[vs]i['c] 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
Lajn[vs]i['c], 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. Lajn[vs]i['c] 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 Lajn[vs]i['c]) 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
assumed 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 Suedmark
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. Lajn[vs]i['c]
and Maister took no steps against the Bishop of Maribor who, three
months after the Austrian collapse, celebrated a Mass 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 God 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.