In Bosnia, for some time after the Austrian collapse, it was
inconvenient to travel. If you went by rail you were fortunate if you
secured a good berth on the roof of a carriage; by road you went less
rapidly and therefore ran a greater risk of being waylaid by the
so-called "Green Depot," who were deserters from the Austrian
army--either through national or other reasons--with their headquarters
in the forests. Some of them were simply men who had gone home on leave
and stayed at home. Here and there a National Guard of peaceful
citizens, irrespective of nationality, was formed against them. But it
was some time before they were induced to lead a less romantic life.
What happened afterwards in Bosnia between the Serbs, the Croats and the
Moslems was so much a matter of routine that the Italians should not
have run off with the idea that this imperilled Yugoslavia. Of the
1,898,044 inhabitants in 1910 the proportions were as follows: Orthodox,
who call themselves Serbs, 43.49 per cent.; Moslem, 32.25 per cent.; and
Catholics, who call themselves Croats, 22.87 per cent. (The remainder
are miscellaneous persons, such as 850,000 Jews, who speak the usual
Balkan Spanish; they play an inconsiderable part in public life.) The
Serbs, the Moslems and the Croats are identical in race and language,
but have hitherto been much divided. Those who joined together in the
Turkish days were led to do so as companions in distress; the rule of
Austria, or to speak with greater accuracy the rule of Hungary--no one
knew exactly who possessed the land, but the Magyars took it for granted
that it was theirs--this rule, of course, did nothing to unite the
various religions. The Moslems, especially after their complete
isolation from Turkey, were the most favoured, while the Serbs, owing to
the proximity of Serbia, were the most oppressed. And during the War it
was the Serbian population which was chiefly tortured. Besides all those
who were dragged away to such places as Arad, hundreds and hundreds were
hanged in their own province. Not satisfied with using, as we see in so
many of those ghastly photographs, their own army as the executioners,
the Austro-Hungarians also organized local bands among the lower classes
of the towns, and in so doing they availed themselves of any latent
religious fanaticism among the Moslems. From the day of the Archduke's
assassination it was the Serbs who suffered most; and many onlookers
must have expected in the autumn of 1918 that they would take a very
drastic revenge. For some weeks the people were left very much to their
own devices, with no troops or police--the Austrian _gendarmerie_ having
to be protected by the better classes, who explained to the peasants
that it was not right to regard only the uniform of those who had so
often maltreated them; yet the gendarmes took the earliest opportunity
of getting into mufti. There was also for several months a dearth of
detectives. Many of those who had worked under Austria and were more or
less criminal, fled at the collapse; others continued to act, but in a
half-hearted way. Sixty new detectives were taken on by the Yugoslav
authorities, and fifty-six of them had to be dismissed. After all, if
one can judge a person's character from his face, the detective who
allowed you to do so would be so incompetent as not to warrant a trial.
And after six or seven months of Yugoslav administration only
thirty-three out of fifty-two detective appointments in Sarajevo had
been definitely filled. So there was not much restriction on the
peasants in their dealings with each other. A few of them were murdered.
In Sarajevo the National Guard was largely composed of well-meaning
street boys; the Serbian troops did not arrive until November 6, and in
many parts of Bosnia not until the end of the month. And yet in the
whole country, with people on the track of those who in the pay of
Austria had denounced or murdered their relatives, and with the poor
_kmet_ at last able to rise against the oppressive landlord, there were
in the first six months under fifty murders, and these were mostly due
to the desperate straits of the Montenegrins, who came across the
frontier in search of provisions, during which forays they assassinated
various people. In the Sandjak of Novi Bazar there was no doubt less
security; but to anyone who knew, say the Rogatica district, under
Austria's very capable administration, it will seem that Bosnia, after
the collapse, was singularly tranquil. Anyhow the population, in the
summer of 1919, were living on much more amicable terms with one another
than for many years. The Government met with some criticism, for it was
alleged to be reserving all the lucrative appointments for the Serbs;
one had to take into account, however, that it was the Serbs who had
been chiefly ruined by the War, and it was just that the concessions for
the sale of tobacco, for the railway restaurants and so forth, should
be, for the greater part, given to them. Nevertheless it may interest
travellers to know that the restaurateurs at the stations of Ilid[vz]e
and Zenica are Catholics--the Moslems are not yet very competent in such
affairs. They are, as their own leaders sadly confess, the least
cultured and the least progressive class. As elsewhere in Islam there
has been a total lack of female education--the mothers of the Sarajevo
Moslem _intelligentsia_ can neither read nor write, while their sons are
cultivated people who speak several languages. A change is being
made--there are already five Moslem lady teachers employed in the mixed
Government schools; this a few years ago would have been thought
impossible. It is to be deplored that these divisions into Moslem and
Orthodox and Catholic should be perpetrated--the Moslem leaders look
forward to the time, in a few years, when their deputies will no longer
group themselves apart on account of their religion; but it is unwise to
introduce too many simultaneous innovations, considering that the
illiterates of Bosnia number about 90 per cent. of the population. The
Yugoslav idea will prosper in this country; and, by the way, while you
meet an occasional Serb who hankers for a Greater Serbia, an occasional
Croat who would like a Greater Croatia, the Moslems have no aspirations
save for Yugoslavia. [They speak of "our language," since the word
"Serbian" has for them too much connection with the Orthodox religion,
the word "Croatian" with Roman Catholicism.] They are not indifferent to
the fact that to their own 600,000 in Bosnia they will add the 400,000
of Macedonia and Old Serbia, together with the 200,000 of Montenegro and
the Sandjak.... One was inclined to think that the least desirable
person of the new era in Sarajevo was the editor of the _Srpski Zora_
("Serbian Dawn"); his methods had a resemblance to those of Lenin, for
he printed lists of persons whom he called upon the Government to
prosecute, and when he was himself invited to appear in court and answer
to some libel charges he declined to go, upon the ground that the laws
were still Austrian and the judge a Magyar. He disapproved of such
tolerance, he disapproved of the Croats because they declined to
recognize that the Serbs had more merit than they, and as for
Yugoslavia--it was a thing of emptiness--he laughed at it and called it
Yugovina, the south wind. The only chance of life it had was if you
left the whole affair to the Serbs and then in two years it would be a
solid thing. It may be thought that the local Government, since they
left him at large, endorsed his theories; but they were reluctant to
give him a halo of martyrdom. They imagined that he was nervous because
he was losing ground--they acknowledged, though, that he still gave
pleasure to a great many Serbs, who were carried away by his appeals to
their old prejudices. It is undeniable that with the peculiar traditions
and customs of Bosnia, that province must for some years have a
Government--whatever method is evolved for the other parts of
Yugoslavia--whose eyes are not turned constantly to Belgrade. It might
even be well to set up a local Chamber in which all classes would be
represented. The Moslems and Croats would thus lose any lurking fear
that they were being swamped, and by coming into contact with other
political parties even the less cultured classes would gradually tend to
discard these fatal religious, in favour of political, divisions. A
somewhat primitive Balkan community cannot be expected of its own accord
to love henceforward in the name of politics those whom hitherto it has
hated in the name of religion. And as yet they are much more interested
in the harvest than in politics; from day to day they change their
views, according to the views of the last orator from Belgrade, Zagreb
or Ljubljana. Only the Socialists appear to be well disciplined. Of
course the present political parties in Yugoslavia are not wholly free
from religious prejudices, an important party, for example, among the
Slovenes being based on Roman Catholicism. But as the Slovenes are, as
yet, the best upholders of the Yugoslav idea, it is obvious that
education covers all things, and that with the increase of education in
Bosnia the religious differences will be less important. Anything that
can be done against this tyranny is beneficial, whether the St. George
be a political orator or a schoolmaster. And as the effects produced by
the former are more rapid, so should he be encouraged. He is, in fact,
appearing in Bosnia, he will carry away, more or less, the _clientele_
of the _Srpski Zora_, and the shattered nervous organism of its editor,
Mr. [vC]okorilo, will be, one trusts, reconstituted and devoted, as it
can be, to a nobler purpose. One of its deplorable effects has been
that the organ of the Croat party, a paper called _Jugoslavija_, has
been compelled to write in a similar strain, whereas the editor, a
dapper little priest, assures one that he would prefer a more elevated
tone.