It was not until now that Great Britain (on May 9) and France (on June
5) formally recognized the new Serbo-Croat-Slovene State.[33] As the
_Times_ said, two years afterwards,[34] "it was not the Allies who
created Czecho-Slovakia or brought about the establishment of
Yugo-Slavia. These events were the inevitable result of the previous
history which the Allies could not, even if they had desired to do so,
prevent." The Americans had not been so extremely considerate to Italy,
for they had recognized the Yugoslav State on February 7, a few days
after Norway and Switzerland.... And how necessary it was for the
Yugoslavs to have some leisure for their home affairs, which presented
so many complications. Here one system of laws and there another--with
the best will in the world and waiving to the uttermost one's own
idiosyncrasies, the Serbs and Croats and Slovenes were faced, at the
beginning of their union, by most arduous problems. The Agrarian
question was regarded generally as one of the most urgent. In Serbia
itself, with practically the whole country in the hands of small peasant
proprietors, this question did not arise; but in the provinces which had
been lately under Austria-Hungary no time was to be lost, and yet a good
deal of time would be needed to cope with a problem so full of
complications. One difficulty was that each political party was inclined
to solve this matter in accordance with its own interests. Among the
three Slovene parties, for example, the Socialists would naturally work
for their own principles, the Christian-Socialist party, whose
supporters were chiefly the small farmers, would prefer to legislate for
them, while the Liberal party, having in its ranks the larger
landowners, would wish that all, except the very largest, should if
possible be left intact; the very large landowners, moreover, will with
the spread of democratic ideas lose their influence over the voters.
There are several points on which all parties are agreed: thus, it is
most undesirable that a man's holdings should, as now, be separated from
each other, often by considerable distances, so that half his time may
be spent in going to and from his fields and a good deal of the other
half in the disputes which naturally spring from such a scattered
ownership.... In Bosnia, where the Agrarian troubles had produced such
frequent outbreaks and savage repression, the Austrians were given the
mandate in 1878 in the hope that they would regulate this matter. They
did not do very much; all that they really did was to modernize a
little. They wrote down in a book who was the landlord and who were the
kmets, and a copy of these details was available for each one of the
kmets. He had the right to remain where he was--unless his conduct was
exceptionally bad--and to retain two-thirds of the produce of the land.
This kmet-right was not hereditary in the female line; but the kmet
could buy his portion--this was an old right, which Austria
regulated--and become a free man, a beg. He would sometimes be a free
man in one place and a kmet in another. In Bosnia there are, of course,
some extremely large landowners; but most of the begs are poor folk, who
live on the third part of a few farms. It would be better if these men
were not compensated with cash, but rather that they should be
established on farms which they would work themselves, the distinction
between the small begs and the kmets thus disappearing.