Anyone who looks at an ethnological map of the Banat will recognize how
difficult it is to partition that province among two or three claimants.
No matter by whom the map is painted, it must have the appearance of
mosaic, with few solid masses of colour. This fact was quickly used by
the Roumanians, who argued that as the Banat had never been divided,
neither politically nor economically, it should still remain one
whole--of course under the Roumanian flag. The Magyars haughtily pointed
out that as the Banat had never been divided, but had for a thousand
years lived under the crown of St. Stephen, it should still remain one
whole--of course under the Hungarian flag. The Roumanians contended that
the indivisibility of the Banat was designed by Nature, since the
mountainous eastern part could not exist if separated from the fertile
west. The Magyars asserted that it was altogether wrong to think of the
radical remodelling and complete dismemberment of a territory which
Nature had predestined to be one. The Yugoslavs agreed with both parties
that it was not easy to draw a satisfactory frontier, but they asked
that, as far as possible, the predominantly Roumanian parts should be
joined to Roumania, the Slav populations to them and the Magyars to
Hungary. As a matter of fact the Paris Conference did attempt to make an
ethnical division, between these three States, of the Banat. Roumania
tried to demonstrate the impossibility of this by turning off the water
in the Bega Canal when the Serbs evacuated Teme[vs]var and were taking
their heavily-laden barges from that town. There will have to be a
central, international organization to control the network of waterways.
As soon as the Paris Conference had decided on this division it was told
by the Magyars, the Roumanians and the Yugoslavs that all the numerous
Germans of the Banat wished to belong to Hungary, to Roumania and to
Yugoslavia. A great many of the Germans were indifferent, so long as
they could peaceably carry on their prosperous agricultural operations.
Not much political solidarity is apparent among the Germans of the
Banat, and seeing that both Yugoslavia and Roumania, now the principal
possessors of this land, have elsewhere within their boundaries large
German populations, their respective Banat Germans will be able to ally
themselves with these in the Parliaments of Belgrade and Bucharest. The
Banat Germans who are discontented with the Paris decisions are firstly
those, among the aristocratic and commercial classes, who were
accustomed to enjoy under the Magyars a favoured position, and secondly
those who, with more or less justification, say that Roumania has yet to
show that she will treat her subject minorities in a truly liberal
fashion. It is for this reason that the Germans of Ver[vs]ac and Bela
Crkva--in which towns they are about as numerous as the total of
Yugoslavs, Roumanians and Magyars--would give a majority in favour of
Yugoslavia if they were asked to vote as to Yugoslav or Roumanian
citizenship. _Adeverul_, which is one of the least chauvinist of
Bucharest newspapers, claimed for Roumania at least the railway line:
Teme[vs]var, Ver[vs]ac, Bela Crkva, Bazias--an argument thought to be
conclusive being that the two central towns are neither Roumanian nor
Serbian but German. This railway line was, as a matter of fact, bestowed
by the Peace Conference on Roumania, and it required some strenuous
work before this decision was modified. The French were suspected in
Yugoslavia of leaning unduly towards the Roumanians, through sympathy
with the Latin strain in their blood; yet it was the French who were for
giving to Yugoslavia not only Bazias but the villages on the Danube down
to Old Moldava, seeing that in those districts the Slavs are certainly
in a majority. The Roumanian case was not assisted by Professor
Candrea's ethnographical map, for in the debated country around Bela
Crkva that gentleman, who told me that he had omitted every place whose
population was less than a hundred, has unfortunately forgotten to
include Zlatica, a village of 1346 inhabitants, which was founded at the
gate of a monastery six hundred and sixty years ago. The population is
according to the Hungarian census of 1910, at which time all the 1346
were Serbs, with the exception of 220 Czechs and a few gipsies.
Professor Candrea has forgotten Sokolavac, a nourishing place about two
hundred and fifty years old with 1800 inhabitants and practically all of
them Serbs, as the Transylvanian Minister of Education admitted. Palanka
with 1400 inhabitants, most Serbs; Fabian with about 1000, mostly
Czechs; Duplaja with 1204, all Serbs but for 10 Slovenes; Crvena Crkva
with 1108 (1048 Serbs, 34 Slovaks, 17 Germans and 9 Magyars), are every
one omitted. Lescovac, with 977 inhabitants, the Professor marks as
Roumanian. When I was at this picturesquely situated place I was
received in the mayor's office by half a dozen burly peasants in the
Serbian national costume who asserted that, with the exception of the
tailor (a Roumanian emigrant) and one or two other persons, the village
was wholly Serb. But Lescovac was then within the Serbian sphere of
occupation, and possibly if I were to go there now I would be told an
appropriate story by other, or the same, peasants in Roumanian attire.
One must try to find some surer indication of nationality, and Professor
Candrea told me that twenty-five years ago he took down a pure Roumanian
text at that place, where the Roumanian language is the most antique in
the Banat. On the other hand, the village must have contained many
Serbs, for when the late notary, a powerful Magyar with Roumanian
sympathies, prevented the school being conducted, as it always had
been, in the Serbian language, and installed a teacher--he stayed for
eight years--who could only speak Magyar and Roumanian, the villagers at
their own expense procured a Serbian school-mistress. She was expelled
by the notary.... This illustrates the difficulties which the Peace
Conference, in its desire to trace an ethnical frontier, was confronted
with. And there was no map which did not make it obvious that Serbian
villages would have to remain to the east and Roumanian villages to the
west of any possible line. They did right, I think, to revise their
decision as to the towns of Ver[vs]ac and Bela Crkva, for there the
Yugoslavs and their German friends have a large and unquestioned
preponderance. Bazias, with about three miles of the railway, was given
to Roumania so that she should have, for the exportation of her wood and
iron-ore, the only harbour in that region of the Danube which is capable
of development. However, with no railway over Roumanian soil from Bazias
to the mines, this port is perfectly useless, and it is to be hoped that
Roumania will give it up, for compensation elsewhere, to the Yugoslavs.
The latter would otherwise be compelled to build three or four miles of
railway, from Bela Crkva to Palanka, which, unless a great deal of money
be spent on it, will always be one of the worst ports on the river. With
a little more difficulty than to Bazias the Roumanians could construct a
railway to Moldava, which also is a very good port; and in return for
this accommodation, whereby the wines of Bela Crkva could be shipped
from Bazias, their natural port, the Yugoslavs would be ready to make
over to Roumania one or two villages whose population far exceeds that
of little Bazias. We may also hope that facilities will be given by the
two Governments for the emigration of those who wish to cross the new
frontier line. Formerly the people of the Banat had no strenuous
objections to being moved, lock, stock and barrel, from one district to
another and without the inducement of coming under the rule of their own
race. Thus the village of Zsam, to the north of Ver[vs]ac, was, like
many others, very sparsely inhabited when the Turks withdrew in 1716;
some villages had only three or four occupied houses. So the Government
in 1722 collected into one village the people of several others, and in
this way Zsam, which had hitherto been Slav, became Roumanian, the Serbs
being established in the neighbouring Sredi[vs]te. In 1809 the
Roumanians were transplanted from Zsam to Petrovasela, between Ver[vs]ac
and Pan[vc]evo, where they entered the Pan[vc]evo Frontier Regiment;
their place at Zsam was taken by Germans, who, being more industrious,
were preferred by the landowners.
Some of the delineators of this frontier--French and British--have told
me that they were guided throughout by the ethnical principle. But
various unfortunate exceptions seem to have been made: for instance, at
Ko[vc]a it runs through a certain house in such a way that the lavatory
alone is in Roumania; and in another village there lives a man who,
since his stables are situated in Roumania, would have had his horses
requisitioned if he had not been able to bring them into the other part
of the house. Another village has its cemetery in Roumania, so that the
Yugoslavs carry their dead friends over during the night. Perhaps the
Entente officials, perceiving that their ambitious resolution to divide
the country on ethnic principles was not feasible--there would always be
alien islands to the right and to the left of any line--perhaps they in
despair drew an arbitrary line upon a map and hoped the poor inhabitants
would make the best of it. But this was rendered more difficult by the
Yugoslav and Roumanian authorities, for the people who desire to cross
the line are put to endless trouble. Apart from the expense, it usually
involves a delay of three weeks before permission can be obtained, so
that the frontier is rarely traversed save by smugglers and by those
who, like the afore-mentioned man of Ko[vc]a, have been driven into
chronic lawlessness.
The first line agreed upon after the War, which temporarily bestowed the
eastern county on Roumania, the western on Yugoslavia and the chief
parts of the central (or Teme[vs]var) county also on Yugoslavia--with
French co-operation--did not find favour in Paris; whether or not this
decision was influenced by the frequent journeys of the Queen of
Roumania and her fascinating daughters to that town I do not know. At
all events another boundary was made which included the large town of
Teme[vs]var and all the northern part of that county in Roumania. It is
true that there are Roumanian villages in the neighbourhood of this
German-Magyar-Jewish town, which is by far the largest place in the
Banat. And the Roumanians, who have already annexed enormous Magyar and
German populations in Transylvania, do not boggle at another 80,000
foreigners. One could, however, find very few Yugoslavs who want
Teme[vs]var to be restored to them; they know that they and the
Roumanians, whatever (as regards themselves) may have been the case in
other days, form, each of them, only about one-thirtieth of the total
population. But they are sorry that the Allies asked them to share in
occupying the town, because the local Serbs, who are interested in
politics, were so enthusiastic, that on the arrival of the Roumanians
they were forced to leave their businesses and go to live in Yugoslavia.
Since neither Serbs nor Roumanians have any ethnical claim to the town
one would suppose that, as the spoil had fallen to Roumania, the Entente
would have endeavoured to give the Yugoslavs some compensation: what
they did was to take away from them a good deal of that which they
had--a considerable slice of their western county--which also was
presented to the Roumanians. Again, the delineators excused themselves
by invoking their ethnical motives, but as a matter of fact in that part
of Torontal the people are predominantly German and they should have
been allotted to Yugoslavia, not merely because the Teme[vs]var Germans
were given to Roumania but on account of their economic existence, which
certainly in the case of the departments of Nagyszentmiklos, Perjamos
and Csene (to retain the Magyar spelling) is bound up with Zsombolya,
their market-town, and Kikinda. According to the census that was taken
in 1919, the population of these three departments now allotted to
Roumania consisted of 41,109 Germans, 13,638 Yugoslavs and 19,270
Roumanians. Further, to the south-east of Torontal, in the departments
of Pardany, Modos and Banlak, there is not so intimate a connection with
the market-town; here the population consists of 12,209 Germans, 11,102
Yugoslavs and 8808 Roumanians. But there seems to be little reason why
the whole of Torontal, following the wishes of the majority of its
inhabitants, should not be given to Yugoslavia; and this would also
reduce to a minimum the inconveniences produced by any frontier. For
many long years there has been a county frontier between Torontal and
Teme[vs]var, each of which was under an official who looked direct to
Buda-Pest. The adoption of this ancient county frontier as that of the
two countries would put an end to the present absurd and unjust, not to
say dangerous, situation. It should, therefore, be brought about as soon
as possible.
A similar rectification is needed in the country to the north and
north-west. The three German villages of Komlo[vs], Mariafeld and St.
Miklo[vs] have their fields near Velika Kikinda, in Yugoslavia, whereas
they are themselves in Roumania. To bring home his maize from the land a
farmer was obliged to pay, at the most favourable rate, up to 200 crowns
a pound. Considering that this part of the country is an absolute plain
with no river flowing through it, one would suppose that a rectification
could easily be made. If these Germans had been consulted they would
naturally have opted for Yugoslavia. The Peace Conference officials
might, also have studied Velika Kikinda, a place with a very creditable
past, which--as I was told by a Serb professional man of that town--will
be completely ruined if she loses the custom of these German villages
and has to depend upon the Serb peasants who make one embroidered suit
and one pair of sandals last them for ten years.... It will be necessary
for the Yugoslav authorities in the Banat not only to endeavour to raise
their countrymen's standard of living but also in the southerly
districts, where the standard is higher, to persuade them not to persist
in limiting their families. The Serbs in the old kingdom have been one
of the most prolific of European races--they would otherwise have been
incapable of carrying on their twenty-six years of war during this last
century--but in the south and south-east of the Banat, perhaps through
mere love of comfort, perhaps through Magyar oppression, there has been
a marked tendency not to increase. The Magyars and Germans have had
normal families, the Roumanians have increased by assimilation (a woman
marrying into a Serbian family will often cause them all to speak her
easier language). The Serbs, however, will in their part of the Banat
absorb the others if they show political understanding and a liberal
spirit. "We will give the Germans," said Pribi[vc]evi['c] to one of them
at Ver[vs]ac--"we will give them everything up to a university."
The north-west corner of the Banat, which has a considerable Magyar
population, has been ascribed to Hungary. Opposite the apex of this
triangular tract of country lies Szeged, the second city of Hungary
(118,328 inhabitants, of whom 113,380 are Magyars) and the chief centre
of the grain trade of the rich southern plains. As was pointed out in
_The New Europe_,[115] Szeged, which lies in flat country, would be even
more defenceless than Belgrade if the lands on the other side of the
river were under alien rule. If one draws a strategical frontier the
nationality of the people is, of course, disregarded; it is, therefore,
beside the point to mention that there seem to be far more Serbs in the
angle opposite Szeged than there were Magyars in the lands opposite
Belgrade. The Entente has simply made up its mind to be generous to
Szeged, and let us hope that we have not left this region to Hungary on
account of the activities of the extremely intelligent Baroness
Gerliczy--a Roumanian lady married to a Magyar--who owns a large estate
there and was much in Paris during the critical period.
The other imperfections in the Paris arrangements, whether with regard
to villages or fields, are not incapable of amendment. One presumes that
the Roumanians, who have no lack of other international problems, will
be wise enough to discard certain dicta of their Liberal party and of
Bratiano, its self-satisfied leader, to whom all subjects seem great if
they have passed through his mind. One particular dictum which the
Roumanians ought to cast aside is that which insists upon the
indivisibility of the Banat. Another Roumanian statesman, Take Jonescu,
was more sagacious when he, during the War, drew up a memorandum whose
object was that Greece, Serbia, Roumania and the Czecho-Slovak
Governments should work in harmony. This idea of presenting a single
diplomatic front was to the liking of Mr. Balfour, who observed to M.
Jonescu that it would be better for these States and better for Europe.
As regards an understanding between Roumania and Serbia in the Banat:
"I," said Pa[vs]i['c]--"I speak for Serbia. Can you speak for Roumania?"
And Jonescu unfortunately had to shake his head.
In the fatuous policy of crying for the whole Banat--they even require
the little island in the Danube between Semlin and Belgrade--Bratiano is
assisted by the aged Marghiloman, who is the chief of a branch of the
Conservative party. But the relations between these two do not seem
destined to be cordial, since Bratiano is married to Marghiloman's
divorced wife.
May the Roumanian people become reconciled to Yugoslavia's righteous
possession of part of the Banat. It would be a pity if these two
neighbours were to live together on such terms as, in the eastern county
of the Banat, Caras-Severin, do the Bufani and the other Roumanians. The
Bufani came from Roumania some hundred and fifty or two hundred years
ago, on account of the taxes which they found intolerable; and they have
not been able to arrive at amicable relations with those countrymen of
theirs who are the descendants of earlier emigrants. Very seldom do the
Bufani and the others intermarry. These Bufani, so say the others, are
like ivy. "They called out," complain the others, "they called out:
'Little brother, be good to us!' and then they strangled us." The
Bufani, who are easily recognizable by their dialect, frequent the same
church and have one priest with the others, but they have a separate
cemetery.
(_e_) THE HUNGARIAN FRONTIER
North of the town of Subotica the frontier between Yugoslavia and
Hungary is almost a natural one, as it runs over vast hills of shifting
sand which are still partly in motion. Neither on foot nor on horseback,
still less with loaded carts, is it possible to travel through these
hills. But to the east and to the west of them the frontier is no better
than that which separates Yugoslavia from Roumania, and when it came to
the delimitation the Magyars thought it would be preferable if this
work were done with their assistance. Otherwise, so they urged, there
would be no check upon the wicked intolerance of their neighbours. It is
true that they themselves had in the past been in favour of
centralization, but against this one must remember that the "subject
nationalities" were inferior beings. The Yugoslavs, the Roumanians and
the Slovaks could not claim a glorious descent from Attila, of whom a
fresco decorates the House of Parliament at Buda-Pest, and thus the
Magyars had always thought it seemly that, by various devices, a limit
should be put to the number of Yugoslav, Roumanian and Slovak deputies.
Count Apponyi and his colleagues told the Peace Conference very frankly
at the beginning of 1920 that it really ought to take their word for it,
and not persist in looking on the Yugoslavs, etc., as if they were as
good as any Magyar. Surely it was obvious that Yugoslavia, Greater
Roumania and Czecho-Slovakia would be "artificial and improvised
creations, devoid of the traditions of political solidarity and
incapable of producing any." But if the Supreme Council was resolved to
allow certain Magyar territories to join themselves, if they desired, to
these ephemeral States it would be necessary to ascertain by means of a
plebiscite what were the real wishes of the people in these territories;
and Count Apponyi was kind enough to tell the Council very definitely
how this plebiscite should be conducted. The principal Allies were to
arrange, in accordance with the Magyar Government, as to the districts
in which a plebiscite was to be held, and the secret voting was to be
controlled by neutral commissions and delegates of the interested
Governments. This may sound rather rash on the part of the Magyars,
since a plebiscite, no matter how it was arranged and controlled, would
presumably detach a good many jewels from the crown of St. Stephen, and
it was not astonishing that Count Apponyi and his friends proposed that
the Magyars should be safeguarded by further Commissions which, if
requisite, would override the results of the voting. These results would
indeed, as between the Magyars and the Yugoslavs, have given our Allies
a larger dominion than they have actually obtained. The triangle south
of Szeged, to which we have alluded, would certainly, if there had been
a plebiscite, have gone to Yugoslavia. In Baranja the Yugoslavs have
claimed that the census of 1910, which indicated 36,000 Serbo-Croats,
should have given them 70,000; but this does not take account of the
large number of [vS]okci--Slavs whose ancestors were forcibly converted
to Catholicism and who came to consider themselves as one with the
Catholic Magyars. This widespread phenomenon of race being superseded by
religion may be noticed, for example, at Janjevo in the district of Old
Serbia; it is inhabited by the descendants of Dubrovnik colonists who,
being Catholic, have come to look upon themselves as Albanians. In
Hungary the dominant Magyar minority was wont to clasp the subject races
to its bosom, not with bonds of love but of religion. Thus in 1914 at
Marmoros-Sziget they charged 100 persons with high treason, because it
was their wish to leave the Uniate Church, in communion with Rome, and
return to the Orthodox faith. The same charge would have been preferred
against certain Ruthenians who were just as unwilling to be members of
the Uniate Church; but in the case of these humble, backward people the
conversion had been effected by their priests, who would thereby procure
for themselves a better situation, and the Ruthenians, who had not been
told of this occurrence, were under the impression that they were still
Orthodox. Professor Cviji['c] believes that, with the help of the
Catholic religion, no less than 113,000 Serbo-Croats have in Baranja
been lost by their Yugoslav brethren.... When the Yugoslavs were asked
by the Supreme Council to evacuate most of Baranja they did so. A
republic, under the presidency of one Dobrovi['c], a well-known cubist
painter, a native of those parts, was formed by Yugoslavs and the
Magyars whose freedom had been safeguarded under their rule. But as this
republic was not assisted by the Yugoslav Government it only lasted for
a week.
Farther to the west is the Prekomurdje, that interesting Slovene
district which extends for about 25 miles along the Mur. The rich plain
that adjoins the river is mostly in the possession of large landowners,
while the hilly country to the north sustains a scattered and poor
population of Calvinists. There are in the whole Prekomurdje some
120,000 Yugoslavs, who are descendants of the old Pannonian Slovenes.
This healthy, honest people has indeed eighteen Catholic and eight
Protestant priests, but is otherwise almost destitute of an
_intelligentsia_. They speak nothing but Slovene, and yet the Magyars
had for ten years previous to the War been so imperialist that only
Magyar schools were tolerated. Thus it happened that the children, like
so many others in the Magyar schools, were at a loss to understand what
they were writing, and if their teacher chanced to learn the Slovene
language he was there and then transferred to Transylvania or the Slovak
country or some other province where he had to teach his pupils in the
Magyar which they did not know. He was supposed to make the children
feel the vast superiority of all things Magyar, so that they should be
ashamed to walk with their own fathers in the streets and speak another
tongue. We are told occasionally in the _Morning Post_ that
consideration should be shown to the Magyars since they are a proud
people, but would they not merit more consideration if they were a
grateful people, grateful that the rest of Europe, overlooking their
Mongolian origin, has accepted them as equals? The Magyars were so
thoroughly persuaded of their own pre-eminence that when the devotees of
Haydn founded in his honour a society at Eisenstadt, where he had
worked, it was allowed on the condition that the statutes and the name
of the society and so forth should be in the Magyar language, although
Haydn was a German. Evidently the poor Slovenes of the Prekomurdje would
be swamped unless they showed exceptional vigour. And when they managed
to survive until after the War the Americans in Paris were for handing
them to Hungary on the ground that the frontier would, if it included
them in Yugoslavia, be an awkward one. Such is also the opinion of Mr.
A. H. E. Taylor in his _The Future of the Southern Slavs_; this author
advocates that Yugoslavia should be bounded by the Mur, albeit in
another part of the same book he says that "a small river is not usually
a good frontier, except on the map"; and the Mur is so narrow that when
Dr. Gaston Reverdy, of the French army, and I arrived at Ljutomir we
found that a crowd of these men and boys had waded across the stream in
order to lay their cause before the doctor, who represented the Entente
in that region. The Bol[vs]evik Magyars were just then threatening to
set all Prekomurdje on fire, and the pleasant-looking, rather shy men
who stood in rows before us begged the doctor to procure them
weapons--they would be able to defend themselves. It is satisfactory to
know that most of this portion of the Yugoslav lands has, after all, not
been lost to the mother country.
(_f_) THE AUSTRIAN FRONTIER
A considerable part of the frontier between Yugoslavia and Austria has
been determined by a plebiscite which was held, under French, British
and Italian control, in the autumn of 1920. The Slovenes during the
previous year had pointed out that while they could no longer claim so
wide a territory now that Austria had been drawn towards the Adriatic,
yet the rural population of Carinthia had remained Slovene, thanks to
the notable qualities of that people. The German-Austrians, on the other
hand, maintained that country districts are the appanages of a town, so
that the wishes of a rural population are of secondary importance. While
these questions were being debated in 1919 by the two interested
parties--and debated, very often, by their rifles--the Italians
intervened. Sonnino's paper, the _Epoca_, made a great outcry over
Klagenfurt (Celovec) which, if given to the Yugoslavs, would be an
insurmountable barrier, it said, to the trade between Triest and Vienna,
although it was clear that the railway connection through Tarvis
remained in the hands of the Italians. (There is not a single Italian
civilian in Tarvis--but no matter.) Meanwhile the French Press noted
that the Italians--presumably not as traders but as benefactors--were
seeing to it that the Austrians did not run short of arms and munitions.
For many months a large area was in a condition of uncertainty and
turmoil, till at last the Peace Conference ordered a plebiscite.
Two zones in Carinthia--"A" to the south-east, with its centre at
Velikovec (Voelkermarkt), and "B" to the north-west, with its centre at
Klagenfurt (Celovec)--were mapped out, and it was agreed that if the
voting in "A," the larger zone, were favourable to Austria, then the
other zone would automatically fall to that country. For several months
before the voting day this area--a region of beautiful and prosperous
valleys watered by the broad Drave and surrounded by magnificent
mountain ranges--for several months this area was the scene of great
activity. German-Austrians and Yugoslavs no longer, as in 1919, attacked
each other with the implements of war, but with pamphlet, broadsheet,
with eloquence and bribery. Austrian and Yugoslav officials took up
their headquarters at various places and saw to it that every voter
should be posted as to the moral and material advantage he would reap by
helping to make the land Austrian or Yugoslav, as the case might be. All
those were entitled to vote who, being twenty years of age in January
1919, had their habitual residence in this area; or, if not born in the
district, had belonged to it or had their habitual residence there from,
at least, January 1, 1912. The larger zone "A" was left under Yugoslav
administration, while zone "B" was under the Austrian authorities; and
the Inter-Allied officials exercised a very close supervision in order,
for example, to protect the partisans of either side from undue
repression at the hands of their opponents. Neither the Austrians nor
the Yugoslavs lost any opportunities for saying in public that the
Inter-Allied Commissions were honestly making every effort to be
impartial. It was, however, unfortunate that Italy should have sent as
her chief representative Prince Livio Borghese, who may have been as
impartial as his colleagues, but whose reputation, whether merited or
otherwise, could scarcely commend itself to the Yugoslavs. They believed
that his activities in Buda-Pest, under the Bol[vs]evik regime, and
afterwards in Vienna, had been very hostile to themselves. Each of the
three allied commissioners had a staff of some fifty or sixty officials,
whose upkeep and expenses were paid by the two interested countries.
If an average person had been asked to foretell the result of the
plebiscite I suppose he would have said that in zone "A" the Yugoslavs
and in zone "B" the Austrians would be successful. We have seen how the
Slovene renaissance of the nineteenth century was met by the central
authorities in Vienna (particularly after the German victory of 1871),
and how the local functionaries assisted them. They argued that Austria
with her miscellaneous races could only survive if one of them was
supreme. Therefore they looked askance on every one who regarded himself
as a Slovene; if he rose to be an official it had to be in another part
of the Monarchy, while for the maintenance of Austria (oblivious to the
argument that Austria was a perfectly unnatural affair) they favoured
all those who announced themselves to be on the side of the predominant
race. From 1903 onwards the Slovene language was barred from the courts
of Carinthia, and if a person did not understand the language of the
German magistrates he had to use an interpreter. The land was invaded by
the German _intelligentsia_: professors, masters in primary and
secondary schools, doctors, lawyers and so forth, excise officials and
railway officials--in 1912 Carinthia possessed about 5000 of these and
only 11/2 per cent. were Slovenes. Those among the Slovenes who were
capable of serving in such positions were dispatched to Carniola,
Dalmatia or preferably to the German-speaking lands of the Empire. A
provincial agricultural authority was set up in 1910 which was
recognized by the State and which enjoyed a monopoly. Its object was to
aid the progress of agriculture by establishing and supporting
agricultural schools, sending experts to the farmer, distributing
subsidies for the purchase of machinery, artificial manure and so on.
The council consisted of twenty-one members, of whom only one was a
Slovene; the subsidies were given to those who were recognized as
Germanophils, while requests were not permitted in the Slovene tongue.
As for the electoral districts, they were so manipulated that one deputy
represented 120,000 Slovenes and another represented 27,000 Germans.
Constituencies in which there was a German majority were allowed to send
two members, while the others only sent one. The German railway
employees worked so thoroughly for pan-Germanism that various Slovenes
were arrested--among them the mayor of a large village who wanted to
travel from Celovec--for asking in the Slovene language for a ticket.
With regard to schools, there were throughout Carinthia in 1860 some 28
Slovene and 56 Slovene-German foundations, whereas in 1914 there were 2
Slovene, 30 German and 84 mixed schools, where the two languages were
supposed to co-exist; they were indeed the home of two languages, for
the children were nearly all Slovene, whereas the teacher and the
language he used were German. Among 230 masters only 20 could read and
write Slovene. Qualified teachers who could satisfy this test were, as
we have mentioned, sent to other parts of the Empire. So far did the
system go that Slovene peasants upon whom the Government had forced a
German education speedily forgot the two hundred words which they had
learned, but as they had been taught no other script than the German
they were accustomed to write the Slovene language with German Gothic
characters. These peasants were fairly impervious to Germanization;
their strong sense of national consciousness was supported by the books,
religious and otherwise, which they received every year from some such
society as that of St. Hermagoras at Celovec, which distributed half a
million books a year among its 90,000 members.
But that which principally guided the peasant was the voice of his
priest, and the vast majority of priests in zone "A" were Slovenes. This
agricultural zone possesses no more than one or two small towns, where
the priest is less regarded. The traders and artisans frequently look
upon themselves as too highly cultured for the Church; they affect the
"Los von Rom" and the Socialist movements. By holding these menaces over
the Bishop's head a good deal of pressure could be brought to bear, and
this was done by the Germans, who were of opinion that the Church
unfairly encouraged the Slovenes. The Bishop of Celovec had both the
zones in his diocese until some months before the plebiscite, when a
temporary arrangement was made under which zone "A" was administered by
a vicar. But in bygone years the Bishop, with these threats hanging over
him, was wont to counsel prudence and to ask his clergy not to agitate
their flock, whom they were merely telling of their rights. In zone
"B," which mostly consists of the town of Celovec, the Church would
naturally be more susceptible to German influence, apart from the fact
that the Bishop himself is a Bavarian. For personal reasons--he is very
imperfectly acquainted with the Slovene language--he wished even the
clergy of zone "A" to correspond with him in German; but the priests
pointed out that their faithful parishioners wanted to follow this
correspondence and by far the greater number of them have no German....
In fact the Church has in each zone brought its help to the more
powerful party--the Slovene peasants in zone "A" and the German or
Germanophil townsfolk in zone "B"; and it appeared probable before the
plebiscite that in both cases she would be on the victorious side.
In foretelling the result of the plebiscite one would not pay much
attention to the census which the German-Austrian officials used to
take. A person was inscribed according to the language he ordinarily
employed, and this was, more often than not, considered to be German if
his superior was a German. Before the census of 1910 the _Grazer
Tagblatt_, which is the Germans' chief organ in those parts, proclaimed
that the official census was a portion of the national propaganda. All
the propagandist societies were entreated to do their utmost to induce
the people to declare German as their usual language. Very humorous
results were obtained. On December 18, 1910, the provincial council of
public instruction gave out the number of German and Slovene children
respectively in thirty Slovene parishes. Amongst them were the
following:
German Children. Slovene Children.
Borovlje (Ferlach) 31 per cent. 69 per cent.
Grab[vs]tajn (Grafenstein) 10.6 " 89.4 "
[vZ]relc (Ebenthal) 24.4 " 75.6 "
Pokr[vc]e (Poggersdorf) 1.3 " 98.7 "
Bistrica (Feistritz) 16.2 " 82.8 "
And twelve days later the official census gave these results:
Germans. Slovenes.
Borovlje 90 per cent. 10 per cent.
Grab[vs]tajn 50.1 " 49.9 "
[vZ]relc 49.2 " 50.8 "
Pokr[vc]e 41.1 " 58.9 "
Bistrica 44.4 " 55.6 "
Far more trustworthy is the almanac issued every year by the Church,
wherein a person's "usual language" is taken to be that in which he
listens to the word of God. These ecclesiastical lists were published by
German bishops, and according to them we find that the region we are
considering held in 1910 some 40,000 Germans and 123,000 Slovenes.
We have seen that Celovec, like the smaller towns in this area, leans
more to the Austrians than to the Yugoslavs. This is partly the effect
of the Austrian Government's policy and partly of the various pan-German
societies (_e.g._ the "Kaerntner Bauernbund," the "Verein der
Alldeutschen," the "Deutscher Volksverein," etc. etc.), which, as was
admitted, drew their funds to a considerable extent from Germany
herself.
The German Republic was very lavish in assisting her smaller Austrian
sister during the period before the plebiscite, pouring both goods and
cash into the district; and after the opening of the demarcation line
between the two zones at the beginning of August they were able to
introduce their supplies quite openly into zone "A." Very few Germans of
the north believe that the German-Austrian Republic will permanently
remain separated from themselves.... Both Yugoslavs and Austrians
circulated vast quantities of printed matter; for the Yugoslavs the most
convincing argument lay in Austria's apparently hopeless economic
position and the undesirability of belonging to a State which had to pay
so huge a debt; the Austrian pamphlets denounced the Serbs as a military
race, though even such a dealer in false evidence as the eminent
Austrian historian, Dr. Friedjung, would find it difficult to sustain
the thesis that the wars engaged in by the Serbs during the last hundred
years were more of an offensive than of a defensive character. In
several prettily prepared handbooks the voters were implored by the
Austrians not to be so old-fashioned as to plump for a monarchy when
they had such a chance of becoming republicans; one could almost see the
writer of these scornful phrases stop to wipe his over-heated brow after
having pushed back his old Imperial and Royal headgear. You might
imagine that the Austrians in their deplorable economic condition would
have avoided this topic; on the contrary, they proclaimed that several
commodities which were lacking in Yugoslavia could be furnished by them
in abundance. One of these, they said, was salt; and certainly the
Yugoslavs purchased a good deal of it, but that was only when they did
not know that it was German salt, which the Austrians bought in that
country and on which they made an adequate profit. When the Yugoslavs
wanted to get their supplies direct from Germany the Austrians
introduced a transit tax of 1000 crowns--not the nearly worthless
Austrian but Yugoslav crowns--per waggon. Later on when the Danube was
thrown open and this tax could not be levied, salt was considerably
cheaper in Yugoslavia than in Austria. So with plums--in 1919 Austria
bought nearly the whole of the exports from Yugoslavia at six crowns per
kilo and sold them to Germany at eleven to twelve crowns, the profit
going, so the authorities said, to the poor.
As the day of the plebiscite approached, the Yugoslavs seemed to be more
confident than the Austrians. The staunch peasants of zone "A" were not
greatly impressed by the numerous appeals to their heart and brain which
were handed to them by the Austrians in the Slovene language. And they
were not much alarmed at the idea of being joined to their countrymen of
the south, those unmitigated Serbs who thrived, if one was to believe
the Austrian propaganda, on atrocities. But this warning was ridiculed
by the Austrians themselves--on a market day at Velikovec you could see
the Austrophils wearing their colours, which they would scarcely have
done if they had been afraid of possible reprisals--and zone "A" was
generally presumed to have a Yugoslav majority. On such a market day one
saw very few Yugoslav colours in the farmers' button-holes, for it was
the wish of their leaders to avoid anything which might give rise to
unnecessary conflict. The day drew near and the Austrians thought that
they were making insufficient progress; for one thing, they were at a
disadvantage owing to the very low value of their money. They hoped that
Germany would come with more zeal than ever to the rescue, and they
hoped that something fatal would occur to Yugoslavia. So they asked the
Inter-Allied Commissions to put it to their Governments that it would
be advisable if the plebiscite were to be postponed for several months,
say until May 1921. But it was reported that the French and British
representatives declined to countenance the scheme. They may also have
feared that if the period of canvassing were to be so long drawn out,
the same passions would come to the surface as in the plebiscite in east
and west Prussia, where in many places the Poles could not display their
sympathies except at great personal risk. But in that particular
plebiscite it must be noted that the Allies were very imprudent in
confiding the maintenance of order to the rebaptized German Security
Police, a body which was entirely in the hands of the reactionary
clique. Yet the military precautions of zone "A" in Carinthia were not
what they should have been, for when the Yugoslavs had lost the
plebiscite an unrestrained horde of Austrian sympathizers, some of them
from that zone and some from outside it, some of them civilians and some
of them soldiers in mufti who made for certain places where supplies of
weapons had been hidden, swarmed across the land and terrorized the
Yugoslavs in such a fashion that a Yugoslav military force had to come
in to protect them. "But how barbaric are these Yugoslavs," sneered
their enemies, "for they refuse to recognize the result of the
plebiscite." More than one diplomat in Belgrade was ordered to present
himself at the Foreign Office and demand an answer why, etc. But the
Yugoslavs had no intention of imitating d'Annunzio.
Those who were not in the zone at the time of the voting might well be
astounded at the result, which was an Austrian victory by 22,025 votes
against 15,278 for Yugoslavia. In view of the undoubted Yugoslav
majority, it was felt that something more than active propaganda, before
and during the election, had been brought to bear. For example, in the
commune of Grab[vs]tajn (Grafenstein) the Germans are said to have
inscribed on the electoral list 180 persons from Celovec and Styria who
had no right to vote; they also asked that seventy strangers should be
inscribed. On submitting these claims to the judgment of the district
council the German leaders, even as the Yugoslavs, were required to
initial each request; it is alleged that these initialled papers, which
were attached to the claims, were left overnight in a room the key of
which was in the keeping of the German secretary, Schwarz. He is charged
with having removed the initialled papers from the Slovene claims and
affixed them to the German claims. There was a large amount of more
usual corruption. Thus it is known that twenty-eight Slovene servants at
an important landowner's were unable to resist the material arguments
and voted for the Germans. And if it is true that a number of people
voted twice and even three times the Inter-Allied Commission fell short
of its duties. It is said that the voting was so lax that if a stranger
had been inscribed and did not turn up to vote, his legitimation was
used by a native. Thus we are told of one Helena Rozenzoph, aged
seventy-five, who was inscribed at Grab[vs]tajn. This woman had never
existed; there had been a certain Barbara Rozenzoph who died in 1919,
and her vote was used by Marjeta Hanzio, aged twenty-two years. The case
was so flagrant that the Commission discovered it and the woman
confessed to having acted on a note which she had received from the
special Austrian _gendarmerie_ force, the Heimatsdienst. The Commission
seems to have been reluctant to take any steps against these frauds and
it is not astonishing that the commune of Grab[vs]tajn registered 1290
votes for the Austrian Republic and only 380 for Yugoslavia, although in
this commune of 3440 inhabitants there are no more than sixteen German
families. A German majority was thus obtained in a province which Dr.
Renner, the Austrian Chancellor, had acknowledged to be Slovene. It
seems incredible that the Commission should have so completely broken
down and the mystery may yet be cleared up, if as the Yugoslavia
delegate requested, all the voting papers have been preserved.... But
the _Hrvat_, the organ of the Narodny Club in Croatia (the
decentralizing but strongly national party) blames Monsignor Koro[vs]ec,
the leader of the Slovene clericals, for the disastrous plebiscite
result. He would have been better employed, it says, in organizing his
people than in gadding about Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Dalmatia
for the purpose of extending his party. He had boasted that the Slovenes
were so well organized that they were perfectly confident as to the
issue. It would seem, however, says the _Hrvat_, that an unexpectedly
large proportion of them are partly or entirely Germanized. And this,
more than the above-mentioned irregularities, may be chiefly responsible
for Yugoslavia's loss. One must also remember that many a Slovene would
shrink from garrison duty in Macedonia, while it would be very natural
for the Carinthian farmer to look up at the mountains that separated him
from Carniola and then to recollect that Celovec (Klagenfurt), the
economic centre of the whole area, would be Austrian. Nevertheless if
zone "A" had been smaller--and more completely Slav--it is probable that
the population would have risen superior to the various doubts which
assailed them. What we have said about the Slovenes who have become
Germanized is borne out by the _Koroski Slovenec_, a newspaper which
appears in Vienna and which, though since its formation has been
essentially hostile to the Austrians, tells us that after the plebiscite
the Slovenes have only suffered real oppression from their
denationalized compatriots. Difficulties arose with regard to the
closing of Slovene schools, but this was largely due to the fact that
many of the Slovene schoolmasters fled to Yugoslavia.
(_g_) THE ITALIAN FRONTIER
A Yugoslav barrister from Pola had gone to a neighbouring village--this
was in 1920--for the purpose of encouraging the natives, who were all
Southern Slavs. He asked them, in the event of their part of Istria
being allotted to the Italians, not to lose heart but to wait for the
day when justice would come by her own. In the middle of his
exhortations a jovial old farmer approached him and slapped him on the
back. "Cheer up, young man!" he exclaimed. "What is it that you are
afraid of?" ... The Slav population of Istria and Gorica-Gradi[vs]ca,
even as that of Dalmatia, has endured a great many things and is
prepared to endure a great many more. Kindness would have gone a long
way towards disarming them. If the Italians on the eastern Adriatic had
been exponents of the Mazzini spirit rather than--which too often has
been the case--of the direst Nationalist, then the Yugoslavs would have
accepted--mournfully, no doubt, but _faute de mieux_--the frontier from
the river Ar[vs]a in Istria which President Wilson suggested. This would
have been a compromise frontier, by which 400,000 Slovenes and Croats
would fall to Italy and a very much smaller number of Italians would
fall to Yugoslavia. It would have satisfied the great sensible mass of
the Italian people, but unfortunately was rejected by Baron Sonnino and
his myrmidons. Far more was claimed by him, and the succeeding Italian
Governments have had to struggle with the passions he so recklessly
aroused. They have been unable to persuade the country that with the
Ar[vs]a frontier they would be getting by no means a bad bargain. By the
Treaty of Rapallo the Italians have obtained much more: the whole of
Gorica-Gradi[vs]ca, portions of Carniola, the whole of Istria and
contiguity with Rieka (which is made a free town), the islands of
Lussin, Cres and Unie, sovereignty over a strip of five miles which
includes Zadar (and a few adjacent islands), finally the southern island
of Lastovo and Pelagosa which lies in the middle of the Adriatic.
In November 1920 all the outside world was congratulating the Italians
and the Yugoslavs on having, after many fruitless efforts of their
statesmen, come to this agreement. The opinion was expressed that both
of the contracting parties would henceforth be satisfied, since each of
them was conscious that the other had accepted something less than his
desires. It was noted that the Yugoslavs exhibited more generosity, as
they gave up some half a million of their countrymen, while the Italians
yielded in Dalmatia that to which they had no right. The Yugoslavs had,
in the past two years, shown so much more forbearance than was usually
expected of a vigorous young nation that the commentators for the most
part fancied they would not waste any time in grieving over these
inevitable sacrifices. It is freely said that if a liberal spirit is
displayed by the Italians at the various points where they and
Yugoslavia are in contact, both people will settle down, with no
afterthoughts, to friendly and neighbourly relations. But it would be
foolish to close our eyes to the fact that the position at Rieka and
Zadar, not to speak of any other places, bristles with difficulties. At
Rieka one hopes that the largest and wisest party, the Autonomists, will
now come into their rights; no doubt a good many of those opportunist
citizens who, at the time of the Italian occupation, developed into
Italianissimi, after having previously been known as more or less
platonic lovers of Italy, Hungary, or Croatia with ambitions chiefly
centred on their native town, will presently assure you that in the Free
State they are convinced Free Staters; but the local politicians have
been living for so long in such a thoroughly oppressive atmosphere that
most of those who have been prominent should for a season now retire. It
will be difficult enough for this harassed port to settle down to
business. As for the Zadar enclave, it is not easy to understand why an
Italian majority in this little town should bring it under the Italian
flag while the overwhelming Slav majorities of central and eastern
Istria have been ignored. And with all the goodwill in the world the
existence of this minute colony encircled by Yugoslav lands will
scarcely make more easy the conduct of relations between Yugoslavia and
Italy. It is naturally to the interest of both countries that
misunderstandings and suspicions should be swept away. And from this
point of view it is very doubtful whether the Italians were well advised
in taking Zadar into their possession. Presumably the Government was
forced to do so by the state of public feeling. They withstood this
feeling with regard to the magnificent harbour of Vis, which even
President Wilson suggested they should have, and contented themselves
with the smaller Yugoslav island of Lastovo (Lagosta). The pity is that
the Nationalists should have forced into their hands anything which may
turn and sting them.
It may be thought that we are excessively pessimistic in pointing rather
to the dangers which the Treaty places on the tapis than to the good
sense of those who will deal with them. We do not say that the Italians
would have permitted their Government to solve the Adriatic question in
a safer and more philosophic manner; but we cannot look forward with
that confidence we should have had if more sagacious counsels had
prevailed.
An arrangement most agreeable to the bulk of the interested population
would have been effected if two Free States, instead of one, had been
created: the small one of Rieka, and a larger one embracing Triest and
the western part of Istria. There would be in each of these two States a
mixed population, who would think with a shudder of the time when the
grass was growing on their quays. Italians and Slavs, prosperous as of
old, would very cordially agree that the experiment of being included in
Italy had been at any rate a commercial disaster. [D'Annunzio's
administration was, of course, a mere camouflage. Without the support of
the Italian Government, which paid his troops though calling them
rebels, the poet-adventurer could scarcely have lasted for a day; and
the swarm of officers, many of them worse adventurers than himself,
would have deserted him. Nor would the population of Rieka have listened
to his glowing periods if the Italian Government had not, under cover of
the Red Cross, sent an adequate supply of food into the town.] Both
Rieka and Triest were, therefore, living under practically the same
conditions, separated from their natural hinterland, and knowing very
well that as Italian towns their prospects were lamentable. It was
significant that the Italian Government should after a time have studied
the scheme of constructing a canal from Triest to the Save. Before the
War one-third of the urban population (and all the surrounding country)
was Yugoslav; and now, when so many Yugoslavs have departed and so many
Italians have arrived, even now it is certain that in a plebiscite not
10 per cent. would vote for Italy--and this minority would be largely
made up of those _leccapiatini_ (the "plate-lickers") who were the
humbler servants of Austria during the War and are now begging for
Italian plates. When the offices of the Socialist newspaper _Il
Lavoratore_--the Socialists are by far the most important party in
Triest--were taken by storm and gutted, the American Consul, Mr. Joseph
Haven, and the Paris correspondent of the _New York Herald_, Mr. Eyre,
happened to be in the building. They afterwards said that the attack by
those ultra-nationalist bands, the fascisti--very young men,
demobilized junior officers and so forth--was entirely unprovoked. The
carabinieri gazed indifferently at the scene. Such is life in Triest,
where the labour movement is gaining in strength every day. Its old
prosperity has departed--there is hardly any trade or water or gas,
since most of the coal was consumed, by order of the Italian
authorities, in making electric light for illuminations. These were
intended to show the city's irrepressible enthusiasm at being
incorporated in the kingdom of Italy. But the inhabitants know very well
that being one of Italy's many ports is worse than being the only port
of Austria; they know that the most direct railways to Austria pass
through Yugoslav territory, that henceforward the Danube will be much
more largely used by Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Hungary (none of whom
had a seaboard) and that Rieka will now be a more formidable rival than
of old.... So, too, at Pola we find that a majority of the population do
not wish their town to be retained in Italy; a number of Italian workmen
fled from the idle shipbuilding yards and actually came in 1919 and 1920
with the Slovene refugees, their fellow-townsmen, to Ljubljana in search
of employment. There are not sufficient orders to go round among such
yards in Italy where, owing to the absence of coal and iron, this
particular industry labours under great disadvantages. But if Rome
considers that the retention of Pola is strategically essential, then in
order to meet her wishes this town might be taken out of the
Triest-Istrian Free State--maybe the Italians will be able to do
something that will cause the citizens to cease regretting those good
days of old when, as Austria's chief naval base, she flourished on the
largesse of officers and men. But what can she do, and what could
anybody do? Hundreds of houses are deserted; and for the year 1920 the
owners of the theatre--which did not engage expensive actors but relied
mainly on cinema--were faced with a deficit of 12,000 lire.
The Triest-Istrian Free State would approximately contain, without Pola,
some 300,000 inhabitants, half Italian and half Yugoslav. The formation
of this State would be less advantageous to the Yugoslavs, for most of
the big landowners and the shop-keepers are Italians who live on the
Yugoslav peasants; but Yugoslavia, for the sake of peace, would be glad
to see the State come into existence. Eastern and central Istria,
forming a part of Yugoslavia and lying between the two Free States,
should extend to Porto di Bado, which would cause it to possess about
3,000 Italians and 280,000 Yugoslavs. If it were to be bounded by the
Ar[vs]a it would make the Italians in the Triest-Istrian State become a
minority.
With respect to the indisputable Slav districts east of the Isonzo,
_i.e._ the territory of Gorica-Gradi[vs]ca and an appreciable part of
Carniola, which have been adjudged to Italy and which long to be joined
to the Yugoslav State, there are two possible solutions. (In passing we
may observe that there is no country where the national frontier is more
clearly indicated. The linguistic frontier is so strictly defined that
the peasant on one side of it does not speak Italian and his neighbour
on the other side does not understand the Slovene tongue. Nevertheless,
Signor Colajanni, the venerable leader of the Italian Republicans, took
up an undemocratic point of view and declined to admit the argument of
the superiority of numbers, when he alluded to this frontier in a speech
to the Republican Congress at Naples. Waving numbers aside, he preferred
to appeal to history and culture, though he should have known that the
mass of the Slovene people is much better educated than the Italian
peasant.) The true ethnographical boundary would be the Isonzo--not many
Yugoslavs live to the west and not many Italians to the east of that
river. Only in the town of Gorica do we find Italians. In 1910 at the
census the Italian municipal authorities attempted to show that their
town was almost entirely Italian; at a subsequent census the Austrians
found that the returns had been largely falsified, and that in reality
Gorica contained 14,000 Italians and 12,000 Slovenes, while it is common
knowledge that if you go 500 yards from the town you meet nothing but
Slovenes. The prosperity of Gorica was mostly based on the export of
fruit and vegetables from the Slovene countryside. In 1898 the Slovenes
awakened, formed societies, started in business on a large scale and
boycotted the Italian merchants, who found themselves obliged to learn
the Slovene language. Suppose that, for the sake of meeting the wishes
of the Italian Nationalists, one half of the town were given to Italy,
then that portion would be faced with ruin. It would, therefore, be
advisable that the whole town should remain with its hinterland, and
that Italy and Yugoslavia should be divided from each other by the
Isonzo. But if this solution is impossible, then a large district east
of the Isonzo should be entirely and permanently neutralized, which
would not endanger the security of either State. Very different in
character is the line Triglav-Idria-Sneznik, which the Italians hold
ostensibly as a means of defence, but which is an offensive line against
Yugoslavia, and primarily against Ljubljana and Karlovac.
No doubt as the Italians in the eastern Adriatic have obtained a regular
position by the Treaty of Rapallo they will henceforth do their best to
win the love of their new subjects. They will disavow such officers as
that one on the sandy isle of Unie who accused the Slav priest of
propaganda, and in fact, as we have mentioned elsewhere, expelled him
for the reason that inside his church, where they had been for many
years, stood monuments of the two Slav apostles, SS. Cyril and Methodus.
St. Methodus was the wise administrator of these two--but even if he
takes the rulers of the eastern Adriatic under his particular protection
one must be prepared for them to fail in smothering, by their
enlightened rule, the discontent which in the last three years has grown
among the Yugoslavs to such acute proportions. It began, as we have
noted, under the aegis of Baron Sonnino; the old neighbour,
Austria-Hungary, had been Italy's hereditary foe, and the Baron's school
could not bring itself to regard the new neighbours in a friendly light,
although their house was so much less populated than that of their
predecessors, not to mention that of the Italians themselves.
There have been times during the last three years when a war between
Italy and Yugoslavia seemed scarcely avoidable--the natives of the
districts most concerned were looking forward to it with eagerness. At a
Yugoslav assembly held in Triest in the summer of 1919 the other
delegates were electrified by two priests from Istria who declared that
their people were straining at the leash, anxious for the word to snatch
up their weapons. (Many of these weapons, by the way, were of Italian
origin, as there had been no great difficulty in purchasing them from
the more pacific or the more Socialistic Italian soldiers; the usual
price was ten lire for a rifle and a hundred rounds.) If there should
come about a war between Italy and Yugoslavia, then it is to be supposed
that the Yugoslavs will afterwards take as their western frontier the
old frontier of Austria (except for the Friuli district, south of
Cormons, which they do not covet, since they look upon this ancient race
as Italian.)
By signing the Treaty of Rapallo the Yugoslav Government has shown that
it is ready to go to very great lengths in order to establish, as
securely as may be, an era of peace. It would be just as creditable on
the part of the Italians if they will consent to Istria being
partitioned in the way we have suggested, for they have been wrongly
taught to think themselves entitled to this country, and to believe that
the inhabitants, as a whole, are glad to be Italian subjects. "You may
suppose we are unpatriotic," the Austrian railway officials of Italian
nationality used to say, "but as Austria gives much better pay than we
should receive from Italy, we prefer that this part of the world should
be Austrian."
The relations between Italy and Yugoslavia have been treated at some
length, for it would require but little to bring a gathering of
storm-clouds to the sky. One even hears of Roman Catholics in Istria and
elsewhere abjuring their Church and--for the national cause--adopting
the Serbian Orthodox faith. Twenty years ago it happened that two
Istrian villages, Ricmanje and Log, went over to the Uniate and thence
to the Orthodox Church. This was on account of a quarrel with the Bishop
of Triest, who wanted, against the wishes of the people, to remove their
priest, Dr. Pojar. But now we have priests in the provinces given to
Italy who are openly calling on their flock to go over with them to
their Orthodox brothers; and this is a movement which, it is thought,
will merely be postponed by the introduction of the Slav liturgy. To
take a single sermon out of many, we may mention one which in the summer
of 1920 was preached in a church of the Vipava valley. The clergyman,
after lamenting that the chief dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church
are Italians, gave it as his opinion that there was nothing to choose in
point of goodness between that particular Church and the Orthodox
Church. "And," said an old peasant who came to Triest with the story of
what had happened, "never in my life did I hear so fine a sermon and one
that did me so much good."