surrendered to Serbia by her ex-enemies being hopelessly out of repair
and always in trouble. And in these villages you see the bare-footed
war-waifs, skulking about in bits of old ruins, children who have lost
father and mother and kith and kin, the kind care at best of American
relief societies. There is said to be no actual want anywhere in
Serbia now, but no nation ever had so many orphans.
At Belgrade, despite many foreign elements, the most constant
impression is one of a multiplied body politic. Belgrade is said to
have more cripples than any other capital of Europe. And Berlin comes
second. It is a one-eyed city, a city of one-legged men, a city of men
with beetling brows and contracted eyes, a city of unrelenting
cobble-stones and broken houses.
You go into the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and the door-keeper
cannot write; you go to the Foreign Office and are shown about
laboriously by a one-legged man. In fact, the one-legged man might be
taken as the type and symbol of the new Serbia. In commerce it is as
in politics. Shop windows are one-third full of goods, the most
ill-assorted goods, mostly coming through the old channels from Austria
and Germany. There has not been enough energy left in the nation to
find the means of making new trade connexions--as for instance, with
England. A curious anomaly, surely, that there should be a glut of our
own products on the home market whilst in Serbia, even taking our
exchange into account, prices range much higher. Thus politics and
trade. You see the new recruits of the conscripted army struggling
along in sixes and sevens, men of all shapes and sizes apparently in
one shape and size of war boot, causing such sufferings to young men.
There are no feather-bed soldiers here. In the schools and
universities, however, you see the rare earnestness of the Slav.
Such is Serbia. And if Germany had won it would have been impossible
to have seen her even in as fair terms as that. But some one outside
of the machine has intervened and the dead has come to life. Serbia
still lives.
One has to show a difference between Serbia and Jugo-Slavia, or the
Kingdom of Serbs, Hrvats,[1] and Slovenes, "S.H.S." as it is commonly
called. The new country is three times as large as the old one, and
the two new parts of Croatia and Slovenia are well-built, fruitful,
prosperous, with all the glamour of Austrian civilization resting on
them. On the one side of the old frontier the wild homelessness of the
mountains, on the other side park-like country, model towns, and broad,
fruitful plains. Hard-bitten, bookless Serbs, and softened bookish
Croats. As a responsibility of the peace Serbia has taken over large
tracts of smitten Austria. Looking at the new territory, one might
reckon it a rich spoil of war. But comparing Serbia as she is with
this ex-Austria, one cannot but be struck with the disparity between
them.
Croats and Slovenes are Slav by race, but strongly Austrian by
education. They were glad to come into the new confederation and
escape some of the penalties of defeated Austria. But once they were
definitely absorbed into the new State they did not feel so
comfortable. The vanity and quarrelsomeness of the Slav soon began to
speak. They hated Austria. But modern Austrian civilization was a
comfortable and well-oiled machine. The Slavs derived enormous
material benefits from their citizenship of the Austrian empire. Here
despite all the feuds was a well-kept home of nations.
Left to themselves the Croats would not have made a better State than
the Slavs usually make. But it is easy for them to imagine that the
good schools, good trains and railway service, and good municipal
administration, and the rest, were due to their own genius and not to
that of the German.
Between Serbia and the new territories stands Belgrade, the capital of
the whole. It is strikingly situated on the cliffs above the winding
Save which glimmers like silver in the evening. From the
shell-splintered fortress one looks forth over the vast fruitful plain
that was southernmost Austria. Here the Kaiser had a seat made for
himself in 1915 that he might look homeward in the evening. Thus he
turned his back on the Balkans and his scheme of the world.
Belgrade below the fortress wall is extensive but poor. Its tired main
street stretches out a long way with flabby houses on each side of its
cobbled wildness. There are as yet no buildings corresponding to the
dignity of a great capital. The old Parliament House is a little place
like a town-school, the temporary one is a converted whitewashed
barracks; the Cathedral is a parish church on a site suitable for a
mighty edifice; the Moscow Hotel looks like a seaside boarding
establishment; the Franco-Serbian Bank is housed in a place which might
pass for an old clothes warehouse in Whitechapel. There is a pleasant
little white stone Post-office. But the Foreign Office, the Education
Office, and other Government Departments are in buildings that might
well be blocks of flats or _pensions_ kept by respectable widows.
The population, if we rule out the Austrians, is mostly "the peasant
come to town"--a proletarian crowd, though not governed by proletarians
but by a small educated class plus an obedient army. You can see by
the women that it is a peasant people--not a jumper or a short skirt in
the whole of Belgrade. They are quiet-eyed and modest. The Serbs are
much harder than the Russians, and bear deeper in their souls the marks
of their historic chains. A tortured look in the face and a certain
dreadful impassivity of countenance are not uncommon. There is a
mixture of geniuses and of people who have not yet begun to live. They
have their Mestrovic, Velimirovic, Petronievic. Is there not in London
a certain M---- made not for our civilization but for two or three
grades higher in world development. Of those who have not yet begun to
live many are suspicious, violent, melancholy, with little instinct for
making life more or fuller, for living and letting live; in business
unenterprising and indisposed for work. The Serbs are potentially
gifted for literature, art, and thought; they are sincere and real in
temperament, but despite their efforts probably not gifted for modern
civilization as we know it.
As regards Belgrade, when prosperity returns we may see the growth of a
fine new city, not a complete town-planned Austrian city, supplied as
it were whole and in every part from a department store, but something
expressive of a new people. All these buildings we look upon to-day
are bound to pass into obscurity. The rising pillars of the
Skupstchina, Serbia's new Parliament House at the foot of Kossovo
Street, point to the future of some great new State.
The Croats say "When you go to Zagreb you will see the difference. Ah,
there is a city; there is civilization." They kiss their hands to show
what they mean. The Croats are Home Rulers. Like the Irish, they are
Catholics. Some of them look forward to the transfer of the capital to
Zagreb, and the changing of the letters of the kingdom to H.S.S. and
putting Hrvats first. Croats insist on the title Jugo-Slavia; Serbs
are inclined to drop it and revert to the name Serbia. The Germans
during the war are said to have promised the Croats to form the German
counterpart of the Allies' idea of Jugo-Slavia, and had Germany and
Austria won, a new constituent of Central Europe was to have been
inaugurated with its capital of Zagreb. The name Jugo-Slavia was
familiar to the Croats and popular with them before the Serbs adopted
it. The Croats think that because they are more educated than the
Serbs they should be the dominant party in the government of the new
State. The quarrel is aggravated by religious difference, Croats being
Roman Catholics and Serbs Orthodox. A number of the separatist
leaders, the chief of whom is Radic, an ex-bookseller, languish in
gaol. These are evidently self-centred people. If they think that
Europe would tolerate another independent Slav State with passports,
frontiers, tariffs, armies, and the rest, surely they are mad. And if
on the other hand, they would like to revert to ruined Austria and have
the value of all their money reduced ten times, surely they are not
very sane. Or if they think that they who suffered little should reap
the major benefits of the war-victory, they are certainly pitiable
egoists.
What is lacking in the new State is goodwill and the spirit of
co-operation. Serbia is terribly hampered by lack of loyalty in her
constituent elements. There is an impression of great uncertainty and
instability. The general bad health of Europe shows sharply at
Belgrade. The cost of living is irrationally high. There is something
of the atmosphere of Russia in 1916. Beggars swarm about the
restaurants and cafés. Cabmen, hawkers, and the poor hold one up for
absurd prices. The shops have odd sets of goods which seldom
correspond to one's desires. The value of the dinar fluctuates
violently, and offers golden opportunities to the many speculators.
The commonest trade-establishments are small banks and bucket-shops;
they range in fours and fives before the eyes. The Government is very
poor, and never feels out of financial difficulties. "We are always
faced with bankruptcy in three months," said Dr. Yannic in
conversation. The Government has been very hospitable to the Russians,
of whom it has almost 60,000 on its hands. It feeds them and tries to
place them where they can do work. It treated with Wrangel for the
establishment of 20,000 Cossacks to be planted along the marches of
Albania, and would have loved to have them, but has not as yet been
able to take them for lack of money. Serbia has done more for Russia
than any other nation.
"We've received not a mark of the indemnity," says M. Ribor, the
chairman of the Constituent Assembly. "And we do not receive financial
aid. On the other hand, is not France financing Hungary--the eternal
potential enemy of Jugo-Slavia?"
There is no certainty about the attitude of France and England.
England is felt to have cooled a little towards Serbia. France is a
source of bewilderment. The decoration of Belgrade with the Cross of
the Legion of Honour was accepted in very good part, and the French
Marshal who brought it was lauded to the skies. But the after-thought
was, when he went away--What did he come for? Was it not perhaps to
flatter Serbia into undertaking a part in some new war, perhaps against
the German, perhaps against the Soviets?
Suspicion is a marked characteristic of political life in Belgrade,
suspicion and fear. They are afraid of the Croat for his separatism,
of the Magyar for his malevolence, of the French for their intrigues,
of the Russians for their numbers and their superior gifts, of the
Austrians for their commercial enterprise. Secret agents abound, and
are evidently excellent. An enormous amount of information is
collected--information too disquieting and too voluminous to be coped
with.
The Serbs, however, have evidently tried hard to accommodate all
talents and all opinions in the new State. In the new Constitution
complete freedom of religion is being guaranteed to all sects; the
monarchy will be strictly constitutional; and all political ideas
except separatism and Bolshevism will be tolerated. Regarding
Bolshevism the Serbs have taken a strong line. It is a criminal
offence, and propagandists are liable to swift arrest. No
discrimination of any kind will be made against subjects of the kingdom
of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes on the ground of race.
Serbia by herself has not a large educated class. She has not enough
of her own to administer Jugoslavia, and consequently she looks
naturally to the employment of the Croat and Slovene educated class,
and also to the refugee Russians. Many Russian professors in exile
have found posts; Russian engineers and technicians are readily
accepted in the hope that their services may be used. In the Ministry
and in the Government offices the other races are amply represented.
Ribor himself, the Speaker of the Constituent Assembly, is a Croat.
The previous obligations of the Austrian Government have in many cases
been taken over. Those who received pensions or subsidies from Austria
are provided for by Serbia. Not that that always gives content.
A characteristic case is that of Kossor, the well-known dramatist, an
Austrian Croat. In the Austrian style he received a State subsidy of
three hundred crowns in encouragement of his talent. The Serbs have
continued that, and given him the equivalent in dinars. But he is
attached to the Art Department of the Ministry of Education and has to
put in an appearance every day--a duty which goes a long way to
stultify one's inspirations.
Kossor is characteristically unhappy in Belgrade. The cobblestones
have a psychological effect on the soul. He feels restricted, and
would like to travel: especially would he like to return to England,
for which, like many others who were refugees among us, he retains the
warmest feelings.
The English in Belgrade are inclined to say that all the Serbian
students who went to England returned atheists and Bolshevists. A
personal impression is, however, contrary. S---- and Y---- who took
their bachelorates of divinity at Oxford, and Lukovic, who graduated at
Cambridge, are warmly devoted to England, and stand for our culture
where by far the most of the young educated people are frankly ignorant
or entirely misinformed regarding England and England's ideals.
Whatever trouble we took and whatever we spent on giving education to
Serbian boys in England was not misapplied and will bear a good fruit
of friendship by and by. That the students of new Belgrade are
free-thinkers, and chased Dr. Mott from the lecture hall is not of much
importance--students usually do behave in that way nowadays. A
university of students all believers would be edifying if it were not
amusing. The modern way to real belief and understanding lies through
denial and agnosticism and free-thinking of all kinds, and Serbia is in
a state of transit from peasant Christianity to modern positive
Christianity. Her need is for well-guided transitional education.
There is no bridge from the simple piety of the peasant to instructed
belief. The peasant marches to a precipice and then falls headlong
into atheism. Strangely enough, the Church even when it realizes this
danger seems unable to build the bridge. Its only remedy is to try and
stop the march of the peasant. This is dangerous, for in time the
peasant can then push his obstruction also over the precipice.
"If only we were as strong spiritually as we are militarily and
economically I should feel happy about Serbia," says Bishop Nicholas on
his return from America. But Jugo-Slavia--one must think of the whole
new State--is not strong in any way yet. Her strength is very great
and mysterious but is still potential. Some day In the future perhaps
five years hence, or ten, if Jugo-Slavia still holds together, we shall
have a great State here with Belgrade as a worthy capital. Austria
will have moved south. There are at least prospects of enormous
commercial prosperity, and on that basis the Arts will surely flourish.
All depends on the Slavs holding together and forgetting their
differences. The Spirit will blow where it listeth, and one day it
will be with Serbia and on another it will be gone.
[1] Slav name for Croats.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
VI. FROM BELGRADE (II)
Up on the cliff one evening a party of Serbs were listening to a
Russian soldier, one of Wrangel's army invalided to a hospital camp
near Belgrade. "Which of these rivers is the Danube?" said he.
The Serbs pointed out where the Save joined the main stream, like a
thread of silver joining a silver ribbon.
"Ah," said the Russian. "And my grandfather was killed on that river,
fighting to free the Slavs. Defenceless little brothers, the Slavs!
When the war began the enemy was right into your capital of Belgrade at
once, but we Russians plunged into East Prussia. Yes, I was there,
brothers, and was wounded and marched back to the Niemen with my wound
open----"
He recounted where he had been in the war, and was so circumstantial
that one by one the Serbs said good-bye and wished him luck and went
away. And he was left standing there alone, looking over the gloomy
Austrian plain below where night was descending fast.
"Would you like to have tea?" I asked. "My lodging is quite close."
He readily agreed, and so we went across to the "Patriarchate" and up
to Bishop Nikolai's white room.
Budomir, Nikolai's servant, a shell-shocked soldier, struck a posture
of pleasure and stoked up the fire to boil some water. Budomir had
been a student and now could multiply numbers of four figures in his
head though he could do little else. He was devoted to Nikolai, and
insisted on serving me because I was Nikolai's friend. The Russian
soldier marvelled to find himself in a room so strongly Orthodox in its
appearance, and he did not fail to cross himself elaborately.
Then he showed us the various crosses which he wore round his neck.
One of these touched him very much: it had been given him by his mother
in August, 1914, when he set out for the war. It had protected him
ever since. He had gone through untold dangers and hardships, and had
actually never seen his home and his wife and his child since that
August morning when he marched away.
He belonged to a Guards regiment, and so I was interested to know what
part he had taken in the revolution, and what he thought of it all. It
should be remembered he was not a newspaper-reading Russian. He called
himself a _Gosudarstvenny_ or State peasant, apparently indicating that
his family had not been serfs but had been free men. He was normally a
peaceful tiller of the soil, stopped at the plough and put into
battle-harness by the politicians of Europe.
Though now one of Wrangel's army he attributed all Russia's misfortunes
to the "burgui." What a bourgeois really was he had not the remotest
idea, but the word served. It was the burgui who brought about the
March '17 revolution in Russia. "If we had been at Petrograd then it
could not have happened," said he.
"How?"
"Well, before the revolution took place, the burgui arranged that the
stanchest regiments should be sent to France. Yes, our regiment of
Guards was actually in the lines below Verdun when the Tsar was
dethroned.
"They did not tell us what had happened. We learned it first from the
Germans. They began calling out to us, 'The Tsar has abdicated.' We
did not pay any attention, as they were always shouting lies. Then
they erected long banners outside their trenches with the words 'There
is revolution in Russia. The Tsar has abdicated. Why do you go on
fighting?'
"We were so infuriated by this that we planned a night attack on our
own, and without the knowledge of our officers we entered the German
trenches that night, just to show them what it meant to insult the
Tsar. There was a great noise. The German artillery awoke. Ours
replied. Our neighbours on the right and left wondered what was
happening, and in the morning our N.C.O.'s were called to explain what
it was all about. They told the story and were strongly reprimanded.
Then officers addressed us and told us the bitter truth that there was
actually revolution in Russia. And we wept, and the officers wept with
us. . . ."
He was a sentimental warrior, and the tears glistened in his eyes now.
He professed to be unendingly devoted to the Tsar. His regiment would
have made a mountain of its dead rather than let them take the Tsar.
If the Tsar had even been in the Crimea when Wrangel was there they
would never have given him up.
"Whom have you hope in now?" I asked. "General Wrangel cannot do any
more."
"There's only one man."
"Who is that?"
"That man is Burtsef."
What an extraordinary conjunction of sentiments!--devotion to the Tsar
and belief in Burtsef! But here it was. The bourgeois were to blame
for all Russia's troubles, and yet he was a soldier in the army that
wanted to restore the bourgeois. Such paradoxical attitudes are no
doubt responsible for the current official opinion in Serbia that all
Russians tend to become Bolshevik, and that they may be a dangerous
element in the State.
The soldier had three glasses of tea and then inverted his glass and
got up and was most profuse in thanks, and for the present of a few
dinars actually got down on his knees in thankfulness.
"You are going back to your hospital camp--how will you go?" I asked.
"On foot?"
"No, by train. They give us a free pass on the railway. Some say
they'll soon give us a free pass back to Russia!"
He looked very woebegone. He showed me his Georgian cross given for
bravery in the field, and then once more the ikon his mother had given
him. "Seven years, and I haven't once been home," said he.
"Seven years," he repeated mechanically, and began stumbling out of the
room.
He was a strange and touching witness of the power of the human
eruption in Russia. As it were, a clod of earth had been lifted from
the province of Tambof and flung as far as the Balkans. Another
witness of another kind was the old Archbishop of Minsk whom I found in
the monastery of Ravanitsa.
The Secretary of State for Religion very kindly facilitated my journey
to the shrine of St. Lazar, where I saw Serbia's mediaeval prince lying
headless before the altar. Strange to say, it seemed as if the body
had a head. The shroud was raised to disclose his brown and wizened
fingers and shrunken middle, and where the head should be were the
contours of a head under a veil. At my desire the cloth was lifted,
and I saw instead of a head a large jewelled mitre.
The monks showed me "bulls" and charters and proclamations and
manuscripts, mostly eloquent now of the ill-faith of Serbia's
neighbours. They were, however, humorous and vivacious and well-fed
monks who bore no ill-will against Turk or Austrian or anyone; they
were good fellows happily lodged by the Church, and without much care
or sorrow of any kind; such a contrast to those outside the Church.
They gave me a room with a comfortable bed and white sheets, and they
regaled Kostya Lukovic and myself and anyone else who happened to
arrive, with old-fashioned generosity of wine and viands.
It was here we met the Archbishop of Minsk, once Rector of the
Theological Academy at Petrograd. He had lost his diocese and lost his
academy; a little old, stooping, grey-haired man, very witty, very
sardonic and indulging in endless pleasantries at the expense of us
all. He drank to England but not to Lloyd George. He drank to meeting
me again--in Moscow. He drank to Serbia, and hoped they'd raise the
standard of doctorate of divinity. He drank to France, without her
ally Poland who had seized most of his diocese of Minsk and was making
it Roman Catholic. He drank to Russia--and a change of heart. In
fact, it is difficult to remember all the toasts he proposed. I
responded in sips, he in half-glasses; the Archimandrite, who had only
a second place at the table, in tumblerfuls; the deacon opposite me
having a strong character, refused to go on, and it was certainly
curious to see this little old archbishop taunt him and ask him if he
were afraid and stir him on to drink more than was good for him. But
he was a Russian first and then an archbishop, and he had lost all that
he cared for. It may be asked, had he lost his faith, too? But do
rectors of theological academies have faith? Seldom, surely.
"The teaching of theology has been abolished in Russia now," said he
next morning, sitting out in the sun and feeding young calves with
bread which he had saved from the breakfast table. "There are no young
students now preparing to be priests. The next generation will be
without clergy."
"But it is a people's Church," I observed. "If there are no priests,
they will take the services themselves. The peasants have an
extraordinary amount of church lore among themselves."
The prelate appeared to be scandalized. "That is of no use. A priest
must first study and then be ordained. Without knowledge the Church
would soon be lost."
"What do you think of the Patriarch of Moscow? He has come to terms
with Lenin."
"He is a weak man," said the Archbishop.
I recalled an opinion of Bishop Nicholas of Serbia that Patriarch
Tikhon would be next dictator of Russia.
The Archbishop of Minsk smiled gently and ironically, and then said
quietly:
"Never. And he has too simple a mind to cope with the enemies of
Russia."