Part 8

It must at this time be recalled in what an extraordinary way the Serb race had fortuitously been broken up into a number of quite arbitrary political divisions. Dalmatia (three per cent. of the population of which is Italian and all the rest Serb or Croat, preponderatingly Serb and Orthodox in the south and preponderating Croat or Roman Catholic in the north) was a province of Austria and sent deputies to the Reichsrath at Vienna; at the same time it was territorially isolated from Austria and had no direct railway connexion with any country except a narrow-gauge line into Bosnia. Croatia and Slavonia, preponderatingly Roman Catholic, were lands of the Hungarian crown, and though they had a provincial pseudo-autonomous diet at Agram, the capital of Croatia, they sent deputies to the Hungarian parliament at Budapest. Thus what had in the Middle Ages been known as the triune kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, with a total Serbo-Croat population of three millions, was divided between Austria and Hungary.

Further, there were about 700,000 Serbs and Croats in the south of Hungary proper, cast and north of the Danube, known as the Banat and Bačka, a district which during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the hearth and home of Serb literature and education, but which later waned in importance in that respect as independent Serbia grew. These Serbs were directly dependent on Budapest, the only autonomy they possessed being ecclesiastical. Bosnia and Hercegovina, still nominally Turkish provinces, with a Slav population of nearly two million (850,000 Orthodox Serbs, 650,000 Mohammedan Serbs, and the rest Roman Catholics), were to all intents and purposes already imperial lands of Austria-Hungary, with a purely military and police administration; the shadow of Turkish sovereignty provided sufficient excuse to the de facto owners of these provinces not to grant the inhabitants parliamentary government or even genuine provincial autonomy. The Serbs in Serbia numbered nearly three millions, those in Montenegro about a quarter of a million; while in Turkey, in what was known as Old Serbia (the sandjak of Novi-Pasar between Serbia and Montenegro and the vilayet of Korovo), and in parts of northern and central Macedonia, there were scattered another half million. These last, of course, had no voice at all in the management of their own affairs. Those in Montenegro lived under the patriarchal autocracy of Prince Nicholas, who had succeeded his uncle, Prince Danilo, in 1860, at the age of nineteen. Though no other form of government could have turned the barren rocks of Montenegro into fertile pastures, many of the people grew restless with the restricted possibilities of a career which the mountain principality offered them, and in latter years migrated in large numbers to North and South America, whither emigration from Dalmatia and Croatia too had already readied serious proportions. The Serbs in Serbia were the only ones who could claim to be free, but even this was a freedom entirely dependent on the economic malevolence of Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Cut up in this way by the hand of fate into such a number of helpless fragments, it was inevitable that the Serb race, if it possessed any vitality, should attempt, at any cost, to piece some if not all of them together and form an ethnical whole which, economically and politically, should be master of its own destinies. It was equally inevitable that the policy of Austria-Hungary should be to anticipate or definitively render any such attempt impossible, because obviously the formation of a large south Slav state, by cutting off Austria from the Adriatic and eliminating from the dual monarchy all the valuable territory between the Dalmatian coast and the river Drave, would seriously jeopardize its position as a great power; it must be remembered, also, that Austria-Hungary, far from decomposing, as it was commonly assumed was happening, had been enormously increasing in vitality ever since 1878.

The means adopted by the governments of Vienna and Budapest to nullify the plans of Serbian expansion were generally to maintain the political émiettement of the Serb race, the isolation of one group from another, the virtually enforced emigration of Slavs on a large scale and their substitution by German colonists, and the encouragement of rivalry and discord between Roman Catholic Croat and Orthodox Serb. No railways were allowed to be built in Dalmatia, communication between Agram and any other parts of the monarchy except Fiume or Budapest was rendered almost impossible; Bosnia and Hercegovina were shut off into a watertight compartment and endowed with a national flag composed of the inspiring colours of brown and buff; it was made impossible for Serbs to visit Montenegro or for Montenegrins to visit Serbia except via Fiume, entailing the bestowal of several pounds on the Hungarian state steamers and railways. As for the sandjak of Novi-Pazar, it was turned into a veritable Tibet, and a legend was spread abroad that if any foreigner ventured there he would be surely murdered by Turkish brigands; meanwhile it was full of Viennese ladies giving picnics and dances and tennis parties to the wasp-waisted officers of the Austrian garrison. Bosnia and Hercegovina, on the other hand, became the model touring provinces of Austria-Hungary, and no one can deny that their great natural beauties were made more enjoyable by the construction of railways, roads, and hotels. At the same time this was not a work of pure philanthropy, and the emigration statistics are a good indication of the joy with which the Bosnian peasants paid for an annual influx of admiring tourists. In spite of all these disadvantages, however, the Serbo-Croat provinces of Austria-Hungary could not be deprived of all the benefits of living within a large and prosperous customs union, while being made to pay for all the expenses of the elaborate imperial administration and services; and the spread of education, even under the Hapsburg régime, began to tell in time. Simultaneously with the agitation which emanated from Serbia and was directed towards the advancement, by means of schools and religious and literary propaganda, of Serbian influence in Bosnia and Hercegovina, a movement started in Dalmatia and Croatia for the closer union of those two provinces. About 1906 the two movements found expression in the formation of the Serbo-Croat or Croato-Serb coalition party, composed of those elements in Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia which favoured closer union between the various groups of the Serb race scattered throughout those provinces, as well as in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Turkey. Owing to the circumstances already described, it was impossible for the representatives of the Serb race to voice their aspirations unanimously in any one parliament, and the work of the coalition, except in the provincial diet at Agram, consisted mostly of conducting press campaigns and spreading propaganda throughout those provinces. The most important thing about the coalition was that it buried religious antagonism and put unity of race above difference of belief. In this way it came into conflict with the ultramontane Croat party at Agram, which wished to incorporate Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Dalmatia with Croatia and create a third purely Roman Catholic Slav state in the empire, on a level with Austria and Hungary; also to a lesser extent with the intransigent Serbs of Belgrade, who affected to ignore Croatia and Roman Catholicism, and only dreamed of bringing Bosnia, Hercegovina, and as much of Dalmatia as they could under their own rule; and finally it had to overcome the hostility of the Mohammedan Serbs of Bosnia, who disliked all Christians equally, could only with the greatest difficulty be persuaded that they were really Serbs and not Turks, and honestly cared for nothing but Islam and Turkish coffee, thus considerably facilitating the germanization of the two provinces. The coalition was wisely inclined to postpone the programme of final political settlement, and aimed immediately at the removal of the material and moral barriers placed between the Serbs of the various provinces of Austria-Hungary, including Bosnia and Hercegovina. If they had been sure of adequate guarantees they would probably have agreed to the inclusion of all Serbs and Croats within the monarchy, because the constitution of all Serbs and Croats in an independent state (not necessarily a kingdom) without it implied the then problematic contingencies of a European war and the disruption of Austria-Hungary. Considering the manifold handicaps under which Serbia and its cause suffered, the considerable success which its propaganda met with in Bosnia and Hercegovina and other parts of Austria-Hungary, from 1903 till 1908, is a proof, not only of the energy and earnestness of its promoters and of the vitality of the Serbian people, but also, if any were needed, of the extreme unpopularity of the Hapsburg régime in the southern Slav provinces of the dual monarchy. Serbia had no help from outside. Russia was entangled in the Far East and then in the revolution, and though the new dynasty was approved in St. Petersburg Russian sympathy with Serbia was at that time only lukewarm. Relations with Austria-Hungary were of course always strained; only one single line of railway connected the two countries, and as Austria-Hungary was the only profitable market, for geographical reasons, for Serbian products, Serbia could be brought to its knees at any moment by the commercial closing of the frontier. It was a symbol of the economic vassalage of Serbia and Montenegro that the postage between both of these countries and any part of Austria-Hungary was ten centimes, that for letters between Serbia and Montenegro, which had to make the long détour through Austrian territory, was twenty-five. But though this opened the Serbian markets to Austria, it also incidentally opened Bosnia, when the censor could be circumvented to propaganda by pamphlet and correspondence. Intercourse with western Europe was restricted by distance, and, owing to dynastic reasons, diplomatic relations were altogether suspended for several years between this country and Serbia. The Balkan States Exhibition held in London during the summer of 1907, to encourage trade between Great Britain and the Balkans, was hardly a success. Italy and Serbia had nothing in common. With Montenegro even, despite the fact that King Peter was Prince Nicholas’s son-in-law, relations were bad. It was felt in Serbia that Prince Nicholas’s autocratic rule acted as a brake on the legitimate development of the national consciousness, and Montenegrin students who visited Belgrade returned to their homes full of wild and unsuitable ideas. However, the revolutionary tendencies, which some of them undoubtedly developed, had no fatal results to the reigning dynasty, which continued as before to enjoy the special favour as well as the financial support of the Russian court, and which, looked on throughout Europe as a picturesque and harmless institution, it would have been dangerous, as it was quite unnecessary, to touch.

Serbia was thus left entirely to its own resources in the great propagandist activity which filled the years 1903 to 1908. The financial means at its disposal were exiguous in the extreme, especially when compared with the enormous sums lavished annually by the Austrian and German governments on their secret political services, so that the efforts of its agents cannot be ascribed to cupidity. Also it must be admitted that the kingdom of Serbia, with its capital Belgrade, thanks to the internal chaos and dynastic scandals of the previous forty years, resulting in superficial dilapidation, intellectual stagnation, and general poverty, lacked the material as well as the moral glamour which a successful Piedmont should possess. Nobody could deny, for instance, that, with all its natural advantages, Belgrade was at first sight not nearly such an attractive centre as Agram or Sarajevo, or that the qualities which the Serbs of Serbia had displayed since their emancipation were hardly such as to command the unstinted confidence and admiration of their as yet unredeemed compatriots. Nevertheless the Serbian propaganda in favour of what was really a Pan-Serb movement met with great success, especially in Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Old Serbia (northern Macedonia).

Simultaneously the work of the Serbo-Croat coalition in Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia made considerable progress in spite of clerical opposition and desperate conflicts with the government at Budapest. Both the one movement and the other naturally evoked great alarm and emotion in the Austrian and Hungarian capitals, as they were seen to be genuinely popular and also potentially, if not actually, separatist in character. In October 1906 Baron Achrenthal succeeded Count Goluchowski as Minister for Foreign Affairs at Vienna, and very soon initiated a more vigorous and incidentally anti-Slav foreign policy than his predecessor. What was now looked on as the Serbian danger had in the eyes of Vienna assumed such proportions that the time for decisive action was considered to have arrived. In January 1908 Baron Achrenthal announced his scheme for a continuation of the Bosnian railway system through the sandjak of Novi-Pazar to link up with the Turkish railways in Macedonia. This plan was particularly foolish in conception, because, the Bosnian railways being narrow and the Turkish normal gauge, the line would have been useless for international commerce, while the engineering difficulties were such that the cost of construction would have been prohibitive. But the possibilities which this move indicated, the palpable evidence it contained of the notorious Drang nach Osten of the Germanic powers towards Salonika and Constantinople, were quite sufficient to fill the ministries of Europe, and especially those of Russia, with extreme uneasiness. The immediate result of this was that concerted action between Russia and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans was thenceforward impossible, and the Mürzsteg programme, after a short and precarious existence, came to an untimely end (cf. chap. 12). Serbia and Montenegro, face to face with this new danger which threatened permanently to separate their territories, were beside themselves, and immediately parried with the project, hardly more practicable in view of their international credit, of a Danube-Adriatic railway. In July 1908 the nerves of Europe were still further tried by the Young Turk revolution in Constantinople. The imminence of this movement was known to Austro-German diplomacy, and doubtless this knowledge, as well as the fear of the Pan-Serb movement, prompted the Austrian foreign minister to take steps towards the definitive regularization of his country’s position in Bosnia and Hercegovina—provinces whose suzerain was still the Sultan of Turkey. The effect of the Young Turk coup in the Balkan States was as any one who visited them at that time can testify, both pathetic and intensely humorous. The permanent chaos of the Turkish empire, and the process of watching for years its gradual but inevitable decomposition, had created amongst the neighbouring states an atmosphere of excited anticipation, which was really the breath of their nostrils; it had stimulated them during the endless Macedonian insurrections to commit the most awful outrages against each other’s nationals and then lay the blame at the door of the unfortunate Turk; and if the Turk should really regenerate himself, not only would their occupation be gone, but the heavily-discounted legacies would assuredly elude their grasp. At the same time, since the whole policy of exhibiting and exploiting the horrors of Macedonia, and of organizing guerilla bands and provoking intervention, was based on the refusal of the Turks to grant reforms, as soon as the ultra-liberal constitution of Midhat Pasha, which, had been withdrawn after a brief and unsuccessful run in 1876, was restored by the Young Turks, there was nothing left for the Balkan States to do but to applaud with as much enthusiasm as they could simulate. The emotions experienced by the Balkan peoples during that summer, beneath the smiles which they had to assume, were exhausting even for southern temperaments. Bulgaria, with its characteristic matter-of-factness, was the first to adjust itself to the new and trying situation in which the only certainty was that something decisive had got to be done with all possible celerity. On October 5, 1908, Prince Ferdinand sprang on an astonished continent the news that he renounced the Turkish suzerainty (ever since 1878 the Bulgarian principality had been a tributary and vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, and therefore, with all its astonishingly rapid progress and material prosperity, a subject for commiseration in the kingdoms of Serbia and Greece) and proclaimed the independence of Bulgaria, with himself, as Tsar of the Bulgars, at its head. Europe had not recovered from this shock, still less Belgrade and Athens, when, two days later. Baron Aehrenthal announced the formal annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by the Emperor Francis Joseph. Whereas most people had virtually forgotten the Treaty of Berlin and had come to look on Austria as just as permanently settled in these two provinces as was Great Britain in Egypt and Cyprus, yet the formal breach of the stipulations of that treaty on Austria’s part, by annexing the provinces without notice to or consultation with the other parties concerned, gave the excuse for a somewhat ridiculous hue and cry on the part of the other powers, and especially on that of Russia. The effect of these blows from right and left on Serbia was literally paralysing. When Belgrade recovered the use of its organs, it started to scream for war and revenue, and initiated an international crisis from which Europe did not recover till the following year. Meanwhile, almost unobserved by the peoples of Serbia and Montenegro, Austria had, in order to reconcile the Turks with the loss of their provinces, good-naturedly, but from the Austrian point of view short-sightedly, withdrawn its garrisons from the sandjak of Novi-Pazar, thus evacuating the long-coveted corridor which was the one thing above all else necessary to Serbia and Montenegro for the realization of their plans.

20 Serbia and Montenegro, and the two Balkan Wars, 1908–13 (cf. Chap, 13)

The winter of 1908-9 marked the lowest ebb of Serbia’s fortunes. The successive coups and faits accomplis carried out by Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria during 1908 seemed destined to destroy for good the Serbian plans for expansion in any direction whatever, and if these could not be realized then Serbia must die of suffocation. It was also well understood that for all the martial ardour displayed in Belgrade the army was in no condition to take the field any more than was the treasury to bear the cost of a campaign; Russia had not yet recovered from the Japanese War followed by the revolution, and indeed everything pointed to the certainty that if Serbia indulged in hostilities against Austria-Hungary it would perish ignominiously and alone. The worst of it was that neither Serbia nor Montenegro had any legal claim to Bosnia and Hercegovina: they had been deluding themselves with the hope that their ethnical identity with the people of these provinces, supported by the effects of their propaganda, would induce a compassionate and generous Europe at least to insist on their being given a part of the coveted territory, and thus give Serbia access to the coast, when the ambiguous position of these two valuable provinces, still nominally Turkish but already virtually Austrian, came to be finally regularized. As a matter of fact, ever since Bismarck, Gorchakóv, and Beaconsfield had put Austria-Hungary in their possession in 1878, no one had seriously thought that the Dual Monarchy would ever voluntarily retire from one inch of the territory which had been conquered and occupied at such cost, and those who noticed it were astonished at the evacuation by it of the sandjak of Novi-Pazar. At the same time Baron Achrenthal little foresaw what a hornet’s nest he would bring about his ears by the tactless method in which the annexation was carried out. The first effect was to provoke a complete boycott of Austro-Hungarian goods and trading vessels throughout the Ottoman Empire, which was so harmful to the Austrian export trade that in January 1909 Count Achrenthal had to indemnify Turkey with the sum of £2,500,000 for his technically stolen property. Further, the attitude of Russia and Serbia throughout the whole winter remained so provocative and threatening that, although war was generally considered improbable, the Austrian army had to be kept on a war footing, which involved great expense and much popular discontent. The grave external crisis was only solved at the end of March 1909; Germany had had to deliver a veiled ultimatum at St. Petersburg, the result of which was the rescue of Austria-Hungary from an awkward situation by the much-advertised appearance of its faithful ally in shining armour. Simultaneously Serbia had to eat humble pie and declare, with complete absence of truth, that the annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina had not affected its interests.

Meanwhile the internal complications in the southern Slav provinces of Austria-Hungary were growing formidable. Ever since the summer of 1908 arrests had been going on among the members of the Croato-Serb coalition, who were accused of favouring the subversive Pan-Serb movement. The press of Austria-Hungary magnified the importance of this agitation in order to justify abroad the pressing need for the formal annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina. The fact was that, though immediate danger to the monarchy as a result of the Pan-Serb agitation was known not to exist, yet in the interests of Austrian foreign policy, the Serbs had to be compromised in the eyes of Europe, the Croato-Serb coalition within the Dual Monarchy had to be destroyed to gratify Budapest in particular, and the religious and political discord between Croat and Serb, on which the foundation of the power of Austria-Hungary, and especially that of Hungary, in the south rested, and which was in a fair way of being eliminated through the efforts of the coalition, had to be revived by some means or other. It is not possible here to go into the details of the notorious Agram high treason trial, which was the outcome of all this. It suffices to say that it was a monstrous travesty of justice which lasted from March till October 1909, and though it resulted in the ostensible destruction of the coalition and the imprisonment of many of its members, it defeated its own ends, as it merely fanned the flame of nationalistic feeling against Vienna and Budapest, and Croatia has ever since had to be governed virtually by martial law. This was followed in December 1909 by the even more famous Friedjung trial. In March 1909 Count Achrenthal had begun in Vienna a violent press campaign against Serbia, accusing the Serbian Government and dynasty of complicity in the concoction of nefarious designs and conspiracies against the integrity of Austria-Hungary. This campaign was thought to be the means of foreshadowing and justifying the immediate military occupation of Serbia. Unfortunately its instigator had not been sufficiently particular as to the choice of his tools and his methods of using them. Among the contributors of the highly tendencious articles was the well-known historian Dr. Friedjung, who made extensive use of documents supplied him by the Vienna Foreign Office. His accusations immediately provoked an action for libel on the part of three leaders of the Croato-Serb coalition who were implicated, in December 1909. The trial, which was highly sensational, resulted in the complete vindication and rehabilitation both of those three Austrian subjects in the eyes of the whole of Austria-Hungary and of the Belgrade Foreign Office in those of Europe; the documents on which the charges were based were proven to be partly forgeries, partly falsified, and partly stolen by various disreputable secret political agents of the Austrian Foreign Office, and one of the principal Serbian ‘conspirators’, a professor of Belgrade University, proved that he was in Berlin at the time when he had been accused of presiding over a revolutionary meeting at Belgrade. But it also resulted in the latter discrediting of Count Achrenthal as a diplomat and of the methods by which he conducted the business of the Austrian Foreign Office, and involved his country in the expenditure of countless millions which it could ill afford.

There never was any doubt that a subversive agitation had been going on, and that it emanated in part from Serbia, but the Serbian Foreign Office, under the able management of Dr. Milovanović and Dr. Spalajković (one of the principal witnesses at the Friedjung trial), was far too clever to allow any of its members, or indeed any responsible person in Serbia, to be concerned in it, and the brilliant way in which the clumsy and foolish charges were refuted redounded greatly to the credit of the Serbian Government. Count Achrenthal had overreached himself, and moreover the wind had already been taken out of his sails by the public recantation on Serbia’s part of its pretensions to Bosnia, which, as already mentioned, took place at the end of March 1909, and by the simultaneous termination of the international crisis marked by Russia’s acquiescence in the fait accompli of the annexation. At the same time the Serbian Crown Prince George, King Peter’s elder son, who had been the leader of the chauvinist war-party in Serbia, and was somewhat theatrical in demeanour and irresponsible in character, renounced his rights of succession in favour of his younger brother Prince Alexander, a much steadier and more talented young man. It is certain that when he realized how things were going to develop Count Achrenthal tried to hush up the whole incident, but it was too late, and Dr. Friedjung insisted on doing what he could to save his reputation as a historian. In the end he was made the principal scapegoat, though the press of Vienna voiced its opinion of the Austrian Foreign Office in no measured tones, saying, amongst other things, that if the conductors of its diplomacy must use forgeries, they might at any rate secure good ones. Eventually a compromise was arranged, after the defendant had clearly lost his case, owing to pressure being brought to bear from outside, and the Serbian Government refrained from carrying out its threat of having the whole question threshed out before the Hague Tribunal.

The cumulative effect of all these exciting and trying experiences was the growth of a distinctly more sympathetic feeling towards Serbia in Europe at large, and especially a rallying of all the elements throughout the Serb and Croat provinces of Austria-Hungary, except the extreme clericals of Agram, to the Serbian cause; briefly, the effect was the exact opposite of that desired by Vienna and Budapest. Meanwhile events had been happening elsewhere which revived the drooping interest and flagging hopes of Serbia in the development of foreign affairs. The attainment of power by the Young Turks and the introduction of parliamentary government had brought no improvement to the internal condition of the Ottoman Empire, and the Balkan peoples made no effort to conceal their satisfaction at the failure of the revolution to bring about reform by magic. The counter-revolution of April 1909 and the accession of the Sultan Mohammed V made things no better. In Macedonia, and especially in Albania, they had been going from bad to worse. The introduction of universal military service and obligatory payment of taxes caused a revolution in Albania, where such innovations were not at all appreciated. From 1909 till 1911 there was a state of perpetual warfare in Albania, with which the Young Turks, in spite of cruel reprisals, were unable to cope, until, in the summer of that year, Austria threatened to intervene unless order were restored; some sort of settlement was patched up, and an amnesty was granted to the rebels by the new Sultan. This unfortunate man, after being rendered almost half-witted by having been for the greater part of his life kept a prisoner by his brother the tyrant Abdul Hamid, was now the captive of the Young Turks, and had been compelled by them to make as triumphal a progress as fears for his personal safety would allow through the provinces of European Turkey. But it was obvious to Balkan statesmen that Turkey was only changed in name, and that, if its threatened regeneration had slightly postponed their plans for its partition amongst themselves, the ultimate consummation of these plans must be pursued with, if possible, even greater energy and expedition than before. It was also seen by the more perspicacious of them that the methods hitherto adopted must in future be radically altered. A rejuvenated though unreformed Turkey, bent on self-preservation, could not be despised, and it was understood that if the revolutionary bands of the three Christian nations (Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria) were to continue indefinitely to cut each others’ throats in Macedonia the tables might conceivably be turned on them.

From 1909 onwards a series of phenomena occurred in the Balkans which ought to have given warning to the Turks, whose survival in Europe had been due solely to the fact that the Balkan States had never been able to unite. In the autumn of 1909 King Ferdinand of Bulgaria met Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia and made an expedition in his company to Mount Kopaonik in Serbia, renowned for the beauty of its flora. This must have struck those who remembered the bitter feelings which had existed between the two countries for years and had been intensified by the events of 1908. Bulgaria had looked on Serbia’s failures with persistent contempt, while Serbia had watched Bulgaria’s successful progress with speechless jealousy, and the memory of Slivnitsa was not yet obliterated. In the summer of 1910 Prince Nicholas of Montenegro celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his reign and his golden wedding. The festivities were attended by King Ferdinand of Bulgaria and the Crown Prince Boris, by the Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia and his sister, grandchildren of Prince Nicholas, by his two daughters the Queen of Italy and the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, and by their husbands, King Victor Emmanuel and the Grand Duke Nicholas. The happiness of the venerable ruler, who was as respected throughout Europe as he was feared throughout his principality, was at the same time completed by his recognition as king by all the governments and sovereigns of the continent. The hopes that he would simultaneously introduce a more liberal form of government amongst his own people were unfortunately disappointed.

The year 1911, it need scarcely be recalled, was extremely fateful for the whole of Europe. The growing restlessness and irritability manifested by the German Empire began to make all the other governments feel exceedingly uneasy. The French expedition to Fez in April was followed by the Anglo-Franco-German crisis of July; war was avoided, and France was recognized as virtually master of Morocco, but the soreness of the diplomatic defeat rendered Germany a still more trying neighbour than it had been before. The first repercussion was the war which broke out in September 1911 between Italy and Turkey for the possession of Tripoli and Cyrenaica, which Italy, with its usual insight, saw was vital to its position as a Mediterranean power and therefore determined to acquire before any other power had time or courage to do so. In the Balkans this was a year of observation and preparation. Serbia, taught by the bitter lesson of 1908 not to be caught again unprepared, had spent much money and care on its army during the last few years and had brought it to a much higher state of efficiency. In Austria-Hungary careful observers wore aware that something was afoot and that the gaze of Serbia, which from 1903 till 1908 had been directed westwards to Bosnia and the Adriatic, had since 1908 been fixed on Macedonia and the Aegean. The actual formation of the Balkan League by King Ferdinand and M. Venezelos may not have been known, but it was realized that action of some sort on the part of the Balkan States was imminent, and that something must be done to forestall it. In February 1912 Count Aehrenthal died, and was succeeded by Count Berchtold as Austro-Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs. In August of the same year this minister unexpectedly announced his new and startling proposals for the introduction of reforms in Macedonia, which nobody in the Balkans who had any material interest in the fate of that province genuinely desired at that moment; the motto of the new scheme was ‘progressive decentralization’, blessed words which soothed the great powers as much as they alarmed the Balkan Governments. But already in May 1912 agreements between Bulgaria and Greece and between Bulgaria and Serbia had been concluded, limiting their respective zones of influence in the territory which they hoped to conquer. It was, to any one who has any knowledge of Balkan history, incredible that the various Governments had been able to come to any agreement at all. That arrived at by Bulgaria and Serbia divided Macedonia between them in such a way that Bulgaria should obtain central Macedonia with Monastir and Okhrida, and Serbia northern Macedonia or Old Serbia; there was an indeterminate zone between the two spheres, including Skoplje (Üsküb, in Turkish), the exact division of which it was agreed to leave to arbitration at a subsequent date.

The Macedonian theatre of war was by common consent regarded as the most important, and Bulgaria here promised Serbia the assistance of 100,000 men. The Turks meanwhile were aware that all was not what it seemed beyond the frontiers, and in August 1912 began collecting troops in Thrace, ostensibly for manoeuvres. During the month of September the patience of the four Governments of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro, which had for years with the utmost self-control been passively watching the awful sufferings of their compatriots under Turkish misrule, gradually became exhausted. On September 28 the four Balkan Governments informed Russia that the Balkan League was an accomplished fact, and on the 30th the representatives of all four signed the alliance, and mobilization was ordered in Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia. The population of Montenegro was habitually on a war footing, and it was left to the mountain kingdom from its geographically favourable position to open hostilities. On October 8 Montenegro declared war on Turkey, and after a series of brilliant successes along the frontier its forces settled down to the wearisome and arduous siege of Scutari with its impregnable sentinel, Mount Taraboš, converted into a modern fortress; the unaccustomed nature of these tasks, to which the Montenegrin troops, used to the adventures of irregular warfare, were little suited, tried the valour and patience of the intrepid mountaineers to the utmost. By that time Europe was in a ferment, and both Russia and Austria, amazed at having the initiative in the regulation of Balkan affairs wrested from them, showered on the Balkan capitals threats and protests, which for once in a way were neglected.

On October 13 Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia replied that the offer of outside assistance and advice had come too late, and that they had decided themselves to redress the intolerable and secular wrongs of their long-suffering compatriots in Macedonia by force of arms. To their dismay a treaty of peace was signed at Lausanne about the same time between Turkey and Italy, which power, it had been hoped, would have distracted Turkey’s attention by a continuance of hostilities in northern Africa, and at any rate immobilized the Turkish fleet. Encouraged by this success Turkey boldly declared war on Bulgaria and Serbia on October 17, hoping to frighten Greece and detach it from the league; but on the 18th the Greek Government replied by declaring war on Turkey, thus completing the necessary formalities. The Turks were confident of an early and easy victory, and hoped to reach Sofia, not from Constantinople and Thrace, but pushing up north-eastwards from Macedonia. The rapid offensive of the Serbian army, however, took them by surprise, and they were completely overwhelmed at the battle of Kumanovo in northern Macedonia on October 23-4, 1912. On the 31st King Peter made his triumphal entry into Skoplje (ex-Üsküb), the ancient capital of Serbia under Tsar Stephen Dušan in the fourteenth century. From there the Serbian army pursued the Turks southward, and at the battles of Prilep (November 5) and Monastir (November 19), after encountering the most stubborn opposition, finally put an end to their resistance in this part of the theatre of war. On November 9 the Greeks entered Salonika.

Meanwhile other divisions of the Serbian army had joined hands with the Montenegrins, and occupied almost without opposition the long-coveted sandjak of Novi-Pazar (the ancient Serb Raška), to the inexpressible rage of Austria-Hungary, which had evacuated it in 1908 in favour of its rightful owner, Turkey. At the same time a Serbian expeditionary corps marched right through Albania, braving great hardships on the way, and on November 30 occupied Durazzo, thus securing at last a foothold on the Adriatic. Besides all this, Serbia, in fulfilment of its treaty obligations, dispatched 50,000 splendidly equipped men, together with a quantity of heavy siege artillery, to help the Bulgarians at the siege of Adrianople. On December 3 an armistice was signed between the belligerents, with the condition that the three besieged Turkish fortresses of Adrianople, Scutari, and Yanina must not be re-victualled, and on December 16, 1912, peace negotiations were opened between representatives of the belligerent countries in London. Meanwhile the Germanic powers, dismayed by the unexpected victories of the Balkan armies and humiliated by the crushing defeats in the field of the German-trained Turkish army, had since the beginning of November been doing everything in their power to support their client Turkey and prevent its final extinction and at the same time the blighting of their ambitions eventually to acquire the Empire of the Near East. During the conference in London between the plenipotentiaries of the belligerents, parallel meetings took place between the representatives of the great powers, whose relations with each other were strained and difficult in the extreme. The Turkish envoys prolonged the negotiations, as was their custom; they naturally were unwilling to concede their European provinces to the despised and hated Greek and Slavonic conquerors, but the delays implied growing hardships for their besieged and starving garrisons in Thrace, Epirus, and Albania. On January 23, 1913, a quasi-revolution occurred in the Turkish army, headed by Enver Bey and other Young Turk partisans, and approved by the Austrian and German embassies, with the object of interrupting the negotiations and staking all on the result of a final battle. As a result of these events, and of the palpable disingenuousness of the Turks in continuing the negotiations in London, the Balkan delegates on January 29 broke them off, and on February 3, 1913, hostilities were resumed. At length, after a siege of nearly five months, Adrianople, supplied with infinitely better artillery than the allies possessed, was taken by the combined Serbian and Bulgarian forces on March 26, 1913. The Serbian troops at Adrianople captured 17,010 Turkish prisoners, 190 guns, and the Turkish commander himself, Shukri Pasha.

At the outbreak of the war in the autumn of 1912 the Balkan States had observed all the conventions, disavowing designs of territorial aggrandizement and proclaiming their resolve merely to obtain guarantees for the better treatment of the Christian inhabitants of Macedonia; the powers, for their part, duly admonished the naughty children of south-eastern Europe to the effect that no alteration of the territorial status quo ante would under any circumstances be tolerated. During the negotiations in London, interrupted in January, and resumed in the spring of 1913 after the fall of Adrianople, it was soon made clear that in spite of all these magniloquent declarations nothing would be as it had been before. Throughout the winter Austria-Hungary had been mobilizing troops and massing them along the frontiers of Serbia and Montenegro, any increase in the size of which countries meant a crushing blow to the designs of the Germanic powers and the end to all the dreams embodied in the phrase ‘Drang nach Osten’ (‘pushing eastwards’).

In the spring of 1913 Serbia and Montenegro, instead of being defeated by the brave Turks, as had been confidently predicted in Vienna and Berlin would be the case, found themselves in possession of the sandjak of Novi-Pazar, of northern and central Macedonia (including Old Serbia), and of the northern half of Albania. The presence of Serbian troops on the shore of the Adriatic was more than Austria could stand, and at the renewed conference of London it was decided that they must retire. In the interests of nationality, in which the Balkan States themselves undertook the war, it was desirable that at any rate an attempt should be made to create an independent state of Albania, though no one who knew the local conditions felt confident as to its ultimate career. Its creation assuaged the consciences of the Liberal Government in Great Britain and at the same time admirably suited the strategic plans of Austria-Hungary. It left that country a loophole for future diplomatic efforts to disturb the peace of south-eastern Europe, and, with its own army in Bosnia and its political agents and irregular troops in Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, even though enlarged as it was generally recognized they must be, would be held in a vice and could be threatened and bullied from the south now as well as from the north whenever it was in the interests of Vienna and Budapest to apply the screw. The independence of Albania was declared at the conference of London on May 30, 1913. Scutari was included in it as being a purely Albanian town, and King Nicholas and his army, after enjoying its coveted flesh-pots for a few halcyon weeks, had, to their mortification, to retire to the barren fastnesses of the Black Mountain. Serbia, frustrated by Austria in its attempts, generally recognized as legitimate, to obtain even a commercial outlet on the Adriatic, naturally again diverted its aims southwards to Salonika. The Greeks were already in possession of this important city and seaport, as well as of the whole of southern Macedonia. The Serbs were in possession of central and northern Macedonia, including Monastir and Okhrida, which they had at great sacrifices conquered from the Turks. It had been agreed that Bulgaria, as its share of the spoils, should have all central Macedonia, with Monastir and Okhrida, although on ethnical grounds the Bulgarians have only very slightly better claim to the country and towns west of the Vardar than any of the other Balkan nationalities. But at the time that the agreement had been concluded it had been calculated in Greece and Serbia that Albania, far from being made independent, would be divided between them, and that Serbia, assured of a strip of coast on the Adriatic, would have no interest in the control of the river Vardar and of the railway which follows its course connecting the interior of Serbia with the port of Salonika. Greece and Serbia had no ground whatever for quarrel and no cause for mutual distrust, and they were determined, for political and commercial reasons, to have a considerable extent of frontier from west to east in common. The creation of an independent Albania completely altered the situation. If Bulgaria should obtain central Macedonia and thus secure a frontier from north to south in common with the newly-formed state of Albania, then Greece would be at the mercy of its hereditary enemies the Bulgars and Arnauts (Albanians) as it had previously been at the mercy of the Turks, while Serbia would have two frontiers between itself and the sea instead of one, as before, and its complete economic strangulation would be rendered inevitable and rapid. Bulgaria for its own part naturally refused to waive its claim to central Macedonia, well knowing that the master of the Vardar valley is master of the Balkan peninsula. The first repercussion of the ephemeral treaty of London of May 30, 1913, which created Albania and shut out Serbia from the Adriatic, was, therefore, as the diplomacy of the Germanic powers had all along intended it should be, the beginning of a feud between Greece and Serbia on the one hand, and Bulgaria on the other, the disruption of the Balkan League and the salvation, for the ultimate benefit of Germany, of what was left of Turkey in Europe.

The dispute as to the exact division of the conquered territory in Macedonia between Serbia and Bulgaria had, as arranged, been referred to arbitration, and, the Tsar of Russia having been chosen as judge, the matter was being threshed out in St. Petersburg during June 1913. Meanwhile Bulgaria, determined to make good its claim to the chestnuts which Greece and Serbia had pulled out of the Turkish fire, was secretly collecting troops along its temporary south-western frontier with the object, in approved Germanic fashion, of suddenly invading and occupying all Macedonia, and, by the presentation of an irrevocable fait accompli, of relieving the arbitrator of his invidious duties or at any rate assisting him in the task.

On the other hand, the relations between Bulgaria and its two allies had been noticeably growing worse ever since January 1913; Bulgaria felt aggrieved that, in spite of its great sacrifices, it had not been able to occupy so much territory as Greece and Serbia, and the fact that Adrianople was taken with Serbian help did not improve the feeling between the two Slav nations. The growth of Bulgarian animosity put Greece and Serbia on their guard, and, well knowing the direction which an eventual attack would take, these two countries on June 2, 1913, signed a military convention and made all the necessary dispositions for resisting any aggression on Bulgaria’s part. At one o’clock in the morning of June 30 the Bulgarians, without provocation, without declaration of war, and without warning, crossed the Bregalnica (a tributary of the Vardar) and attacked the Serbs. A most violent battle ensued which lasted for several days; at some points the Bulgarians, thanks to the suddenness of their offensive, were temporarily successful, but gradually the Serbs regained the upper hand and by July 1 the Bulgarians were beaten. The losses were very heavy on both sides, but the final issue was a complete triumph for the Serbian army. Slivnitsa was avenged by the battle of the Bregalnica, just as Kosovo was by that of Kumanovo. After a triumphant campaign of one month, in which the Serbs were joined by the Greeks, Bulgaria had to bow to the inevitable. The Rumanian army had invaded northern Bulgaria, bent on maintaining the Balkan equilibrium and on securing compensation for having observed neutrality during the war of 1912-13, and famine reigned at Sofia. A conference was arranged at Bucarest, and the treaty of that name was signed there on August 10, 1913. By the terms of this treaty Serbia retained the whole of northern and central Macedonia, including Monastir and Okhrida, and the famous sandjak of Novi-Pazar was divided between Serbia and Montenegro. Some districts of east-central Macedonia, which were genuinely Bulgarian, were included in Serbian territory, as Serbia naturally did not wish, after the disquieting and costly experience of June and July 1913, to give the Bulgarians another chance of separating Greek from Serbian territory by a fresh surprise attack, and the further the Bulgarians could be kept from the Vardar river and railway the less likelihood there was of this. The state of feeling in the Germanic capitals and in Budapest after this ignominious defeat of their protégé Bulgaria and after this fresh triumph of the despised and hated Serbians can be imagined. Bitterly disappointed first at seeing the Turks vanquished by the Balkan League—their greatest admirers could not even claim that the Turks had had any ‘moral’ victories—their chagrin, when they saw the Bulgarians trounced by the Serbians, knew no bounds. That the secretly prepared attack on Serbia by Bulgaria was planned in Vienna and Budapest there is no doubt. That Bulgaria was justified in feeling disappointment and resentment at the result of the first Balkan War no one denies, but the method chosen to redress its wrongs could only have been suggested by the Germanic school of diplomacy.

In Serbia and Montenegro the result of the two successive Balkan Wars, though these had exhausted the material resources of the two countries, was a justifiable return of national self-confidence and rejoicing such as the people, humiliated and impoverished as it had habitually been by its internal and external troubles, had not known for very many years. At last Serbia and Montenegro had joined hands. At last Old Serbia was restored to the free kingdom. At last Skoplje, the mediaeval capital of Tsar Stephen Dušan, was again in Serbian territory. At last one of the most important portions of unredeemed Serbia had been reclaimed. Amongst the Serbs and Croats of Bosnia, Hercegovina, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, and southern Hungary the effect of the Serbian victories was electrifying. Military prowess had been the one quality with which they, and indeed everybody else, had refused to credit the Serbians of the kingdom, and the triumphs of the valiant Serbian peasant soldiers immediately imparted a heroic glow to the country whose very name, at any rate in central Europe, had become a byword, and a synonym for failure; Belgrade became the cynosure and the rallying-centre of the whole Serbo-Croatian race. But Vienna and Budapest could only lose courage and presence of mind for the moment, and the undeniable success of the Serbian arms merely sharpened their appetite for revenge. In August 1913 Austria-Hungary, as is now known, secretly prepared an aggression on Serbia, but was restrained, partly by the refusal of Italy to grant its approval of such action, partly because the preparations of Germany at that time were not complete. The fortunate Albanian question provided, for the time being, a more convenient rod with which to beat Serbia. Some Serbian troops had remained in possession of certain frontier towns and districts which were included in the territory of the infant state of Albania pending the final settlement of the frontiers by a commission. On October 18, 1913, Austria addressed an ultimatum to Serbia to evacuate these, as its continued occupation of them caused offence and disquiet to the Dual Monarchy. Serbia meekly obeyed. Thus passed away the last rumble of the storms which had filled the years 1912-13 in south-eastern Europe.

The credulous believed that the Treaty of Bucarest had at last brought peace to that distracted part of the world. Those who knew their central Europe realized that Berlin had only forced Vienna to acquiesce in the Treaty of Bucarest because the time had not yet come. But come what might, Serbia and Montenegro, by having linked up their territory and by forming a mountain barrier from the Danube to the Adriatic, made it far more difficult for the invader to push his way through to the East than it would have been before the battles of Kumanovo and Bregalnica.

GREECE

1 From Ancient to Modern Greece

The name of Greece has two entirely different associations in our minds. Sometimes it calls up a wonderful literature enshrined in a ‘dead language’, and exquisite works of a vanished art recovered by the spade; at other times it is connected with the currant-trade returns quoted on the financial page of our newspapers or with the ‘Balance of Power’ discussed in their leading articles. Ancient and Modern Greece both mean much to us, but usually we are content to accept them as independent phenomena, and we seldom pause to wonder whether there is any deeper connexion between them than their name. It is the purpose of these pages to ask and give some answer to this question.

The thought that his own Greece might perish, to be succeeded by another Greece after the lapse of more than two thousand years, would have caused an Ancient Greek surprise. In the middle of the fifth century B.C., Ancient Greek civilization seemed triumphantly vigorous and secure. A generation before, it had flung back the onset of a political power which combined all the momentum of all the other contemporary civilizations in the world; and the victory had proved not merely the superiority of Greek arms—the Spartan spearman and the Athenian galley—but the superior vitality of Greek politics—the self-governing, self-sufficing city-state. In these cities a wonderful culture had burst into flower—an art expressing itself with equal mastery in architecture, sculpture, and drama, a science which ranged from the most practical medicine to the most abstract mathematics, and a philosophy which blended art, science, and religion into an ever-developing and ever more harmonious view of the universe. A civilization so brilliant and so versatile as this seemed to have an infinite future before it, yet even here death lurked in ambush.

When the cities ranged themselves in rival camps, and squandered their strength on the struggle for predominance, the historian of the Peloponnesian war could already picture Athens and Sparta in ruins, and the catastrophe began to warp the soul of Plato before he had carried Greek philosophy to its zenith. This internecine strife of free communities was checked within a century by the imposition of a single military autocracy over them all, and Alexander the Great crowned his father Philip’s work by winning new worlds for Hellenism from the Danube to the Ganges and from the Oxus to the Nile. The city-state and its culture were to be propagated under his aegis, but this vision vanished with Alexander’s death, and Macedonian militarism proved a disappointment. The feuds of these crowned condottieri harassed the cities more sorely than their own quarrels, and their arms could not even preserve the Hellenic heritage against external foes. The Oriental rallied and expelled Hellenism again from the Asiatic hinterland, while the new cloud of Rome was gathering in the west. In four generations of the most devastating warfare the world had seen, Rome conquered all the coasts of the Mediterranean. Greek city and Greek dynast went down before her, and the political sceptre passed irrevocably from the Hellenic nation.

Yet this political abdication seemed to open for Hellenic culture a future more brilliant and assured than ever. Rome could organize as well as conquer. She accepted the city-state as the municipal unit of the Roman Empire, thrust back the Oriental behind the Euphrates, and promoted the Hellenization of all the lands between this river-frontier and the Balkans with much greater intensity than the Macedonian imperialists. Her political conquests were still further counterbalanced by her spiritual surrender, and Hellenism was the soul of the new Latin culture which Rome created, and which advanced with Roman government over the vast untutored provinces of the west and north, bringing them, too, within the orbit of Hellenic civilization. Under the shadow of the Roman Empire, Plutarch, the mirror of Hellenism, could dwell in peace in his little city-state of Chaeronea, and reflect in his writings all the achievements of the Hellenic spirit as an ensample to an apparently endless posterity.

Yet the days of Hellenic culture were also numbered. Even Plutarch lived to look down from the rocky citadel of Chaeronea upon Teutonic raiders wasting the Kephisos vale, and for more than three centuries successive hordes of Goths searched out and ravaged the furthest corners of European Greece. Then the current set westward to sweep away the Roman administration in the Latin provinces, and Hellenism seemed to have been granted a reprieve. The Greek city-state of Byzantium on the Black Sea Straits had been transformed into the Roman administrative centre of Constantinople, and from this capital the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century A.D. still governed and defended the whole Greek-speaking world. But this political glamour only threw the symptoms of inward dissolution into sharper relief. Within the framework of the Empire the municipal liberty of the city-state had been stifled and extinguished by the waxing jungle of bureaucracy, and the spiritual culture which the city-state fostered, and which was more essential to Hellenism than any political institutions, had been part ejected, part exploited, and wholly compromised by a new gospel from the east.