Part 11

One day in 1862 the Turks, who still were in the Belgrade fortress, started, for some foolish reason, to bombard the town. Prince Michael in the subsequent negotiations showed that he had qualities one could not but respect. Still he was unsuccessful (until 1867) in obtaining the removal of the Turkish garrisons--Great Britain, fearing Russian influence, and Austria, hostile to the total independence of the Serbs, supported Turkey. And Michael governed with so firm a hand that there were many who believed that the material improvement he was introducing, schools of agriculture, schools of forestry and what not, could be just as well inaugurated by the far more sympathetic Prince Nikita. And when in 1866 Michael and Nikita made a grand convention for the union of the Serbs in Serbia and in Montenegro, and Nikita undertook to step aside, if necessary, so that all the independent Serbs might be united under Michael's sceptre, then indeed the Omladina talked of him with rapture. And Nikita made allusions to this "grand refusal" all his life and with a face of honest pride. He never mentioned anything about clause 3, which was not published. By that clause Nikita was to be Prince Michael's heir, in case he had no son. There was not much likelihood that he would have one, for the Hungarian wife from whom he was divorced had given him no children, and the girl with whom he was overpoweringly in love was a cousin, whom the Church, because of their relationship, prevented him from marrying. It was with this girl that the Prince was always said to have been walking in the park near Belgrade on June 10, 1868, when he was mysteriously murdered. After Michael's death the Skuptina, not acting in accordance with the secret clause, placed on the throne a grandson (?) of a brother of Prince Milo, who was a minor and the nearest in the order of succession. By this time the Omladina had perceived that in the character of their romantic prince lay certain lamentable traits. The friendship, which he had inherited, with Russia he continued, and the Russian Court rewarded him in no half-hearted fashion. When the Italians proposed in 1866 that he and they should share the Bocche di Cattaro, he said the moment was not opportune; the Austrians for this bestowed on him a pension which they paid until the outbreak of the World War. One could understand, of course, that Nikita did not wish to rouse the enmity of Austria; it must have hurt him to refrain from going to the Bocche, where the population was most Slav and had endured a great deal for the cause, but other men were hurt by his acceptance of the pension.

FOR THEY KNOW NEITHER NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO NOR MICHAEL OF SERBIA

Michael in those few years had displayed such qualities that he might have united with his country Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Macedonia. His statesmanship, which made such a result seem very possible, may have induced some jealous partisans of the rival Karageorgevi['c] dynasty to murder him; the same reasons would have been sufficient for Austria. And Austria had given her formal consent to a diplomatic plan for the solution of the Bosnian question, whereby Michael was to administer the two distracted provinces as the Sultan's mandatory. The decapitation of the begs by Omar Pasha had by no means marked the dawn of a new era for the peasant. From 1856 till 1859 the country was in a condition of such anarchy, with pashas tyrannizing here and there, with villages obliged to take as their protector some marauding ruffian who had settled in their midst, with young men taking to the hills, that finally a conference was summoned, at Austria's instigation, in Constantinople, and of this the upshot was that the abuses practised hitherto by the great landlords were all sanctioned if they would inaugurate no new ones. The Franciscan monks, beloved by the people, had kept alive the people's hope that something would be done for them; they could not stop the people from attempting to obtain it by ill-organized revolts. From time to time there would be a concerted movement; thus Luka Vukalovi['c] in 1862 fired his own Herzegovina and also the Bocche di Cattaro, weapons and volunteers came from Montenegro, and Vukalovi['c] was recognized by Turkey as the military and civil head of an autonomous Herzegovina. But he was subsequently forced to fly to Serbia, while the Turks had such success against the Montenegrins that the Great Powers had to intervene. And that was one of the most fruitful of the insurrections. When the news was spread that Michael would arrive there were great popular rejoicings. Christians and Muhammedans were busy, till the time of his assassination, preparing for his solemn entry.

IF MICHAEL HAD LIVED!

Many of the Bulgars were as eager to associate themselves with Michael. In 1862, when Belgrade was bombarded by the Turks, Rakovski got together a Bulgarian legion which would fight in Serbia against the common foe; in 1867 the Bulgarian Revolutionary Committee at Bucharest, where these leaders of the people had sought sanctuary, proposed the union of Bulgaria and Serbia under Michael. "Between the Serbs and the Bulgars," says the first article, "there shall be established a fraternal union calling itself the Yugoslav Kingdom." If this idea had been put forward by any one but Rakovski one might consider it a mere fantastic notion, but the Bulgars who elected this extraordinary man to be their chief were, as is the habit of the Bulgars, nothing if not practical.

THE STRANGE CAREER OF RAKOVSKI

Rakovski was born at the picturesque little town of Kotel in the eastern Balkans, and was educated at Constantinople, but his ebullient temperament did not allow him to pursue his studies to the end. He turned up at Braila in 1841 and, being hardly twenty years of age, was dreaming of a revolution of the Orient. With a group of insurgents he tried to cross the Danube and to rouse the Bulgars. A Roumanian patrol opens fire, on each side there are several killed and wounded. He is captured and condemned to death, but having a Greek passport he is rescued by the Greek Consul and put on board a boat which lands him at Marseilles. For eighteen months he lives in France--it is not known where--and is imbued with democratic doctrine. Passing through Constantinople in 1843 he accepts a post as schoolmaster at Trnovo, but is immediately at loggerheads with the Greek bishop and departs. Returning to his birthplace he is irritated by the pride and harshness of the upper class, and he attempts to make the people rise against them. They charge him with being a disturber of the peace. "He has travelled through Europe," says their complaint to the Government, "and now in this town he bestrides a horse, brandishes his sword and overwhelms the Turks with insults, both their race and their religion." In consequence Rakovski and his father are arrested and dispatched to Constantinople, where they both of them remain in prison until 1847. After being liberated, he forms a secret society which is to take advantage of the approaching Russo-Turkish conflict. Its members are to have themselves enrolled among the Turks, with the double object of protecting the Bulgarian population from excesses on the part of the soldiery and also, at the propitious moment, to stir them up and so assist the Russians. He himself is appointed to the Turkish staff at Shumen, as first dragoman. His plot being discovered, he is arrested and sent to Constantinople; on the way he escapes, but he proceeds to Constantinople and organizes there a company of heiduks. Turkey's entrance into the European concert fills him with pessimism. The Bulgars at Constantinople believe that the civilizing influence of the West will not be in vain. He foresees a more evil despotism masked by the pseudo-liberal manoeuvres of the Powers, and henceforward he joins those Bulgars who agitate from Roumania or from Serbia. He goes to the Banat, where he is not only made most welcome but is enabled to publish The Bulgarian News, which is political, and a literary supplement, The Swan of the Danube. The Turks are uneasy; they ask the Austrians to suppress these papers. The Austrians comply and expel the editor. He is persecuted by the Porte in Moldavia and flies to Russia, where he devotes himself seriously to a long poem in honour of the heiduks. The first part of this very long work, the Gorski Patnik, had appeared at Novi Sad. It brought him considerable fame--he was compared with Virgil--but modern readers find this poem tedious. He likewise wrote a dissertation which established, by comparative philology, that the Bulgars are the most direct descendants of the Aryans, that their language is the nearest to Sanskrit, and that the other European languages, including Greek and Latin, are derived from it. Rakovski next appears in Belgrade, where he leads a life of splendour; he had carriages and wonderful horses, he was arrayed in a princely kind of uniform and was surrounded by a kind of guard. The source of his revenues, which always seemed to fluctuate, was never fathomed; but they may at this period have accrued from his literary labours, which--although the present generation smile--produced among the Bulgars a vast, patriotic pride. At Belgrade the visionary historian and whimsical philologist becomes a most sagacious politician. He is the first Bulgarian publicist to talk of a free press, and he refuses, unlike many others, to seek help from Russia only. "We must help ourselves," he cries. "As we are Orthodox, Russia will desire to keep us under the authority of the Greek Church; as we are Slavs, she will try to make the Western Powers suspicious of us." When there was a wave of emigration to Russia he frantically tried to stop it. "For you it will be suicide," he exclaimed, "for your children assassination and for Bulgaria ruin!" He painted Russia in appalling colours, and the would-be emigrants repented. His personal affairs oppressed him for a time in 1862, when he left Belgrade to the imprecations of his creditors. The Serbian statesmen, while appreciating his exalted patriotism, would have sooner had amongst them a more typical and stable Bulgar. Yet they declined the Porte's request for extradition. At the beginning of 1863 Rakovski is in Athens, magnificent once more and now accompanied by an aide-de-camp, a Montenegrin captain, whom he introduces as related to Nikita. He is forming an alliance of the Balkan States, which, according to his calculations, will exterminate the Turk in Europe. He promises himself to furnish 20,000 volunteers--to start with. In the previous year when he had planned to liberate Bulgaria with 12,000 volunteers, of whom a hundred were to be cavalry and another hundred gunners, he could gather only 500. And now again he is disillusioned and leaves Athens.

It was during his stay there that he met the well-known Balkan travellers, Miss Irby and Miss Muir Mackenzie. They had been up and down the Peninsula in 1862 and 1863, making very exhaustive inquiries that were the basis of their book. In 1917 Professor Ivan Shishmanoff discovered two letters of Miss Muir Mackenzie's in Sofia and published them in Sbornik. The first is dated May 12, and is in German. "Since we have been here we have made the acquaintance of Mr. Rakovski," she writes. "He has been so kind as to teach me Serbian, during Miss Irby's illness. We like him very much, and I know of no one among the Slavs with whose opinion we so entirely agree; because he does not think as a Serbian or yet a Montenegrin or a Croat or a Bulgar, but as a Slav.... I can't tell you how much I fear that their internal divisions will make impossible the realization of a Yugoslav country. One can't hope for much from the Greeks; they have exorbitant ambitions and neither private nor public integrity. Those are bad faults to find in an ally. And they speak openly of a Byzantine Empire! And reckon that all the Southern Slavs, Serbs as well as Bulgars, belong to them.... I hope that England will some day assure herself that there are other Christians in the East besides the Greeks."

THE YUGOSLAV NAME

Miss Muir Mackenzie's other letter, of June 23, is addressed to Rakovski from Bolsover Castle, Chesterfield. It is written in French. "We attach great importance," she says, "to the name Yugoslav. By means of crying that word in the ears of the Greeks one will succeed in making them understand that the Bulgars are Slavs. By means of crying it in the ears of the European diplomats one will succeed by making them comprehend that one cannot ignore a people of ten or twelve million souls. By means of crying 'We are Yugoslavs,' the Yugoslavs themselves will succeed in forgetting their little distinctions of environment and race, and in conducting themselves as a nation worthy of the name. Let us therefore cry that word--we will make people speak of it sooner or later."

In June 1863 Rakovski was at Cetinje, but as he was requesting subsidies he did not find a very sympathetic audience in Nikita. Thence he passed to Bucharest, where he issued--for ten numbers--a Bulgaro-Roumanian newspaper; the Bulgars in Bucharest had grown too prosperous to be interested either in his journalistic or his military schemes, and he found the Bulgarian colonies in Russia equally obtuse. He was attacked by consumption while he was at work upon the Provisional Law for the National Bands in the Forests--a sort of written constitution for the heiduks, and in the intervals of his last sufferings he wrote a history of the heiduks from the days of the Turkish conquest. He died on October 20, 1867.

The statesmen who then governed the Great Powers may have deprecated Rakovski as much as he deprecated them. It must have been exasperating for those solid persons subsequently to acknowledge--if they did so--that this unbalanced agitator weighed them very well. But the Balkan countries were too weak; they had to suffer being thrown aside, pushed here and there, and trampled on; for when the Great Powers came down to the Balkans they could really not pay much attention to the little peoples of the country and at the same time keep their eyes upon each other. Afterwards the Balkan countries found that it was better for them when the Great Powers fought each other there than when they came to friendly understandings. It was profitable and diverting for Albania when the Austrians and the Italians glowered at each other in that silent land: it was terrible in 1878 for Bosnia and Herzegovina when the Great Powers were on such good terms with one another that they allowed one of themselves to make off with those two waifs of whom he was not even the wicked uncle.

Russia had been taking a keen interest in the Balkans after Austria's disaster in 1859 at Sadowa. It was then that Prince Gortchakoff and his colleagues in the Ministry were inspired by the doctrines of Katkoff, who in his Moscow Gazette exercised much authority over public opinion and even over the Tzar. Panslavism, according to Debidour, which a short time ago had been shivering in the background, lifted its head proudly and spoke of the new era which holy Russia was about to inaugurate, of the sacred mission that was incumbent on the Tzar. And the sanctity was greater in that it was not to be defined by merely mediaeval but by modern language; the Tzar must not alone protect all those who practised his religion, he must be a patron saint who patronizes.

RUSSIA AND AUSTRIA SOW DISCORD IN THE BALKANS

To this end committees, in Moscow and in Petrograd, deliberated; newspapers and pamphlets spread their views; agile agents propagated them throughout the Balkans, calling on the Bulgars and the Bosniaks to rise, promising aggrandizements to Serbia and Montenegro, spurring on the fiery Cretans to make their revolt of 1866. All promised well. There was to be a Balkan federation formed at the expense of Austria and the Porte: Serbia would receive the Voivodina and Bosnia, Montenegro would acquire Herzegovina, the Croats would at least annex Dalmatia, and the Slovenes and the Bulgars would come naturally into this united Yugoslavia, under Michael's sceptre. He was at the time not only in most cordial relations with the Bulgars, but in 1867 he began pourparlers to ally himself with Greece, and he made overtures to the new sovereign of Roumania, Charles of Hohenzollern. And after this plan also had been nullified by Michael's death, the Russians still continued with their task, but now they had to deal with a convalescent Austria. It came to pass that the Bulgars found themselves in Russia's sphere, the Serbs in that of Austria. The little countries were thus violently pulled apart, and naturally each of them began to stretch their hands out to the neighbouring Slavs who were in servitude, but yet they managed to keep hand in hand with one another. The young men, such as Karaveloff and Tzankoff, whom Prince Michael sent to Western Europe to be educated, the young Bulgarian priests who had studied in that branch of the Belgrade seminary which Prince Michael opened for them, and all the Serbs and Bulgars who considered their two countries knew that, for political and economic reasons, they must not be kept apart. But there was always a Great Power to frustrate these designs. Yet even after they had been flung at each other in the fratricidal days of 1885, even after their attempt in 1905 to found a Customs union had been vetoed, even after some of their so-called intelligentsia had done what injury they could by harping on the limitations from which they naturally, like the older peoples, are not exempt--nevertheless, as it was seen in 1912, when the demonstrations of delight in Belgrade and in Sofia were touching, they are only too glad to fulfil their destiny. Since 1912 that misguided intelligentsia has been given a large store of fresh ammunition. They will go on firing and firing, while the people, including the real intelligentsia, will be better engaged.

THE MACEDONIAN SLAVS UNDER THEIR GREEK CLERGY

The name of Tzankoff brings to mind a strange ecclesiastical movement. The reader may remember how the little Macedonian town of Kuku carried from its church the books in Greek and how it welcomed the Bulgarian monk who sang the Mass in Slav. The bishops and the clergy of the Greek Church had not made themselves beloved in Macedonia, where the population was indisputably much more Slav. Greek villages were very scarce to the north of Lake Castoria; but after the suppression of the two Slav Patriarchates in the eighteenth century the only Christians who lead a dignified existence were the Greek clergy. Among the Slav upper class there was a good deal of Hellenization; to be a Greek was of much social value. But the people generally stayed intact, because the schools so thoughtfully provided by the Greeks were solely for the boys. The language spoken in the home would therefore still be Slav. And it is not likely that the people would have cherished their Greek clergy, even if they had been archangels, when once the national awakening had begun. But what we hear about this clergy is too seldom of a pleasing character. The children of the Macedonian peasants might go into ecstasies on seeing one of these episcopal processions, with the bishop's glorious white horse and harness such as they had never dreamed of, with his footmen round about him and with all those other priests, the old ones and the young ones and the monks, and then the bishop's doctor and some other men in spectacles, and then the bishop's cook and a few more monks. But the Macedonian villagers who had to entertain all this rapacious brood and pay terrific fees for everything--250 piastres for a liturgy, 500 for a whole service, 500 for marriages among relatives up to the seventh degree, large contributions under the name of charity, and so forth--these had only rancour for the Church. Perhaps the saintliest among the Greeks declined to go to Macedonia. One hears of them so little and of people like Meletios so much. This savage person was appointed in 1859 to be Bishop of Ochrida, although the reputation he had left there--having previously been the coadjutor--was atrocious. Protests and entreaties were sent to Constantinople, but from 1860 until 1869 he stayed at Ochrida and carried on an implacable duel with his flock. He was frequently received with hisses, sometimes he was struck by stones, sometimes he was flung out of a church. But he was not the man to be intimidated--a large man, with broad shoulders, an arrogant expression and a bristling beard; they say he had the appearance of a janissary in clerical garb. He took into his service an Albanian bandit, through whom he terrorized the diocese. At one time he had the young wife of a man who was away in Roumania brought into his harem. The husband returned, asked for his wife and succeeded in obtaining her, but after two months he was assassinated, and the widow thought she might as well allow the bishop to console her. The outcry was enormous; no one doubted that it was Meletios who had given orders for the crime. A deputation of thirty went to lay this case and numerous other transgressions before the Patriarch at Constantinople. He would only receive five delegates, who read their document in a plenary sitting of the Holy Synod. After they had recited the afore-mentioned episode, one of the bishops who was present lost patience and, "Is it really worth our while to listen to such tales?" he asked. "If Christ spoke to the Samaritan woman, why should not a simple bishop hold converse with a woman also?" "At last the moment has come!" said the delegates. They departed, and at the door they shook the dust from their feet. The Patriarch himself ran after them. "Come back, my children!" he cried. But they were deaf to his voice.

About forty years after the reign of Meletios there was still a Greek bishop at Ochrida, but--this was in 1912, after the first Balkan War--the town had also a Bulgarian and also a Serbian bishop. The Greek ecclesiastic did not profess to administer a very large flock--it consisted of about twelve families--but he explained that his presence was made necessary by the ancient Greek culture. He was there to watch over it. The local church of St. Clement and the monasteries of SS. Zaim and Naoum are dedicated to disciples of Cyril and Methodus, the two brothers who introduced Christianity to these parts. They may well have recruited their disciples among the Slavs, whose language they had learned before they set out. But whether the old stones which the Greek bishop was guarding in 1912 are Greek or Slav, he was better employed than most of his predecessors.

THE AFFAIR OF KUKU

One of the first Macedonian villages to take an independent attitude had been Kuku. When it heard that some French priests were operating at Salonica, and that if it were converted to Catholicism it would be given a national clergy and the protection of France, the temptation was so great that it succumbed. One of the Bulgarian democrats at Constantinople, Dragan Tzankoff, identified himself with this idea, not through religious motives but in order that the Porte should no longer fear that the independence of the Catholic Bulgarian nation would be a gain for Russia. This may sound rather far-fetched; he may have also used Catholicism merely as a threat by which to induce the Russians to assist in procuring the Exarchate. Tzankoff and various other people went to Rome, where Pius IX. blessed their enterprise and consecrated one of them, the archimandrite Sokolski, as Bishop of the Bulgarian Uniate Church. Sokolski was a worthy, patriotic man, but not endowed with mental attributes such as this post demanded; they had, however, been unable to find anybody better qualified. He soon decamped to Russia, for he was down-hearted when the Church did not attract a greater number of disciples. His defection was a grave blow to the cause, chiefly on account of the laughter it excited. Bulgarian Catholicism had, however, a fair number of adherents at Constantinople and at Kuku.... There was at the same time another movement, more discreetly undertaken, by American missionaries to convert the Bulgars to the Protestant religion. These Americans, drawn by the magic name of Greece, had come to Europe to assist that people in their fight for freedom. They had built them schools, had printed educational books in Greek, and had contributed in every way towards the people's moral progress; and no sooner was the country liberated than they were expelled. The Bulgars did not treat them in so cavalier a fashion, but neither did they adopt Protestantism as the State religion. Sir Henry Bulwer, the British Ambassador, recommended them rather to persevere with Catholicism; it seemed to him that this religion, with its authoritative organization, would be more adapted to removing the Bulgars from the influence of Russia. The Russian Ambassador, the disdainful Prince Lobanoff-Rostovski, was very much bored by all this trouble that the Bulgars were giving; the Greeks were furious. One day a Catholic Bulgar died in the French hospital at Pera, and a body of Greeks, accompanied by clergy, wished to have the corpse handed over to them for burial according to the Orthodox Greek rite. When they were refused admission they attempted to enter by force, raising loud cries and threatening to sack the whole place. In the end they were dispersed by a detachment of French sailors....

THE EXARCHATE IS ESTABLISHED

These religious disputes between Greek and Bulgar were agreeable to the Porte, which encouraged the Bulgars to persevere with the Catholic plan. Russia continued to be very embarrassed, not wishing to make a permanent enemy either of the Greek Church or of the Bulgarian people. Finally the Bulgarian efforts to secure a national Church met with reward. The Turkish authorities--Fuad Pasha, the Grand Vizier, being an enlightened man--did not persist in the impracticable plan that this Church should be in communion with Rome. One of the consequences of the establishment of their autocephalous Church was that many of the Bulgarian Catholics at Constantinople and Kuku abandoned that religion. The Vatican complained--and not unreasonably--that it had been fooled. The Russians are generally given much credit for this Bulgarian success, but although they participated in the negotiations--and their Ambassador, the resourceful Count Ignatieff, would make it seem that they were gratified with the result--their situation was so delicate that they preferred to play for safety. When the news was brought to Serbia it gave rise to great rejoicings, for the Exarchate was the charter of liberty for the Macedonian Slavs. No one dreamed at this time that, on account of Macedonia, Serbs and Bulgars would be some day flying at each other's throat.

1867: AUSTRIA DELIVERS THE SLAVS TO THE MAGYARS

The Southern Slavs had recently been shown that if they waited in the hope that others would assist them to improve their fortunes they would have to have a monumental patience. When Austria, after her defeat at the hand of the Prussians, was flung out of the German federation, she availed herself of the services of a German, Count Frederick Beust, to put her house in order. His negotiations with Hungary produced the compromise, the Ausgleich, of 1867. This Constitution, which made them independent of each other as regards internal matters, bade their Slavs prepare themselves to lose all shreds of independence. The Serbs of the Banat and Baka, as well as the Roumanians of Transylvania and the Slovaks, were delivered to the Magyars without any guarantee that their language or their nationality would be respected. "Look!" said the Magyars in after years, when travellers came to see what they had done, "we have a language law, evolved by Deak, which lays down that everybody in the law courts has the right to use his mother-tongue." The traveller had been wondering what unusual people lived in Hungary, for he had seen a peasant choose precisely that time when a train was due to come and quarrel about something with the booking clerk. How was the traveller to learn that the non-Magyar peasant wished to buy a ticket for his native village, whose name had just been Magyarized, and that the clerk refused to sell a ticket except the peasant used a name he did not know? And when the peasant had walked home he might see in the village register that he who had been Saba was now Shebek and that his friend Ziva, who could speak no word of Magyar, was now Vitaljos; and that the children of poor Vitaljos, in order that they should not suffer from their father's handicap, were not confining their education to ordinary subjects, but were learning the Magyar language for seventeen hours every week. Well, how was your traveller to know that if a person used his own tongue in the law courts, which was very probably the tongue of everyone who lived there save a handful of officials, one of these officials who was accidentally in court would say he was acquainted with that person's language? The judge would take his word for it and he would start interpreting. When the Hungarians came to deal with the Croats they were careful to give them, for the world's eye, a great deal of autonomy. Strossmayer, assisted by the historian Raki, had in April 1866 led a deputation to Buda-Pest when it was clear that extreme divergencies existed between the Croats and the Magyars. Among other Croatian demands was one that Rieka should no longer be the scene of Magyar intrigues. As yet the town's importance was not great: in 1869 she had only 17,884 inhabitants and the total of her exports and imports did not exceed 150,000 tons. But everybody knew that by the building of a direct line to Croatia and to the valleys of the Save, the Drave and the Danube there would come an era of prosperity. The Magyars had allied themselves with the Autonomist party, showing them what great advantages the town would reap if it were joined to Hungary. Would not Hungary, for instance, be able to manipulate the railway freights? There had been constant bickerings between the Croats and the Autonomist party, so that Strossmayer's deputation asked that the Magyars should refrain from giving to the latter their financial and moral support. But the Magyars had no such intention. "One should try to convince everyone," said Raki, "that in national politics the Magyars and ourselves stand at the Antipodes. We see in the Slav and Yugoslav solidarity the most powerful guarantee for our national future, whereas the Magyars see in it the tomb of their nationality. We consider the liberation of the East as a condition of a happier future, while the Magyars regard it as the beginning of their absolute ruin or at least as the end of their aspirations for the sole dominion. The idea of a Yugoslav State, arising in Croatia or in Bosnia or Serbia, would always find in Hungary a most determined foe." It was thus improbable that any satisfactory arrangement would be made, particularly as the Austrians, oblivious to all that Jellai['c] had done for them, were quite prepared to give their erstwhile enemies, the Magyars, a free hand. And what the Magyars did was to confer upon Croatia this autonomy for educational and legal and religious matters, while they reserved financial, railway, fiscal and commercial questions, military legislation and the laws relating to the roads and rivers in which both were interested--all these subjects they reserved for the Parliament at Buda-Pest, in which, of course, the Croats formed an impotent minority. Francis Joseph on May 1, 1867, sent a message to Zagreb in which he stated that "the pourparlers with the Kingdom of Hungary, which to him was always dear and faithful, had led to the desired results." He trusted that the Croats would be represented at his coronation at Buda-Pest. Strossmayer was ordered to bring this about; he went instead to the Paris Exhibition. He and the National party prepared themselves for a severe struggle. But now Baron Levin Rauch, of infamous memory, was nominated as Ban. He at once altered the electoral laws, so that the National party came back with only fourteen deputies. If any one in Western Europe thought about the Croats it was with the traditional aversion for the way in which they had behaved to the most noble Kossuth. This was years before the time when Dr. Seton-Watson, as it may interest him to hear, defeated the Magyarophil candidate at an election in the town of Ogulin. The bright idea occurred to somebody to whisper it abroad that Dr. Seton-Watson would arrive that day in order to make notes of the election for the British Press. With Rauch's obedient majority a compromise, the Nagodba, was arranged with Hungary. The terms of this, subordinating Croatia economically and financially to Buda-Pest, are what one would expect; the chief novelty concerns Rieka, as to which port no agreement had been reached.

THE "KRPITSA"

On the Croat text of the Nagodba, which had received the Emperor's sanction on November 8, a piece of paper, the famous "Krpitsa," was glued; and on this paper were the words Rieka knew of old--Corpus separatum sacrae coronae Hungaricae. They had been put forward by the Hungarian delegates and approved by the Emperor on November 17. This rather melodramatic affair would have been thought worthy of at any rate a few lines by most of us if we had written a whole book, nay two books, about Rieka. But our friend Mr. Edoardo Susmel glides, as gracefully as possible, over it. In his Fiume Italiana he is as peu communicatif as a carp. His other book, written in French, simply and beautifully says of this law of 1868 that it is "a precious heritage transmitted from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in which period there was condensed"--or shall we say made palpable?--"the spirit which is jealous of the municipal liberties." "Down to this day," says he, "Rieka is in complete possession of her charter. Rieka has to-day still got her great charter. This constitutional charter ..." and so on and so on. But these modern coryphees of Rieka and Dalmatia are so forgetful.

RIEKA'S HISTORY, AS TWO PEOPLE SEE IT

Mr. Susmel begins by saying that the origins of the Italianity of Rieka lose themselves in the story of Rome. He knows--none better--that the Romans came to these parts. They disappeared--but of course one can't put in every detail. Anyhow, they left an arch, a lot of coins, some vases, etc.; and a few of these are depicted in Mr. Susmel's book. What a relief it must have been to innumerable people as they turned his pages and discovered that he had forgotten to include the illustrations of our Roman Wall, of the Pont du Gard and of the glorious aqueduct that traverses Segovia! From the time of the "Krpitsa" onwards a regular colonization began. Italians were urged to come from their own country--but if Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who studied the question on the spot, is accurate in his diagnosis that Fiume is Italian "with that intensity of feeling bred by alien rule and the sudden victorious liberation therefrom" (Land and Water, May 29, 1919), it certainly does seem a little strange that the Italians should think in this way of the Magyars who invited them and were so good to them. They were told, no doubt, by the Magyars that the Croats would not hurt them, that the city council would always be Italian, that if the saucy Croats asked for schools--as indeed their numbers entitled them to do--well, they would receive no reply. ("Show me a single Croat school!" cried the Italian mayor triumphantly to me in 1919.) The Magyars spent vast sums on the harbour, making the other little harbours of Croatia obsolete, and they were not going to lose their grip of the town for want of proper legislation. They were surprised that more "regnicoli" (Italians from Italy) did not respond; but the renegades made up for them. "Passionate and justified," said Mr. Hilaire Belloc in 1919, is Italian feeling with respect to Fiume. But this writer, who says he travelled to the Adriatic with a view to ascertaining the real facts, did not altogether waste his time, since one of his two adjectives is quite correct. With regard to the renegades no questions were ever asked, if only one helped to keep Rieka from the Croats, if, for example, on a voting paper for the Croatian Diet one put the word "nessuno" (no one). Mr. Susmel, I see, says that the Diet's continued invitation to the town that it should send its deputies to Zagreb was a display of "incredible obstinacy."