Part 14 (2/2)
Towards the end of 1905, Pas.h.i.+tch, then Prime Minister of Serbia, though already working hard against Bulgaria in Macedonia, signed a secret commercial convention with that country providing for the free interchange of goods with the exception of certain specified objects, and binding the two to a monetary convention and a.s.similation of weights and measures. As both countries produced much the same articles the arrangement did not appear to be likely to stimulate trade and as the racial hatred and rivalry of the two over the unsettled Macedonian scheme was extreme, the permanence of the arrangement was in any case doubtful.
Serbia was in dire need of a loan, and was on the point of concluding one for 70,000,000 francs. Part of this was to be supplied by the Vienna Bank, and both Serbia and Bulgaria were negotiating new commercial treaties with Austria. Serbia thought best therefore to keep the transaction with Bulgaria quiet. But just as business was almost concluded with Austria, a Bulgarian newspaper blurted out the Bulgar-Serb convention. The Austria-Hungarian Government demanded at once to see the doc.u.ment, and all business came to a standstill. Nor was this surprising, for Petar I, Pas.h.i.+tch and the regicide group were notoriously Russia's proteges, and any secret arrangement on their part was likely to be directed against Austria.
Austria closed her frontier to Serbian live stock.
Serbia was on the bubble. England had stipulated that the regicides were to be retired from power, as a condition of resuming diplomatic relations. (A stipulation that showed either that the Foreign Office little knew the Balkans, or that it knew very well that the treaty was a farce and did not care.) The regicide gang was infuriated and plotted the a.s.sa.s.sination of their opponents who wished by legal means to settle the question. But, as was delicately expressed by The Times correspondent, ”it is stated that the police authorities refused to afford facilities for the execution of the plot, which consequently failed.” Pity indeed that the police of Serbia did not remain ”conscientious objectors” to plots of a.s.sa.s.sination. And about the same time when Vladan Georgevitch was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for ”revealing state secrets,” in The End of a Dynasty, the author in court denounced King Petar as the humble instrument of Russian policy.
Austria insisted on modifications to the Serbo-Bulgar convention; Turkey too demanded an alteration.
But by the time I arrived in Bosnia this affair was thrown quite into the shade by a new step on Serbia's part. She decided to purchase the artillery for her reconstructed army from the Creusot works in France. This so infuriated Austria that she declared a complete boycott of all Serbian goods. Serbia retorted and the frontiers were absolutely closed; so tightly indeed that along the Serbian frontier I found the officials complained of a meat shortage, and a great trade in smuggled fowls was run at night.
Feeling ran very high. Bosnia being under military occupation naturally bristled with officers and men. The officers talked very freely. Not once did I ever hear the Serbo-Bulgar convention mentioned. It was always the guns. They said it was not a question of trade in armaments. That did not matter. It was the question of policy. Serbia showed plainly now to all the world that she was ranged on the side of Russia and France against the Central Powers.
”She has joined the Franco-Russian combine against us.” They were quite right too, though being then unaccustomed to war, I thought their suspicions unreasonable. And neither I nor they knew that this step had followed immediately on the commencement of ”military conversations” between France and England. But that this arming of Serbia was directly connected with the ringing-in policy of France and Russia is now obvious. Poor Edward VII may have thought he was peace-making, when he let Petar Karageorgevitch's gory past be forgotten and forgiven, and agreed to give up his visit to Montenegro so as not to wound that monarch's sensitive feelings--but he little knew the Balkans.
Scarcely one of the Austrian military or civil authorities I spoke with had ever visited Serbia or Montenegro. They all regarded the two as semi-savage lands used as tools against them by Russia. When I arrived at Vishegrad, close on the Serb frontier, feeling was running high. Serbia showed no sign of giving way as had been expected. I told the officials their boycott was bound to fail, as you cannot starve out a people whose main a.s.sets are maize and pigs.
”You will see I am right. They will simply go on eating pigs till you are tired.” The Bezirksvorsteher was annoyed at this, but interested. I said ”Get me a horse and a guide, and I will go into Serbia and see.” He retorted It was impossible as the frontier was closed, but he hired me the horse and a very black gypsy, a wild enough creature, and I went.
Was halted at the border blockhouse, which the black gypsy thought unpa.s.sable, but the Serbs were rather pleased to be inspected, telephoned through to Uzhitza, and I rode on. An amusing sidelight was the surprise of the gypsy at finding the same language both sides of the border. ”But they talk Bosniak!” he cried.
An aged peasant on horseback joined me and asked so many questions about London that I thought he knew something about it till he asked ”Is it a free country?”
He was puzzled when I said, ”Yes.”
”But it is under Austria,” he protested.
”No, no,” said I, ”it is a free country.”
”Thank G.o.d,” said the old boy, ”and I believed it was under Austria.
Bogati--so many people are under Austria. But London is not.”
In Serbia I found I had guessed right. ”In spite of the horrible curse, n.o.body seemed a penny the worse.” Uzhitza was in high spirits and reminisced my visit of 1902. They referred with triumph to the murder of Alexander. Since that, everything had been going splendidly. The army was everything and all possible money was to be spent on it. If Alexander had lived he would have made an alliance with Austria and have stinted the army. The army and Great Serbia was the cry. They were all for Russia. As for the wretched Draga, the ladies told me that she had received them at some function or another with powder all over her face. Imagine having to kiss the hand of such a fallen woman! (Fas.h.i.+ons have changed now, or England would be a female slaughterhouse.) All the officers killed in her defence were stated to have been her paramours. Nothing was too bad for her. King Petar was described as one who would never interfere with the army. There was much enthusiasm over the resumed relations with England. It was obvious that no one believed that the regicides would really go; their departure was a mere matter of form. As for the boycott, they laughed and told funny tales. A bride had ordered her whole trousseau at Vienna. The wedding was fixed. But the frontier was closed. Her girl friends gallantly went to Vienna in their oldest garments; changed and came back, rather stout but triumphant, clothed in the whole trousseau. As for export, by the aid of France and England they would export to Egypt and Ma.r.s.eilles via Salonika. The French artillery would come in by the same route.
French artillery they intended to have.
I was much interested, but as I had brought no baggage could not go further into Serbia. The Mayor gave me a mounted gendarme as escort to the frontier.
This impressed the Vishegrad authorities much, as did the fact that I had got across the frontier at all. The Bezirksvorsteher asked at once what I had learnt in Serbia, and if the frontier would soon be open.
”I do not know,” said I.
”What do you think?” said he.
”I think not.”
”Our Minister at Belgrade is of the same opinion,” he replied. In truth the officers who had protested that Serbia had now openly joined the Russo-French combine were right. And what is more, through our Entente with France, we too now, consciously or not, were tools used by Russia for the making of Great Serbia and furthering Pan-Slav ambition. Serbia began to feel it safe to pull long noses at Austria. That the Austrians on the other hand regarded their occupation of Bosnia as permanent was clear. No nation merely on a temporary job of ”putting things straight” would have expended the vast sums and effort needed to bring a half-wild Turkish province in twenty-eight years up to a high state of material well-being. The mountain roads are second to none in Europe. Mines, agriculture and every possible industry were being developed regardless of expense, by up-to-date methods.
”The officials,” I noted in my diary, ”give one the impression of being overworked.” Everything was centralized and had to go through the Konak. They wrestled with a ma.s.s of detail and mostly felt like exiles in a wild land. The large majority were Slavs--either Poles, Croats or Bosniaks, and these got on much better with the populace than the Magyars or Germans, of whom I met a few. The mistake of the Government was in trying to go too fast. A leap in twenty-eight years from the twelfth century or thereabouts to the twentieth was too much. The peasant intensely conservative by nature resented every change. ”Better that a village should fall than a custom” is a South Slav proverb which I have heard quoted with approval. An astonis.h.i.+ng amount of work had been done and admirably done. Future generations will profit by it. But the peasant who had had all his ideas and habits upheaved had had time to forget the oppression of the Turk, but remembered, with kindness, his slop-dawdle tolerance, This happens, I believe, in every land ”freed” from the Turk. The people vaguely expect an earthly paradise where every one will do as he pleases, and find to their dismay that you can no longer evade the sheep-tax by tipping the hodja to let you put your flock on ”vakuf” land. The Christian loses his privilege and has to serve in the army which he hates. He cannot run to a foreign consul for support against his Moslem neighbour, nor earn good pay by acting as spy for one Power or another. He complained bitterly that the Turkish Government never made roads or mended bridges, When he finds, however, that the new foreign government expects him to contribute to their making by giving labour, or paying tax, he is furious. ”Liberty” for most Balkan Christians means liberty to ma.s.sacre Moslems and take their property. The Bosnian Orthodox peasant found precisely the same law applied to him and the Moslems.
The strict impartiality observed by the Austrian Government towards all three sects caused the wrath of all. ”What,” said a Catholic fiercely, ”can you think of our Government when I tell you that a priest baptized and converted three Moslem lads, and the Government actually made him send them back to their parents and censured him because they were not of age? Not of age, if you please, and so their souls are not to be saved!”
The Moslem was equally furious with the equality treatment, for he was no longer top-dog.
The most remarkable work of the Austrian Government gave perhaps the most offence. It was the medical. The Bosniak, in appearance, is often a giant. But his appearance is deceptive. Stripped of his numerous waistcoats his chest measurement, as the military doctors informed me, is so poor that a larger percentage of Bosniaks were rejected from the army than in most of the other recruiting districts of Austria-Hungary. As in all South Slav lands, tuberculosis raged. ”Thirty per cent, affected, without counting an apex” as a Bosnian doctor told me. And scattered over the country, but especially virulent on the eastern districts along the Serbian frontier, was syphilis. In some parts this was so rampant that the Government posted on the village walls and in the schools, notices warning persons never to drink from a gla.s.s after some one else, or wipe with the same towel, and other advice. All of which went against the custom of the people. Against tuberculosis the schools waged an anti-spitting war. A child who spat on the floor had to clean it up, which was considered a great indignity and gave great offence. Compulsory cleaning of streets to a population who regarded the street as the proper receptacle for all garbage was a further source of trouble. That the medical work produced a great improvement, that malaria, by drainage, petroleum on the ponds, and quininizing of the Population was stamped out in some districts and got in hand in others counted for nothing. They ”were not our custom,” they were ”Schwab.”
The forests also were a source of friction. In old days the peasant cut what he pleased, where he pleased. His goats browsed the saplings and they grew up crooked. But they made firewood and it did not matter. No replanting ever took place. When all the wood was cut on a hillside the winter rains washed away the whole of the soil and left bare rock. A pity--but the will of G.o.d, sighed the peasant, and he went on to fell the next wood.
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