no objections if Austria-Hungary should find it necessary
"to
occupy
the
Sandjak
definitely
like
the
rest."1
Moreover,
the
Russian
delegates,
Gorchakov
and
Shuvalov,
told
the
Serb
statesman
Ristic
that
he
must come to terms with Andrássy, and that beyond
Pirot and Vranja Serbia could hope for nothing. It is
highly interesting to note that Ristic, hitherto the soul
of the Russophile party, but henceforth driven perforce
to a revision of policy, tried to convince Shuvalov that
one day Russia would have a great settlement with
Austria, and that at the moment of liquidation Serbia
would be of more value than Bulgaria. * But all that he
could get in reply was the remark of the Russian Under-
Secretary, Jomini, that " in fifteen years at most the
situation will be such that Russia will have to reckon up
with Austria. That will be your consolation " — and
very cold comfort this must have been at the time.
In a word, two Serbian provinces had been added to
the Habsburg dominions, which now held nearly twice
as many Jugoslavs as lived outside them. Contact
1 Fournier, Wie wir zu Bosnien kamen, p. 74.
2Vladan Gjorgjevic, La Serbie et le Congrès de Berlin.
22
between Serbia and Montenegro was rendered more
difficult
by
the
introduction
of
Austro-Hungarian
garrisons
in
the
Sandjak.
The
presence
of
those
garrisons seemed to be symbolic of Austria-Hungary's
designs upon Macedonia and Salonica. Worst of all,
Russia had definitely abandoned Serbia as an Austrian
sphere of influence and was concentrating her own
efforts upon Bulgaria.
The twenty-five years that followed the Berlin settle-
ment are the most disheartening in Jugoslav history,
but, though they supply the key to many of the dis-
contents of the present day, the barest summary must
suffice for my present purpose.
Serbia, under the rule of the brilliant but unprincipled
and utterly unstable Milan Obrenovic, became the vassal
of Austria-Hungary by a secret political treaty concluded
in 1881 (and lasting till 1895), and at the same time,
thanks to her geographical isolation, fell into an economic
dependence, which was only accentuated by Austro-
Hungarian
control
over
railway
development
in
the
Balkans. At home Milan instituted a regime of arbitrary
and spasmodic government, rendered worse by open
favouritism in the army and the administration. The
result was an internecine party feud which weakened
the country.
Milan's main excursion into foreign policy was his
unhappy onslaught upon Bulgaria in 1885. Obsessed
by the idea of a Balkan Balance of Power, he was eager
to recover his lost prestige, and looked upon Prince
Alexander and his untried army as an easy prey. His
ill-considered and dog-in-the-manger action resulted in
immediate disaster, but, worse still, it created a gulf
between Serb and Bulgár that was speedily to widen.
Milan was saved from the worst consequences of his folly
by
Austria-Hungary's
threat
of
armed
intervention
against the Bulgars if they carried their success too far.
Bismarck, who had a well-merited contempt for Milan,
23
tried to dissuade Kálnoky, the Austro-Hungarian For-
eign Minister, from committing himself too far. But
Kálnoky's reply is most illuminating.1 He explains
that his action was not taken for the sake of Serbia or of
Milan, but on account of its effect upon the " brothers "
of the Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia. In other words, he
was conscious of the growing interaction between the
different branches of the Southern Slavs on either side
of the frontier, and saw that what affected the one group
could no longer be indifferent to the other.
Bismarck remonstrated and hinted prophetically that,
the stronger Serbia became, the greater would be her
powers of attraction upon the Southern Slavs of Austria-
Hungary. " But Kálnoky, as he once told his Minister in
Belgrade, did " not count on Serbia adhering to us for
love; she will have to do so from fear and owing to
material interests, and these I consider as far more
reliable motives than the changing feelings of such half-
wild peoples."* This phrase gives us the key to Austria-
Hungary's failure during the next thirty years. Her only
real solution rested upon force, and led logically to the
progessive alienation of Southern Slav sentiment.
Milan's abdication in 1889 did not lead to any essential
change of regime, for his son, King Alexander, warped
by education and surroundings, perpetuated the personal
scandals of his father's Court, and, worse still, his un-
constitutional
and
arbitrary
tendencies.
All
this
and
fierce party dissensions kept Serbia in a fever till, in 1903,
she was rid of her impossible King and Queen by a
brutal assassination which set a precedent for military
interference in politics.
Meanwhile, the same period had been one of stag-
nation and repression in Croatia. Count Khuen Héder-
váry, who ruled as Ban from 1883 to 1903 as the ex-
ponent of Budapest policy, may in his own way be regarded
1 Die Grosse Politik, v., pp. 28, 32.
2 Ibid., p. 38.
3 Corti, Alexander von Battenberg, p. 235·
24
as one of the most effectively corrupt satraps of a subject
province of whom the nineteenth century can boast.
His method was to play off Croat and Serb against each
other, to " pack " the Diet and muzzle the Press, and to
close every avenue of public life to men of independent
views and keen national feeling; so that the Croats do
not exaggerate when they denounce
Khuen as the
corrupter of a. whole generation. It was only towards
the turn of the century that a new generation began to
arise, both among Croats and Serbs, which had received
its education abroad, and especially at Prague, where
the ethical and political teachings of Professor Masaryk
exercised a remarkable influence over the progressive
youth of all Slav countries.
At the same time Bosnia-Herzegovina was under the
control of the Joint Ministry of Fi
nance in Vienna,
whose chief from 1882 to 1903 was another brilliant
Magyar, Benjamin Kállay. Under him Bosnia acquired
roads,
railways,
ordered
administration,
and
growing
material prosperity; but nothing was done to win the
soul of the people, and very little to solve the two vital
problems of illiteracy and the feudal land-tenure. His
virtual proscription of the Serb name, and the attempt
to create an artificial " Bosnian " nationality, was, of
course, foredoomed to failure. But it was part of the
general system of water-tight compartments in which the
different sections of the Southern Slavs were kept.
Serbia,
Montenegro,
Bosnia,
Dalmatia,
Croatia,
the
Voivodina, the Slovene lands, Fiume, each developed
on lines of its own, and everything was done that could
be done to discourage intercourse between the different
units.
As between the Habsburg lands and Serbia, this was
ensured especially by the establishment of an extra-
ordinarily ramified system of espionage, civil and military,
with Bosnia as its centre, so comprehensive as to make
it very nearly impossible for subjects of the Serbian
25
kingdom to travel in Bosnia. The first signs of reviving
solidarity came in 1903, when Khuen's rigorous sup-
pression of rioting in Zagreb and other Croatian towns led
to demonstrations of protest throughout Dalmatia and
Istria. Thirty Croat deputies of those two provinces
resolved to lay their kinsmen's grievances before the
Emperor, and his refusal of an audience played a
material part in alienating Croat sympathies from the
Crown.
It is a curious coincidence that, just as the year 1868
witnessed a set-back in both Serbia and Croatia, so the
year 1903 marks a parallel revival in national conscious-
ness in all the chief Jugoslav countries. In Serbia the
removal of the Obrenovic dynasty, however revolting
the circumstances under which it was accomplished,
leads to a very general improvement — more constitutional
government, less corruption, financial stabilisation, and
a corresponding revival of economic life. In Croatia
Khuen falls, and there is the beginning of a movement
here and along the Dalmatian coast which leads to
renewed co-operation between Serb and Croat, and in
1905 to the Resolution of Fiume and to the formation
of the Serbo-Croat Coalition, which remains the back-
bone of national resistance to Hungary right on till the
final upheaval of the Great War. In Bosnia, again, the
, death of Kállay in 1903 ends an era, and under his
successor
Burián some progress was made towards
autonomy in Church and School, and the demand for
self-government became yearly more insistent. Lastly, in
Macedonia the desperate insurrection of 1903, though it
ended in failure, led the Powers to insist upon a scheme
of reform which, while checking the worst forms of out-
age, actually accentuated the unrest, and braced all
the rival races for the supreme effort to expel the
Turk and substitute a new hegemony in place of the old.
This series of transformations in the political field
Rurally reacted upon Austria-Hungary's Balkan policy,
26
and in this her relations with Serbia became more and
more the keystone.
It is of some importance, in view of what happened in
1914 after Sarajevo, to consider the attitude of Vienna
towards
the
assassination
of
King
Alexander.
The
details of the plot had been worked out by some of the
conspirators at the Café Imperial, on the Ringstrasse,
in Vienna; and one of Kállay's principal subordinates
in the Bosnian Ministry, Thallóczy, had been in close
touch with them. What was on foot had been well
known both to the Austro-Hungarian and to the. Russian
Government for at least a fortnight beforehand, and
neither had lifted a hand to prevent it.1 It is, of course,
only fair to add that no one had foreseen the brutal
details of the crime, which were due to panic after the
lights of the Palace had been cut off; but it is also obvious
that they must all have reckoned with bloodshed and
probably murder as a virtual certainty. On the day
after the assassination, the official organ .of the Ballplatz,
the Fremdenblatt, published an article regretting the
murder, but affirming " that it mattered little who
reigned in Serbia, provided he were on good terms with
Austria-Hungary." This view was confirmed by Count
Goluchowski to the French Ambassador; and, while
King Edward insisted on the withdrawal of the British
Minister from Belgrade for three years, and the Tsar
greeted the new King Peter in pointedly frigid terms,
Francis Joseph, the doyen of European dynasties, sent
a long and relatively cordial telegram, assuring Peter
of " support and friendship " in the task of restoring
internal order.»
The fact is that Austria-Hungary calculated that the
1 This was confirmed to me in 1908 by a prominent member of the Austrian
Cabinet
of
the
day.
According
to
Bogicevió (Kriegsursachen, p. 15), Herr
Müller, then chief of the Ballplatz Press bureau, was also in constant touch
with the conspirators through Prince Peter's cousin, Nenadovid.
a Steed, Through Thirty Years, i., p. 206.
2 Herr von Wegerer in Die Kriegsschuldfrage (June 19-25), among other serious
inaccuracies, asserts the contrary.
27
Karagjorgjevic dynasty was not likely to quarrel with
Vienna, and less likely to lean upon Russia, as Alexander
had done before the catastrophe. But this calculation
was false in two directions. Peter, both by personal
inclination and thanks to the circumstances under which
he came to the throne, played a much more negative
rôle than Alexander, and could not shape policy, which
fell under the control of the Russophil Radicals. Austria-
Hungary, on the other hand, instead of setting herself
to conciliate the new regime, antagonised it by an
economic policy resting upon high agrarian tariffs.
The Radicals had from the very first opposed Austria-
Hungary, and King Milan as her tool; and Svetozar
Markovié, the inspirer of their programme, had pro-
claimed in very explicit language the view that " the
liberation and union of all Southern Slavs can only be
attained
through
the
destruction
of
Austria-Hungary,"
and that its existence and that of Serbia are incom-
patible. 1 Now that they had definite control
of Serbia's
destinies, their leader, Mr. Pasic, appears to have drawn
up a secret programme, whose six points were as follows:
(1)
League
with
Montenegro;
(2)
Agreement
with
Bulgaria as to Macedonia; (3) Serbo-Bulgar Customs
Union;
(4)
Economic
emancipation
from
Austria-
Hungary; (5) Furtherance of the Southern Slav move-
ment inside Austria-Hungary; and (6) Propaganda to
discredit it abroad. 2
In 1905 a first step was taken in this direction by the
conclusion of a Customs Alliance with Bulgaria. But
this was stillborn from the first, since Austria-Hungary
Was determined to prevent at all costs a step which would
have soon brought the two Slav neighbours closer
together. She imposed her veto, and, when Serbia
1 Skerlic, Svetozar Markovié, . 108.
2 This was made public by Mr. Balugdiic, then private secretary to the King,
and to-day Jugoslav Minister in Berlin. See Mandl, Die Habsburger und die
Sebische Frage p. 62. a source which must be used with very great caution,
since Mandl has for over fifteen years led a campaign of extreme violence against
Serbia
28
demurred, peremptorily broke off the negotiations then
in course for a new Austro-Serbian commercial treaty,
and closed her frontier to Serbian livestock and other
imports. To yield was made still more impossible by
Austria-Hungary's
further
demand
that
Serbia
should
order the guns and other munitions which she required
at the Skoda works in Austria rather than with Creuzot-
Schneider, or elsewhere in the West.
The result was the famous " Pig War," in which
Serbia, shut off from her economic outlet to the north,
had to search desperately for new markets — a task in
which she was surprisingly successful. But this pro-
longed economic struggle had important political effects.
It brought home to the meanest intelligence the intoler-
able handicap of Serbia's geographical position — shut
off from the sea, and dependent for her trade and
prosperity upon the whim of her great neighbour to the
north. It hit the pocket of every peasant, and gave
him a double incentive to hostility against the " Svaba " 1
— the economic and the national combined.
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