Sarajevo
Page 4
While, then, Serbia was passing through this ordeal,
and making under King Peter a rapid revival alike in
the political, the intellectual, and the economic sphere,
in Austria-Hungary home and foreign policy became
more
and
more
intertwined.
Magyar
racial
policy
towards Croatia and the other non-Magyar nationalities,
the parallel tariff policy advocated by Magyar agrarian
interests, and the narrow outlook of the high military
authorities of the Monarchy towards Italy and the
Balkans, all reacted upon the foreign relations of the
Ballplatz with Serbia, and, as time passed, with Roumania
also.
In the spring of 1907 the short-lived entente between
the Hungarian and Serbo-Croat Coalitions ended in open
rupture, and a determined attempt was made from
1 The " Swabian " — the Serb's nickname for the German, whom he knows
best through the Swabian colonists of the Banat.
29
Budapest, through its successive nominees as Ban, or
Governor, of Croatia, to split the new-found concord
between Croat and Serb, and to reduce Croatia to its
old subservience. But Baron Rauch, despite all his
official apparatus, failed to secure a single seat for his
creatures at the general election of 1908, even under the
very narrow franchise which then prevailed; and so
he proceeded to govern without Parliament by
an
elaborate system of administrative pressure, Press perse-
cution, and espionage. At this stage home and foreign
policy again joined hands — on the one hand Magyar
intolerance of Croat national aspirations, on the other
the designs of the Ballplatz against Serbia in connection
with the impending annexation of Bosnia.
From 1897 to 1906 Austria-Hungary and Russia had
worked fairly harmoniously together in Balkan questions,
thanks in no small measure to the easy-going attitude
of Count Goluchowski. But the Russo-Japanese War
diverted Russia's attention from the Near to the Far
East, and, by rendering her temporarily unfit for military
action on a grand scale, created a situation which the
Central Powers could not refrain from exploiting —
Germany by her action against France in the Moroccan
affair,
Austria-Hungary
by
renewed
activity
in
the
Balkans.
With
the
appointment
of
Baron
Aehrenthal
as
Goluchowski's successor (1906) the coolness between
Vienna and Petersburg grew rapidly, and was, ere long,
accentuated by a personal rivalry between Aehrenthal
and the Russian Foreign Minister Izvolsky, who was
angry at not receiving any previous notice of the project
announced in January 1908 for a railway through the
Sandjak of Novipazar, to link the Bosnian railway system
with Salonica. To this day it is not clear whether
Aehrenthal was really in earnest with this project, or
Wierely used it as a means for breaking with Russia.
Certain it is that such a railway could never hope to be
30
a commercial proposition, and that the Austro-Hungarian
General Staff was utterly opposed to it, of course realising
that the strategic line of advance to Salonica or the
Aegean lay up the Morava valley, through the heart of
Serbia, and not through the wild and trackless mountains
of the Sandjak.
The growing unrest in Bosnia took the significant
form of a demand for the grant of parliamentary institu-
tions by the Turkish suzerain — a skilful· tactical means
of
loosening
and
challenging
the
authority
of
the
occupying Power1; and when the Young Turk Revolu-
tion came in the summer of igo8,Aehrenthal not unnatur-
ally felt that it was high time to regulate the position of
the two provinces, and that the Revolution provided
him with an admirable excuse and opportunity for
creating
an
accomplished
fact,
before
Russia
had
recovered her full strength.
It was at this point that Russian Imperialistic aims
played into Aehrenthal's hands; for Izvolsky was eagerly
working to secure free passage for Russian warships
through the Straits, and on 2 July, 1908, offered to
Aehrenthal, in return for this, to endorse the annexation,
not only of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but of the Sandjak as
well.
Aehrenthal,
in
his
reply,
agreed,
subject
to
Roumania and Bulgaria, as Black Sea Powers, acquiring
the same right, and subject also to a guarantee of the
safety
of
Constantinople
against
naval
attack.2
On
15 September a meeting took place between the two
statesmen at Count Berchtold's castle of Buchlau, at
which Aehrenthal told Izvolsky of the impending annexa-
tion,
though
without
indicating
the
exact
date.
Aehrenthal renounced the Sandjak, and also those clauses
of the Treaty of Berlin which restricted Montenegro's
freedom of action, while Izvolsky pledged Russia not to
1 Friedjung, Zeitalter des Imperialismus, vol. II., p. 205. In a footnote Dr.
Friedjung goes out of his way to criticise me for not referring to this incident
in my book, The Southern Slav Question (1911).
2 27 August, 1908. Friedjung, op. cit., p. 224,
31
occupy Constantinople. But Izvolsky, when he went
on
to Paris and London, found the Western Powers
entirely disinclined for any concession on the question
of the Straits, and thus found himself without any quid
pro quo when, in October 1908, the annexation of Bosnia
and the independence of Bulgaria were simultaneously
proclaimed.1 He could not pretend that he had had
no warning, for Aehrenthal had given formal notice on
30 September; but his own amour propre was touched,
and to Berchtold, then Ambassador in St. Petersburg,
he insisted that the method adopted by Aehrenthal was
an acte brutale, contrary to ordinary diplomatic practice. '
But, of course, the root of the matter lay in the fact that
a severe blow had been deliberately dealt at the prestige
of Russia among the Balkan Slavs. In the six months
of crisis that followed, Izvolsky, it must be admitted,
tried to ignore a whole series of very explicit commit-
ments entered into by Russia on the Bosnian Question
in the seventies and eighti
es,3 and now once more, less
formally, with Aehrenthal, and set himself to enlist the
Entente, Serbia and Turkey against Austria-Hungary's
action. The contention of the Western Powers that
1 Aehrenthal himself once boasted to Dr. Kanner of having deceived Izvolsky
at Buchlau by telling him of the annexation, but giving him no inkling that it
was
imminent.
(See
Kanner,
Kaiserliche
Katastrophenpolitik,
p.
82.)
On
the
other hand, it seems clear that Izvolsky was disingenuous when he assured Sir
Edward Grey that he had not " given his consent in advance to what Austria
had done about Bosnia." (Grey, Twenty-five Years, vol. i., p. 183.) He certainly
had not agreed to a definite date for the annexation, but he almost certainly
agreed to it in principle, as part of a bargain involving the Straits. If, how-
ever, Baron Schoen, who talked with Izvolsky at Berchtesgaden on 26 September,
nas
correctly
reported
this
conversation,
then
Izvolsky
must
have
even
known of the imminence of annexation; for Schoen quotes him as saying that
Aehrenthal's intention was to raise the whole question at the Delegations, which
were due to meet as early as 8 October. Cf. Brandenburg, Von Bismarck zum
Weltkriege, pp. 272-6.
2
Berchtold's report to Aehrenthal on his conversation with Izvolsky on
30 October, 1908, is quoted by Friedjung, Zeitalter des Imperialismus, p. 22g
te. He also gives extracts from Aehrenthal's two letters to Izvolsky, of
1 and 30 September (pp. 231-2). These help to explain Izvolsky's annoyance,
or in the first Aehrenthal says, " Je ne suis pas encore à même de vous donner
s informations sur la date précise à laquelle nous procéderons à l'annexion
de ces provinces."
3 1881 and 1884. See Fournier, Wie Wir eu Bosnien Kamen, p. 83 and Prib-
ram, Austrian Foreign Policy, p.20.
32
an international Treaty cannot be subjected to one-
sided revision without undermining the public law of
Europe, was unanswerable in theory, but was greatly
weakened in practice by these very commitments of
Russia, and hence denounced by the Central Powers
with some plausibility as hypocritical.
Serbia, on her side, confronted by the brutal fact of
annexation, was encouraged by Russia's attitude in a
resistance which would otherwise have seemed mere
madness even to the maddest of patriots. She had
lived thirty years in the fond illusion that the occupation
of the two provinces in 1878 was not necessarily more than
a passing phase, and now saw the erection of a permanent
obstacle alike to her national and her economic expan-
sion.
Excitement
reached
fever-heat;
the
Press,
and
even responsible statesmen, indulged in wild language
against Austria-Hungary; and Crown Prince George was
mouthpiece of a very vocal war party, until the scandal
of his demented attack upon his valet put him under
eclipse and led to a change in the succession.
The tension between Vienna and Belgrade was still
further increased by the sinister methods employed by
Aehrenthal
and
his
subordiates
to
justify
Austro-
Hungarian action. In the summer of 1908 wholesale
arrests were made in Croatia on charges of treasonable
Pan-Serb propaganda; and in March 1909, while the
international crisis was at its very height, a Treason Trial
was opened against fifty-three Serbs of the Monarchy at
Zagreb, which lasted seven months, and developed into one
of the worst travesties of justice since Judge Jeffries. Its
object was to show that the leaders of the foremost Croat
and Serb parties of the Monarchy were in correspondence
with, and in the pay of, the Serbian Government, and
that drastic action had to be taken in order to check the
movement.
As a further proof, the well-known Austrian historian,
Dr. Friedjung, was supplied by the Ballplatz with a
33
large number of documents implicating many of the
Serbo-Croat Coalition leaders, and the first of his articles
based upon them appeared in the Neue Freie Presse at a
moment when war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia
seemed to be unavoidable. If war had come, these men
were to have been arrested, and probably shot, and the
truth might never have come to light. As it was, the
crisis passed, and they brought a libel action against
Friedjung, which, after long delays, came up before a
Viennese jury, and led to the amazing revelation that
the " documents " supplied by the Austro-Hungarian
Foreign Office were impudent forgeries, intended to
compromise the movement for Serbo-Croat unity.1
Even more sensational was the sequel. In a speech
before the Austrian Delegation in February 1910, pro-
fessor Masaryk (now President of Czechoslovakia) was
able to produce evidence which showed that the docu-
ments were manufactured inside the Austro-Hungarian
Legation at Belgrade. It transpired that the alleged
minutes
of
the
revolutionary
society,
"
Slovenski
Jug," had been forged upon huge sheets of paper (97 by
34 centimetres in size), so that they could be con-
veniently
photographed
afterwards,
and
that
the
forgers were so clumsy as to use a reception form in
place of a transmission form for a telegram which they
were forging. Another hardly less interesting document
produced by Masaryk was a sheet of paper on which
someone
had
been practising the signature of Mr.
Davidovic, a former Serbian Minister of Education.2 On
the strength of all this Masaryk denounced the Austro-
Hungarian
Minister
in
Belgrade,
Count
Forgách, as
another "Azev,"3 while Aehrenthal sat shamed and
1 For a detailed account of these trials and their sequel, see my Southern
Slav Question, chaps, x., xi., xii.
2 In 1919 and 1924 Jugoslav Premier, and to-day leader of the Opposition
bloc.
3 A reference to the notorious Russian agent provocateur who betrayed the
police to the revolutionaries and the revolutionaries to the police, until a just
fate came him.
34
silent before him. Yet nothing was done to punish
Forgách, and, after a short interval as Minister at
Dresden, he was transferred to the Ballplatz, where he
became the right-hand
man of
Aehrenthal and
his
successor Berchtold in the conduct of the Monarchy's
Balkan policy.
The attempt to destroy Serbo-Croat unity in Croatia
had failed miserably, Austro-Hungarian policy towards
Serbia had been badly discredited before the whole
world as a result of these revelations, and a strong
impetus had been given to the national movement among
the Southern Slavs, who looked increasingly towards
Serbia as their champion.
Meanwhile, the international crisis had been settled by
Russia's
surrender.
Aehrenthal's
whole
action
rested
upon the calculation that Russia could not fight a great
war so soon after the conflict with Japan, and here he
judged rightly. But he was not allowed to win the
laurels of a new Austrian Bismarck, as some were fain
to call him; for the final solution of the crisis came
through
Germany's
intervention
in
Petersburg,
and
William II's theatrical pose as the deliverer "in shining
armour." This phrase, which stung no less than his
other allusions to " Nibelung loyalty " and to Austria-
Hungary as " brilliant second on the duelling field,"
revealed to the world the double fact that Austria-
Hungary was becoming more and more the vassal of
Berlin, and that the Central Powers were bent on elimin-
ating
Russian
influence
from
the
Balkan
Peninsula.
There is even reason to believe that the final decision of
Francis Joseph and his nephew in favour of peace was
due to their fear of falling under German control in the
event of war.l
1 William II had visited Francis Ferdinand at Eckartsau in November 1908,
and had won him for a scheme by which German garrisons would hold Galicia
and Bohemia, and keep Russia in check, while Austria-Hungary invaded Serbia.
But Francis Joseph's comment was, " I can see the Germans coming in, but I
don't see how we are to get them out again afterwards." See H. W. Steed,
" The Quintessence of Austria," (Edinburgh Review, October 1915).
35
It must, however, be added that Germany, so far from
prompting Aehrenthal's action, had not been consulted
at all. While Aehrenthal had, on 27 August, made
formal overtures to Russia, which led to the Buchlau
meeting, his first communication to Bülow in Berlin was
ten days after that event (26 September), and included
the highly misleading statement that he had already