Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle

by M. E. Durham

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BOSNIA IN 1906. THE PLOT THICKENS.

In the summer of 1906, when I visited Bosnia, the plot was already far advanced. Petar Karageorgevitch was on the throne of Serbia, and Russia, who had had a bad set-back in the Far East, was again turning Balkanwards.

To visit Bosnia a visa was necessary, a sure sign that a land suffers from "unrest." To obtain it I went to the Austrian Embassy. The young gentleman who attended to passports was out, and I was bidden sit on a bench with a number of rather poverty-stricken Austrians. When the gentleman appeared he was vexed to find so much work, and refused most of the applicants roughly. Their papers were incorrect or he was dissatisfied with their reasons for wishing to return home. One "cheeked" him considerably in German, and I laughed. It therefore never occurred to him that I was English. I am in fact, when travelling, rarely taken for English, which is often convenient. He addressed me sharply in German: "You want to go to Bosnia?"

"Yes, please." He took me for a Bosnian, and I let him do it.

"When did you leave Bosnia?"

"In the summer of 1900."

"What have you been doing in London?"

"Writing and other things."

This alarmed him and he said sternly: "You must tell me exactly why you left Bosnia."

"Because I am English," I said politely, "and it was time to come home."

I pressed my passport upon him, which he had been too haughty to look at before. Then there was hurrying and scurrying and orders and abuse of the doorkeeper and much confusion, and I was conducted to a drawing-room and apologized to (for having been treated as an Austrian subject) and given the visa. I enjoyed the episode immensely, and incidentally learnt how the official mind regarded Bosniaks. My previous experience in Serbia caused me to go in search of a new-laid Serbian visa also, in case I wished to cross the frontier. Militchevitch this time was very friendly, joked about the awful bill for cypher telegrams which I had run up for the Serbian Government in 1902, and promised to send me some introductions to leading Bosniaks.

At Trieste great events were in progress. The Emperor Franz Joseph was to hold big military manoeuvres at Trebinje in the Herzegovina and a naval review at Ragusa. The air was full of political electricity, flags and decorations, and the coasting steamer was full of police spies. All papers and passports were scrutinized carefully at each landing-stage. The Kaiser had not visited Dalmatia for very many years, and the populace was delighted. Dalmatia complained bitterly that money was poured into Bosnia and nothing done for her. Now things no doubt would look up.

Then we touched at Lesina and learnt that the Kaiser was unwell and that his heir presumptive, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, would replace him.

"I know what is the matter with him," said the captain to me: "he has political fever. Something has happened."

The tale ran round that the Kaiser had intended after the manoeuvres to announce the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. But that Abdul Hamid, apt at expedients, had learnt this fact, and had sent Franz Josef a polite message regretting that he was unable in person to receive His Majesty on this, his first visit to a Turkish province, but assuring him that his reception should be in every way suitable. Se non vero, ben trovato. Possibly true, for it came out later that Goluchowski actually broached the subject to Russia in the summer of 1906 and Russia raised objections, and may very probably have informed Abdul.

The news caused great disappointment. The old Kaiser was genuinely respected and even loved. Towns that were poor had spent much to do him honour. Perhaps this was one of the "tides in the affairs of men" and nations, that can be taken once and once only. The change of feeling was marked at all our stopping-places. It was very late when we reached Ragusa, and a gauntlet of police had to be run. The town was crammed. Next day the great grey warships lay off the coast and the army was arriving, disembarking and marching up to Trebinje. No stranger might go there without a special pass. I did not ask for one, as in such cases one sees only what one is meant to see, which is misleading. So I got up at 4 a.m. and went to look at the army. It was put to an unusual test in Europe, as it had to rely largely on mule transport. Having done much pack-saddle travel myself, I noted with interest that the Bosniak regiments were the only ones who knew how to "pack-saddle." With most of the others the saddles rolled under at once, or halfway up the road, which is worse. The army marched off early. I then made the acquaintance of a pretty girl, who was engaged to one of the officers, and from her later heard all that happened. This I supplemented by sitting in the cafe when the officers came back and hearing their curses. The men were dead-beat. The water supply had broken down, so had the food. The burning limestone karst had been too much for the men from the plains, and they broke down badly. Only the Croats and Bosniaks had stood the test. The manoeuvres were a failure.

The arrival of the Archduke and suite was very quiet. Ragusa was decorated entirely with Slav colours. Only on the Government offices did the yellow and black of Austria appear. At three in the afternoon the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to drive through the town, whose broad main street is a fine background for a procession. It was crammed with a gay throng, and the national dress of Ragusa can be very gay indeed. All were talking and laughing.

Then came the solemn strains of "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser," the finest of all national anthems, and a sudden hush fell on the crowd. A silence absolute and unbroken that continued till the unhappy man, who sat motionless and erect, his face as blanched as a corpse, drove out of the further gate of the town. Then the crowd burst into one huge laugh. So complete was the demonstration that it was certainly pre-arranged.

"Write to the papers! write to the papers!" cried several who knew me, in high glee. Then Prince Danilo passed, and the crowd cried "Zhivio!"

I met The Times correspondent and said: "Well, that was a display. You have something to write about now!" But he replied that as we were on friendly terms with Austria he should certainly not report it. Nor did the papers to which I wrote think fit to publish this highly significant affair. Thus is the trend of Foreign Affairs hidden from the public.

Editors might as well often do without their correspondents, for they tell them beforehand what to emphasize, or cut the important news out of their telegrams.

The Archduke arrived with a portmanteau full of medals, and took them all away with him again. His only enthusiastic reception was from the deputation of Albanian Bishops and other ecclesiasts who came from Scutari to greet him. He was a brave man, for after the demonstration he went into the town on foot almost unescorted, and during the drive, though he must have expected a bomb every moment, he showed no loss of self-control save the blanching of his face. From Ragusa I went to Serajevo. I took the phonograph to collect songs, and wished specially to collect tattoo patterns and see the Bogumil and all other local historical remains, but was badly hampered, nor is it my purpose here to describe things anthropological. Had I been left to my own devices I should doubtless have made larger collections and seen less of the political situation. But the Austrian police, like the Serbian in 1902, insisted on rubbing my nose in it.

Travel in the interior was forbidden without a special pass. The British Consul was absent, and had referred me to his Italian colleague who muddled the business badly, whether because he was stupid or for reasons of his own, I did not find out. A little of both, I think. I was asked to call at a certain hour on the Governor of Serajevo. He was a Croat, spoke German to me and told me it was the wrong time of year to travel in Bosnia. Much surprised, I said I had wintered in Macedonia and could stand anything. He then spoke Serb, and I foolishly replied in the same tongue. I told him all I wanted was the permit, and that I could shift for myself. He objected that the food was bad; native houses dirty; winter near —such a journey as I proposed among the people in short impossible. I replied I was used to bugs, lice and fleas, could sleep on the ground and eat anything. All I wanted was a pony and a respectable guide. He stated that unfortunately there were no guides in Bosnia, so I said if I could have a pony I would find the way myself by map. Remembering my trump card at the Serb Legation, I asked if the country were in too dangerous a state. He hastened to say it was not. At last, countered at every point, he offered to lend me his man-servant for a fortnight; could not spare him longer. I should then have seen enough and could return to England. I said I could not so inconvenience him; that I could not get any work done in the time and that I thought of staying months not weeks. He said he would think it over and I was to call again. Next time he was all smiles and had a map ready. "Here," he said, "is your route. Here is a letter"—he pointed to a large pile—"for the Bezirksvorsteher of every place. You will present it on your arrival and do nothing till the authorities have arranged for you. The tour will take three weeks, and then you will go back to England." It was a great disappointment to me. You cannot get a native to tell you folk-tales while you draw the interior of his hut, if a policeman is sitting waiting till it is done. Nor can you live with a family and see its habits. Just as I had plodded round Serbia in spite of the police, so I would not be put off Bosnia, but to this day I regret the great amount of most interesting material that was there at my hand and which I could not gather. Bosnia was a mine of old-world lore and belief. As in Serbia, however, it was obvious that there was something the authorities wanted to conceal. And as "DORA" had not yet been born in England the affair seemed to me unutterably silly and tiresome. The first part of the journey I was, for all practical purposes, under arrest. Met on arrival everywhere by a most polite young official, who told me his whole time was at my disposal. "This is a mosque," he said, "this is a Turkish coffee-house. We will have a cup of coffee. This is the Catholic Church, or Orthodox, as the case might be." We inspected the school, and took a walk in the environs. "Now you have seen all. I will go with you to the post office and get a place for you on the diligence to-morrow. It starts at eight." The evening was spent in the hotel where all the Beamters had their meals. I tried to get information about local customs. Sometimes my hosts supplied them. More often the topic bored them. We talked of Vienna and London. After a good deal of this I reflected I was losing time and money. Every one was politeness and kindness itself. But I missed the long evenings in Albanian or Montenegrin huts round the fire; the talk and the doings. The Austrian official who sighed only for the Opera or the Ringstrasse and thought himself an exile wearied me. But as I was not allowed to study the native I had to study him. I startled some of them one night when they asked me as usual, how I liked Bosnia, by telling them that so far I had seen none of it, nothing but the Austrian occupation. This sort of thing went on a bit longer. Then on the Herzegovinian frontier I accidentally picked up an official to whom I had no letter of introduction. A cheery, enterprising individual who said he did not know to which of the many races of the Empire he belonged—and did not care. Was a geologist and a bit of an antiquarian. Took me up an 8,000 foot mountain and incidentally almost killed me. For on the desolate summit we surprised a chamois at close quarters, which snuffed us, gathered its feet and jumped over what looked like a precipice, though it had footholds for chamois. My new friend insisted on following it, as the shortest way down. When we were on a slippery grass slope so steep I could see the bottom of the valley a thousand feet below between my own boots, and the native servant lad refused to further risk his life, I too struck, and the chase was given up. When we arrived at a gendarmerie outpost on the night of the second day, and I was nearly dead-beat after seventeen hours' continuous struggle over many rocks and other obstacles, he confessed he had had no idea of the way. The stolid gendarmerie captain was appalled. "But if the Fraulein had died?" he asked. "Ah, but I knew she was English!" cried the other, "they can do these things. She will be all right to-morrow." He was delighted with the exploit, and suggested all kinds of places I should go to. I told him about my route and my previous experiences. He roared with laughter. Said it was silly nonsense. Some of the Serajevo people were too stupid for words. "Have you a passport? And it is in order. Very well. You are a British subject. They dare not stop you. Why should they? They ought to be glad to get tourists, and they won't if they go on like this. Burn all those letters and go where you please."

He made me a list of places where I should find Bogumil monuments, tattooed people, Roman remains and so forth. Told me that in his opinion Austria was wasting time and money in the provinces. The changes were too quick for the people; they preferred the old Turkish tracks and pack beasts to carts and the new roads, and that they suspected everything new. He himself got on with the people excellently, took me into several houses where they had portraits of Prince Nikola of Montenegro, and chaffed them about wanting to join that land. "They are all of them plotting across the border," he said, laughing. "They would far rather pig along like the Montenegrins. I've tried hard to persuade them to use iron ploughs. Our government supplies them at less than cost price. But they won't. They say, 'No, it is a Schwab thing.' We have spent no end of money trying to improve the live stock: bulls, stallions, rams, boars of the finest breeds. We sent a splendid boar last year to a village in charge of a man who was supposed to be reliable. And when Christmas came he killed it, roasted it and asked all the village to a feast. It was worth a lot of money. He only said that there was so much meat on it, it seemed a pity to let it live! It will take them several generations to get new ideas. Why worry. All this talk of going to Salonika is folly. This place is too much for us." His own job were beautiful irrigation works which kept a whole district fertile through the heats of summer. "But," he laughed, "the people are not a bit pleased. They say that in the old days it rained when it was God's will. They have quite forgotten they lost most of their crops every year from the drought. This is a Schwab thing, so they think it bad." On parting with him I took his advice and went where I liked. I was "shadowed" a good deal and my correspondence was generally ten days late, but otherwise was not interfered with. Living in native houses and going as guest to festivities, weddings, etc., as I had done in other Balkan lands was, however, impossible. It would have got my hosts into trouble. As it was, the wife of an official was very angry when I said I could get a meal in any village. For she declared she and her husband had even been refused coffee, the people all vowing they had none.

The reason for all the fuss was that the authorities were trying to hide the fact that the country was going through a very bad crisis, which was further exacerbated by the rumoured annexation; the open talk of an advance towards Salonika; and the renewed political activity of Russia and Serbia, which had now got England installed again at Belgrade.

Speaking Serb, I found without difficulty that there was a very strong Serb propaganda being worked from Belgrade among the Orthodox, who at that time formed nearly two-fifths of the native population. Next in number were the Moslems and after them the Catholics, lastly several thousand Spanish Jews. Orthodox, Moslem and Catholic native populations were entirely Slavonic. There was an acute division between the Orthodox and the other two parties.

The Catholics and even some of the Moslems called themselves Croat, and hated the term Serb. I had heard a report that in Croatia a reconciliation between Serb and Croat had taken place. None was to be seen in Bosnia. Only in the Herzegovina did the Catholic natives wish union with Montenegro.

The bulk of the Moslems looked longingly towards Turkey. The Orthodox, on the other hand, were violently pro-Serb, and feelings between Austria and Serbia had risen to fever heat.

Towards the end of 1905, Pashitch, 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 assimilation 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 document, and all business came to a standstill. Nor was this surprising, for Petar I, Pashitch 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 assassination 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 assassination. 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 assets 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 unpassable, 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 God," 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, nobody 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! (Fashions 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 Marseilles 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 mass 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 astonishing 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 massacre 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 glass 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 God, sighed the peasant, and he went on to fell the next wood.

Forestry laws infuriated him, and his disregard of them infuriated the forestry officer. A goat-tax (slight for the poor owner of a couple of goats) was instituted, rising according to number, to a sum which made the keeping of a large herd impossible. An official, to whom I remarked on what seemed to me the paucity of flocks, said, "We do not let them keep goats and they won't keep sheep. For my own part I should relax the goat laws for a while at least; they cause such resentment. But the central authorities will not do it. We have to rely largely on the sale of timber to run the country. It is one of the most valuable assets."

All officials agreed in finding the people very difficult to move; very childlike in their ideas and very slow to adopt new ones. A few hated and loathed them.

It was, however, not the officials but the private residents who were on bad terms with the native population, families who had come for business purposes from civilized and comfortable Austrian towns, and who would not take the trouble to learn Slav except just enough for their marketing. I had never before been in a land under foreign occupation, and commented on this attitude to some officers. They jeered at me and said, "You have evidently never been to Egypt. Wait till you have seen your own people there."

I was annoyed at the time. But when some years later I went to Egypt I found the English attitude to the native worse and repented of my comments about Bosnia. One race in truth cannot see with the eyes of another.

The Austrian official really tried to adapt the law to native ideas, and when unable to unravel complicated questions of native usage, even summoned the ancient council of "the good men" to decide according to local custom. A good deal of blood-vengeance still went on, but with the knife; firearms were strictly forbidden, and very few licences for them issued. This was a source of great discontent, for the carrying of arms to the South Slav peasant means manhood. The Christian's idea of liberty is to carry arms. And the fact that the Moslem also was debarred from so doing in no way consoled him. In one respect the lack of firearms was a real hardship, for Bosnia swarmed with wild pig which devastated the crops. When the corn was standing, peasants sat up all night drumming on petroleum tins around the fields to drive off beasts. There were enough wolves also to harry the flocks. An Austrian official killed ten in one night with strychnine during my visit. But the natives complained bitterly that the Government did not permit them to shoot wild beasts and did not keep them down itself.

There was, I was told, very little stealing but, in the forest districts where the woodcutters all carried long handled hatchets, a blow with which was invariably fatal, there was a good deal of slaughter, as in a quarrel a man struck with whatever was handy. Only if the attack proved to be cold-blooded and pre-arranged was capital punishment inflicted. Otherwise imprisonment up to twelve years according to the circumstances.

Wages were low. The peasant was very poor. Very high wages were obtainable in America, and thousands emigrated thither. They ascribed this to Austrian rule, but the same thing was happening in Montenegro, where the Government was vainly trying to stop emigration by refusing passports. It was simply an economic question of supply and demand. Labour was wanted in America at any price. The emigration had the same effect in Bosnia as in Montenegro. A large surplus of women remained behind, and the birth-rate of illegitimate children rose high and, as is perhaps inevitable with a military occupation, prostitution was common. This, though, was not the only cause of immorality in both Montenegro and Bosnia. In old days all the women of the family were the property of the men of the family, who had the right to shoot at sight any man tampering with a wife or daughter of a family group. A blood vengeance so started might mean twenty lives. The risks were not to be lightly taken. The emancipation of women and the restriction of firearms produced new complications.

The Austrians were rather pleased to see emigrants leaving the land, and said they hoped they would never come back, so that they could be replaced by a better population. They were anxious to consolidate their position in Bosnia as fast as possible, so as to be ready for a forward move. "Nach Salonik" was a favourite topic of conversation. A friendly chemist at Fotcha even invited me to have tea with him under the Austrian flag at Salonika, that day three years, that is October 1909, by which time he fully expected to be established there. He considered the Government had been shamefully slow. They ought already to be well on the way there. I travelled by train from Ragusa to Mostar with a General and his daughter. She, who had just arrived, looked with wonder at the bare grey rocks we passed and asked, "Why ever did we take all these stones, father?"

"Part of the price we paid Europe for Salonika, my dear!" he replied.

I wintered at Serajevo, and by taking my phonograph to the Moslem coffee-houses gained some popularity, for there was but one other such instrument in Serajevo, and you had to pay to hear it. The Moslems, I soon learnt, wanted only the Padishah and hoped for the return of the Turk. Several had lived long years in Egypt. But when I told them I meant to go there they very earnestly begged me not to. All the English were very soon to be driven out or done away with, and the company unanimously agreed that it would be a very great pity that I, who had been so kind as to play the "monogram" to them for nothing, should be killed out there. I asked them to tell me truthfully what it was that the English did that was so bad. They replied very reasonably: "Everything. Nothing you do is as we do. You make yourselves fine houses and streets in Cairo. Why do you not make them in your own land and leave our land to us? We hate your things. The land is now not our land. It is all Alia Franga." You do not like our ways. We do not like yours. Go and leave our land to us."

We should say just the same thing, only less politely, were we "occupied" by the Japanese. They were kind enough to say that the English were not so bad as the Schwabs, but I fear this was only out of gratitude for phonograph favours.

In a private room upstairs they sang me a special ballad of the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, which began by describing how Prince George of Greece and the British Consul and some other European officials drank beer together and when they had drunk too much, planned a treacherous attack upon the Turks. It was a long song and took four hours to sing—with refreshments in the middle. I did not stay to the end. Every one, of course, believed in the guilt of the British Consul.

At Serajevo I got, too, into a very Nationalist Orthodox set through the Nationalist school kept by Miss Irby. The pro-Serb party was all Orthodox, wildly anti-Turk and furiously anti-Catholic. All that was Latinski was abhorrent, and every vice and crime was imputed to the Catholic clergy. They were represented as fiends in human shape, who stole people's children and baptized them into the Roman Church. I had found similar fanaticism among the Montenegrin peasants, but did not expect it among the educated Bosnian officials and their wives.

They made no secret of being in communication with Serbia, told of their expedients to smuggle in papers and dodge the police authorities. And when the windows were carefully shut used to sing "Onamo, onamo," and other forbidden Nationalist songs. In one respect I found the Orthodox exactly like the Moslems. They wanted to be top-dog and suppress the others. A pretty school mistress complained to me bitterly of the authorities who had put her to teach in a purely Catholic district, "where I can do no propaganda at all." She wanted a Parliament for Bosnia, and assured me that as the Orthodox party Was the largest they would then be able to shout the others down, from the gallery, and was naively surprised When I told her that this was forbidden in England, which she had thought was a free country. She had been taken once to the Budapest Parliament for the express purpose of screeching all the time certain members spoke. The debate ended in a free fight, and she had been hoarse for days.

This idea of freedom is, of course, not unknown in England. It is the only one existing across the Adriatic. An ardent Great Serbian once explained: "When Great Serbia is made we mean to have religious equality everywhere. For instance, in Ragusa there are two monasteries, both Catholic. This is unjust. When it is ours, one will be Orthodox and one Catholic."

"Which do you mean to rob then, the Franciscans or the Dominicans?" he was asked. "Rob!" he said, much hurt. "We are going to make religious equality. One must be Orthodox and one Catholic." And this he continued to repeat, though it was urged that in this case one or the other order must be deprived of its monastery, and that, moreover, the vast majority of Ragusa is Catholic.

But Liberty is a glorious thing, and I found the Orthodox heartily approved of Alexander's murder as one step towards it.

By now I had learned that even officials in Austrian employ were working against the Austrian Government. A friend of mine, who was also much interested in things South Slavonic, wrote at this time and suggested I should join the Slovenski Jug Society then recently formed. But as it was made clear to me that these so-called patriotic associations were plotting against the Austrian Government I decided that I, as a British subject, should steer clear of them, more especially as one could not tell to what lengths they would go. I had been on the brink of the plot for the destruction of Alexander Obrenovitch, a sufficiently alarming precedent, so I declined to become a member of the Slovenski Jug, preferring a front seat at the drama to being possibly dragged onto the stage.

As one of my objects in this journey was to see Christmas customs in a peasant house I determined to leave for Montenegro, where I could do so easily, and left the tense political atmosphere of Bosnia with some relief.