Of these by far the most important were the first two. In Serbian political parties the personal question used to be nearly always uppermost, and now, in the case of parties (a) and (b), it was most difficult to understand what aims the one had which the other did not share. One may say that each of them was a group under a wily politician who was able, not only to forge out of various elements a homogeneous group, but to persuade them that there was a fundamental difference between their group and any other. Here one has not so much the Western system, under which a man enters a Cabinet as the exponent of party principles, but the Eastern system under which a Minister uses his influence to found a party, which is based inevitably on the disappearing relics of the past. In the spring of 1919 many foreign observers fancied that new parties were surging up like mushrooms and proving, no doubt, that the people's vitality was strong, although one would have waited willingly for this evidence until the country's external and internal affairs were more settled. As a matter of fact these rather numerous parties, of which the outside world now heard for the first time, had been in existence or semi-existence for years. There was, however, a certain bewildering vacillation on the part of some of the deputies. The Bosnian Moslems, for instance, could not make up their minds whether they would be Serbs or Croats and belong to (a) or (b). Finally most of them settled down in (b), while two others formed an independent group. It must be remembered that they, like all the other deputies, were not really deputies but delegates, since it was not yet possible to hold elections. There would naturally be many changes after the first General Election; for one thing, the Moslems intend to join in one group with their brethren from Macedonia and Novi Bazar.... As we shall see, later on, the changes produced by the first General Election—which was the election held in November 1920, for the Constituent Assembly—were extremely sweeping. While the Radicals and Democrats returned with close on one hundred members each, the Korošeć party met with comparative disaster, and the Starčevic group was overwhelmed. With about fifty members apiece, the Communist and the Radić parties gave expression, roughly speaking, to the discontent produced by the unsettled conditions—unavoidable and avoidable—of the new State's first two years. The Moslems came back with nearly thirty members, and a healthy phenomenon for a country in which the peasant so largely predominates was the success, apart from the Radić Peasant party, of the Agrarians with some thirty deputies, and the Independent Peasant party with eight.
The Italian Press disposed in five lines of the historical Act of Union which occurred when the delegates of the Yugoslav National Council were received by the Prince at Belgrade on December 1, 1918. In the address, which was read by Dr. Pavelić, it is recorded that "the National Council desires to join with Serbia and Montenegro in forming a United National State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, which would embrace the whole inseparable ethnographical territory of the South Slavs.... In the period of transition, in our opinion, the conditions should be created for the final organization of our United State." And there is a dignified protest against the Treaty of London and the Italian encroachments which even went beyond that which the treaty gave them. In his reply the Prince, among other remarks, said that "in the name of His Majesty King Peter I now declare the union of Serbia with the provinces of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in an indivisible kingdom. This great moment should be a reward for the efforts of yourselves and your brothers, whereby you have cast off the alien yoke. This celebration should form a wreath for the officers and men who have fallen in the cause of freedom.... I assure you and the National Council that I shall always reign over my brothers and yours, and what constitutes the Serbs and their people, in a spirit of brotherly love.... The first task of the Government will be to arrange with your help and that of the whole people that the frontiers should comprise the whole nation. In conjunction with you I may well hope that our powerful friends and Allies will be able justly to appreciate our standpoint, because it corresponds with the principles which they themselves have proclaimed and for the achievement of which streams of their precious blood have been poured out...." The Prince spoke of Italy in phrases to which we have already alluded.[30] He reminded her of the Risorgimento and of the principles with which her great sons had then been inspired. But the Italian Press preferred to moralize in column after column on the variety of the political groups of Yugoslavia, with the object of showing to the world that they were a people of no cohesive capacities and of no real national consciousness.
THE SLOVENE QUESTION
This matter of the frontiers had been very lucidly set before the Allies with regard to Dalmatia and Rieka; it now remained for the Slovenes to formulate their case. From the statement given by Dr. Trumbić to the Council of Ten in Paris we will take these extracts: "The province of Gorica-Gradišca may be divided into two different parts, both from an ethnical and economic point of view. The western part, up to the line Cormons-Gradišca-Monfalcone, is economically self-supporting. If we estimate the population on a language basis, there are about 72,000 Italians and 6000 Slovenes. Geographically it is simply the prolongation of the Venetian plain. We do not claim this territory called Friuli, which belongs ethnologically to the Italians. The rest of this province to the east and the north of the Cormons-Gradišca-Monfalcone line, which comprises the mountainous region, is inhabited by 148,500 Slovenes and 17,000 Italians, of whom 14,000 are in the town of Gorica, where they constitute half the population.... The Slovenes are an advanced and civilized people, acutely conscious of their racial solidarity with the other Yugoslav peoples. We therefore ask that this district should be reunited to our State.... Istria is inhabited by Slavs and Italians. According to the latest statistics, there were in it 223,318 Yugoslavs and 147,417 Italians. The Slavs inhabit central and eastern Istria in a compact mass. More Italians live on the western coast, particularly in the towns. They inhabit only five villages north of Pola, and their populations have no territorial unity. Istria is territorially linked with Carniola and Croatia, whereas it is separated from Italy by the Adriatic, and therefore it ought to belong to the Yugoslav State.... Triest and its neighbourhood is geographically an integral part of purely Slav territories. The majority of this town—two-thirds, according to statistics—is Italian and the rest Slav. These statistics being on the language basis, include Germans, Greeks, Levantines, etc., as Italian-speaking, among the Italians. The Slav element plays an important part in the commercial and economic life of Triest. If the town were ethnically in contact with Italy we would recognize the right of the majority. But all the hinterland of Triest is entirely Slav. Yet the commercial and maritime value of Triest is what chiefly counts, and it is a port of world trade. As such it is the representative of its hinterland, which stretches as far as Bohemia, and chiefly of its Slovene hinterland, which forms a third of the whole trade of Triest and is inextricably linked with it. Should Triest become Italian it would be politically separated from its trade hinterland, and would be prejudiced in a commercial respect. Since Austria has crumbled as a State, the natural solution of the problem of Triest is that it should be joined to our State."
THE SENTIMENTS OF TRIEST
It would be futile to talk of Triest without considering the relations between Italians and Germans. We have seen already how at the elections they combined against the "common enemy." But in commerce the Germans were in need of no alliance, for the Italians have relatively so little capital to dispose of that they were unable to keep the Germans from attaining that very dominant position in Italy. As the Italians have, as a general rule, a lack of initiative and enterprise with respect to modern industry, it was to German efforts that the great industrial and commercial awakening of Italy and of Triest were largely due. In that town the Italians were principally agents; and it is to be feared that if it ultimately falls into their hands it will become a German town under the Italian flag. It would be the object of the Italians to emancipate Austria from the Yugoslavs, giving them an outlet to Triest over Italian territory; and it would be to the Italian advantage if Austria were joined to Germany. Therefore it is preferable for all the Allies, except the Italians, that Triest should be international. Conditions could then be offered to the Austrians that would cause them to prefer these rather than to join themselves to Germany. But, in the opinion also of many enlightened Italians, it is not in that country's interest that she should hold Triest. Apart from the older publicists and statesmen, including Sonnino, who might wish to modify their opinions, one of the best-informed writers on Triest and Istria, A. Vivante, a native of Triest, in his L'irredentismo adriatico (1912) is a most determined adversary to an Italian occupation of Istria or Triest; his book has been withdrawn from circulation by the Italian Government. Other resolute opponents have been all the inhabitants of Triest, except the extreme Nationalists. The town's prosperity dated from the time when the Habsburgs were driven out of Italy. Triest has not forgotten what occurred when she and Venice were under the same sceptre; and this it was which brought about, at Austria's collapse, the autonomous administration in which practically all the elements of the town participated. Only the Irridentists then thought that Triest's liberation need involve union with Italy and economic separation from the hinterland on which it depends.... When the occupation started, in November 1918, the Chief of the Italian police summoned before him the members of the Yugoslav National Council of Triest. Only two of them answered the summons, whereupon a lieutenant read them the following order from the Italian Governor: "In view of the fact that the Italians troops have occupied the line of demarcation and that traffic over this line is suspended for the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, it is ordered that, for strategical reasons, the South Slav National Council in Triest be dissolved and its offices closed." The Slovenes demanded a copy of this order, which, however, was refused. They were not allowed to depart until the books and national emblems had been removed from the premises of the National Council, the doors sealed and a guard stationed. "We others, Italians," an Italian writer had said in the Edinost, the Slovene paper of Triest, on August 18, 1918, "should understand that if we want our freedom we must see that this is likewise given to our neighbours." And the Mercure de France of October remarked that these wise words would be listened to at Rome. In the realm of navigation the Italians were not idle. They started at once to negotiate with the Austrians for the sale to themselves of the Lloyd Steamship Company, the Austro-Americana and the Navigazione Libera, the three largest Austrian companies. By the end of February 1919, a Mr. Ivan Švegel related in a well-informed article,[31] the Italians had, by acquiring a large portion of their shares, obtained the decisive influence in these companies. The deal which was carried through with the assistance of the Austrian Government and which, according to the Neue Freie Presse of February 22, "fully satisfied the needs of Austrian commerce," was transacted during the Armistice and behind the back of public opinion. Surely the Austrian mercantile marine, to which the Yugoslavs contributed the majority of the personnel and which they, with the other nationalities of the late Empire, helped to build up with the aid of considerable subsidies, should not have been permitted to fall an easy prize into the lap of Italy, but ought rather to constitute an asset in the liquidation of the late Austrian State and a subject of public discussion.... In consequence of the Italian attitude towards Austria on the one hand and the Slovenes on the other, the Austrians made an attack from northern Carinthia near Christmas and despoiled the Slovenes of about half the territory they had occupied. An American mission asked both sides to cease from hostilities, saying that the question of frontiers would be decided by Paris in a few weeks. Two Americans, who unfortunately could speak neither German nor Slovene, motored through the country, made some inquiries, especially in the towns, and departed for Paris. It would have been as well if, like the French farther to the east, they had deliminated between the two people a neutral zone. Sooner or later the troubles were bound to recommence.
MAGNANIMITY IN THE BANAT
Meanwhile, of all the lands which the Yugoslavs were inheriting from Austro-Hungary, that which was passing through the period of transition with the least disturbance was the Banat. Those Magyars who stayed were saying wistfully that it had been Hungarian for a thousand years, but considering what they had done they could not have brought forward a worse reason for their reinstatement. Here and there at places near the frontier, such as Subotica, they waylaid and murdered lonely Serbian soldiers; after which, with the complicity of Magyar officials whom the Serbs had not removed, they managed to escape to Hungary. But as a rule they thought it wiser to stay peacefully in the Banat than seek their fortunes in a land so insecure as Hungary was then. While Count Michael Karólyi's Government was doing its utmost to cultivate good relations with France, England and America—printing in the newspapers cordial articles in French and English, surrounding the Entente officers even in their despite with the old, barbaric hypnotizing Magyar hospitality, assuming in a long wireless message to President Wilson that the Hungarians were among those happy people who at last had been liberated from the yoke of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire—("I beg you, Mr. President, to use your influence that no acts of inhumanity or abuses of authority may threaten our new-born democracy and freedom from any quarter. They would cruelly wound the soul of our people and hinder the maturing of that pure pacifism and that mutual understanding between the peoples without which there will never be peace and rest on earth.... We will not discredit or delay with acts of violence the new-born freedom of the peoples of Hungary or the triumph of your ideas....")—at a place called Nagylak the free Hungarian people requested the authorities to give them an official document permitting them to plunder for twenty-four hours; at a place called Szentes there was a car which had been stolen from a man at Arad, sixty miles away; hearing where it was he telegraphed to the authorities and nothing happened; so he hired another car and went himself to Szentes where the Magyar Commissary confiscated this one also. It was better to remain in the Banat if one had anything to lose. The treatment which the Magyars received was such that Mr. Rapp, Commissary of the Buda-Pest Government, published a proclamation on the generous conduct of the Serbian troops occupying southern Hungary: "Our nationals," he declared, "though vanquished and in a minority, are safe. The Serbian officers in command treat them in a most humane and chivalrous fashion."[32] At Pančevo, for example, the Magyar officials were placed, for their protection, on board a boat by the Serbian authorities and kept there, provided with food and cigars, for twelve hours, after which, as the danger was past, they were set at liberty. In the same town, forty years earlier, the language used in the law courts had been Serbian; no one, in fact, spoke Magyar, except the cab-drivers—if you spoke it people said you must have been in prison. Yet, although the Magyar judges had, to put it mildly, not been too considerate towards the Serbs, they were retained in office on the understanding that they would learn Serbian within a year; nor were they asked, as yet, to administer the law in the name of King Peter, but in the name of Justice. This magnanimity was not displayed because, as with the railway employees, the Serbs were short of people for those posts, since they had barristers well qualified to be employed, as they were, for example, at Sombor, in the position of temporary judges. Even the town advocate was not dismissed, although this healthy gentleman had superseded a Serb forty-two years of age, considerably older than himself, who had been compelled to join the army. Not alone were all these functionaries left in office, but the papers sent to them were in their own language, Magyar or German. And in return they generally were loyal to the Yugoslavs.
TEMEŠVAR IN TRANSITION
An extraordinary state of things was to be seen at Temešvar, where the Magyar mayor was one of the most worried men in Europe. Until February 1919 he was being asked to serve not two but several masters. Some uncertainty existed as to whether the town was under French or Serbian military command, but that was not a very serious question. There was at Novi Sad a temporary Government for all the Voivodina, this was the "Narodna Uprava" (National Government), consisting of eleven commissaries, each over a department, who had been appointed by the Voivodina Assembly of 690 Serbs, 12 Slovaks, 2 Magyars and 6 Germans—one deputy for every thousand of the population. The mayor of Temešvar could have reconciled the wishes of the Narodna Uprava and the military authorities, but there was a Magyar Jewish Socialist, a certain Dr. Roth, who had elected himself to be head of the "People's Government," and was subsequently appointed by telephone from Buda-Pest the representative of the Hungarian Government. Roth organized a civil guard, mostly of former Hungarian soldiers, who—although he paid them well (since Buda-Pest had given him 12 million crowns for propaganda purposes), yet had a way of borrowing a coat or cap from Serbian soldiers and, arrayed in these, holding up pedestrians after nightfall. Roth had therefore been granted the right to rule, but—save for the dubious guard—his power was only that which the Serbian or French authorities would give him. He issued many orders to the mayor, some of which were very questionable, as for instance when he sent provisions out of the Banat to Hungary. This produced so great a scarcity that the flour-mill employees thought it was the time to go on strike; they demanded 80 per cent. increase in wages, without undertaking to go back to work if they received it. "I am not a politician," said the harassed mayor, "I only want to save the town from starving." But the Narodna Uprava would send no food, since the town (that is to say Roth) would not acknowledge its authority. There were many rumours as to how Roth spent the sums from Buda-Pest, and a weekly Socialist sheet, which he himself had founded, but had now made over to a couple of his friends (likewise Magyar Jews), called Fürth and Isaac Gara, started to bring charges against its founder. Roth, whose previous resources were not large and were well known to Fürth and Gara, used now to frequent the fashionable café and indulge, night after night, in potations of champagne, inviting to his table not Fürth nor Gara, but the French General. This officer, in the advance through Serbia, had captured a great many prisoners and a very large number of guns, arousing everybody's enthusiasm by his personal bravery, his dashing tactics and the skill with which he executed them. He was a most original person, who would sometimes about midnight in that café at Temešvar leap on to one of the marble tables and there perform a pas de seul. Dr. Roth succeeded in worming himself into this merry warrior's good graces, and Fürth and Gara looked with jaundiced eyes on the carouses of these two. And in their newspaper, the Temešvar, they said very biting things. Thereupon Roth complained about them to the Serbian authorities, asking that they should be sent to Belgrade. When the Serbs did nothing he made application to the French, and they—not aware of all the circumstances—sent the couple under guard to Belgrade, where they were interned. The mayor continued to receive the orders of the various parties, and then suddenly Roth organized a strike which lasted for two days—the railways, the electric light, the water-supply and the shops all joining in the movement. There was even a Magyar flag on the town hall, and cries were raised by a procession for the Magyar Republic. But this time he had gone too far. An order came from Belgrade, from General Franchet d'Espérey, and Roth was taken in a car to Arad, where he was deposited on the other side of the line of demarcation.