The Ambassadors' Conference has committed a grave injustice. "Let us hope," says M. Justin Godart,[109] a French ex-Under Secretary of Hygiene, concerning whose very misguided mission to Albania we have written elsewhere,[110] "let us hope," says he—in my opinion one of the unjustest men towards Yugoslavia and Greece—"let us hope that Yugoslavia will understand that it is unworthy of her to contest the decision of the Ambassadors' Conference." It has given to the Yugoslavs a frontier that necessitates the presence of a considerable army, and this is precisely what suits the Italians. Seeing that in Italy there are men alive who can recall their struggles against the Austrian oppressor, it is sad that their own country should now be playing this very same rôle. The Ambassadors appear to have taken no notice of Italy's support of the Tirana Government, but to have been very drastic with respect to Yugoslavia's support of the Mirditi. They have punished the Yugoslavs by binding their hands in a district part of whose population long for the help of those hands in gaining some tranquillity, whereas the other part consists of persons against whom one must defend oneself.
The politicians have acted as if all the border folk were as peaceful as they doubtless are themselves. In consequence, there will be panic and assassination till the politicians—unable to oppose the wishes of the majority of those who dwell in the frontier zone—proclaim that until further notice General Franchet d'Espérey's wise and prudent dispositions shall be honoured.
That is the only method by which an Albania can be brought slowly into existence. At this moment the cartographers are printing the map of the Albanians' country in accordance with the Ambassadors' decision. They might spare themselves the trouble. The decision to recognize an Albania was as premature a project as, in Mr. Wells' opinion, is the League of Nations. A free, united Albania has been recognized, and in a little time the Ambassadors' Conference, perceiving that such a thing does not exist, will be relieved to see the North and the South taking the steps to which we have referred. It is wonderful that the Ambassadors' Conference and the League of Nations should imagine that a country, most of which is in the social state of the Gallic clans in the days of Vercingetorix, can suddenly become a modern nation by the simple contrivance of a parliament, which, as a matter of fact, has been the caricature of one. In the words of Lord Halsbury, when reversing a judgment of the Court of Appeal, I am bewildered by the absurdity of such a suggestion. Albania is in need of organizers, not of orators. A very competent French traveller,[111] one who believes that a future is reserved for this unquenchable people, warns the world against undue haste. After describing the deplorable state or the non-existence of Albanian schools, roads, ports, the monetary system and the organization of credit, he says that it is scarcely an exaggeration to assert that from the point of view of economic arrangement everything has to be created. This necessitates a Government which knows how to administer and which has funds at its command. But there is not the least likelihood of regular taxes being paid to a central Government until you have security of communication. And even then the native—except if force is used—will not pay before he sees the benefit which taxes produce. He who for the most part has never given obedience save to his village chief will require to see the local benefit. Therefore his whole outlook must be changed; slowly from being parochial it must become national.... There can be no greater folly than at this stage to aim at applying modern usages, equality of taxation, uniformity of judicial organization, and so forth. It must be a very slow advance, says M. Jaray, taking local traditions and the feudalism, both domestic and collective, into account. Even if a central Government had all the necessary qualifications, yet that would not cause the people to regard it with gratitude and loyalty. It is too remote. The clans have been accustomed to look no farther than their own chiefs. Only in serious circumstances and against an invasion have they united and chosen a common leader. To expect the Albanians rapidly to throw aside their clannishness is to prepare for oneself a disappointment. It is in the clan that they must be made fit for something more extensive. Let the country be recognized not as a nation, but as a collection of clans, and let these clans, with any outside assistance they themselves may choose, come gradually to understand the word "Albania." ... And what are the chances that this will come to pass? No country is more feudal; yet only the most thoroughgoing peasant reforms will lay a sure foundation for the State.
(b) The Greek Frontier
The frontier with Greece has undergone no alteration as a result of the War. It is inconvenient in certain details; it runs, for example, at such a very short distance to the south of the town of Ghevgeli that the prefect has little chance of frustrating those who actively object to the payment of import duties. Rather a large number of Slavs, some say 300,000, live on the Greek side of the frontier, while a far smaller number of Greeks live in Monastir. Both the Slavs and the Greeks have made sundry complaints, which are more or less justified, against the alien authority which governs them. However, during 1919 and 1920, the two Governments resolved, in the furtherance of their good understanding, to raise none of these questions, neither the claims of the derelict Slavs, who are mostly Exarchists, nor of the Monastir Greeks, who are mostly hellenized Vlachs. The two countries, while Venizelos was in power, were acting on the principles of the Serbo-Greek friendship that used to be advocated by L'Hellénisme, the newspaper which Sir Anastasius Adossides, under Venizelos the enlightened Governor-General of Salonica, published for several years before the first Balkan War in Paris. Yugoslavia was to have every facility given her in Salonica, which course would naturally be the most beneficial to that place. And among the minor advantages of really amicable relations would be the impossibility of such a state of things as once prevailed at Doiran, where the masters of the Greek and Bulgarian schools were neither of them in a position to chastise their peccant pupils, who could always have the last word by threatening to transfer themselves to the rival establishment. It was, I believe, the custom of these young scoundrels to remain at one or other of the two schools on the understanding that the teacher gave them a retaining fee of so many chocolates.... One rather felt, during 1919 and 1920, that the Yugoslavs, in their willingness to take the hand of Greece, which had so shamefully refused to act upon its obligations in the first half of the War, were behaving as if Venizelos would henceforward be retained in power by his countrymen. Should the Serbs find themselves hampered in their use of the "Free Zone" at Salonica, a moment might arrive when they and the Bulgars would, to their mutual advantage, make an arrangement with regard to Salonica and her hinterland.
(c) The Bulgarian Frontier
There have been various modifications in the frontier line between Serbia and Bulgaria. The Bulgars acknowledge that in the case of the Struma salient, of the part near Vranja and of the villages on the bank of the Timok, it was clearly for the purpose of safeguarding the railways; and few people would be found to say that Serbia has been other than modest in her demands. Compare the Italian position on the Brenner with the Yugoslav frontier against Bulgaria and in the Baranja: against Bulgars and Magyars the Yugoslavs only secure a sound defensive frontier, whereas Italy obtains a capacity for the offensive against Austria.[112] It is rather different with regard to Tsaribrod, on the main line between Niš and Sofia. So good a friend of the Yugoslavs as Dr. Seton-Watson has deplored the cession of this small place, since it appears likely to imperil a future friendship between Serbia and Bulgaria. As a matter of fact the Yugoslav Peace Delegates requested, for strategic purposes, a still more southerly frontier on the Dragoman Pass, which was denied to them. But Tsaribrod, which is dominated by the heights of Dragoman, is anyhow a place of minor importance. It is much to be hoped that the inhabitants will not imitate those of the Pirot intelligentsia who in 1878 shook off the dust of their town when it became Serbian and migrated to Sofia, where they never wearied of anti-Serbian agitation. One must do one's best not to retard the arrival of that day when it will be almost a matter of indifference as to whether a village is situated in Serbia or in Bulgaria. Mr. Stanojević, the deputy for Zaječa, which is not far from the frontier, proposed in the Skupština that Tsaribrod should be left to the Bulgars in exchange for a sum of money. This suggestion was opposed by the Radicals, and the far-seeing Yugoslav statesmen who would gladly have adopted it were left hoping that the Skupština would some day decide in its favour.... This moderation on the part of the Serbs has been less in evidence at Bucharest and still less at Athens. The Peace Conference which felt itself unable to deprive its Ally of southern Dobrudja, and unable to resist the persuasive eloquence of M. Venizelos, does not seem to have contributed towards a lasting Balkan peace. A reviewer in the Observer, while approving of Mr. Leland Buxton's hope of a Serb-Bulgar reconciliation, asks why this should be effected to the exclusion and obvious detriment of Greece. "Why not a Balkan Federation?" he asks. In view of the very different races which inhabit the Balkans, he might just as well ask, "Why not a European Federation?" And the statesmen of the non-Slav Balkan countries do not seem to have made serious efforts to prevent the coming of a purely Slav Federation. It remains to be seen whether, when that comes to pass, the Greek and Roumanian people will have achieved such statesmanship as to make an equally small effort to keep under their control their large Slav territories.... "We should no longer think of Thrace," said M. Venizelos in the Greek Chamber in 1913, "for it is impossible to include in the Greek State all those parts where Greeks have lived; we ought to be modest and contented with what is most righteous and attainable; we ought not to let ourselves be carried away by our imagination."
(d) The Roumanian Frontier
THE STATE OF THE ROUMANIANS IN EASTERN SERBIA
A new frontier between Yugoslavia and Roumania has been drawn by the Allied Powers in the Banat. But before we consider its merits and absurdities we must examine the Serbo-Roumanian question in the several departments of eastern Serbia. During 1919 one heard a good deal, in Bucharest and in Paris, of the pitiful Roumanians whom the Serbs had always deprived of their own national schools and churches. It was claimed, chiefly by a certain Dr. Athanasius Popovitch, that the Roumanians in Serbia were longing for the day of their redemption. On March 8, 1919, two deputations of Roumanians from the Timok and from Macedonia, who had lately arrived in Paris in order to plead before the Conference, presented themselves to the Roumanian colony at 114 Avenue des Champs-Elysees. We are told that in consequence of their moving narrative, and on account of the loud appeal made by them to all their free brothers, the Roumanian colony founded, with great enthusiasm, a national league for their delivery. The Vice-President of the league was announced to be Dr. Athanasius Popovici. In a pamphlet called Les Roumains de Serbie (Paris, 1919), Dr. Draghicesco, a Roumanian Senator, denounces the Serb authorities for having obliged Dr. Athanasius, while he was a schoolboy, to change his surname into the purely Serbian one of Popovitch. "Not being able to endure this régime of violence," we are informed, "he expatriated himself and established himself in Roumania." But if Dr. Athanasius felt so strongly with regard to his name when he was a mere schoolboy, one is puzzled to understand why, being an adult and a pamphleteer in 1919, he should be hesitating between Popovitch, which is Serbian, and Popovici, which is Roumanian. The Senator does not seem to be well informed as to the early years of Dr. Athanasius, who so far from expatriating himself as an indignant schoolboy, remained in Serbia, where he went through five classes of the gymnasium in Belgrade, after which he studied theology in the same town, with a view to succeeding his father, who was a priest at Dušanovac in eastern Serbia. Later on Athanasius performed his military service at Zaječa, where he married—so one of his sisters told me—one Mileva, the daughter of Yovan Stančević, a merchant. After his marriage he went to Jena, in order to continue his studies, and there he became a Doctor of Letters. It may be that while he was at Jena he became conscious of the régime of violence to which the Roumanians in Serbia are subjected; at any rate he decided not to return to that country, where his wife and three sisters are well satisfied to live. He launched himself into a furious anti-Serbian propaganda in favour of those who, in the words of Dr. Draghicesco, are profoundly sad and full of grief at being neither Serbian nor Roumanian, who when they meet a Roumanian brother listen to him with pleasure and, with their eyes full of tears, murmur: "How happy we should be to be with you." ... When I travelled through those parts with a view to verifying Dr. Athanasius's assertions, I was invariably told by persons of Roumanian origin that they had no complaint whatever against the Serbs, and that the last thing they desired was to be politically united to the Roumanians of the kingdom. Dr. Athanasius might reply that his wretched compatriots were impelled by fear to give such answers. But what do they fear?—one finds that among these people are deputies, priests, army officers and so forth. "To-day," says Dr. Athanasius, "all the peoples who are reduced to slavery by other people secure the right to return to their fatherland." The Roumanians of Serbia would have to be a good deal more miserable before wishing to have anything to do with Roumania. Milan Soldatović, ex-mayor of the great mining village of Bor and himself of Roumanian origin, said that he had never heard of any one who went to work in Roumania. No doubt the present generation of Roumanian landowners deeply deplore the misdeeds of their ancestors, who drove the ancestors of these peasants away from Roumania. "The peasant hovels were merely dark burrows, called bordei, holes dug in the ground and roofed with poles covered with earth, rising scarcely above the level of the plain.... The interior was indescribable. Neither furniture nor utensils, with the exception of the boards which served as beds or seats and the pot for cooking the mamaliga"[113]—his sole food, a paste consisting of maize meal cooked in water. And one cannot be astonished if the Roumanians in Serbia are chary of believing that their native land has changed for the better. "If," said a Roumanian peasant before an Agricultural Commission in 1848, "if the boyar could have laid hands upon the sun, he would have seized it and sold God's light and warmth to the peasant for money." Even in 1919 the peasant still had much reason to be dissatisfied, for where the owner parted with his land it was usually—no doubt as a stage in the transaction—made over to the village as a whole. And if the boyar no longer has the monopoly of the sale of alcohol, if he has so far improved that Vallachia is not now losing its inhabitants as it was after the Regulations of 1831, when we read that "in vain the rivers are assiduously watched, as if in a state of siege; the emigrants cross at the places which are clear of troops. Emigration is especially rife in winter, when the frozen Danube presents an ever-open bridge," yet among the Roumanians of Serbia it has been handed down from father to son what happened in the reign of Prince Miloš. To take one case out of many such that are preserved in the National Archives at Belgrade, a dispatch was sent on February 11, 1831, by Vule Gligoriević, his representative in those parts, to Prince Miloš, who was at Kragujevac, enclosing a supplication from the priests and other inhabitants of the large Roumanian island called Veliko Ostrvo, in the middle of the Danube, praying that they might be allowed to cross to Serbia. "We are in great misery," they wrote, "and have boyars who are very bad, and we cannot bear the misery in which we find ourselves, and in the greatest grief we beg your Highness to let us come to Serbia with our wives and children." The Prince had a special sympathy for Roumania and was therefore most reluctant to intervene in her internal affairs. He adopted a very cautious attitude in this matter, but when Gligoriević sent him petition after petition he was finally so touched by the recital of their woes that he permitted them to cross the river; and one night, with the help of the Serbian authorities, the whole island crossed over, to wit 57 families, with 186 oxen, 70 horses, 694 sheep and 87 pigs. Miloš made them a free grant of land for the building of a village, together with a vast stretch of territory for pasture and stock-raising; at his own expense he built them a church and extended to them all the liberties and advantages enjoyed in Serbia by the Serbs themselves. As a token of their gratitude these Roumanian emigrants called their village Mihailovac, after the name of Michael, the Prince's son. This village is the birthplace of our friend Dr. Athanasius, whose sentiments appear to have placed him in a minority of one. When his pamphlet came into the hands of Jorge Kornić, the mayor of Mihailovac and a Roumanian by origin, he brought it to the prefect at Negotin saying that he wished to have nothing to do "with any devil's work."