SERB AND BULGAR
A map of the Balkan migrations, with its curved lines leading almost everywhere, is a bewildering spectacle; but if we study the main clusters of lines we shall see that the people whose movements they chronicle have frequently preserved, in a remarkable fashion, certain common characteristics: thus a stream flowed from the south-west towards Valjevo in Serbia, and it is interesting to notice how the prominent men of that region, whose ancestors came from somewhere between Montenegro and the old frontiers of Serbia, have all of them certain characteristics—a talent for foreign languages, a subtlety of reasoning, originality but insufficient observation, and clever but fallacious minds. Similarly in the Bulgar there are qualities which even now can be ascribed to the Mongol blood. The Bulgar is more stolid than the Serb; he is less given to sympathy and on that account can be cruel. The Bulgar is benevolent because he is urged by kindliness, whereas the more impressionable Serb is under the influence both of sentiment, sentimentality and sympathy. These differences of temperament—and there are others, more or less distinguishable—do not seem to Balkan thinkers any reason why the two should keep apart. And a couple of months after the Great War, during which the Bulgars, as their best friends must acknowledge, were far from irreproachable in occupied Serbia—partly this was due to the vast number of new posts for which they had no suitable men—a few months afterwards a Bulgarian engineer was placidly working among the Serbs at Čačak railway station, wearing his own uniform. And a Serbian butcher who emigrated to Bulgaria settled down at Ferdinand just before the War and has lived there unmolested up to this day, and that in spite of his not being very highly esteemed—for, as the police president told me, he had married a woman with more wealth than good fame; the president had been among her lovers.... One would not suppose that the contrasting public morality of the two countries will keep them apart. It is easy enough for us to argue that this morality is on a pretty low level, because a Bulgarian War Minister saw fit to sue, under a nom de guerre, a French armament firm which omitted to send him the stipulated commission; because another Minister, incarcerated on account of felony, could be liberated by the grace of Tzar Ferdinand and become Premier; because a Serbian Minister used to buy himself corner-houses, while his Bulgarian colleagues seem to own most of the houses in Sofia. There was a minor Serbian official over against whom I took my meals for about a month; one of his ways was to produce a pocket-knife and cut his bread with it. Certain other parts of his ritual did not appeal to me, but who knows whether I did not disgust him by breaking my bread with my fingers? And who knows what sentiments were awakened some years ago at the Orthodox monastery of Gromirija, in Croatia, when a foreign guest proposed to wash himself in water, though by the joyous custom of that house there was no other liquid on the premises but wine? If there is in both countries, in Serbia and Bulgaria, a movement against the cynicism which does not clothe its corruption with a decent Western drapery, that is something; if there is a further movement in the direction of probity, that is something more. And, whatever some Serbs may tell you, it is undeniable that honesty has made important strides in the public life of that kingdom, even without having added to the Statute Book those rigorous proposals of the newly-formed Peasants' party, one of which would punish a peculating official with death. It is, however, apparent that this party has not arrived at a sense of discretion, for it wants to terminate the practice of allowing pensions to officials, so that each man is obliged to make his own provision for old age. Bulgaria, the younger country, has made a proportionate progress; there is trustworthy German evidence to the effect that the corrupt Radoslavoff Government was despised by the people, not in the hour of disaster but in 1916, when the Bulgarian soldiers changed the words of an anti-Serb song and instead of "Our old allies are brigands" proclaimed that "the Liberals are brigands." This German, Dr. Helmut von den Steinen, the correspondent of the Nordeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (in which he was bound to speak favourably of Radoslavoff) used to deliver propaganda lectures in the Bulgarian language at Sofia during the War. He was very well acquainted with Bulgarian affairs and being summoned to Berlin at the end of 1917 he made a speech[120] in camera to a committee of German savants and artists. In the course of this he lamented that his country had attached herself to Radoslavoff, who, said he, was hated and would at the next elections be swept away.
As one must repeat ad nauseam, the gulf between Serb and Bulgar has not been caused by an extreme divergence of their private or their public morals, academically considered, but by the various incidents which in the eyes of each of them testified to the other's depravity. And at the bottom of it all was Macedonia—Macedonia which now, being wisely administered, will be the foundation-stone of Yugoslavia.
At the end of his book, Balkan Problems and European Peace, Mr. Noel Buxton agrees that such a Yugoslav Federation has become a practical possibility. But his two alternative proposals with respect to what should meanwhile be the fate of Macedonia would indefinitely postpone that Federation. We have already dealt with the proposal of autonomy, put forward also by Mr. Leland Buxton. As for what Mr. Noel Buxton calls the ideal solution—"a plebiscite conducted by an impartial international commission over the whole of the historical province of Macedonia"—this is aiming no higher than at a perpetuation of the two distinct countries, Serbia and Bulgaria. We should probably have had more plebiscites in Europe if more Allied armies had been available, but the campaign of intimidation and every sort of ruthlessness which occurred in Upper Silesia and Schleswig make us look rather askance upon this method of registering the popular will. Mr. Buxton airily asks for a plebiscite over the whole of the historical province of Macedonia, ignoring altogether the special difficulty that "Macedonia" means something quite different to the Serb, the Bulgar and the Greek. He dismisses likewise the universal difficulty of plebiscites, which is to be just in laying down the limits of the various regions. But there is really no need for Mr. Buxton to take us on to those quagmires, since he knows, and is good enough to tell us, what the result of the plebiscite will be. "The Bulgarian sympathies," says he, "of the mass of the Macedonian population are apparent to every inquiring traveller." If Mr. Buxton were to encounter one of those pretty lawless Karakačan nomads, who from the Monastir district wander all over the Balkans, his recognition of the man's Roman and Thraco-Illyrian descent would be facilitated by the permanent cheesy odour which pervades his person. There is nothing so permanent about the Macedonian Slav. His sympathies, as is natural, have gone out to that Balkan country which cultivated him and since, as Dr. Milovanović, the Serbian statesman, says, "the Serbs did not begin to think about Macedonia till 1885," it would indeed have been extraordinary if the Macedonian Slavs—whose ethnical position, as scientists agree, is such a vague one—had been generally drawn to Serbia. One cannot help feeling that in this book Mr. Buxton does a serious disservice to his reputation as a Balkan expert. He says that Serbia until the accession of King Peter was Austrophil; which is, to put it mildly, a very sweeping remark—only that party which called itself Progressive was identified with Milan's views. He praises the Bulgars for being devoted to their national Church, and praises them for producing a large number of Protestants, whose sincerity, etc., so that one presumes he would have praised them still more if the whole nation, as was once on the cards, had joined the Protestant Church. Save me from my friends! the Bulgars might say. What is perfectly sincere about them is their patriotism; and while some of those who now change their religion have doubtless no ulterior, personal motive, the entire country would probably have as little reluctance as Japan in adopting any religion which, like the Exarchist Church of to-day, would be an instrument of the national cause. Mr. Buxton's knowledge of the Balkan protagonists has its limitations; for example, prior to Bulgaria's entry into the War he was all for the removal of the British Minister on account of his pro-Serbian sympathies, but he says no word about M. Savinsky, the Russian Minister, who was left by his Entente colleagues to play the first violin. This capricious gentleman was no diplomat, but a courtier. He did not even protest when German munitions for Turkey passed through Roumania, and far too much of his time was spent in motoring with pretty girls in the neighbourhood of Sofia. Many good observers were of opinion that with a more competent Russian representative, such as M. Nekludoff, who in 1914 was transferred to Stockholm, the situation would have been saved. In their memorandum submitted in January 1915 to Lord (then Sir Edward) Grey, Messrs. N. and C. R. Buxton said that their experience of fifteen years convinced them that the Bulgarian sentiment of the Macedonians could not in a short time be made to give way to another national sentiment. If we rule out, as being slaves of circumstance, all the Macedonians who now tell you that from Bulgar they have changed to Serb, there is no reason why we should not credit those who are so weary of the rival activities of both parties that they wish for peace and nothing else. They would follow, not the Messrs. Buxton, but the priest of the Bulgarian village of Chuprenia, who told me that he held that one might pray to God for the success of the Bulgarian arms, without saying whether they were in the right or in the wrong. After the end of the war this priest sent a telegram, which was perhaps a little indiscreet, advocating that the Bulgarian people should join in Yugoslavia.
To prevent the Southern Slavs being torn by internal strife, it is necessary between Serbia and Bulgaria that one of them should for a time be paramount. We may be confident that Serbia will not abuse her position. In fact it is the opinion of a Roumanian lady at Monastir that the Serbs were uncommonly rash in taking into their service so many who once had called themselves Bulgars and now maintain that they are Serbs. But Serbia has become relatively so strong that she can be indulgent. She will even satisfy that Bulgarian professor who is said to have discussed the Macedonian question with the British military attaché.
The attaché suggested a division between Serbia and Bulgaria.
"No," said the professor; "let the country remain a whole, like the child before Solomon."
"Would you be satisfied?" asked the attaché, "if this question were now decided once and for all?"
"Yes," said the professor, "if the judge be another Solomon."
Among the Bulgars who are looking forward to the day when their country will, in some form or other, join Yugoslavia, there are some who suggest that when comparative tranquillity has been assured upon the Macedonian frontiers (that is to say, between Macedonia and the Albanians) it would be as well to garrison the province with Croatian regiments, pending the employment in their own country of Macedonian troops. Gradually the time will come when, as one of the units of the Yugoslav State, Macedonia will enjoy the same amount of Home Rule as the other provinces. She will then, maybe, decide for herself such matters as the preservation of her dialects, local administration, police, etc.