CHAPTER XIV
THE EVOLUTION OF SERBIA INTO JUGOSLAVIA

The little Balkan Kingdom of Serbia was a principality under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire for half a century after its resurrection during the Napoleonic Wars. The Serbs engaged in a war with Turkey in 1876, which led to the intervention of Russia, and to the recognition by the powers of the independence of Serbia in the Treaty of Berlin. The limits of the new kingdom were so drawn as to exclude the northern part of Macedonia, which was left to Turkey, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the administration of which was entrusted to Austria-Hungary, without detaching these territories from the Ottoman Empire. The little principality of Montenegro, whose inhabitants had successfully resisted the Turks for centuries, was also declared independent by the Treaty of Berlin. In 1908, after the Young Turk revolution, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, little Serbia succeeded in nearly doubling her territory and adding 50 per cent to her population at the expense of Turkey and Bulgaria. An important part of the new territory, however, contained a non-Serbian majority.

Of the Serbian-speaking peoples, known as the Jugoslavs, considerably more than half were in the Hapsburg dominions at the outbreak of the World War. The kingdom of Serbia had a population of 3,000,000 before the Balkan Wars, which added 1,500,000 more, of whom 1,000,000 by the most liberal estimate could be considered Serbs. In round numbers the Jugoslavs in 1918 were distributed as follows:

Old Serbia3,000,000
New Serbia1,000,000
Montenegro500,000
Croatia and Slavonia2,600,000
Bosnia and Herzegovina2,000,000
Dalmatia1,000,000
Slovenia1,500,000
Istria400,000
Banat of Temesvár250,000
Other parts of Hungary1,000,000

We must have these figures before us to realize the tremendous difficulties confronting the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, created by the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon. Greater Rumania was formed by adding between four and five million liberated Rumanians and an equal number of alien peoples to an independent kingdom already containing more than seven million Rumanians. Greater Serbia was formed by adding 8,000,000 liberated Jugoslavs and the half-million already independent Montenegrins to 4,000,000 independent Serbians. The figures alone demonstrate the difference in the problem. If the Serbians were to maintain their supremacy over the redeemed brethren, it was going to be a case of the tail trying to wag the dog.

But there is a still wider divergence between the problems of Greater Rumania and Greater Serbia than is shown by the figures. The redeemed Rumanians could be assimilated with those of the kingdom into one nation. They had a common interest in standing together against alien elements formidable in number. In Greater Serbia the Serbian-speaking elements had been separated for centuries. With radically different social and political, religious and cultural backgrounds, amalgamation was a complicated problem. Many Serbians have attempted to draw a parallel between the unification of the Italians and that of the Jugoslavs. The analogy does not hold, because the Italians were all of the same religion, they were a product of the same Occidental culture, and their social and political experience had not, in modern times, at least, been dissimilar. The Jugoslavs, on the other hand, had been separated since the Middle Ages by formidable barriers.

Serbs and Montenegrins are Orthodox; Bosnians, Herzegovinians, and a portion of the inhabitants of what is known as New Serbia are Orthodox, Catholic, and Mohammedan; while most of the Croats, Dalmatians, and Slovenes are Catholic. The Jugoslavs of the Hapsburg Empire are Occidentals, and have always been under the influence of Rome. Most of them escaped wholly the Ottoman yoke. They have evolved a high degree of civilization, as we Westerners understand that term, and have little except language in common with the Serbians, a people that lived for hundreds of years under the shadow of the Crescent. It was impossible to expect that the more cultivated Serbian-speaking peoples of the Hapsburg Empire should be willing to play second fiddle to a Balkan people whose manner of life and habits of mind were semi-Oriental.

When the fortunes of war began to point to an Entente victory in 1918, it would have been possible to secure the recognition of a Jugoslav state, to be formed by the union of the Jugoslav portions of Austria and Hungary with Serbia. But the Serbian Government failed to recognize the barriers of which we have just spoken, and aimed to use the victory as a means of aggrandizing Serbia. The new territories were to come into the existing kingdom without conditions. Premier Pashitch tried to get the Entente Powers and the United States to agree to the annexation of Bosnia by Serbia when the Austro-Hungarian armies withdrew. In the summer of 1918, when the Czechoslovak National Council was officially recognized as trustee of the future Czechoslovak Government, it was intimated that a similar step would be taken on behalf of the Jugoslavs if only Serbia agreed to throw in her lot with the proposed Jugoslavia. Rumania and Greece joined the Entente Powers in urging this course upon the Belgrade Government. Premier Pashitch refused. The golden opportunity was lost; for in October Italy declared that she would countenance no such move. When, with the break-up of the Dual Monarchy, Agram proclaimed the independence of Croatia on October 28, 1918, it was too late to arrange what would have been feasible in the summer. On November 9 the Belgrade and Agram Governments issued at Geneva a joint declaration to work together until a constituent assembly, elected by universal suffrage, should adopt a constitution for the new states, whose boundaries were as yet indefinite.

This modus vivendi, accepted at the eleventh hour by Pashitch, might have lasted throughout the Peace Conference had it not been for the fear of Italian aggression, which prompted the Agram Government to beg for the assistance of the Serbian army to save Laibach and Fiume from Italian occupation. In taking over the territories assigned to them by the armistice of November 3, the Italian armies acted with a high hand, suppressing the Jugoslav national movement promptly and ruthlessly. Italian nationalism was being worked up to fever heat by the propaganda to make the Adriatic an Italian lake. The Dalmatian League at Rome declared that Dalmatia was to be Italian. D’Annunzio issued an impassioned appeal for Fiume, the words of which he soon afterward proved himself able to translate into actions.