In the administration of Bosnia, only thirty-one out of three hundred and twenty-two functionaries are Servians, only twelve out of one hundred and twenty-five professors of lyceums, only thirty-one out of two hundred and thirty-seven judges and magistrates. And yet the Orthodox Servians form forty-four per cent. of the population. The young Bosnians who have graduated from the Austro-Hungarian universities find themselves excluded from public life. Turning to commercial life, they find eighty per cent. of the large industries controlled by German capital and managed exclusively by Germans. Turning to agriculture, they find economic misery and hopeless ignorance among the peasants of their race, and every effort made by the Government to prevent the bettering of their lot. Turning to journalism and public speaking to work for their race, they find an unreasoning censorship and a law against assemblies. As one of them expressed it to me, "We must either cease to be Slavs or become revolutionaries."
Did Austria-Hungary need to look to Servian propaganda, to influences from the outside, to find the cause of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand? Political assassinations were not new in the south Slavic provinces of the monarchy. A young Bosnian student attempted to assassinate the Governor of Bosnia at Sarajevo on June 6, 1910, at the time of the inauguration of the Bosnian Sabor (Diet). Two years later the royal commissioner in Croatia was the object of an attempt at assassination by a Bosnian at Agram. In September of the same year, a Croatian student shot at the Ban of Croatia. The same Ban, Skerletz, was attacked again at Agram by another young Croatian on August 18, 1913. These assassinations preceded those of the Archduke and his wife. They were all committed by students of Austro-Hungarian nationality. Only the last one had ever been in Servia.
In theory, Bosnia has had since February 20, 1910, a constitution with a deliberative assembly. But the Sabor can discuss no projects of law that have not been proposed by the two masters. Once voted, a law has to pass the double veto of Vienna and Buda-Pesth. As if this were not enough, the Viennese bureaucracy has so arranged the qualification of the electorate and the electoral laws that the suffrage does not represent the country. Then, too, the constitution decides arbitrarily that the membership of the Sabor must be divided according to religions, one Jew, sixteen Catholics, twenty-four Moslems, and thirty-one Orthodox. The Government has reserved for itself the right of naming twenty members! The constitution provides for individual liberty, the inviolability of one's home, liberty of the press and speech, and secrecy of letters and telegrams. This enlightened measure of the Emperor was heralded to the world. But of course there was the joker, Article 20. Vienna held the highest card! In case of menace to the public safety, all public and private rights may be suspended by a word from Vienna. Public safety always being menaced in Bosnia, the constitution is perpetually suspended. The Government even goes as far as to prosecute deputies for their speeches in Parliament. Newspapers are continually censored. Their telegraphic news from Vienna and Buda-Pesth is suppressed without reason. Particularly severe fines—sometimes jail sentences—are passed upon offending journalists.
Is it necessarily because of instigation and propaganda from Belgrade that of the three Servian political parties in Bosnia two (the Narod and the Otachbina) are closely allied to the Pan-Servian Society Narodna Obrana, and that these two parties openly support the separatist movement?
In Bosnia, Dalmatia, and Croatia in 1914 the bureaucracy of Vienna has been engaged in the same process of repression and police persecution as in Italy during the half century from 1815 to the liberation of Italy. The local constitutions have been suspended everywhere. Why have the Austrians, in spite of the lessons of the beginning of the present reign, dared to tempt providence in exactly the same way after the Golden Jubilee?
The victories of the Allies in the Balkans were a terrible blow to Austria-Hungary. Not only was her dream of reaching the Ægean Sea through the sandjak of Novi Bazar and Macedonia shattered by the Greek occupation of Salonika, but the aggrandizement of Servia, caused by a successful war, threatened to have a serious effect upon the fortunes of the Empire. The appearance of the Servians on the Adriatic would mean really the extension of Russian influence through Bulgaria and Servia to the Austrian and Italian private lake, and would cut off Austria for ever from her economic outlet to the Ægean. But there was more than this to cause alarm both in Austria and in Hungary. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Dalmatia—would they remain loyal to the Empire, if once they came under the spell of the idea of Greater Servia? Leaving Russia entirely out of the calculation, an independent, self-reliant, and enlarged Servia, extending towards the Adriatic and Ægean Seas, if not actually reaching it,—would it not be, as Professor Wirth declared, "the suicide of Germany"? The statesmen of the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Empires determined that it should not occur.
From the very moment that the Servian armies drove the Turks before them, Austria-Hungary began to act the bully against Servia. The Austrian consuls at Prisrend and Mitrovitza were made the first cause of Austrian interference. It was pretended that Herr Prochaska had been massacred and mutilated at Prisrend, and that the life of Herr Táhy had been threatened so that he was forced to flee for safety from Mitrovitza. A formal inquest showed that the first of these consuls was safe, and that the trouble had been merely a discussion between Servian officers and Herr Prochaska over some fleeing Albanians who had taken refuge in the consulate, in the other case, there seemed to be no ground at all for complaint. But on January 15, 1913, the Servians acceded to the demand of Austria that the reparation be granted for the Prisrend incident. A company of Servian soldiers saluted the Austro-Hungarian flag as Consul Prochaska solemnly raised it. This incident seems too petty to mention, but in that part of the world and at that moment we thought it very serious. For it showed how anxious Austria-Hungary was to pick a quarrel with Servia in the midst of the Balkan War.
Two other incidents of an even more serious character immediately followed. Servia refused the Austrian demand that Durazzo be evacuated, supporting herself upon the hope that Russia would intervene. During December and January, deluded by unofficial representatives of Russian public sentiment and by demonstrations against Austria-Hungary in Moscow and Petrograd, Servia held out. It was only when she saw that Russian support was not forthcoming that she withdrew from Durazzo. The international situation during January, 1913, was similar to that during July, 1914, and the cause of the crisis was practically the same. In both cases Servia backed down, but the second time Austria-Hungary and Germany determined to provoke the war which they believed would be the end of Servia and the destruction of Russia's power to influence the political evolution of Balkan Peninsula.
After Durazzo, it was Scutari. Servia for the third time bowed before the will of Austria.
The next move against Servia was the annexation on May 12, 1913, of the little island of Ada-Kaleh on the Danube, which had curiously enough remained Turkish property after the Treaty of Berlin. It had actually been forgotten at that time. This island, situated in front of Orsova, would have given Servia a splendid strategic position at the mouth of the river. Austria-Hungary anticipated the Treaty of London.