Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle

by M. E. Durham

The bride was cousin to King Alexander Obrenovitch who had no direct heir. Failing one, she was one of the nearest relations to the Obrenovitch dynasty. The astute Prince Nikola, having married a daughter to the Karageorge claimant to the throne, now strove to make assurance doubly sure by marrying a son to a possible rival candidate. My diary notes though: "It seems there has been a lot of bother about it and that it was nearly 'off' as Papa Constantinovitch required Mirko to put down a considerable amount in florins. And Mirko could not produce them. I suppose he has now borrowed on his expectation of the Serbian throne. Which is, I imagine, his only asset."

I confess that at this time I did not know the Balkans and saw all these doings humorously, as a comic operetta. But the comic operas of the Balkans are written in blood and what was then fun to me was to end in a world tragedy.

My route to Belgrade was by boat to Fiume and thence by rail via Agram. On the boat I picked up a Croatian lady and her daughter, who moped miserably in the hot and stuffy cabin till they ventured to ask my permission to sit with me on deck. "You are English, so the men will not dare annoy us," they said, "if we are with you." Only English women, they declared, could travel as I did. The mere idea of a journey in Serbia terrified them and they assured me it was quite impossible.

And the cheap hotel in Agram, to which they recommended me, was of the same opinion. The company there assured me that King Alexander was drinking himself to death, and were loud in their expression of contempt for land and people. In those days union between Croatia and Serbia was possible only if Croatia swallowed Serbia. And not very long after I was in Agram riots took place in which the Serbs of the town were attacked and plundered.

As the train lumbered over the plains north of the Save, on the way to Belgrade, my fellow travellers, too, thought I was bound on a mad and impossible errand. As is usual in the Near East they all cross-examined me about my private affairs with boring persistency, and their verdict was that not even a British passport would see me through. "You will never see Serbia," they declared. I did though. For, being wholly innocent of any plots, all the efforts of all the multitudinous police of Serbia failed to turn me from my plan. "The wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous is as bold as a lion."

The train thundered over the iron bridge at night and deposited me in Belgrade. I had to give up my passport and my troubles began. I had come to see Serbia, and finally saw the whole of it and have described it in another book. But for obvious reasons I did not then recount all that befell me; I did not even understand it all.

Looking back on that tour I can only wonder at the dogged persistence with which I overcame all the obstacles which the Serb police put in my way. Short of forbidding me to travel they did all they could.

In accordance with my promise to M. Militchevitch, "To do nothing without consulting the British Consul," I went to the consulate, where I found a nice young man, who had but recently arrived and seemed to know nothing whatever about the country. He was playing with a dachsdog and told me cheerfully I could go anywhere I liked "and none of them will dare touch you." But he warned me that it would be very expensive as carriages were two pounds a day. I suggested mildly that the land being a poor one this could not possibly be the regular charge, but that people sometimes had to pay extra for the privilege of being British Consul; which apparently he had never thought of. It proved correct though. Serbia in those days was the cheapest spot in Europe. Never again in all probability will the peasant be so well off.

But before starting up country I meant to see Belgrade, and began by asking at the hotel where the King was to be seen. For a King, in 1902 at any rate, was still an object of interest, and one of the "show sights" of most European countries. The waiter replied "You want to see our King? You won't see him. He dares not come out of the Konak. He is probably drunk." Nor in fact during the time I spent in Belgrade did he ever come out.

In Belgrade the first thing I learnt was that I was "shadowed" by the police. To the uninitiated this is most uncanny. The same man keeps turning up. He does it very badly as a rule. You sit and have coffee on one side of a street and he sits and drinks beer at the restaurant opposite. You wander on and think: "What an ass I was to think he was following me!" and meet him at the next corner. Most disquieting of all perhaps is to come suddenly out of your bedroom and almost tumble over him in the corridor. All these and more were my experiences in the first weeks of my tour. And always I said to myself in triumph: "They can't do anything to me for I have not done anything." I could not even buy a railway ticket for a day's outing without being cross-examined as to my purpose, my father, my uncles and other relatives. The officials in Vain assured me that there was nothing to see in the place I wished to visit. I played the card which had succeeded with Militchevitch and asked if it were dangerous. I could not enter a village without being at once asked by the local policeman for my passport. Blankly ignorant of what was behind these proceedings I steadily pursued my way, smiling at all questions and supplying at demand long biographies of various members of my family. No; my father had not been in the diplomatic service, nor my uncles, nor brothers, nor cousins. No; none of them were officers.