He made me a list of places where I should find Bogumil monuments, tattooed people, Roman remains and so forth. Told me that in his opinion Austria was wasting time and money in the provinces. The changes were too quick for the people; they preferred the old Turkish tracks and pack beasts to carts and the new roads, and that they suspected everything new. He himself got on with the people excellently, took me into several houses where they had portraits of Prince Nikola of Montenegro, and chaffed them about wanting to join that land. "They are all of them plotting across the border," he said, laughing. "They would far rather pig along like the Montenegrins. I've tried hard to persuade them to use iron ploughs. Our government supplies them at less than cost price. But they won't. They say, 'No, it is a Schwab thing.' We have spent no end of money trying to improve the live stock: bulls, stallions, rams, boars of the finest breeds. We sent a splendid boar last year to a village in charge of a man who was supposed to be reliable. And when Christmas came he killed it, roasted it and asked all the village to a feast. It was worth a lot of money. He only said that there was so much meat on it, it seemed a pity to let it live! It will take them several generations to get new ideas. Why worry. All this talk of going to Salonika is folly. This place is too much for us." His own job were beautiful irrigation works which kept a whole district fertile through the heats of summer. "But," he laughed, "the people are not a bit pleased. They say that in the old days it rained when it was God's will. They have quite forgotten they lost most of their crops every year from the drought. This is a Schwab thing, so they think it bad." On parting with him I took his advice and went where I liked. I was "shadowed" a good deal and my correspondence was generally ten days late, but otherwise was not interfered with. Living in native houses and going as guest to festivities, weddings, etc., as I had done in other Balkan lands was, however, impossible. It would have got my hosts into trouble. As it was, the wife of an official was very angry when I said I could get a meal in any village. For she declared she and her husband had even been refused coffee, the people all vowing they had none.
The reason for all the fuss was that the authorities were trying to hide the fact that the country was going through a very bad crisis, which was further exacerbated by the rumoured annexation; the open talk of an advance towards Salonika; and the renewed political activity of Russia and Serbia, which had now got England installed again at Belgrade.
Speaking Serb, I found without difficulty that there was a very strong Serb propaganda being worked from Belgrade among the Orthodox, who at that time formed nearly two-fifths of the native population. Next in number were the Moslems and after them the Catholics, lastly several thousand Spanish Jews. Orthodox, Moslem and Catholic native populations were entirely Slavonic. There was an acute division between the Orthodox and the other two parties.
The Catholics and even some of the Moslems called themselves Croat, and hated the term Serb. I had heard a report that in Croatia a reconciliation between Serb and Croat had taken place. None was to be seen in Bosnia. Only in the Herzegovina did the Catholic natives wish union with Montenegro.
The bulk of the Moslems looked longingly towards Turkey. The Orthodox, on the other hand, were violently pro-Serb, and feelings between Austria and Serbia had risen to fever heat.
Towards the end of 1905, Pashitch, then Prime Minister of Serbia, though already working hard against Bulgaria in Macedonia, signed a secret commercial convention with that country providing for the free interchange of goods with the exception of certain specified objects, and binding the two to a monetary convention and assimilation of weights and measures. As both countries produced much the same articles the arrangement did not appear to be likely to stimulate trade and as the racial hatred and rivalry of the two over the unsettled Macedonian scheme was extreme, the permanence of the arrangement was in any case doubtful.
Serbia was in dire need of a loan, and was on the point of concluding one for 70,000,000 francs. Part of this was to be supplied by the Vienna Bank, and both Serbia and Bulgaria were negotiating new commercial treaties with Austria. Serbia thought best therefore to keep the transaction with Bulgaria quiet. But just as business was almost concluded with Austria, a Bulgarian newspaper blurted out the Bulgar-Serb convention. The Austria-Hungarian Government demanded at once to see the document, and all business came to a standstill. Nor was this surprising, for Petar I, Pashitch and the regicide group were notoriously Russia's proteges, and any secret arrangement on their part was likely to be directed against Austria.
Austria closed her frontier to Serbian live stock.
Serbia was on the bubble. England had stipulated that the regicides were to be retired from power, as a condition of resuming diplomatic relations. (A stipulation that showed either that the Foreign Office little knew the Balkans, or that it knew very well that the treaty was a farce and did not care.) The regicide gang was infuriated and plotted the assassination of their opponents who wished by legal means to settle the question. But, as was delicately expressed by The Times correspondent, "it is stated that the police authorities refused to afford facilities for the execution of the plot, which consequently failed." Pity indeed that the police of Serbia did not remain "conscientious objectors" to plots of assassination. And about the same time when Vladan Georgevitch was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for "revealing state secrets," in The End of a Dynasty, the author in court denounced King Petar as the humble instrument of Russian policy.
Austria insisted on modifications to the Serbo-Bulgar convention;
Turkey too demanded an alteration.