Austria was already withdrawing the officers' families from the
Sanjak, and complete evacuation would follow. She dropped also the
Uvatz-Mitrovitza railway scheme which the Young Turks seemed not
over-willing to permit.
Moslem wrath, fierce against Austria, was further excited by the arrival of malcontent Moslems from the annexed provinces, who had thrown up their businesses and emigrated to the Young Turks. A curio-dealer from Mostar, whom I knew, was among them He and his friends had all believed that the Turkish revolution meant that Bosnia-Herzegovina would be the Sultan's once more. I asked why there had been no rising, and he explained humorously that, except his wife's scissors, he had no weapon to rise with. The "Schwabs" had called in all knives big enough to fight with, some weeks before the annexation was proclaimed.
A Moslem demonstration took place outside the Austrian consulate. The consular staff sent for Browning pistols, and insisted on ordering one for me, too, as declared my lodgings outside the town were dangerous. There was a whirlpool of contrary currents. Just before the Turkish revolution took place Essad Bey, who was aware of what was going on but, characteristically, meant to keep clear till he knew which was the winning side, applied for leave to go abroad for his health, which appeared excellent, and abroad he remained till Young Turk victory was certain.
In the first frenzy of joy, over what they believed to be the coming reign of liberty and justice, one of the cries of the townsfolk had been: "Now if Essad ever dares come back they will hang him, and give back all the lands and monies he has stolen!" Essad, however, outwitted the Young Turks as easily as he later outwitted the British Foreign Office. Whatever happened, he would be "butter-side uppermost." He announced that he, too, was a Young Turk, and returned in triumph as a member of the Committee of Union and Progress. This did more in Scutari to shake all faith in the new regime than anything else. Excitement grew. War was expected at any moment. Serbia and Montenegro were reported to have mobilized, and all frontiers were armed. On October 28th I find in my diary: "Had urgent appeal to go to Belgrade, but decided not—I don't want to get badly mixed in their politics." The Montenegrins were all for war, and the wildest reports reached us of Prince George of Serbia's efforts to precipitate it.
Russia, still reeling from her Japanese thrashing and torn with internal troubles, could do nothing. That was plain to every one but the South Slavs.
Baron Nopcsa, the Hungarian traveller, whose knowledge of Albanian matters is unrivalled, returned from a tour in the mountains. He was violently anti-Serb, and, in reply to my hope that war would be avoided, said very earnestly: "It can't be. Russia Is rapidly recovering. The Slavs mean our destruction; it is now or never for us. Our one chance is to crush them before they become too strong." I suggested there was room for both. He maintained there was not. "Let the Slav once get the upper hand, and there will be room for no one else. You had better remember that!" As a choice of evils, he favoured union with Germany against the common foe.
The pro-Serb attitude of England astonished every one except the "Great Serbians," who did not think it strong enough, and hoped for British naval support at least. To the Austrians it was incomprehensible that England should have made such a complete volte-face since 1878. The Czech consul-general, the Croatian secretary, and the Dalmatian doctor—all Slavs—were dead against Serbia and-all her claims. And in spite of the surprise expressed by England it appeared that the question of Bosnia's status had been discussed with England almost immediately after the proclamation of the Young Turk revolution. For a Reuter telegram had reported: "August 12, Vienna. . . . it was agreed at the conference between Baron Aehrenthal and Sir Charles Hardinge at Ischl to-day that any developments arising in Bosnia and the Herzegovina from the constitutional changes in Turkey should be considered as purely internal matters affecting Austria-Hungary and not involving any question of international policy." Sir Charles Hardinge, who had come in company with King Edward VII, at once returned to England.
The Moslems regarded the annexation as a Christian attack on Islam, and, as it was Ramazan, demonstrated loudly at night in the Christian quarter of Scutari. The Turkish Government boycotted all Austrian goods, and as the bulk of Scutari's imports came from Trieste the town felt this severely. The attache told me that England was believed to be behind this boycott for commercial purposes, and that as Austria manufactured a great deal expressly for the Turkish market a prolonged boycott must spell ruin. How easily we thought it spelt in those days!
Montenegro, meanwhile, went rabid because her special envoy to Belgrade, Yanko Vukotitch, cousin to the Princess, was stopped, and, it was said, searched on Austrian territory. Things were touch and go. The Montenegrin army was preparing to fall on Cattaro. War seemed inevitable, for England's attitude caused the Montenegrins to believe that they had only to begin and British aid was certain. Imaginative people actually saw the Mediterranean fleet coming up the Adriatic. They were spoiling for a fight. I was sure our bark was far worse than our bite was likely to be, but was very anxious, for we had no British representative in Cetinje to advise moderation, and, while we went on barking, Montenegro might bite. Montenegrin and Austrian troops faced each other on the frontier, and a rifle fired by a man full of rakia might set the whole ablaze.
People at home did not know how close the spark and the powder lay. If war ensued, it would mean the end of Turkey in Europe. In spite of tension between Christian and Moslem, the Albanians remembered that blood is thicker than water, and were very anxious to consolidate their position by adopting a common alphabet for all Albania. This, owing to Turkish prohibitions, had previously been impossible. For Italy and Austria, who printed school books in Albanian, did so for their own purposes, and not to encourage nationality, and so each used a different alphabet and changed it not infrequently.