The evident failure to profit by the experience of two general mobilisations within the previous six years is in itself a proof that there is "something rotten in the state," and it is already obvious that only a complete and crushing victory of Germany can extricate Austria-Hungary from the war without loss of prestige and actual territory. Unless the Russians can be not merely defeated but driven out, it is absolutely certain that they will retain the province of Galicia, or at least the eastern portion, with its Ruthene or Ukrainian population; unless the Serbian army can be overwhelmed, Bosnia and at least some portion of Dalmatia will fall into the hands of Serbia. This would be an eminently unsatisfactory solution or rather it would be no solution at all, for it would solve neither the Polish, the Ukraine, nor the Southern Slav questions. I merely refer to it as a possible outcome of one form of stalemate; it is hardly necessary to add that from every point of view stalemate is the result which is most to be dreaded, since it inevitably involves fresh wars in the immediate future. Whatever happens, the effete Dual System in its present form is doomed, for while an Austrian defeat means dissolution, an Austrian victory means the absorption of Serbia and Montenegro, and in either case the balance between Austria and Hungary will be fatally disturbed and a new constitutional arrangement rendered inevitable. It is thus a tragic paradox that while the attempt to bolster up the Dual System was undoubtedly one of the great underlying causes of the war, its first effect is likely to be the collapse of that very system.
The Dual System once abolished, it might seem reasonable to aim at a reconstruction of Austria-Hungary on a modified federal basis. But this was essentially a peace-ideal. The war, far from kindling a common patriotism which in Austria-Hungary was so conspicuous by its absence, has placed a gulf of blood between race and race, and rendered their continued existence under the same roof not only difficult but undesirable. Even in the event of only relative failure on the part of Austria-Hungary a much more radical solution may be expected, while the effect of her complete defeat would be to place the solution of the whole "Austrian problem" in the hands of the Entente Powers and of her own disaffected populations. In that case there are two probable alternatives, one more radical than the other. Both depend to a large extent upon the development of the military situation and upon as yet incalculable economic influences, but it is possible to indicate their broad outlines. Indeed, this is the best means of illustrating the conflicting fears and aspirations which the great conflict has still further intensified in the racial whirlpool of Central Europe. Let us consider the less drastic of the two first.
Austria, as distinguished from Hungary, consists of seventeen provinces, of which Galicia is the largest and most populous; yet there are many Austrians who have long regarded its possession as anything but an unmixed blessing for the Monarchy as a whole, and would scarcely regret its loss. It has always occupied a peculiar autonomous position of its own; its political, social, and economic conditions are at least a century behind those of the neighbouring provinces, and have given rise to many gross scandals. It has been a hot-bed of agrarian unrest, electoral corruption, and international espionage. Instead of paying its own way, it has been financially a heavy drag upon the State, while racially it provides, in the Polish-Ruthene conflict, an object-lesson on the disagreeable fact that an oppressed race can become an oppressor when occasion arises. But the argument which weighs most with the Germans of Austria is that the Poles of Galicia have for a whole generation held in their hands the political balance in the Austrian Parliament, and that the disappearance of the Polish and Ruthene deputies would destroy the Slav majority and correspondingly strengthen the Germans. The Magyars in their turn would no doubt view with some alarm the extension of the Russian frontier to the line of the Carpathians; but the change would bring to them certain obvious compensations, since it would greatly increase the relative importance of Hungary inside what was left of the Habsburg Monarchy. In short, it is by no means impossible that if the Russians succeed in holding Galicia, Austria-Hungary may show a sudden alacrity to buy peace by disgorging a province which has never wholly fitted into her geographical or political system.
It is obvious that the fate of the small province of Bukovina is bound up with that of Galicia; and in such circumstances as we have just indicated, it would doubtless be divided between Russia and Roumania on broad ethnographical lines, the northern districts being Ruthene, the southern Roumanian. This, however, must depend upon the attitude of the kingdom of Roumania, to which reference will be made later.
There is one other direction in which Austria could afford to surrender territory, without serious loss save that of prestige. The southern portion of Tirol—the so-called Trentino, the district round the town of Trent—is purely Italian by race, and its union with the kingdom of Italy has long been the chief point in the programme of the Italian Irredentists or extreme Nationalists. It is a poor and mountainous country, which belongs geographically to its southern rather than to its northern neighbour. The pronouncedly Italian sympathies of its inhabitants have complicated the problem of government and have been a permanent source of friction between Austria and Italy. The elaborate fortifications along the existing frontier would have to be sacrificed, but the new racial frontier could soon be made equally satisfactory from a strategic point of view. It should then be borne in mind that at a later stage of the war an attempt may be made by Austria to buy off Italy with the offer of the Trentino. Whether the latter would seriously consider such an offer, if made, will doubtless depend upon future events, but it is clear that Italy, if her diplomatists are sufficiently adroit, has a fair prospect of acquiring the Trentino, whichever side wins, and consequently that a much more tempting bait will be required in order to induce her to abandon her neutrality. These two losses, the one already probable, the other hypothetical, would still leave Austria in the unquestioned position of a Great Power. The problem of her future relations with her Balkan neighbours raises an infinitely more complicated issue. Let us consider the Southern Slav and Roumanian questions, first separately, and then in their bearing upon each other.
§6. The Southern Slav Question.—The Southern Slav question, as has already been argued in an earlier chapter, can only be treated satisfactorily as an organic whole; and it may be taken for granted that Austria-Hungary, in the event of victory, will annex the two independent Serb kingdoms, and unite the whole Serbo-Croat race under Habsburg rule. The task of governing them, when once she has overcome their resistance, will be one of extraordinary difficulty, and will involve a complete revision of her own standards of government and administration. Her record and that of Hungary in the Slavonic South does not inspire one with confidence as to the result. Moreover, it is not too much to assert that the destruction of Serb independence—a task which the present writer unhesitatingly regards as beyond the powers of Austria—will in no way solve the Southern Slav problem, but merely transfer its centre of gravity. The task of Southern Slav liberation would pass to Bulgaria, and Austria-Hungary would be involved in an ever-widening field of hostilities. Hence, even if Serbia's independence were not now inextricably bound up with the success of the British arms, it would still be essential that every effort should be made to heal what has long been an open sore upon the face of Europe. People in this country are only too apt to ignore the question altogether, or at best to say, "Oh yes, of course, if the Allies win, the Serbs will get Bosnia." Those who talk thus have not grasped the elements of the great problem, of which Bosnia, like Serbia itself, is only one section. The idea that to transfer Bosnia alone from Austro-Hungarian to Serbian hands would settle anything whatever, fatally ignores alike the laws of geography and those considerations of national sentiment which dominate politics in South-Eastern Europe. In every respect Bosnia-Herzegovina and Dalmatia complement each other. So long as there were no railways in the Balkans and Bosnia stagnated under Turkish rule, so long as the national consciousness of the Serbo-Croats slumbered or ran in purely provincial channels, the separation between coast and hinterland was possible, though even then unnatural. But with the advent of modern economic ideas the situation radically changed. It was above all the possession of the Dalmatian seaboard that tempted Austria to occupy Bosnia, and so conversely the acquisition of Bosnia by Serbia would at once compel the latter, willy-nilly (quite apart from all racial affinities or sentiments), to aspire to Dalmatia as well.
Geographically, it is inconceivable that to-day Dalmatia should be in different hands from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Herzegovina does actually touch the sea at two places—for a few miles at the swampy mouth of the Narenta below Metkovié, and for a mile at Castelnuovo-Zelenika, inside the Bocche di Cattaro. It is obvious that to allow Serbia these two outlets, while leaving their surroundings to another State, would create immediate and intolerable friction; whereas to assign the southern half of Dalmatia to Bosnia, but to leave the northern half in other hands, would be keenly resented by the Dalmatians themselves, as an outrage alike upon their national and their local traditions.
When we consider the population of Dalmatia we must apply the rival tests of history and of race. On the grounds of historical sentiment Italy might claim Dalmatia; for its chief towns (Zara, Sebenico, Trau, Spalato, Lesina, Curzola)[1] were Venetian colonies, and not only they but even the Republic of Ragusa, which always maintained an independent existence, were saturated with Italian culture and ideals. But on ethnical grounds Dalmatia is now overwhelmingly Slavonic. In 1900 only 3.1 per cent of its population—in other words, about 15,000 out of a total of 584,000—were Italians, the remaining 97 per cent being Serbo-Croats. The census of 1910 is even more unfavourable to the Italians, probably unduly so. It is, of course, true that the Italian element, though numerically negligible, represents a higher percentage of the educated and cultured class; but while this would entitle Italy to demand guarantees for the maintenance of existing Italian schools and institutions, it cannot conceivably be employed as an argument in favour of an Italian occupation. Not only would it bring her inevitably into collision with the Southern Slavs who already are, and are likely to remain, a military power of no mean order; it would lead her on into the false and hopeless path of attempting to assimilate a hostile population by the aid of an insignificant minority which only exists in half a dozen towns, and in all the rest of the province is simply non-existent. The price paid would be the eternal enmity of all Slavs, the jeopardising of Italian interests in the Balkans, the sacrifice of many of the benefits which the new Trans-Balkan railway route (Odessa-Bucarest-Kladovo-Sarajevo-Spalato) would naturally bring to Italy, a challenge to one of the finest maritime races in Europe—the Croats of Dalmatia, Croatia and Istria—a challenge which would sooner or later involve the creation of a Southern Slav navy against Italy. So far as Britain is concerned, to separate Dalmatia from Bosnia is not only to prevent even the beginnings of a solution of the Southern Slav question, but to obscure the naval situation in the Mediterranean, to alienate Russia in a matter in which we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by accommodating her. But even when Bosnia and Dalmatia have been united to Serbia and Montenegro, the Southern Slav problem will still be far from solution. Dalmatia is alike in constitutional theory and in political fantasy, though not in sober fact, an integral portion of the Triune Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia, and it is unthinkable that Serbo-Croat opinion could ever consent to the liberation of the one without the other. No solution has any chance of permanence which ignores Agram as the centre of Croat political and religious life, of education, art and historic memories. The Dalmatian Croats, as the most virile and stubborn element in the race, have always formed the vanguard of political thought, but it is to Agram that they have always turned for the necessary backing, and it is the peasantry of Croatia who have always borne the brunt of every attempt at repression. Latterly the Dalmatians have been the soul of the student movement, which plays so vital a part in recent political development.
[Footnote 1: In the West they are only known under their Italian names, but at home they are known as Zadar, Sibenik, Trogir, Split, Hvar, Korcula, and Dubrovnik (Ragusa).]
Croatia-Slavonia is a vital part of the problem, indeed from a national point of view perhaps more vital than Bosnia and Dalmatia. But even this is not enough. No settlement will be complete which ignores the Slovenes of eastern Istria, Carniola, and southern Carinthia and Styria: they must share the fate of their Croat and Serb kinsmen.