If the present war is decided in favour of the Allies—and this is the prayer of all the Slavs—it will become necessary to settle the Southern Slav problem once and for all. This can only be done satisfactorily by respecting the principle of nationality, and by a just delimitation of the various national zones. In disputed territories, such as Istria or the Quarnero Islands, a referendum ought to decide.
The Slavs have been tortured long enough. For centuries they have guarded European civilization against the inroads of Ottoman Islam, which has always been synonymous with bigotry, barbarism and sloth, and should never be confounded with Arab Islam, or Hindu Islam, to whom the whole world of science, art and philosophy is eternally indebted. Austria and Prussia are the natural heirs of Ottoman Islam, and the Southern Slavs have made a heroic stand against this latter-day Prussian Islam.
Civilization owes them a debt of honour, and it is only their due that Europe should give them justice.
EPILOGUE.
“BURIED TREASURES.”
BY DIMITRIJ MITRINOVIĆ.
Speaking generally, the Southern Slavs are divided into Slovenes, Serbo-Croats, and Bulgarians, but of these three branches only the Slovenes and Serbo-Croats are racially identical. In speaking of a political Southern Slav State, a state which would in the future dominate the whole of the Balkan Peninsula, it would be wrong not to include the Bulgarian nation. However, the Serbo-Croats form the principal cultural “unit” among the Southern Slavs, and after them come the Slovenes. The nucleus, the life-giving element of the Southern Slav family and its culture, is formed by the Southern Slavs of Serbia, Old Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Hercegovina, Croatia, Dalmatia and Serbian Hungary, or, to give them their collective name, by the Serbo-Croats. The Serbo-Croats, and more especially the Serbians proper (Serbians of Old Serbia and Serbia), have always led the vanguard of Serbo-Croatian political life; the two greatest cultural achievements of the Southern Slav race, to wit,[179] the national poetry and the individual architecture and sculpture of Ivan Meštrović, have always been associated with the Serbians of Serbia. The fall of the Serbian Empire forms the chief theme of Meštrović’s art, no less than of Southern Slav national poetry—and thus it has become usual, if not strictly correct, to speak of all Southern Slav poetry as Serbian national poetry, and of the great Southern Slav artist as the great Serbian artist.
We speak of the Southern Slav poetry and of Ivan Meštrović, our Southern Slav Michelangelo, as “buried treasures.” In a sense, all Slav civilization may be called a buried treasure. Russian and Slav literature as a whole, is far greater than its reputation in Western Europe. Ottokar Brezina, the celebrated Csech poet, is translated and read in Slavophobe Germany, but not in allied France and England; because in these days nations are more often brought into contact by war and travel than by civilization and our common humanity.
Western Europe has been even less just to the Southern Slavs than to any other Slav nation; and they who have paid so dearly in blood and suffering for their freedom are less known and recognized than any other European nation, in spite of the great historic merit of the Serbians, and the importance of their culture;—the consideration shown by Europe to a dynasty has been greater than her justice to a portion of mankind. A universal conflagration and a breaking-up of the old order of things was necessary, ere Europe learned to value millions of human beings more highly than the principle of a bygone generation, or the pathos of old age. In the future we may hope to see a just Europe which will not look upon the Serbians as a nation of regicides, but as a people revolting against secret treaties with the Hapsburgs, and upon the Southern Slavs, not as traitors, but as a democratic people refusing to be destroyed. When the Slovenes of Istria, Carniola, Styria, and Carinthia, together with the Serbo-Croats, form a strong, prosperous and free, though small State, their culture will be developed to the full, crowning and unifying Southern Slav life.
This growing civilization of Greater Serbia, which may be called Yougoslavia, will gather up the scattered threads of the history of Serbian art in the past. We shall then no longer speak of “Slovene painting,” “Croatian drama,” “Old Serbian tapestry,” “Serbian folk-lore.” The literature of one and the same people will cease to be broken up into “Literature in Ragusa,” “Dalmatian Island and Coast Literature,” “Bosnian,” “Croatian,” and “Serbian” literature. All this, together with the national life to the State, will form the totality of the Southern Slav nation. The two zones of culture: the Western European zone of the Croats and Slovenes, and the Eastern-Byzantine zone of the Serbians; the three religions: Orthodox, Catholic and Mussulman; the two forms of script: the Latin of the Croats, and the Cyrillic of the Serbians; all these, as well as a few differences of speech, will only add to the wealth and originality of Southern Slav culture. When this Greater Serbia or Yougoslavia shall stand for the third great civilization of the Balkans (the first was Hellenic, the second Byzantine), the Southern Slavs will become a new factor in European civilization and politics, and the great art of Serbian national poetry, and the work of the Yougoslav artist, Meštrović, will no longer be buried treasures. Serbian music, literature and science, although they have existed and still exist, will only then be known and recognized.