Between Serbia and the new territories stands Belgrade, the capital of the whole. It is strikingly situated on the cliffs above the winding Save which glimmers like silver in the evening. From the shell-splintered fortress one looks forth over the vast fruitful plain that was southernmost Austria. Here the Kaiser had a seat made for himself in 1915 that he might look homeward in the evening. Thus he turned his back on the Balkans and his scheme of the world.
Belgrade below the fortress wall is extensive but poor. Its tired main street stretches out a long way with flabby houses on each side of its cobbled wildness. There are as yet no buildings corresponding to the dignity of a great capital. The old Parliament House is a little place like a town-school, the temporary one is a converted whitewashed barracks; the Cathedral is a parish church on a site suitable for a mighty edifice; the Moscow Hotel looks like a seaside boarding establishment; the Franco-Serbian Bank is housed in a place which might pass for an old clothes warehouse in Whitechapel. There is a pleasant little white stone Post-office. But the Foreign Office, the Education Office, and other Government Departments are in buildings that might well be blocks of flats or pensions kept by respectable widows.
The population, if we rule out the Austrians, is mostly "the peasant come to town"—a proletarian crowd, though not governed by proletarians but by a small educated class plus an obedient army. You can see by the women that it is a peasant people—not a jumper or a short skirt in the whole of Belgrade. They are quiet-eyed and modest. The Serbs are much harder than the Russians, and bear deeper in their souls the marks of their historic chains. A tortured look in the face and a certain dreadful impassivity of countenance are not uncommon. There is a mixture of geniuses and of people who have not yet begun to live. They have their Mestrovic, Velimirovic, Petronievic. Is there not in London a certain M—— made not for our civilization but for two or three grades higher in world development. Of those who have not yet begun to live many are suspicious, violent, melancholy, with little instinct for making life more or fuller, for living and letting live; in business unenterprising and indisposed for work. The Serbs are potentially gifted for literature, art, and thought; they are sincere and real in temperament, but despite their efforts probably not gifted for modern civilization as we know it.
As regards Belgrade, when prosperity returns we may see the growth of a fine new city, not a complete town-planned Austrian city, supplied as it were whole and in every part from a department store, but something expressive of a new people. All these buildings we look upon to-day are bound to pass into obscurity. The rising pillars of the Skupstchina, Serbia's new Parliament House at the foot of Kossovo Street, point to the future of some great new State.
The Croats say "When you go to Zagreb you will see the difference. Ah, there is a city; there is civilization." They kiss their hands to show what they mean. The Croats are Home Rulers. Like the Irish, they are Catholics. Some of them look forward to the transfer of the capital to Zagreb, and the changing of the letters of the kingdom to H.S.S. and putting Hrvats first. Croats insist on the title Jugo-Slavia; Serbs are inclined to drop it and revert to the name Serbia. The Germans during the war are said to have promised the Croats to form the German counterpart of the Allies' idea of Jugo-Slavia, and had Germany and Austria won, a new constituent of Central Europe was to have been inaugurated with its capital of Zagreb. The name Jugo-Slavia was familiar to the Croats and popular with them before the Serbs adopted it. The Croats think that because they are more educated than the Serbs they should be the dominant party in the government of the new State. The quarrel is aggravated by religious difference, Croats being Roman Catholics and Serbs Orthodox. A number of the separatist leaders, the chief of whom is Radic, an ex-bookseller, languish in gaol. These are evidently self-centred people. If they think that Europe would tolerate another independent Slav State with passports, frontiers, tariffs, armies, and the rest, surely they are mad. And if on the other hand, they would like to revert to ruined Austria and have the value of all their money reduced ten times, surely they are not very sane. Or if they think that they who suffered little should reap the major benefits of the war-victory, they are certainly pitiable egoists.
What is lacking in the new State is goodwill and the spirit of co-operation. Serbia is terribly hampered by lack of loyalty in her constituent elements. There is an impression of great uncertainty and instability. The general bad health of Europe shows sharply at Belgrade. The cost of living is irrationally high. There is something of the atmosphere of Russia in 1916. Beggars swarm about the restaurants and cafés. Cabmen, hawkers, and the poor hold one up for absurd prices. The shops have odd sets of goods which seldom correspond to one's desires. The value of the dinar fluctuates violently, and offers golden opportunities to the many speculators. The commonest trade-establishments are small banks and bucket-shops; they range in fours and fives before the eyes. The Government is very poor, and never feels out of financial difficulties. "We are always faced with bankruptcy in three months," said Dr. Yannic in conversation. The Government has been very hospitable to the Russians, of whom it has almost 60,000 on its hands. It feeds them and tries to place them where they can do work. It treated with Wrangel for the establishment of 20,000 Cossacks to be planted along the marches of Albania, and would have loved to have them, but has not as yet been able to take them for lack of money. Serbia has done more for Russia than any other nation.
"We've received not a mark of the indemnity," says M. Ribor, the chairman of the Constituent Assembly. "And we do not receive financial aid. On the other hand, is not France financing Hungary—the eternal potential enemy of Jugo-Slavia?"
There is no certainty about the attitude of France and England. England is felt to have cooled a little towards Serbia. France is a source of bewilderment. The decoration of Belgrade with the Cross of the Legion of Honour was accepted in very good part, and the French Marshal who brought it was lauded to the skies. But the after-thought was, when he went away—What did he come for? Was it not perhaps to flatter Serbia into undertaking a part in some new war, perhaps against the German, perhaps against the Soviets?
Suspicion is a marked characteristic of political life in Belgrade, suspicion and fear. They are afraid of the Croat for his separatism, of the Magyar for his malevolence, of the French for their intrigues, of the Russians for their numbers and their superior gifts, of the Austrians for their commercial enterprise. Secret agents abound, and are evidently excellent. An enormous amount of information is collected—information too disquieting and too voluminous to be coped with.
The Serbs, however, have evidently tried hard to accommodate all talents and all opinions in the new State. In the new Constitution complete freedom of religion is being guaranteed to all sects; the monarchy will be strictly constitutional; and all political ideas except separatism and Bolshevism will be tolerated. Regarding Bolshevism the Serbs have taken a strong line. It is a criminal offence, and propagandists are liable to swift arrest. No discrimination of any kind will be made against subjects of the kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes on the ground of race.