An Observer in the Near East

by William Le Queux

With religion persecuted, education at a standstill, and the Press either gagged or suborned, Austria is slowly carrying out her policy of crushing the Serbs. In Bosnia you have no right to pray, no right to think; you must blindly obey and laud with flattery the very talons outstretched to rend you. It is a land where justice is a farce, where lies are told as truths, where the police persecute and murder, where the poor are oppressed, where the official grows wealthy, and where no man is secure from the false denunciation of spies eager for reward.

Should it be permitted in this twentieth century to one European people to crush another European people under the false pretext of civilisation? The Bosnians are neither negroes nor red-skins, but a civilised religious race, part of the great Serb nation, with the same right to live, the same right to religion, liberty, and to justice as the canting hypocrites of Vienna themselves. Why should they be exterminated?

So careful is the local Government of Bosnia not to allow the truth to leak out that up to the present little has been heard in Europe of the plain, unvarnished facts I have here put forward. But it is a subject that will come before the public ere long, and then we shall see if the Powers will still stand by and allow the destruction of a people who do not merit the hatred of their master.

Sarayevo: Bosnia.

In Herzegovina.

Bosnia and Herzegovina are both rich countries; the soil is productive, the inhabitants are intelligent and apt in agriculture, industry, and commerce. The provinces are capable of moral and material expansion, if such were permitted, and there is no reason why the whole country should not be peaceable and prosperous.

Save André Barre, scarcely a writer has up to to-day had the courage to frankly criticise the rule of His Imperial and Royal Majesty the Emperor of Austria. So carefully are the facts concealed by the local authorities—who adopt the self-same tactics of Russia before the uprising—that strangers going to Bosnia see or hear practically nothing, and what they do see is all rose-tinted. What I have written here is, however, based upon my own observations, and upon what was told and proved to me by responsible persons in Mostar and Sarayevo, men who, living under the persecution of police and Government, risked their liberty in speaking with me. I have therefore put the facts plainly, in order that the English reading public may form their own conclusions.

The reforms urgently needed are many.