Volume 2 — VIII (continued 3)

Dr. Athanasius and his friends are agitated, as one would imagine, when they discuss with you the numbers of their countrymen. In Le Temps of April 22, 1919, they declared that they could produce 500,000, for they realized that their previous claim of between 250,000 and 350,000 was not large enough to give the Roumanians in Serbia the benefit of the principle of nationality. But even this more modest figure will be found, on examination, to be exaggerated. In the four north-eastern counties of Serbia there were 159,510 Roumanians in 1895; 120,628 in 1900, and in 1910 a little over 90,000. This diminution, say the chauvinists, is due to a falsifying of statistics, for those, they say, who have attended a Serbian school are inscribed as Serbs. The truth is that everyone is entered according to his mother-tongue. And history knows countless instances of a gradual decrease in the case of people placed in foreign surroundings and exposed to foreign influences. Like the Illyrians who people Dalmatia, the Thracians of ancient Dacia and the Serbs who emigrated to Russia in the seventeenth century, the Roumanians of Serbia are undergoing this process and are inevitably becoming Serbicized. Frequently we noticed that men possessing no Serbian blood did not care to admit their Roumanian origin, which, however, is no secret to their neighbours in spite of the Serbian termination "ić" that, in the course of years, has been affixed to their names. An allusion to their origin is clearly regarded as lacking in delicacy. "Well, my ancestors were Roumanian," is often as much as they will admit. And when some enterprising agitators came over from Roumania to the department of Požarevac in 1919, the Roumanians of those parts gave up to the authorities all those who did not manage to escape. For ten years Lieut.-Colonel Gjorge Marković commanded the 9th Regiment, which is chiefly formed of Roumanians from that region. They used to tell him that they wanted to have nothing to do with the Roumanian boyars. "Here we are boyars ourselves," they said. All of them speak Serbian, many of them write it; and on winter evenings they have for years received instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic and singing, which compares favourably with Roumania's army, in which, as I was told at Bucharest, the plan of starting any education had to be postponed in consequence of the outbreak of the Great War. Together with the unwillingness of these people to acknowledge their origin, one observes a general vagueness as to the home of their forefathers. Apparently these came over from southern Hungary, whence the name Ungureani,[114] or from Tara Rumaneasca, i.e. the Roumanian land, whence the name Tarani. Others again are descended from Roumanized Serbs who came from Kossovo and other Serb regions of the south, lived in the Banat and Transylvania among the Roumanian villages, acquired the Roumanian language and then crossed over to Serbia. These three classes have all come to Serbia in recent times. Any attempt on the part of Dr. Athanasius and his friends to drag in the Romans can be answered by the undoubted fact that the ancient Roman colonists had completely disappeared from Serbia as far back as the fifteenth century, leaving no trace at all, and there is no connection between them and the present Roumanian population of Serbia. No memories remain of the old Roman colonists, save certain place-names which, as Professor Georgević remarks, strike one as surprising in the midst of a purely Serbian population. It is interesting to note that these ancient Roman place-names are very rare in the regions inhabited to-day by men of Roumanian origin.

It would not have been worth whole devoting so much space to the activities of Dr. Athanasius and his adherents but for the fact that European public opinion, which has concerned itself extremely little with the Roumanians of Serbia, might possibly imagine that their advocate deserves to be taken seriously.

2. THE BANAT

Anyone who looks at an ethnological map of the Banat will recognize how difficult it is to partition that province among two or three claimants. No matter by whom the map is painted, it must have the appearance of mosaic, with few solid masses of colour. This fact was quickly used by the Roumanians, who argued that as the Banat had never been divided, neither politically nor economically, it should still remain one whole—of course under the Roumanian flag. The Magyars haughtily pointed out that as the Banat had never been divided, but had for a thousand years lived under the crown of St. Stephen, it should still remain one whole—of course under the Hungarian flag. The Roumanians contended that the indivisibility of the Banat was designed by Nature, since the mountainous eastern part could not exist if separated from the fertile west. The Magyars asserted that it was altogether wrong to think of the radical remodelling and complete dismemberment of a territory which Nature had predestined to be one. The Yugoslavs agreed with both parties that it was not easy to draw a satisfactory frontier, but they asked that, as far as possible, the predominantly Roumanian parts should be joined to Roumania, the Slav populations to them and the Magyars to Hungary. As a matter of fact the Paris Conference did attempt to make an ethnical division, between these three States, of the Banat. Roumania tried to demonstrate the impossibility of this by turning off the water in the Bega Canal when the Serbs evacuated Temešvar and were taking their heavily-laden barges from that town. There will have to be a central, international organization to control the network of waterways. As soon as the Paris Conference had decided on this division it was told by the Magyars, the Roumanians and the Yugoslavs that all the numerous Germans of the Banat wished to belong to Hungary, to Roumania and to Yugoslavia. A great many of the Germans were indifferent, so long as they could peaceably carry on their prosperous agricultural operations. Not much political solidarity is apparent among the Germans of the Banat, and seeing that both Yugoslavia and Roumania, now the principal possessors of this land, have elsewhere within their boundaries large German populations, their respective Banat Germans will be able to ally themselves with these in the Parliaments of Belgrade and Bucharest. The Banat Germans who are discontented with the Paris decisions are firstly those, among the aristocratic and commercial classes, who were accustomed to enjoy under the Magyars a favoured position, and secondly those who, with more or less justification, say that Roumania has yet to show that she will treat her subject minorities in a truly liberal fashion. It is for this reason that the Germans of Veršac and Bela Crkva—in which towns they are about as numerous as the total of Yugoslavs, Roumanians and Magyars—would give a majority in favour of Yugoslavia if they were asked to vote as to Yugoslav or Roumanian citizenship. Adeverul, which is one of the least chauvinist of Bucharest newspapers, claimed for Roumania at least the railway line: Temešvar, Veršac, Bela Crkva, Bazias—an argument thought to be conclusive being that the two central towns are neither Roumanian nor Serbian but German. This railway line was, as a matter of fact, bestowed by the Peace Conference on Roumania, and it required some strenuous work before this decision was modified. The French were suspected in Yugoslavia of leaning unduly towards the Roumanians, through sympathy with the Latin strain in their blood; yet it was the French who were for giving to Yugoslavia not only Bazias but the villages on the Danube down to Old Moldava, seeing that in those districts the Slavs are certainly in a majority. The Roumanian case was not assisted by Professor Candrea's ethnographical map, for in the debated country around Bela Crkva that gentleman, who told me that he had omitted every place whose population was less than a hundred, has unfortunately forgotten to include Zlatica, a village of 1346 inhabitants, which was founded at the gate of a monastery six hundred and sixty years ago. The population is according to the Hungarian census of 1910, at which time all the 1346 were Serbs, with the exception of 220 Czechs and a few gipsies. Professor Candrea has forgotten Sokolavac, a nourishing place about two hundred and fifty years old with 1800 inhabitants and practically all of them Serbs, as the Transylvanian Minister of Education admitted. Palanka with 1400 inhabitants, most Serbs; Fabian with about 1000, mostly Czechs; Duplaja with 1204, all Serbs but for 10 Slovenes; Crvena Crkva with 1108 (1048 Serbs, 34 Slovaks, 17 Germans and 9 Magyars), are every one omitted. Lescovac, with 977 inhabitants, the Professor marks as Roumanian. When I was at this picturesquely situated place I was received in the mayor's office by half a dozen burly peasants in the Serbian national costume who asserted that, with the exception of the tailor (a Roumanian emigrant) and one or two other persons, the village was wholly Serb. But Lescovac was then within the Serbian sphere of occupation, and possibly if I were to go there now I would be told an appropriate story by other, or the same, peasants in Roumanian attire. One must try to find some surer indication of nationality, and Professor Candrea told me that twenty-five years ago he took down a pure Roumanian text at that place, where the Roumanian language is the most antique in the Banat. On the other hand, the village must have contained many Serbs, for when the late notary, a powerful Magyar with Roumanian sympathies, prevented the school being conducted, as it always had been, in the Serbian language, and installed a teacher—he stayed for eight years—who could only speak Magyar and Roumanian, the villagers at their own expense procured a Serbian school-mistress. She was expelled by the notary.... This illustrates the difficulties which the Peace Conference, in its desire to trace an ethnical frontier, was confronted with. And there was no map which did not make it obvious that Serbian villages would have to remain to the east and Roumanian villages to the west of any possible line. They did right, I think, to revise their decision as to the towns of Veršac and Bela Crkva, for there the Yugoslavs and their German friends have a large and unquestioned preponderance. Bazias, with about three miles of the railway, was given to Roumania so that she should have, for the exportation of her wood and iron-ore, the only harbour in that region of the Danube which is capable of development. However, with no railway over Roumanian soil from Bazias to the mines, this port is perfectly useless, and it is to be hoped that Roumania will give it up, for compensation elsewhere, to the Yugoslavs. The latter would otherwise be compelled to build three or four miles of railway, from Bela Crkva to Palanka, which, unless a great deal of money be spent on it, will always be one of the worst ports on the river. With a little more difficulty than to Bazias the Roumanians could construct a railway to Moldava, which also is a very good port; and in return for this accommodation, whereby the wines of Bela Crkva could be shipped from Bazias, their natural port, the Yugoslavs would be ready to make over to Roumania one or two villages whose population far exceeds that of little Bazias. We may also hope that facilities will be given by the two Governments for the emigration of those who wish to cross the new frontier line. Formerly the people of the Banat had no strenuous objections to being moved, lock, stock and barrel, from one district to another and without the inducement of coming under the rule of their own race. Thus the village of Zsam, to the north of Veršac, was, like many others, very sparsely inhabited when the Turks withdrew in 1716; some villages had only three or four occupied houses. So the Government in 1722 collected into one village the people of several others, and in this way Zsam, which had hitherto been Slav, became Roumanian, the Serbs being established in the neighbouring Središte. In 1809 the Roumanians were transplanted from Zsam to Petrovasela, between Veršac and Pančevo, where they entered the Pančevo Frontier Regiment; their place at Zsam was taken by Germans, who, being more industrious, were preferred by the landowners.

Some of the delineators of this frontier—French and British—have told me that they were guided throughout by the ethnical principle. But various unfortunate exceptions seem to have been made: for instance, at Koča it runs through a certain house in such a way that the lavatory alone is in Roumania; and in another village there lives a man who, since his stables are situated in Roumania, would have had his horses requisitioned if he had not been able to bring them into the other part of the house. Another village has its cemetery in Roumania, so that the Yugoslavs carry their dead friends over during the night. Perhaps the Entente officials, perceiving that their ambitious resolution to divide the country on ethnic principles was not feasible—there would always be alien islands to the right and to the left of any line—perhaps they in despair drew an arbitrary line upon a map and hoped the poor inhabitants would make the best of it. But this was rendered more difficult by the Yugoslav and Roumanian authorities, for the people who desire to cross the line are put to endless trouble. Apart from the expense, it usually involves a delay of three weeks before permission can be obtained, so that the frontier is rarely traversed save by smugglers and by those who, like the afore-mentioned man of Koča, have been driven into chronic lawlessness.

The first line agreed upon after the War, which temporarily bestowed the eastern county on Roumania, the western on Yugoslavia and the chief parts of the central (or Temešvar) county also on Yugoslavia—with French co-operation—did not find favour in Paris; whether or not this decision was influenced by the frequent journeys of the Queen of Roumania and her fascinating daughters to that town I do not know. At all events another boundary was made which included the large town of Temešvar and all the northern part of that county in Roumania. It is true that there are Roumanian villages in the neighbourhood of this German-Magyar-Jewish town, which is by far the largest place in the Banat. And the Roumanians, who have already annexed enormous Magyar and German populations in Transylvania, do not boggle at another 80,000 foreigners. One could, however, find very few Yugoslavs who want Temešvar to be restored to them; they know that they and the Roumanians, whatever (as regards themselves) may have been the case in other days, form, each of them, only about one-thirtieth of the total population. But they are sorry that the Allies asked them to share in occupying the town, because the local Serbs, who are interested in politics, were so enthusiastic, that on the arrival of the Roumanians they were forced to leave their businesses and go to live in Yugoslavia. Since neither Serbs nor Roumanians have any ethnical claim to the town one would suppose that, as the spoil had fallen to Roumania, the Entente would have endeavoured to give the Yugoslavs some compensation: what they did was to take away from them a good deal of that which they had—a considerable slice of their western county—which also was presented to the Roumanians. Again, the delineators excused themselves by invoking their ethnical motives, but as a matter of fact in that part of Torontal the people are predominantly German and they should have been allotted to Yugoslavia, not merely because the Temešvar Germans were given to Roumania but on account of their economic existence, which certainly in the case of the departments of Nagyszentmiklós, Perjámos and Csene (to retain the Magyar spelling) is bound up with Zsombolya, their market-town, and Kikinda. According to the census that was taken in 1919, the population of these three departments now allotted to Roumania consisted of 41,109 Germans, 13,638 Yugoslavs and 19,270 Roumanians. Further, to the south-east of Torontal, in the departments of Párdány, Módos and Bánlak, there is not so intimate a connection with the market-town; here the population consists of 12,209 Germans, 11,102 Yugoslavs and 8808 Roumanians. But there seems to be little reason why the whole of Torontal, following the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants, should not be given to Yugoslavia; and this would also reduce to a minimum the inconveniences produced by any frontier. For many long years there has been a county frontier between Torontal and Temešvar, each of which was under an official who looked direct to Buda-Pest. The adoption of this ancient county frontier as that of the two countries would put an end to the present absurd and unjust, not to say dangerous, situation. It should, therefore, be brought about as soon as possible.

A similar rectification is needed in the country to the north and north-west. The three German villages of Komloš, Mariafeld and St. Mikloš have their fields near Velika Kikinda, in Yugoslavia, whereas they are themselves in Roumania. To bring home his maize from the land a farmer was obliged to pay, at the most favourable rate, up to 200 crowns a pound. Considering that this part of the country is an absolute plain with no river flowing through it, one would suppose that a rectification could easily be made. If these Germans had been consulted they would naturally have opted for Yugoslavia. The Peace Conference officials might, also have studied Velika Kikinda, a place with a very creditable past, which—as I was told by a Serb professional man of that town—will be completely ruined if she loses the custom of these German villages and has to depend upon the Serb peasants who make one embroidered suit and one pair of sandals last them for ten years.... It will be necessary for the Yugoslav authorities in the Banat not only to endeavour to raise their countrymen's standard of living but also in the southerly districts, where the standard is higher, to persuade them not to persist in limiting their families. The Serbs in the old kingdom have been one of the most prolific of European races—they would otherwise have been incapable of carrying on their twenty-six years of war during this last century—but in the south and south-east of the Banat, perhaps through mere love of comfort, perhaps through Magyar oppression, there has been a marked tendency not to increase. The Magyars and Germans have had normal families, the Roumanians have increased by assimilation (a woman marrying into a Serbian family will often cause them all to speak her easier language). The Serbs, however, will in their part of the Banat absorb the others if they show political understanding and a liberal spirit. "We will give the Germans," said Pribičević to one of them at Veršac—"we will give them everything up to a university."

The north-west corner of the Banat, which has a considerable Magyar population, has been ascribed to Hungary. Opposite the apex of this triangular tract of country lies Szeged, the second city of Hungary (118,328 inhabitants, of whom 113,380 are Magyars) and the chief centre of the grain trade of the rich southern plains. As was pointed out in The New Europe,[115] Szeged, which lies in flat country, would be even more defenceless than Belgrade if the lands on the other side of the river were under alien rule. If one draws a strategical frontier the nationality of the people is, of course, disregarded; it is, therefore, beside the point to mention that there seem to be far more Serbs in the angle opposite Szeged than there were Magyars in the lands opposite Belgrade. The Entente has simply made up its mind to be generous to Szeged, and let us hope that we have not left this region to Hungary on account of the activities of the extremely intelligent Baroness Gerliczy—a Roumanian lady married to a Magyar—who owns a large estate there and was much in Paris during the critical period.

The other imperfections in the Paris arrangements, whether with regard to villages or fields, are not incapable of amendment. One presumes that the Roumanians, who have no lack of other international problems, will be wise enough to discard certain dicta of their Liberal party and of Bratiano, its self-satisfied leader, to whom all subjects seem great if they have passed through his mind. One particular dictum which the Roumanians ought to cast aside is that which insists upon the indivisibility of the Banat. Another Roumanian statesman, Take Jonescu, was more sagacious when he, during the War, drew up a memorandum whose object was that Greece, Serbia, Roumania and the Czecho-Slovak Governments should work in harmony. This idea of presenting a single diplomatic front was to the liking of Mr. Balfour, who observed to M. Jonescu that it would be better for these States and better for Europe. As regards an understanding between Roumania and Serbia in the Banat: "I," said Pašić—"I speak for Serbia. Can you speak for Roumania?"

And Jonescu unfortunately had to shake his head.

In the fatuous policy of crying for the whole Banat—they even require the little island in the Danube between Semlin and Belgrade—Bratiano is assisted by the aged Marghiloman, who is the chief of a branch of the Conservative party. But the relations between these two do not seem destined to be cordial, since Bratiano is married to Marghiloman's divorced wife.

May the Roumanian people become reconciled to Yugoslavia's righteous possession of part of the Banat. It would be a pity if these two neighbours were to live together on such terms as, in the eastern county of the Banat, Caras-Severin, do the Bufani and the other Roumanians. The Bufani came from Roumania some hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, on account of the taxes which they found intolerable; and they have not been able to arrive at amicable relations with those countrymen of theirs who are the descendants of earlier emigrants. Very seldom do the Bufani and the others intermarry. These Bufani, so say the others, are like ivy. "They called out," complain the others, "they called out: 'Little brother, be good to us!' and then they strangled us." The Bufani, who are easily recognizable by their dialect, frequent the same church and have one priest with the others, but they have a separate cemetery.

(e) The Hungarian Frontier

North of the town of Subotica the frontier between Yugoslavia and Hungary is almost a natural one, as it runs over vast hills of shifting sand which are still partly in motion. Neither on foot nor on horseback, still less with loaded carts, is it possible to travel through these hills. But to the east and to the west of them the frontier is no better than that which separates Yugoslavia from Roumania, and when it came to the delimitation the Magyars thought it would be preferable if this work were done with their assistance. Otherwise, so they urged, there would be no check upon the wicked intolerance of their neighbours. It is true that they themselves had in the past been in favour of centralization, but against this one must remember that the "subject nationalities" were inferior beings. The Yugoslavs, the Roumanians and the Slovaks could not claim a glorious descent from Attila, of whom a fresco decorates the House of Parliament at Buda-Pest, and thus the Magyars had always thought it seemly that, by various devices, a limit should be put to the number of Yugoslav, Roumanian and Slovak deputies. Count Apponyi and his colleagues told the Peace Conference very frankly at the beginning of 1920 that it really ought to take their word for it, and not persist in looking on the Yugoslavs, etc., as if they were as good as any Magyar. Surely it was obvious that Yugoslavia, Greater Roumania and Czecho-Slovakia would be "artificial and improvised creations, devoid of the traditions of political solidarity and incapable of producing any." But if the Supreme Council was resolved to allow certain Magyar territories to join themselves, if they desired, to these ephemeral States it would be necessary to ascertain by means of a plebiscite what were the real wishes of the people in these territories; and Count Apponyi was kind enough to tell the Council very definitely how this plebiscite should be conducted. The principal Allies were to arrange, in accordance with the Magyar Government, as to the districts in which a plebiscite was to be held, and the secret voting was to be controlled by neutral commissions and delegates of the interested Governments. This may sound rather rash on the part of the Magyars, since a plebiscite, no matter how it was arranged and controlled, would presumably detach a good many jewels from the crown of St. Stephen, and it was not astonishing that Count Apponyi and his friends proposed that the Magyars should be safeguarded by further Commissions which, if requisite, would override the results of the voting. These results would indeed, as between the Magyars and the Yugoslavs, have given our Allies a larger dominion than they have actually obtained. The triangle south of Szeged, to which we have alluded, would certainly, if there had been a plebiscite, have gone to Yugoslavia. In Baranja the Yugoslavs have claimed that the census of 1910, which indicated 36,000 Serbo-Croats, should have given them 70,000; but this does not take account of the large number of Šokci—Slavs whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Catholicism and who came to consider themselves as one with the Catholic Magyars. This widespread phenomenon of race being superseded by religion may be noticed, for example, at Janjevo in the district of Old Serbia; it is inhabited by the descendants of Dubrovnik colonists who, being Catholic, have come to look upon themselves as Albanians. In Hungary the dominant Magyar minority was wont to clasp the subject races to its bosom, not with bonds of love but of religion. Thus in 1914 at Marmoros-Sziget they charged 100 persons with high treason, because it was their wish to leave the Uniate Church, in communion with Rome, and return to the Orthodox faith. The same charge would have been preferred against certain Ruthenians who were just as unwilling to be members of the Uniate Church; but in the case of these humble, backward people the conversion had been effected by their priests, who would thereby procure for themselves a better situation, and the Ruthenians, who had not been told of this occurrence, were under the impression that they were still Orthodox. Professor Cvijić believes that, with the help of the Catholic religion, no less than 113,000 Serbo-Croats have in Baranja been lost by their Yugoslav brethren.... When the Yugoslavs were asked by the Supreme Council to evacuate most of Baranja they did so. A republic, under the presidency of one Dobrović, a well-known cubist painter, a native of those parts, was formed by Yugoslavs and the Magyars whose freedom had been safeguarded under their rule. But as this republic was not assisted by the Yugoslav Government it only lasted for a week.

Farther to the west is the Prekomurdje, that interesting Slovene district which extends for about 25 miles along the Mur. The rich plain that adjoins the river is mostly in the possession of large landowners, while the hilly country to the north sustains a scattered and poor population of Calvinists. There are in the whole Prekomurdje some 120,000 Yugoslavs, who are descendants of the old Pannonian Slovenes. This healthy, honest people has indeed eighteen Catholic and eight Protestant priests, but is otherwise almost destitute of an intelligentsia. They speak nothing but Slovene, and yet the Magyars had for ten years previous to the War been so imperialist that only Magyar schools were tolerated. Thus it happened that the children, like so many others in the Magyar schools, were at a loss to understand what they were writing, and if their teacher chanced to learn the Slovene language he was there and then transferred to Transylvania or the Slovak country or some other province where he had to teach his pupils in the Magyar which they did not know. He was supposed to make the children feel the vast superiority of all things Magyar, so that they should be ashamed to walk with their own fathers in the streets and speak another tongue. We are told occasionally in the Morning Post that consideration should be shown to the Magyars since they are a proud people, but would they not merit more consideration if they were a grateful people, grateful that the rest of Europe, overlooking their Mongolian origin, has accepted them as equals? The Magyars were so thoroughly persuaded of their own pre-eminence that when the devotees of Haydn founded in his honour a society at Eisenstadt, where he had worked, it was allowed on the condition that the statutes and the name of the society and so forth should be in the Magyar language, although Haydn was a German. Evidently the poor Slovenes of the Prekomurdje would be swamped unless they showed exceptional vigour. And when they managed to survive until after the War the Americans in Paris were for handing them to Hungary on the ground that the frontier would, if it included them in Yugoslavia, be an awkward one. Such is also the opinion of Mr. A. H. E. Taylor in his The Future of the Southern Slavs; this author advocates that Yugoslavia should be bounded by the Mur, albeit in another part of the same book he says that "a small river is not usually a good frontier, except on the map"; and the Mur is so narrow that when Dr. Gaston Reverdy, of the French army, and I arrived at Ljutomir we found that a crowd of these men and boys had waded across the stream in order to lay their cause before the doctor, who represented the Entente in that region. The Bolševik Magyars were just then threatening to set all Prekomurdje on fire, and the pleasant-looking, rather shy men who stood in rows before us begged the doctor to procure them weapons—they would be able to defend themselves. It is satisfactory to know that most of this portion of the Yugoslav lands has, after all, not been lost to the mother country.

(f) The Austrian Frontier

A considerable part of the frontier between Yugoslavia and Austria has been determined by a plebiscite which was held, under French, British and Italian control, in the autumn of 1920. The Slovenes during the previous year had pointed out that while they could no longer claim so wide a territory now that Austria had been drawn towards the Adriatic, yet the rural population of Carinthia had remained Slovene, thanks to the notable qualities of that people. The German-Austrians, on the other hand, maintained that country districts are the appanages of a town, so that the wishes of a rural population are of secondary importance. While these questions were being debated in 1919 by the two interested parties—and debated, very often, by their rifles—the Italians intervened. Sonnino's paper, the Epoca, made a great outcry over Klagenfurt (Celovec) which, if given to the Yugoslavs, would be an insurmountable barrier, it said, to the trade between Triest and Vienna, although it was clear that the railway connection through Tarvis remained in the hands of the Italians. (There is not a single Italian civilian in Tarvis—but no matter.) Meanwhile the French Press noted that the Italians—presumably not as traders but as benefactors—were seeing to it that the Austrians did not run short of arms and munitions. For many months a large area was in a condition of uncertainty and turmoil, till at last the Peace Conference ordered a plebiscite.

Two zones in Carinthia—"A" to the south-east, with its centre at Velikovec (Völkermarkt), and "B" to the north-west, with its centre at Klagenfurt (Celovec)—were mapped out, and it was agreed that if the voting in "A," the larger zone, were favourable to Austria, then the other zone would automatically fall to that country. For several months before the voting day this area—a region of beautiful and prosperous valleys watered by the broad Drave and surrounded by magnificent mountain ranges—for several months this area was the scene of great activity. German-Austrians and Yugoslavs no longer, as in 1919, attacked each other with the implements of war, but with pamphlet, broadsheet, with eloquence and bribery. Austrian and Yugoslav officials took up their headquarters at various places and saw to it that every voter should be posted as to the moral and material advantage he would reap by helping to make the land Austrian or Yugoslav, as the case might be. All those were entitled to vote who, being twenty years of age in January 1919, had their habitual residence in this area; or, if not born in the district, had belonged to it or had their habitual residence there from, at least, January 1, 1912. The larger zone "A" was left under Yugoslav administration, while zone "B" was under the Austrian authorities; and the Inter-Allied officials exercised a very close supervision in order, for example, to protect the partisans of either side from undue repression at the hands of their opponents. Neither the Austrians nor the Yugoslavs lost any opportunities for saying in public that the Inter-Allied Commissions were honestly making every effort to be impartial. It was, however, unfortunate that Italy should have sent as her chief representative Prince Livio Borghese, who may have been as impartial as his colleagues, but whose reputation, whether merited or otherwise, could scarcely commend itself to the Yugoslavs. They believed that his activities in Buda-Pest, under the Bolševik régime, and afterwards in Vienna, had been very hostile to themselves. Each of the three allied commissioners had a staff of some fifty or sixty officials, whose upkeep and expenses were paid by the two interested countries.

If an average person had been asked to foretell the result of the plebiscite I suppose he would have said that in zone "A" the Yugoslavs and in zone "B" the Austrians would be successful. We have seen how the Slovene renaissance of the nineteenth century was met by the central authorities in Vienna (particularly after the German victory of 1871), and how the local functionaries assisted them. They argued that Austria with her miscellaneous races could only survive if one of them was supreme. Therefore they looked askance on every one who regarded himself as a Slovene; if he rose to be an official it had to be in another part of the Monarchy, while for the maintenance of Austria (oblivious to the argument that Austria was a perfectly unnatural affair) they favoured all those who announced themselves to be on the side of the predominant race. From 1903 onwards the Slovene language was barred from the courts of Carinthia, and if a person did not understand the language of the German magistrates he had to use an interpreter. The land was invaded by the German intelligentsia: professors, masters in primary and secondary schools, doctors, lawyers and so forth, excise officials and railway officials—in 1912 Carinthia possessed about 5000 of these and only 1½ per cent. were Slovenes. Those among the Slovenes who were capable of serving in such positions were dispatched to Carniola, Dalmatia or preferably to the German-speaking lands of the Empire. A provincial agricultural authority was set up in 1910 which was recognized by the State and which enjoyed a monopoly. Its object was to aid the progress of agriculture by establishing and supporting agricultural schools, sending experts to the farmer, distributing subsidies for the purchase of machinery, artificial manure and so on. The council consisted of twenty-one members, of whom only one was a Slovene; the subsidies were given to those who were recognized as Germanophils, while requests were not permitted in the Slovene tongue. As for the electoral districts, they were so manipulated that one deputy represented 120,000 Slovenes and another represented 27,000 Germans. Constituencies in which there was a German majority were allowed to send two members, while the others only sent one. The German railway employees worked so thoroughly for pan-Germanism that various Slovenes were arrested—among them the mayor of a large village who wanted to travel from Celovec—for asking in the Slovene language for a ticket. With regard to schools, there were throughout Carinthia in 1860 some 28 Slovene and 56 Slovene-German foundations, whereas in 1914 there were 2 Slovene, 30 German and 84 mixed schools, where the two languages were supposed to co-exist; they were indeed the home of two languages, for the children were nearly all Slovene, whereas the teacher and the language he used were German. Among 230 masters only 20 could read and write Slovene. Qualified teachers who could satisfy this test were, as we have mentioned, sent to other parts of the Empire. So far did the system go that Slovene peasants upon whom the Government had forced a German education speedily forgot the two hundred words which they had learned, but as they had been taught no other script than the German they were accustomed to write the Slovene language with German Gothic characters. These peasants were fairly impervious to Germanization; their strong sense of national consciousness was supported by the books, religious and otherwise, which they received every year from some such society as that of St. Hermagoras at Celovec, which distributed half a million books a year among its 90,000 members.

But that which principally guided the peasant was the voice of his priest, and the vast majority of priests in zone "A" were Slovenes. This agricultural zone possesses no more than one or two small towns, where the priest is less regarded. The traders and artisans frequently look upon themselves as too highly cultured for the Church; they affect the "Los von Rom" and the Socialist movements. By holding these menaces over the Bishop's head a good deal of pressure could be brought to bear, and this was done by the Germans, who were of opinion that the Church unfairly encouraged the Slovenes. The Bishop of Celovec had both the zones in his diocese until some months before the plebiscite, when a temporary arrangement was made under which zone "A" was administered by a vicar. But in bygone years the Bishop, with these threats hanging over him, was wont to counsel prudence and to ask his clergy not to agitate their flock, whom they were merely telling of their rights. In zone "B," which mostly consists of the town of Celovec, the Church would naturally be more susceptible to German influence, apart from the fact that the Bishop himself is a Bavarian. For personal reasons—he is very imperfectly acquainted with the Slovene language—he wished even the clergy of zone "A" to correspond with him in German; but the priests pointed out that their faithful parishioners wanted to follow this correspondence and by far the greater number of them have no German.... In fact the Church has in each zone brought its help to the more powerful party—the Slovene peasants in zone "A" and the German or Germanophil townsfolk in zone "B"; and it appeared probable before the plebiscite that in both cases she would be on the victorious side.

In foretelling the result of the plebiscite one would not pay much attention to the census which the German-Austrian officials used to take. A person was inscribed according to the language he ordinarily employed, and this was, more often than not, considered to be German if his superior was a German. Before the census of 1910 the Grazer Tagblatt, which is the Germans' chief organ in those parts, proclaimed that the official census was a portion of the national propaganda. All the propagandist societies were entreated to do their utmost to induce the people to declare German as their usual language. Very humorous results were obtained. On December 18, 1910, the provincial council of public instruction gave out the number of German and Slovene children respectively in thirty Slovene parishes. Amongst them were the following:

German Children.Slovene Children.

Borovlje (Ferlach) 31 per cent. 69 per cent.

Grabštajn (Grafenstein) 10·6 " 89·4"

Žrelc (Ebenthal) 24·4 " 75·6"

Pokrče (Poggersdorf) 1·3 " 98·7"

Bistrica (Feistritz) 16·2 " 82·8"

And twelve days later the official census gave these results:

Germans.Slovenes.

Borovlje 90 per cent. 10 per cent.

Grabštajn 50·1 " 49·9"

Žrelc 49·2 " 50·8"

Pokrče 41·1 " 58·9"

Bistrica 44·4 " 55·6"

Far more trustworthy is the almanac issued every year by the Church, wherein a person's "usual language" is taken to be that in which he listens to the word of God. These ecclesiastical lists were published by German bishops, and according to them we find that the region we are considering held in 1910 some 40,000 Germans and 123,000 Slovenes.

We have seen that Celovec, like the smaller towns in this area, leans more to the Austrians than to the Yugoslavs. This is partly the effect of the Austrian Government's policy and partly of the various pan-German societies (e.g. the "Kärntner Bauernbund," the "Verein der Alldeutschen," the "Deutscher Volksverein," etc. etc.), which, as was admitted, drew their funds to a considerable extent from Germany herself.

The German Republic was very lavish in assisting her smaller Austrian sister during the period before the plebiscite, pouring both goods and cash into the district; and after the opening of the demarcation line between the two zones at the beginning of August they were able to introduce their supplies quite openly into zone "A." Very few Germans of the north believe that the German-Austrian Republic will permanently remain separated from themselves.... Both Yugoslavs and Austrians circulated vast quantities of printed matter; for the Yugoslavs the most convincing argument lay in Austria's apparently hopeless economic position and the undesirability of belonging to a State which had to pay so huge a debt; the Austrian pamphlets denounced the Serbs as a military race, though even such a dealer in false evidence as the eminent Austrian historian, Dr. Friedjung, would find it difficult to sustain the thesis that the wars engaged in by the Serbs during the last hundred years were more of an offensive than of a defensive character. In several prettily prepared handbooks the voters were implored by the Austrians not to be so old-fashioned as to plump for a monarchy when they had such a chance of becoming republicans; one could almost see the writer of these scornful phrases stop to wipe his over-heated brow after having pushed back his old Imperial and Royal headgear. You might imagine that the Austrians in their deplorable economic condition would have avoided this topic; on the contrary, they proclaimed that several commodities which were lacking in Yugoslavia could be furnished by them in abundance. One of these, they said, was salt; and certainly the Yugoslavs purchased a good deal of it, but that was only when they did not know that it was German salt, which the Austrians bought in that country and on which they made an adequate profit. When the Yugoslavs wanted to get their supplies direct from Germany the Austrians introduced a transit tax of 1000 crowns—not the nearly worthless Austrian but Yugoslav crowns—per waggon. Later on when the Danube was thrown open and this tax could not be levied, salt was considerably cheaper in Yugoslavia than in Austria. So with plums—in 1919 Austria bought nearly the whole of the exports from Yugoslavia at six crowns per kilo and sold them to Germany at eleven to twelve crowns, the profit going, so the authorities said, to the poor.

As the day of the plebiscite approached, the Yugoslavs seemed to be more confident than the Austrians. The staunch peasants of zone "A" were not greatly impressed by the numerous appeals to their heart and brain which were handed to them by the Austrians in the Slovene language. And they were not much alarmed at the idea of being joined to their countrymen of the south, those unmitigated Serbs who thrived, if one was to believe the Austrian propaganda, on atrocities. But this warning was ridiculed by the Austrians themselves—on a market day at Velikovec you could see the Austrophils wearing their colours, which they would scarcely have done if they had been afraid of possible reprisals—and zone "A" was generally presumed to have a Yugoslav majority. On such a market day one saw very few Yugoslav colours in the farmers' button-holes, for it was the wish of their leaders to avoid anything which might give rise to unnecessary conflict. The day drew near and the Austrians thought that they were making insufficient progress; for one thing, they were at a disadvantage owing to the very low value of their money. They hoped that Germany would come with more zeal than ever to the rescue, and they hoped that something fatal would occur to Yugoslavia. So they asked the Inter-Allied Commissions to put it to their Governments that it would be advisable if the plebiscite were to be postponed for several months, say until May 1921. But it was reported that the French and British representatives declined to countenance the scheme. They may also have feared that if the period of canvassing were to be so long drawn out, the same passions would come to the surface as in the plebiscite in east and west Prussia, where in many places the Poles could not display their sympathies except at great personal risk. But in that particular plebiscite it must be noted that the Allies were very imprudent in confiding the maintenance of order to the rebaptized German Security Police, a body which was entirely in the hands of the reactionary clique. Yet the military precautions of zone "A" in Carinthia were not what they should have been, for when the Yugoslavs had lost the plebiscite an unrestrained horde of Austrian sympathizers, some of them from that zone and some from outside it, some of them civilians and some of them soldiers in mufti who made for certain places where supplies of weapons had been hidden, swarmed across the land and terrorized the Yugoslavs in such a fashion that a Yugoslav military force had to come in to protect them. "But how barbaric are these Yugoslavs," sneered their enemies, "for they refuse to recognize the result of the plebiscite." More than one diplomat in Belgrade was ordered to present himself at the Foreign Office and demand an answer why, etc. But the Yugoslavs had no intention of imitating d'Annunzio.

Those who were not in the zone at the time of the voting might well be astounded at the result, which was an Austrian victory by 22,025 votes against 15,278 for Yugoslavia. In view of the undoubted Yugoslav majority, it was felt that something more than active propaganda, before and during the election, had been brought to bear. For example, in the commune of Grabštajn (Grafenstein) the Germans are said to have inscribed on the electoral list 180 persons from Celovec and Styria who had no right to vote; they also asked that seventy strangers should be inscribed. On submitting these claims to the judgment of the district council the German leaders, even as the Yugoslavs, were required to initial each request; it is alleged that these initialled papers, which were attached to the claims, were left overnight in a room the key of which was in the keeping of the German secretary, Schwarz. He is charged with having removed the initialled papers from the Slovene claims and affixed them to the German claims. There was a large amount of more usual corruption. Thus it is known that twenty-eight Slovene servants at an important landowner's were unable to resist the material arguments and voted for the Germans. And if it is true that a number of people voted twice and even three times the Inter-Allied Commission fell short of its duties. It is said that the voting was so lax that if a stranger had been inscribed and did not turn up to vote, his legitimation was used by a native. Thus we are told of one Helena Rozenzoph, aged seventy-five, who was inscribed at Grabštajn. This woman had never existed; there had been a certain Barbara Rozenzoph who died in 1919, and her vote was used by Marjeta Hanzio, aged twenty-two years. The case was so flagrant that the Commission discovered it and the woman confessed to having acted on a note which she had received from the special Austrian gendarmerie force, the Heimatsdienst. The Commission seems to have been reluctant to take any steps against these frauds and it is not astonishing that the commune of Grabštajn registered 1290 votes for the Austrian Republic and only 380 for Yugoslavia, although in this commune of 3440 inhabitants there are no more than sixteen German families. A German majority was thus obtained in a province which Dr. Renner, the Austrian Chancellor, had acknowledged to be Slovene. It seems incredible that the Commission should have so completely broken down and the mystery may yet be cleared up, if as the Yugoslavia delegate requested, all the voting papers have been preserved.... But the Hrvat, the organ of the Narodny Club in Croatia (the decentralizing but strongly national party) blames Monsignor Korošec, the leader of the Slovene clericals, for the disastrous plebiscite result. He would have been better employed, it says, in organizing his people than in gadding about Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Dalmatia for the purpose of extending his party. He had boasted that the Slovenes were so well organized that they were perfectly confident as to the issue. It would seem, however, says the Hrvat, that an unexpectedly large proportion of them are partly or entirely Germanized. And this, more than the above-mentioned irregularities, may be chiefly responsible for Yugoslavia's loss. One must also remember that many a Slovene would shrink from garrison duty in Macedonia, while it would be very natural for the Carinthian farmer to look up at the mountains that separated him from Carniola and then to recollect that Celovec (Klagenfurt), the economic centre of the whole area, would be Austrian. Nevertheless if zone "A" had been smaller—and more completely Slav—it is probable that the population would have risen superior to the various doubts which assailed them. What we have said about the Slovenes who have become Germanized is borne out by the Koroski Slovenec, a newspaper which appears in Vienna and which, though since its formation has been essentially hostile to the Austrians, tells us that after the plebiscite the Slovenes have only suffered real oppression from their denationalized compatriots. Difficulties arose with regard to the closing of Slovene schools, but this was largely due to the fact that many of the Slovene schoolmasters fled to Yugoslavia.

(g) The Italian Frontier

A Yugoslav barrister from Pola had gone to a neighbouring village—this was in 1920—for the purpose of encouraging the natives, who were all Southern Slavs. He asked them, in the event of their part of Istria being allotted to the Italians, not to lose heart but to wait for the day when justice would come by her own. In the middle of his exhortations a jovial old farmer approached him and slapped him on the back. "Cheer up, young man!" he exclaimed. "What is it that you are afraid of?" ... The Slav population of Istria and Gorica-Gradišca, even as that of Dalmatia, has endured a great many things and is prepared to endure a great many more. Kindness would have gone a long way towards disarming them. If the Italians on the eastern Adriatic had been exponents of the Mazzini spirit rather than—which too often has been the case—of the direst Nationalist, then the Yugoslavs would have accepted—mournfully, no doubt, but faute de mieux—the frontier from the river Arša in Istria which President Wilson suggested. This would have been a compromise frontier, by which 400,000 Slovenes and Croats would fall to Italy and a very much smaller number of Italians would fall to Yugoslavia. It would have satisfied the great sensible mass of the Italian people, but unfortunately was rejected by Baron Sonnino and his myrmidons. Far more was claimed by him, and the succeeding Italian Governments have had to struggle with the passions he so recklessly aroused. They have been unable to persuade the country that with the Arša frontier they would be getting by no means a bad bargain. By the Treaty of Rapallo the Italians have obtained much more: the whole of Gorica-Gradišca, portions of Carniola, the whole of Istria and contiguity with Rieka (which is made a free town), the islands of Lussin, Cres and Unie, sovereignty over a strip of five miles which includes Zadar (and a few adjacent islands), finally the southern island of Lastovo and Pelagosa which lies in the middle of the Adriatic.

In November 1920 all the outside world was congratulating the Italians and the Yugoslavs on having, after many fruitless efforts of their statesmen, come to this agreement. The opinion was expressed that both of the contracting parties would henceforth be satisfied, since each of them was conscious that the other had accepted something less than his desires. It was noted that the Yugoslavs exhibited more generosity, as they gave up some half a million of their countrymen, while the Italians yielded in Dalmatia that to which they had no right. The Yugoslavs had, in the past two years, shown so much more forbearance than was usually expected of a vigorous young nation that the commentators for the most part fancied they would not waste any time in grieving over these inevitable sacrifices. It is freely said that if a liberal spirit is displayed by the Italians at the various points where they and Yugoslavia are in contact, both people will settle down, with no afterthoughts, to friendly and neighbourly relations. But it would be foolish to close our eyes to the fact that the position at Rieka and Zadar, not to speak of any other places, bristles with difficulties. At Rieka one hopes that the largest and wisest party, the Autonomists, will now come into their rights; no doubt a good many of those opportunist citizens who, at the time of the Italian occupation, developed into Italianissimi, after having previously been known as more or less platonic lovers of Italy, Hungary, or Croatia with ambitions chiefly centred on their native town, will presently assure you that in the Free State they are convinced Free Staters; but the local politicians have been living for so long in such a thoroughly oppressive atmosphere that most of those who have been prominent should for a season now retire. It will be difficult enough for this harassed port to settle down to business. As for the Zadar enclave, it is not easy to understand why an Italian majority in this little town should bring it under the Italian flag while the overwhelming Slav majorities of central and eastern Istria have been ignored. And with all the goodwill in the world the existence of this minute colony encircled by Yugoslav lands will scarcely make more easy the conduct of relations between Yugoslavia and Italy. It is naturally to the interest of both countries that misunderstandings and suspicions should be swept away. And from this point of view it is very doubtful whether the Italians were well advised in taking Zadar into their possession. Presumably the Government was forced to do so by the state of public feeling. They withstood this feeling with regard to the magnificent harbour of Vis, which even President Wilson suggested they should have, and contented themselves with the smaller Yugoslav island of Lastovo (Lagosta). The pity is that the Nationalists should have forced into their hands anything which may turn and sting them.

It may be thought that we are excessively pessimistic in pointing rather to the dangers which the Treaty places on the tapis than to the good sense of those who will deal with them. We do not say that the Italians would have permitted their Government to solve the Adriatic question in a safer and more philosophic manner; but we cannot look forward with that confidence we should have had if more sagacious counsels had prevailed.

An arrangement most agreeable to the bulk of the interested population would have been effected if two Free States, instead of one, had been created: the small one of Rieka, and a larger one embracing Triest and the western part of Istria. There would be in each of these two States a mixed population, who would think with a shudder of the time when the grass was growing on their quays. Italians and Slavs, prosperous as of old, would very cordially agree that the experiment of being included in Italy had been at any rate a commercial disaster. [D'Annunzio's administration was, of course, a mere camouflage. Without the support of the Italian Government, which paid his troops though calling them rebels, the poet-adventurer could scarcely have lasted for a day; and the swarm of officers, many of them worse adventurers than himself, would have deserted him. Nor would the population of Rieka have listened to his glowing periods if the Italian Government had not, under cover of the Red Cross, sent an adequate supply of food into the town.] Both Rieka and Triest were, therefore, living under practically the same conditions, separated from their natural hinterland, and knowing very well that as Italian towns their prospects were lamentable. It was significant that the Italian Government should after a time have studied the scheme of constructing a canal from Triest to the Save. Before the War one-third of the urban population (and all the surrounding country) was Yugoslav; and now, when so many Yugoslavs have departed and so many Italians have arrived, even now it is certain that in a plebiscite not 10 per cent. would vote for Italy—and this minority would be largely made up of those leccapiatini (the "plate-lickers") who were the humbler servants of Austria during the War and are now begging for Italian plates. When the offices of the Socialist newspaper Il Lavoratore—the Socialists are by far the most important party in Triest—were taken by storm and gutted, the American Consul, Mr. Joseph Haven, and the Paris correspondent of the New York Herald, Mr. Eyre, happened to be in the building. They afterwards said that the attack by those ultra-nationalist bands, the fascisti—very young men, demobilized junior officers and so forth—was entirely unprovoked. The carabinieri gazed indifferently at the scene. Such is life in Triest, where the labour movement is gaining in strength every day. Its old prosperity has departed—there is hardly any trade or water or gas, since most of the coal was consumed, by order of the Italian authorities, in making electric light for illuminations. These were intended to show the city's irrepressible enthusiasm at being incorporated in the kingdom of Italy. But the inhabitants know very well that being one of Italy's many ports is worse than being the only port of Austria; they know that the most direct railways to Austria pass through Yugoslav territory, that henceforward the Danube will be much more largely used by Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Hungary (none of whom had a seaboard) and that Rieka will now be a more formidable rival than of old.... So, too, at Pola we find that a majority of the population do not wish their town to be retained in Italy; a number of Italian workmen fled from the idle shipbuilding yards and actually came in 1919 and 1920 with the Slovene refugees, their fellow-townsmen, to Ljubljana in search of employment. There are not sufficient orders to go round among such yards in Italy where, owing to the absence of coal and iron, this particular industry labours under great disadvantages. But if Rome considers that the retention of Pola is strategically essential, then in order to meet her wishes this town might be taken out of the Triest-Istrian Free State—maybe the Italians will be able to do something that will cause the citizens to cease regretting those good days of old when, as Austria's chief naval base, she flourished on the largesse of officers and men. But what can she do, and what could anybody do? Hundreds of houses are deserted; and for the year 1920 the owners of the theatre—which did not engage expensive actors but relied mainly on cinema—were faced with a deficit of 12,000 lire.

The Triest-Istrian Free State would approximately contain, without Pola, some 300,000 inhabitants, half Italian and half Yugoslav. The formation of this State would be less advantageous to the Yugoslavs, for most of the big landowners and the shop-keepers are Italians who live on the Yugoslav peasants; but Yugoslavia, for the sake of peace, would be glad to see the State come into existence. Eastern and central Istria, forming a part of Yugoslavia and lying between the two Free States, should extend to Porto di Bado, which would cause it to possess about 3,000 Italians and 280,000 Yugoslavs. If it were to be bounded by the Arša it would make the Italians in the Triest-Istrian State become a minority.

With respect to the indisputable Slav districts east of the Isonzo, i.e. the territory of Gorica-Gradišca and an appreciable part of Carniola, which have been adjudged to Italy and which long to be joined to the Yugoslav State, there are two possible solutions. (In passing we may observe that there is no country where the national frontier is more clearly indicated. The linguistic frontier is so strictly defined that the peasant on one side of it does not speak Italian and his neighbour on the other side does not understand the Slovene tongue. Nevertheless, Signor Colajanni, the venerable leader of the Italian Republicans, took up an undemocratic point of view and declined to admit the argument of the superiority of numbers, when he alluded to this frontier in a speech to the Republican Congress at Naples. Waving numbers aside, he preferred to appeal to history and culture, though he should have known that the mass of the Slovene people is much better educated than the Italian peasant.) The true ethnographical boundary would be the Isonzo—not many Yugoslavs live to the west and not many Italians to the east of that river. Only in the town of Gorica do we find Italians. In 1910 at the census the Italian municipal authorities attempted to show that their town was almost entirely Italian; at a subsequent census the Austrians found that the returns had been largely falsified, and that in reality Gorica contained 14,000 Italians and 12,000 Slovenes, while it is common knowledge that if you go 500 yards from the town you meet nothing but Slovenes. The prosperity of Gorica was mostly based on the export of fruit and vegetables from the Slovene countryside. In 1898 the Slovenes awakened, formed societies, started in business on a large scale and boycotted the Italian merchants, who found themselves obliged to learn the Slovene language. Suppose that, for the sake of meeting the wishes of the Italian Nationalists, one half of the town were given to Italy, then that portion would be faced with ruin. It would, therefore, be advisable that the whole town should remain with its hinterland, and that Italy and Yugoslavia should be divided from each other by the Isonzo. But if this solution is impossible, then a large district east of the Isonzo should be entirely and permanently neutralized, which would not endanger the security of either State. Very different in character is the line Triglav-Idria-Sneznik, which the Italians hold ostensibly as a means of defence, but which is an offensive line against Yugoslavia, and primarily against Ljubljana and Karlovac.

No doubt as the Italians in the eastern Adriatic have obtained a regular position by the Treaty of Rapallo they will henceforth do their best to win the love of their new subjects. They will disavow such officers as that one on the sandy isle of Unie who accused the Slav priest of propaganda, and in fact, as we have mentioned elsewhere, expelled him for the reason that inside his church, where they had been for many years, stood monuments of the two Slav apostles, SS. Cyril and Methodus. St. Methodus was the wise administrator of these two—but even if he takes the rulers of the eastern Adriatic under his particular protection one must be prepared for them to fail in smothering, by their enlightened rule, the discontent which in the last three years has grown among the Yugoslavs to such acute proportions. It began, as we have noted, under the ægis of Baron Sonnino; the old neighbour, Austria-Hungary, had been Italy's hereditary foe, and the Baron's school could not bring itself to regard the new neighbours in a friendly light, although their house was so much less populated than that of their predecessors, not to mention that of the Italians themselves.

There have been times during the last three years when a war between Italy and Yugoslavia seemed scarcely avoidable—the natives of the districts most concerned were looking forward to it with eagerness. At a Yugoslav assembly held in Triest in the summer of 1919 the other delegates were electrified by two priests from Istria who declared that their people were straining at the leash, anxious for the word to snatch up their weapons. (Many of these weapons, by the way, were of Italian origin, as there had been no great difficulty in purchasing them from the more pacific or the more Socialistic Italian soldiers; the usual price was ten lire for a rifle and a hundred rounds.) If there should come about a war between Italy and Yugoslavia, then it is to be supposed that the Yugoslavs will afterwards take as their western frontier the old frontier of Austria (except for the Friuli district, south of Cormons, which they do not covet, since they look upon this ancient race as Italian.)

By signing the Treaty of Rapallo the Yugoslav Government has shown that it is ready to go to very great lengths in order to establish, as securely as may be, an era of peace. It would be just as creditable on the part of the Italians if they will consent to Istria being partitioned in the way we have suggested, for they have been wrongly taught to think themselves entitled to this country, and to believe that the inhabitants, as a whole, are glad to be Italian subjects. "You may suppose we are unpatriotic," the Austrian railway officials of Italian nationality used to say, "but as Austria gives much better pay than we should receive from Italy, we prefer that this part of the world should be Austrian."

The relations between Italy and Yugoslavia have been treated at some length, for it would require but little to bring a gathering of storm-clouds to the sky. One even hears of Roman Catholics in Istria and elsewhere abjuring their Church and—for the national cause—adopting the Serbian Orthodox faith. Twenty years ago it happened that two Istrian villages, Ricmanje and Log, went over to the Uniate and thence to the Orthodox Church. This was on account of a quarrel with the Bishop of Triest, who wanted, against the wishes of the people, to remove their priest, Dr. Pojar. But now we have priests in the provinces given to Italy who are openly calling on their flock to go over with them to their Orthodox brothers; and this is a movement which, it is thought, will merely be postponed by the introduction of the Slav liturgy. To take a single sermon out of many, we may mention one which in the summer of 1920 was preached in a church of the Vipava valley. The clergyman, after lamenting that the chief dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church are Italians, gave it as his opinion that there was nothing to choose in point of goodness between that particular Church and the Orthodox Church. "And," said an old peasant who came to Triest with the story of what had happened, "never in my life did I hear so fine a sermon and one that did me so much good."

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