Chapter 20

One gets very weary of hearing the phrase "Divide et impera," which always occurs at least several times in the course of an exposition of Austrian policy. But we are bound to say that this principle governed her behaviour when she stage-managed in 1908 the Zagreb high-treason trial,[68] which was to drive a wedge between Serbs and Croats, in 1909 the Friedjung case, as also the Cetinje bomb affair which was to, and did in fact, alienate Nikita from his son-in-law, the Serbian King.

AUSTRIA GIVES HOSTAGES TO HISTORY

The Zagreb trial was conducted by a man who gave a good impersonation of Mr. Justice Shallow. "There is nothing to laugh at!" he cried, when a Serb doctor was asked whether he did not refuse to wear cravats because of the resemblance of that word to Croat. The whole farce resulted, not as one might have expected, in the collapse of the prosecution but in thirty-one convictions, varying in length from five to twelve years. The Croats, however, had thwarted Austria's schemes. They remained true to the Serbs, acted as their counsel without payment and helped to support the families of the poorer prisoners. At the Friedjung trial this professor, an eminent historian, produced a series of photographs of documents which were subsequently shown to have been fabricated at the Austro-Hungarian legation in Belgrade; he wished to prove that a political club in that town was guilty of a most extensive plot involving the Yugoslav territories of the House of Habsburg. Among those whom these proceedings and those at Zagreb brought into European prominence were the Pribi[vc]evi['c] brothers, a very zealous family of Croatian Serbs, that is to say Croats belonging to the Orthodox Church. [The chief of these four brothers was Svetozar, a statesman whose Serbo-Croat Coalition party was, with the advent of Yugoslavia in 1918, to form the nucleus of the Democratic party. He then became for many months the all-powerful Minister of the Interior, a man with the appearance of a bull-dog in whose veins is electricity. The vehemence of his methods of centralization is supported and opposed by his countrymen with an almost equal vehemence.] ... But to return to the events of 1908 and 1909--the result of these two trials was lamentable from the Austrian point of view. More success attended her efforts in Cetinje, for Nikita was intensely roused against his son-in-law, and the European reputation of Serbia was again dragged down to the level of the day which saw the murder of Alexander and his Queen. An individual called Nasti['c] whom, according to Professor Friedjung, one could only touch with a pair of tongs, accused the Serbian Royal Family of attempting to blow up their picturesque relative, under whose roof, by the way, Princess Helen of Serbia, his grand-daughter, happened to be staying. The bombs were carried in an ordinary portmanteau to Kotor, where they were discovered. Those who believed that Nikita, the arch-intriguer, was using this method for discrediting the Karageorgevi['c] dynasty, can point to the fact that he never wanted a public trial, and it seems probable that Nikita--who was aware that a group of his young, discontented subjects was planning against him a demonstration, but nothing more than that, even though there are in the Balkans a certain number of people who incline to the throwing of a bomb when their British equivalents would write to the _Times_--it seems probable that Nikita may not only have stolen their thunder but have put the lightning in their pockets and have then indignantly revealed it. But the whole affair is wrapped in darkness and awaits the exploring of Austria's archives. The probability is that Aerenthal was at his work to demonstrate that Belgrade was a nest of vipers, so that Europe would not hearken to their protest when the time came for the House of Habsburg to smother them.[69] ... This same Austrian police-spy Nasti['c] had procured for Nikita a certain "revolutionary statue" which that personage made over to the Imperial authorities, for use against the Serbs at the Zagreb treason trial. This atrocious deed against his brother Serbs destroyed for ever the last shreds of Nikita's reputation.

THE DREAMS OF AN OLD REALIST

Nevertheless he dreamed that from the mighty castle which looks down on Prizren he would rule the Southern Slavs; his eyes were ever turned towards the famous legendary land of Old Serbia. One essential was that he should be a king, and in 1910 with the consent of the Powers he assumed this title. The spider-webs of which he was so fond began to join Cetinje and Sofia, Cetinje and the mountains of Albania, while the master-weaver mitigated in his usual fashion the monotony of life in his poor capital. The Petrovi['c] have such a way with them that--if you do not happen to be one of their subjects--you are in danger of being disarmed. Thus when they were basking in the goodwill of Austria and when Nikita himself, in the spring of 1911, had been splendidly received at Vienna, so that on his return to Cetinje he was welcomed by the whole diplomatic body, save for the Russian Minister, Count Giers, and General Potapoff, the Russian military attaché, who were exhibiting their Government's disapproval, this appeared to Nikita a favourable moment for--as the Persians would say--blackening the face of the Austrian representative.

It was said by many of his discontented subjects that the King of Montenegro's great solicitude for his own personal affairs caused him frequently to be quite dull in recognizing other people's merit. But that day when he received the Austrian Minister he was so very much delighted with him that he there and then gave him promotion from the second to the first class of the Order of Danilo. He had some months before conferred upon this gentleman the second class, with diamonds of paste, and when the Austrian now told the King of his appreciation of the honour being so profound that he had ventured to replace the other diamonds with real ones--"I am enchanted," said the King, "to see that we have such a real friend in you, and I propose to grant you," said the King, as he produced another star composed of imitation diamonds, "to grant you this, the most exalted class. Your Excellency has deserved right well of our beloved Montenegro. Give me back now that inferior decoration, and to-morrow, with due ceremony at eleven o'clock to-morrow," said the King with his paternal smile, "we will bestow on you what you deserve so richly, and it gives me every satisfaction, I assure you," said His Majesty.

The Malissori of Albania were also listening to the old man's blandishments. If they would revolt against the Turks--they were exasperated at the time against the Young Turk rule--then their families would be sheltered in Montenegro and their land, after it had been liberated, would be given independence. With the potent help of Ferdinand of Bulgaria the Turk was to be overthrown. But nothing came of all these plans; the Malissori were abandoned to the mercy of Constantinople.

However, in 1912 that which had been thought impossible was brought about: Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro were allied against the Turk. "Onamo, onamo!..."

"Yonder, yonder!--Let me see Prizren, For it is mine--I shall come to my home...."

but Nikita, who had written these famous words and who had taught them to his people for a generation, had no cavalry--in the Montenegrin mountains they would have been of no avail--and thus, while his warriors were still some hours from Prizren, they had the mortification of hearing that the Serbs had entered it. With passionate desire they turned to Scutari. Nikita told them of the old Slav princes who were buried there--and to the simple-minded Montenegrins that seemed a good enough reason why 20,000 of them, the flower of the army, should lay down their own lives on the dreary hills that barred them from the town. It was hardly necessary for Nikita to allude to the wealth that would be theirs if they could gain possession of this outlet to the Adriatic. There in the plain at the end of the lake was the glittering white town, and if they could have seen themselves as clearly and their own inadequate resources, they would have refrained from the attempt. The minarets of Scutari, raised like so many warning fingers, failed to warn them. Their equipment was such that munitions and other supplies were frequently carried up to the lines by women--on the Bardonjolt no less than eighty of these were killed and wounded in one day. When the Serbs in October pushed through Albania to the Adriatic they offered to assist in the taking of Scutari, but Nikita shook his head. And it was not until some time after this that he accepted the co-operation of three batteries of Krupp guns, which had been meanwhile taken from the Turks at Kumanovo. But the Montenegrin army was not only handicapped by its lack of resources; the Crown Prince, who commanded a division, actually instigated a revolt among his own men. He had promised the Austrian Minister, Baron Giesl von Gieslingen, that the Montenegrin army would not enter Scutari, and the Government could only put a stop to Danilo's intrigues by invoking the aid of General Potapoff. The Turks were not wasting their time; they employed Austrian engineers to strengthen the fortifications, and thus the task had become far more difficult when finally the Montenegrin Court party availed itself of Serbian reinforcements. In more ways than one they were badly needed by the brave but ill-disciplined soldiers. "It is wonderful," they said to Major Temperley,[70] "their troops do not fire until an officer gives the word." Primitive men and a venal commander--according to Dr. Sekula Drljevi[vc], who was Minister of Finance and Justice, Prince Danilo is alleged to have remembered, just before his country's entrance into the War, that money could be made on the Vienna Bourse by judicious selling and, after the declaration of war, by purchasing. The professional financier who on this occasion, thanks to his knowledge of the Montenegrin royal plans, is alleged to have realized, with his friends, the sum of 140 million francs, was no less a person than Baron Rosenberg, whose subsequent operations in Paris at the beginning of the Great War and in Switzerland during the War received the close attention of the French authorities.[71] These financial methods of Danilo's did less material harm, at any rate to his own people than the system he employed as a motorist; it was necessary that he should obtain the latest models, and it suited him that the Government, not haggling over the price, should take over his discarded vehicles. Similar hostages to gossip were given by Mirko, his younger brother; one remembers the smiles of the diplomatic corps at Cetinje when this young man dispatched, at the cost of the Government, a telegram of about 500 words to Austria, concerning a horse which he wanted to buy. Mirko, who died during the Great War in an Austrian sanatorium, was not one of those rugged and valiant Montenegrin mountaineers whom Gladstone and Tennyson celebrated; once when his father ordered him to come back from Paris, where he was copiously spending his country's substance on an actress with whom he had decamped, leaving his wife and several young children at Naples, he dutifully returned and settled down in his palace, a large, comfortable house outside Podgorica. Since it was less amusing than in Paris he remained in bed for most of the twenty-four hours; he would often spend an hour before dinner in superintending the removal of pictures from one wall to another, and having dined he would immerse himself in State affairs, which took the form of speculating as to when he and his heirs--Danilo being childless--would be called to rule over the great Serbian kingdom of Serbia combined with Montenegro. As to the fate of the Karageorgevi['c] dynasty, this was wont to vary from night to night, in proportion to the amount of wine that Mirko had drunk.

These events occurred in 1913, and in the same year the Montenegrins entered Scutari. It was not brought about by force of arms, but by some arrangement with Essad Pasha, the illiterate and clever Albanian who succeeded to the command of the town after Hussein Riza Bey, the Turkish leader, had been assassinated on the threshold of Essad's house, where he had been dining, by a couple of the Pasha's men, disguised as women. Scutari was not to stay for long in Montenegrin hands; an International Force arrived, under Admiral Sir Cecil Burney, and took it over. One need scarcely add that the national sentiment of the Albanians moved the Powers at this juncture as little as it moved the Albanians.

VERY HIGH POLITICS

We have seen that Prince Danilo, before flinging himself against the infidel Turk, is alleged to have transacted a little business on the Bourse--a former Montenegrin Minister of Finance says that he may well have netted between 25 and 30 million crowns--and his royal father, though his methods often had a tinge of mediævalism, was not the man to rush, like some old knight, in succour of distress. When Serbia was attacked in 1914 he refrained from flying to her side. Montenegro "stood up spontaneously to defend the Serbian cause: she fought and she fell," says Mr. Devine. There is not the least doubt but that the vast majority of Montenegrins would have acted in this fashion. To some degree they had deteriorated under the example of Nikita--"A fish stinks from its head," says a Turkish proverb; but when their brother Serbs were in deadly peril all else was forgotten. And they were bewildered and suspicious when the Skup[vs]tina was summoned, seeing that the Constitution laid it down that the declaring of war was a royal prerogative. As practically every man was thirsting for battle--after all they were Serbs and incapable of committing high treason against their brethren--they marvelled at the King's delay. But to the politicians his manoeuvre explained itself; they recognized that Nikita had some secret arrangement[72] with the Austrians and that he wanted to tell Francis Joseph that the War had been forced upon him. From that moment he was playing a double rôle; a Serbian officer was chief of the Montenegrin staff. "They have placed my army under Serbian command," he told the Austrians. "So faithful was I," he said to the Entente, "that I even took a Serbian commander."

In view of the persistent pro-Nikita propaganda which subsequently reared its foolish head in Great Britain, it is as well to note what were the sentiments of the Montenegrins towards their own country and their brother Serbs, and on the other hand how they regarded Nikita. Alone among the Allies the Montenegrin soldier received no decorations either in the Balkan wars or in the Great War, and yet he had formerly been so proud of such recognition that it had often been carved upon his tombstone, and when for one decoration there were two claimants a duel was frequently arranged in order to decide which was to be the recipient. But Nikita's régime of corruption and intrigue caused these marks of distinction to be conferred more and more upon police-agents and such like, so that in the Balkan War, when the heroes could no longer be counted, when more than five standard-bearers fell one after another in carrying the same standard and when it was proposed to decorate _en bloc_ the Ku[vc]i brigade, the soldiers refused to accept what had been so profaned.

THE RIDDLE OF SARAJEVO

On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was murdered at Sarajevo.

In the course of July 1914 the Austro-Hungarian Government (wherein far more influence was exerted by Count Tisza, the wealthy and incorruptible, the vastly ambitious Magyar Prime Minister, than by the Foreign Minister, Count Berchtold, the courteous, somewhat frivolous man of the world who was doomed to execute reluctantly the orders of Berlin and be swept away by the resulting storm, while the brave and brutal Tisza, fighting for the glory of the Habsburgs and the greater glory of the Magyars, rode upon the storm for years)--the Austro-Hungarian Government in July 1914 dispatched to Sarajevo a commissioner for the purpose of investigating whether the Serbian authorities had anything to do with the Archduke's assassination. This official, Baron von Weisner, a very distinguished Professor of Political Economy who was a German Bohemian[73] with staunch German sympathies, reported in the same month that he was convinced that no accusation whatever could be levelled against Belgrade. (As a matter of fact the Serbian police, who had information that a plot was being hatched in Bosnia, gave warning to the Austrian authorities; but no notice was taken of this, not even when a similar warning was uttered on June 21 by the Serbian Minister at Vienna, nor were any special precautions laid down for the Archduke's safety. It was all rather mysterious.) "Byzantium, the everlasting and unconquerable Byzantium," says an Austrian publicist,[74] "had won another victory.... The Habsburg Empire," says he, "only wished to defend herself against those invisible and irrepressible intrigues." And after denouncing the Serbs for throwing a spark into the powder barrel on June 28, 1914, he accounts for their conduct by writing that "it is the tradition of nomad blood to tear down ancient, noble palaces, replacing them by nomad huts." What we know is that General Potiorek, the Governor of Bosnia, who had urged Francis Ferdinand and his wife to continue their programme after the failure of the first attempt at assassination before lunch, was never invited to explain anything--unfortunately for Austria he was placed in command of the "punitive expedition" into Serbia. Other incidents on which a light may some day be thrown were the very unceremonious funeral arrangements for the murdered couple (though this may very likely have been due to the High Chamberlain's personal hatred of the Archduke), and the fact that an Imperial Commission was sent to Konopi[vs]t[ve], the Archduke's Bohemian estate, to seize his papers. It was there that he had lately been confabulating with the German Emperor; and Count Berchtold had visited the place on the day after the Kaiser's departure to try to ascertain what had occurred.... It was also at Konopi[vs]t[ve] that Francis Ferdinand, who was threatened with hereditary madness, had shot a gamekeeper dead. Knowing that the Archduke was as good a shot as he was insignificant in horsemanship, this had excited great attention in the highest circles, coming as it did after other scenes of violence.... In contrast with all these semi-mysteries it is clear that Serbia had nothing whatever to gain by the Archduke's disappearance, and although Austria had time and again endeavoured to pick a quarrel with her she had managed to avoid a situation which, after the two recent wars, would be perilous in the extreme. The Serbian Press, which enjoyed a complete freedom, was naturally violent in tone when it observed that the Austro-Hungarian Government was doing little to control the demonstrations hostile to Serbia. Houses of prominent Serbs were looted and gutted at Sarajevo, while similar scenes took place--with the connivance of the authorities--in other large towns of the Monarchy. But the Belgrade populace, uninflamed by their Press, conducted themselves with great moderation. The stories circulated in Austria-Hungary of several Magyar journalists having been murdered were absolutely false. Just as false were the rumours of a demonstration against the Austrian Minister at the funeral of M. Hartwig, his Russian colleague, although Serbian public opinion ascribed the sudden death of this powerful friend of theirs to a cup of poisoned coffee at the Austrian Legation. Hartwig has been criticized for his encouragement of Serbia's idea of expansion and for having fostered anti-Austrian propaganda--of course it was a very wicked thing, from the Austrian point of view, to think of the day when the Serbs might be joined to their unredeemed brethren; and as for the blessed word "propaganda," which covers everything from the mildest expression of opinion to assassination, there has been no responsible Austrian so reckless as to accuse the Serbs or M. Hartwig of having had recourse to methods that approached in wrong-doing their own notorious (and unsuccessful) forgeries.

Let us address three questions to those who carried on a calumnious campaign against Serbia:

(a) Why was the Sarajevo trial conducted behind a closed door? If the crime was instigated and perpetrated by Serbia, the Habsburg Monarchy, which at the time of the trial had already declared war on Serbia, had every interest in establishing with all publicity the guilt and the complicity of Serbian circles.

(b) Why were the evidence of the witnesses and the declarations of the authors of the assassination not published? It was only in 1918 that the Austrian Government, with the help of a professor of Berlin University, published a few facts taken from the proceedings of the trial. Although in this book[75] a great deal of material importance has been omitted--for example, the declarations of the witnesses as well as the last declarations of the accused, nevertheless that which we have before us constitutes one of the most terrible accusations against the Habsburg Monarchy. The young accused persons were not afraid to state, even behind closed doors in a barrack-room, some bitter truths concerning Austria-Hungary. One can have some idea of what they would have said in a public trial from the results of the famous trials of Zagreb and of Friedjung. All the accused persons, as well as their accomplices, declared that the decision to kill the Archduke was an act of their own personal will and that nobody incited or ordered them to make the attempt, least of all any authority of the Kingdom of Serbia. The crime was the personal act of Bosnian patriots who believed that they were serving their oppressed people. "In Bosnia," said the Minister Burian--"in Bosnia, there is no policy, there is only administration."

(c) Why did the Sarajevo police and Austro-Hungarian official circles conduct themselves so strangely with respect to the bomb-thrower [vC]abrinovi['c], a notorious anarchist and son of a Sarajevo police spy, who had on a former occasion been expelled by the police from Sarajevo? Later on, after the Belgrade police had been obliged, owing to the intervention of the Austrian Consulate, to allow him to stay in Belgrade, he returned to Sarajevo and was quite unmolested by the police, whose precautions a few years previously, at the time of the visit of Francis Joseph, had gone so far as to expel, as suspected persons, two members of the Bosnian Parliament.