Chapter 38

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 Bol[vs]evik 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 Bol[vs]evik 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. Grab[vs]tajn (Grafenstein) 10·6 " 89·4 " [vZ]relc (Ebenthal) 24·4 " 75·6 " Pokr[vc]e (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. Grab[vs]tajn 50·1 " 49·9 " [vZ]relc 49·2 " 50·8 " Pokr[vc]e 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.