Henri Pozzi, 1935
The Croat Problem - I. The Peril << Contents >> The Croat Problem - III. What the Man-in-the-Street Thinks
This Serbo-Croat conflict endangers the very existence of Yugoslavia. The day that the Croats and Slovenes break away, then Yugoslavia will disappear from the map. Serbia, deprived of nearly five million of her inhabitants and their resources, will drop again to a little nation of fewer than ten million people, of whom two million, the Macedonians and the Germano-Hungarians of Banat, are her mortal enemies. Serbia's military power would no longer be a political pawn in the European game which France is playing with one eye on Serbia as an ally. And if once the balance of the game breaks, God knows where we shall end.
With this fact in mind, I asked myself repeatedly if, in the interests of Yugoslavia, of France, of Europe, it were not possible to effect a reconciliation of these warring peoples. I put my question to Serbian friends. "Go and see Dr. Trumbitch," said one celebrated doctor, a confidant of King Alexander. "He is the leader of the Croat Opposition. He does not like Belgrade, but Belgrade respects him. He will be as impartial as anyone can be in this country today."
There was no trouble about the interview. Dr. Trumbitch lived in a cold, austere apartment guarded by policemen in uniform and in plain clothes. I lost no time in coming to my point. "Is it true, Mr. Minister, as your compatriots in exile in Paris and Geneva pretend, that there is no possibility of an entente between the government of Belgrade and the populations of Croatia and Slovenia?" "None!" "None, Mr. Minister? To-day, perhaps not, for the passions on both sides are over-excited; but to-morrow, if the necessary gestures of conciliation were made?" "They will not be made!" With his hands on his knees, his face the colour of old ivory, Dr. Trumbitch answered me in a hard voice that hammered home each syllable. "They cannot be made," he continued after a pause, during which, with eyes half-closed, he seemed to be meditating his words. "Even should the men of Belgrade desire an appeasement, not a Croat, not a Slovene, after all they have suffered, would accept. Should we desire such a gesture, the Serbs, whose pride will always refuse to recognise that an adversary can be right, would never consent." "I beg you to say this, sir, and say it to all your compatriots: that between us and the Pan-Serb camarilla which directs Yugoslavia to-day, it is not a question of force, for they are by far the strongest, but it is a question of time, a question of patience, until the day arrives when accounts will be settled. "You will kill the unity of Yugoslavia." Dr. Trumbitch bounded from his chair, transfigured with anger. "The unity of Yugoslavia! There has never been such a thing! There is a Serbia who has seized Croatia, Slovenia, Banat, Macedonia, Montenegro, Dalmatia and more; and who has tried for fourteen years to transform them into mere Serb provinces. At first, as long as Pasitch was able to impose his will, things were better. He had no more affection for us than the rest of Belgrade, but he measured the consequences of open conflict with us. He proceeded secretly, by a sort of underground work. They gave it a semblance of form then, but since the vote for the constitution of unity in 1921 all that is ended; the men of Belgrade are convinced that no one can resist them, and they do not pretend any more.
"They have swept away traditions, customs, local liberties--all that has made for centuries the qualities, the faults, the distinct personalities of our diverse peoples. Serbianisation is carried to extremes under the name of national unity. That unification, sir, is a unification downwards. It is the illiterates who command the educated; imbeciles who command the intelligentsia. Everyone in Yugoslavia, be he Dalmatian, Hungarian, Croat or Macedonian, must think, speak, pray and love in Serbian. While they are at it, they might as well demand a prenuptial certificate affirming that the future couple can say in Serbian, with a Belgrade accent: "I adore you" and without which the marriage will not be celebrated. You will see: they will come to it!
"Yugoslavia has never existed but on the paper of banknotes, stamps and official documents. For eight million so-called Yugoslavs the word 'Yugoslavia' is only the synonym for oppression, suffering, and intellectual and moral abasement. "What Croatia and Slovenia were before the War, you know! Theoretically they were dependent upon Hungary, but in reality they administered themselves. Their culture, their civilisation, made them the equal of any occidental country. Their riches and prosperity were legendary. The probity, the political conception of their administrators, and their devotion to
public interests, made them an elite. The corruption of the Serbs, on the other hand, and the trickery and incapacity of their administrators, was the laughing stock of Europe: they have imposed that upon us. Our wealth, the fruit of our labour and of our intelligence, they are bent upon destroying, going as far as to impose their antiquated legislation upon our co-operative banks which the technicians of all Europe admire. This, sir, is what union with Serbia signifies for the Croats and Slovenes from an economic standpoint alone."
The former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Serbo-Croat-Slovene kingdom paced the room like a lion in a cage. He spoke in broken sentences, weighing essential words, repeating them in a low voice, as if he were speaking to himself. "To pretend to make an extremely centralised State, unified in its language, its customs, its civil and fiscal legislation, as in England, for example, or in your own country, of a nation composed of pieces and morsels hastily assembled, as in our monarchy--what stupidity! What ridiculous vanity! "Decentralisation and not centralisation should have been the order of the day in Yugoslavia. They should have aided the existing state of things by creating four or five great administrative centres, those which history has created: Belgrade for the Serbs, Ljubljana for the Slovenes and Dalmatians, Zagreb for the Croats, Sarajevo for the Bosnians, and Skoplje for the Macedonians. A central government composed of representatives of each region, of each nationality, and which quite naturally would have been situated at Belgrade, would have presided over the common destiny. The unification would then be accomplished unconsciously, the national customs of each nationality being preserved, and only those being abandoned which the common welfare demanded."
"A sort of Switzerland, Mr. Minister?" I interjected. "If you will! Or even something like your France before the revolution, when the legislation and central administration under the king, admitted the co-existence of a provincial legislation and administration." "Perhaps it would be possible, Mr. Minister, to achieve this ideal at a later date..."
"Too late, sir!" Dr. Trumbitch cut short my words. "Too late; with all the bitterness, all the deception, all the hatreds engendered by the acts of this clique of aspirants and mercenaries who have tyrannised and exploited for fourteen years all who are not of their blood. What the authors of the coup d'etat of January 1929 desired was not to defend the principle of national unity said to be menaced by us Croats. Oh, no! That is only a specious argument designed to justify the inexcusable violation of the oath taken by King Alexander in the eyes of occidental democracies, and particularly in the eyes of
France. It is a diplomatic lie. The real aim of the dictators was to render possible the destruction of all civilisation and culture other than their own, which incidentally, is the most inferior of all our diverse peoples. In a penitentiary the prison guards do as they wish, and Yugoslavia for the last few years is nothing but a prison camp! "If you do not believe what I say, go and talk of these things to the Hungarians of Banat, whom the Serbs treat as they had never been treated by the Turks; go and talk to the Macedonians, who have been subjected to a regime of violence which for a long time I have refused to believe and which will dishonour Serbia in the eyes of the world the day that it is known. Speak of an entente with the Serbs to our populations of Croatia and Slovenia, to the Italians on the Adriatic coast, to the Montenegrins, to the Bosnians, whom the Serb administration and police persecute, pillage and assassinate--speak to them and see what you will get! "No! They have gone too far. Because we have dared to insist upon our just part in the administration of a State in which, intellectually, morally and materially we constitute incontestably the elite; and because we have dared to denounce the shameful wastes and robbery of a rotten government, the people at Belgrade have imposed on us a tyranny which we, free men that we are, refuse to support any longer. "The corruption and the laziness of the Turkish officials killed the Turkey of the Sultans. They are surpassed by those of the Serbian administrators who have been imposed upon us by force. From the highest to the lowest, all are for sale; all traffic their authority. They do not even take pains to hide the fact, for the example comes to them from the ministers, of whom there is not one who does not claim his commission for civil and military supplies. Your great French enterprises of munition, aviation and public works know something about this!" "You are severe, Mr. Minister, with the directors of Belgrade!" I suggested. "Severe? But do you know, sir, to cite only one example, that no one in Yugoslavia at the present time, outside a few Serb personalities who received and dissipated them, knows the exact figure of the sums paid by Germany as reparations? "You do not believe me? Very well, amuse yourself by trying to trace these payments in the Yugoslav Budget! You will find nothing, or next to nothing! This money is not considered by our Serb chiefs to be the common property of the nation, but as booty belonging to them. They have utilised it for certain secret needs of Serbia; in particular to pay for the lying propaganda carried on in foreign countries. How easy it is! They are answerable to no one but themselves.
"What about the loans floated in France, and in particular the 7 1/2%? What about the advances that your treasury has granted to Yugoslavia? Do you know that nine-tenths of them have been employed in Serbia alone, without parliamentary control, and without accountable justifications? That is true, I swear, yet all of us, Croats, Slovenes, Dalmatians and Macedonians will have to repay them; if they ever are repaid, for I tell you frankly--and Korochetz, Matchek, Previtchevitch, Spaho and Budak, all the chiefs of our national opposition, will tell you the same-that these loans will be absolutely repudiated by us when we are released from the Serbs. "The present taxes crush us. Calculated on gold values they are four to five hundred per cent. greater than those which we paid when we were dependents of Hungary, and they are often ten times greater than the Serbian taxes. Yet the revenue is devoted nearly exclusively to Serbian agriculture, commerce, industry, railroads and government employees. We are sheared like sheep. We pay dearly, I can tell you, for the honour of being Yugoslavs!"
"But, Mr. Minister," I said, "the Serbs have the right to say that their country, having been ravaged, pillaged and emptied of all its resources by four years of enemy occupation, should receive the first attention of the central government before your own, which, naturally, has not suffered from the War."
Dr. Trumbitch, who was walking towards the window, stopped abruptly: "And who pretends to the contrary, sir?" he said, returning to sit near me. "Not I! And who would complain about it in Croatia, where the lowest of our peasants has an innate feeling for justice and right, if those who are taking our money had treated us decently and openly. But it is the spoliation, the robbery and the tyranny which raises the Croats against the Serbs, and will keep them so raised until the day when we come out victors. Force may temporarily crush right, but right always finishes by triumphing over force, especially when those who
are in the right possess a culture, a morality, and a civilisation superior to their oppressors. "You are not going to compare, I hope, the Croats, the Slovenes, or the Dalmatians, whom centuries of artistic, moral and intellectual communion with Austria, Italy and Hungary have made pure occidentals, with these half-civilised Serbs, these Balkan hybrids of Slavs and Turks. They are barbarians, even their chiefs--whose occidentalism goes no further than their
phraseology and the cut of their clothes! You knew Pasitch! He was a true Serb! You know Marinkovitch, Givkovitch, Lazitch, Fotich? Do they have the same mentality or the same morality as the statesmen and soldiers of France or Germany? Would France or Germany have tolerated a dictator who had been the assassin of a woman? Yet Serbia has honoured Givkovitch, murderer of Queen Draga. It is men like these who are determined to crush us! What else can you expect from them? "There is no longer, today, in Croatia, Slovenia or Dalmatia, either individual or public liberty. We live in about the same fashion, and under the same regime as the Macedonians. A little longer and nothing will differentiate us from them. "Take, for instance, the liberty of
the Press. The Serbs will tell you that it is guaranteed by law.
"Quite right! So it is! The first article of that law says: The press is free. But the second says: This liberty is conditioned by law. There is nothing to stop our newspapers from printing all the news--nothing at all. But the proofs of each number must be submitted to the police, and only the censured copy may be printed. If they disobey the Censor, what is the result? Immediate arrest; suppression of the journal and anything up to three years in prison for the editor and the responsible director. Do you want an example of the liberty which our Press enjoys? Three months ago, on the occasion of my birthday, I received several hundreds of telegrams from my friends in Croatia, Slovenia and Dalmatia. As it was impossible for me to thank them individually, I sent a note of thanks to the papers. Its publication was prohibited by the police censor under the pretext that I was seeking to transmit an order to my friends by an indirect method.
"It is useless to tell you that the right of free association, the liberty of speech, which we fully enjoyed under the domination of Hungary, are no more to-day than memories. You know it already. The only people who have the right of free association, the right to exchange their ideas, are the Serb immigrants. Why, only a few days ago a priest named Rudolph Jesima was sentenced to three months' hard labour for daring to suggest to a tax-collector that he should give the peasants in his district a little time in which to pay their taxes. For having said that in his opinion Belgrade was not so well kept as Zagreb, a peasant called Antoine Ekarta was fined 500 dinars; whilst another peasant, Etipe Tarlitch, of the village of Drinska Slatinika, was condemned to two months' imprisonment by the court of Osijek for criticising the dictatorship. "Individual liberty has gone! Political trials, here, succeed one another incessantly. They are all parodies of justice; and the judges, capable of anything, mercilessly apply laws which are a derision of justice and right! The accused are tortured and maimed in the course of their 'interrogations' to such a point that they nearly all have to be carried on stretchers to the hearing. All are given the maximum possible sentence of isolation, or forced labour. By this means they are utterly eliminated from society, for they are never allowed to go free again, but stay in the prison where they are deprived of water or food every other day, beaten ferociously, worked to exhaustion, piled eight, ten and twelve in damp cells swarming with vermin, and there they smother, pressed one against the other. There they live in filth and under the lash. Most of them carry from thirty to forty pounds of chains each. As for the women, better death than what awaits them on the part of the Serb police and jailers.
"The elite of our youth, sir, had to fly to foreign countries. The rest are subjected to a constant supervision. At the least pretext Serb gendarmes invade the universities and beat them without mercy. The handy men of the dictatorial police are all members of that abominable association the Novi Pokret, that filial of the White Hand and the Narodna Odbrana, whose chief is no other than the colonel commanding the garrison of Zagreb; these fellows assassinate with impunity, and in the very centre of the city, all those who displease them or who cause them any trouble whatsoever.
"My old friend, Professor M. Sufflay, one of our chief men of science, was killed by these ruffians, and the Press was not allowed to mention
it at all until they were commanded, under pain of instant suppression, to publish an infamous communication, edited by Dr. Bedekovitch, Chief of Police of Zagreb, which affirmed that my friend had been killed during a brawl with some of his supporters at the door of a public house. Less than a month ago one of the chiefs of the Peasant Democratic Party was clubbed to death by cut-throats of the Novi Pokret in the very heart of Zagreb.
"You saw the friends who surrounded me on the terrace of Hotel Esplanade yesterday evening. They are the members of my committee. They know my life is in danger, and so they accompany me everywhere. But they will not prevent the inevitable: I shall end as my friend Sufflay did. They will assassinate me at some street-corner, or at my door, or else they will deport me to an unknown village in Old Serbia where I shall be at the mercy of brutes who have been
charged to put me out of the way. If the people in Belgrade were not certain that his assassination would provoke a general uprising of the Catholic Slovenes, Dr. Korochetz, priest though he be, would have been murdered long ago; but the Pan-Serbs of Belgrade will find means of getting rid of him yet! Assassination has always been their favourite political arm: Queen Draga and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand know something about that." "But, Mr. Minister," I said, "if Croatia and Slovenia succeeded in separating themselves from Serbia, what would they do? They are too small to stand alone. By what means, moreover, do you believe a separation realisable? How can you possibly beat the
Serbians?"
"Liberation", replied Dr. Trumbitch, "will come to us either by revolution or by war. If the present Pan-Serb dictatorship is destroyed by a revolution and a Republic is established then we shall proclaim our independence. For my part, however, I consider revolution is improbable for a long time to come. The dictatorship, menaced by a revolution, will seek to escape it by risking all in a foreign war. That the dictatorship is visibly preparing for such a war may be seen from the provocations and attacks committed by its agents against the Italians in Istria and Dalmatia. If this war comes, then the Croats, Slovenes and Dalmatians will do what the Czechs did in 1916; and their refugees abroad, speaking and acting in the name of their compatriots who still remain under the Serbian yoke, will proclaim before the inevitable defeat of Serbia, the will of their peoples to be free from her.
"You said just now that we are to small to stand alone! We do not propose to do so, though we could do it well enough, but the future which we foresee is elsewhere. It is in a great state stretching from the Adriatic to Poland: a great federal Republic which will contain Hungary, Croatia, Dalmatia and the Tyrol, and which will be joined to Poland. It would also be an impregnable barrier to pan-Slavism, which you Frenchmen do not realise is a mortal danger to occidental civilisation. And finally, economically, it would re-establish in Central Europe that harmony between production and consumption, between agriculture and industry, which was madly destroyed fourteen years ago by men who pretended to make peace by arbitrarily mangling economic and political entities born of centuries of effort and experience."
Frankly then, almost brutally, I put the final question: "You spoke of war, Mr. Minister," I said. "You and I know which war you had in mind--the war which will throw Yugoslavia into conflict with Italy. This war is inevitable. It is coming with irresistible force and rapidity. What I want to know is this: if is should break out to-morrow, what would be the attitude of the Croats? Before the Latin enemy, would the national union of Yugoslavia assume a new character as Belgrade affirms, and as her paid writers and speakers have broadcast to the world? "The Italo-Serbian war is indeed inevitable, in my view," replied Dr. Trumbitch with gravity. "Nothing, it seems to me, can prevent it, particularly since the men behind the dictatorship desire it, because in it they see their only chance of safety, and they believe that they have all the chances of victory by the constitution of the Little Entente. For months they have been organising in Dalmatia such incidents as will force Italy, they hope, to act in a manner that will give her the appearance of an aggressor. You ask me what will be our attitude? My reply is that in no case, even in case of a foreign war, would the Croat opposition consent to give its political or moral support to the present government of Yugoslavia. We have given the dictatorship no blank cheque, and in no case, not even in case of war against Italy, will
the opposition in Croatia renounce its nationalist and separatist aims.
"Our children will fight on the side of the Serbs, as the Bulgarians of Macedonia, or the Hungarians of Banat will do, because they cannot do otherwise, for they will be mingled with them in the same regiments. They will do what the young men of Alsace Lorraine did in the German Army in 1914. They will fight to the end, at all events. You are at liberty to take that as you please."
"Well, then," I said, "contrary to what Belgrade pretends, such a war will not recreate the national unity of Yugoslavia, Mr. Minister?" "A war would recreate the national unity only if it were declared by a government truly representing the country," replied Dr. Trumbitch, "and the present government of Yugoslavia represents only itself. There is no national unity possible, even in the face of an enemy, in a country where several thousand men exploit and oppress millions."
I have set down for you the opinions of Dr. Trumbitch. They are the opinions of a moderate man, a man of substance and of character. He does not speak hastily, but his words come from his heart, through a sound, business brain. "Tell France! Tell Europe!" he cried as I left him. "I know it puts my life further in danger--but what matter, if Europe will but learn the truth and defend itself from the coming catastrophe!"
His last words still burn in my brain! I still hear his voice! I still see his lighted ardent eyes! And yet only a few months afterwards he expiated his "crime" in the torture-chambers of Serbia.
Will nothing teach us!
The Croat Problem - I. The Peril << Contents >> The Croat Problem - III. What the Man-in-the-Street Thinks
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