Henri Pozzi, 1935
The Serbian Scene - I. Belgrade and Impressions << Contents >> The Serbian Scene - III. The Military Power
A rat caught in a trap turns vicious not because it is full of power or of hate, but because it is full of fear. So to-day in Belgrade, the Big Men of the dictatorship, along with their minions, the petty officials and the police, are like rats in a trap, fighting against the power which their own ignorance and stupidity, handed down to them by the shades of Pasich and Company, has bound upon them. There is an old saying in China that he who rides upon a tiger dare not dismount, and that is true in Belgrade today. The men behind the dictatorship are riding upon their tiger because they can do nothing else. If the oppressed states of Yugoslavia have their dilemma of suffering, then also the oppressors certainly have their share of the dilemma, for the forces of nature almost are running against them--certainly the forces of human nature.
History is repeating itself in Yugoslavia. The lesson is not yet learned which Englishmen learned when they tried to coerce their brothers in North America. Co-operation is the secret of all national growth involving the absorption of unlike nations into a homogeneous whole. Co-operation begets co-operation as sunshine promotes growth, but coercion stiffens the muscles of the coerced and turns reasonable men into pig-headed obstructionists. Serbia, through the blind, greedy ignorance of its Pasitches and their type, has set forces in operation which must destroy Yugoslavia either through war or through revolution. Meanwhile, the tyranny grows by what it feeds upon.
Once treason to the state becomes looked upon as a virtue (as treason to the Yugoslavian state is looked upon today by the oppressed minorities who regard it as nothing more than a vehicle of Serbian domination) then those who wish to maintain the status quo must either act or else satnd humbly aside and watch the nation go to pieces. What is the natural human action in such cases? Is it not to fight blindly for the preservation of the established order? Is the crime of the Serbians any greater than that? No! The real crime lies upon the shoulders of those who conceived Yugoslavia as a cloak for Serbian greed and not as a free association of diverse peoples. Let us recognise the dilemma of the Serbian people and admit that the error lies not so much in the hearts of the people as in the fight against human nature to which they have been committed.
This fact does not unfortunately solve the problem. We may understand the dilemma, but we shall not disperse the gathering hatreds and the inevitable disaster by our knowledge.
Savoir tout, c'est pardonner tout, may be all very well as a philosophic statement, but it is of little use to men who feel themselves robbed of their inheritance to feed the vanity of a crowd of megalomaniacs who have no humanity and no respect for anything but their own desires.
And the great pity is that there are some things that cannot be undone except by explosion. You may easily pack a tree-trunk with dynamite and set the fuse ready for firing, but you will not find it so easy to withdraw the charge again. All you can do is to get as far away as you can form the scene and let the explosion spend itself in the air. So it is with Yugoslavia. The dynamite of human passion and thwarted desire is laid, the fuse is lit and the train is running to its inevitable end. The explosion must ensue. Away, then, France! Away, England! Cut the ties that bind you to the doomed tree, and retire to safety, lest the inevitable explosion find you in the peath of its progress and sweep you, and with you Europe, into the dust of the Past.
The catastrophe, as in 1914, will come from some minor incident. As a high Serb official put it to me, "A single police operation in Bulgaria (and it just missed taking place six months ago) will lead to the intervention of Italy, and a French counter-intervention. In a few days the conflagration will cover all Europe--a second 1914."
The Pan-Serb part, which stands behind the government and directs the king, is inclined to paly this card as soon as possible, as it is persuaded that a war against Italy would instantly re-establish the unity between the Serbs and Croats, the latter having an ancestral hatred for the Italians. In addition to this, the high Yugoslav officials are convinced that their country would come out of the conflict clothed with military glory and more than doubled in extent and power. In their eyes this is a sufficient reason for setting Europe on fire again, and it is possible that their calculations are right, though it is much more probable that they are false.
"I am telling you nothing," said my official friend, "If I tell you that Yugoslavia has offended all her neighbors since she has been directed by the Pan-Serbs, and this applies even to her allies. Under the double inspiration of Mustapha-Kemal and Venizelos (who know only too well that a new Serb victory, either over the Bulgars or the Italians would mean the loss of of Constantinople by the Turks, and of Salonica and her Aegean shores by the Greeks) astonishing ententes have been effected against Yugoslavia. The people here in Belgrade are right when they complain that they are encircled by enemies. They are, and by their own fault! Only the Czechs support them, but the Czechs have never been worth much as soldiers! On the day of danger, the Serb dictators can count on no one outside France. It is true that the weight that France would throw in the balance would be worth all the others put together, and it is because the present directors of Yugoslavia know it, because they have calculated that with France's aid they will be assured of the victory, that they will not hesitate when they believe the moment comes, to risk a war in order to avoid a revolution. This, at least, is my opinion."
It was not until King Alexander of Serbia made his visit to Paris in 1931 that he was able to realise to what extent French political circles were alarmed by the aggressiveness displayed by Belgrade towards Sofia and unanimously disapproved of it.
There were reasons to believe that the peril was averted, at least momentarily. But if war is averted, there is still revolution to fear. An old friend, a Francophile, and an advisor of Yugoslavia, said to me: "The second eventuality from which Yugoslavia will not escape is the revolution, even if its governors refuse to shoulder the responsibility of a new European conflict. Revolution is not, in my opinion, likely as yet. It presupposes an accord between powerful
military chiefs and groups of the socialist and democrat opposition. If it takes place, it would involve a repetition of the drama that cost the lives of Queen Draga and King Alexander. It would sweep the good away with the bad. All those who in any way served the dictators would be its victims. Politcally, by the general dislocation that it would lead to, this would be the end of Yugoslavia.
"Such is the dilemma: revolution or war. There is no escape. No one in France seems aware of what the situation really is here. In France they nurse the illusion of a powerful Yugoslavia and one, in case of war, capable of giving real support to her allies. No one knows anything of the Croat question, of the Macedonian question, of the furious opposition of former parties, of the progress of revolutionary ideas: of all causes which conduce to that state of things which in the event of war would abondon and betray the army from behind. France's blindness and ignorance in face of all this is almost touching because of its enormity.
"The worst, perhaps, is that the dictators have discovered the personality of the King. Before that, he was the refuge of parties; respected, if not loved, by all. He benefited from the prestige which his father had enjoyed, and from the legend, cleverly establiched, that he served personally on the Macedonian front during the War. Today, the dictatorship has made a party chief of him. And what a party! It is called the Narodna Odbrana, in which is consecrated all the violences, all the blindness, all the appetites of Pan-Serbism: so from now on the Croats, Macedonians, and all the Serb opposition hold the King responsible for all the faults and abuses of his ministers, because thay are convinced that they do nothing without having taken orders from him. And, unfortunately, it is true. They don't dare attack him openly because no one fancies hard labor, but most abominable rumors circulate about him. He has become the most unpopular man in Yugoslavia, after General Givkovitch and Jika Lazitch. Last April, thosands of students gathered before the royal palace. The furious charges of the gendarmes did not succeed in dispersing them, and there they stood hurling insults at the King, and accusing him of having enormous sums in the banks of Budapest and Basle, thanks to commissions he had received from foreign corporations and enterprises. I saw it with my own own eyes, I can tell you the
bones of old Pasitch would have turned a hand-spring in his coffin..."
"The revolution is rising, and hence war is coming."
Events must have marched terribly fast in Yugoslavia during the last few months, for no official would have said to me a year ago what so many among them have since done."
The dilemma in Yugoslavia is growing so intense that the floods of dissolution wash at very walls of the inner fortress of Pan-Serbism.
The Serbian Scene - I. Belgrade and Impressions << Contents >> The Serbian Scene - III. The Military Power
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