Those who did not know Serbia before the War, nor even just after the War, can have no idea of the transformation that has taken place within her borders.
Imagine a poor man, whose ancestors have lived for centuries in hovels, suddenly set free from his poverty by the wave of a magic wand. Imagine him, after generations of bowing to the lord of the manor, suddenly transported into the home of that lord.
If you can imagine that you will understand what has happened to Serbia and you will understand a lot of the feverish activity whaich is so foreign to the minds of countries whose history has been so dramatically changed by the War.
You will notice that I speak of Serbia and not of Yugoslavia. I do it deliberately because the latter is a mere hybrid that exists for Serbia. All that is called Yugoslavia is in reality only Serbia, for all who act, all who command, all who count in any way at all in the affairs of tha nation are Serbian. The others have no influence at all upon the shaping of the national life. Considering also that the great mass of the Serbian people are illiterate, possessing the mentality of two centuries gone, it would be fair to say that Yugoslavia is not even Serbia- it is Belgrade.
In this Yugoslavia, with a territory about as large as that of Great Britain, lives a blind powerless amorphous mass of about fifteen million people which is animated, exploited and governed by a few thousands of Serbian officers, officials and business men installed in the Serb capital.
Yet nobody "in the swim" seems conscious of the enormity of the situation. Nobody seems to have analysed the state of mind induced by the events. The more I hear, the more I am led to realise that an irresistible current is sweeping things and people in Yugoslavia towards no one knows what disastrous events. There is no guiding principle other than the fevered desire for more of everything. The hypertropic development of Belgrade; the unbelievable revolution in morals and ideas which has taken place within the governing classes; the arrogance; the need to dominate and parade; the contempt for all that is beneath them; the hatred for all that is higher and stronger; the violent ambitions; and the aggressive imerialism, are all born of a too-sudden rise from obscurity to power.
The people of Belgrade who count by virtue of their official positions, their social importance, their fortune and their country in the eyes of the world, and who govern the rest of a nation as they choose, all live in a waking dream, a sort of collective hypnosis. To them prosperity is assured, and Belgrade, the metropolis of an all-powerful Yugoslavia, will tomorrow be one of the poles of Europe.
All the Serbs who today command Yugoslavia (and even those who combat the present masters and will replace them if the present regime is swept away by the excess of its abuses) have a common dogma, a similar faith in the unlimited future which awaits their race, and the irresistable and predestined force of expansion of Serbism.
All are Pan-Serbs.
In its origins and its manifestations, in the immense peril that it carries in itself, Pan-Serbism is an exact replica of Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism which have already cost the world a dreadful price.
Born of the dreams of a handful of doctrinairs; exalted by chauvinistic officers, by professors of a hasty and confused science. and by students enlightened by refugees encountered in foreign universities, Pan-Serbism is an affirmation of the Serbian pre-eminence over all Slav nationalities of the Balkan peninsula, and of its right of conquest over all the Slav lands south of the Danube. Its progress since it first appeared in the second half of the nineteenth century has been rapid, and its influence became immediately very great in all the elements of Serb society- SAVE IN THE POOR AND HUMBLE CLASS.
The Pan-Serbs are responsible for the territorial ambitions of Belgrade towards the Adriatic regions on one part, and towards Bulgarian Macedonia on the other, which began to be manifested after the Peace of Berlin.
Repulsed by Austria, who hoped to drive them away from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbs commenced by directing their efforts towards the south, on the Bulgarian border. Crushed by the Bulgars in 1885, they took their revenge in 1913. In the meantime, Serb professors and diplomats were affirming the integral Serbism of Bulgarian Macedonia, and thus peacefully paving the way for war.
Belgrade never lost sight of the Adriatic, but Austria-Hungary, for a long time, was too strong for her. The Serbs did not decide upon the move against Vienna until they were sure of Russian support. The day that it became a reality, Pan-Serbism, intoxicated as it was by the victories over the Turks and Bulgars, did not hesitate a second.
Ten million men paid for Pan-Serbism with their lives; and the thousands of war memorials in the villages of France, England, Germany and Russia are matched by the statue of Princip, the assassin, which the Serbs raised at Sarajevo by national subscription.
In October 1908 during an assembly of all the military and civil notabilities of Belgrade held at the City Hall under the presidency of General Bochko Jankovitch, a Pan-Serb organisation of propaganda and of combat was created. Henceforth Pan-Serb imperialism had a focus, a constitution and a name, and it was called the Narodna Odbrana.
Expression of all the aspirations, of all the hatreds, of all the great national expectations, the Narodna Odbrana did not tarry long in acquiring a formidable influence in Serbia: eighteen months after its creation it counted 223 local committees, it contained all the personalities of the kingdom, and its ramifications extended into Bosnia, into Herzegovian, into Slovenia, and even into Istria.
It was the Narodna Odbrana which condemned to death and executed King Alexander Obrenovitch and Queen Draga. It was the Narodna Odbrana which made a king of the refugee Peter Karageorgevitch, the father of Alexander since murdered at Marseilles.
The avowed official aim of the organisation created by General Jankovitch was the development of a patriotic spirit and a national solidarity between all the Slavs of the Balkans under the direction of the Serbian race. Its real aim was the preparation for a victorious war against Austria which would permit the Serbs to realise their designs on Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia.
In May 1911, a second secret Pan-Serb society, Unification or Death, better known as the Black Hand, was constituted under the direction of Colonel Dragoutine Dimitrievitch-Apis, chief of the Intelligence Service of the Serb general staff. Its task was to "work for the liberation of Serbs living under foreign oppression." It was not long before it had absorbed the most active elements of the Narodna Odbrana, and had imposed upon them one of its chiefs, Milan Vasitch.
The Black Hand immediately entered into conflict with Pasitch, the President of the Council, whom they accused of cowardice and obstruction to the Pan-Serb idea. It was eventually outlawed in June 1917. Its chiefs were accused of revolutionary intent and were shot at Salonica as the result of a trial by the judges of the War Council, whose "decision" was really a written order of the Prince-Regent, Alexander.
But the Pan-Serb idea which these dead men had personified has survived them.
The imperialistic programme of the Black Hand has been resumed, completed, carried to its height since 1917 by the White Hand, an official organisation created on the model of the Black Hand by trustworthy men of the Narodna Odbrana, who were at the same time henchmen of King Alexander.
By the army, which is entirely its puppet, and by the administartion in which it holds all the control levers so that none can hope to enter who are not its members, the White Hand is today absolutely and exclusively master of all the interior and exterior policies of Yugoslavia.
It has become the essential machinery of the State. It decided, and its members executed, the coup d'etat of the 6th January, 1929. The first dictator, General Givkovitch, is representative type of the Pan-Serb White Hand.
It was by the members of the White Hand, acting under the instructions of Belgrade, that the Venetian monuments of Dalmatia, in Croatia, were mutilated in December and January 1931; and so many others during the last ten years have been destroyed in Istria.
The destruction of the lions in Trojir was an act of defiance flung by the White Hand into the mouth of Italy. It was their way of demonstrating to the Italian populations in Dalamatia, and to Italy herself, that Yugoslavia intended to do just as she pleased on her own territory.
Pan-Serbism has not, unfortunately, restricted itself to destroying Latin and Bulgarian inscriptions and stone lions found on conquered territories.
It is today admitted without question that the double assassination at Sarajevo was its work. The material proof has been given,, not only by the publication in 1930 of official stenographic notes and the debates in extenso of the trial of the assassins, but by documents revealed since the War by Messrs. Sidney Fay and Bogicevitch, which show that Colonel Dimitrievitch-Apis, chief of the Intelligence Service of the great general staff of Belgrade and grand master of the Black Hand, was the instigator of the 28th June, 1914.
Colonel Dimitrievitch, moreover, admitted in his written confession a few hours before he faced the firing squad, that he had placed at the disposition of the assassins of the Archduke all the service of the Serbian military espionage even down to the bombs and revolvers which came from the arsenal of Kragoujevatz.
The directors of Pan-Serbism were naively persuaded that the worst that could result from the attack would be a localised conflict in which Austria and Russia only would come in conflict, the rest of Europe remaining specators of the conflict in which Slavism, they thought, was assured to carry off a brilliant victory.
Dragomir Stefanovitch, who was for fifteen years one of my intimate friends, and who was Serbian chrge d'affaires in Paris, told me these things years ago.
In the course of our conversations on the subject of the origin of the War, at Paris, where I saw him daily, and at Belgrade, where he had become one of the chiefs of the National Bank, Stefanovitch revealed to me what his functions had permitted him to learn of the great conflict.
He did not cease to condemn the Pan-Serbs of the Black Hand and their official accomplices for the way in which they precipitated the World War. His conscience cried out against the crime that they had committed with such sang-froid against the peace of the world.
"They were miserable wrentches!" he said. "But they were so powerful, they had succeeded so well in concealing their actions, and in placing accoplished facts before those who, like Pasitch, condemned their revolutionary methods of direct action, or more or less feared the consequances, that it was impossible to stop them. Pasitch knew! We all knew! But nothing could be done. If Russia had not supported us, if we had had to submit to the inquest which the Austrian ultimatum exacted in July 1914, we would have been caught with our hand in the sack. Well, well! We have won the match- but will we win the next one, for there is going to be a next one. Those people at Belgrade take themselves for geniuses, but really they are only asses who have been intoxicated by success. They are persuaded that victory is their natural right. They want to start trouble agin, and when they do start it we sahell not, perhaps, have either Russia or you to asve us."
The double victory in the Balkan War had already intoxicated the men of the Black Hand, and the miraculous triumph of 1918, in which they forget they palyed a most insignificant part, has nade their successors lose all prudence.
They are convinced that the force of Yugoslavia will increase illimitably and that its exterior alliancees shelter it from all surprises. Pan-Serbism, the absolute imbeciles without scruples who admit neither contradiction nor opposition.
All those whom it regards as obsticles to its policy of indefinite expansion Pan-Serbism looks upon as enemies; and there lies the expalnation of all that at first appears incomprehensible, absurd or odious in the attitude which has been adopted since the peace treaty by the government of Belgrade towards the non-Serb portions of their country.
Those who have witnessed the violence, the abuse, the cynical contempt with which the Serbs have treated the Croats and Slovenes are astonished that the Serbs do not realise that in acting thus they are working against themselves, compromising their future and undrmining with their own hands the ediifice of Yugoslavia.
But those who think in this fashion reason as Frenchmen, as Englishmen, as Americans; they judge and decide with their occidental mentalities; they do not judge as Serbs. If they did they would understand immediately.
The crimes which their best friends reproach them for having committed in Croatia, in Macedonia, in Banat, and in the Adriatic provinces are considered ny the Pan-Serbs as thoroughly justified and necessary. In their minds, the acts of which they are accused are not faults, but on the contrary are the affirmation of the justice of their political intuition. All the things that appear to foreign observers as aberrations of judgment, heavy with perilous consquences, the Pan-Serbs judge excellent, and declare them indispensable to the consolidation and to the existence of this Yugoslavia which, according to them, cannot live, cannot develop itself, and realise its integral destines, unless it has one mind, one thought, one destiny- the mind, the thought and the destiny of Belgrade.
This is textually the principle invoked by King Alexander and his Pan-Serb advisors to explain and justify the coup d'etat of 6th January, 1929, in which one of the first acts was to suppress, under pretext of unification, the very traces of the former administrative parties. Here, too, is a point which Frenchmen (and Englishmen also) might do well to realise. Pan-Serb circles do not love France. They dissimulate, but they do not even admire us.
Let us not harbour any illusions. The official manifestations, the academic discourses, the telegrams celebrating the fraternity of arms and the celebrations of victory, all that means precisely nothing. They are obligatory gestures and vain words. In reality, their respect for France rests on advantages which accrue to the government of Yugoslavia. Their respect will last so long as these advantages continue. Not a day more, not an hour!
The clique which directs Yugoslavia would have cast France off long ago had they been able to get along without us.
With the people it is different. The anonymous and obscure masses of the workshop and the fields, (among whom the veterans of the Great War and the refugees of the retreat of 1915 have sown the legend of the invincible force, the immense resources, and the fraternal camaraderie of the "Franski,") these are the ones who love us, admire us, and are grateful to us for what we did for Serbia during the War. Their sentiments towards us are about the same as those which they held for the Russians before Bolshevism.
The Pan-Serb circles do not love France. How could it be otherwise? Their atavisms, their education, their political ideals, their principles of government, their ambitions for the future, their intellectual and moral formation, all are entirely opposed to those of France.
When they permit themselves to speak freely, Pan-Serb ministers and high officials sneer contemptuously at the weakness of our statesmen, the peril of our democratic institutions, and the blindness of the concessions to which we have consented during the last ten years. "Ah! If we had your army and your billions," one of them said to me. "How we would make use of them!"
Yet it is by the grace of France that their country is still existing; it is to France that they are indebted for all they possess. France has been their inexhaustable banker for forteen years. Twice since 1918 she has saved them from bankruptcy. French power still today is the shield behind which the dictatorship of Belgrade protects itself against the popular wrath.
But what France has done and is continuing to do for them is nothing in the minds of the Pan-Serbs compared with what France has not done. We may have fought because of them, we may have saved thier armies in 1915, but even so they cannot forget that in 1918 we halted the Serb regiments who were disposed to pillage Sofia. We made it possible for them to gain Macedonia, certainly, but they prefer to remember that we obliged them to evacuate Bulgaria and that we did not support their claims upon Fiume. We have fallen out with Italy because of them, but they hold it against us that we have not ceased for ten years to put pressure upon the government of Belgrade in order to constrain them to maitain peace in the Balkans.
The Pan-Serbs have forgotten the services rendered, and they do not pardon us for the other things because of those services. Let us not be astonished. Ever since there have been politicians who envy the property of others, history has been the same. The Imperialism of weak people has always turned to pitless egotism when they have become strong.
Of this kind is the imperialism of Belgrade, and I will insist once more on this point- I do not say "the imperialism of the Serb people," because the people themselves are simple, calm, reasonable and terribly tried by six years of war. They ask only for peace for themselves and for others. They have no part whatsoever in the responsibility of the criminal errors of the governors, nor for the inconceivable madness of their schemes for expansion.
Here is what the officers and non-commissioned officers make their men learn in all the garrisons of Yugoslavia. It is taken from the Manual of the Soldier, edited by Colonel Kostich of the general staff, under the direction of the government of Belgrade. I cite it word for word:
"All our provinces are not yet reunited to our kingdom. The Italians still hold all of Istria with Goritza, Gradisca and Trieste as far as Izonzo; the city of Zara and its surrounding country, the islands of Cherso, Lussin, Lastua and Pelagosa, as well as the southern part of Slovenia. Austria still holds the northern part of Carinthia Steiermark. The Hungarians still hold the northern part of Baranya and of Prekomurje. The Roumanians still hold the eastern part of Banat. The Bulgarians still occupy the regions of Vidina and of Sofia. The Albanians still hold Scutari and a part of northern Albania.
In all the elementary and secondary schools of Yugoslavia, the same instruction is given each day to a half-million children, compulsorily and officially. The same mission of liberation of "brothers still oppresssed" is presented to them as the sacred duty which will be incumbent upon them when they become men.
This hatred is buried systematically in the hearts of children and young men who learn each day by hundreds of thousands that there are lands so-called foreign that are in reality Yugoslav and must be torn from those who retain them. Tears, ruin and bloodshed will follow on this for all the people who dare to remain bound to the destiny of Yugoslavia. Psychology teaches us that there is nothing so potent as an idea sown into a young mind- beware, then, of these babies educated to war.
You will understand why so much suspicion, so much hostility, and so much hatred in Central Europe and the Balkans surrounds Yugoslavia. Those who do no know and who are astonished about it attribute it to the jealousy which the prosperity and the power of Belgrade inspires in its neighbors.
Those hostile neighbors, whose aggressive spirit Belgrade does not cease to denounce, are hostile because they know the secret intentions of the men who dominate Yugoslavia. No one shelters the least illusion as to what is being prepared. Born of war, aggrandised by war, Yugoslavia is led by the megalomania of its chiefs towards a future war. Victorious three times in succession, tripled in territory, more than doubled in population, increased tenfold in riches and possibilities, she is not yet satisfied.
The Manual of the Soldier is terrifying because of what it reveals to us of the secret projects of Pan-Serbism, and of the fearful mentality of conquering nationalism that it is trying to inculcate into the young Yugoslav generations. Yet certain geographic maps, officially edited at Belgrade, are even more terrifying in their import.
The one I have before me while writing this, and which is by no means intended for exportation to France, represents a "Greater Serbia" encircling Trieste, Fiume, all of Istria; extending up into Carinthia and towards the Austrian Tyrol to Gratz; and descending to Scutari, Drama, Thasos, and into Bulgaria well past Sofia.
It is not less ambitious than the maps which Pan-Germanism prepared to show the proposed annexation of Belgium, Denmark, the East and North of France, Basle, Geneva and Lausanne.
Do not tell the Pan-Serbs that their dreams of hegemony will shatter on insurmountable obsticles, and that they are preparing their country for a supreme disaster, for they will not listen to you. Whatever service you have been able to render them in the past, whatever friendship you have borne their country, you will become forthwith suspect and an enemy. They will accept the advice of no one, or if they are obliged to appear to accept it, they will not follow it. They will admit no contradiction. They wish neither to undrstand nor to know. They intend to follow to the end the road which they have traced for themselves. They do not believe that it was only by a miraculous stroke of destiny that the miniature Balkan kingdom of 1914 has become the powerful European State today.
The hypnosis of Pan-Serbism dominates everything. In the army, the diplomatic corps, the government councils, the great administartions, the men of Narodna Odbarana are everywhere, and even though they appear to occupy but a psot of secondary importance, in reality it is thay who command, because all the forces of the secret organizations are behind them.
And let no one believe that this is a new phenomenon, a result of the state of intellectual and moral disequilibrium produced by the dictatorship and which will disappear if the dictatorship caves in. It has been thus at Belgrade since the day that thses Pan-Serb organizations- first Narodna Odbrana, and then the Black Hand and the White Hand made themselves masters of the State.
Who, for example, was this Colonel Dragoutine Dimitrievitch-Apis, whose action was decisive in starting the World War? He was, I repeat, simply the chief of the Intelligence Service of the great general staff, that is to say, a subordinate.
But this did not prevent him from passing over the heads of his superiors, over the head of the Chief of the Government himself, and deciding, preparing and organising in its most minute details the attack of Sarajevo. He chose the authors of the attack, he sent them revolvers and bombs taken from the State arsenals of Kragoujevatz, he had them escorted to the frontier of Bosnia by officers of the regular army, he had them guided and cared for in Austrian territory by agents of the Serbian espionage, and he had them conducted in some underhand fashion to the quay of Miljocka behind which they (Tchabrinivitch and Gavrilo Princip) lay in ambush to strike.
Pasitch knew what was being prepared, but capable Prime Minister as he was, he could do nothing against it. The forces of Pan-Serbism were behind it. The all-powerful minister met in the shadows something more powerful than he.