The little Balkan Kingdom of Serbia was a principality under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire for half a century after its resurrection during the Napoleonic Wars. The Serbs engaged in a war with Turkey in 1876, which led to the intervention of Russia, and to the recognition by the powers of the independence of Serbia in the Treaty of Berlin. The limits of the new kingdom were so drawn as to exclude the northern part of Macedonia, which was left to Turkey, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the administration of which was entrusted to Austria-Hungary, without detaching these territories from the Ottoman Empire. The little principality of Montenegro, whose inhabitants had successfully resisted the Turks for centuries, was also declared independent by the Treaty of Berlin. In 1908, after the Young Turk revolution, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, little Serbia succeeded in nearly doubling her territory and adding 50 per cent to her population at the expense of Turkey and Bulgaria. An important part of the new territory, however, contained a non-Serbian majority.

Of the Serbian-speaking peoples, known as the Jugoslavs, considerably more than half were in the Hapsburg dominions at the outbreak of the World War. The kingdom of Serbia had a population of 3,000,000 before the Balkan Wars, which added 1,500,000 more, of whom 1,000,000 by the most liberal estimate could be considered Serbs. In round numbers the Jugoslavs in 1918 were distributed as follows:

We must have these figures before us to realize the tremendous difficulties confronting the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, created by the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon. Greater Rumania was formed by adding between four and five million liberated Rumanians and an equal number of alien peoples to an independent kingdom already containing more than seven million Rumanians. Greater Serbia was formed by adding 8,000,000 liberated Jugoslavs and the half-million already independent Montenegrins to 4,000,000 independent Serbians. The figures alone demonstrate the difference in the problem. If the Serbians were to maintain their supremacy over the redeemed brethren, it was going to be a case of the tail trying to wag the dog.

But there is a still wider divergence between the problems of Greater Rumania and Greater Serbia than is shown by the figures. The redeemed Rumanians could be assimilated with those of the kingdom into one nation. They had a common interest in standing together against alien elements formidable in number. In Greater Serbia the Serbian-speaking elements had been separated for centuries. With radically different social and political, religious and cultural backgrounds, amalgamation was a complicated problem. Many Serbians have attempted to draw a parallel between the unification of the Italians and that of the Jugoslavs. The analogy does not hold, because the Italians were all of the same religion, they were a product of the same Occidental culture, and their social and political experience had not, in modern times, at least, been dissimilar. The Jugoslavs, on the other hand, had been separated since the Middle Ages by formidable barriers.

Serbs and Montenegrins are Orthodox; Bosnians, Herzegovinians, and a portion of the inhabitants of what is known as New Serbia are Orthodox, Catholic, and Mohammedan; while most of the Croats, Dalmatians, and Slovenes are Catholic. The Jugoslavs of the Hapsburg Empire are Occidentals, and have always been under the influence of Rome. Most of them escaped wholly the Ottoman yoke. They have evolved a high degree of civilization, as we Westerners understand that term, and have little except language in common with the Serbians, a people that lived for hundreds of years under the shadow of the Crescent. It was impossible to expect that the more cultivated Serbian-speaking peoples of the Hapsburg Empire should be willing to play second fiddle to a Balkan people whose manner of life and habits of mind were semi-Oriental.

When the fortunes of war began to point to an Entente victory in 1918, it would have been possible to secure the recognition of a Jugoslav state, to be formed by the union of the Jugoslav portions of Austria and Hungary with Serbia. But the Serbian Government failed to recognize the barriers of which we have just spoken, and aimed to use the victory as a means of aggrandizing Serbia. The new territories were to come into the existing kingdom without conditions. Premier Pashitch tried to get the Entente Powers and the United States to agree to the annexation of Bosnia by Serbia when the Austro-Hungarian armies withdrew. In the summer of 1918, when the Czechoslovak National Council was officially recognized as trustee of the future Czechoslovak Government, it was intimated that a similar step would be taken on behalf of the Jugoslavs if only Serbia agreed to throw in her lot with the proposed Jugoslavia. Rumania and Greece joined the Entente Powers in urging this course upon the Belgrade Government. Premier Pashitch refused. The golden opportunity was lost; for in October Italy declared that she would countenance no such move. When, with the break-up of the Dual Monarchy, Agram proclaimed the independence of Croatia on October 28, 1918, it was too late to arrange what would have been feasible in the summer. On November 9 the Belgrade and Agram Governments issued at Geneva a joint declaration to work together until a constituent assembly, elected by universal suffrage, should adopt a constitution for the new states, whose boundaries were as yet indefinite.

This modus vivendi, accepted at the eleventh hour by Pashitch, might have lasted throughout the Peace Conference had it not been for the fear of Italian aggression, which prompted the Agram Government to beg for the assistance of the Serbian army to save Laibach and Fiume from Italian occupation. In taking over the territories assigned to them by the armistice of November 3, the Italian armies acted with a high hand, suppressing the Jugoslav national movement promptly and ruthlessly. Italian nationalism was being worked up to fever heat by the propaganda to make the Adriatic an Italian lake. The Dalmatian League at Rome declared that Dalmatia was to be Italian. D’Annunzio issued an impassioned appeal for Fiume, the words of which he soon afterward proved himself able to translate into actions.

The Agram National Council’s hand was forced. Instead of waiting to arrange on equal terms with the Belgrade Government the details of union, as the Declaration of Geneva had provided, the Council proclaimed, on November 23, the union of the territories under its control with the Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro. Three days later a national assembly at Podgoritza deposed King Nicholas and his dynasty and voted for the union of Montenegro with the new state. Prince Alexander, as regent, announced the birth of “free and united Jugoslavia” at Belgrade on December 1, 1918.

When the Jugoslavs appeared with a united delegation at the Peace Conference, Italy insisted that its members be acknowledged only as Serbians, acting in the name of the Belgrade Government. The union of the Jugoslav portions of the Hapsburg Empire with the Kingdom of Serbia had not been recognized by Italy, or by the other Entente Powers, for that matter;14 and, as such an event was a thing of the future, to be decided by the Peace Conference, Italy declared that she would not consent to have decisions anticipated or prejudiced by acceptance of the union as a fait accompli. Throughout the Conference Italy maintained this uncompromising attitude.

It was after issuing from a conference in which the future of the Jugoslavs was the principal topic that Mr. Lloyd George said that the peace treaties threatened “to Balkanize Europe.” The full significance of this remark is grasped when we realize that the Jugoslav cause at Paris was not advanced by delegates who presented a solid front and followed a consistent policy in pressing their national claims. Pashitch and his colleagues from Belgrade, dismayed by Italian opposition at times and at others more interested in the Banat of TemesvÁr and Macedonia than in the Adriatic, held back from whole-hearted support of Croat and Slovene claims. In their attitude toward their “redeemed brethren” the Serbs displayed curiously mixed sentiments. If one were rash enough to attempt to express the Serbian feeling in one sentence, he might put it in this way, that the Serbs possessed, in relation to the Hapsburg Jugoslavs, a superior military complex and an inferior cultural complex.

But to be fair to the Serbs one must remember their recent military achievements and the martyrdom of the World War. They had put the Serbian race in a position of commanding the respect of the world and of being listened to at Paris because of their exploits and their sufferings. Then, too, they had fought for the Entente Powers while the rest of the Jugoslavs had fought for the Central Empires. It meant a great deal to them to renounce the historic name of their country and the flag under which they had fought, and to lose their identity in a new “Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.” The change of the red-blue-white flag to a blue-white-red flag was even more of a renunciation. On the practical side of the question, Premier Pashitch had to think of two other considerations: Serbia, bled white, risked a new war with Italy in championing the Croat side of the Fiume question and the Slovene side of the Istrian question; and the Serbians, with a hundred years of independent existence behind them, risked being submerged in the new state with its Occidental and more highly educated Croato-Slovene majority. What leader, under these circumstances, would not have paused to weigh the alternatives of Greater Serbia and Jugoslavia? The dilemma was all the more distressing because Pashitch realized that at the best he would have to sacrifice half a million Slovenes to Italy and would thereby incur their enmity for himself and for the Belgrade Government as well!

In the midst of currents and counter-currents of sentiment and sound diplomatic common sense, the Jugoslavs whirled through the mad year of 1919, avoiding a decision as to the precise form the new state should take. Until the treaties with Austria and Hungary were signed, the Jugoslavs concentrated upon the problems demanding attention at Paris, which were (1) resisting the pretensions of Italy in Dalmatia and at the head of the Adriatic; (2) getting as much territory as possible from Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria; and (3) trying to prevent the award of the Banat of TemesvÁr to Rumania.

Two problems of minor importance came up: (1) the repudiation by influential Montenegrins of the union voted by the Podgoritza assembly; and (2) fixing a frontier with the Albanians.

The Banat question with Rumania was compromised by a Solomonic division of the disputed territory. As we have seen elsewhere, Jugoslav ambitions in regard to Albania were thwarted by the Albanians themselves, whose success in defending their independence was followed by the intervention of the League of Nations. The Montenegrin revolt was suppressed. Serbian claims at the expense of Bulgaria were allowed in the Treaty of Neuilly. The Treaty of Trianon gave the new state generous frontiers at the expense of Hungary. The Treaty of St.-Germain provided for a plebiscite in the Klagenfurt district of Carinthia, which resulted in a victory for the Austrians. But the Paris Conference left to direct negotiations between Italy and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes the fixing of the frontier with Italy.

For eighteen months it looked as if war would break out between Italians and Jugoslavs. But the latter were not sufficiently united to make possible an uncompromising attitude toward the Italians. In violation of President Wilson’s ninth point in the famous Fourteen, the Jugoslavs finally agreed to sacrifice a large portion of the Slovenes, to renounce their claim to Fiume, and to agree to the incorporation of the Zara district and some of the Dalmatian islands in Italy. This compromise, called the Treaty of Rapallo, was signed on November 28, 1920. Like other compromise frontiers in the general settlement after the World War, the Rapallo arrangement created an irredentist problem more complicated and dangerous than the one it was supposed to solve. Italy was confirmed in the possession of Istria and secured a frontier in the hinterland of Trieste and the Isonzo Valley more advantageous than the frontier of the 1915 secret Treaty of London. Fiume was made a free state “in perpetuo.” Zara and its hinterland became an Italian enclave in Dalmatia. The islands of Cherso and Lussin, with “minor islands and rocks” off the Istrian Peninsula, went to Italy. Former Austro-Hungarian subjects were allowed to opt for Italian nationality, without the obligation to transfer their domicile outside Jugoslav territory. Reciprocity for Jugoslavs residing within the new limits of the Kingdom of Italy was denied.

A glance at the map will show how great a blow to the prosperity of the Slovenes and the Croats was the creation of the Free State of Fiume. The loss of Trieste was serious enough to the Slovenes; that of Fiume cut them off entirely from the sea; while Fiume, where the Julian and Dinaric Alps meet, is the logical outlet for Croatia, Hungary, and Slavonia. Italy justified her seizure of Fiume (the fiction of a free state is transparent) on the ground that the majority of the port’s inhabitants were Italians. If the suburb of Susak be counted as part of the city, even this claim was debatable. But the fact that Danzig’s population was over 90 per cent pure German did not weigh at Versailles against the decision to detach Danzig from Germany to make it an outlet for Poland. Memel was similarly taken from German to be later awarded to Lithuania. Here we see the application of two weights and two measures, in the case of Fiume against a state created by the Peace Conference itself! The moral of most of the decisions made since 1918 is that the supreme argument in international relations is the possession of force. Taken as a whole, the map of Europe, as redrawn since 1918, has been more influenced by the possession of superior force by its beneficiaries than any of the territorial readjustments of the nineteenth century.

Advantageous as it was, there was a loud outcry in Italy against the Treaty of Rapallo, and it has not yet been fully put into force. As I write these lines the Jugoslavs are vainly endeavoring in a conference at Abbazia to secure loyal fulfilment of Italian promises and to make conditions tolerable for the foreign trade of Jugoslavia.

The frontier disputes, entailing the possibility of war with Italy, Rumania, or Albania, made necessary the postponement of elections to the Constituent Assembly until November, 1920. During the two transitional years a provisional parliament of an extraordinary character had met at Belgrade. Its Serbian members were those of the Skupshtina elected in June, 1914, and the Croatian members were of the Diet elected under Hungarian rule in January, 1914; while the Montenegrin deputies were chosen by the revolutionary assembly of Podgoritza in November, 1918. The other representatives belonged to haphazard local organizations of non-official character and doubtful legality.

Internal politics singularly aided the Italians in holding out for the terms eventually embodied in the Treaty of Rapallo; and none can study the political intrigues of this period without becoming convinced that many of the Serbians, had it not been for outside pressure, would have united successfully to throw overboard the program of a Jugoslavia for Pashitch’s dream of a Greater Serbia, with an outlet to the sea at Scutari at the expense of Albania. Thanks largely to the skill and devotion of M. Vesnitch (Serbian minister at Paris during the World War and the Peace Conference), who assumed the premiership at a critical moment, the various elements among the Jugoslavs were brought finally to an agreement by which the election for a Constituent Assembly could be held. It was a sign of the weakness of the new state, however, that the non-Slavic populations were not allowed to vote, although they were about 20 per cent of the electorate. Premier Vesnitch realized that it was going to be difficult enough to form a working assembly of Jugoslavs alone, without the added confusion of alien elements!

In Croatia, the peasant leader Raditch, who had been in prison for advocating a republican and federal form of government, was elected with fifty of his followers; while the Croat and Slovene Clericals were equally opposed to centralization. The Communists, also for a republic and decentralization, returned fifty-eight members. In the confusion of many parties, none holding a majority, the veteran Pashitch became premier once more and began to rule with a heavy hand and by skilful intrigues. He was confronted with the passive resistance of the great majority of Croats and Slovenes. The fifty members of Raditch’s Croatian party followed the Irish Nationalist example and refused to take their seats at Belgrade. Pashitch got rid of the fifty-eight Communists by expelling them.

The attempt of ex-Emperor Karl to regain the Hungarian throne at the end of March, 1921, the failure of all efforts from outside and inside to overthrow the Soviet Government in Russia, and the recrudescence of Mohammedan strength through the successes of the Turkish Nationalist movement acted as a sobering influence upon the Jugoslavs, who realized that their newly won liberties would be jeopardized if there were political anarchy at home. Dangers from abroad gave Premier Pashitch the temporary support of the most influential elements, who preferred a centralized Serbia to disintegration or Communism. The constitution, providing for a single chamber, was finally adopted on June 28, 1921, which was supported by all the Jugoslavs with the exception of the Croatians and Slovenes.

King Peter died in August, 1921, and was succeeded by Alexander, who had been acting as regent during all the period of internal confusion since 1914. A marriage was arranged for Alexander with Princess Marie of Rumania, whose older sister had married the Crown Prince of Greece. The wedding took place in June, 1922, and was the occasion of a demonstration of friendship with Rumania and a strengthening of the defensive alliance of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Jugoslavia against any revision of the treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon.

King Alexander played a rÔle during the World War that endeared him to his people, and he has entered upon a task of uniting the Jugoslavia peoples with a great deal of personal prestige. The Rumanian marriage alliance is popular, because the Jugoslavs see in it a guarantee against a new war in the Balkans. For all that, the Monarchy will be a really constructive force only if Croatians and Slovenes are regarded as equal partners in the new country, held together (as Austria was held together) by common attachment to the crown. When the people amalgamate in such a way as to form one country, Jugoslavia may become a republic. The attitude toward the monarchy is one of personal affection and esteem for the present sovereign, and of conviction that the monarchy has still a useful part to fulfil in developing and consolidating the political life of the country. But the ideal of the Jugoslavs outside the old kingdom is a republic. One might hazard the opinion that republicanism is the inevitable tendency in all Balkan countries. I had the privilege of being present at the marriage festivities in Belgrade, and found that other observers of contemporary Balkan history shared my feeling that the King and Queen of Serbia are simply convenient symbols, internally and internationally, of the period of transition and amalgamation through which the new Jugoslavia is passing.

The General Election in April, 1923, however, indicated that the danger of internal disruption has not yet passed, and that some form of federalism will have to be worked out if Jugoslavia is to hope to become a country with representative institutions. The new Chamber contains thirteen parties, several of which are divided by personal antagonism among their leaders. The Radicals, who represent national Serbian traditions and whose policy is centralization held ninety-two seats out of 417 in 1920, and in the recent election secured 109 seats in the reduced Chamber of 313. They are the largest single party, but even if the Serbian Democrats united with them they would still be in a minority. The Democrats are divided among themselves on the issue of centralization versus federation. Neither Radicals nor Democrats obtained a single seat in Croatia or Slovenia. The most remarkable gain was that of Raditch’s Croatian peasant party. In 1920 Raditch had fifty seats out of 417; in 1923 he has seventy out of 313. The twenty-two Slovene Clericals and the two Montenegrins are also Federalists. The disappearance of the Communists and Republicans and the remarkable shrinking of Agrarians indicate that social and economic questions are, for the time being, subordinated to that of the question whether the country can be molded into a homogeneous whole or whether there shall be three autonomous states united in a triune kingdom. The issue is squarely before the country; for when the Chamber assembled Premier Pashitch discovered that by no combination could he secure a working majority over the Croatian, Slovenian, and other Federalists.

The situation is by no means desperate. Much that one sees now to condemn will disappear with a little more experience and the mellowing influence of time. It took the United States six years for the thirteen original units to agree upon a modus vivendi, and from 1789 to 1865 to work out the problem of national unity. In sizing up the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, we must distinguish between inherent weaknesses and those that are the result of lack of time or experience. Most of the difficulties in administration and politics arise from newness of the association and the inability to find trained men for governmental posts. Local antagonisms must be overcome, and conflicting local interests reconciled. As soon as railways and ports are constructed and the first shock of marriage overcome, there is no reason to believe that these peoples, occupying rich territories and bound together by the ties of blood and language, cannot bridge the cultural gulf that separates them and work out together a better future than they enjoyed separately in the past. But there can be no question of assimilation of one element by the other; there must be amalgamation.

The external dangers and difficulties are of another order and will not easily be overcome unless the Jugoslavic peoples are allowed to work out their own destiny.

Now that Bulgaria is completely disarmed, that Greece has her hands full for years to come, and that Rumania manifests strikingly her intention of remaining on friendly terms with Serbia, the large standing army and the alliance with the other Succession States of the Hapsburg Empire can only mean that the unity of the territories now included in Jugoslavia has not been achieved by the will of the peoples included within the frontiers of this new state. It is an indication of the fundamental weakness of the new Europe of the Paris treaties. The new states were given the advantage every time when it was a question of strategic or economic frontiers; and while the principle of self-determination was invoked to create the new states, it was denied when the new states demanded frontiers to suit their convenience or when they were encouraged by the interests of one or the other of the Entente Powers to ask for frontier districts to which they had not aspired. Jugoslavia suffered at the hands of Italy, which, being a big power, made her frontiers as she chose. But Jugoslavia was allowed to treat the vanquished states as she herself had been treated by Italy.

The frontiers of Jugoslavia are a source of weakness and danger, like those of Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. If the real interests of these peoples had been considered, and not the policies of great powers, more permanent frontier lines could have been traced. But the rÔles of Austria and Hungary have simply been reversed. The four Succession States are compelled to guard their frontiers arms in hand, and are saddled with alien border populations by the million, which can be governed only by military intimidation. Thus the old European evils of irredentist agitation, of harsh treatment of minorities, of government by military force, have not been done away with.

The Treaty of Neuilly increased materially the already large number of Bulgarians under Serbian rule. Macedonian mountaineers, comitadjis by profession, have not accepted Serbian overlordship and are waging against the Serbs the guerrilla warfare that baffled the Turks and proved so costly to them. The Macedonian League is giving the Serbs much trouble and anxiety. In a comminatory note on this subject, one finds M. Nintchitch, the minister of foreign affairs, using to Bulgaria the same argument and employing the same threats Austria used and employed against Serbia, when it was a question of the activities of the Narodny Obrana in Bosnia. We remember that Austria asserted that these activities were engineered from Serbian territory, and it was a summons to stop them that led to the World War. And now Jugoslavia, alarmed over the spirit of rebellion among her Bulgarian subjects in Macedonia, talked to Bulgaria as Serbia used to object to Austria talking to her!

After four years of anxious effort Jugoslav statesmen began to see the danger of having hostile neighbors and constant frontier disputes when internal questions were still far from being settled. A sensible attitude was adopted toward Italy and Bulgaria. Stubbornness in the west and intimidation in the east were abandoned as profitless. In the spring of 1923 the Jugoslavs got together with the Italians at Abbazia (and later Rome) and with the Bulgarians at Nish. Moot questions were frankly thrashed out. With Italy the problem of Porto Baros, on the coast near the frontier with the Free State of Fiume, was solved by mutual compromise. With Bulgaria it was decided that practical measures should be taken by both states to minimize the inconveniences and political agitation of comitadji raids. Bulgaria was to be allowed to conscript frontier guards, and Serbia was granted the right to pursue comitadjis on Bulgarian territory.

The debacle of Greece in Asia Minor, the dramatic return of the Turks to Thrace, and the sudden overthrow of the Stambulisky rÉgime in Bulgaria compelled the new Jugoslav Government to make a military demonstration in Macedonia in June, 1923. From Nish to Strumnitza troops were concentrated. The Serbians intimated at Lausanne to the Turks and at Sofia to the Bulgarians that no move to modify or upset the Treaty of Neuilly would be tolerated. In view of what has happened at Lausanne, however, it is doubtful if this attitude can be maintained. When the Turks successfully resisted the Treaty of SÈvres, they made a precedent and set an example for the other conquered nations. The Bulgarian revolution is the logical result of the success of the Angora Nationalist movement. Jugoslavia is not yet secure, in so far as the Balkans are concerned, in her fruits of victory.