United States or Gambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Diet ceased to meet, the constitution of Croatia was in abeyance, the elections were characterised by corruption and violence such as eclipsed even the infamous Hungarian elections of 1910; the Press and the political leaders were singled out for special acts of persecution and intimidation." Friedjung, the distinguished Austrian historian.
He founded his article upon what he believed to be genuine documents, and on the evidence of Nastitch, the Bosnian, who had given sensational evidence at the Cetinje bomb trial. Nastitch proved to be a professional spy, and the evidence forged. Friedjung lost his case, and the sentences of the condemned men were annulled.
Friedjung, who made extensive use of documents supplied him by the Vienna Foreign Office. His accusations immediately provoked an action for libel on the part of three leaders of the Croato-Serb coalition who were implicated, in December 1909.
This was followed in December 1909 by the even more famous Friedjung trial. In March 1909 Count Achrenthal had begun in Vienna a violent press campaign against Serbia, accusing the Serbian Government and dynasty of complicity in the concoction of nefarious designs and conspiracies against the integrity of Austria-Hungary.
During the Friedjung trial it was again chiefly due to Professor Masaryk's efforts that forgeries of the Vienna Foreign Office, intended to discredit the Yugoslav movement, were exposed and the responsibility for them fixed on Count Forgach, the Austro-Hungarian minister in Belgrade.
In some parts of France where the wet-nurse industry flourishes so greatly that nearly all the children are brought up by hand, it has been found that the percentage of rejected conscripts is nearly double that for France generally. Corresponding results have been found by Friedjung in a large German athletic association.
The extent to which our attitude at the Hague Conference damaged us in the eyes of the whole world is no longer a secret to anybody. As Heinrich Friedjung rightly observes: "At the Hague Conference German diplomacy delivered itself up to the vengeance of the pacifists, like a culprit."
But Forgách, though publicly denounced as "Count Azev," was not allowed to fall into disgrace; on the contrary, he had become within two years of his exposure permanent Under-Secretary at the Ballplatz, and inspirer of new plots to discredit and ruin Serbia. The scandals of the Friedjung Trial led to the fall of the Governor of Croatia, but there was no change of system.
The trial, in truth, resembles the case of The Times v. Parnell. The Times, like Friedjung, lost its case not because the charge was false, but because all the evidence produced was forged. That Parnell was intimately acquainted with and connected with all the anti-English work going on in Ireland is now well known. Friedjung was correct.
Heinrich Friedjung, referring to this incident, says: "Quite superfluously it occurred to the German Government to make our East-Asiatic Squadron, under Admiral Diederichs, appear before Manila precisely at the moment when, in 1898, the decision was made regarding the Philippines. This was done simply out of a pointless consciousness of power, without any intention to cause offence."
Word Of The Day