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It happens that I have no near relatives of military age, and neither I nor any near relative is likely to suffer by the war. But when I brood over the agony of the less fortunate millions, over the harrowing experience of Belgians, Poles, and Serbs, over the whole ghastly orgy of blood and tears in Europe, I feel unutterable disdain of these paltry efforts to justify the ways of God to man.
The Croats think that because they are more educated than the Serbs they should be the dominant party in the government of the new State. The quarrel is aggravated by religious difference, Croats being Roman Catholics and Serbs Orthodox. A number of the separatist leaders, the chief of whom is Radic, an ex-bookseller, languish in gaol. These are evidently self-centred people.
In Dalmatia the Serbs played a similar rôle in the service of Venice, which, like Austria-Hungary, was frequently at war with the Turks. During the sixteenth century Ragusa enjoyed its greatest prosperity; it paid tribute to the Sultan, was under his protection, and never rebelled. It had a quasi monopoly of the trade of the entire Balkan peninsula.
While in the west it sowed the seeds of United Italy and United Germany, which the nineteenth century was to bring to fruition, in the Balkans it stirred waters which had seemed dead for centuries, and led to the uprising of the Serbs and Greeks, then of the Roumanians, and finally a generation later of the Bulgarians.
Both Serb and Montenegrin are working to clear off the Albanians from the debatable districts so as to show a Slav majority to the Commission." The ill-timed revolt gave them a chance of doing this. The Serbs fell on the Gostivar district, burning the villages with petroleum, and throwing such people as could not escape, back into the flames with their bayonets.
These did not belong to the Magyars alone, but to all the races that settled in the country, to the Sclaves, to the Wallachians, the Serbs, and to others, whatever their race or their extraction. Yet none but the Nobles were privileged.
The Serbs also undertook to build a railway through their country to the Turkish and Bulgarian frontiers. The memory of Gladstone, who specially espoused Montenegro's cause in this matter, is held in the greatest reverence in the brave little mountain country, but unfortunately the ports themselves are economically absolutely useless.
However suspicious Rumania may be of Russia, however bitter the quarrels between Bulgars, Greeks, and Serbs, it is not, nor can it ever be natural, that peoples who have groaned under Turkish despotism for centuries should, after only one year of complete liberation, join hands with an old and dreaded enemy not only against their fellow sufferers, but even against those who came 'to die that they may live'. These are the Dead Sea fruits of dynastic policy.
A whiff of peril, pitfalls to be leaped, some days or weeks of dire uncertainty, men to be won, and factions placated, any or all of these might have appeased the jealous gods. But this instant success would shock Olympus. It cried for contrast by its very flight to the pinnacle. None suspected this mood in the chosen King. He charmed these volatile and romantic Serbs by his naturalness.
When mentioning this later to a company of Serbs they asked "What was the name of the man you had an introduction to?" I gave it. They exchanged glances. "That family was in trouble formerly about the murder of Prince Michel" was all that was said. He was in point of fact a partisan of the Karageorgevitch family. And the Mayor was a pro-Obrenovitch.
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