Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/1163

Rh

Yugoslav to transmit to the American Government a project assigning Bosnia to Serbia as " compensation " in the event of a patched-up peace. On July 25 at the London Mansion House Mr. Balfour publicly indorsed the full Yugoslav programme, as formulated by the Serbian minister, Mr. Jovanovic: but the latter's full report to his home Government was answered by a severe snub, and during the winter he too was dismissed for his Yugoslav sentiments. When on Aug. 9 Mr. Balfour officially recognized the Czechoslovak National Council as " trustee of the future Czechoslovak Government," he was ready to extend a similar recognition to the Yugoslav cause, but as a preliminary condition he very reasonably insisted upon unanimity between those who claimed to represent the two groups of Yugoslavs. Pasic adhered to his standpoint, and even the efforts of Venizelos and Take Jonescu to bring him and Trumbic together were unavailing. When in the last week of Oct. the rival statesmen moved from London to Paris, all hope of Yugoslav recognition before the opening of the Peace Conference had vanished, owing to the stiffening in the attitude of Italy.

Zagreb declares Independence. One of the first steps of the new Zagreb Government was to recognize Trumbic and his committee as its representatives abroad, and to send delegates to Switzerland to discuss the measures for consummating national unity. On Nov. 9 the Declaration of Geneva was signed by Pasic as Serbian Premier, Father Korosec, Doctor Cingrija (mayor and deputy of Ragusa) and Doctor Zerjav (a Slovene Progressive) for the Zagreb Council, Trumbic and four others for the Yugoslav Committee, and Trifkovic, Draskovic and Marinkovic as chiefs of the Serbian opposition parties. " By this act," it was laid down, " the new State appears and stands from to-day as an indivisible state-unit and as a member of the Society of Free Nations. The former frontiers no longer exist." The Governments of Belgrade and Zagreb were to retain their former spheres until a constituent assembly, elected by univer- sal suffrage, could draw up a new constitution. Yielding to the unanimous desire of the other delegates, Pasic officially re- quested the Entente to recognize the Zagreb Council as the supreme authority in the ex-Austro-Hungarian provinces, and Trumbic as its accredited representative in the West, until unification could be completed. The repeated efforts made by Pasic to avert so distasteful a decision were held to disqualify him from the leadership of the new united Cabinet, but in order to secure his renunciation it was found necessary to exclude the other party chiefs. This arrangement, however, never really came into force; for the simple reason that telegraphic communications between the West and Serbia were hopelessly irregular, and that events continued to move, with the advance of the Serbian army and civil authorities from the South and of the Italians from the West. On Nov. 8 Gen. Franchet d'Esperey received at Belgrade a Hungarian peace delegation under Count Karolyi, and concluded with them an armistice whose provisions still further complicated the situation. No orders were given for the evacuation of Slovakia; in Transylvania an impossible shaped line was drawn, such as left Cluj (Kolozsvar) and many pure Rumanian districts in Magyar hands; while the Rumanians were incensed by the assignment of Temesvar (Temisoara) and the whole Banat to Serbia. The Serbian army was also allowed to occupy the Backa, Syrmia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, 'but no territory farther west: and for a moment it seemed as though an attempt was being made to leave the Croats and Slovenes to their fate and to form an aggrandized Serbia on the es advocated by Pasic and Petrograd in the summer of 1915. y such development was, however, averted by the advance of .jubljana. For to meet this danger, the Zagreb Government rgently invited the assistance of the Serbian army, which uring the final advance contained a large proportion of Yugo- slav volunteers. The first Serbian troops entered Fiume on Nov. 18, and a most dangerous situation arose between them and the Italians in Istria and Dalmatia, which was only very par- tially mitigated by the dispatch of American military and naval forces to Trieste and Fiume. Much of the blame falls upon the
 * e Italian army beyond the Armistice line, in the direction of

Supreme Council, which shrank from the only effective means of allaying friction immediate Allied occupation of the dis- puted zone, pending the decision of the Peace Conference. The Council's occasional outbursts against Italy only rendered Baron Sonnino still more intractable, and irritated Italian public opinion. No satisfactory solution was possible unless the Treaty of London was abrogated, and this involved the abandonment of other secret treaties to which Paris and London clung. Amer- ica pointedly defined the Adriatic problem as a test case, but amid the pressure of other affairs it was allowed to drift.

Union proclaimed at Belgrade. The equivocal attitude of the Entente toward the new State naturally hastened the process of union. On Nov. 23 the Zagreb National Council pro- claimed the union of the territories under its control with the Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro, and invited the Prince- Regent of Serbia to assume the regency of the new State. This decision (passed with only one dissentient voice, but that unhap- pily Stephen Radi6, the peasant leader) took formal effect on Dec. i, when Prince Alexander, at the formal request of 24 delegates from Zagreb, proclaimed the union and repeated their cry " Long live free and united Yugoslavia." Meanwhile on Nov. 26 a hurriedly convoked national assembly at Podgoritsa had proclaimed the deposition of King Nicholas and his dynasty, and the union of Montenegro with Serbia in the new united State. The first Yugoslav Cabinet was constituted -under Protic as Premier and Father Korosec as vice-Premier: Trumbic became foreign minister, and the other portfolios were divided more or less equally between Serbia and the new territories. Pasic was appointed principal delegate at the Peace Conference, with Trumbic, Vesnic (minister in Paris) and Zolger (a Slovene professor who had held office under Seidler in Austria).

The Adriatic Crisis. Apart from agrarian riots in Slavonia and Bosnia, the transition to the new regime was accomplished with remarkable ease. Italy's claims upon Istria and Dalmatia rallied the Yugoslavs to the cause of national unity, and intense indignation was aroused by the action of the Entente in drawing an armistice line against Austria-Hungary almost identical with that prescribed by the secret treaty of London, and in sanction- ing Italy's prompt occupation of the disputed territory. Friction was increased by a whole series of incidents along the coast, by the deportation of prominent Yugoslavs to Italy and by the entry of Italian troops into Fiume, despite the protests of the Yugoslav civil and military authorities (Nov. 18). Meanwhile the whole Nationalist press of Italy, actively encouraged by Sonnino and his entourage, opened a fierce campaign against the Yugoslavs and their western supporters, which rapidly developed into agitation against the Allies. By the close of the year the situation had become so envenomed that Bissolati, the foremost Italian advocate of conciliation, found it necessary to withdraw from the Orlando Cabinet, and on Jan. n 1919 was howled down at a great meeting in Milan. At the Paris Con- ference there was from the first a deadlock in the Adriatic dispute. Clemenceau and Lloyd George found themselves be- tween two irreconcilable standpoints between Sonnino, who claimed the liberal fulfilment of their treaty pledges, with the addition of the port of Fiume, and President Wilson, who refused all cognizance of the secret treaties and regarded them as expressly abrogated by the Allies when they accepted his successive notes as the basis of the Armistice. The three western Powers were in the impossible position of judges in a dispute to which one was a party, while the other two were accessories: the only Great Powers from whom an impartial verdict could be expected were Japan, who resolutely held aloof from purely European quarrels, and America, who quite logically regarded the Adriatic as a test case for the application of the new order in Europe. It was on these grounds that the Yugoslavs, from whom the treaty had always been carefully concealed and who had of course never recognized its validity, offered to submit the whole dispute to the arbitration of President Wilson (Feb. n). On March 3, however, Italy, who had steadily refused to recog- nize the accomplished fact of Yugoslav unity and insisted on the Conference only admitting the Yugoslavs as a " Serbian "