The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1

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THE BIRTH OF
YUGOSLAVIA

BY

HENRY BAERLEIN

VOLUME I

LONDON
LEONARD PARSONS
DEVONSHIRE STREET

_First Published 1922_
_[All Rights Reserved]_

LEONARD PARSONS LTD.

     Portions of this book which deal with Yugoslav-Albanian
     affairs have appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ and,
     expanded from there, in a volume entitled _A Difficult
     Frontier_.




NAMES AND PRONUNCIATION


The original Serbo-Croat names of the Dalmatian towns and islands have
been commonly supplanted on the German-made maps by later Italian
names. But as the older ones are those which are at present used in
daily speech by the vast majority of the inhabitants, we shall not be
accused of pedanticism or of political bias if we prefer them to the
later versions. We therefore in this book do not speak of Fiume but of
Rieka, not of Cattaro but of Kotor, and so forth. In other parts a
greater laxity is permissible, since no false impression is conveyed
by using the non-Slav version. Thus we have preferred the more
habitual Belgrade to the more correct Beograd, and the Italian Scutari
to the Albanian Shqodra. The Yugoslavs themselves are too deferential
towards the foreign nomenclature of their towns. Thus if one of them
is talking to you of Novi Sad he will almost invariably add, until it
grows rather wearisome, the German and the Magyar forms: Neu Satz and
Uj Videk.

These names and those of persons have been generally spelt in
accordance with Croat orthography--that is to say, with the Latin
alphabet modified in order to reproduce all the sounds of the
Serbo-Croatian language. This script, with its diacritic marks, was
scientifically evolved at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
chief points about it that we have to remember are that c is
pronounced as if written ts, ć as if written tch, č is
pronounced ch, š is pronounced sh, and j is pronounced y. So the
Montenegrin towns Cetinje, Podgorica and Nikšić are pronounced
as if written Tsetinye, Podgoritsa and Nikshitch, while Pančevo is
pronounced Panchevo. It will be seen that this matter is not very
complicated. But we have not in every case employed the Croat script.
We have not spoken in this book of Jugoslavia but of Yugoslavia, since
that has come to be the more familiar form.

The full list of Croat letters, in so far as they differ from the
English alphabet, is as follows:

        c, whose English value is ts.
        ć,   "     "      "       tch.
        č,   "     "      "       ch, as in church.
        š,   "     "      "       sh.
        ž,   "     "      "       s, as in measure.
       dž,   "     "      "       j, as in James.
gj (or dj),  "     "      "       j,     "   "
        j,   "     "      "       y, as in you.
       lj,   "     "      "       li, as in million.
       nj,   "     "      "       ni, as in opinion.




PREFACE


On a mild February afternoon I was waiting for the train at a wayside
station in north-western Banat. So unimportant was that station that
it was connected neither by telegraph nor telephone with any other
station, and thus there was no means of knowing how long I would have
to wait. The movements of the train in those parts could never, so I
gathered, be foretold, and on that afternoon it was uncertain whether
a strike had prevented it from leaving New-Arad, the starting-point.
Occasionally the rather elegant stationmaster, and occasionally the
porter with the round, disarming face, raised their voices in
prophecy, but they were increasingly unable--so far, at least, as I
was concerned--to modify the feelings of dullness that were caused by
the circumstances and by the dreary nature of the surroundings: a
plain with several uninteresting little lakes upon it. There was time
enough for meditation--I was wondering if I would ever understand the
people of the Balkans. One hour and then another slipped away, and the
lakes began to be illuminated by the setting sun. A handful of
prospective travellers and their friends were also waiting, and as one
of them produced a violin we all began to dance the Serbian Kolo,
which is performed by an indefinite number of people who have to be
hand-in-hand, irrespective of sex, forming in this way a straight line
or a circle or a serpent-like series of curves. They go through
certain simple evolutions, into which more or less energy and
sprightliness are introduced. The stationmaster looked on approvingly
and then decided to join us, and after a little time he was followed
by the porter. Our violinist was in excellent form, so that we
continued dancing until some of us were as crimson as the sun, and
presently, while I was resting, what with the beauty of the scene and
the exhilaration of the dance, I found myself thinking that, after
all, I might within a reasonable time understand these people.