In a strong military voice he said that two million Russians outside Russia acknowledged him as their leader. The French alternatives of Brazil or "Sovdepia" he considered shameful. Soviet Russia he always referred to as "Sovdepia"—the new name for it. Exodus to Brazil without preliminary conditions meant, he said, white slavery. Return to Sovdepia meant the chresvichaika and execution. Time, he believed, was on his side. The Allies would need his army yet, and would be foolish if they deserted those who had sacrificed themselves to the Allied cause. Like many other Russians, Baron Wrangel believes in the coming complete disruption of Europe. Germany is almost bound to go the way of Russia.
That was the voice of Baron Wrangel, and one had the impression of a fine character which would stand the test of adversity. A soldier, however, and not a statesman or a prophet. But perhaps it takes neither a statesman nor a prophet to see that Europe is in mortal danger.
* * * * * *
The supreme problem at Constantinople and on the peninsula seems to be to liquidate the Russian population fairly and honourably. Even those who have no sympathy with the military adventures in Russia will feel the call of humanity here. The Russians are not guilty of any crime: they are only terribly unfortunate.
Shortly after I saw Wrangel, he was isolated by the French authorities and forbidden to visit his army. The French then began the forcible return of the soldiers to Soviet Russia. As an alternative they could go to Brazil. But the first transports for Brazil were stopped by wireless. The Government of Brazil, after all, did not agree to receive the Russians. So these miserables were put on the island of Corsica. Of the others little is known. Large numbers have been returned to Russia. Serbia and Czecho-Slovakia have covenanted to take a few thousand.
As for the civilian refugees, a hundred thousand of them are in desperate straits. They cannot live in Constantinople, and they cannot get away. It is a death-trap for them. For the women it is a trap far worse than death. They are unpopular people in Europe now—the gentry of Russia, people of education and gentle upbringing, the people of the old landed families. I observe that with the signing of the trade treaty with Soviet Russia funds have at once been started with the object of feeding starving Russians in Russia. Charities are a British and American vice, but something, not necessarily money, is due to the Russian refugees. Human attention is needed—an honourable effort to solve the problem of making these Russians self-supporting economic units. Mr. Ilin, at the head of the Russian organization, is the man to approach. He is a capable, quiet Russian, who is under no illusions as to the enormity of the task or the difficulty of coping with it.
I met a Countess Trubetskoy, as poor as poor. "All I ask is something to take my mind off our coming fate," said she. "Imagine it. I am reading the Tarzan series of novels right through. Just to forget." They wish to forget, and we, who used to talk of loving the Russians,—we have forgotten.
EXTRA LEAVES
(ii) On "Charity" and the Stagnation of Peoples
In company with Mme. Tyrkova-Williams, I subsequently visited the offices of the "Save the Children Fund" in London to try to get some extra help for Constantinople, being convinced that the sufferings of the children there far exceeded those of the children of Vienna and Budapest and Prague. But no money can save the Russians at Constantinople, or the "little things" which Wrangel's army leaves behind them. Refugee men and women ought, perhaps, to be fruitless, but they are not. The birthrate at Gallipoli and Constantinople is high, and the lying-in hospitals are full. Is it not a characteristic paradox of life that babies should keep coming into a world that cannot find room for the parents? To provide for all these Russians for any considerable time would involve the collecting of more money than the rich of the world have to spare. When the hospitals of London are threatened with closure for want of funds, it is clear that mere "charity" is a useless resort. "Charity" moreover leaks. Though it is much puffed up and advertiseth itself, and is supported on the public platforms with sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, nevertheless it faileth. There is knowledge, and it remains, prophecies and they are fulfilled, but this thing which we call "charity" faileth, it vanisheth away. "The fund will soon be exhausted," we hear on all sides. Why not, then, try love? Why not try human action? Let men and women think a little more and forget mere money. Inspired political action is required, the refugees should be given some means of helping themselves and should be distributed over Europe in countries where for adults there is the chance at least of finding work, and where for the children food abounds. Constantinople is an overcrowded caravanserai. There is no lasting means of living for more than one-fifth of the population, and almost no chance at all for the Russians. In Serbia, in Bulgaria, in Bohemia, in France and England, and in the New World there are at least chances of life for the homeless. At present there is scarcely a nation in the world that will take in the unfortunate Russians unless they are possessed of material means. France in this is adamant. She keeps the Russians waiting longest of all. And yet her responsibility for these Russians is very direct. The Russians helped to save France in the war, and these Russians were used by France to try and regain her lost investments in Russia. They believed in a generous noble France which never abandoned her friends. It is dumbfounding to the Russians that it should be France that is now forcing them either to die or to return to Soviet Russia.
Rather than go back to "Sovdepia" many who think their lives are forfeit there are ready to resort to desperate means of escape. They steal over to Kemal and fight for him, or they sign on for Brazil, or stow away in one or other of the many ships in the harbours. But whilst adventurous escapades are possible for the men there is not even that way open for the women and the old folk and the children. Many are sure to die before they find salvation. The way to save the greatest number is assuredly to allow the refugees to circulate freely and find what life they can. Has not England been plastered with the notice, "Don't pity a man; find him a job." That is something to apply to the Russians. We cannot find them a job, but at least let us give them a chance. There is room in Europe for these Russians, and they would not prove long a burden once they were in the way of life.
In any case a great stagnant pool of human beings such as is found at Constantinople, makes a dangerous place in the body politic of humanity. Is the blood of all of us a little distempered? It comes from foul pools and sluggish channels where conditions of health are absent.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
IV. FROM SOFIA
The last night at Constantinople was memorable, and it is strange to contrast the brilliance, the clamour, the poignancy, of that time with the quiet gloom and dirt of Sofia. Dinner with two young Russians at the "Kievsky Ugolok"; vodka was taken as if it were part of a rite. We were served by a beautiful woman with little hands. All the lights were shaded and the violins crooned.
"The best of my youth gone in senseless fighting," said Count Tolstoy. "Twenty-two to twenty-eight, think of it; surely the best years of life, and campaigning all the while, from Insterburg to Sevastopol, and who knows what more."
"I am going to cut it all and start afresh," said Col. S. "I don't believe in the cause. If I could get a little farm in Canada or California!"
"Well, you are married and have children, that makes the difference. You are bound to them. But honour binds me to Russia—whatever happens."
"It's a strange time."
"Yes, strange."
"Who knows what will happen next in Europe!"
"Do you think European civilization will fall?"
"I think it possible that it may."
"In my opinion also—it may happen. The fall of Russia is just a forewarning—it will all go down."
Once more the favourite theme of conversation.
Going home at midnight, one sees the miscellaneous crowd still on the street. From an open café window a gramaphone bleats out the strains of "Pagliacci" into the street, as if "Pagliacci" also were a refugee and was on the streets. Listening to it there came the thought that our whole modern way of life, of which that opera is sufficiently characteristic, was being chased from its home, chased out into an unkind elemental world to beg its way. Then on a corner of a street a hoarse woman calling repeatedly her price like a hawker at a market, "Chetiresta! Chetiresta!" Quite a decent lady in Russia, the wife of a bank-clerk or petty official, but now up against it, the great it of revolution. Four crooked lanes go down to Petits Champs, all a-jingle with Greek music and tinkling glasses and women's laughter. The great glass-house cabaret below is refulgent with electric light, and you see the figures swirl in a "Grande Danse Moscouvite." You climb the mounting street to where dusky but handsome Punjabi soldiers stand in front of the British Embassy, looking with sinless gaze on sin passing by, and then to the hotel. You sleep in the office of the hotel, between two safes, because there is no room to be had anywhere. Your curtainless windows are right on the street, and the endless razzle-dazzle of night-life goes on. In the disturbed after-hours of midnight or early hours of morning you may see a dozen or so drunken sailors pulling cabs and cabhorses on to the pavement, two sailors on each horse, cuffing its flanks with their hats, shouting and screeching, and evidently dreaming of the Wild West whence they come, the Turkish cab-drivers absolutely placid and passive, however, and the Turkish gendarmes unalarmed, whilst strapping fellows of the American Naval Police with white bonnets on their heads, and neat blue jerkins, rush in and literally fell the sailors one by one with their truncheons, and fling them sprawling to the side-walk.
Next morning it is brilliantly and cruelly sunny, and on the way out of the city the eyes rest on a young woman dressed in the fashions of 1917, but with burst boots and darned "tango" stockings, and rent, shabby dress. The strong light betrays the disguises of a long-lived hat and shines garishly on the powder and paint of a young-old face. So Constantinople goes on.
What a contrast when you return to Sofia! It is a day's journey in the express—a very short time, far too short to efface the vivid impression on the senses made by Constantinople. Perhaps in one respect Sofia resembles the great city, in that it is overcrowded. Arriving at night, you are lucky to share a room with a Bulgarian officer. The latter is lying in bed, and does not seem perturbed at a civilian being put into his room. Perhaps he has been staying a long time without paying, and the management is retaliating. There is a bed which has sheets which may have been laid fresh for a German officer in 1915, and you wisely follow the custom of the country and sleep with your clothes on.
Next day, when you step out on to the streets of the Bulgarian capital, your eyes almost refuse to take in the change. You have such a strong expectation of the moving picture of the Constantinople street that you feel, as it were, robbed and astonished, as by a spell cast over your world. You have been transported by enchantment to an entirely different scene. Here is a strange quiet. A peasant population has come to town in heavy clothes and heavy faces. Despite the war and all the trouble it has meant, there is a feeling that all able-bodied men and women are provided for. Here is none of the elegance and indolence of Athens, or of the ingenuity and cleverness of Constantinople, but a steadiness and drabness of a peasant clumsiness mark the new Sofia. It is neither so pleasant nor so promising a place as it was in 1915. The soil of the black years is upon it.
Sofia was a peasant city without much fashion or style then, and this aspect has intensified itself. The peasant is the born enemy of the town, and whilst he may be perfect in the country he is a boorish and non-comprehending fellow when he comes to the capital to rule. The peasant in power has very little use for the brighter side of civilization. The more the latter is cut down the better for him. He has, unfortunately, grasped the truism that "without the peasant nothing can exist," and he is much disposed therefore to take more of the profit of living for himself and cut down the expenses of civilization.
In Bulgaria we have the curious anomaly of peasant communists in political power and a king. Monarchy and a sort of Bolshevism.
"So you are all Bolsheviks here?"
"No, only peasant-communists."
"Is that not similar?"
"No. We have no international programme. International politics do not interest us. We do not want any more wars. Governments make the wars and the people have to fight them. Ask anyone, Did we want the last war? Do we ever get anything out of wars? No. And now we have an administration who will keep us out of trouble."
The speaker was an ordinary Sofian proletariat, earning his living in a bakery. He seemed much pleased with Bulgaria as she is now; did not want a port, or talk about plebiscites, or the alleged nationality of those who dwell in the wildernesses of Macedonia.
So it is, a people of few words and not much racial ambition is in power. The old diplomatists and politicians, the "bourgeois," as they are now called, are all in opposition. Most of the educated and cultured and rich are out of office and power. They pursue the same old course of Balkan intrigue, communicating their opinions to you in stage-whispers, but intrigue merely ends in intrigue and does not lead to action. The old regime and old politics naturally find allies in the press which, having been so venal in the past, finds it difficult to turn to honest journalism. The venality of the press in Balkan countries is a characteristic which does more harm to nationhood in these parts than is understood. It springs from the original practice of giving State subsidies to authors and journalists and newspaper proprietors, on the ground that the reading public is too small to support such people entirely. Receivers of subsidies are naturally chary of writing against their patrons, and a great opportunity arises for interested parties to buy the press. The advisability of buying sections of the Balkan press is urged upon foreign Governments. So journalism and the organs of public opinion become not only physically debauched but poisoned at heart.
For that reason one need not pay much respect to the recrudescence in the press of attacks upon Greece. It is true, Bulgaria has lost Dédéagatch, her southern port, her window on to the Aegean, and a Greek army is between Bulgaria and Constantinople, but peasant Bulgaria will thrive quite well without a port; she virtually never used Dédéagatch, and it would be obvious foolishness to shed more blood for the possession of this remote harbour. The exit of Varna on the Black Sea suffices for all the wants of new Bulgaria.
One meets many partisans of Bulgaria. English people naturally like the Bulgars at first sight. The Bulgar is a good fighting man, and that makes a strong appeal to the man of the world. He is simple, not bumptious, gives himself no airs of traditional culture or modern education, and therefore recommends himself. The cynical and false opinion of 1914-15 regarding Bulgaria—that she would come in to the war on the side that bid most money—is forgotten. And the disloyalties of Bulgaria, disloyalty to the Russia who set her free and to her erstwhile ally Serbia, are overlooked. The stupid Bulgarian hates and intractabilities are ignored, and the new European partisans would raise and strengthen her again, some being even ready, in opinion, to set her flying against Greece once more.
There is one constructive hope which appeals to most thinking minds, and that is, that at some time in the future Bulgaria could be merged in Jugo-Slavia or federated with it. Serbia abandoned her own good name and took this name of Jugo-Slavia or Country of the southern Slavs, that she might form the basis of a commonwealth of all the southern Slav nationalities. And if she embraces Croats and Slovenes why not Bulgars, too? It is said that the Bulgars, in order to ingratiate themselves with their war-allies, pretended that they were not Slav, that they were in reality also Huns, kindred of Hungarians and Finns. But a people with a language so like Russian could hardly cling to that deception. The best way to avoid trouble in the Balkans is to have larger, more comprehensive states. Therefore, one looks forward to the mergence of Bulgaria in something better and safer by and by.
Many Russians have found refuge in Sofia, a few thousand of the more lucky ones who have managed to get away from Constantinople. I daresay it is not realized how difficult it is to get out of that city to go even such a short distance as Sofia. Even for an Englishman it is difficult enough. What takes days for one of us takes months for a Russian, and then he has to have sponsors. However, when once he gets to Sofia, he finds the cost of living reduced five times. A pound sterling would keep a Russian in Sofia for a week, but in Constantinople for not much more than a day. Of course you can starve for nothing in both cities: the cost of living ceases to be important when you have nothing at all. But Sofia abounds in cheap white bread and butter. You get a pat of about two ounces with your morning roll. Vienna and Berlin may be on black bread, Budapest without butter, but Sofia does not lack. And sugar seems plentiful, and meat is not dear. Oranges are cheap, and the wine of the country is accessible. Manufactures, of course, depend on the exchange, and are expensive. There is cheap entertainment, the inexpensive tedium of the cinema and the use of a theatre. Once more Russia in exile affords some cultural help with performances of the Theatre of Art, concerts, and ballet. Peter Struve has taken up his abode, and now makes bold to re-issue one of Russia's principal critical reviews, the "Russkaya Misl." Here in Sofia is a Russian publishing house, which has printed a translation of Wells' impressions of Bolshevik Russia, and "At the Feast of the Gods," by Bulgakof, and Struve's "Thoughts on the Revolution," new books of value which suggest that the old Russia still lives.
Asked how the Bulgars behaved toward the Russians, a foreign and therefore perhaps neutral diplomat replied: "The Bulgar will not do anything for people in distress. He is an egoist. He'll let his own father starve rather than sacrifice anything of his own. He has cause to be eternally grateful to the Russians, and now he has a chance to pay back something of what he owes, but not he. He treats the Russian as a beggar and an inferior, just because he sees him in a state of failure and misery."
A Serbian, asked whether Bulgars and Serbs could come to an understanding, said "No, because when the Bulgars were put in power over Serbs by the strength of German arms they set about abolishing the Serbian nation. In a cold-blooded way they went through the whole of Serbia, murdering and destroying. A nation like the Bulgars," said he, "is incapable of friendship."
A Greek, asked, "Could there not be an entente between Greece and Bulgaria, a burying of the hatchet," replied: "No, there is a mortal vendetta between us. There is something in the Bulgarian which makes our people see red."
When these matters were referred to a Bulgarian, he smiled, and said: "We shall obtain the protection of England or France; that will be enough. Bulgaria is impregnable against enemies. Let any nation try and take Bulgaria and her mountains, see what it would cost in human lives. But these wars, what is the use of them: does anyone ever gain anything by them?"
Bulgaria gained her freedom by a war. But of that it seemed untactful
to remind this denizen of Sofia. Besides, he was a kind of Bolshevik.
If Bolshevism were to sweep Europe, he would not be put out of doors.
Bulgaria also would be in the political advance-guard of world-progress.
"You do compulsory communal labour in the fields every year, do you not?"
"Such a law has been passed. You see, we are an agricultural people. Food is our life. The war greatly disturbed our population, and it was not easy to get labour, or to get it at a reasonable price. So compulsory labour was introduced—every man to do his share in producing the daily bread."
So Bulgaria has met the peace. She was our enemy. But her money is at least worth more than that of one of our Allies, and compares favourably with that of another. The cost of living is low. Wages have gone up to a considerable extent, and the able-bodied working-man has enough for himself and his family. One saw how much more stable is an agricultural state than an industrial one. If our Europe goes down in economic ruin it does not at all follow that little states like Bulgaria will be engulfed. On the contrary, Bulgaria as she is constituted to-day would almost certainly survive. It is industrialism and large business upon which our Western superstructures depend, not on the tilling of the soil.
"Humanity, however, first depends on bread," said a Bulgarian in a restaurant. "If civilization falls, it does not follow that humanity will fall."
There was plenty of bread on the table in front of us.
"Well, thanks for the bread. But you know the text. There are some of us who still want to live by the Word."
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
V. FROM BELGRADE (I)
A personal friendship with Bishop Nicholas of Zicca brought the gift of his rooms in the Patriarchia, opposite the Cathedral. Nicholas, better known during the war years as Father Nicholas Velimirovic, being on a mission to the United States, his simple white-walled rooms hung with bright-coloured ikons were free, and could be a home for a wanderer in an over-crowded city. Kostya Lukovic, who during the war graduated at Cambridge, treated me as if I were the England to whom he could repay the gratitude he owed for our hospitality to him. Dr. Yannic, also known to us in England, then a priest, now temporarily secretary to the Constituent Assembly, was also very kind. A recommendation from Balugdic, the Minister at Athens, opened many doors and obtained a separate carriage for me at night on some wild trains. Archimandrites and Abbots entertained me lavishly at the shrines of the Frushta Gora. It can therefore be said that the Serbs know how to treat an Englishman well when he passes through their country. Salutations therefore, and thanks! They fought like lions, and they suffered as none others suffered in Europe's terrible ordeal. A Serbian spark at Sarajevo fired the arsenal of European militarism, and a common ungenerous thought sometimes blames the spark instead of blaming the recklessness of those who allowed Europe to be enkindled. And there used to be some who could not forget Serbia's dynastic history. But that has been forgiven, and Serbia has purchased a good name by a shedding of blood and a national unhappiness unparalleled in the war. People said, "Serbia is no more, Serbia can never be again." Yet after complete loss of country to the most malevolent of foes, and after the agony of Corfu, behold still Serbia fighting. And was it not the vigour of Serbia's reconstituted army in 1918 which, under Misió and a French Marshal, struck the critical blow at the Bulgar which ruined the whole German confederation—brought about the surrender of Bulgaria and Austria, and led infallibly to the Armistice! Whatever happens in the new political turmoil, Serbia has won our admiration and gratitude in the West.
The impression which one obtains in passing through the towns and villages of Macedonia is very painful. Ghevgeli, on the Greek frontier, and such places, remind one of the shattered areas of Western Europe. You realize, if you did not do so before, that the deadly disease of war ravaged this empty country as greedily as it did the fullness of Flanders and France. Ruin stares from thousands of lost homes, and from many you realize the inhabitants have been destroyed also. There is recovery. Like convalescent maimed creatures, Skoplye and Nish creep into the sunlight and show signs of animation. Not nearly so many fields are ploughed as in Bulgaria. Why? Because the labouring hands are lost. You see many jolly, laughing Turks in Skoplye. They can laugh. Their manhood survives plentifully, but death has gleaned in every Serbian family down there. The trains go at a snail's pace through Serbia. One day we went all day and part of the night at an average of five kilometres the hour. In Bulgaria and Greece the trains go slowly, but they are express compared with the trains from Ghevgeli to Skoplye. The reason is because the permanent way has been almost ruined and will need years of work upon it, and all bridges have been blown up. The train halts now and then, and then most fearfully budges forward, scarcely moves, budges, budges upon temporary wooden structures of bridges, and the workmen down below seem veritably holding the bridges up whilst the trains go over them.
You stop hours at little villages, the exhausted and damaged engines surrendered to Serbia by her ex-enemies being hopelessly out of repair and always in trouble. And in these villages you see the bare-footed war-waifs, skulking about in bits of old ruins, children who have lost father and mother and kith and kin, the kind care at best of American relief societies. There is said to be no actual want anywhere in Serbia now, but no nation ever had so many orphans.
At Belgrade, despite many foreign elements, the most constant impression is one of a multiplied body politic. Belgrade is said to have more cripples than any other capital of Europe. And Berlin comes second. It is a one-eyed city, a city of one-legged men, a city of men with beetling brows and contracted eyes, a city of unrelenting cobble-stones and broken houses.
You go into the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and the door-keeper cannot write; you go to the Foreign Office and are shown about laboriously by a one-legged man. In fact, the one-legged man might be taken as the type and symbol of the new Serbia. In commerce it is as in politics. Shop windows are one-third full of goods, the most ill-assorted goods, mostly coming through the old channels from Austria and Germany. There has not been enough energy left in the nation to find the means of making new trade connexions—as for instance, with England. A curious anomaly, surely, that there should be a glut of our own products on the home market whilst in Serbia, even taking our exchange into account, prices range much higher. Thus politics and trade. You see the new recruits of the conscripted army struggling along in sixes and sevens, men of all shapes and sizes apparently in one shape and size of war boot, causing such sufferings to young men. There are no feather-bed soldiers here. In the schools and universities, however, you see the rare earnestness of the Slav.
Such is Serbia. And if Germany had won it would have been impossible to have seen her even in as fair terms as that. But some one outside of the machine has intervened and the dead has come to life. Serbia still lives.
One has to show a difference between Serbia and Jugo-Slavia, or the Kingdom of Serbs, Hrvats,[1] and Slovenes, "S.H.S." as it is commonly called. The new country is three times as large as the old one, and the two new parts of Croatia and Slovenia are well-built, fruitful, prosperous, with all the glamour of Austrian civilization resting on them. On the one side of the old frontier the wild homelessness of the mountains, on the other side park-like country, model towns, and broad, fruitful plains. Hard-bitten, bookless Serbs, and softened bookish Croats. As a responsibility of the peace Serbia has taken over large tracts of smitten Austria. Looking at the new territory, one might reckon it a rich spoil of war. But comparing Serbia as she is with this ex-Austria, one cannot but be struck with the disparity between them.
Croats and Slovenes are Slav by race, but strongly Austrian by education. They were glad to come into the new confederation and escape some of the penalties of defeated Austria. But once they were definitely absorbed into the new State they did not feel so comfortable. The vanity and quarrelsomeness of the Slav soon began to speak. They hated Austria. But modern Austrian civilization was a comfortable and well-oiled machine. The Slavs derived enormous material benefits from their citizenship of the Austrian empire. Here despite all the feuds was a well-kept home of nations.
Left to themselves the Croats would not have made a better State than the Slavs usually make. But it is easy for them to imagine that the good schools, good trains and railway service, and good municipal administration, and the rest, were due to their own genius and not to that of the German.
Between Serbia and the new territories stands Belgrade, the capital of the whole. It is strikingly situated on the cliffs above the winding Save which glimmers like silver in the evening. From the shell-splintered fortress one looks forth over the vast fruitful plain that was southernmost Austria. Here the Kaiser had a seat made for himself in 1915 that he might look homeward in the evening. Thus he turned his back on the Balkans and his scheme of the world.
Belgrade below the fortress wall is extensive but poor. Its tired main street stretches out a long way with flabby houses on each side of its cobbled wildness. There are as yet no buildings corresponding to the dignity of a great capital. The old Parliament House is a little place like a town-school, the temporary one is a converted whitewashed barracks; the Cathedral is a parish church on a site suitable for a mighty edifice; the Moscow Hotel looks like a seaside boarding establishment; the Franco-Serbian Bank is housed in a place which might pass for an old clothes warehouse in Whitechapel. There is a pleasant little white stone Post-office. But the Foreign Office, the Education Office, and other Government Departments are in buildings that might well be blocks of flats or pensions kept by respectable widows.
The population, if we rule out the Austrians, is mostly "the peasant come to town"—a proletarian crowd, though not governed by proletarians but by a small educated class plus an obedient army. You can see by the women that it is a peasant people—not a jumper or a short skirt in the whole of Belgrade. They are quiet-eyed and modest. The Serbs are much harder than the Russians, and bear deeper in their souls the marks of their historic chains. A tortured look in the face and a certain dreadful impassivity of countenance are not uncommon. There is a mixture of geniuses and of people who have not yet begun to live. They have their Mestrovic, Velimirovic, Petronievic. Is there not in London a certain M—— made not for our civilization but for two or three grades higher in world development. Of those who have not yet begun to live many are suspicious, violent, melancholy, with little instinct for making life more or fuller, for living and letting live; in business unenterprising and indisposed for work. The Serbs are potentially gifted for literature, art, and thought; they are sincere and real in temperament, but despite their efforts probably not gifted for modern civilization as we know it.
As regards Belgrade, when prosperity returns we may see the growth of a fine new city, not a complete town-planned Austrian city, supplied as it were whole and in every part from a department store, but something expressive of a new people. All these buildings we look upon to-day are bound to pass into obscurity. The rising pillars of the Skupstchina, Serbia's new Parliament House at the foot of Kossovo Street, point to the future of some great new State.
The Croats say "When you go to Zagreb you will see the difference. Ah, there is a city; there is civilization." They kiss their hands to show what they mean. The Croats are Home Rulers. Like the Irish, they are Catholics. Some of them look forward to the transfer of the capital to Zagreb, and the changing of the letters of the kingdom to H.S.S. and putting Hrvats first. Croats insist on the title Jugo-Slavia; Serbs are inclined to drop it and revert to the name Serbia. The Germans during the war are said to have promised the Croats to form the German counterpart of the Allies' idea of Jugo-Slavia, and had Germany and Austria won, a new constituent of Central Europe was to have been inaugurated with its capital of Zagreb. The name Jugo-Slavia was familiar to the Croats and popular with them before the Serbs adopted it. 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. If they think that Europe would tolerate another independent Slav State with passports, frontiers, tariffs, armies, and the rest, surely they are mad. And if on the other hand, they would like to revert to ruined Austria and have the value of all their money reduced ten times, surely they are not very sane. Or if they think that they who suffered little should reap the major benefits of the war-victory, they are certainly pitiable egoists.
What is lacking in the new State is goodwill and the spirit of co-operation. Serbia is terribly hampered by lack of loyalty in her constituent elements. There is an impression of great uncertainty and instability. The general bad health of Europe shows sharply at Belgrade. The cost of living is irrationally high. There is something of the atmosphere of Russia in 1916. Beggars swarm about the restaurants and cafés. Cabmen, hawkers, and the poor hold one up for absurd prices. The shops have odd sets of goods which seldom correspond to one's desires. The value of the dinar fluctuates violently, and offers golden opportunities to the many speculators. The commonest trade-establishments are small banks and bucket-shops; they range in fours and fives before the eyes. The Government is very poor, and never feels out of financial difficulties. "We are always faced with bankruptcy in three months," said Dr. Yannic in conversation. The Government has been very hospitable to the Russians, of whom it has almost 60,000 on its hands. It feeds them and tries to place them where they can do work. It treated with Wrangel for the establishment of 20,000 Cossacks to be planted along the marches of Albania, and would have loved to have them, but has not as yet been able to take them for lack of money. Serbia has done more for Russia than any other nation.
"We've received not a mark of the indemnity," says M. Ribor, the chairman of the Constituent Assembly. "And we do not receive financial aid. On the other hand, is not France financing Hungary—the eternal potential enemy of Jugo-Slavia?"
There is no certainty about the attitude of France and England. England is felt to have cooled a little towards Serbia. France is a source of bewilderment. The decoration of Belgrade with the Cross of the Legion of Honour was accepted in very good part, and the French Marshal who brought it was lauded to the skies. But the after-thought was, when he went away—What did he come for? Was it not perhaps to flatter Serbia into undertaking a part in some new war, perhaps against the German, perhaps against the Soviets?
Suspicion is a marked characteristic of political life in Belgrade, suspicion and fear. They are afraid of the Croat for his separatism, of the Magyar for his malevolence, of the French for their intrigues, of the Russians for their numbers and their superior gifts, of the Austrians for their commercial enterprise. Secret agents abound, and are evidently excellent. An enormous amount of information is collected—information too disquieting and too voluminous to be coped with.
The Serbs, however, have evidently tried hard to accommodate all talents and all opinions in the new State. In the new Constitution complete freedom of religion is being guaranteed to all sects; the monarchy will be strictly constitutional; and all political ideas except separatism and Bolshevism will be tolerated. Regarding Bolshevism the Serbs have taken a strong line. It is a criminal offence, and propagandists are liable to swift arrest. No discrimination of any kind will be made against subjects of the kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes on the ground of race.
Serbia by herself has not a large educated class. She has not enough of her own to administer Jugoslavia, and consequently she looks naturally to the employment of the Croat and Slovene educated class, and also to the refugee Russians. Many Russian professors in exile have found posts; Russian engineers and technicians are readily accepted in the hope that their services may be used. In the Ministry and in the Government offices the other races are amply represented. Ribor himself, the Speaker of the Constituent Assembly, is a Croat. The previous obligations of the Austrian Government have in many cases been taken over. Those who received pensions or subsidies from Austria are provided for by Serbia. Not that that always gives content.
A characteristic case is that of Kossor, the well-known dramatist, an Austrian Croat. In the Austrian style he received a State subsidy of three hundred crowns in encouragement of his talent. The Serbs have continued that, and given him the equivalent in dinars. But he is attached to the Art Department of the Ministry of Education and has to put in an appearance every day—a duty which goes a long way to stultify one's inspirations.
Kossor is characteristically unhappy in Belgrade. The cobblestones have a psychological effect on the soul. He feels restricted, and would like to travel: especially would he like to return to England, for which, like many others who were refugees among us, he retains the warmest feelings.
The English in Belgrade are inclined to say that all the Serbian students who went to England returned atheists and Bolshevists. A personal impression is, however, contrary. S—— and Y—— who took their bachelorates of divinity at Oxford, and Lukovic, who graduated at Cambridge, are warmly devoted to England, and stand for our culture where by far the most of the young educated people are frankly ignorant or entirely misinformed regarding England and England's ideals. Whatever trouble we took and whatever we spent on giving education to Serbian boys in England was not misapplied and will bear a good fruit of friendship by and by. That the students of new Belgrade are free-thinkers, and chased Dr. Mott from the lecture hall is not of much importance—students usually do behave in that way nowadays. A university of students all believers would be edifying if it were not amusing. The modern way to real belief and understanding lies through denial and agnosticism and free-thinking of all kinds, and Serbia is in a state of transit from peasant Christianity to modern positive Christianity. Her need is for well-guided transitional education. There is no bridge from the simple piety of the peasant to instructed belief. The peasant marches to a precipice and then falls headlong into atheism. Strangely enough, the Church even when it realizes this danger seems unable to build the bridge. Its only remedy is to try and stop the march of the peasant. This is dangerous, for in time the peasant can then push his obstruction also over the precipice.
"If only we were as strong spiritually as we are militarily and economically I should feel happy about Serbia," says Bishop Nicholas on his return from America. But Jugo-Slavia—one must think of the whole new State—is not strong in any way yet. Her strength is very great and mysterious but is still potential. Some day In the future perhaps five years hence, or ten, if Jugo-Slavia still holds together, we shall have a great State here with Belgrade as a worthy capital. Austria will have moved south. There are at least prospects of enormous commercial prosperity, and on that basis the Arts will surely flourish. All depends on the Slavs holding together and forgetting their differences. The Spirit will blow where it listeth, and one day it will be with Serbia and on another it will be gone.
[1] Slav name for Croats.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
VI. FROM BELGRADE (II)
Up on the cliff one evening a party of Serbs were listening to a Russian soldier, one of Wrangel's army invalided to a hospital camp near Belgrade. "Which of these rivers is the Danube?" said he.
The Serbs pointed out where the Save joined the main stream, like a thread of silver joining a silver ribbon.
"Ah," said the Russian. "And my grandfather was killed on that river, fighting to free the Slavs. Defenceless little brothers, the Slavs! When the war began the enemy was right into your capital of Belgrade at once, but we Russians plunged into East Prussia. Yes, I was there, brothers, and was wounded and marched back to the Niemen with my wound open——"
He recounted where he had been in the war, and was so circumstantial that one by one the Serbs said good-bye and wished him luck and went away. And he was left standing there alone, looking over the gloomy Austrian plain below where night was descending fast.
"Would you like to have tea?" I asked. "My lodging is quite close." He readily agreed, and so we went across to the "Patriarchate" and up to Bishop Nikolai's white room.
Budomir, Nikolai's servant, a shell-shocked soldier, struck a posture of pleasure and stoked up the fire to boil some water. Budomir had been a student and now could multiply numbers of four figures in his head though he could do little else. He was devoted to Nikolai, and insisted on serving me because I was Nikolai's friend. The Russian soldier marvelled to find himself in a room so strongly Orthodox in its appearance, and he did not fail to cross himself elaborately.
Then he showed us the various crosses which he wore round his neck. One of these touched him very much: it had been given him by his mother in August, 1914, when he set out for the war. It had protected him ever since. He had gone through untold dangers and hardships, and had actually never seen his home and his wife and his child since that August morning when he marched away.
He belonged to a Guards regiment, and so I was interested to know what part he had taken in the revolution, and what he thought of it all. It should be remembered he was not a newspaper-reading Russian. He called himself a Gosudarstvenny or State peasant, apparently indicating that his family had not been serfs but had been free men. He was normally a peaceful tiller of the soil, stopped at the plough and put into battle-harness by the politicians of Europe.
Though now one of Wrangel's army he attributed all Russia's misfortunes to the "burgui." What a bourgeois really was he had not the remotest idea, but the word served. It was the burgui who brought about the March '17 revolution in Russia. "If we had been at Petrograd then it could not have happened," said he.
"How?"
"Well, before the revolution took place, the burgui arranged that the stanchest regiments should be sent to France. Yes, our regiment of Guards was actually in the lines below Verdun when the Tsar was dethroned.
"They did not tell us what had happened. We learned it first from the Germans. They began calling out to us, 'The Tsar has abdicated.' We did not pay any attention, as they were always shouting lies. Then they erected long banners outside their trenches with the words 'There is revolution in Russia. The Tsar has abdicated. Why do you go on fighting?'
"We were so infuriated by this that we planned a night attack on our own, and without the knowledge of our officers we entered the German trenches that night, just to show them what it meant to insult the Tsar. There was a great noise. The German artillery awoke. Ours replied. Our neighbours on the right and left wondered what was happening, and in the morning our N.C.O.'s were called to explain what it was all about. They told the story and were strongly reprimanded. Then officers addressed us and told us the bitter truth that there was actually revolution in Russia. And we wept, and the officers wept with us. . . ."
He was a sentimental warrior, and the tears glistened in his eyes now. He professed to be unendingly devoted to the Tsar. His regiment would have made a mountain of its dead rather than let them take the Tsar. If the Tsar had even been in the Crimea when Wrangel was there they would never have given him up.
"Whom have you hope in now?" I asked. "General Wrangel cannot do any more."
"There's only one man."
"Who is that?"
"That man is Burtsef."
What an extraordinary conjunction of sentiments!—devotion to the Tsar and belief in Burtsef! But here it was. The bourgeois were to blame for all Russia's troubles, and yet he was a soldier in the army that wanted to restore the bourgeois. Such paradoxical attitudes are no doubt responsible for the current official opinion in Serbia that all Russians tend to become Bolshevik, and that they may be a dangerous element in the State.
The soldier had three glasses of tea and then inverted his glass and got up and was most profuse in thanks, and for the present of a few dinars actually got down on his knees in thankfulness.
"You are going back to your hospital camp—how will you go?" I asked.
"On foot?"
"No, by train. They give us a free pass on the railway. Some say they'll soon give us a free pass back to Russia!"
He looked very woebegone. He showed me his Georgian cross given for bravery in the field, and then once more the ikon his mother had given him. "Seven years, and I haven't once been home," said he.
"Seven years," he repeated mechanically, and began stumbling out of the room.
He was a strange and touching witness of the power of the human eruption in Russia. As it were, a clod of earth had been lifted from the province of Tambof and flung as far as the Balkans. Another witness of another kind was the old Archbishop of Minsk whom I found in the monastery of Ravanitsa.
The Secretary of State for Religion very kindly facilitated my journey to the shrine of St. Lazar, where I saw Serbia's mediaeval prince lying headless before the altar. Strange to say, it seemed as if the body had a head. The shroud was raised to disclose his brown and wizened fingers and shrunken middle, and where the head should be were the contours of a head under a veil. At my desire the cloth was lifted, and I saw instead of a head a large jewelled mitre.
The monks showed me "bulls" and charters and proclamations and manuscripts, mostly eloquent now of the ill-faith of Serbia's neighbours. They were, however, humorous and vivacious and well-fed monks who bore no ill-will against Turk or Austrian or anyone; they were good fellows happily lodged by the Church, and without much care or sorrow of any kind; such a contrast to those outside the Church.
They gave me a room with a comfortable bed and white sheets, and they regaled Kostya Lukovic and myself and anyone else who happened to arrive, with old-fashioned generosity of wine and viands.
It was here we met the Archbishop of Minsk, once Rector of the Theological Academy at Petrograd. He had lost his diocese and lost his academy; a little old, stooping, grey-haired man, very witty, very sardonic and indulging in endless pleasantries at the expense of us all. He drank to England but not to Lloyd George. He drank to meeting me again—in Moscow. He drank to Serbia, and hoped they'd raise the standard of doctorate of divinity. He drank to France, without her ally Poland who had seized most of his diocese of Minsk and was making it Roman Catholic. He drank to Russia—and a change of heart. In fact, it is difficult to remember all the toasts he proposed. I responded in sips, he in half-glasses; the Archimandrite, who had only a second place at the table, in tumblerfuls; the deacon opposite me having a strong character, refused to go on, and it was certainly curious to see this little old archbishop taunt him and ask him if he were afraid and stir him on to drink more than was good for him. But he was a Russian first and then an archbishop, and he had lost all that he cared for. It may be asked, had he lost his faith, too? But do rectors of theological academies have faith? Seldom, surely.
"The teaching of theology has been abolished in Russia now," said he next morning, sitting out in the sun and feeding young calves with bread which he had saved from the breakfast table. "There are no young students now preparing to be priests. The next generation will be without clergy."
"But it is a people's Church," I observed. "If there are no priests, they will take the services themselves. The peasants have an extraordinary amount of church lore among themselves."
The prelate appeared to be scandalized. "That is of no use. A priest must first study and then be ordained. Without knowledge the Church would soon be lost."
"What do you think of the Patriarch of Moscow? He has come to terms with Lenin."
"He is a weak man," said the Archbishop.
I recalled an opinion of Bishop Nicholas of Serbia that Patriarch
Tikhon would be next dictator of Russia.
The Archbishop of Minsk smiled gently and ironically, and then said quietly:
"Never. And he has too simple a mind to cope with the enemies of
Russia."
"Do you not think Holy Russia will reassert herself? You know the famous lines of Solovyof: 'O Russia, what sort of an East will you be, the East of Xerxes or the East of Christ?'"
"It looks rather like the East of Xerxes," said the old man. "But you believe differently——"
And he smiled indulgently.
I could not say whether he spoke sincerely or out of the depths of personal and national humiliation.
I suppose it is hard for those who are not Russians to realize what has happened in Russia. Propaganda has discredited news. The western world thinks of Russia as the same country with a change of government. The colossal fact of the complete removal of the upper crust of Russia is not realized.
A third group of deracinés whom I came across in Serbia was an artel of Rostof engineers. I met a family I had known in Russia. Last time I had seen them it was one evening with their children scampering round a tall Christmas tree on which all the candles were lighted. They were comfortable and capable people, and proud in their way of what they could do and of what they possessed. Now, with all the other engineers of the Vladikavsky Railway, they had fled from the "terror" and were giving their services for the reconstruction of Serbia.
Serbia did not particularly want them, and was not ready for their grand schemes.
"You can't start anything in this country," said Engineer N—— regretfully. "Every one wants to make money out of it. The administration lives on the enterprise of the people. We have presented the Government with a complete plan for the reorganization of the Serbian railroads. We have brought the treasury of the Vladikavsky Railway with us, so we have a little capital, and given the authority we could make a gigantic improvement in Jugo-Slavia. But all we have been able to do so far is to arrange a few services of motor transport to places not reached by railway."
My friends were in a poor little wooden hut on the outskirts of Belgrade, very courageous and very sad, and their children, once petted and even pettish, were now grown and serious and facing life earnestly for themselves and for their parents' sake.
A great chance for Serbia lay in the use of these Russian engineers. And the alternatives for the engineers are either to make good in Serbia or to drift back eventually to Mother Russia. I am personally inclined to think that the Serbs will let the chance slip through their fingers. Serbs and Russians, though they like one another, do not seem to be able to work together very well. The Serbs are a smaller people, more intense and less adaptable than the Russians. The difference between the two races as one sees and hears them on the streets of Belgrade is very remarkable. The soft pervasive accents of Russian speech are pregnant with a great race-consciousness and a feeling of world destiny.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
VII. FROM BUDAPEST
The ill-health of our new Europe needs no demonstration. "She's an ailing old lady," says Engineer N. "She's a typhoid convalescent," says Dr. R. "She's deaf and dumb and paralytic and subject to fits. She has sore limbs and inflamed parts—in fact, a hopeless case," says a cheerful Hungarian. "But what does it matter whether Europe lives if her young daughter Hungary survives her?"
"That young daughter Hungary has already been in the Divorce Court," I hazarded.
"Well, Hungary is not going to alarm herself over the health of Mother Europe, anyway. Hungary has to look after herself. Mother won't look after her."
The best train for Budapest leaves Belgrade at ten o'clock at night. From the capital of Serbia to the neighbouring capital of Hungary is only two hundred miles, formerly five or six hours' journey in a fast train without hindrance or anxiety. In a state of good health, to go from one main artery of Europe to another ought to be almost as quick and as easy as thought. But now it is labour. No facilities are made by Serbia for Hungary or Hungary for Serbia. International trains with sleeping cars carefully avoid what are known as ex-enemy capitals. In this night-train from Belgrade all the arrangements are discouraging and fatiguing. First, second, and third class carriages are the same, all wood, but some are marked "1" and others "2" and others "3." There are no lights in the train, and it is very crowded. You crawl all night through the ex-Austrian territory now part of Serbia. At four in the morning you arrive at Subotitsa and wait six hours. You wait in a queue and show passports to Serbian police; you take your baggage through the Serbian douane and it is searched for articles liable to export duty. You send a "D" telegram to Budapest to reserve a room at a hotel. For this "D" telegram you pay two or three times the ordinary charge in order that it may have precedence of telegrams not marked "D." Some time after ten in the morning you get into the Serbian frontier train which takes you ten kilometres and deposits you in a Hungarian no-man's land. Hungarian gendarmes collect the passports of the passengers. You stand on a shelterless platform and wait for the Hungarian frontier train which takes you ten kilometres further and deposits you at the station of Szeged. Here you congregate like lost souls in Hades and wait and suffer. They say those suffer most who continue to have hope in that region. The hopeful clamour and push and mortify themselves, whilst highly indifferent and laconic Magyars chuckle among themselves and throw ink across an inky table asking foreigners in Hungarian their mother's maiden name and their natal town. The officials have adopted the principle of the division of labour—one makes out a form, another fills it in, a third franks it with a rubber stamp, a fourth registers details, and a fifth signs the visa. Strange to say, this seems to multiply the time by five rather than divide it by five. And most people know that the train for Budapest will leave at the scheduled hour, leaving half the passengers to wait all day at Szeged for another train. After passports, there is a violent onslaught on your baggage by the customs officials. When they are convinced that you are carrying nothing dutiable you have to get a cab and make a hundred-crown journey across Szeged to another train. You wait in a long queue for a ticket. Heaven help you if you have baggage to register or re-register. It cannot be registered through from Belgrade. As for the train, the passengers seem to be hanging from the roofs of the carriages like bats. It is like a seaside excursion express, and if you are lucky enough to get a place you find there is only half a back to your seat.
A Hungarian diplomat, anxious that I should see his country in a good light, helped me considerably on this journey, and I caught the train. I had the doubtful pleasure of reflecting that at least half of my fellow-passengers were still languishing at the first Szeged station, victims of the division of labour and the verification of passports. "I do hope you get a hotel after all this," said the diplomat. "For my part, I wired to an actress," he added, with a knowing smile. "She knows how to get a room when others cannot."
We arrived in Budapest about 11 p.m. The "D" telegram, alas, was languishing far behind. It was delivered next day about noon. Knowing the expensive folly of taking a cab and trying to find a hotel I made a midnight exploration of the capital of Hungary on foot, all sleeping, all apparently dead and without a spark of night life. There were no trains, no flocking crowds, but only occasional pedestrians and the accidental clatter of a horse-cab now and then. And the Danube rolled through the stillness silently. I fell in with a late-going working man coming off a day shift. He piloted me to the "Ritz," home of Allied Commissions and delegates of all kinds. That there should be a room there was unlikely enough, but it was possible to persuade the clerk to telephone to various obscure establishments on the "other side of the river." It is always obscure on the other side of the river.
At last a hotel was found and located, and when the cabman had brought my things from the station and one asked timidly: "How much?" one received a characteristic reply.
"A thousand crowns," said the unblushing cabby—rather more than the cost of a ticket for the whole journey from Belgrade to Budapest.
I saw next day that I must report to the police within twenty-four hours of arrival, and also within twenty-four hours of departure. Such is modern travel in Europe, and I felt rather amused when the question was put to me, "Are you travelling for pleasure or on business?"
Serbia and Hungary are not on good terms. The Hungarians will not forgive the loss to Serbia of territory over which they claim to have ruled for a thousand years. Hungary will not forgive the Czechs or the Roumanians either. They have been mightily despoiled by the nations. Roumania has doubled her original territory at old Hungary's expense. Czechoslovakia holds Pressburg, the ancient capital and coronation-city of the Hungarian kings, and calls it Bratislavl. "They might as well have called it New York," says a Magyar contemptuously. There is nothing soft or relenting about the Magyars. They are quite implacable, and they are a fighting people. There is no good will. On the contrary, there is definite ill-will on the part of Hungary towards her neighbours. Austria is soft towards the new nations which have arisen on the ruins of her empire, but Hungary is hard.
To the Serb, the enmity of the Magyar is disconcerting. By crossing the Danube, Serbia has become genuinely part of Europe; she has turned her back on the Balkans and the eternal strife on barren empty hills. The new Serbia can afford to forget and forgive Bulgaria, now a remote sort of country. She can retort to Greece concerning Salonica—We have no need of that port now, for we no longer aspire to be a power on the Aegean, we are a Central-European people. Jugo-Slavia is not a Balkan country. She is ashamed of the Balkans and of the Balkan past. She will loyally look to Geneva or any other capital of the League of Nations. She will cling to the centre. All seems well. Perhaps Bulgaria will cease to be an enemy, and Greece will cease to be a rival. Serbia moves northward, but in the North she comes face to face with a worse potential enemy than either—the Magyar. Serbia becomes conscious of a European destiny, but Hungary avers that a large stretch of Hungarian territory has been torn from Europe and is being Balkanized, despoiled of the old comfort and civilization of the Austro-Hungarian State and made dirty and inefficient by Slavs.
Every one blames some one else in this part of the world. There are bugs in the railway-carriages—the German soldiers brought them; they were not there before. The trains go slowly—the Hungarian engine drivers have ruined all the locomotives by making big fires with little water in the boilers; contractors seem to take bribes—these are Hungarians, "They'd sell their souls for a dinar." "Look, look," says a Magyar officer, pointing to the dirt on Subotitsa station. "You never could see that in the old days. I used to be here with my regiment. It was as pretty and clean a place as you could find in Hungary."
Nearing the frontier you pass in review a very sad sight, and that is, several hundred locomotives rusted to their very depths and eaten out with bad weather and neglect. "These are the locomotives we surrendered to the Serbs after the Armistice," says a Hungarian. "The Serbs could not use them. They have no engineers—no shops for their repair. We wouldn't have minded if the engines were used, but it makes us sick to think of such waste."
On the other hand, perhaps, the Hungarians in their malice surrendered the engines with their boilers burnt out and with other vital defects. One side or the other, or both, is to blame. But whatever the judgment might be, the engines remain in their rust—these useful iron servants of humanity have perished. They are symbols of a spoliatory peace.
Serbia discourages travel to Hungary. Hungary for her part bristles with spears. Above the passport window on the Danube quay at Budapest you read:
I BELIEVE IN ONE GOD. I BELIEVE IN GOD'S ETERNAL JUSTICE. I BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION OF HUNGARY.
—a dangerous creed.
Dr. M——, first assistant at the University of Vienna, now made a Czech subject against his will, put the matter well: "Bismarck was a man of genius, but he made a great mistake in taking Alsace and Lorraine. And Clemenceau was a great man, greater for instance than Lloyd George; I treated him for twelve years, I know his character well, but he outdid Bismarck by making a whole series of Alsace-Lorraines in Europe. It means a century of wars to put it right."
"There would be war now," said Von K——, an ex-Captain of the 3rd Hussars. "But we shudder to take the responsibility of plunging Europe once more into the bath of blood."
The 3rd Hussars is called the Dead Regiment now. It was reduced to five officers and a hundred and thirty-seven men in the war. It was resolved not to recruit for it again, but to leave it as it was left, and it paraded before the King at Budapest in its original formation, showing all the gaps. "It was tremendously impressive," said the Captain—"one man here, two there, three only on the right wing. Many of us who had come through all that hell with dry eyes wept like children in the parade.
"We often receive letters from our people in Roumania, Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia, saying 'Why do you not come over and protect us?'" he went on. "If we marched into the stolen territories, the local populations would all rise in our favour. The time will come, but it is not yet. The last word has not been said."
That conversation was at the beginning of April, and Karl was actually in Budapest endeavouring in a clumsy way to follow the example of Constantine in Greece and resume monarchical sway. Budapest for a day was all agog with rumour and whispered conversations. Karl was popular, but his failure was sensed by the populace. He had come inopportunely, despite the fact that the great powers seemed not unfavourable. France, by many accounts, had given secret countenance to the return of the Hapsburg, Karl being known as Francophile in policy. "Present us with a fait accompli," Briand was reported to have said to Karl, "and we will not oppose your return to power." Evidently part of France favoured the adventure and was not a little annoyed at its failure. As an allied power with Italy and England she had to show a forbidding front to Karl, but as "Le Figaro" said, "Ce n'est pas sur le Danube que nous menacent des perils mortels, c'est sur le Rhin." The Allies, however, as they are called, had little power to help or stop ex-Kaiser Karl. It was the little States that stopped him—the Petite Entente of Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-slavia and Roumania, and of these powers chiefly the Czech.
As long ago as January Karl's attempt to return was anticipated by the Czechs. They used it as the motive for making a ring round the hostile State. Hungary was the potential enemy of the three States which had taken over ex-Hungarian territory. Hungary, moreover, had had her terrible moment of Bolshevism and had got over it, she had become nationalistic again and had reorganized her army on national lines. To any one of the new States surrounding her she would be a formidable enemy. Hungary, however, would stand little chance against three combined. So with great zest the new combination was formed. Certainly the warmest national friendship in the Near East to-day is that between Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia, and it has been called into being by the common danger of the Magyar.
Budapest is a handsome city with grand bridges spanning the bending Danube. The fashionable part climbs upwards on crags to the higher light, and the Danube flashes upward. The modern city is a first-class aggregation of business houses, cafés, and places of pleasure. There is pavement comfort. The people are well dressed, despite losses and troubles. The smooth pates of business men abound, and the knobbly skulls of the Balkans are fewer. The women are in fashion, and as in the rest of Central and Western Europe, wear bunches of artificial grapes hanging from one side of their hats. You see no grapes and hanging ribbons in Belgrade and Sofia. They will come there next year or in 1923. The Hungarian women are broad-faced and broad-bosomed, and talk more than they smile. City madam in elegant attire with languorous half-shut eyes and Hungarian drawl is a man's darling. Flesh-coloured stockings greatly abound. One is, however, strongly advised not to judge of Hungary by the people who spend four or five hours of the day sitting in the cafés of Budapest. The poor parts of the city present a different spectacle. Here there are great numbers of crooked-legged spindly children, war-products evidently. The slums are nothing like so bad as those of London or Chicago—only the children are less boisterous, less vital, and seem to have been underfed all their lives. The new babies look much better than the children of four or five. Food is more abundant now, and a great deal of relief work is done at the schools. But it is doubtful if any philanthropic efforts can restore the war-children. Budapest has a bad streak left in her town-population by the war, and it is visible. Cotton goods are very expensive, and many of the poor children seem inadequately dressed. The price of cotton is dependent upon much speculation and bad business between the American cotton plantation and the obscure worker in Hungary. It is a curious anomaly that Americans should burn cotton-bales in the Southern States to keep up the price, and that the American Red Cross on the other hand should in Europe distribute free garments to those who cannot pay the world-price thus attained.
The exchange is very low, five crowns to a penny, three hundred to a dollar. For a thousand crowns a week you can live—you can live in one room and keep body and soul together. For two thousand crowns a week you can live at a second-class hotel with board and lodging. An ordinary dinner with a glass of beer costs a hundred crowns. You can also get a seat at the back of the stalls in a theatre for that amount. There is a luxury-tax of ten per cent on all you buy at cafés and restaurants, on perfumery, and like objects. This, no doubt, brings in a large amount to the national exchequer if it is efficiently collected. The wages and salaries of all trades and professions are in a continual hurdle-race, vaulting cost of living and the rate of exchange. There are thousands of nouveaux riches, and there are thousands of ex-rich and gentry in decay. One feels that Hungary, however, is a rich country even as she stands to-day, and that the people have sterling qualities which make for the recuperation of the new State. There is still a love of work in the country, and that is comparatively a rare virtue in modern Europe. The working class, as in Germany, feels that it lost the war and cannot expect extra fine conditions. The Hungarian working man outworks and therefore undersells or can undersell the English working man. The nation whose working men are ready to do most work is the most fortunate in 1921. If Hungary can avoid indemnities and export taxes she is likely to do well. The Government will no doubt undergo many changes, and most people believe that the King is bound to come back. By popular vote he probably would—just as Constantine did in the Greek elections. But external opposition is too great. If Czechs and Serbs quarrelled it would be different. International animosity and the general ill-will militate most against the peaceful development of the new Hungary.
Budapest no doubt will always win friends for the country of which it is the capital. Capitals can be of enormous service to states in the matter of silent propaganda. A handsome comfortable city of impressive buildings will always predispose foreigners in favour of the country itself. On the other hand, an inadequate capital will be a hindrance to a state. In this respect, Belgrade, as it is to-day, is a handicap to Jugo-Slavia. But Budapest will help Hungary enormously.
What a glamour there is upon Budapest in the evening, with myriads of lights on each side of the gliding Danube. Formerly one arrived under the grand bridges in a house-boat at night and came alongside the stone quays, and without passports or customs walked up into one of the gayest and brightest cities of Europe. But now the Danube, mother of mighty countries, is enchanted and enthralled. When will she be disenchanted again?