escort
to the frontier.

This impressed the Vishegrad authorities much, as did the fact that
I had got across the frontier at all. The Bezirksvorsteher asked at
once what I had learnt in Serbia, and if the frontier would soon be
open.

"I do not know," said I.

"What do you think?" said he.

"I think not."

"Our Minister at Belgrade is of the same opinion," he replied. In
truth the officers who had protested that Serbia had now openly
joined the Russo-French combine were right. And what is more,
through our Entente with France, we too now, consciously or not,
were tools used by Russia for the making of Great Serbia and
furthering Pan-Slav ambition. Serbia began to feel it safe to pull
long noses at Austria. That the Austrians on the other hand regarded
their occupation of Bosnia as permanent was clear. No nation merely
on a temporary job of "putting things straight" would have expended
the vast sums and effort needed to bring a half-wild Turkish
province in twenty-eight years up to a high state of material
well-being. The mountain roads are second to none in Europe. Mines,
agriculture and every possible industry were being developed
regardless of expense, by up-to-date methods.

"The officials," I noted in my diary, "give one the impression of
being overworked." Everything was centralized and had to go through
the Konak. They wrestled with a mass of detail and mostly felt like
exiles in a wild land. The large majority were Slavs--either Poles,
Croats or Bosniaks, and these got on much better with the populace
than the Magyars or Germans, of whom I met a few. The mistake of the
Government was in trying to go too fast. A leap in twenty-eight
years from the twelfth century or thereabouts to the twentieth was
too much. The peasant intensely conservative by nature resented
every change. "Better that a village should fall than a custom" is a
South Slav proverb which I have heard quoted with approval. An
astonishing amount of work had been done and admirably done. Future
generations will profit by it. But the peasant who had had all his
ideas and habits upheaved had had time to forget the oppression of
the Turk, but remembered, with kindness, his slop-dawdle tolerance,
This happens, I believe, in every land "freed" from the Turk. The
people vaguely expect an earthly paradise where every one will do as
he pleases, and find to their dismay that you can no longer evade
the sheep-tax by tipping the hodja to let you put