nflict ... who can go away without a
feeling of despair for the present generation of refugee Bosnia?" The
people of Montenegro and Serbia were profoundly stirred by the
miseries of their brothers. But Milan vacillated, and when finally he
took up arms it was without success, and five weeks after the peace
signature Russia began the Turkish War, one of whose necessary
antecedents was the recognition by Russia that the Austrians were not
to be hampered in Bosnia-Herzegovina. (After the Treaty of Berlin had
placed the two provinces under Austria's administration it is said
that Andrassy, on his return from Berlin, remarked to Francis Joseph
that the door of the Balkans was now open to His Majesty. But the
Russian delegate, Prince Gortchakoff, had prophesied to Andrassy that
Bosnia-Herzegovina would prove the Empire's grave.) One effect
produced by this incursion of the Austrian eagles was a serious
divergence between the Croats and the Serbs. By historic and by ethnic
rights the provinces, so the Serbs argued, should be theirs when once
the Turk had ceased to rule. The Croats, laying special emphasis on
the religious question, were for justifying Austria's occupation. The
Catholic Slav clergy, unlike the Orthodox, ranged themselves with the
great Catholic Power; while Croat politicians of the school of
Star[vc]evi['c] invoked other historic and ethnic sanctions in their
endeavour to found, under the name of "Great Croatia," a State uniting
all the Yugoslav lands of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Thus the
Serbs and their Croatian brothers were acutely in conflict. Never,
said the Serbs, would that "Trialism" come to pass, for the Magyars
would veto the formation of a Yugoslav State within the Empire, having
a population roughly equal in numbers to its own. We Yugoslavs have
nothing to hope for, said the Serbs, except from ourselves, and, being
divided, we are ruining our common interests.... From yet another
quarter was a storm-wind blowing on the Serbs. The Russian volunteers
and officers had taken back with them highly unfavourable impressions
as to the capabilities of the Serbian army, which they accompanied in
the luckless campaign of 1876; also, in the opinion of the
Pan-Slavists the Serbs had been contaminated by European civilization,
whereas the Bulgars seemed, in the words of Professor Miliukoff,[58]
to be the sons of an untouched, virgin soil, free from politics and
ready to work, with all possible zeal for the "i