Emancipation of the Serfs

“ The Government is convinced that all the Servian people are united until the end of this hallowed war, to defend their hearths and their liberty; that their sole duty is to assure an army proportionate to this great war, which from the very beginning has been a struggle for the emancipation and the union of all our brother Serbo-Croato-Slovaks, who now suffer under foreign rule. ”

“ Another reason for the slowness of the emancipation and development of modern Serbia has been the proneness of its people to internal dissension. There was no national dynasty on whom the leadership of the country would naturally devolve after the first successful revolution against Turkish rule, there was not even any aristocracy left, and no foreign ruler was ever asked for by the Serbs or was ever imposed on them by the other nations as in the case of Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria. ”

“ The history of the Serbs during the first five centuries after their arrival in their present country was a struggle between the attempts at union and centralization of the Zhupaniyas into one state under one government, and the resistance to such union and centralization, a struggle between the centripetal and the centrifugal political forces. ”

“ Germanism in its drive toward the Orient hurled itself upon Serbia, and only as a single united nation of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, closely bound to Italy, can we obstruct the German push toward the Orient and Adriatic, and aid in the establishment of a durable peace.
We ask only justice. We demand that slavery of peoples be abolished, just as slavery of individuals was suppressed. We demand equality among all nations, whether great or small, the fraternity and equality of all nationalities, and the foundation of a free State of all the reunited Jugoslavs. ”

“ If the war ends in a draw the former oppression of nationalities will remain in force. To Serbia, which constitutes about one-hundredth of the participants in the present war, the war represents a "continuation of the policy" of a bourgeois liberation movement. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Worse than being a Serb and joining in a revolution would be to be a Serb and fail to lift a hand in the struggle for freedom.’
“‘Revolutions,’ I said, sententiously, ‘do not pay, Gavrilo.’
“‘But since when has that been so?’ he countered quickly. ‘There was, for instance, the French Revolution. Did not that pay? And there was the American Revolution. Surely that paid! And there was the revolution of Serbia against the Turks. ”

“ The bourgeois revolution of the South Slavs is in full swing, and the shooting at Sarajevo, however wild and senseless an act in itself, is as much a chapter of this revolution as the battles by which the Bulgarians, Serbs and Montenegrins liberated the peasants of Macedonia from the yoke of Turkish feudal exploitation. Is it a wonder that the South Slavs of Austria-Hungary look with longing to their racial brothers in the kingdom of Servia? The Serbs in Servia have attained the highest goal a people can attain in the present order of society. They have attained national independence. ”

“ Today it is no longer a question of the economic independence of Serbia, since Austria-Hungary is passing from the scene, but it is a matter of the liberation and of the union into a single State of our race as a whole. This is the idea which at this moment governs the masses of our people, and the numberless graves of our fallen heroes testify to the sacrifice which we have made for the sake of this idea. Whoever, therefore, opposes our national union is an enemy of our race. ”

“ Government has informed the Allied Governments that it regards the Jugoslav movement for obtaining independence and the formation of a free State as a principle for which the Allies are fighting, and as a condition of a just and lasting peace. ”

“ The liberation and union of the Southern Slavs under the political guidance of Serbia would mean a further stage in the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary, and in the organic re-modelling of the Balkans on a racial basis. And surely Serbia has proved her loyalty as an Ally!
Italy’s just national aspirations also demand the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary. ”

“ Civic law and order, and regularity in the administration—unheard of under Turkish rule—were first looked upon as113 purely miraculous, and then tacitly accepted as the inevitable consequences of freedom. The idea of a free State is only of theoretical value to the Serbs, the main thing for them is that they should be a free people. ”

“ Hardly is there a nation which has met with a sadder fate than the Servian. From the height of its splendor, when the empire embraced almost the entire northern part of the Balkan peninsula and a large portion of the territory now belonging to Austria, the Servian nation was plunged into abject slavery, after the fatal battle of 1389 at the Kosovo Polje, against the overwhelming Asiatic hordes. Europe can never repay the great debt it owes to the Servians for checking, by the sacrifice of their own liberty, that barbarian influx. ”

“ Some of our neighbours may be against that, but all their opposing effort will be in vain. Every intrigue against the Serbian ideals of freedom and unity cannot effect a suppression, but only a short prolongation of the period of its realisation. Behold, the time has come, the fruit has grown ripe. All the Serbian race has now been plunged into slavery. United to-day in slavery, they have now only one wish—to be united to-morrow in Freedom. ”

“ A generation ago Serbia was willing to go to war with Turkey to help her downtrodden kindred in Bosnia and Herzegovina. "The saving of Old Serbia and the Union of the Serb peoples is the star by which the Serb steers," said a traveler in the early part of King Peter's reign, and certainly to the liberty-loving [Pg 103] Serb this was a beautiful vision—that he was sometime to liberate from Turkish and from Austrian control all his oppressed brothers, the four and a half millions whom the twentieth century found so restive under Turkish, Teutonic, or Magyar control. ”

“ All such intrigues and calumnies, have only one end—to destroy the faith which our allies have in the Serbian people, to rupture the national concord, and by our discord and quarrels to assure the conquest of the Serbian Nation. ”

“ The existence to our day of this almost primitive economy finds its explanation in the fact that serfdom existed in Russia, in all its unmitigated cruelty, until comparatively recent times. Its abolition through the Emancipation Act of Alexander II—antedating our own Emancipation Proclamation by a few years—struck off the chains that bound twenty millions of peasants to the soil. ”

“ That is, Serbia would have given up her freedom at the threat of force; the Serbs would no longer be a free people, and every individual Serb would have been humiliated. He would have confessed himself to be the kind of man who will yield when an Austrian bullies him. ”

“ Serbia, by the death of Czar Dūshan, had lost the one man capable of restraining anarchy at home, or of marshalling the forces of the nation against the Turkish invaders, and the great empire of the Némanjas had shivered into a hundred fragments. ”

“ Why not then sever a connection as malign as it is artificial? Why not divorce Stamboul from Bosnia, and erect an independent State under an European guarantee? The democratic genius of the people would suggest a Republic as the best form of government, but the divided state of the country would preclude such a government to begin with, and a Principality after the model of free Serbia might combine Parliamentary government with the coherence of a monarchy. ”

“ Milenko Vesnitch, Minister of Justice, and with the Ministers of Commerce and of Finance, I found them all in accord upon the one great principle of policy, namely, the preservation of the great Serb nation, which consists of over ten million persons, spread through Bosnia, Herzegovina, Slavonia, Kossovo, Montenegro, Servia, Dalmatia, and many parts of Hungary itself. This great population speak the same language and have the same aspirations, namely, the unity of the great nation whose past history is such a splendid one. ”

“ Cut up in this way by the hand of fate into such a number of helpless fragments, it was inevitable that the Serb race, if it possessed any vitality, should attempt, at any cost, to piece some if not all of them together and form an ethnical whole which, economically and politically, should be master of its own destinies. ”

“ It is the duty of the Social-Democratic Parties of Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Slavonia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina to continue with all their strength their fruitful activity against any attempts on the part of the dual monarchy to encroach upon Serbia. ”

“ Of all the new kingdoms which had been carved out of the Sultan's dominions, Serbia—let us remember this fact to her everlasting honour—is the only one that has won her own independence. Russia, France, and Great Britain have set free all the rest. ”

“ First of all, the proletariat, although by no means disputing the historic right of Servia to strive for national unity, could not trust the solution of this problem to the powers then controlling the destinies of the Servian kingdom. And in the second place--and this was for us the deciding factor--the international Social Democracy could not sacrifice the peace of Europe to the national cause of the Serbs, recognizing, as it did, that, except for a European revolution, the only way such unity could be achieved was through a European war. ”

“ The national element in the present war is represented only by the struggle of Serbia against Austria, a fact which was noted, by the way, in the resolution of our party's conference at Berne. Only is Serbia and amongst the Serbs have we a national liberation movement of many years standing, and one which embraces millions of the masses. The war between Serbia and Austria is a "continuation " of this movement. ”

“ The Serbian people could, at a price, have bought exemption from this present annihilation, but at a price which would have killed for ever, hope of the eventual freedom, not only of the four million Serbian and Montenegrin Slavs, but of the seven million Slavs, now living in a neighbouring and hostile State. ”

“ Marko Kraljevitch, the popular hero-knight, feudal lord and outlaw, according as occasion demanded, embodies Serbian resistance and Serbian revolt against Moslem invaders. The stirring accents in which tales of his deep attachment to Serbia were recounted awakened exultant delight in the heart and brain [322] of listeners and inspired them to the hope of liberation from the hated yoke. Serbia was prepared for the day of national independence by means of this slow and century-long propaganda. ”

“ The Bosnian Crisis.—In 1908 the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary and the revolution in Turkey brought about an acute crisis. Many Serbs still hoped for the realization of the so-called “Great Servian Idea,” i.e. the union in a single empire of Servia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Old Servia (Stara Srbiya) or the sanjak of Novibazar with north-western Macedonia—all countries in which the population consists largely, and in some cases almost exclusively, of Orthodox Serbs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is despairing to see what use of her power, her "kultur," her science and her riches, Germany of to-day is making in Serbia, among a people who for half a thousand years struggled against the Turkish tyranny with the motto For Cross and Freedom, and who looked sometimes from their dark corner towards the German Kaiser, the knight of many Holy Orders, as towards the champion and redeemer of enslaved Christianity in the Balkans. Never suffered a nation from serpents as much as the poor nation of Serbs suffers to-day from "civilised" men. ”

“ The untiring Serbian bards have now turned their attention to the exploits of modern heroes at Monastir, Koumanovo, Perlep (Prilip) , Scutari (Skadar) , &c., and they will thus immortalize for the delight of future generations the final triumph of the Serb over the oppressor of his race, from whom he has wrested the empire of his valiant ancestors—if not in its entirety as under the rule of Tsar Doushan the Powerful, yet as it was in extent in the time of Tsar Lazarus. ”

“ Intermittently, whenever the power of Byzantium or of Bulgaria waned, some Serb princeling would try to form a political state on a more ambitious scale, but the fabric always collapsed at his death, and the Serbs reverted to their favourite occupation of quarrelling amongst themselves. ”

“ In the Banat, which the Serbs entered after crossing the Danube at Moldova and Basiatz, some final engagements occurred with the German troops, who were invariably defeated.
The demonstrations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Croatia-Slavonia, and in the Banat were in favour of a Yugoslav Federation. This was the idea that united the various peoples of Yugoslav race, of whose aspirations Serbia had made herself the standard-bearer. ”