Yugoslavia

“ THE SIN Yugoslavia was born in sin and in sin it perished. The King of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Alexander I, a freshly self-proclaimed dictator, declared it on October 1929. It was a union of East and West, the Orthodox and the Catholic, Ottoman residues with Austro- Hungarian structures, the heart and the mind. ”

“ The reading public and some of the statesmen of the world begin to recognize that, whatever may be the case on other portions of the new map, there is nothing unreal or impossible or artificial about Yugoslavia. This State is the result of a national movement, having its origins within and not without the peoples whose destiny it affects. The various Yugoslavs, after being kept apart for all these centuries, have now—roughly speaking—come to that stage which the Germans reached in 1866. They cannot rest until they [230] reach the unity which came to the Germans after 1870. ”

“ The unregenerate part of the people will not be able to resist an occasional foray into Yugoslavia. And although the reputation which the Serbs have left behind them may induce the tribes to be, for the most part, good neighbours, yet they have not been long enough under the civilizing process, and the more advanced among them would agree with the Yugoslavs that it would have been better for that régime to have continued over them. You may object that the finest patriots of the Albanians would have preferred to remain outside Yugoslavia. ”

“ If there should come about a war between Italy and Yugoslavia, then it is to be supposed that the Yugoslavs will afterwards take as their western frontier the old frontier of Austria (except for the Friuli district, south of Cormons, which they do not covet, since they look upon this ancient race as Italian.) ”

“ Young officers must not forget that the propagators of the great Yugoslavia still exercise with their megalomania a potent influence over the primitive population and that a gesture of theirs, a word, an attitude, may even yet indirectly favour the Croat cause and make difficulties for us in exhibiting our mission of civilization. ”

“ Your Honors will find this passage on Page 303 of the document book.
During the 4 years of German domination, the people of Yugoslavia experienced great sufferings and sorrow. The Germans looted the economic wealth of the country and caused great material damage. But the damage they caused to the culture of the people of Yugoslavia was even greater.
In concluding this chapter of my report, I consider it essential, Your Honors, to quote yet another excerpt from the diary of the Defendant Frank. ”

“ But now Serbia is a part of Yugoslavia, which has to deal with a greater Italy, a greater Roumania and others. And the question as to whether a certain town or district is to be Serbian or Bulgarian sinks into the background.
Fortunately, in the Balkans—where one is nothing if not personal—you can express yourself concerning another gentleman with a degree of liberty that in Western Europe would be thought unpardonable. And so, if the Serbs and the Bulgars will in the main follow the tracks of their far-sighted leaders, they need not quite suppress their criticism of each other. ”

“ VARIOUS BRITISH COMMENTATORS
Count de Salis's impartial methods did not always please the population, which was by a large majority against the former king's return and—as he clearly stated—heart and soul for Yugoslavia. Balkan people do not yet, to any great extent, appreciate your desire for truth or even your honesty if you should give a hearing to their antagonists. ”

“ But if these tenacious men have made up their minds to join their brethren on the right bank of the Drin and enter Yugoslavia, the Ambassadors' Conference would preserve more of their dignity in accepting with a good grace that which [350] they are powerless to hinder.... The minority of the border population will go raiding in Yugoslavia. If they had been consulted they would have drawn the frontier very much as it is. With large areas lying at their mercy they will keep the border villages in constant dread. ”

“ We are convinced that even now, even today, opportunities for renewing the political and diplomatic dialogue can and must be found on the basis of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia and of respect for the rights of its ethnic groups. ”

“ We have in the London Press and in the House of Lords a number of reactionary persons who do not cease regretting the disappearance of Austria-Hungary. The new States, such as Yugoslavia and Czecho-Slovakia, they argue, are very unsatisfactory, if only for the reason that they substitute a lower civilization for a higher. ”

“ In addition, Yugoslavia for weeks has planned a general mobilization of its army in great secrecy. This is the answer to my eight-year-long effort to bring about closer cooperation and friendship with the Yugoslav people, a task that I have pursued most fastidiously. ”

“ Fodor, has the bright idea that "the race is the multitude of individuals who inhabit one uniform region." ... Passing to Yugoslavia's [9] domestic obstacles, it was impossible to think that all the Serbs and Croats and Slovenes would forthwith subscribe to the Declaration of Corfu and become excellent Yugoslavs. Some would be honestly unable to throw off what centuries had done to them, and realize that if they had been made so different from their brothers, they were brothers still. ”

“ In the old kingdom of Serbia, with much the greater part of the land in peasant possession, it may be said that there is no agrarian problem.... Those enemies of Yugoslavia, by the way, who have hoped that the particularism of Croatia would be something altogether different from what it is, should have mingled with the crowd at Zagreb on the evening of Prince Alexander's arrival in July 1920. ”

“ The lands that today comprise Croatia were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the close of World War I. In 1918, the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes formed a kingdom known after 1929 as Yugoslavia. Following World War II, Yugoslavia became a federal independent Communist state under the strong hand of Marshal TITO. Although Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, it took four years of sporadic, but often bitter, fighting before occupying Serb armies were mostly cleared from Croatian lands. ”

“ He said, "The Yugoslavs are comparatively open and smuggling across the Adriatic from Italy, commonplace. We'd bring the things you want in that way. Yugoslavia and Poland are on good terms, currently, with lots of trade. ”

“ This territory should of right be permitted to join Germany, but there is strong objection in [France] because of the increase of [population] involved. (4) Yugoslavia. It faces the following problems: 1. frontier questions with Italy in Istria and the Dalmatian coast; with Rumania in the Banat; 2. an international problem arises out of the refusal of the Croats to accept the domination of the Serbs of the Serbian Kingdom; 3. a problem of the Mohammedan Serbs of Bosnia who are said to be loyal to the Hapsburgs. They constitute a little less than one-third of the population. ”

“ At the end of the cold war, Serbian nationalism forced the breakup of Yugoslavia. An ugly and dangerous war broke out in the heart of Europe, risking an even wider conflict in the Balkans which could have drawn the United States and many other countries in. Bosnia, a land in which Muslims, Serbs, and Croats had lived together peacefully for centuries, was literally torn apart. ”

“ Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Government have been informed by authoritative German quarters that German policy has no aims beyond Austria, and that the Yugoslav frontier would in any case remain untouched. In his speech made at Graz on the 3rd of April of that year the Führer and Chancellor stated that in regard to the reunion of Austria, Yugoslavia and Hungary had adopted the same attitude as Italy. ”

“ In the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia the peoples and the citizens shall realize and safeguard the sovereignty, territorial integrity, security and defense of Yugoslavia, the international relations of Yugoslavia, the unity of the social-economic and political system, the economic unity of the country, the course and coordination of general economic development, and the basic freedoms and rights of man and the citizen ”

“ The federation of the United States depends on the centralization of political parties, whereas in Yugoslavia the parties have only just begun to combine. Feudalism in the German Empire rested on the predominance of Prussia, a position which the Serbs are, under present conditions, loth to occupy in Yugoslavia. In Germany, moreover, many of the States used to be independent, while in Yugoslavia this was only the case with Serbia and Montenegro. ”

“ They imagined that he was nervous because he was losing ground—they acknowledged, though, that he still gave pleasure to a great many Serbs, who were carried away by his appeals to their old prejudices. It is undeniable that with the peculiar traditions and customs of Bosnia, that province must for some years have a Government—whatever method is evolved for the other parts of Yugoslavia—whose eyes are not turned constantly to Belgrade. ”

“ They know that Yugoslavia will have no enemy in that house in the village of Brod, between Tetovo and Prizren, where two brothers are living together, of whom one went over to Islam. They know that the Muhammedan Krasnichi of Albania are proclaiming their kinship with the great Montenegrin clan of Vasojević, that the Gashi are calling to the Piperi and the Berishi to the Kuči. The new cordiality will be impaired neither by the differences of religion nor by the similarity of costume. ”

“ In pledging itself to cumprehensive political, economic and cultural cooperation with other peoples and states, Yugoslavia, as a socialist cummunity of peoples, holds that this cooperation should contribute to the creation of new democratic forms of association between states, nations and people which will answer to the interests of peoples and social progress, and in this respect it is an open cummunity. ”

“ The Yugoslavs had, in the past two years, shown so much more forbearance than was usually expected of a vigorous young nation that the commentators for the most part fancied they would not waste any time in grieving over these inevitable sacrifices. It is freely said that if a liberal spirit is displayed by the Italians at the various points where they and Yugoslavia are in contact, both people will settle down, with no afterthoughts, [385] to friendly and neighbourly relations. ”

“ The working people and the peoples of Yugoslavia exercise their sovereign rights in the Federation when the Constitution determines this to be in the common interest and exercise all other relations in the socialist republics. ”

“ While they discuss their internal organization—no simple matter when one considers their varied antecedents, their different legal systems and so forth—they will not let Yugoslavia go to pieces. The work of construction and of more or less strenuous, but necessary, criticism occupies by far the greater number of the politicians. ”

“ And it is from the Slovene Socialists that the peasants of Croatia might very profitably learn.... The Slovene influence, coming from a more highly organized province, would be beneficial both for Serbs and Croats, for the industrial workers and for the peasants. The nature of the Southern Slavs, say these Socialists, is democratic, and the State mechanism might be made more so. Now that the various parts of Yugoslavia have liberated or are liberating themselves from various yokes, they have approached one another with a different mentality; they will become much better known to one another. ”

“ What happened afterwards in Bosnia between the Serbs, the Croats and the Moslems was so much a matter of routine that the Italians should not have run off with the idea that this imperilled Yugoslavia. Of the 1,898,044 inhabitants in 1910 the proportions were as follows: Orthodox, who call themselves Serbs, 43·49 per cent.; Moslem, 32·25 per cent.; and Catholics, who call themselves Croats, 22·87 per cent. (The remainder are miscellaneous persons, such as 850,000 Jews, who speak the usual Balkan Spanish; they play an inconsiderable part in public life.) ”

“ But for about fifteen centuries the greater number of Yugoslavs were unable to liberate themselves from their alien rulers; not until the end of the Great War were these dominations overthrown, and the kindred peoples, the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, put at last before the realization of their dreams—the dreams, that is to say, of some of their poets and statesmen and bishops and philologists, as well as of certain foreigners. ”

“ He deduced this from the fact that a telegram used to travel much more expeditiously in Austrian days; but he did not remember that the Yugoslavs, in the Serbian and in the Austro-Hungarian armies, had suffered enormous losses in the War, and that while French, Dutch and Swiss doctors have been obtained by the Belgrade Government, one cannot use telegraphists who are ignorant of the language. An excellent province in which Yugoslavia's solidity can be studied is Bosnia. ”

“ It has been the fate of the Yugoslavs—Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and Bulgars—to live for centuries beside each other and be kept always, by foreign masters, isolated from each other. At rare intervals, as we shall see in following their history, a person has arisen who has tried, with altruistic or with selfish motives, to make some sort of union of the Yugoslavs. ”

“ By means of crying it in the ears of the European diplomats one will succeed by making them comprehend that one cannot ignore a people of ten or twelve million souls. By means of crying 'We are Yugoslavs,' the Yugoslavs themselves will succeed in forgetting their little distinctions of environment and race, and in conducting themselves [153] as a nation worthy of the name. ”

“ We may look forward to seeing the majority of this frontier population resolved that the links between themselves and the Yugoslavs shall not be broken. Very little will they care for the edicts of European Ambassadors. It would not have been surprising to hear that on the withdrawal of the Yugoslavs to the prescribed frontier their resourceful friends beyond it had procured from Serbia a few volunteers to take the place of the official Serbs. And failing this, that rough-and-ready people might simply declare themselves to be in Yugoslavia. ”