The War and Democracy · Chapter 18The Issues of the War (3)
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§9. Bohemia and Hungary.—But the most striking result of the partition would be the revival of the famous mediaeval kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary as independent States. Thus would be realised the dream of two races, the Czechs and Magyars, whose national revival forms one of the most romantic incidents of the nineteenth century. But it is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than their respective development. In Bohemia the Czechs, after losing their religious and civic liberty and enduring for two centuries the domination of the Germans, raised themselves once more in the course of two generations, by sheer force of character and tireless industry, to a position of equality, and reorganised their national life on an essentially democratic basis. In Hungary the Magyars, thanks to their central position, their superior political sense, and their possession of a powerful aristocracy, succeeded in concentrating all government and administration in their own hands and reducing the other races of the country, who have always formed a majority of the population, to a state of veritable political helotry. And just as their evolution has been on very different lines, so must be their future fate. In Bohemia all is activity and political progress, in Hungary the sterility of a corrupt and reactionary system, staking the future upon the hollow credit of a long-vanished past. The Czechs are beyond all question the most progressive, the most highly civilised, the most democratic of all Slavonic nations. The stubborn spirit of John Hus is still alive among them to-day, and their recent achievements in music, art, and industry are in every way worthy of the nation which has produced Comenius and Dvorák and first lit the torch of Reformation in Europe. The ancient city of Prague contains all the elements of culture necessary for the regeneration of Bohemia, and the mineral riches and industrial resources of the country are infinitely greater than those of many European States which have successfully led a separate national existence.
But the liberation of the Czechs would not be complete unless their close kinsmen the Slovaks were included in the new Bohemian State; and every reason alike of politics, race, and geography tells overwhelmingly in favour of such an arrangement. The Slovaks, who would to the last man welcome the change, have long suffered from the gross tyranny of Magyar rule. Their schools and institutions have been ruthlessly suppressed or reduced in numbers, their press muzzled, their political development arrested, their culture and traditions—far more truly autochthonous than those of the conquering Magyar invaders—have been discouraged and hampered at every turn. The Slovaks are a race whose artistic and musical gifts, whose innate sense of colour and poetry have won the sympathy and admiration of all who know them; and their systematic oppression at the hands of the Magyar oligarchy is one of the greatest infamies of the last fifty years. In this war Britain has proclaimed herself the champion of the small nations, and none are more deserving of her sympathy than the Slovaks. Unless our statesmen renounce that principle of nationality which they have so loudly proclaimed, the Slovaks cannot be abandoned to their fate; for they form an essential part of the Bohemian problem. Without them the new kingdom could not stand alone, isolated as it would be among hostile or indifferent neighbours. In every way the Slovak districts form the natural continuation of Bohemia and are the necessary link between it and Russia, upon whose moral support the new State must rely in the first critical years of its existence.
The main difficulty would be the fate of racial minorities; for minorities there still must be, no matter how the frontiers may be drawn. At first sight the natural solution would be to pare down Bohemia by assigning to the neighbouring provinces of Germany the German fringe which almost completely surrounds the Czech kernel. So far as the south-west and north-east districts of Bohemia (near Budweis and along the German Silesian border) are concerned, the historic boundaries might fairly be revised on ethnographic lines, and in the same way the line of demarcation between Bohemia and Hungary could in the main be made to follow the racial boundary between Slovak and Magyar and later between Slovak and Ruthene. But in the north of Bohemia there are insurmountable objections to any revision of the historic frontier of the kingdom; for not merely is its industrial life concentrated to a very considerable degree in the German districts, but this fact is responsible for the existence of important Czech industrial minorities, which it would be difficult to sacrifice. So far as there is to be any sacrifice, it must be made by the losers rather than by the winners in this war. But it ought to be possible, under the rule of some carefully selected western prince as ruler of Bohemia, to devise proper administrative guarantees for the linguistic rights of minorities in every mixed district of Bohemia, whether it be Czech or German. The case of Hungary is different. That the Allies, if victorious, should perpetuate the racial hegemony of the Magyars, and with it many of the abuses which have contributed towards the present war, is as unthinkable as that they should once more bolster up the Turkish régime. If the Habsburg Monarchy should break up, Hungary is fully entitled to her independence. She will become a national Magyar State, but in a sense very different from that which her Jingo politicians have intended—not by assimilating the non-Magyar races of the country, but by losing to the other national States by which she will be surrounded all but the purely Magyar districts of the central plains. Hungary will then be more fully than before a Danubian State; her rich alluvial lands will be developed, and a check will be put upon the unnecessary streams of Magyar emigration which the present political and economic situation favours. The chief gainer by the change will be the Magyar peasantry, who have in their own way been exploited by the ruling oligarchy as cruelly as their non-Magyar neighbours. One result of the war will be to discredit the policy and methods of this oligarchy and to hasten the break-up of the vast latifundia of the great magnates and the Church, and those other drastic land reforms without which Hungary cannot hope to attain her full economic value as the granary of central Europe. Hitherto the government of the day has secured a parliamentary majority by corrupting and terrorising the non-Magyar constituencies of the periphery and thus out-voting the radical Magyar stalwarts of the great plain; and with the loss of the Slovak, Ruthene and Roumanian districts this system would automatically collapse. The result might be a genuine strengthening of democratic elements and the dawn of a new era for the Magyar race.
§10. Germany and Austria.—One final problem connected with Austria-Hungary remains. What is to be the fate of the German provinces of Austria? If the map of Europe is to be recast on a basis of nationality, we obviously cannot withhold from the great German nation that right to racial unity which we accord to the Czechs, the Poles and many minor races. The seven German provinces—Upper and Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Tirol, Salzburg and Vorarlberg—reconstituted perhaps as a kingdom of Austria under the House of Habsburg and augmented by the German population of western Hungary, would then become an additional federal unit in the German Empire. Such an event, it cannot be too often repeated, is inconceivable except as the result of a complete defeat of the central powers, but if on that assumption Germany loses Alsace-Lorraine and Posen, the loss would be made good by the incorporation of German Austria. The result of this in figures would be the subtraction of six million inhabitants and the addition of eight million others—a transaction which need not unduly alarm the British Jingo, and at the same time might render defeat less galling to the German patriot.
Whether this fulfillment of the Pan-German aspiration would meet with unqualified enthusiasm on either side of the present frontier, is a question on which it is not altogether easy to answer. The idea of admitting eight million additional Catholic subjects into Germany would certainly arouse misgivings in Prussia, both among the stricter Protestants and among the far more active section of "intellectuals" who merely regard Protestantism as a political asset in the struggle against Latin and Slavonic influences. From a political point of view their admission would unquestionably transform the whole parliamentary situation and force the Imperial Government to revise its whole attitude; for the Austrian voters would greatly strengthen the two parties to whose existence Prussia has never become reconciled—the Clerical Centre and the Social Democratic Left,—while contributing little or nothing to the parties of the Conservative Junkers or the middle-class "Liberals." In other words, the new element might prove to be an effective leaven which would permeate the whole lump. All the arguments which induced Bismarck to expel Austria from Germany in 1868 would still be upheld by the advocates of "Preussen-Deutschland" (see p. 65), and the Prussian hegemony; but after an unsuccessful war and territorial losses the chance of making these good by the achievement of national unity would probably sweep away the dissentients, who would no longer represent a triumphant system, but a beaten and discredited caste. The old idea of the "seventy-million Empire," which appealed so strongly to the Liberals of Frankfurt in 1848, should prove irresistible under these circumstances. The influence of Austrian Germans, already so marked in literature, art, music, and above all in political theory, might make itself felt in other spheres also.
Meanwhile, in view of the wild talk in which certain sections of the Press are already indulging, it cannot be too strongly emphasised that only the Germans can reform their political institutions, and that any attempt at external interference will not merely fail lamentably, but produce the very opposite effect from that which is intended. If the German Emperor insists upon confusing the relative positions of the Deity and some of his self-styled vicegerents upon earth, only the German people can restore him to a sense of proportion and modesty. All believers in human progress hope that after this war the monstrous theories of divine right propounded by the House of Hohenzollern will be relegated to the lumber-room of a vanished past. But the sooner references to St. Helena as a residence for deposed emperors are dismissed as arrant nonsense, the better. The future of German dynasties, as of German Unity, rests with the German people itself; and those who challenge this statement repudiate ipso facto the two principles of Nationality and International Law, which we have officially adopted as our programme for the future.
The fate of the German provinces of Austria is one of the central problems raised by this war, since it is the link between the fate of two Empires. The present writer most emphatically disclaims all idea of prophecy; but he feels that the time has come for outlining some of the possible alternatives which confront the statesmen of "the new Europe." So far as Austria-Hungary is concerned, it is clear that the splendid dream of "a monarchical Switzerland," as conceived by many serious political thinkers, has already died a violent death; but it would be quite premature to dogmatise on the future grouping of the races of the Dual Monarchy at a moment when its ultimate fate has still to be decided on the field of battle.
§11. Italian Aspirations.—We have already alluded to Italy's position, in connection with the Southern Slav question, and have pointed out that a settlement which follows even approximately the lines of nationality would assign the Trentino, the town of Trieste (as a free port), and a strip of Western Istria to Italy, but the remainder of the coast from Cape Promontore to the Bojana river to the new "Jugoslavia." There are, however, other directions in which Italy may claim compensation for her friendly attitude towards the Triple Entente. She has already occupied the rocky islet of Saseno, opposite Valona, and in the event of the collapse of Austria-Hungary, she may demand the whole bay of Valona, as the strategic key to the Adriatic, and even a general protectorate of the embryo Albanian State. The establishment of a miniature Gibraltar on the eastern side of the Straits of Otranto is a step which neither France nor Britain would oppose, if Italy should insist upon it; but it may be questioned whether she would not thereby be laying up stores of trouble for a distant future, altogether incommensurate with any possible advantages which might accrue. Indeed, Italy would probably be well advised to abandon all idea of an Albanian adventure (which, originally conceived as a counterstroke to Austrian aggression, would lose its point if Austria disappeared from the scene), to leave the Greeks a free hand in south Epirus, to cede to them Rhodes and the other islands occupied during the Tripolitan War, and then to secure, during the partition of Turkey, the reversion of Cilicia and the Gulf of Alexandretta. It is in any case clear that the Powers of the Triple Entente will raise no objections to such action on the part of Italy, and are resolved to show every consideration to a power whose great and vital interests in the Mediterranean in no way conflict with their own.
§12. The Balkan Situation: Bulgaria and Greece.—The creation of a Greater Roumania and of a new Southern Slav State would transform the whole Balkan situation, and therefore obviously involves material concessions to Bulgaria and Greece.
(A) If Roumania succeeds in redeeming her kinsmen across the northern frontiers, she cannot be so ungenerous as to insist upon retaining territory whose population is overwhelmingly Bulgarian, and the least which might be expected from her would be the retrocession to Bulgaria of her bloodless acquisition during the second Balkan War. This means a reversion to the boundary defined under Russian arbitration at Petrograd in January 1913—except outside the fortress of Silistria, where strategic reasons demand its rectification.
It is in the relations of Bulgaria and Serbia, however, that the key to the Balkan situation is to be found. The Serbo-Bulgarian treaty of February 1912, which formed the groundwork of the Balkan alliance, had limited Serbia's sphere of influence to northern Macedonia and referred to the arbitration of the Russian Tsar any disputes arising from conquests to the south of a certain specified line. Serbia was tacitly given a free hand in her attempt to reach the sea in Northern Albania. The action of Austria-Hungary in vetoing her access to the Adriatic forced Serbia to turn her eyes from west to south and to seek her economic outlet to the sea down the valley of the Vardar to Salonica and the Aegean. The cession of Monastir, Ochrida, and the Vardar Valley to Bulgaria would have rendered this impossible, for it would not merely have driven a wedge between Serbia and Greece, but would have placed two customs frontiers, the Bulgarian and the Greek, between Serbia and the sea, instead of only one, the Turkish, as hitherto. Shut in upon all sides, with all hope of expansion blocked by the powerful Dual Monarchy to north and west and by a big Bulgaria to east and south, Serbia would have found herself in a worse position than before the war. The Bulgarians, intoxicated by their victories over the Turks and seduced by the promptings of the Austrian tempter, turned a deaf ear to the arguments of their Serbian allies, and insisted upon their pound of flesh. They failed to realise that the most effective way of inducing the Serbs to evacuate Macedonia was to give them adequate backing in their demand for an Adriatic port. Every fresh intrigue of Sofia with Vienna confirmed Belgrade in its view of the vital necessity for retaining the Vardar Valley. The hoary argument that "circumstances alter cases," appeared anew in the garb of the Bismarckian theory that all treaties are subject to the provision "rebus sic stantibus"—a theory which many great international lawyers have unhesitatingly endorsed. In this form it appealed as irresistibly to the Serbs as did the rival shibboleth of "The treaty, the whole treaty, and nothing but the treaty" to the Bulgarians. It is impossible to absolve either side from blame; for the Serbs, in formally denouncing a treaty into which they had voluntarily entered, were doing exactly what they had so bitterly resented in Austria-Hungary's treatment of Bosnia, while the Bulgarians, in flouting the Tsar whom they had named as arbiter and in attempting to uphold the treaty by brute force and treachery, abandoned the ground of law, and placed themselves openly in the wrong.
The events of the great war have already modified the problem. The one unanswerable argument of the Serbs in declining to surrender Macedonia was the plea that they would then have nothing to offer Bulgaria for her neutrality or her support when their own inevitable day of reckoning with Austria should arrive. In short, Veles, Monastir and Ochrida were widely regarded as a pledge to be held until Bosnia and Dalmatia could be redeemed, but then to be handed over to the Bulgarians. It is true that the Serbo-Bulgar War of 1913 and the passions which it aroused have converted this feeling into one of reluctance to sacrifice what was bought at such a fearful price. But the moment has now arrived to translate an instinct into a reality. If Southern Slav Unity is to be achieved, a binding promise, under the guarantee of the Entente Powers, must be given to Bulgaria, that, in proportion as the work of Serbo-Croat unification is achieved, the Macedonian frontier will be revised in favour of Bulgaria. It is possible that Bulgaria may prefer a different formula, according to which the Tsar with the approval of his Western Allies should arbitrate upon the original Serbo-Bulgar treaty. Any such concession to Bulgarian sentiment ought not to be resented in Serbia, in view of the great issues involved. It is obvious that Serbia cannot hope to achieve her national unity unless Bulgaria abstains from hostile action, or to consolidate her new position when won unless she can win Bulgaria's active friendship. The latter by her intervention could at any moment turn the scales against Turkey or against Serbia, and it is thus essential that the Allies should treat her now with a generosity proportionate to the callous neglect with which Europe left her to her fate in September 1913.
The tendency to look down upon the Balkan States from the fancied heights of a superior "culture" has never been so marked in France or Britain as in Germany, where the Press is now engaged in comparing their own cultural exploits in Belgium with the lack of culture displayed by the "bandits" and "assassins" of Serbia, and where a man of such scientific distinction as Werner Sombart can describe the heroic kingdom of Montenegro as "nothing but a bad joke in the history of the world!"[1] But even here the habit of condescension lingers, and amidst the threatened collapse of Western civilisation it is well to remember the essential distinction between primitive and savage. The Balkan nations have grown to manhood while we slept, and must henceforth be regarded as equals in the European commonwealth.
[Footnote 1: Berliner Tageblatt, cited by Observer, November 8, 1914.]
(B) Such territorial changes as have been outlined above would vitally affect the position of Greece, who is also fully entitled to claim compensation for any serious disturbance of the balance of power. The first and most obvious form which compensation would take is the final occupation of southern Epirus; no objections will be raised to this by the Entente Powers, and it is probable that Italy has already made her own bargain with the Cabinet of Athens on this very point. It is to be hoped that Italy may also consent to hand over Rhodes and the neighbouring islands to Greece, in return for a free hand in Southern Asia Minor in the event of the Turkish Empire breaking up. By far the thorniest problem is provided by the future ownership of Kavala, which the Treaty of Bucarest assigned to Greece in August 1913, but which from an economic point of view is Bulgaria's port on the Aegean, and as vital a necessity for her future development as it is a superfluous luxury to Greece. The statesmen of Petrograd were not blind to these considerations, but the scale was turned at Bucarest by the active intervention of the German Emperor, who, under the plea of seconding his brother-in-law, King Constantine, skilfully provided a permanent bone of contention between Bulgaria and Greece. His action may not unfairly be compared to that of the Hungarian Premier, Count Tisza, in fomenting the quarrel between Serbia and Bulgaria two months earlier.
Serbia's cession of Central Macedonia to Bulgaria could not fail to be distasteful to the Greeks, for it would automatically render their tenure of Kavala highly precarious. It is to be hoped, however, that they may be brought to realise that its surrender and the consequent improvement of Greco-Bulgarian relations are in the highest interests of Greece and the whole Hellenic race. Here again, the break-up of the Turkish Empire may enable the Greeks to compensate themselves on the shores of Asia Minor. But the real key to the problem of Kavala, and thus indirectly to the revival of the Balkan League and all the far-reaching effects which that would have upon the fate of Europe, lies in the hands of Britain. It could instantly be solved by the cession of Cyprus to Greece, on condition that Kavala and the valley of the Strymon were restored to Bulgaria. Neither strategically nor economically is Cyprus of any value to Britain; thirty-five years ago it was taken over by Disraeli "as a sort of fee for opposing Russia," a foolish habit which we had abandoned long before the present war with Turkey. Its population is predominantly Greek, and the Hellenic national movement is steadily gaining ground. Anything that we might gain by its retention is more than counterbalanced by its value as an instrument of barter.
§13. The Future of Turkey.—The entry of Turkey into the great war marks a further stage in the winnowing process from which we hope that a regenerated Europe will emerge. Two of the main causes of the war are the Turk and the Magyar, whose effete and tyrannous systems have each in its own manner and degree long kept South-Eastern Europe in a ferment of unrest and reaction. It is a matter of profound regret that two infinitely more virile and progressive races, the German and the Jew, should be fighting their battles for them, and indeed bolstering up causes which would otherwise speedily collapse by reason of their own inward rottenness. It is the Triple Alliance which has made it possible for the iniquitous racial hegemony of the Magyars to survive in Hungary; it is the joint policy of Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin which has hampered the progress of the Balkan States, and above all the development of every Slavonic nation; and in this their most valuable allies have been the Jewish Press and the Jewish haute finance of Germany, Austria and Hungary. Just as we hope and believe that one result of this war will be the emancipation of Germany and German "culture" from the corroding influences of militarist doctrine, so there are good grounds for hoping that it will also give a new and healthy impetus to Jewish national policy, grant freer play to their many splendid qualities, and enable them to shake off the false shame which has led men who ought to be proud of their Jewish race to assume so many alien disguises and to accuse of anti-Semitism those who refuse to be deceived by mere appearances. It is high time that the Jews should realise that few things do more to foster anti-Semite feeling than this very tendency to sail under false colours and conceal their true identity. The Zionist and the orthodox Jewish nationalist have long ago won the respect and admiration of the world. No race has ever defied assimilation so stubbornly and so successfully, and the modern tendency of individual Jews to repudiate what is one of their chief glories suggests an almost comic resolve to fight against the course of nature.
These cryptic tendencies of pseudo-national as opposed to national Judaism have played a great part in the Young Turkish movement and the destruction which it is bringing upon Turkey. The Committee of Union and Progress at first enjoyed the moral and financial support of many men, both Christians and Jews, to whom its methods and secret currents were a sealed book. For a time the Young Turks, like the Magyars farther west, deceived foreign opinion by claptrap phrases from the repertory of modern democracy. But "murder will out," and the Committee—despite the tiny group of able, and in certain cases honourable, men who control its destinies—has gradually been revealed in its true colours, as a parasitic growth upon the body politic, preserving the worst faults of the old régime and blending with it much of the decadence which lies like froth along the backwaters of Western civilisation.
Since 1908, then, the fate of Turkey has passed from the control of the Turk and is being decided by an alien clique of infidels, renegades, political freemasons[1] and Jews, in whose hands the Caliph is a helpless tool, and to whom the teachings of Christ and of Mohammed are mere worn-out superstitions. In fact, the Committee is in its essence non-Turkish and non-Moslem. In the name of a secret society, based openly upon the subversive ideas of the wilder French Jacobins, and not shrinking from assassination as a convenient political weapon, a Jehad or Holy War is to be preached against the British Empire, and the most sacred interests of Islam are to be exploited in the interests of Germany. What bitter irony is in the fact that William II., who risked universal war to avenge the murder of his friend, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, should now find himself closely allied with Enver Pasha, the military adventurer who barely two years ago foully assassinated his own commander-in-chief, Nazim Pasha, and who therefore represents everything that is anathema to the Prussian War Lord with his exaggerated ideas of military discipline and personal loyalty!
[Footnote 1: Not to be confused for a moment with the very different form of freemasonry which prevails in this country.]
The die has been cast, and even those who most regret Turkey's action cannot shut their eyes to the fact that it inevitably raises the whole question of Constantinople and the Dardanelles. If Germany should emerge victorious, Turkey is likely to fall under a more or less veiled German protectorate. In the event of the victory of the Allies, Turkey may continue to exist as an Asiatic power, but there is little doubt that she will be eliminated from Europe. The only real question is, Who is to replace her? Bulgaria will, it is to be hoped, recover Adrianople and the Enos-Midia line, of which she was so cruelly robbed last year. The fact that the Turks on their re-entry systematically wiped out the entire Bulgarian population of northern Thrace does not weaken, but enormously strengthens, the case for its restoration. But to offer Constantinople to Bulgaria would be a fatal gift. She has absolutely no historic claim to the great city of the Caesars (Tsarigrad, as it is rightly known to every Slav); nor is there even any considerable Bulgarian population which could rally round the new government. The administrative task is obviously far beyond the powers of a small peasant state, most of whose present leaders were born under a foreign yoke. Nor is Greece a serious candidate for the vacant post. The Greeks, of course, unlike the Bulgarians, have a definite claim, based on the traditions of the Byzantine Empire, and there is a large Greek population in the city—at present close upon 350,000, though their numbers are likely to be materially reduced before this war is over. But in their case also Constantinople would be a fatal gift. The resources even of the enlarged Hellenic kingdom would inevitably prove unequal to the task. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that a Greek occupation would be opposed on many grounds by the entire commercial community of every other nation in Europe.
In some ways the ideal arrangement would be that Roumania should assume the administration of the city, as trustee for a reconstituted Balkan League, with proper guarantees for the commercial rights of all the Powers. But it is to be feared that such a solution would please nobody, perhaps not even Roumania herself. A league of the five Balkan kings, with Roumania as primus inter pares, is the dream of a remote future, and until it can be realised, Constantinople cannot assume its natural position as capital of the Balkan peninsula.
§14. Russia and Constantinople.—In short, as matters stand to-day, there is only one power which can replace the Turks as master of Constantinople, and that power is Russia. The Russians could not of course incorporate the city in their empire for reasons of geography; and this fundamental fact destroys at a blow the numerous objections which might have told against the occupation, if Constantinople had been contiguous to the Russian dominions. It would obviously be necessary to establish a special autonomous administration under a Russian governor. It is by no means impossible that Russia would be satisfied with the expulsion of the Turks and the internationalisation of Constantinople as a free port under a Christian prince or a commission of the Powers. But, though admirable in theory, such a solution would give rise to endless complications and disputes. Unless the Western Powers can trust Russia sufficiently to leave her in full possession, they must make up their minds to bolstering up the impossible Turk for a further period of years. Such a surrender to the unreasoning and ignorant prejudices of a previous generation would be a sure prelude to the collapse of our alliance with Russia, which it is the vital interest of all British patriots to uphold at all costs. Happily, "the fear of Russia," as of a strange and unknown colossus, is dying out, vague fancies inevitably yielding to the hard logic of facts. The Disraeli policy in the Near East must give place once and for all to the broader conceptions of Gladstone, tempered by the cautious statesmanship of Salisbury. The greatest of the Christian Powers must be allowed to replace the cross upon the dome of Saint Sofia. The religious appeal of such a change is clear enough, nor need there be any anxiety on economic grounds. There is nothing to prevent Constantinople from becoming a free port under the Russian flag, and filling a similar place to that which the free port of Trieste would occupy under the flag of United Italy. Indeed it may be confidently assumed that the change would give an extraordinary impetus to trade in the whole eastern Mediterranean. The recent history of Batum and Baku is a faint indication of what might be expected.