YUGOSLAVIA AND THE AXIS
By ELIZABETH WISKEMANN
THE confusion of traditions, if not of races, in Yugoslavia is considerably greater than it ever was in the Czecho- Slovak Republic, for young King Peter's territories derive not only from old Austria and old Hungary but embrace also lands where Turkish rule had succeeded to a partly Byzantine inheritance. In the south of Yugoslavia, since the Italian seizure of Albania, it has become easier to revive the Mace- donian question through Italian propaganda along the Tirana-Skoplje-Sofia route of which one hears much talk today. In the north-east the problem is a German one. In the Voivodina or Banat territory, which was Hungarian before the War, and stretching westwards into Slavonia, all along the Yugoslav course of the Danube, the descendants of the eighteenth century Swabian colonists live. Though much propaganda has been done among these Germans by emissaries from the Nazi Reich, their central organisation, the Schwabisch-deutscher Kulturbund, for some time refused to accept the complete Nazification demanded by its younger generation, and until last autumn Hiderism appeared to have brought discord rather than unity. After Munich, however (in November, 1938), the Kulturbund accepted the demands of its extremists, who re-entered its ranks with a programme similar to that proclaimed by Konrad Henlein at Karlsbad one year ago, including the claim that the whole German mino- rity in Yugoslavia shall profess a National Socialist ideology. Meanwhile the German Consul-General, Herr Neuhausen, who is also the head of the German tourist agency in Yugoslavia, has been helping to organise and finance the buying up of land from Croats and others so that the Germans shall form a more solid block along the Danube valley, in a position of economic advantage in relation to their Slav fellow-citizens. In the north-west the Slovenes fed the pressure, not so much of the Germans— relatively few—who live among them at Maribor and Kocevye, but rather of the Reich itself. Indeed Slovenia is most uncomfortably squeezed between Germany and Italy, painfully conscious of the grim denationalisation of the con- siderable Slovene minority in Italy and the smaller one in German Styria. "Will it be this one or that one who comes?" the Slovene peasants ask one another gloomily ; they prefer not to mention Hitler or Mussolini.
The main internal problem of Yugoslavia, as everyone in the country admits today, is that of the relation between Serbs and Croats. Five years ago King Alexander, together with many of the Serbs, could still deny the existence of the Croatian question ; he had divided the country into adminis- trative districts (Banovinas) intended to obliterate the his- toric boundaries claimed by the Croats. Today not only the Serbs of Crotia, but the great majority of the Serbs of old Serbia, would like to see Dr. Matchek, the leader of the Croat autonomy movement, as Prime Minister of all Yugoslavia. Despite political persecution and the dictatorial activities (perhaps because of them) of Dr. Stoyadinovitch, the Serbs as a whole remain very genuine democrats and opposed with all their hearts to Germany and Italy with whom Dr. Stoya- dinovitch is known to have carried on nefarious intrigues ; indeed, it is largely because they believe Dr. Matchek to be a sincere democrat that the Serbs are willing to accept a Croat leader. But they are at the same time aware that they must accede to the federal demands of the Croats before Dr. Matchek will consider even a ministerial portfolio. The Army chiefs themselves, once the sternest centralists, are now said to be among the warm supporters of a federal settle- ment with Dr. Matchek, and the present Cabinet of other- wise uninteresting men was appointed in order to bring this settlement about.
Difficulties today come rather from the Croats than the Serbs, for the Croats know that the increased strength of Germany and Italy, by making Belgrade more anxious for a settlement, plays into their hands. It is easy to sympathise with Croat grievances. There is no doubt that the Croats in 1918 were more socially advanced than the Serbs, yet they have been subjected since then to an invasion of relatively primitive Serb officials, while heavier taxation in Croatia has taken the wealth of the Croats for the Serbs ; the poverty of the Serbs, of course, provided some justification for greater expenditure by the State for them. For years police terrorisation was very severe in Croatia, but in recent years, and for instance at the time of the elections last December, the authorities treated the Serbs more roughly than the Croats. Dr. Matchek is among the most moderate members of his, the Croat Peasant, Party. It is characteristic of the situation in Croatia that he was bitterly attacked for his moderation by small Fascist groups paid by Germany and Italy at least until after the fall of M. Stoyadinovitch in February, though Germany and Italy were the pillars of the anti-Croat Stoyadinovitch regime. While reviling the Croats to the members of the German minority in Slavonia, German propagandists have been full of fine words to the Croats themselves, to whom they have particularly recommended independence on the Slovak model ; but although the Yugoslav Press is indirectly controlled from Berlin and Rome, the Croats feel increasingly, sceptical regarding the joys of Slovak liberty.
In the circumstances Dr. Matchek was compelled to ask the Prime Minister for a great deal when M. Tsvetkovitch came to Zagreb to confer with him over the week-end following Easter. (It was significant that the Premier should come to the Croat capital, because the gesture was conciliatory, but also because when Dr. Matchek came to Belgrade in the autumn of 1937 he was received with such enthusiasm that the Serb poke were in no hurry to see him there again.) The Croats, in fact, demanded complete home rule for them- selves, with only the dynasty and the two Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defence to be the links betwcen the Serbs and me Croats, and whoever else receives the same status. The actual negotiations which took place were only concerned with the frontiers within which Croat autonomy is to reign. The Serb and Croat populations are in many dis- tricts difficult to disentangle from one another, nowhere more so than in Bosnia, which before the War was neither a part of Croatia under Hungary nor of independent Serbia, but under an Austro-Hungarian condominium. The Croats now demand for themselves the ancient frontiers of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia ; these are to embrace both Kotor on the coast and Zemun outside Belgrade if Bosnia remains autonomous beyond them. Zemun is an extraordinarily diffi- cult request for the Serbs to accept ; if they will not, Bosnia is to be divided between Croats and Serbs, though probably. the Bosnians, not excepting the Croat Bosnians, would prefer autonomy.
These demands are almost more than any Belgrade Government could meet, and the Zagreb conversations, which were to be resumed within a few days, seem rather to have broken down. Instead, perhaps, the Yugoslav Govern- ment appears to be falling in with Italy's plans for a rapprochement between Belgrade and Budapest. It seems that at Venice Count Ciano, strengthened by the Italian con- quest of Albania as he was, made very extensive offers to M. Cincar Markovitch, underlining Serb-Bulgar co-opera- ton under Belgrade's direction. The Yugoslav Government does not regard the possibility of help from the West to exist; and if it cannot give the country real unity by arriving at a solution of the Croat question, it may welcome an arrangement with Bulgaria and Hungary. For such an arrangement can be made to appeal to the Serb peasants' romantic belief in Serb-Bulgar brotherhood, while diverting the eyes of the Bulgarian and Hungarian Governments to those portions—Dobrudja and Transylvania—of' Rumania which they have long coveted. The Serbs and Rumanians have no feeling for one another, and it appears that Southern Slav sentiment, which is incidentally strongly pro-Russian, can thus be used to smash the Balkan Entente and to save the pseudo-dictatorial Yugoslav regime, which still refuses to recognise the U.S.S.R., from any admission of failure with regard to the Croats. There is still much talk in Yugoslavia of Italy's interest in resisting Germany's advance to the south-east, but if Yugoslavia is brought into the Axis in this way it will greatly strengthen Germany's position at Bel- grade, while Germany's intrigues against Belgrade in Zagreb will have done much to achieve this result.
The governing group in Belgrade will thus have gone back to the Stoyadinovitch policy so bitterly resented by all Yugoslays alike; the generous sentiment of the people will again have been sacrificed to the advantages of dictatorial co-operation for the governing few.
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