The History of Yugoslavia. Henry Baerlein
hear enough—in what proportion were they to the inhabitants of the Peninsula? The people as a whole exhibited indifference, which causes Garibaldi to complain most bitterly. And if it had not been for the genius of Cavour and his collaborators, for the diplomatic support of England, the alliance with Prussia and, above all, for the French army, the redemption of the country would have been delayed. No doubt the Church had an enormous influence upon the people, no doubt in the surviving mediæval States—the duchies and republics—whose government belonged to the privileged classes, there was little to awaken popular interest; no doubt great masses of the people were untouched by education and the spread of new ideas—if freedom is a new idea; no doubt the peasants in various parts of the country were in as deplorable a plight as the peasants of to-day, which has had as one effect the inexpansive manner, as Italian officers have testified, with which the redeemed peasants of the Trentino and elsewhere often welcomed their redeemers. And the Italian peasants of 1859 may be pardoned for imagining that this world never would be made so good as to include their own salvation. One can find sufficient excuses for what occurred in Italy. Will not the Italians excuse, rather than praise, the very, very small number of Yugoslavs who have stood out against Yugoslavia? When Italy had been united did no Italians choose rather to go into exile?
HOW CAVOUR WOULD HAVE TREATED THE SLAVS
Some Italians were so intoxicated with the success of Garibaldi's troops and the French army that they began to see dangerous visions. Once again, on December 28, 1860, they were warned by the great founder of their country. "Let us avoid," wrote Cavour,[45] "every expression which could permit one to suppose that the King's government aspires not merely to the possession of Venice, but also to that of Triest, with Istria and Dalmatia. I know well that in the towns of the littoral the population is fundamentally Italian by race and sentiments, but that the rest of the country belongs exclusively to the Slavs. … Every word which touches this question, however lightly it be uttered, would become a dangerous weapon in the hands of our enemies. They would know very well how to use them in order to raise up England against us, for that Power would also not look with favour on the Adriatic Sea becoming, as in the days of Venice, an Italian Sea." Cavour's opinion as to the towns was presumably based on such researches as were made in 1842 by Kandler. The city of Triest contained in that year 53,000 persons "who speak Italian" and 21,000 "who speak Slav"; but as Italian, an international language, was used by the numerous German, Armenian, Greek, Turkish and Levantine colonies, and was spoken in public by all the Slavs, the 53,000 would lose a considerable proportion who were not fundamentally Italian by race or sentiments. It may safely be stated, on the other hand, that none of the Italians and an infinitely small number of the exotic population would speak Slav, so that one may say that Triest contained 21,000 Slovenes. One need not attach overmuch importance to the fact that the town in 1866, among other manifestations of loyalty occasioned by the defeat of the Italian navy near Vis (Lissa), created the Austrian Admiral Tegetthoff an honorary citizen. Even if the 53,000 had all been Italians, Triest might have thought it expedient to act in this way. … Cavour may have accepted in very good faith the similar figures for the little ports of western Istria; in them there was no such miscellaneous population, but a large number of those who spoke Italian did so because it was only at this period that the Bishop, Dr. George Dobrila, the great regenerator of the Istrian Yugoslavs, began to rouse his countrymen and to induce them not to discard their own language. "Wachen sie die Slaven" ("Awaken the Slavs"), said Francis Joseph before the war against Italy in 1866 when he was anxious for the southern provinces; and although the Emperor used various means to put the Slavs to sleep again, it may be noted that in 1861 Cavour would learn that in the Diet there were two Slavs against twenty-eight Italians, in the Parliament no single Slav; whereas if he had lived another fifty years he would have seen the same country returning nineteen Slav deputies to the Diet against twenty-five Italians, and three to the Parliament at Vienna against three Italians. …
ITALIAN v. SLAV: TOMMASEO'S ADVICE
As for Dalmatia, where also the Italian-speaking population was not fundamentally Italian by race or sentiments, we may turn to the renowned Nicolo Tommaseo, whose authority the Italians do not dispute. "We must not abolish the Italian language," he said—and this was in the year 1861—"for it would be a dream of fools to wish or hope to be able to abolish it immediately in public life without causing offence and confusion and injury even for those who speak Illyrian; this would be a tyranny the more abominable as it would be powerless … because the Illyrian tongue, as is the case more or less with all the Slav languages, spoken by nations which up to the present have not entirely participated in the abstractions of science and in the refinements of European art, is not as yet equipped with all that reserve of terms and locutions which is demanded in a highly developed social life, although that language possess in itself all the elements." This capacity which he recognized in the Slav languages and which came subsequently to the surface in Russian and Czech literature, would, he said, in two generations cause the Slav to be employed as the official language of Dalmatia. He stipulated for two generations "because, in the first place, it is necessary that this language should be learned regularly in the schools from the lowest to the highest class, without for that reason ever banishing Italian; and secondly, it is requisite that men should become skilful in the use of this language and should render it adequate for the needs of social life."
AUSTRIA LEANS ON GERMANS AND ITALIANISTS
For a moment after her Italian misfortunes Austria assumed a kindly mien towards her Slavs. In the manifesto of July 15, 1859, which made public the treaty of peace, the Emperor promised "immediate modifications in the laws and in the administration." Bach, the German reactionary, was succeeded by Goluchowski, and in April 1861 Ivan Mazuranić became the Croat Chancellor at Vienna, with educational, legal and religious affairs included in the sphere of his office. The incorporation with Dalmatia was not granted then, but was promised. A letter was, however, sent to Mamula, the governor of Dalmatia, ordering him to create a majority hostile to the Emperor's letter of December 5, 1860, in which he had invited the two provinces to send their delegate to a conference at which the union would be discussed. The shrill protests of the German party were successful; for the next few years the Slavs were being pushed into their pit and then helped half-way out again. Schmerling, the German, would evolve an electoral system by which the Parliament must always have a German majority; Francis Deak, the Hungarian, would make excellent proposals that too often suffered shipwreck through no fault of his, he would manage to pass liberal legislation which remained in after years upon the statute book and was exhibited by Magyars to appreciative foreigners. The general tendency of those years after the Italian disaster was unfavourable to the Slav. In southern Hungary the Serbian duchy was dissolved, despite their protests, after an existence of eleven years. But as Francis Joseph was no longer able to bestow caresses on the recreant Italians he transferred his love to the Dalmatian autonomists, who now began to call themselves the Italian party. It is probable that he smiled on these 2½ per cent. of the province, not only because of his family traditions, his leaning towards Italian art and the hope against hope that he would once more some day rule in Italy, where he had his numerous well-wishers among the clergy and the rural population—it is possible that he was gracious to the autonomist Dalmatian party because they were a brake upon the national sentiments. Until 1866 the whole administration was conducted in the language of the 2½ per cent. In that year the Ministers of Justice and of the Interior decided to ask officials who thenceforward entered the Dalmatian service to have some sort of knowledge of the Illyrian language. In 1869 these Ministers permitted the Dalmatian communities to correspond in their own language with the tribunals and the administrative authorities; while in 1887 the administrative authorities and the tribunals were ordered to reply in Serbo-Croat to the local bodies who used that language. The autonomist party may not appeal to us and apparently it did not appeal to Nicolo Tommaseo. From wherever he is he must be looking on with interest at a controversy between two Italian writers who both published books on Dalmatia in 1915 and who bear witness—Mr. Cippico to the truth that Tommaseo was an autonomist and Mr. Prezzolini to the truth that he was not. "The theory of Tommaseo," says Mr. Cippico, "desires an autonomous Dalmatia between the mountains and the sea." "Go to!" says Mr. Prezzolini.