VI.
America and Her Allies
WE Americans should have a better excuse if we had never acknowledged the truth. When President Wilson stated his "Fourteen Points," one of the few items that excited no opposition, started no debate, was the demand for restoration of Montenegro along with Belgium and the other little states that had entered the war on the same basis.
One of the chief unanswered charges against Mr. Wilson was his failure to carry out the purposes he himself had announced and the best sentiment of America had repeatedly approved. No feature of his program appealed more powerfully to the civilized world's sense of justice than his insistence upon the self determination of small nations.
President Wilson went to Europe with a briefcase bulging with Peace Plans, any or all of which he was willing to trade for support of his League of Nations. When the diplomats had gone through it nothing remained but the League. They left that to the very competent hands of the United States Senate.
To specify only a few items, Mr. Wilson had given up the freedom of the seas for England's support; he had made a separate defensive alliance—never voluntarily submitted to Congress for approval—with France and England to please the former; he had held over distressed Italy a threat of economic pressure. On the other hand he had yielded Shantung to Japan while allowing Serbia to swallow Montenegro and Dalmatia.
President Wilson went to Europe to lead the oppressed peoples out of the desert into the Promised Land, giving them a new version of the Commandments. But the old order was too strong for him. Those diplomatic priests and levites made of him le bouc émissaire. They laid upon his head the sins of the people and led him out into the wilderness of words, and he never found his way back.
In October, 1919, writing from Fiume in reference to the conditions created by the Peace Conference, I made the following statement:
"The conference is responsible for the confusion which exists about the Fiume and Dalmatian question. It has made a mistake and should rectify it—it is a mistake, not a crime. The crime is Montenegro—having wiped it off the face of the map—not of the world, however—and some day that crime must he atoned.
But if the War President conveniently forgot his own creed, the United States cannot do so. One principle is an inseparable part of our history. We accepted it and asserted it long before Mr. Wilson was thought of as chief Executive. Self-determination was really implied in the Monroe Doctrine, the refusal of the United States to let Europe dictate to any of our weaker sisters in South America or elsewhere on this continent. We asserted the same principle and gave our blood for it in the Cuban war, proving our own sincerity by leaving the island when self-government was assured. And whatever thought of our own interest may have acted as a motive in 1917, indignation over the crime against Belgium was the unquenchable fire that burned up every dry argument against our entering the World War.
One of the first feelings of decent school boys is hatred of a bully who is cruel to weaker lads. The right-minded man never loses that feeling.
Germany bullied Belgium. The manhood of the world fought her to a finish. But when Serbia bullies Montenegro, nobody lifts a hand to stop the outrage.
Why?
Because Serbia has lied successfully and the conscience of the world which hates lying has not yet found her out. Or perhaps it would be more accurate though less flattering to say that we are too lazy to seek out the truth and force correction of the error.
Serbian activity in the court of public opinion has been very cleverly directed. Much of what her apologists proclaim so loudly is true. But she suppresses just the vital elements whose absence leads to a false conclusion. This is the way she does it:
The Serbians are a brave and progressive race."
"Montenegrins and Serbians have a common origin."
"Desire for an alliance or some form of confederation has often been expressed in Montenegro."
Montenegro has been for over five centuries an independent State. She has maintained that independence against incredibly superior forces. Whatever they may think about confederation or alliances, the Montenegrin people have never expressed a wish to give up their existence as an individual nation.
First of all Montenegro could not come to any real decision or express any free choice as to her destiny until she herself was free. It ought not to be necessary to recall that axiomatic truth, yet the whole case turns on that and it is never mentioned in any of Serbia's manifestos.
It was Serbia that precipitated the war by refusing to admit Austria's right even to send a delegate to take part in the investigation of the murder of the Austrian Archduke and Arch-duchess. On the same principle she ought to have aided in restoring Montenegro to independence. When the government was re-established it would have been time to treat on equal terms as to confederation in a Jugoslavic state.
Viscount Gladstone gave it as his judgment that Montenegro "could not be treated worse had she fought on the side of the Central Powers."
Since the war, Serbia's attitude towards Montenegro, unrebuked by her allies, has been that of a conqueror toward a conquered enemy. Yet strangely enough, even certain conquered territories have been permitted to vote freely as to their own disposition.
Under the Treaty of Versailles, Slesvig, the Sarre Valley, East and West Prussia and upper Silesia were permitted to decide their own destiny; Eupen and Malmedy could register protests. And much of the voting thus provided for has been honestly accomplished according to the Official Report.
Montenegro has never been permitted to register a protest where it would do any good. One of the clearest and most impartial general views of the war's results is given in Ralph Graves' article "The New Map of Europe" printed in The National Geographic Magazine. He is holding no brief for or against anybody but analyzing facts and stating present conditions. These are his final paragraphs:
"In addition, the former Kingdom of Montenegro has been absorbed. As to the former Kingdom of Serbia, it would be perhaps more nearly proper to speak of its expansion to include Jugoslavia than of its 'absorption' by the new state. It is the Serbian King Peter I, who occupies the throne of Jugoslavia in the capital city of Belgrade.
"The new boundaries make Jugoslavia, a state three times the size of pre-war Serbia, with a population roughly estimated at 14,500,000 which is more than three times that of Serbia in 1914."
There is nothing new in the program of those ambitious masters of intrigue. It is only in recent years that they have taken the trouble to mask their designs. In 1908 the Minister of Foreign Affairs openly addressed these words to the Serbian Chamber:
"We ought to have a war in Europe. We are hoping that some unforeseen event will unchain it. Europe must give us the territory we demand or we will engage in a great and bloody contest."
The desired war was precipitated. After the event, in the same spirit the Serbian consul general at Odessa wrote in 1916 that his country alone had won immortal glory, for although a little state, "by hard work, from year to year she succeeded in unchaining the world war." And looking to a still more glorious future, he declared that Serbia ought to prepare, when this conflict was over, for another war, to secure what she has not yet obtained.
A Herald editorial of August 14, 1922 couples the attempted extinction of Montenegro as a separate state with the recent recognition by Secretary Hughes of the Albanian Government. The editorial goes on thus:
"It seems a peculiar dispensation of fate that at the time when the Montenegrins are losing statehood, the Albanians their enemies for centuries should acquire it. The Montenegrins have a history rich in traditions of their struggles against the Turks. Those Black Mountaineers remained unconquered when all the remainder of the Balkans had been subjugated by the Sultan's armies. They were for centuries a Western bulwark against the advance of the Moslem. The Montenegrin chieftain's deeds of valor, like those of all the Serb races, were preserved in folk legend and story and told by their Homeric bards to the music of the guzla at all their public meeting places. It was this constant recital of past heroism which inspired the Montenegrin's loyalty to his race and state."
The editorial recalls the fact that Montenegro was obliged to give up Scutari to Albania after it had been fairly captured in war, the Scripture rule being reversed to read "To him that hath not shall be given." But gifts to Albania have not always been to its own advantage—for example, the Powers handed her a foreign ruler, Prince William of Wied!
"The Albanians knew nothing of him and he knew as little of the Albanians. His reign lasted for a few months and he was willing to abandon his throne. Essad Pasha then went to live in the palace which had been fitted up for the Prince and remained there imagining himself king, until the Austrian invasion ousted him. After the war a provisional state was formed and a provisional government took charge of affairs. It kept peace and order through a turbulent period and relinquished what power it had to the present government.
"The state which has been formed is thus the first substantially organized independent rule which the Albanians have had." What a contrast to Montenegro, with her five hundred years of independence.