One of the greatest misfortunes of the nineteenth century was the
creation of separate Serbian and Bulgarian kingdoms, wherein there was
so small an ethnological difference between these two branches of the
Yugoslavs; and in those districts where a frontier runs one sees
especially how criminal it was to make this separation. Balkan
philologists to-day will tell you--and even those who are in other
respects the most rabid Serbs or Bulgars--that there is really no such
thing as a Serbian and a Bulgarian language, but only groups of
Yugoslav dialects. And yet it pleased the Great Powers to prevent the
union of the two Balkan brothers. In that region with which we are
dealing the Berlin Congress attempted to draw, with very inadequate
maps, a frontier line along the watershed; and the Commissioners who
were sent to mark out this line, observing that many of the indicated
points did not coincide with the watershed, thought it would be
preferable to trace the frontier along the saddle, between the
tributaries of the Morava on one side and of the Struma and the river
of Trn on the other. As the region was, however, not uninhabited the
farmers were frequently cut off, as at Topli Dol and Preseka, from the
meadows and the forests which they had regarded always as their own.
Bismarck, speaking with indifference of "the fragments of nations that
inhabit the Balkan Peninsula," could see in the national yearning of
the Yugoslavs only a yearning for lawlessness and tumult. So he
laboured at his plan of dominating Europe with the mighty structure of
the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian conservative empires; and if
he built it over a stream of democracy, with results that are to-day
apparent, who knows whether the statesmen of our day are not somewhere
constructing a house which to our descendants will appear equally
ridiculous? And anyhow, as we shall see, he was far from being the
only offender at the Berlin Congress. If that particular strip of
frontier had been drawn in the most unimpeachable fashion it would
still have been iniquitous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account