SERVIA. 



771 



mostly in accordance with the Radical pro- 

 gramme. In the electoral law effective safe- 

 guards were inserted to prevent illegitimate 

 pressure or falsification of returns, to secure the 

 proportional representation of minorities, and to 

 guarantee to all parties complete freedom in 

 the exercise of the right of suffrage. The law 

 reorganizing the national, communal, district, 

 and county administration for the first time re- 

 alizes the popular desire for decentralization in- 

 stead of the concentration of powers in the 

 hands of the Central Government that has been 

 the prevailing tendency. The communes, and 

 also the districts and counties, have extensive 

 political, police, and judicial functions under 

 their control, for which special representative 

 bodies were created, which possess, moreover, a 

 certain power of taxation. Of a reactionary chaiv 

 acter is a law giving the Minister of Justice 

 a certain disciplinary control over the judges. 

 The law on the administration of the Church is 

 equally at variance with Radical principles. 

 The lower clergy are deprived of the representa- 

 tion they have had in the Holy Synod and are 

 subjected entirely to the authority of the Metro- 

 politan. By voting this bill in obedience to Rus- 

 sian dictation the Radicals drew upon themselves 

 the enmity of the village clergy, a class that has 

 always furnished effective support to their party. 

 The Skupshtina also approved the nationaliza- 

 tion of the railroads and a bill on monopolies 

 that was expected to increase the public income. 

 The most important act of the session, which 

 lasted six months, was the introduction of the 

 militia system, which was carried out only par- 

 tially, for King Milan's army was too powerful 

 a political force to be transformed suddenly 

 against the will of the officers. Two of these, 

 Col. Milan Pavlovich and Lieut-Col. Jovan Ban- 

 lich, were deprived of their commands in Jan- 

 uary for attempting to agitate among their com- 

 rades against the reorganization of the army. 



Queen Natalie's Demands. Not less than 

 before King Milan obtained his decree of divorce 

 and vacated the throne the course of politics 

 continued to depend in 1890 on the quarrels be- 

 tween him and Queen Natalie. Garashanine, 

 who had always combated the political opinions 

 represented in the circle that surrounded the 

 Queen, had retired from power rather than 

 countenance the King's desire to have a di- 

 vorce granted irregularly and without legal 

 grounds, and the King had placed himself in 

 the hands of his political opponents, the former 

 friends of Queen Natalie, in order to obtain their 

 co-operation in securing the divorce, and when 

 both had carried out their part of the bargain, 

 he resigned his royal prerogatives rather than 

 govern under a Radical Constitution. The de- 

 cree of divorce signed by the Metropolitan Theo- 

 dosius, after the Holy Synod had referred the 

 matter to a constitutional court and the lat- 

 ter had decided that no cause for a divorce ex- 

 isted, was contested strenuously by Queen Na- 

 talie. After the divorce was granted and she 

 was deprived of the custody of her son, with the 

 aid of the German authorities at Wiesbaden she 

 entered into correspondence with the public men 

 of Servia with a view of being invited back to 

 Belgrade with full recognition of her rank and 

 status, and also sought the intervention of the 



Czar and of the ecclesiastical authorities in Rus- 

 sia. Receiving only evasive replies, she di-ti-r- 

 mined to go to Belgrade without an invitation. 

 King Milan also returned tg Serviu to o| 

 her aims. She demanded the right to live in 

 Belgrade and to see her son every Sunday aud 

 holiday. Gen. Gruich obtained froffl the ex-'Kinj: 

 and Ilistich their sanction to her visiting the 

 King twice a year in the palace, and being n 

 those occasions treated with royal honors, and 

 when she rejected this compromise, he would 

 have nothing more to do with her case. The 

 women arid the youth of the country sympa- 

 thized strongly with the Queen mother. She 

 had the advocacy of Garashanine and his re- 

 cently resuscitated party and the more powerful 

 support of the Liberals. Ristich and the Radi- 

 cal ministers were deterred from granting her 

 requests by the promises they had made the ex- 

 King. It was not known till afterward that 

 Milan, who still possessed a strong influence over 

 the officers of the army, had guarded against 

 their acceding to the wishes of the Queen by 

 making his abdication conditional. The Premier 

 wrote to her that she was at liberty to return to 

 Servia as a private person whenever she pleased, 

 but that it rested with King Milan, as King Al- 

 exander's guardian, to regulate her interviews 

 with her son. When the Skupshtina met again 

 in the autumn she submitted a memorandum 

 praying for the restitution of her rights. In this 

 document she first made known the fact that the 

 Holy Synod had pronounced the decree of di- 

 vorce invalid and that the Metropolitan Michael 

 had annulled it by a decree signed six months be- 

 fore, on June 25, 1890. Through it the secret com- 

 pact between King Milan and the Regents \\;is 

 revealed likewise for the first time. The Radical 

 majority in the Skupshtina prevented any action 

 being taken on the memorandum, which by a fu- 

 tile vote they endeavored to keep secret from the 

 world. The Liberals made a strong fight in fa- 

 vor of a vote on the petition, and when the tac- 

 tics of suppression and evasion prevailed they 

 left the hall in a body by way of protest. A sec- 

 tion of the Radicals, headed by Dragishka Stano- 

 jevich, an old supporter of the Karageorgevich 

 pretenders, seceded from the party on the same 

 question. The ex-King declared that if the 

 clause in the Constitution giving him absolute 

 rights of guardianship over his son should be set 

 aside he would regard it to have been abrogated 

 as a whole and would act as though his abdica- 

 tion had not taken place. 



Old Servia. The decision of the Porte to 

 create Bulgarian bishoprics in Macedonia 

 BULGARIA) rekindled Servian as well as Greek 

 jealousies. Several lawless acts committed in the 

 Turkish provinces were made the subject of dip- 

 lomatic complaints in 1890. In May theAr- 

 nauts who dwell in Kossovo. belonging to the 

 turbulent section of that unruly nation that for- 

 merly lived in the southern part of the present 

 Kingdom of Servia and migrated across the bor- 

 der after the Berlin Treaty, fell upon some Chris- 

 tian villages near Ipek, drove out the inhabitant 

 and massacred the fugitives near Kolaschiua. 

 Since their migration they have enjoyed no 

 prosperity, and have frequently committed raids 

 across the Servian frontier or on their Slavic 

 neighbors in the confines of Turkish territory. 



