5i8 



The Review of Reviews. 



Albanian. Finally, in the whole of Kossovo 

 there are scarcely any Albanians who do not 

 speak Servian, and they are mostly of Servian 

 origin. Notwithstanding migrations and Is- 

 lamisations, there are in Old Servia 800,000 

 orthodox Servians. Many of them are fairly 

 recent settlers, who came to these fertile plains 

 from Montenegro in times of famine. There are 

 also 300,000 Servian Mohammedans who only 

 speak Servian, some 150,000 to 200,000 Ar- 

 nauts, or Albanised Servians, who speak both 

 languages, and the remainder, 300,000 to 

 400,000, are the Albanian colonists referred to 

 above. 



WHAT OLD SERVIA MEANS TO SERBS. 



■ Servia and Montenegro have strong humane 

 and national reasons for putting a stop to the 

 anarchy in these Servian lands by insisting on 

 autonomy or by occupying the territory. 

 Turkish rule and Albanian crimes ! Even the 

 most humane in Western Europe can have but 

 a faint idea what these mean. For us Serbs 

 they are real, and they mean the destruction of 

 a people, a people of our own blood and our 

 owh language, who have relatives throughout 

 Servia. Indeed, in some parts of our country 

 the greater proportion of the population hails 

 from Old Servia, which at one time formed the 

 centre of the ancient Empire. In the neighbour- 

 hood of Novi Bazar lie the ruins of the old 

 capital, Rassa. Prishtina, Pauni, Prizren, and 

 other capitals and castles of the great Ne- 

 manitch rulers are all here. In the southern 

 part of this region lies Uskub, one of the 

 capitals of Tsar Dushan, and where his famous 

 code was sanctioned in 1354. Almost in the 

 centre lies the Plain of Kossovo — sad memory ! — 

 for it was here that the disastrous battle was 

 fought in 1389 between the Turks, on the one 

 hand, and the Servians and their allies on the 

 other. Even though it was a catastrophe, it 

 became to us a source of national strength 

 because of the monumental bravery of the Ser- 

 vians who perished fighting to the end for their 

 fatherland. If we were to take possession of 

 these countries by bloodshed and warfare, no 

 Servian would look upon it as a conquest, but 

 as the recovery of what already belonged to us. 



AN OUTLET TO THE SEA NECESSARY. 



But apart from the national distress described 

 above, our country has yet a stronger reason 

 for interesting herself in this territory. Servia 

 is the most thickly populated country on the 

 Balkan Peninsula, and relatively it has the 

 thickest network of railway communications. 



The more she has advanced economically, the 

 more she has realised that she was suffocated 

 without an outlet on the sea. Up to six or 

 seven years ago all the agricultural export of 

 Servia went north to Austria-Hungary and be- 

 yond. Difficulties were made for us, and there 

 followed the Customs' war between Servia and 

 Austria-Hungary. We were obliged to make 

 a great effort to alter the course of our export 

 trade towards the South, towards Salonica, thus 

 changing our markets and all our mercantile 

 connections. But owing to the disturbances 

 in Turkey this route is uncertain.* Already 

 every Servian peasant has personally experi- 

 enced what Mr. Garvin stated in the Observer, 

 that Servia is a surrounded country, and that its 

 people are an imprisoned nation. It is evident, 

 then, that Servia cannot develop under present 

 conditions. Only together with Old Servia 

 would she constitute a unit which has the neces- 

 sary conditions for economical development. 

 From Old Servia, along the river Drina, lies 

 the shortest road to the Adriatic, and here a 

 railway could be built which would join Servia 

 with the coast at San Giovanni di Medua to 

 Ijesh, and perhaps to Durazzo. On account of 

 this need of Servia, the plan was set on foot of a 

 Danube-Adriatic railway, for which we have 

 succeeded in interesting the capitals of the 

 Western European States. But several years' 

 negotiations and transactions have had no re- 

 sult, because of Turkish indolence and Albanian 

 savagery. Only with an outlet on the Adriatic 

 Sea will Servia have the necessary condition 

 for economical independence, and only then can 

 she be satisfied. She can only obtain it if she 

 and Montenegro become adjoining States, and 

 this is one of the aims of the present war. 



JOINT ACTION RECOGNISED AS NECESSARY. 



Servia, like the other Balkan States, would 

 still perhaps have endured the crimes and op- 

 pression which we have described. She would 

 have protested, but would have been unable to 

 accomplish anything, even after the massacres 

 of the Bulgarians at Kotchna and of the Ser- 

 vians at Senitsa and Berane. The isolated little 

 Balkan States would perhaps even have accepted 

 without making war Turkey's rejection of the 

 autonomy programme. Thus it would have 

 been had a strong alliance not been formed 



*The Servian Minister of Finance, Dr. Laza Pachu, 

 has said on the subject to an Austrian correspondent — 

 "Was niitzt uns die Bahn nach Sabniki, wenn die 

 ewigen Unruhen ihne Benutzung ausschliessen, wenn 

 wir me wissen ob neuer Tumulte halber der Betrieb 

 nichteingestellt wird." {Neue Freie Presse, October 

 1912.) Cp., Rene Pinon, " I'Europe et'l'Empirc 

 Ottoman," Paris, 1908, pp. 397-444. 



