Russia, the partisans of Dimitriyevitch appealed for Russian sympathy and approached me also with a memorandum. Naturally, I held aloof, for I had heard something of the “Black Hand” in Belgrade before the war. But, again and again, I reconciled the warring factions and calmed their excitement. Though I recognized that the Serbians had made mistakes, the situation demanded discipline and quieter tactics.
Later on, towards the end of the war, the Italian occupation of Croat and Slovene territory led to further differences with the Serbians. The Diet of Zagreb addressed to President Wilson, on November 4, 1918, a protest against the Italian occupation, and further protests followed from Dalmatia and Bosnia. Among the Croats the rumour spread that Dr. Vesnitch, the Serbian Minister in Paris, had assented to the Italian occupation. Dr. Trumbitch, on the other hand, maintained that it ought not to be carried out either by Italian or by Serbian but by American troops—a standpoint which gave displeasure in Serbia.
Before I had been long in America I saw that the Yugoslavs were at sixes and sevens. Among the Croat colonies in the United States—and in South America too—local views and influences were making themselves felt just as they had done at first in our own case. Bad blood was caused also by the action of Pashitch, the Serbian Prime Minister, in pensioning off the Serbian Minister at Washington, Mihailovitch, in July 1918, for having, it was said, consistently supported the Declaration of Corfu and the unification of the Southern Slavs. Therefore he lost the favour of Pashitch who, according to serious Croat information, had been convinced by the pro-Austrian war aims speeches of Wilson and Lloyd George in January 1918 that Yugoslav unity would be unattainable and that Serbia must secure for herself at least Bosnia-Herzegovina and access to the sea. It should, however, be said that the Declaration of Corfu had been expounded in America one-sidedly and in a manner suggestive rather of a “Great Croatian” and republican programme than of Yugoslav unity.
For the sake of completeness I ought to say that a representative of Montenegro, or rather of the King of Montenegro, came also to see me. King Nicholas had looked upon me with disfavour since the days when I had criticized Montenegrin policy in the Vienna Parliament. I admit that I handled him somewhat severely in that speech, and he let me feel it when I went later on to Cettinye, though I went with his permission. But the war effaced these memories, and he sent to me one of
