PARIS 1919 (20 page)

In the months after the Corfu declaration Nikola Pa
i
quietly slid away from any real union. He worked behind the scenes to make sure that the Allies did not recognize Ante Trumbi
and the Yugoslav Committee as the voice of the South Slavs from Austria-Hungary. In October, just as the war was ending, he had a meeting in London with Wickham Steed, who still thought that he could sort out the remnants of Austria-Hungary into nice, rational patterns.
Nikola Pa
i
would not be managed. He told Wickham Steed that Serbia had liberated the South Slavs from Austria-Hungary, that the Corfu Declaration had been intended only for propaganda, and that Serbia was going to be in control of any new state. Croats or Slovenes who did not like it were perfectly free to go elsewhere. “He alone was entitled to determine what policy should be followed; and those whom he employed had to obey orders.” Wickham Steed angrily accused
Nikola Pa
i
of acting like a sultan, and the two men never spoke to each other again.
¹⁵

Apart from self-appointed experts such as Wickham Steed, few on the Allied side had given much thought to the future of central Europe and even less to the Balkans. The sudden disintegration of the Habsburg empire in the last weeks of the war raised huge issues. Would there still be some sort of rump state, with Austria and Hungary presided over perhaps by a different set of Habsburgs? Perhaps Croatia could become a new kingdom under an English prince. More practically, who was going to own the railway lines and the ports? What about Austria-Hungary's fleet? The young Emperor Karl, in one of his last acts, handed it over to his rapidly departing South Slav subjects. Possibly because the Balkans had caused so much trouble already, the powers tacitly agreed that the borders settled with so much difficulty before 1914 would not be touched.

Well before the Peace Conference opened, the South Slavs had taken matters into their own hands. In Zagreb, capital of Croatia, a National Council of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes declared its independence from Austria-Hungary on October 29, 1918. The next step was not clear. Many still hoped for their own separate South Slav state. Many Serbs, on the other hand, were for simply joining Serbia. Ante Trumbi
and his supporters preferred a federation, but a considerable number of Croats wanted an independent Croatia. In that moment the choices all seemed open.

In reality, circumstances were closing them off. Although Nikola Pa
i
was forced by Allied pressure into forming a coalition government with Ante Trumbi
and representatives of the National Council in Zagreb in the second week of November, he made sure that the new government was stillborn. “The old man,” reported Seton-Watson, “changes his mind every few hours and cannot be trusted for five minutes with his word of honour or anything else.” Meanwhile, on the ground, the Serbian army, as an Allied force, was fanning out into Austrian territory, first to the north and south and then, by November, into Croatia and Slovenia. French authorities, nominally responsible for the sector, watched benevolently. France had no objection to a strong Yugoslavia, which could act as a brake on Italy. When the Yugoslav Volunteers, some 80,000 soldiers from Austria-Hungary now fighting on the Allied side, tried to win Allied recognition as an occupation force,
Nikola Pa
i
, to the dismay of Ante Trumbi
and other Croats, made sure that this did not happen. With Serbian encouragement, self-appointed assemblies in the Banat and in Bosnia-Herzegovina voted, hastily, for union with Serbia. In Montenegro, with Serbian troops in occupation, a national assembly, apparently made up only of those with the correct views, voted equally hastily to depose their king and to unite with Serbia.
¹⁶