TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,—So it is true, after all! Austria having lawlessly annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, a Conference is to be summoned for the constatation of the annexation. Poor Austria! The Sick Man of Stambul having suddenly recovered, the Sick Woman of Vienna takes his place as an object of the solicitude of Europe.

I regret to see that some of your correspondents have assumed that in protesting against the annexation I was animated by hostility to Austria. Quite the contrary. Is it an unkind act to deprecate a misfortune to your neighbours? That the conversion of an occupation into an annexation would be a misfortune we know on the best authority. When Mr. Gladstone declared, “There is not a spot upon the whole map that you can lay your finger upon and say, ‘There Austria did good!’” he not merely stated an historical truism—he provoked a not less historical declaration; for Count Karolyi, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador in London, assured Mr. Gladstone, after the latter became Prime Minister, that his Government “had no desire whatever to extend or add to the rights it has acquired, under the Treaty of Berlin, and that ‘any such extension would be actually prejudicial to Austria-Hungary.’” I maintain that I am therefore a kind friend of Austria-Hungary in opposing anything which, in the opinion of Austria-Hungary itself, would be actually prejudicial to its interests.

What is the Conference to consider? I assume it is not merely to register a foregone conclusion. You do not need a solemn conference to constater un fait accompli. The Conference meets to consider, to discuss what is best, in the interest—first, of Europe as a whole; secondly, of Austria-Hungary; and thirdly, of the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I will say nothing about the general European interest, but is it to the interest of Austria-Hungary that the two provinces should be annexed? We all have a selfish interest in averting the break-up of that artificial State of which it was once said (as a variation of another famous phrase) that if it had not existed it would have to be invented. Empires, they say, are apt to die of indigestion. Is the health of the Sick Lady at Vienna so robust that she can safely make a meal of these Slavonic provinces? May they not be an apple of discord between Austria and Hungary? I cannot forget what my old friend M. Emile de Laveleye wrote to me in l879:—“Whatever Austria may do, she is working for the Slavs, and the more she advances beyond the Danube the more she will hasten her own dissolution.” I am, however, most of all concerned about the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Are they to be transferred, like a flock of sheep, to the Austrians? Are those men, who (please remember) raised the Eastern Question by their revolt in 1875, to be denied an opportunity of being heard before the Areopagus of Europe? Will there not even be a plebiscite taken before their transfer is completed? And, if so, will this plebiscite be a perfectly genuine one? That is the question! I may be told that I am but a vox clamantis in deserto, that a single person can do nothing. But for pronouncing one word, only one person is sufficient, no matter how weak, how lonely, how unsupported! At this moment that word is:—Beware!

Several of your correspondents—Anglicans, Romans, and Jews—have hastened to protest against the statement made by the Bosnian refugees in their memorial to The Hague Conference, as to the injustice and oppression of the Austrian rule. They say that Austrian rule has increased the material wealth of the provinces, and that is all that anybody can desire. But is it so? Can the whole material world compensate for the loss of our religion, of our souls? What we—the Greek Orthodox—protest against, is that the Austrians all these thirty years of their occupation have been persecuting the Greek Church in all its dogmas and manifestations. They have introduced swarms of Jesuits, they are ruining the youth of the country, sapping its moral and physical vitality. It is Prince Metternich and the poor King of Romo over again (everybody knows what that means!). Is the annexation to be granted, without any examination into the truth of this indictment, without the inhabitants of these provinces being allowed to be heard by the Conference, without any guarantees being taken that in the annexed provinces the Orthodox Church will be secured against the persecution from which it has suffered during all the time of the occupation? Can this be tolerated?

If any of your readers may be disposed to regard lightly this protest against the betrayal of the Slavs, will you have the goodness to allow me to reproduce in your columns the words uttered by General Skoboleff in Paris in 1882? The 26 years which have passed in no way impair the value of a warning which saved Europe from a war then, and may render the same service again:—

“Europe is in imminent danger of a great war. It is inevitable; the provisions of the Berlin Treaty are to be trampled under foot by Austria. Russia has no reason to love that treaty. It was a bad treaty for her and for the Southern Slavs; but it at least secured the latter from being crushed by foreign despots. If not, there will be war. It would be a mad war, a war of suicide, you say—perhaps. But there are some circumstances where even suicide is unavoidable. But there is no need for war.

“Peace can be maintained,” continued he, “if the facts are recognized in time. I wish to remind you of these facts, which the diplomatists, who are always for ignoring the truth until it is too late, have obscured.

“I have no hostility to Germany. But why does she not restrain Austria from aggression? If Berlin were to say ‘Hands off!’ the word would be respected at Vienna. The Slavs only wish to remain Slavs. They object to be either Magyarized, Germanized, or Jesuit-ridden. Austria was only authorised to occupy, and to administer, to restore order in the two provinces. She was exceeding her commission. She was enforcing the conscription and promoting a Jesuit propaganda amongst the people. Russia had not delivered the Slavs from the Turk to have them trampled on by the Austrian. Even under the Turk the Slavs had more independence than under the oppressive yoke of the bureaucrats of Vienna. Why cannot she let them develop in their own way, and live their own life? It may be rough and rude; but such as it is, it must be the basis of their own social and political evolution. . . .

“She is the only State in Europe sufficiently idealistic to go to war for a sentiment. Her people shrink from no sacrifice in the cause of religion and of race. Beware lest you provoke them too far?”

I have only to echo General Skobeleff’s one word—Beware!

OLGA NOVIKOFF.

4, Вrunswick-place, Regent’s Park, Oct. 20.