Politika
- Dr Krajač’s programme
- The assault on Kajmakčalan, September 17, 1916
- Latin brotherhood
Politika criticises Krajač’s economic programme as insufficient despite thirty-one points and weeks of work. Alongside it, a Kajmakčalan remembrance describes graves and wounded men, while a cartoon uses an imagined Italian–French quarrel to satirise their supposed brotherhood.
Selected, image-checked first-page passages; partial reading, not complete articles or the whole page.
Translation
Dr Krajač’s programme
In two columns of small print and 31 points, the Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Krajač, has set out for the public his ideas on treating the economic crisis.
The general impression left by this programme, “General measures to normalize conditions in our economy and state finances,” amounts to Dr Krajač’s wish to raise morale and introduce economy. But that is not enough if we are really to grapple with the enormous spectre of the economic crisis. Frankly—and an open, honest word at such a moment is a vital need for state and people, however bitter it may be—Dr Krajač has seriously fallen short in the substance of his programme. Allow us to say that from the egg on which an entire committee of ministers, in whose expertise such hopes were placed, has been sitting; after all the sleepless nights individual ministers spent working, and after weeks in which the Minister of Trade and Industry was almost completely unavailable to everyone and everything except the programme for treating the economic crisis, there has hatched, instead of a strong and resolute eaglet, a feeble chick!
The assault on Kajmakčalan, September 17, 1916
A cold north wind, driving rain and snow southward, enveloped proud Kajmakčalan on every side. To its eternal keeping, the valiant men of the Drina had entrusted countless fresh graves of their most glorious heroes. Cemeteries, great sad cemeteries, on every height and slope; wounded men descend from all sides, and beside the road, near the second Drina dressing station, lie 48 officers’ graves side by side, from the Drina Division alone.
Our hair stands on end, our breath stops, our sight blurs, our minds grow numb.
Latin brotherhood
THE ITALIAN: Well, who knows how a war between us would end?
THE FRENCHMAN: It would end with me having to go to the Piave again, as in 1918.
Context
Why a long economic programme could still look too small
The editorial’s egg-and-chick image attacks the gap between the government’s preparations and the scale of its remedy. Length, technical expertise and weeks of work do not by themselves establish that a plan can meet a crisis. Krajač’s programme is faulted for offering morale and thrift where the writer expects stronger economic action. The polemic makes adequacy, rather than effort, the test by which ministers should be judged.
A battlefield remembered through its graves
The Kajmakčalan passage looks back ten years to the 1916 fighting on the Salonika front. Rather than reconstructing an operational plan, it places the reader among graves, dressing stations and descending wounded men. Naming the Drina Division connects an enormous loss to a particular military community. Weather and bodily reactions make the anniversary a recollection of what victory cost, not only a celebration of what the army achieved.
The wartime debt behind “Latin brotherhood”
French forces had fought in Italy during the First World War, including the Piave operations of 1918. The Frenchman’s reply uses that shared history to deflate the Italian’s imagined conflict: France would once again have to act on Italian ground. The title’s claim of Latin kinship becomes ironic. The joke trades on a former ally’s memory of assistance, turning a discussion of possible rivalry into an assertion of superiority.
Original
Програм г. др. Крајача
На два ступца ситнога слога и тридесет и једној тачки министар трговине и индустрије г. др. Крајач изложио је широкој јавности своје идеје о томе како треба лечити привредну кризу.
Општи утисак који овај програм „Опште мере за нормализирање односа у нашој привреди и државноме газдинству“ оставља своди се на тежњу г. др. Крајача да дигне морал и уведе штедњу. Но то није довољно ако се збиља треба хватати у тежак коштац са огромним бауком привредне кризе. Јер, искрено речено — а отворена и искрена реч у оваквом тренутку представља насушну потребу и за државу и за народ, без обзира на то што може бити и опора, — г. др. Крајач је озбиљно подбацио суштином својега програма. Нека нам је дозвољено казати да се из јајета, на коме цео један комитет министара, на чију се стручност много полагало, лежао; после свих бесаних ноћи испуњених радом појединих министара, и после читавог низа недеља, за време којих је министар трговине и индустрије био скоро потпуно искључен за све, свакога и свашта сем програма о лечењу привредне кризе, место снажног и одлучног орлића излегло једно нејако пиле!
Јуриш на Кајмакчалан — 17 септембра 1916 године
Хладан северац, гонећи кишу са снегом југу, обавио је са свију страна горди Кајмакчалан, коме су дични Дринци предали на вечито чување безброј свежих гробова својих најславнијих јунака. Гробља, велика тужна гробља, на свима котама и њиховим падинама; рањеници силазе са свију страна, а украј самога пута, у близини другог дринског завојишта, 48 официрских гробова, један до другог, само из Дринске Дивизије.
Коса нам се диже, дах застаје, поглед мути, ум млачи.
ЛАТИНСКО БРАТСТВО.
ИТАЛИЈАН: Е, ко зна како би се свршио рат између нас?
ФРАНЦУЗ: Свршио би се тако да бих ја опет морао да идем на Пијаву, као 1918.