Politika
- The Adriatic Railway
Politika of 2 October 1926 carried a reader's letter on the "Adriatic Railway," addressed directly to the paper's director with a request to publish it. The legible portion argues that experts, too, must examine the question in light of the country's general interests, then opens a numbered argument: the mountain ridges and deep river valleys running toward the sea make it impossible for any existing port on the kingdom's coast to be linked by a fan of railway lines to all its centers of production and consumption. Holding that only such branching railway traffic could make a modern port serve the whole state, the writer signals a negative answer to whether the port of Split, with a Belgrade–Sarajevo line, could fill that role.
This reading covers one legible passage from the letter "The Adriatic Railway." It begins mid-sentence and breaks off in the middle of the question about Split and the Belgrade–Sarajevo line, so the writer's full argument and any discussion of Kotor or other ports are not available. No byline is securely legible. The page's cartoon caption and the remaining body text could not be transcribed reliably.
Translation
The Adriatic Railway
… but experts, too, should examine it and, on the basis of the knowledge they have gained and with a view to our general interests, reach their own conclusion. In that spirit I ask you, Mr. Director, kindly to allow this exposition of mine on the Adriatic Railway to appear in one of the forthcoming issues of your esteemed paper.
1) Just a more careful look at the map of our country, at the direction of the mountain ridges and deep river valleys running toward the sea, convinces us that it is impossible to find a single one of the existing ports on our sea that could be linked, fan-like, by railway lines over which export and import goods could be carried to all our centers of both production and consumption. And only with such branching railway traffic could a modern port serve the good of the whole state and satisfy all economic and transport interests. Accordingly, a negative answer immediately presents itself to the question posed: "Can the port of Split, with the Belgrade–Sarajevo line –…
Context
Split had only just gained its through route to the interior
The letter asks whether the port of Split, together with a Belgrade–Sarajevo line, could serve as the kingdom's outlet, and it appeared some fourteen months after a decisive change on the Dalmatian coast. Split already had a short line to Knin, built in 1888 and long known as the Dalmatian railway, but the through route northward was completed only with the Lika railway. Its last section, between Gračac and Knin, opened amid great celebrations on 25 July 1925, finishing the Zagreb–Split/Šibenik line. By the autumn of 1926, therefore, Split's rail link ran toward Zagreb, and the question the letter takes up was whether a further connection toward Belgrade by way of Sarajevo would make it the port for the whole state. As far as the text survives, the writer's answer is that no existing port can be made the hub of the whole network — a position that belongs to the letter itself, not a settled verdict on the rival routes.
Twelve years to build one line to the coast
The letter rests its case on the map: the ridges and deep river valleys running toward the sea, it argues, prevent any port from being served by a fan of lines reaching the interior. The Lika railway, the most recent line to the Dalmatian ports, shows how slowly even a single such connection came into being. Ground was broken in the spring of 1913, and by June 1914 some 14,000 workers were on the site. From 1915, mobilisation and hardship on the Austro-Hungarian home front cut the supply of materials and labour; after 1918 the new Yugoslav authorities continued the work at a slower pace, opening sections in 1920 and 1922 and the final stretch in 1925. With one line taking twelve years, deciding which port to connect, and how, was a heavy commitment, and the letter's insistence that the question be judged by the country's general interests reads against that background. A 1957 study by Zvonimir Jelinović, published by the Yugoslav Academy in Zagreb, framed the subject as the "struggle for the Adriatic railways" and its economic aims — a sign that the rivalry this letter enters was about more than engineering.
Politika as a forum for the railway debate
The writer addresses "Mr. Director" and asks for space in "your esteemed paper," so the text appears as a submitted letter rather than as the paper's own reporting. Politika was a Belgrade daily founded in 1904 by Vladislav F. Ribnikar; its launch issue had four pages and 2,450 copies. War had silenced it from September 1915 until December 1919, so in 1926 it had been back in continuous publication for less than seven years. Printing a numbered, argued letter of this kind let its Belgrade readers see the Adriatic question framed in terms of general national interest and expert judgment. Here the paper provides the platform, while the conclusions about Split belong to the correspondent, whose name is not legible in this reading.
Original
Јадранска пруга
но и стручњаци испитати и на основу стечених знања а с погледом на опште наше интересе донети свој закључак. У том смеру, ја вас молим, господине Директоре, да изволите ово моје разлагање о Јадранској Прузи пустити у један од наредних бројева вашег цењеног листа. 1) Само један пажљивији поглед на карту наше земље, на правац планинских греда и речних дубодолина према мору, уверава нас, да је немогуће наћи ниједно од постојећих пристаништа на нашем мору, које би се могло лепезасто везати железничким пругама, преко којих би се извозна и увозна роба могла преносити у све наше центре и производње и потрошње. А само са тако разгранатим железничким саобраћајем могло би једно модерно пристаниште служити на корист целе државе и задовољити све привредне и саобраћајне интересе. Нама се одмах према томе намеће негативан одговор на постављено питање " Може ли се Сплитско пристаниште са пругом Београд-Сарајево -