Politika
- “The Geneva Balance Sheet”
- The First Consequence of the Bulgarian Loan
- What Are People Saying?
This partial reading of Politika's page of 7 October 1926 covers three items. Dr. Lazar Marković, who had worked in the Third Commission and the Assembly at that year's League of Nations session, wrote to the editor demanding a correction of the paper's 26 September leader on the Geneva "balance sheet" and said he would confine himself to his own work there. The paper replied that the balance remained negative, then reported that the Macedonian émigré weekly "Nezavisima Makedonija" in Bulgaria would appear daily from 11 October, calling this the first consequence of the League-backed Bulgarian refugee loan. A column signed "Ibis" told of young Croatian teachers who begged to stay in the Kruševac Župa after marrying there, and used them to mock Croatian politicians who insisted that Serbs and Croats were two peoples.
This edition reads three excerpts from a partly legible scan. The OCR mixes columns and splits words, so the text follows only what can be read in the image; the first daily issue of the émigré paper is dated 11 October from the image, where the OCR reads 14. Tile edges cut Marković's letter off mid-sentence and remove the paper's italic reply and points 3 and 4, so his account of the Third Commission is missing. The opening of the Ibis column, including one blurred phrase, is not transcribed, and uncertain readings are marked [?] as in the source.
Translation
“The Geneva Balance Sheet”
“Balance [?]”
Mr. Editor,
On the occasion of the leading article in Politika under the above title, published in the issue of 26 September, I have the honor to send you this letter as a correction, in the conviction that you yourself will also wish that matters which concern our state and its reputation, and which relate to the work of our delegates at this year's Assembly of the League of Nations, be presented as they are, faithfully and truthfully, without praise and without belittlement. I believe that the above article arose from a lack of information or that it was written on the basis of inaccurate information, and so it is in any case in the interest of your paper's reputation that the untrue assertions it contains be retracted in good time, so that they do no harm to the public interests of this country.
I shall confine myself to that part of the article which speaks of my work in the Third Commission and in the Assembly of the League of Nations. I could also correct the assertions concerning our work with regard to the approval of the Bulgarian loan for refugees, since I too was to some extent …
Dr. Lazar Marković.
The First Consequence of the Bulgarian Loan
… balance of Geneva, even if we were to share Dr. Marković's conviction, remains as it was: negative.
The First Consequence of the Bulgarian Loan
In Bulgaria the paper “Nezavisima Makedonija” has been appearing for four years now as the organ of the Macedonian emigration. That paper used to come out once a week. In its latest issue, however, it announces in large type in the leading position that from 11 October it will begin appearing every day. The joyful announcement says: “At last the great idea has been realized that the emigration should have its own daily paper, a tribune from which it will plead before the world for the just cause of Macedonia. Now effort, energy and work are needed so that this fine undertaking, which comes at a good hour, may be enlarged by success.”
What Are People Saying? [?]
What Are People Saying?
… milieu, and that it would be better for them to be posted somewhere in Croatia. But at their insistence they were finally posted in the Kruševac Župa, on the condition that they stay there for only one year. However, when this year's assignment of teachers was being drawn up, these young Croatians appeared again at the Ministry of Education, presented themselves personally to the minister and begged him not to transfer them, declaring that they felt very much at home in the Župa, all the more so since they had all married there.
Croatian politicians are wearing themselves out proving that Serbs and Croats are two peoples, and the Croatian youth refutes them this enthusiastically.
Ibis.
[?] … PROCESSION
Context
Disarmament preparations at Geneva in 1926
Marković's letter concerns the 1926 League of Nations Assembly, which met while the League was preparing a conference for disarmament. In a message to Congress on 4 January 1926, US President Calvin Coolidge reported that the League Council had invited the United States to send representatives to a "Preparatory commission for the disarmament conference," which was to meet in Geneva in February 1926. Coolidge described further international agreements as the natural corollary to recent European treaties under which guarantees of peace had been provided, and he tied that step to the limitation of armaments. The delegation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes therefore worked in Geneva while arms limitation was a live item on the League's agenda. The selected passage breaks off before Marković describes what he did in the Third Commission, so this page does not show which positions he took there. What the page does show is the sequence of the dispute: Politika's 26 September leader judged the delegation's record harshly, a delegate demanded a public correction, and the paper kept its negative verdict.
The League's refugee loan for Bulgaria
The Bulgarian refugee loan that Marković and Politika argued over grew out of Bulgaria's post-war refugee crisis. Refugees poured into Bulgaria from Aegean Thrace, Macedonia, Dobrudzha and the borderlands with Yugoslavia, and after the Treaty of Neuilly the Bulgarian government found it very difficult to raise an international loan because it needed the prior approval of the victors. From 1926 René Charron, an envoy of the League's financial service, worked on the problem; after assessing the refugee situation he proposed an international loan, and the League agreed. The Bulgarian government signed the so-called Refugee Loan on 22 December 1926, for £2.4 million plus an additional $4.5 million, and the money went chiefly into new inexpensive houses, livestock and public infrastructure, helping some 250,000 refugees resettle. Marković's letter treats the approval of the loan as part of that year's work in Geneva, while the formal signature came more than two months after this page appeared. The heading "The First Consequence of the Bulgarian Loan" is Politika's own argument: the paper presented the émigré weekly's move to daily publication as a result of the loan, but the item offers no evidence of a financial connection, and the loan's documented uses were refugee housing, resettlement and infrastructure.
IMRO and the “Independent Macedonia” programme
The title of the émigré paper, Nezavisima Makedonija, means "Independent Macedonia," the name of the political goal pursued in the interwar years by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). After the First World War IMRO developed an agenda for an autonomous or even independent Macedonia on the territories of Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, under the protectorate of the Great Powers, which in fact meant a second Bulgarian state. IMRO held de facto full control of Pirin Macedonia, the Bulgarian part of the region, and used it as a base for hit-and-run attacks against Yugoslavia and Greece, with the unofficial support of right-wing Bulgarian governments. This background explains why a Belgrade paper treated the expansion of an émigré weekly as alarming news: the promise to "plead before the world for the just cause of Macedonia" included territory that then belonged to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Politika's report is the only evidence here for the paper's four-year weekly run and its move to daily publication from 11 October, and this page does not establish the paper's exact relationship to IMRO's leadership.
Original
„Биланс Женеве“
" Биланс [?] Господине Уредниче, Поводом уводног чланка у " Политици " под горњим насловом, објављеног у броју од 26 септембра, част ми је послати вам ово писмо као исправку, у уверењу да ћете и Ви сами желети да се ствари које се тичу наше државе и њенога угледа и које се односе на рад наших делегата на овогодишњој скупштини Лиге Народа, преставе онакве какве су, верно и истинито, без хвале и без потцењивања. Ја верујем да је горњи чланак потекао из необавештења или да је писан на основу нетачних информација. па је свакојако у интересу угледа Вашега листа да се неверна тврђења у њему садржана благовремено опозову да не би нанела какву штету јавним интересима ове земље. Ја ћу се ограничити на онај део чланка који говори о моме раду у трећој комисији и у Скупштини Лиге Народа. Могао бих да исправљам и тврђења која се тичу нашега рада у погледу одобрења зајма бугарског за избеглице, јер сам и ја у неколико
Прва последица бугарског зајма
ланс Женеве, све и кад бисмо поделили уверење г. др. Марковића, остаје као што је и био - негативан. Прва последица бугарског зајма У Бугарској већ четири године излази као орган македонске емиграције лист " Независима Македонија ". Тај лист излазио је једанпут недељно. У последњем свом броју међутим објављује крупним словима на уводном месту да од 11 октобра почиње излазити сваки дан. У тој радосној вести каже се: " Најзад је остварена велика идеја да емиграција добије свој свакодневни лист, трибуну са које ће пледирати свету за правичну ствар Македоније. Сад је потребан напор, енергија и рад да би се успехом увећало ово лепо дело које долази у добар час ". Шта се говори? [?]
Шта се говори?
средини и да би боље било да буду постављени негде у Хрватској. Али на њихово наваљивање поставе их најзад у крушевачкој жупи с тим да тамо остану свега годину дана. Међутим, када се ове године радио учитељски распоред, ови хрватски омладинци поново су се појавили у Министарству Просвете, јавили се лично министру и умолили га да их не премешта изјављујући да се у Жупи врло добро осећају у толико пре што су се сви тамо и поженили. Хрватски политичари се убише доказујући како су Срби и Хрвати два народа а хрватска омладина их овако одушевљено демантује. Ибис. [?] ИЧКА ЛИТИЈА