Politika
- A Conversation with Mr. Frano Petrinović
- FOR THE SERBIAN ARMY
In this partial reading, Politika's front page of 2 November 1926 carried an interview in which the shipowner Frano Petrinović firmly denied rumors that he would take a political post or enter political life at all. He pointed to his business commitments and his own temperament, and he charged that Yugoslav politics had turned into personal feuds and mutual intrigue in which the individual counted for more than the state. A second, badly damaged editorial column headed 'For the Serbian Army' recalled a 1915 scene at the Serbian Supreme Command, where someone arrived with a document. The document reportedly told the quartermaster about British and other Allied arrangements at Brindisi and mentioned a million and a half tons of food and other supplies for the army.
This edition translates two excerpts from a partial reading of the page. The body of the Petrinović interview prints his name as 'Петриловић'; the translation renders it as Petrinović, following the headline. The editorial 'For the Serbian Army' survives only in fragments because the column edge is cut off, and every gap is marked [?]. The 'Modern Brutus' cartoon caption and other columns are not translated.
Translation
A Conversation with Mr. Frano Petrinović
Mr. Petrinović most decisively denied the rumors now spreading that he is to take up some position in political life, or to act in any way at all in the political field. "That is out of the question," he said. "I can neither do it, because of my business in other fields, nor would my mentality allow it. Today our politics has taken the direction of personal struggles, of alternately outwitting and undermining one another. The person has become much more important than the state. In such politics there can be no place for me."
FOR THE SERBIAN ARMY
[?] 1915, [?] came to the Supreme Command, himself [?] a document in his hand. He [?] to the quartermaster, the late [?], that the English and [?] in Brindisi [?] of our army, and that in that [?] a million and a half tons of food and [?] supplies.
Context
Frano Petrinović and the Split shipping companies
The man Politika interviewed came from shipping rather than from party politics. Flag historians record that Jugoslavensko-amerikanska plovidba, known as Jugoamerikanska, was founded in 1924 by B. Banac, P. Baburica, the Mihanović brothers and F. Petrinović. In 1928 that company merged with Atlantska plovidba, both firms being from Split, to form Jugoslavenski Lloyd. This background makes concrete what Petrinović meant when he named his 'business in other fields' as one reason he could not enter politics. His charge that personal feuds had made the individual more important than the state is his own verdict on the political scene of 1926, as the paper reported it, rather than an independently established assessment.
The 1926 contest over a South America shipping line
Petrinović spoke at a time when Yugoslav shipowners were fighting over who would run a subsidized line to South America. In 1926 the British firm Yugoslav Express Agency, behind which the Cunard Line actually stood, proposed to the Ministry of Transportation that a nominally domestic company be set up to run passenger and freight services there. Some domestic shipowners strongly opposed the plan, because they saw that the company would not be truly domestic and because they wanted to launch such a line themselves. The government did not approve the agency's request, and in 1930 the state contracted Yugoslav Lloyd, the company formed from Jugoamerikanska, which Petrinović had co-founded, and Atlantska plovidba, to maintain the line for ten years. The selected excerpt does not mention this dispute, but it shows the commercial stakes facing a Split shipowner whom rumor linked to political office.
Foreign capital and the Adriatic railway
Petrinović's complaint that persons mattered more than the state came during years when the kingdom's major infrastructure plans depended on foreign lenders and on foreign politics. In 1922 the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes negotiated a loan with the New York bank Blair and Co., and Italy, then in diplomatic conflict with Belgrade, obstructed the talks. A study of those negotiations finds that Italy's aim was to slow the railway linking the Yugoslav interior with the Adriatic Sea, a project meant to be financed with the American loan. By September 1925 the American minister in Belgrade reported that Blair and Co. wished to renew Yugoslav treasury notes so as to keep its option on the Adriatic Railway contract for some time longer. These records show that, in the years just before Petrinović spoke, the railway to the coast remained bound up with foreign loans and Italian rivalry; the selected excerpt itself does not mention the railway or any role he may have had in it.
The Serbian army's 1915 retreat and Allied supplies
The damaged editorial 'For the Serbian Army' returns to the crisis of late 1915, when the Serbian government and supreme command decided to retreat across the mountains of Montenegro and Albania. Their objective was to reach the Adriatic coast, where the army could reorganise and reequip with Allied help; the High Command's retreat order of 25 November 1915 promised that the army would there be furnished with food, arms, munitions, clothing and other necessities sent by the allies. Only 120,000 soldiers and 60,000 civilians reached the coast, and Allied ships evacuated them to Corfu. The editorial's scene, in which a document at the Supreme Command spoke of English and other arrangements at Brindisi and of a million and a half tons of food, belongs to this story of promised Allied supply. The surviving fragments do not show who brought the document or whether the supplies arrived, and the figure stands as the paper's claim rather than a verified total.
Original
Разговор са г. Франом Петриновићем
Гласове који се шире да би он имао да заузме неки положај у политичком животу или уопште да било како делује на политичком пољу, г. Петриловић је најодлучније демантовао. " То је искључено - рекао је - ја то нити могу због мојих послова на другим пољима, а нити би ми мој менталитет то дозволио. Данас је наша политика пошла правцем персоналних борба наизменичног изигравања и подметања. Личност је постала много важнијом него држава. У таквој политици мени не може да буде места.
ЗА СРПСКУ ВОЈСКУ
[?] 1915 године дошао је [?] Врховну Команду, сам [?] у руци један акт. Он [?] интенданту, покојном [?], да су енглеска и [?] у Бриндизи [?] наше војске, и да у тој [?] милион и по тона хране и [?] потреба.