Politika
- Beyond the border...
- FROM THE MEMOIRS OF MIL. J. NIKOLAJEVIĆ
- A letter from the court lady Draga Mašin.
Politika's page of 13 November 1926 opened this reading with an editorial, "Beyond the border...". It protested that Italy had closed every primary and secondary school of "our brothers" across the frontier. It also said that a royal decree of December 1925 had banned the children's mother tongue even as an optional subject, and that the brothers were refused private schools although Italy's own laws should allow them. The page also ran a fragmentary instalment of the memoirs of Mil. J. Nikolajević. It recounts how a king tried to break with a woman linked to the opera and ran into public trouble. Beside it ran the printed transcription of a short note from the court lady Draga Mašin, who postponed an audience to the following Monday because the Queen had a fever.
This edition reads part of the page: the editorial on Italian school policy, a memoir fragment and the printed transcription of Draga Mašin's letter. The OCR was empty or garbled, so the texts were read from the page image. Illegible words in the memoir are marked [?], and its last sentence breaks off. Lines cut at tile edges and the item 'Шта се говори?' were not reconstructed. The handwritten facsimile of the letter was not read; only its printed transcription is translated.
Translation
Beyond the border...
Our public and Europe already know that Italy has closed all the primary and secondary schools of our brothers, and that by the king's decree of December 1925 the children's mother tongue is forbidden even as an optional subject. It is likewise known that our brothers are forbidden to open even private schools, although under the laws in force in Italy this would have to be permitted.
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF MIL. J. NIKOLAJEVIĆ
The second woman is R. B., an opera [?]. With her the king had a long, bitter [?]. Wishing to free himself of her [?] struck up an acquaintance with Mrs. [?], he ran into enormous troubles and [?], because that break, besides [?] into public view, cost the royal …
A letter from the court lady Draga Mašin.
Sir, Her Majesty the Queen has had a fever since yesterday afternoon, and it is therefore not possible for Her to receive you today; she will do so next Monday at the same time. With distinguished respect, Draga Mašin.
Context
How Italy closed Slovene and Croat schools in the Julian March
The "brothers" whose schools the editorial mourns are chiefly the Slovenes and Croats of the former Austrian Littoral, which Italy annexed after the First World War and called the Julian March. Independent accounts confirm the broad picture the paper draws. After annexation Italy closed the classical lyceum in Pazin and the high school in Volosko, and the closure of the 488 Slovene and Croat primary schools followed. The decisive legal step came in 1923. That year the school reform prepared by the Fascist minister Giovanni Gentile abolished teaching in languages other than Italian, which in the Julian March ended instruction in Slovene and Croatian. Some 500 Slovene teachers, nearly half of those in the Littoral, were moved to the Italian interior. The editorial attributes the ban on the mother tongue even as an optional subject to a royal decree of December 1925, and that precise dating remains the paper's claim. The regime certainly issued language decrees against other minorities in the same weeks. A royal decree of 22 November 1925 suppressed the teaching of French in the Aosta Valley, so the measure Politika describes fits a wider wave of late-1925 restrictions.
Why the fate of Italy's Slavs mattered to Belgrade readers
School closures were one part of a broader Italianization drive that was intensifying in 1926. Under it, minority rights in the annexed lands were severely reduced. In 1926 the Italian government announced the Italianization of German, Slovene and Croat surnames, claiming it was restoring their original Italian form. The pressure also pushed people across the border. Between the two world wars more than 100,000 Slovenes and Croats emigrated from Italian territory, the vast majority to Yugoslavia. For a Belgrade daily, then, the people "beyond the border" were not distant strangers. Their kin and fellow nationals were arriving in the Yugoslav state, and the editorial's language of "our brothers" and its appeal to "Europe" reflect that sense of a national community divided by the new frontier.
Yugoslav–Italian relations in November 1926
The editorial appeared under an official policy of accommodation with Mussolini. In 1924 Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes settled the Fiume dispute in Rome, agreeing that Fiume would be annexed to Italy. A pact of friendship between the two states was signed in Rome the same year. The follow-up Treaty of Nettuno, signed in 1925, was not ratified by the Yugoslav parliament until 1928. Its long delay shows how contested the Italian connection remained in Belgrade politics. A press protest over the minorities therefore criticized a neighbour that the government still officially treated as a partner. That balance was about to change. Two weeks after this issue, on 27 November 1926, Italy signed a friendship pact with Albania, which effectively ended the good relationship between Rome and Belgrade. Foreign Minister Momčilo Ninčić resigned over it. Read in that light, Politika's complaint captures Yugoslav opinion souring toward Italy on the eve of an open diplomatic rupture.
Draga Mašin, from court lady to murdered queen
The letter printed on this page is a routine note, but its signatory was among the most notorious figures in recent Serbian history. Draga Mašin served as lady-in-waiting to Queen Natalija, the mother of King Aleksandar Obrenović, until 1897. Because the paper's heading calls her a court lady, the feverish "Queen" in the note is most likely Natalija, and the letter most likely dates from before 1897. Her later rise turned such papers into curiosities. Although she was ten years older than Aleksandar, she married him on 5 August 1900. Dowager Queen Natalija bitterly opposed the match and was exiled by her son. On the night of 10–11 June 1903 a group of army officers invaded the royal palace and killed the couple, ending the Obrenović dynasty. Printed next to a memoir instalment about a king's entanglements with women, the facsimile let Politika's readers in 1926 see the handwriting of a woman whose name still carried scandal.
Original
С ону страну границе...
Познато је већ нашој јавности и Европи да је Италија затворила нашој браћи све њихове основне и средње школе и да је по краљевом декрету од децембра, 1925, матерњи језик деце чак и као необавезан предмет забрањен. Исто тако познато је да је нашој браћи забрањено отварати и приватне школе. иако би се то, према постојећим законима у Италији, морало допустити.
ИЗ УСПОМЕНА МИЛ. Ј. НИКОЛАЈЕВИЋА
Друга је жена Р. Б. оперска [?]. Са њом је краљ имао дуго горко [?]. Хотећи да се ње ослободи [?] је везао познанство са г-ђом [?], наишао је на силне неприлике и [?], јер је тај прекид, осим [?] у јавност, стао краљевски
Писмо дворске даме Драге Машин.
Господине, Њено Величанство Краљица има грозницу од јуче по подне и зато Њој није могуће примити Вас данас него ће то учинити у понедељник идући у исто доба. С одличним поштовањем Драга Машин.