Britain and Serbia in the WWI: British policy, public responses and humanitarian aid to Serbia

Introduction
This paper was prepared for a Serbian Council of Great Britain event
at the British Library in commemoration of the centenary of the First
World War on 3 November 2014. Two introductory parts of the paper
“British policy” and “Serbia’s war” are edited for publishing and their
main points are briefly suggested here. The central topic of the paper is
unedited version of the talk given at the event.
British policy during the July Crisis, which ensued after the assassination
of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on the 28th of
June 1914, was a policy of peace in Europe. Following the declaration
of war on Serbia, Britain was still keen on mediation and to this end
was ready to accept Austro-Hungarian occupation of Belgrade and
other places in Serbia. In the end Britain was compelled to go to war
to defend Belgium and France against German aggression. Britain
was less concerned about Austro-Hungarian hegemony in the Balkans
than about German hegemony in the world. Britain’s most immediate
war aim was the restoration of Belgium, not Serbia.
British official policy towards Serbia was multi-layered. British
Balkan experts had a strong impact on British policy towards the Austro-
Hungarian Monarchy. They argued for a strong and independent
South Slav state to serve as a bulwark against German expansion to the
south-east of Europe. British official thinking was also informed by
the Serbian minister in London and the exiled South Slav politicians.
British politicians and Balkan experts worked hard to form a new
Balkan alliance of Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro.
To this end, Britain expected Serbia to make sacrifices by offering to
Bulgaria the territories in Southern Macedonia acquired in the First
Balkan War, the so-called ‘Uncontested Zone’ in Macedonia. The British
belief was that a Balkan Alliance would bring victory in the war
which would enable Serbia to acquire, in exchange for the territories
in Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbian areas of Slavonia and
part of Dalmatia with access to the sea. However, the drawing of Italy
into the war involved South Slav populated territories along the eastern
cost of the Adriatic. According to the Treaty of London of April
1915, Italy was to receive Austrian Istria, the northern part of Dalmatia
and most of its islands. Serbia remained unwilling to secede most of
the Uncontested Zone of Macedonia to Bulgaria in exchange for new
western territories including access to the sea.
British politicians did not give guarantees of support for Yugoslav
union until the very end of the war at which point the British policy
evolved towards the right to self-determination. In the end it was the
collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Italian Adriatic designs that
brought the Austro-Hungarian Croats, Slovenes and Serbs together in
union with the Kingdom of Serbia.
Serbia’s war was a nationwide and defensive, a war for survival, but
her political and national aspirations were guided by ethnic and historical
principles. Serbia had laid her claims to the South Slav territories
within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire
before the conflict.
All Serbian war governments were staunch allies and loyal supporters
of the Entente for the duration of the war without a formal treaty
between Serbia and the Entente. The Entente unreservedly supported
and financed the Serbian war effort until the end of the war, though
not entirely her political and national aspirations.
The death toll in Serbia in the First World War was the highest of
all, and amounted to around one million people, or over 22% of her
pre-war population of over 4.5 million including Kosovo and Macedonia
from 1912. More than half of the mobilised men were killed in
combat or died in war – around 370,000 troops. The number of dead
civilians in Serbia was at least 600,000. Civilians in Serbia died from
atrocities in the war and enemy retribution, or as war casualties in
the territories which were overrun several times by the enemy forces
in 1914. The majority of people died from contagious diseases, famine
and cold.

Humanitarian aid
In 1914 Serbia entered her third war in the last three years, unprepared
for it in every way. The Balkan Wars had exhausted her limited resources,
and the country needed a period of peacetime to recover, integrate,
and to continue her modernising processes in the army, government,
transport infrastructure, health, education and so on. When in the
summer of 1914 an influx of numerous sick and wounded soldiers
began, the army and mobilised Serbian doctors, part of a total of 450
doctors in Serbia, could not meet the medical needs of the army nor the
needs of the country’s civilian population without foreign aid. The first
foreign doctors and medical workers, including British personnel, arrived
on three-month Serbian government contracts from August 1914.
The American wife of a Serbian government official, Mabel Grujić, had
organised a group of British nurses in London and arrived with them
in Serbia in August 1914. A month later she sent a letter from Serbia to a
Balkan War veteran nurse: My dear Lady Paget, My husband just told
me that a telegram has come saying that you are coming out to us and
bringing a large force of Surgeons, Aids and Nurses, in addition to the
unit which the Red Cross is sending. That is truly brave and splendid
of you. How often have I wished for you since my arrival here a month
ago. As you perhaps know, I brought out nine English nurses with me,
and I took them to Kragoyevatz to work under Colonel Sondermayer.
There are 1300 wounded in that one hospital, only these sisters and a
few Servian women with the usual “Bolnitsa’s.”
Reports of the Austro-Hungarian atrocities committed against the
innocent civilian population, the Serbian military successes against
an overwhelming enemy and the bravery of the Serbian troops deeply
moved the British public, turned round the public sentiment and
aroused sympathies in Serbia’s favour. In this atmosphere of public
support for Serbia, on the initiative of Bertram Christian, a former
Balkan Wars correspondent, the Serbian Relief Fund was founded
in London in September 1914. This organisation brought together respectable
and influential public personalities, members of parliament,
cabinet members, British Balkan experts, academics, journalists and
other friends of Serbia. In February 1915 Queen Mary became Patroness
of the Serbian Relief Fund. During the course of the war the
British public responded more than generously to the Serbian Relief
Fund through numerous public appeals, demonstrations of support
and events, and thanks to this generous public response many thousands
of Serbian lives were saved. The immediate task of the Serbian
Relief Fund was to raise funds for a medical unit to be sent to Serbia.
Lady Paget was in charge of the first unit, which arrived in Skoplje in
November 1914. By June 1915 the Serbian Relief Fund sent five medical
units to Serbia, fully equipped and supplied for independent hospital
work. These hospitals were based in Skoplje, Kragujevac, Belgrade
and Požarevac. Tons of sanitary supplies, medical materials, hospital
equipment and medicines and other necessities were shipped to Serbia
on an Admiralty transport from Southampton to Salonika thanks to
close cooperation with the British government. The sea voyage from
Britain to Salonika via Gibraltar and Malta usually took 17 days. The
humanitarian aid to Serbia paid for by the British public and raised
by many different committees, charities and organisations in the first
years of the war was greater and more visible than official British aid.
The Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service were founded
in Edinburgh in the autumn of 1914 and originated from the Suffragette
movement. The idea of proving the equality of women was embodied
in the foundation of hospitals which were composed only of
female staff, from surgeons to orderlies. Dr Elsie Inglis, the founder of
the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, was a leading figure in the struggle for
the emancipation of British women. When the services of the Scottish
Women’s Hospitals were turned down by the War Office, Dr Inglis offered
their services to Belgium, France and Russia, and later, having
met the energetic Mrs. Grujić in London, she extended them to Serbia.
The Serbian Government accepted the offer with alacrity in October
1914. Before the first Scottish Women’s Hospitals left Southampton
for Serbia in December 1914, the news arrived that Belgrade had fallen
into enemy hands and that the Serbian army, lacking food, rest and artillery
shells, was withdrawing before the enemy advance. The news of
another great Serbian victory reached them before their arrival in Salonika.
At Salonika the Scottish Women’s Hospitals received an order
to proceed to Kragujevac where help was urgently needed. Their first
stopping place was Niš, where the army authorities showed them the
largest hospital in town. Mr. William Smith of Aberdeen who went