The generally recognized mental superiority of Queen Draga over her husband had still another unfavorable consequence,--one of a political character. While Alexander was unmarried, his political mistakes, his autocratic interference with the work of the Skuptschina, his violation of the constitution, were charged to himself; but after his marriage all the political sins of the government were ascribed to Draga’s instigation.
The political conditions of the Balkan countries are of the most unsettled kind. They resemble very much the political conditions in the South American and Central American states, and while nominally they are regulated by constitutions and by a parliamentary system of government, they are really controlled by the principle that “might constitutes right.” It has been so in Servia from the day of the establishment of its national independence: continuous party strife, revolutions, assassinations--frequently winked at, if not directly instigated and supported, by foreign powers. In 1903 the Radicals had been several years in full control of the government. They had filled all lucrative offices with their party friends, many of whom belonged to the rural population, and had so apportioned the public taxes as to place the principal burden upon the city populations, where the Liberals had their voting strength. The misgovernment under the Radicals was so great that it became a national scandal. The public debt had been nearly doubled, the annual deficit was enormous, the most flagrant corruption and extravagance existed in all branches of the public service; but the Servian Congress refused to correct these abuses, and it remained for the King to interfere personally. He did so by a new _coup d’état_ in March, 1903; the old Constitution was abrogated, a new Constitution was promulgated, and new general elections were ordered.
One of the most alarming features of the political situation in Servia was the dissatisfaction of the army, and especially of its officers. This dissatisfaction was not, as has been asserted frequently, caused by patriotic considerations or by disapproval of the King’s personal conduct, but simply by the unpardonable neglect of the army on the part of the government. While in the royal palace at Belgrade an uninterrupted series of festivities, all arranged in the most sumptuous and expensive style, kept the gay capital on the tiptoe of excitement, the army was reduced nearly to a state of starvation, because neither officers nor men had been paid for months, “for want of funds in the public treasury.” Instead of being a firm support of the government, the army therefore turned against it. It easily lent itself to propositions for a change, especially if that change would come in with the payment of their arrears of wages.