population of 12,000,000, divided as follows: Serbia, 4,500,000; Croatia and Slavonia joined, 2,650,000; Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1,900,000; Slovenia, 1,600,000; Dalmatia, 650,000; Istria, 403,000, and Montenegro, 440,000, all under the centralized administration of Serbia, whose aspiration has been steadily and consistently fixed upon a united Serbia.

These various countries represent a bewildering agglomeration of of ethnographical origins, languages, religions, and customs. Leaving the others aside for present purposes, it may be of interest to summarize the facts affecting Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Serbia, as affected by the Serbian Party of Centralization, and the diverging, separatist influences that lean toward a new republicanism-tendencies of revolt against Serbian centralization which are still fermenting.

CROATIA

The most important political party of Croatia before the war, and the one which has retained the lead in Parliament since 1914, is the party of the "Croato-Serb Coalition." The main program of this party, says M. Rivet, was "Jugoslav liberty and union." It rallied the young, progressive generation, those liberal Croat elements who understood that only union between the Slavs of the Dual Monarchy could counterbalance the Austrian formula, "Divide et impera." These Croats were joined by the Serbs of the empire-the floating Serbian population on the confines of the Croatian provinces-many of them refugees from Turkish despotism, who came in greater and greater numbers with their orthodox clergy and formed veritable colonies at the frontiers of their former country.

These Serbs, who preserved the tradiditions of their country, different in religion, and hence inapt for assimilation, were used by the Hungarian policy as a check on the Croat movement toward independence. But the Croat and Serbian liberals came to an understanding above the heads of their masters, and from this union, arising out of the consciousness of the unity of race, arose a new political factor, the Croato-Serb coalition. To the

very end of the war this party stood out among the individualistic parties of Croatia, and a new horizon was opened before it by the idealistic principles of the Allies, the perspective of a South Slav union. It declared itself for union without restriction, for complete centralization. It was forthwith abandoned by the Slav patriots, who rejected the solution of a "Balkan gravitation." These democratic progressives, who abandoned the coalition, raised their own banner, that of Federalism; a banner hoisted at the last moment, hastily, in fear of the intentions attributed to the Old Radicals and in ignorance of those of the Allies concerning Jugoslavia, which might conceivably be offered up as a victim to the theory of Serbian compensation.

FIGHT FOR CENTRALIZATION

The leader of the coalition party at Zagreb, Svetozar Pribitchevitch, a Croatian Serb and Minister of the Interior in the Jugoslav Ministry at Belgrade, resolutely waived the possibility of a Federalistic solution; the State, he declared, must be centralized in one Government with a single legislative body. Only the Slovenes occupied a separate territory, while the Croats and Serbs were so intermingled that a line of demarkation would be almost impossible between them. The Federalists, he intimated, were mostly Austrian sympathizers.

Yet he advocated autonomy for the communes, districts, and departments; but this autonomy, he said, must not extend to the former boundary divisions, as Serbia had been replaced by the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, so Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, and Dalmatia must disappear as individualities; the Austrian formula of "divide and rule" must be forever eliminated. As for the question of religion, the autonomous Orthodox churches would be united under a single Serbian Patriarch, and the relations of the Catholic churches and the State would be regulated by the Concordat. The Macedonian question, said the Minister, must be settled in favor of Serbia; the Bulgarians were more alien to the Slav population of Macedonia than the Serbs; all idea of a Balkan Federation, furthermore, in view of the Bul

garian atrocities, must be abandoned. Similar views concerning centralization and autonomy were expressed by Dr. Schlegel, chief editor of the Agramer Tageblatt; autonomy, after departmental division, established on economic bases, must be provided for, but the old national boundaries of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Montenegro must go. Only territories were claimed, he said, which formed a compact unit, ethnographically Slavic.

The Serbian National Radical Party and the Social Democratic Party, of minor importance as compared with the party of coalition, were both unionist in tendency.

The other side of the picture was presented by the apprehensions of the Croat commercial circles, which feared that the Belgrade centralization would suppress Croat institutions; that Zagreb would become a dead city of officialdom, that Serbia would assume the aspect of a dead weight upon the new communistic life of South Slavdom. Free, Croatia might enjoy the right of development checked by the Hungarian despotism; closely united with Serbia, this self-development might be long deferred. As Jugoslavs, the Croats desired the formation of a common State; but the different elements had received a different education; after Federalism and a common education, Centralism would establish itself logically and automatically. But at present any liberty understood in the centralizing sense, and which brought the Croats a diminution of their autonomy, could scarcely be admitted.

SLOVENIA

The Slovenes, on their part, republicans by conviction, accepted nevertheless the monarchical régime in the interests of united Jugoslavia. The Slovenes, oppressed by Vienna, yet found in her a source of Western culture. In the Slavic family the Slovenes culturally come immediately after the Czechs. Essentially democratic, they rallied nevertheless with all their parties, including the Clericals, to the slogan of Centralism at Belgrade, and demanded a monarchy ruled by the Karageorgevitch dynasty. Though more developed generally than

their co-nationals of Croatia and Serbia, they accepted this centralization, at least provisionally, in order to oppose a compact body to external dangers, waiving the advantages that might accrue to them from a confedaration which would preserve their national physiognomy.

Such was the spirit of Slovenia as expressed and crystallized in their capital, Liubliana, (formerly Laibach.) Obliged to conceal their real sentiments, they followed anxiously the last convulsions of the dualist monarchy. In the cafés of Liubliana they laughed at the political blindness of Vienna, which had learned nothing from a war prolific in social les

sons.

Their Provisional Government, rapidly installed, hastened to suppress all railway communications toward the north and south, so as to concentrate on Liubliana, which thus became a veritable trap. A good part of the trains brought troops and military convoys from the front. These military refugees were disarmed by a national guard hastily recruited; provisions were confiscated; about 300,000 guns were seized, 1,000 automobile trucks and munition caissons. The Governor of Trieste, Count Fries Kéné, was relieved at Liubliana of his Government funds; similarly General Boroievitch, who had fled from Marburg, was despoiled of the material stolen by him and his staff from Italy, including 170 loads of flour. A few weeks later came the Jugoslav compact; Slovenia was free; the cafés were filled with animated and excited crowds; gone the days of espionage, gone the Viennese inquisition; gone the days when the Corriere della Sera was read at the peril of one's life. The S. H. S. replaced everywhere the sinister K. und K., (Kaiserliches und Königliches,) and the Slovenes, like their brothers, the Croats and the Serbs, were ready to begin a new national existence.

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

In the cosmopolitan province of BosniaHerzegovina, Herzegovina, nationalities had been created by religions; both sympathies and antipathies were determined by the religious angle. This point of view led to complications; the Orthodox Serb saw

in the Croatian Catholic the Austrian of the old régime; in the Bosnian Mussulman he saw the Turk, abhorred less as Turk than as infidel. In this population of many languages there were 600,000 Mussulmans, 840,000 Orthodox, 460,000 Catholics, and 12,000 Jews; necessarily there was no unity of opinion when the day of liberation came. The Serbian occupation came, successor to those of Turk and Austrian. The Mussulmans were said to regret their co-religionaries; the Catholics the Austrians, Catholic like themselves. The triumph was won by the Orthodox, thus restored to their brothers in religion. Formerly conspirators, they were now the masters of the hour, and they made their new authority felt.

Even before the Jugoslav idea had taken form, Serbia had claimed Bosnia on the

same basis as Macedonia; also the Banat, and, under another form, Montenegro. When the Serbian military occupation came, Catholics and Mussulmans protested; only the Orthodox supported the Serbs. Bosnia, they said, was Serbian, and would become an integral part of Serbia. Let BosniaHerzegovina enter into the new kingdom of Jugoslavia, answered the protesters, but we refuse to favor their becoming a Serbian province. And so the conflict between Federalism, prevalent throughout the new nation, was initiated also here.

The situation in Bosnia when the Austrian power disappeared was about the same as elsewhere. A Provisional Government was installed, at first purely local and general. With the Serbian occupation, the wind blew from Belgrade; the recalcitrant were forced to leave the Government, and the supporters were officially confirmed. Bosnia, as well as Dalmatia, received a Governor. These measures, declared the protesters, had never been ratified by any assembly; they were measures which the Constituent Assembly alone had the right to determine.

SERBIA

While Liubliana began with gusto to enjoy her new, free life; while Zagreb reveled in her new-found liberty, Bel

grade was working silently on her task of national reconstruction; and Prince Alexander, with the same resolution that he displayed for the four years of war among the débris of his shattered armies, undertook the vast and complex task of the creation of the new Jugoslavic State.

Sacked and ruined, Belgrade stands today as a mournful monument of the Teutonic fury; the pavement is torn up; the walls are shattered by shell explosions; the houses are empty, pillaged by the invading host, which, at the order of Mackensen, carried off their booty beyond the Danube. The martrydom of Belgrade's population had been made the subject of an official investigation; toward the end of February, one of the main oppressors, a certain Uidmann, captured at Temesvar, was waiting in prison for the punishment of his crimes. Four of the scaffolds which this man had had erected were being exhibited in the military prison; in the shops of the city were sold postal cards showing the scenes at the many hangings witnessed by the officers of Austria.

In this city of Belgrade, torn and devastated by war, the first conception of a united Serbia, completed by all the lands torn from Austria, arose; and here this original conception was developed into the wider project, discussed at Zagreb and taken up by Belgrade, of a complete and definitive South Slav State. M. Pashitch, at the personal request of the Crown Prince, nominally relinquished his power, though his influence continued parallel with that of M. Protitch, appointed President of the council in his place. An adverse party, represented by M. Drachkovitch, believed that the apprehension of the Croats, which was becoming more and more pronounced, and the Federalism of Zagreb had been provoked by the imperialistic tendencies of the "Old Radical" Party. "The Balkanism of M. Pashitch and his friends," said M. Drachkovitch, "is an element of conflict and disorganization. As far as we are concerned we are partisans also of a centralized State, but without any reserve thought of PanSerbism."

Opposition to the Pan-Serbian idea was confined to the other territories: in Belgrade, in the Government and around the Government, the Serbian idea transcended the Jugoslav idea, except in the case of the son of King Peter. The strength of this Pan-Serbian idea was explained thus: Serbian life crystallized throughout the war around the person of M. Pashitch, at Corfu and Saloniki, which became centres of Serbian existence during the dark period of invasion, while, during the same period, Jugoslavism, personified by M. Trumbitch, developed painfully and in isolation at London, ignored by the Allies, who encouraged the creation of Greater Serbia.

The belief of M. Protitch, as expressed by himself, embraced the organization of the new kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes as a democratic and parliamentary monarchy in the modern sense of the word, governed by its heroic dynasty, with wide administrative autonomy, and with equal, universal, secret suffrage. M. Balougditch, Minister of the Court, entertained a similar view; Serbia had renounced her Parliament and admitted into her Government a full third of Croatian and Slovenian Ministers; she had decided for autonomy; what more could be asked of her in the way of concession? Energetically the Minister repudiated the thought of Serbicization. Similarly Prince Alexander himself declared: "It does not enter into our intentions to Serbicize Jugoslavia."

That the opposition to Serbian centralization was crystallizing was indicated by a dispatch from Zagreb published in the Paris Temps of March 4, which said that numerous national assemblies had been held in various Croatian localities to protest against the régime which Serbia had introduced into the country. The assembly held at Karlovatz (West Croatia) had voted a resolution against the Belgrade Government. This resolution may be summarized as follows:

1. It declares that it does not recognize and consider as its representatives the agents who have not been elected by the will of the people; it considers all its decisions null and void as contrary to democratic principles and the interests of the people.

2. It demands prosecution of the members of the Provisional Government who wish to introduce the monarchical régime without even consulting the people, trampling under foot national rights and constitutional liberties.

3. It invites the Council of Zagreb urgently to intervene against the bastonnade, the imprisonment of individuals, the prohibition of meetings and republican agitation, and against the barbarous actions of the Serb soldiers and agents at Belovar, Ratcha, Brod, Pakratz, Zagreb, and other localities, and to put an end to barbarism and militarism in the Jugoslav countries.

A further dispatch stated that Dr. Horvat and M. Frank, former Deputies to the Diet of Croatia and leaders in the individualistic movement of Croatia, who had been recently arrested by the authorities, had been set at liberty.

THE

HE first message of Dr. Thomas G. Masaryk, President of the Czechoslovak Republic, which was delivered at Prague on Dec. 22, 1918, before the National Assembly, showed the foreign policy of the new State to be in the

direction of bringing about co-operation among all the States of Central Europe which had newly arisen or been strengthened by the collapse of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Only with Poland of the new nations has Czechoslovakia had

difficulties, which, since the Presidential message, have brought fighting, and recently with Hungary over the question of the delimitation of boundaries now in dispute between the new Hungarian Soviet Government and the Allies.

The Czechoslovak relations both with the Poles and the Hungarians were particularly stressed by President Masaryk in his message, with an implicit warning of the possibility of future complications. The way in which the Poles intended to obtain Czechoslovak territory in Upper Silesia, he said, was inadmissible. Over the Hungarians, he said, further, it was not necessary to waste any words. Since 1867 they had been an Austrian vanguard toward the Balkans. It was absurd, he intimated, that the Magyars had been allowed to oppress four other nations, the Slovaks, the Ruthenians, the Rumanians and the Jugoslavs. It was clearly evident that the Hungarians were entitled only to the limits of their national State.

The conflict between Czechoslovakia and Poland in Upper Silesia, particularly in the Teschen district, was described in the preceding issue of CURRENT HISTORY. The Interallied Mission had called on the conflicting parties to declare a truce, and had ordered the Czechs to evacuate a part of the occupied territory. This order the Czechs had rejected. Early in April a commission was sent to Paris to adjust the matters in dispute. [For the conflict of the Czechoslovaks with the Hungarians over the question of boundary see the special article on Hungary printed elsewhere in this issue.]

ATTACK ON KRAMARCZ

The attempted assassination of Karel Kramarcz, Premier of Czechoslovakia, reported from Prague on Jan. 10, at the hands of an anarchist named Staftny, led to violent demonstrations against the Socialists. It was said that this event, which occurred on the eve of the reunion of the National Assembly, had influenced the dispositions of the Parliament. A program of reforms was read, whose immediate application would tend to improve the situation, especially in regard

to the high cost of food; the mines would be nationalized, but, above all, order would be maintained as a first condition to develop the political and economic advantages resulting from the unique situation of Bohemia in the centre of Europe. Premier Kramarcz made the following energetic declaration:

If we remain the bastion of liberty and order we can count on the support of the Entente; we shall therefore not hesitate to treat as enemies of the country all those who attempt to overthrow by force the established order of things.

CONDITIONS IN PRAGUE

The independence of reconquered Bohemia, and the assurance that its national aspirations would be favorably received at the Peace Conference, were appreciated at their just value by the enlightened minds in the new republic, but it had no visible effect on the food crisis in Czechoslovakia or on the dearth of raw materials inevitable in a country exhausted by four years of suffering. Lack of employment had developed among the people a habit of idleness which made a return to normal life difficult; above all, the great lack of food had increased the state of mental and physical exhaustion. Meat was heavily taxed; the producers sold to the rich at fantastic prices, and the butchers had closed their shops. Butter and fats had disappeared, and eggs were sold at an exorbitant price. Bread was of bad quality. Coal was becoming rarer and rarer; the Bohemian mines showed a daily deficit of 800 loads on the normal production. The return of many Czechs had created a scarcity of lodging in Prague, to cope with which the Socialists had proposed expropriation of the houses of the rich. The sugar industry was paralyzed by lack of labor; ministers, deputies, manufacturers and merchants had appealed to the Entente for raw materials to save this industry, one of the principal sources of the wealth of Bohemia, and also for food, to prevent famine and the dreaded advent of Bolshevism.

Meanwhile the Minister of National Defense was endeavoring to reorganize the Czechoslovak Army, the country's only hope to preserve order in the in