III

The elimination of the Austrian empire from the European concert is imminent. For the last fifty years events have notoriously proved that Austria-Hungary was the stumbling-block in the solution of the Eastern Question and the creation of a Balkan confederation. She pursued there a policy of envy, malice and cunning. Profiting from the misery of Bulgaria, she offered her in 1915 a loan of $100,000,000 from the Disconto Gesellschaft syndicate. Half of this sum was paid in cash and the remainder of $50,000,000 applied to outstanding obligations, giving the syndicate a two years' option on Bulgaria's 5 per cent government securities. Of course, all this bargain was made at the expense of Serbia and her territory in Macedonia and in the Morava valley. Bulgaria sold to Austria the bear's skin even before the bear was killed!

Nobody can deny that in the Balkan Peninsula AustriaHungary has great political and economic interests. Of $500,000,000 of export and import per year made by the Balkan states, one-fifth, i.e., $100,000,000 is in connection with Austria-Hungary. Serbia, as an inland country having no outlet on the Aegean or the Adriatic Sea, is entirely dependent on her powerful northern neighbor. Dalmatia and Istria, which geographically form the seaboard of Serbia, and which are besides inhabited by Jugoslavs, rest in the control of alien hands. Unsuccessful in finding new markets, the Serbian peasants feel the pinch of a permanent struggle with Austrian and Magyar capitalists. Lying between the Bulgarian anvil and the Austrian hammer, Serbia will continue this struggle to the end. But the issues involved in the rivalry between Austria-Hungary and the young Balkan states rest upon other than economic motives. The unity of a race of twelve millions is at stake; the future of all the wide lands that lie between Pirot and Ljubljana, between Cetinje and Temišvar is concerned.

The Southern Slavs, sharing the same racial characteristics and forming a single national family, want to be united into one state. As immortal Jefferson said,

THE JOURNAL OF RACE DEVELOPMENT, VOL. 9, No. 2, 1918

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.

The causes which impel the Jugoslavs to separation from the Austrian empire are manifold. Austria-Hungary is not a state in a strict constitutional or international sense of the term, but simply a geographical expression. Most modern states are organized and practically homogeneous nations. They are inhabited by men of the same race, who speak the same language, who cherish the same ideals, and who are united by a great common heritage, by the bonds of a common literature, history and tradition. In Austria-Hungary nationalities are forcibly held together, and hate each other with a fierce hatred. Next to that, Austria-Hungary suffers from very dangerous social fissures. Whilst the body politic of the country is ruled by race privileges, the body social is dominated by caste privileges. In the Dual Monarchy the aristocracy and gentry still exercise mediaeval rights. In social and economic relations the characteristics are arrogance and brutality from above and humility and servility from below. The agricultural laborers, small farmers, and factory workers are treated almost like serfs. Austria-Hungary, as a purely artificial and preposterous state is united not by the unity of the people, but by a common bondage. The racial, national, religious and social antagonisms within the country are so great that they can only be described in the terms of Thomas Hobbes: Bellum omnium contra omnes.

IV

Far from being happy, the people in the Habsburg Monarchy live a miserable life. Plato once said that a state would be happy where philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers. As ill luck would have it, the Austrian philosophers have never been kings, nor the Habsburgs

philosophers. The various nationalities in Austria-Hungary are oppressed and subjected to one of the grossest tyrannies which the modern world knows. The Jugoslavs: Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes, do not want to be constituent parts of such a "state" which is in its entity a greater political, geographical and ethnical anomaly than ever was the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century. The Southern Slavs are nowadays straining every nerve to form their own state, which will be independent from Austria-Hungary. In this new state they purport to be bound together, not only by a common racial origin, common language and historic tradition, but by the strong consciousness of the advantage and necessity of being united into one autonomous political unit. This future state, which was officially proclaimed by the Jugoslav Committee of London and the Serbian Government at Corfu, July 20, 1917, will have a homogeneous population of about 12,000,000 inhabitants, and will include the following states and provinces: Serbia, Montenegro, BosniaHerzegovina, Croatia-Slavonia, Dalmatia, Istria, Carniola, Bačka and Banat. The new state, in itself, will constitute a young and wholesome force, as a dam in the defense of Europe against the German Drang nach Süden. The whole history of Serbia's struggle for liberty and independence, her unlimited courage, her religious and political tolerance, her democratic instincts and dispositional moderation are the guarantees for fulfilment of this great task.

Small in territory, but great in spirit and valor, Serbia has shown the world an example of epic virtue and in no less degree a capacity for endurance in adversity. The Serbian people believe religiously in the justice and final triumph of the Jugoslav ideal, and while fighting for it they have given examples of lofty heroism and martyrdom. A better future is the rightful heritage of such a nation. Liberated and unified Serbia will become the focus and center of the whole Jugoslav race. Here is not a question of allotting to Serbia certain provinces inhabited by other branches of her race and tongue as "compensation."

Nothing can "compensate" heroism so magnificent, and sufferings so terrible as those of Serbia, save the unification of all the Jugoslav nation. The point in question lies in giving practical application of the working out of the Southern Slav race idea, and securing for Serbia that seaboard of which her traditional enemy, Austria, has long deprived her. It is further a question of conciliating the requirements of Italian national security with the requirements of Jugoslav unity. Without Jugoslav unity, formed in agreement with Italy, Italian national security cannot be obtained. The Italians and Jugoslavs have in the Adriatic identical interests. The Italians are a free and generous nation whose liberation in the time of Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi, passed the same phase through which is today painfully laboring the liberation and unification of the Southern Slavs.

Reaching a friendly understanding in regard to the Dalmatian coast, the Italians and Jugoslavs will be linked by a fraternity of arms, of aims, and of interests, and will constitute a magnificent field of economic and cultural activity to the mutual benefit of both. When they come to this understanding there will be no longer any cleft in the Italo-Jugoslav Block into which Austria will be able to pour the corrosive acid of her inveterate intrigues. A permanent solution of the Southern Slav Question, in coöperation with Italy, will be the best guaranty and counterbalance athwart the Austro-German road to the Adriatic and the Balkan Peninsula.

If the future is to be devoted to correcting violations of the principle of nationality from the Habsburg Monarchy, considerable sacrifices are unavoidable. Truth has only one standard and the last word for the creation of the Jugoslav state with its natural ethnographical and economic boundaries will rest with political wisdom. Then, and only then, the people of the Balkan Peninsula will be able to unfold their rich resources for the welfare of human progress and for the establishment of justice and peace among the nations of southeastern Europe.

BULGARIA'S CASE

A REPLY TO PROFESSOR R. A. TSANOFFI

By N. J. Cassavety, General Secretary of the Pan-Epirotic Union in America

In the May issue of the New Europe, Mr. Mavrocordato, in commenting upon an article written by Mr. Sideris, socialist Greek deputy from Salonica, on Macedonia, makes a remarkable statement. He declares that the Balkan nations are extreme in their nationalistic aspirations, and uncompromising to exasperation. He also says that the writers on the Balkan question, as a rule, have shown as strong a fanaticism for or against this or that Balkan race, as the Balkan peoples themselves.

Any one who has read the literature written on the Balkans during the last fifty years will agree that with very few exceptions the Philhellenes are hopelessly irreconcilable to the Bulgars, and the Philobulgars are unreasonably antagonistic to the Greeks.

The only explanation we venture to give of this warm championship of the one side or the other is the violence of the propaganda which is carried on by both Bulgars and Greeks to influence foreigners in favor of their respective views on Macedonia.

Thus, a foreigner who first visits Greece, is so thoroughly catechized in the Greek version of Macedonia, and in the Greek conception of the "terrible, savage, and brutal Bulgars," that he becomes from there on impermeable by any arguments which tend to alter his Greek opinion of the Bulgars. And likewise, the foreigner who visits Bulgaria first, is so convinced of the total worthlessness of the Greek claims on Macedonia, and of "the brutality, perfidy, barbarity" of the Greeks, that he cannot even bear to listen to the arguments on the other side.

1 See article, "Bulgaria's Case," by Professor Tsanoff, Jour. of Race DEVELOPMENT, Jan., 1918, p. 296. 145