for speculation. It is probable that he construed the Dual Settlement as subject to revision as soon as the Magyars, whose support he had purchased by it, should have helped him to overthrow Prussia. In any case it is certain that, by the summer of 1870, his Austrian Premier, Hohenwart, had convinced him of the disadvantage of being bound by an arrangement to which Prussia held the key, and had persuaded him to modify it by assigning to Slav Bohemia a position in the Monarchy scarcely less important than that held under the Dual System by German Austria and Magyar Hungary. The rescripts of September 1870, by which he promised the Bohemians to be crowned as their King at Prague and held out to them a prospect of an autonomous status in the Empire, clearly prove his intention. But the German victories in France and the rapidly-formed coalition between Bismarck, Beust (the Austrian Chancellor), and Andrássy (the Magyar Premier) compelled him to withdraw the rescripts, alienate the Bohemians, and to suffer the yoke which he had thought provisional to be riveted upon him for the rest of his life.

Having thus reduced Francis Joseph to lasting bondage, the next step of Bismarck and Andrássy was to turn his mind away from Germany and in the direction of the Balkans. The prospect of acquiring Bosnia-Herzegovina completed his enslavement. No Hapsburg could resist the temptation of securing more acres'; and upon the bargain struck at the Berlin Congress, Bismarck and Andrássy set their seal in October 1879 by the conclusion of the Austro-German Alliance against Russia. Once again the Prusso-Magyar combination proved the determining element in German control over the Hapsburgs; and it is, to say the least, a singular coincidence that the action on the part of the Hapsburgs, which opened the series of European crises that led up to the present war, should have been taken at a moment when the supremacy of the German element in Austria, and of the Magyar element in Hungary, appeared to be exposed to some danger, if not actually imperilled. That action was the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in October 1908. It is worth while briefly to examine its domestic Austro-Hungarian antecedents.

However deftly arrangements may be organised for maintaining the supremacy of minorities, there come moments when the pressure of the relatively disfranchised majorities threatens

So

the existence of the oppressive system. Between 1902 and 1904 the Magyar Independence Party-which presently expanded, in January 1905, into an anti-Tisza and anti-Francis Joseph coalition-carried on, by parliamentary obstruction and by the organisation of passive resistance' in Hungary, a determined campaign against the military demands of the Crown. In September 1905 Francis Joseph startled his subjects by threatening to have the issue between himself and the Magyar Coalition tried by the ordeal of universal suffrage, which would have meant the collapse of the Magyar minority or, rather, of the Magyar oligarchy in Hungary. frightened were the leaders of the Magyar Coalition at this prospect, that their decision to come to terms with Francis Joseph may be dated from the autumn of 1905, though it took effect only in April 1906. Count Tisza, whom the Coalition had overthrown in January 1905 and who was the object of its fiercest hatred, regained at a stroke the respect and almost the admiration of his enemies by publishing a series of impassioned articles against universal suffrage and warning the 'Magyar nation'-that is to say, the oligarchy-of the deadly peril to which it was exposed. Needless to say, after coming to terms with Francis Joseph and taking office in the spring of 1906, the Magyar Coalition successfully burked all attempts at serious franchise reform.

Nevertheless, the idea of universal suffrage had excited the disfranchised non-Magyars of Hungary and had awakened in Austria an echo too loud to be ignored. To the developments in Austria reference will presently be made. In Hungary the disquiet of the Magyars was so deep that it led them to take what was-from the Prusso-Magyar point of viewan astonishing step. In their anger, they actually concluded an alliance with the Southern Slavs against Vienna ! It is vaguely known in Western Europe that, since 1868, there has existed between Hungary and Croatia-Slavonia a settlement analogous in name but very different in reality from that created in 1867 between Austria and Hungary. Mr. Gladstone, whose correspondence with the famous Southern Slav Bishop Strossmayer reveals a keen interest in the liberation of

* Cf. 'The Southern Slav Question,' by R. W. Seton-Watson, Appendix xvii.

the Southern Slavs, imagined, somewhat ingenuously, that the relationship between Hungary and Croatia was of

home rule,' which might well serve as a model for the system of self-government he hoped to establish in Ireland. He sent a trusted emissary to Budapest with instructions to inquire into and report upon the working of Croatian 'home rule' and the practical relations between Croats and Magyars. 'I believe we have something on paper about the 'Croatians,' replied an eminent Magyar authority to Mr. Gladstone's envoy, 'but, in practice, we do with them 'pretty much as we like.' Further inquiry confirmed this terse account of the situation, and Mr. Gladstone cited the example of Croatia no more.

The Magyars continued to do 'pretty much as they liked' with Croatia-Slavonia until, in the summer of 1903, the Croatian peasants revolted against the rule of the Magyar Governor, Count Khuen-Heder vary, who fled to Budapest and sought refuge in an opportune vacancy that had occurred in the Hungarian Premiership. The Croatian disturbances were suppressed, but the ferment spread throughout the Southern Slav provinces of Hungary and affected also the Austrian provinces of Istria and Dalmatia, of which the former is largely and the latter overwhelmingly Southern Slav. A new spirit of brotherhood grew up between Croat and Serb until, in the autumn of 1905, a conference of Austro-Hungarian Croat leaders held at Fiume ended by the adoption of a programme in the form of a resolution, which led up to the formation of a Croato-Serb Coalition embracing the Austrian as well as the Hungarian Southern Slavs. This political reconciliation of the Croat (or Roman Catholic) with the Serb (or Orthodox) Southern Slavs of the Monarchy was a portent. As such it was immediately regarded in the German and pro-Prussian camp at Vienna and subsequently also by the Magyars at Budapest. But, at the moment, the Magyar Coalition was too preoccupied with its fight against the crown and too perturbed by Francis Joseph's threat in regard to universal suffrage, to trouble greatly about the new friendship between Croat and Serb. Rather did the Magyar Coalition welcome the opportunity afforded by the resolution of Fiume to conclude a working alliance with the Southern Slavs. The basis of the alliance was an undertaking that the Croato-Serb Coalition should

support the Magyar Coalition in the fight against Francis Joseph, and that, if and when the Magyar Coalition took office, it should grant better government to Croatia with honest Croatian Under-Secretaries of State, clean elections, and a new franchise.

The object of the Southern Slav leaders in making this alliance with the Magyar Coalition has not always been understood. Yet its purpose was sufficiently clear. A real improvement in the Southern Slav position could only come from and through Hungary under whose rule the great majority of the Hungarian Southern Slavs lived and groaned. The adversity of Hungary—that is to say, of the Magyar Coalition -was the Southern Slav opportunity. When, in April 1906, the Magyar Coalition eventually came to terms with the Crown and took office, the leaders of the Croato-Serb Coalition in the Croatian Diet presented their bill for payment. Somewhat reluctantly, the Magyar Coalition honoured its signature, though one of the most important terms of the agreementthe appointment of honest Croatian Under-Secretaries of State at Agram-was only fulfilled after the application of severe pressure by the Southern Slavs.

This pressure took the form of concerted silence on the part of the Southern Slav inhabitants and municipalities of Dalmatia during the presence of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand at the land and sea manœuvres in September 1906. So general and so effective was this demonstration of silence that the only Dalmatian town to give a welcome to the Archduke was Zara, the capital, which is also the only Italian municipality in Dalmatia. Meanwhile the pressure had its effect both at Budapest and at Vienna. The Southern Slav leaders secured their main demands and with them a new era of liberty in Croatia-Slavonia. In a 'clean' election the adherents of the Croato-Serb Coalition swept the constituencies of CroatiaSlavonia (Dalmatia, though belonging juridically to CroatiaSlavonia, was and is de facto an Austrian province), secured undisputed control of the Croatian Diet at Agram and of the deputation of forty members which represents the Croatian Diet in the Hungarian Chamber. The franchise was reformed and prospects seemed bright when, in 1907, the Magyar Government, influenced from Vienna and Berlin, suddenly broke faith with the Croato-Serb Coalition and drove it into opposi

tion. The truth is that the alarm felt in Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest at the rapid development of Southern Slav sentiment had culminated in a determination to break the Croato-Serb Coalition and to revert to the old repressive system of government in Croatia-Slavonia. This determination inspired the notorious High Treason Trial at Agram, the perpetration of the anti-Southern Slav forgeries (subsequently exposed during the Friedjung Trial) as a preparation for the intended annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the whole scheme of vexatious tyranny of which the Southern Slavs of Austria-Hungary were the objects down to the beginning of the war. On the outbreak of war, administrative tyranny became sanguinary persecution, and the hangman reinforced the bureaucrat and the gendarme. At this point it is necessary to revert to the Austrian situation as it stood in September 1905 when Francis Joseph launched the threat of universal suffrage against the recalcitrant Magyar Coalition in Hungary. Received with ill-disguised terror by the Magyar oligarchy in Hungary, the cry of Universal Suffrage aroused enthusiasm in Austria. For eight years, with rare and brief intervals, the working of the Austrian Parliament had been impeded by strife between the representatives of the various Austrian nationalities— mainly between Germans and Czechs-who had in turn effectively obstructed parliamentary business. Government had been carried on by an abusive interpretation of the Emergency Clause of the Constitution. There seemed to be some hope that these difficulties might be overcome were the whole framework of the Austrian Chamber to be melted down and cast in a new mould. The system of curiae, or categories, under which a certain number of seats had been allotted to rural districts, urban districts, the large landed proprietors and the Chambers of Commerce respectively, was suddenly regarded as too cramped and artificial to permit of a true expression of the public will. Since 1896 there had been tacked on to the categories of Deputies above mentioned a fifth category or curia of seventy-two deputies elected by universal suffrage. It was now proposed to merge the whole Chamber into a single category of universal suffrage; or, in other words, to sweep away all distinctions between the various classes of popular representatives. The Austrian Germans, and, especially, the so-called German Liberals, fought hard