“J’ai mis le pied sur la tête du serpent,” said Count Andrassy, speaking to Lord Salisbury after the signature of the Treaty of Berlin. And those words give to-day the key to the Austrian policy. She seeks to crush the Serbs, not only in Bosnia, but in the kingdom of Servia itself, and to Germanise the whole land by steel and by hunger. And such is the present pitiable situation—a situation unrealised in England—a situation which has actually called forth the hostile criticism of the Vienna journals themselves—including the semi-official _Neue Freie Presse_—against the present barbarism of the occupation. Any industry or commerce exploited by Serbs is at once crushed and ruined, while in the police we have vivid examples of corrupt maladministration only equalled in Russia. The police persecutions are scandalous. Many were related to me by persons who had themselves been victims. The Bosnian citizen beneath the claws of the police is utterly without defence. If the paternal Government of Austria attempt to deny this, let the recent cases of M. Gligorie Jeftanovitch of Sarayevo, M. Chola of Mostar, M. Stiepo Srchkitch, M. Ilia Duckovitch, M. Risto Maximovitch, M. Radoulovitch, M. Nikolas Pichkakutch of Banja-Louka, and the sad affair of Pierre Dorliatcha of Bosnia-Novi, amid a thousand others, be cited, to show what travesties of justice are performed in this remote corner of the Balkans. A whole volume, indeed, could be written upon the corrupt Austrian police methods which vie with those of Holy Russia. But it must suffice here to cite cases upon which no denial can be offered by the authorities. The Austrian authorities, who are so glib with their semi-official denials and statements, which we see almost daily in the London newspapers, will have some difficulty in disproving the disgraceful incident at Sokolatz, near Sarayevo, not long ago. Here, during the Easter fête, the gendarmes were formed round the church “to maintain order.” A peasant saw one of the gendarmes endeavouring to outrage a young woman, and ran to inform the authorities. Whereupon the gendarme shot the peasant dead with his revolver. There was no inquiry regarding the murder, though witnessed by at least a hundred persons. And the official account of the affair—which I have myself seen—actually declares that the unfortunate peasant died _a natural death_! This is but one single case of hundreds. All over the country the police and gendarmes shoot the witnesses of their crimes, and there is never an inquiry. Of a verity the barbarities of the police in Bosnia are a disgrace to a nation that calls itself civilised, and cry for reform quite as loudly as they do in the Land of the Tzar. Let the reader who doubts this outspoken condemnation of Austrian administration go to Bosnia and see for himself. He will find that I have understated the facts, and things will be told him that surely will stagger belief.