If any serious criticism of Bosnian administration is published abroad, the authorities always seek to immediately purchase and suppress it, and many are the sums yearly paid in blackmail to unscrupulous writers who, knowing the truth, threaten to make exposure. I will give a case in point. Not very long ago there was in Prague published a brochure severely criticising the Bosnian policy, giving a description of the maladministration, and pointing out the disastrous state of the finances. A copy of this fell into the hands of M. Stakievitch, late director of the administration of the Bosnian local Government, and at that moment _en congé_. He at once apprised the local Government, who immediately sent Dr. Berx to Prague, with orders to suppress the publication of the book at all costs. The Government, after some brief negotiations, paid the sum of 100,000 florins (200,000 fcs.) for the destruction of the book and the silence of its author upon the state of Bosnian finance! Then on the return of Dr. Berx no fewer than forty functionaries were arrested on charges of having given information to the author. Is not this sufficiently significant? Every newspaper in Bosnia and Herzegovina is well subsidised, and in return is compelled to chant the praises of the administration of the local Government, while all correspondents of foreign journals are equally the recipient of money from the State. In Bosnia the foreign newspaper correspondent lives well and grows fat. Thus does Austria throw dust in the eyes of Europe. With religion persecuted, education at a standstill, and the Press either gagged or suborned, Austria is slowly carrying out her policy of crushing the Serbs. In Bosnia you have no right to pray, no right to think; you must blindly obey and laud with flattery the very talons outstretched to rend you. It is a land where justice is a farce, where lies are told as truths, where the police persecute and murder, where the poor are oppressed, where the official grows wealthy, and where no man is secure from the false denunciation of spies eager for reward. Should it be permitted in this twentieth century to one European people to crush another European people under the false pretext of civilisation? The Bosnians are neither negroes nor red-skins, but a civilised religious race, part of the great Serb nation, with the same right to live, the same right to religion, liberty, and to justice as the canting hypocrites of Vienna themselves. Why should they be exterminated? So careful is the local Government of Bosnia not to allow the truth to leak out that up to the present little has been heard in Europe of the plain, unvarnished facts I have here put forward. But it is a subject that will come before the public ere long, and then we shall see if the Powers will still stand by and allow the destruction of a people who do not merit the hatred of their master. [Illustration: Sarayevo: Bosnia.] [Illustration: In Herzegovina.]