The _Ausgleich_ was of ill-omen to the Slav subjects of Hungary. It was not much more auspicious for the Slovenes, Istrians and Dalmatians. The Slavs seem to have been the Habsburgs' nightmare. Why the million and a quarter of Slovenes--people who do not approach the Basques, for instance, in pugnacity--should be the butt of everlasting coercion and repression may seem inexplicable. When the German-Austrians of Triest, even after the Italians in Italy had begun to claim the town, allied themselves with the Triest Italians "to fight," as they declared, "the common enemy," it can surely not have been these quiet Slovenes who had won for themselves by great industry a place in the town which is situated in their province. The "common enemy" to whom the German-Austrians referred must have been Russia. And so the Southern Slavs of the Balkans and of the Adriatic owed part of the bad treatment they received not to their own vices but to the organizing virtues which their larger brother was supposed to have. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 36: _Memorie per la storia degli arvenimenti che seguirono in Dalmazia la caduta della Republica veneta_, by G. Cattalinich, 1841.] [Footnote 37: This is perpetuated by the initial letters of the saying "Samo sloga Srbina spasava" ("Only in the union of Serbs is salvation"), which are placed round the cross in Serbia's coat of arms.] [Footnote 38: Cf. _La Dalmatie de 1797-1815_, by the Abbé Paul Pisani. Paris, 1893.] [Footnote 39: His fame as a teacher was such that several towns entreated him to settle in their midst. In 1845 the inhabitants of Stara Zagora sent him this curious letter: "When Philip, King of Macedonia, invited Aristotle to be the tutor of his son, he wrote to him: 'I am happy, in the first place, because God has given me a son, and, secondly, because this son was born in your time....' And we also, we thank God, firstly, because it has been granted to us to found a school, and, secondly, because we know that under your direction it will be a real school. That is why we supplicate and pray that you will come to us and be our teacher."] [Footnote 40: Smail Aga, Vice-Governor of Herzegovina, had earned for himself the greatest detestation of the Montenegrins, whom he harried, and of his own unhappy subjects. In August 1840 he was attacked by a small band of heroes, men of Montenegro and of Herzegovina. He and a large number of his men were killed. A translation of this celebrated poem was made by Mr. J. W. Wiles at Salonika, and printed there, under difficult circumstances, entirely by Serbian refugees.] [Footnote 41: Cf. _Fiume Italiana_. Rome, 1919.] [Footnote 42: According to the census of 1857 the figures were: Serbs, 452,500; Roumanians, 414,900; Germans, 394,100; Magyars, 256,100; Jews, 12,500; Gipsies, 600.]