At last, on January 5, 1917, the _Neue Freie Presse_ acknowledged that Austria provoked the war with the intention of crushing Serbia. It is a formal and categorical confession. And it obliges us to consider seriously the thesis put forward by Jules Chopin in _Le Complot de Sarajevo_ (Paris, 1918), according to which the plot was hatched at Konopiště between the German Kaiser and the man to whom the plot proved fatal. Monsieur Chopin, after a minute examination of the facts and of grave presumptions, believes that Serbia was to be held up to the world as having provoked the war that was to consolidate the Monarchy and satisfy the Archduke's paternal ambitions. The army manœuvres were to be in Bosnia, the Archduke was to make his ceremonial entry into Sarajevo on Vidov dan, the day when the Serbs solemnly celebrate the battle of Kossovo, and Čabrinović, son of the Sarajevo police-spy, was to be assisted through the Chinese Wall which then encircled Bosnia. But what did not enter into the royal calculations was the possibility that other Southern Slavs, acting on their own initiative, might strike a real blow. THE MISERABLE MACEDONIANS This period of Yugoslav history (from 1876 until the European War) was at the beginning much concerned with Macedonia. And so it was towards the end. Very wretched was the lot of the Macedonian Slavs--occasionally the Exarchists and occasionally the Patriarchists were in the ascendant, but while in religious matters the Greeks clung by all possible means to their ancient, privileged position, so the Turks maintained in secular affairs the sorry plight of their Slav raia. The Macedonian Slavs, when the rest of Europe began to listen to their cries, were not the most sympathetic of mortals--the more enterprising of them had abandoned the country, while the moral sense of those who stayed was grievously affected by the course of conduct which the presence of the Turk compelled. Europe was touched by the anguish of these Christians and did not inquire too closely as to the proportion of the virtues, often called the Christian virtues, which they cultivated. And it was undoubtedly a fact that their treatment left a great deal to be desired. The peasant was obliged to pay direct imposts in cash. There were taxes on landed property, on cattle, on sheep and on fruit-trees, tithes on every species of harvest and a poll-tax to which only Christians were liable, amounting to ten shillings per annum for every male. To complete the exactions with a touch of irony, there was also an education-tax and a heavy road-tax for the upkeep of the indescribable highways. These taxes were not collected by Government officials, but were farmed out to the highest bidder, and so flagrant were the abuses of this system that it was not unusual for the villagers to cut down their fruit-trees in order to avoid the tax upon them, for the tax-farmer, against whom an appeal would be worse than useless, was wont to appear with gendarmes and