from religious prejudices, an important party, for example, among the
Slovenes being based on Roman Catholicism. But as the Slovenes are, as
yet, the best upholders of the Yugoslav idea, it is obvious that
education covers all things, and that with the increase of education in
Bosnia the religious differences will be less important. Anything that
can be done against this tyranny is beneficial, whether the St. George
be a political orator or a schoolmaster. And as the effects produced by
the former are more rapid, so should he be encouraged. He is, in fact,
appearing in Bosnia, he will carry away, more or less, the _clientèle_
of the _Srpski Zora_, and the shattered nervous organism of its editor,
Mr. Čokorilo, will be, one trusts, reconstituted and devoted, as it
can be, to a nobler purpose. One of its deplorable effects has been
that the organ of the Croat party, a paper called _Jugoslavija_, has
been compelled to write in a similar strain, whereas the editor, a
dapper little priest, assures one that he would prefer a more elevated
tone.
RADIĆ AND HIS PEASANTS
Those who wished that Yugoslavia would be an idle dream have had their
hopes more centred in Croatia. They told the world that horrible affairs
took place, that there has been a revolution, several revolutions, that
castles have been sacked and that the statesman, Radić, was
imprisoned. If you met this little pear-shaped man, who is a
middle-aged, extremely short-sighted person, with a small, straggling
beard, an engaging smile and a large forehead, you would say that surely
he had spent a good many hours of his life in some university garden
where the birds, knowing that he could not easily see them, were in the
habit of alighting for their dinner on his outstretched hands. He is a
very learned little man, who started his career by obtaining the first
place at the famous École des Sciences Politiques in Paris. But Stephen
Radić happens also to be very much interested in politics and
extremely impulsive, so that his wife and daughter have often had to
look after the bookshop, since the Government--that of Austria-Hungary
and afterwards that of Yugoslavia--had consigned him to prison. He
probably expected nothing else, for his eloquence--and he is an orator
in several languages--has frequently carried him along and swept him
round and round, like a leaf, not only in a direction opposite to that
which he previously travelled but flying sometimes in the face of the
most puissant and august authorities. So, for example, he began to
agitate in 1904 against the vast territorial possessions of the Church
in Croatia. This resulted in the then Archbishop issuing an interdict
against him and his meetings--a measure which, I believe, is still in
force. He was described as Antichrist, with the consequence that his
audiences, out of curiosity to see what such a personage might look
like, became larger than ever. For many years he was the only Croat
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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