Today the political aspirations of this compact mass of Serbians are centered around the independent kingdom of Serbia, which is regarded as the nucleus around which a greater Serbia comprising all the Serbian-speaking inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula will group. This Serbo-Croatian element is estimated to comprise at least 10,300,000 individuals.[182] The southern Slav question centers chiefly around the fate of those unredeemed populations. The Near Eastern Question cannot be settled without cutting away from Austria-Hungary, and uniting with Serbia and Montenegro, all the southern Slav provinces of the Hapsburg crown. It is stated of Metternich that he had openly proclaimed his belief in the necessity of annexing Serbia to either Turkey or Austria. That was in the day, however, when popular claims counted for little. Southern Slav unity and independence are both necessary to Europe. Serbia, or rather Serbo-Croatia or “Jugoslavia,” is reared on a land-gap that provides Europe with a gateway to the east. The freedom of Balkan peoples and to a great extent the freedom of Europe depend upon the power of the southern Slavs to hold the gate. It is therefore to the advantage of European countries to strengthen the southern Slavs by every means in their power. A partial unity that would leave any considerable portion of Jugoslavia unredeemed would but divert southern Slav energy into irredentist channels and deflect it from its chief mission. The ties which unite Serbians and Croatians have led writers to consider the two peoples as one under the name of Serbo-Croatians.[183] In the eleventh century Skilitzer, a Byzantine writer, alludes to the “Croatians, who are called Serbians.” Little distinction was made between their tribes when they first made their appearance in Balkan lands. Both peoples are Slavs and it is not unlikely that they are derived from a common stock. The location of the territory they occupied affords a clue to the origin of differences between them. Their homelands lie on the confines of the two Roman empires which ruled respectively over eastern and western Europe. It was natural that some groups of the Serbo-Croatian element should follow the religious leadership of Rome while others rallied to the Orthodox teachings of Byzantium. The main distinction between Serbians and Croatians is found in this diversity of religious views.