The Slavic peoples, otherwise divided by language and tradition, are also divided by religion. People speaking the same language, and sharing in other respects the same traditions, are frequently just as widely separated by differences of religion as they could be by differences of race. For example, among the southern Slavs the majority of the Slovenes and the Croatians are Roman Catholics, others are Protestants. On the other hand, the majority of the Serbs, their close neighbours, are members of the Greek Orthodox Church, while others are Mohammedans. So wide is the division between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Slavs that in some cases members of the Eastern and Western branches of the Church belonging to the same nationality wear a different costume in order to emphasize the differences of religion that might otherwise be forgotten or overlooked. In Galicia there are not only the Roman and Orthodox branches of the Church, but there are also three or four other minor branches. One of these, the Uniates, which is a compromise between the two and is intended to be a sort of link between the Eastern and Western churches, is now, it is said, just as distinct from both as any of the other branches of the Church. In this region, which has been the battleground of all the religions in Europe, religious distinctions play a much more important rôle than they do elsewhere, because the masses of the people have not yet forgotten the bitterness and the harshness of the early struggles of the sects. The result is that religious differences seem to have intensified rather than to have softened the racial animosities. In spite of the divisions and rivalries which exist, there seems to be growing up, under the influence of the struggle against the other and dominant races in the Empire, and as a result of the political agitations to which this struggle has given rise, a sense of common purpose and interest in the different branches of the Slavic race; a sort of racial consciousness, as it is sometimes called, which seems to be one of the conditions without which a race that is down is not able to get the ambition and the courage to rise. It is the presence of this great Slav race in western Europe, groping its way forward under the conditions and difficulties which I have described, that constitutes, as well as I am able to define it, the race problem of southern Europe.