Ethnologically speaking, the inhabitants of all these countries form
one people, and are a brother nation to the Serbs in the Kingdoms
of Serbia and Montenegro. Their language, customs, historical past
and achievements in art, science and literature, are identical. The
sole difference between them is that the Croats and Slovenes are
Catholics, while part of the inhabitants of Bosnia are Mohammedans.
Those confessing the Serbo-Orthodox faith (more than a third of the
population) also own to the national name and call themselves Serbs.
This compact and homogeneous national body would certainly have become
a most important factor in the Monarchy had they not been cut in two by
administrative policy. Here as elsewhere throughout all her dominions
Austria has applied her principle of dividing and dismembering,
and the Southern Slav provinces were shared between two spheres of
power. Croatia and Slavonia were allotted to the Hungarian; Carniola,
Dalmatia and Istria to the Austrian sphere, and a mixed Austrian and
Hungarian administration was introduced in Bosnia and Hercegovina.
This system made a unanimous political rally of the Southern Slavs
quite impossible, and provided German and Magyar propaganda with a more
manageable field of operations. In both spheres unremitting efforts
were devoted to the task of eliminating the Southern Slav element,
stifling Slav thought, and transforming the Slavs into _slaves_.
But the Southern Slav is endowed with unusual tenacity; the most
zealous efforts on the part of the Government were frustrated by his
dogged resistance, and they merely defeated their own ends. German
“kultur” and Magyar _lack_ of culture were held in equal abomination
by the Slav nations upon whom they were to be inflicted, and the
ruthless spoliation to which they were likewise subjected engendered a
deep-seated animosity. The Northern Slavs, who possess more practical
business capacity than the Southern, did not allow themselves to be
economically strangled, and even contrived to hold their own in this
respect; whereas the Southern Slavs, being mainly an agricultural
people, found themselves the helpless victims of Austrian and Hungarian
rapacity. Dalmatia, one of the loveliest spots in Europe, has for
the last century known no privilege except that of paying taxes, and
Austria’s mal-administration of that country has become proverbial.
Croatia and Slavonia fare little better. They have to pay 56 per
cent. of their revenues to Hungary. This tax figures under the head
of “contributions to mutual interests,” chiefly represented by the
railways and the postal system. The net annual income from these two
sources amounts to 250 million Kr., but of this Croatia never receives
a penny! The net profit _all_ goes to Hungary who brazenly employs
it to subvention the Magyar propaganda in Croatia. The condition of
Carniola and Istria is almost as deplorable as that of Dalmatia, and
in Bosnia and Hercegovina the Austro-Hungarian Government has for
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