serious proportions. The Serbs in Serbia were the only ones who could
claim to be free, but even this was a freedom entirely dependent on the
economic malevolence of Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Cut up in this way by
the hand of fate into such a number of helpless fragments, it was
inevitable that the Serb race, if it possessed any vitality, should
attempt, at any cost, to piece some if not all of them together and form
an ethnical whole which, economically and politically, should be master of
its own destinies. It was equally inevitable that the policy of
Austria-Hungary should be to anticipate or definitively render any such
attempt impossible, because obviously the formation of a large south Slav
state, by cutting off Austria from the Adriatic and eliminating from the
dual monarchy all the valuable territory between the Dalmatian coast and
the river Drave, would seriously jeopardize its position as a great power;
it must be remembered, also, that Austria-Hungary, far from decomposing,
as it was commonly assumed was happening, had been enormously increasing
in vitality ever since 1878.

The means adopted by the governments of Vienna and Budapest to nullify the
plans of Serbian expansion were generally to maintain the political
_émiettement_ of the Serb race, the isolation of one group from another,
the virtually enforced emigration of Slavs on a large scale and their
substitution by German colonists, and the encouragement of rivalry and
discord between Roman Catholic Croat and Orthodox Serb. No railways were
allowed to be built in Dalmatia, communication between Agram and any other
parts of the monarchy except Fiume or Budapest was rendered almost
impossible; Bosnia and Hercegovina were shut off into a watertight
compartment and endowed with a national flag composed of the inspiring
colours of brown and buff; it was made impossible for Serbs to visit
Montenegro or for Montenegrins to visit Serbia except via Fiume, entailing
the bestowal of several pounds on the Hungarian state steamers and