which Baron Rauch hoped to split the Serbo-Croat coalition, and which was
to furnish the cause of a war with Serbia on the annexation of Bosnia in
1908, collapsed. It rested on forgeries concocted within the walls of the
Austro-Hungarian legation in Belgrade where Count Forgach held forth. The
annexation of Bosnia in 1908 completed the operation begun in 1878
and called for the completion of the policy of prevention. It was the
forerunner of the press campaign in the first Balkan war, the Prohaska
affair, the attack by Bulgaria upon Serbia and Greece, the rebuff
to Masaryk and Pa[s]i[c], the murder of Francis Ferdinand, and the
Austro-Hungarian note to Serbia. The mysteries connected with the forgeries
and this chain of events will remain a fertile field for detectives and
psychologists and, after that, for historians. For us, it is necessary to
note that, as the hand of Pan-Germanism became more evident, the Slovenes
began to draw nearer to the Croats and the Serbs. It remained only for the
Serbs to electrify the Jugo-Slavs --"to avenge Kossovo with Kumanovo"
--in order to cement their loyalty to the regenerated Serbs. Religious
differences, political rivalries, linguistic quibbles, and the petty
foibles of centuries appeared to be forgotten in the three short years
which elapsed from Kumanovo to the destruction of Serbia in 1915. The
Greater Serbia idea had really perished in 1915, as had the Greater Croatia
idea in 1878. In their place emerged Jugo-Slavia --the kingdom of the
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes--implied by the South Slav Parliamentary Club
in Austria in their Declaration of May 30, 1917, and formulated by the Pact
of Corfu of July 7, 1917, which Pasie, premier of Serbia, and Trumbie, the
head of the London Jugo-Slav Committee, drew up. The evolution had been
completed. Nationalism had proved stronger than geography, stronger than
opposing religions, more cohesive than political and economic interests.
For this, the Jugo-Slavs have not only themselves and modern progress, like
railroad-building, to thank, but also the policy of the Habsburg monarchy,
the hopeful, though feeble, Note of the Allies to President Wilson, the