on parallel lines, views have been exchanged in collaboration with the
president of the Skupstina, on all questions concerning the life of the
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in their joint future State.

We are happy in being able once more on this occasion to point to the
complete unanimity of all parties concerned.

In the first place, the representatives of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
declare anew and most categorically that our people constitutes but
one nation, and that it is one in blood, one by the spoken and written
language, by the continuity and unity of the territory in which it lives,
and finally in virtue of the common and vital interests of its national
existence and the general development of its moral and material life.

The idea of its national unity has never suffered extinction, although all
the intellectual forces of its enemy were directed against its unification,
its liberty and its national existence. Divided between several States,
our nation is in Austria-Hungary alone split up into eleven provincial
administrations, coming under thirteen legislative bodies. The feeling of
national unity, together with the spirit of liberty and independence, have
supported it in the never-ending struggles of centuries against the Turks
in the East and against the Germans and the Magyars in the West.

Being numerically inferior to its enemies in the East and West, it was
impossible for it to safeguard its unity as a nation and a State, its
liberty and its independence against the brutal maxim of "might goes before
right" militating against it both East and West.

But the moment has come when our people is no longer isolated. The war
imposed by German militarism upon Russia, upon France and upon England for