the Moslems and the Croats are identical in race and language,
but have hitherto been much divided. Those who joined together in the
Turkish days were led to do so as companions in distress; the rule of
Austria, or to speak with greater accuracy the rule of Hungary--no one
knew exactly who possessed the land, but the Magyars took it for granted
that it was theirs--this rule, of course, did nothing to unite the
various religions. The Moslems, especially after their complete
isolation from Turkey, were the most favoured, while the Serbs, owing to
the proximity of Serbia, were the most oppressed. And during the War it
was the Serbian population which was chiefly tortured. Besides all those
who were dragged away to such places as Arad, hundreds and hundreds were
hanged in their own province. Not satisfied with using, as we see in so
many of those ghastly photographs, their own army as the executioners,
the Austro-Hungarians also organized local bands among the lower classes
of the towns, and in so doing they availed themselves of any latent
religious fanaticism among the Moslems. From the day of the Archduke's
assassination it was the Serbs who suffered most; and many onlookers
must have expected in the autumn of 1918 that they would take a very
drastic revenge. For some weeks the people were left very much to their
own devices, with no troops or police--the Austrian _gendarmerie_ having
to be protected by the better classes, who explained to the peasants
that it was not right to regard only the uniform of those who had so
often maltreated them; yet the gendarmes took the earliest opportunity
of getting into mufti. There was also for several months a dearth of
detectives. Many of those who had worked under Austria and were more or
less criminal, fled at the collapse; others continued to act, but in a
half-hearted way. Sixty new detectives were taken on by the Yugoslav
authorities, and fifty-six of them had to be dismissed. After all, if
one can judge a person's character from his face, the detective who
allowed you to do so would be so incompetent as not to warrant a trial.
And after six or seven months of Yugoslav administration only
thirty-three out of fifty-two detective appointments in Sarajevo had
been definitely filled. So there was not much restriction on the
peasants in their dealings with each other. A few of them were murdered.
In Sarajevo the National Guard was largely composed of well-meaning
street boys; the Serb