s were somewhat depleted by Bol[vs]evik tracts, telling
them to go home, as there would be no more war; and yet at Gutenstein
sixty men with three machine guns, under Lieut. Maglaj, a Slovene from
Carinthia, kept 1500 men at bay from 9 a.m. till 3.30, after which they
slowly withdrew until the fighting ceased at six; a corporal and two men
of a machine-gun detachment were cut off and concealed themselves in the
shrubs of a defile. Suddenly they heard a German company come down the
road, singing as they marched. The three men opened fire--the Germans in
perplexity stood still and then retired in disorder. The whole
German-Austrian movement was checked by General Maister. And when the
Serbian veterans, men of all ages, with uniforms of every shade, marched
through the streets of Maribor, it was felt that there need be no more
anxiety as to that particular frontier of Yugoslavia.

YUGOSLAVIA BEGINS TO PUT HER HOUSE IN ORDER

It was not until now that Great Britain (on May 9) and France (on June
5) formally recognized the new Serbo-Croat-Slovene State.[33] As the
_Times_ said, two years afterwards,[34] "it was not the Allies who
created Czecho-Slovakia or brought about the establishment of
Yugo-Slavia. These events were the inevitable result of the previous
history which the Allies could not, even if they had desired to do so,
prevent." The Americans had not been so extremely considerate to Italy,
for they had recognized the Yugoslav State on February 7, a few days
after Norway and Switzerland.... And how necessary it was for the
Yugoslavs to have some leisure for their home affairs, which presented
so many complications. Here one system of laws and there another--with
the best will in the world and waiving to the uttermost one's own
idiosyncrasies, the Serbs and Croats and Slovenes were faced, at the
beginning of their union, by most arduous problems. The Agrarian
question was regarded generally as one of the most urgent. In Serbia
itself, with practically the whole country in the hands of small peasant
proprietors, this question did not arise; but in the provinces which had
been lately under Austria-Hungary no time was to be lost, and yet a good
deal of time would be needed to cope with a problem so full of
complications. One difficulty was that each political party was inclined
to solve this matter in accordance with its own interests. Among the
three Slovene parties, for example, the Socialists would naturally work
f