ash if in
attempting to foretell the future we should base ourselves upon the
premise that their patience will be everlasting. A new Alsace has been
created, an Alsace to which, in the opinion of competent observers, all
the Yugoslavs will turn until the day comes when it is honourable to set
the standards forth on a campaign of liberation.

NEW FORCES IN THE FIRST YUGOSLAV PARLIAMENT

When the Yugoslavs were at last in a position, late in 1920, to hold the
elections for the Constituent Assembly the Radicals and the Democrats
were the most successful, but even if they made a Coalition they would
still have no majority. [Now and then the Democrats asserted themselves
against the Radicals, but when the Opposition thought they could
perceive a rift the Democratic Press would write that the two parties
were most intimately joined to one another, and especially the
Democrats.] The small parties were very numerous, the smallest being
that of M. Ribarac, the old Liberal leader, who found himself in the
Skup[vs]tina with nobody to lead; the clericals of Slovenia came to
grief, a fact which appeared to give general satisfaction, and a similar
mishap befell the decentralizing parties of Croatia. On the other hand
the Croat Peasants' party, whose decentralization ideas were more
extreme, had a very considerable success, and the Communist party, whose
fall we have already described, had come to the Skup[vs]tina with some
fifty members.

(_a_) MARKOVI['C] THE COMMUNIST

The temporary triumph of the Communists was admittedly due to the
exceptional position in which the country found itself. They had in Sima
Markovi['c] an enthusiastic leader who has abandoned the teaching of
mathematics in order to expound the gospel of Moscow, and in the
Skup[vs]tina the shrill, voice of this kindly, bald-headed little man
had to be raised to its uttermost capacity, for most of his
fellow-members were unwilling to be taught. It so happens that he is
Pa[vs]i['c]'s godson, and on one occasion when the little Communist was
talking with great vehemence the old gentleman, who was turning over the
pages of some document, was heard by an appreciative House to murmur:
"Oh, be still, my child, be still!" But the most unfortunate episode in
Markovi['c]'s oratory was when he expressed the hope that Communism
would rage through the country like an epidemic, forgetting for the
moment that those municipalities which had gone over to Communism had
won gen