eral praise for their improvements in the sanitary sphere.
Largely on account of this infelicitous simile he was replaced in the
leadership by another, a less vigorous and less entertaining person. And
this party stood in particular need of attractive champions.

The Croat Peasants' party, or the Radi['c] party, as it came to be
called, gave to its beloved chief more than half the seats in Croatia,
forty-nine out of ninety-three; and the whole party refused to go to
Belgrade.

"Would it not have been better," I asked him, "if you had gone? The
Constitution will be settled without you."

(_b_) RADI['C], THE MUCH-DISCUSSED

"We had various reasons," said he, "for not going. One of them was that
the Assembly which laid down the Constitution was not sovereign. For
example, it was not permitted to discuss whether Yugoslavia should be a
monarchy or a republic. I admit that three-quarters of the members would
very likely have voted for a monarchy, and in that case we should have
accepted the situation very much as do the royalist deputies in the
French Parliament."

"What are your own views on this subject?"

"Well," said he, "for this period of transition I believe--mark you,
this only applies to myself--that a monarchy is not merely acceptable
but preferable. On the other hand the Croat peasant was so badly treated
by the Habsburgs that he will now hear of nothing but a republic."

I ventured to say that this sudden conversion to republican ideas in one
who for centuries had lived in a monarchy was peculiar, and Radi['c]
acknowledged that when the first republican cries were raised at a
meeting of the Peasants' party on July 25, 1918 they came to him as a
revelation, one which he accepted.

"You don't accept everything that your peasants shout for?"

"I do not," said he. "There was a gentleman who asked them at a meeting
whether they would kill him if he, elected as their representative, were
to go to Belgrade. They shouted back that they would do so. And when the
prospective candidate came to tell me this story, thinking that I would
be delighted, I told him that a ship's captain cannot have his hands
bound before undertaking a voyage and he must therefore withdraw his
candidature.... When the time comes we will go to Belgrade."

"And those who say that you are longing for the return of the
Habsburgs?"

He gripped my arm. "They are fools," said he. "We are looking forward as
eagerly as the great Bishop Stross