mayer to the union of the Southern
Slavs. According to the spirit of his time he began at the top, with
academies, picture galleries and so forth. We prefer to begin with
elementary schools." And bubbling with enthusiasm he told me of the
efforts his party was making. It was plain to see that what lies nearest
to his heart is to improve their social and economic status. And those
observers are probably in the right, who believe that he merely uses
this republican cry as a weapon which he will conveniently drop when it
has served its purpose.

"If only Yugoslavia had a great statesman," said I, "who would weld the
new State together, so that the Croats remain with the Serbs not alone
for the reasons that they are both Southern Slavs and that they are
surrounded by not over-friendly neighbours. The great statesman--perhaps
it will be Pa[vs]i['c]--will make you all happy to come together."

"From the bottom of my heart I hope he will succeed," said Radi['c],
"and he will be remembered as our second and more fortunate
Strossmayer."

We generally imagine that the statesmen of South-Eastern Europe are a
collection of rather swarthy, frock-coated personages who, when not
engaged in decrying each other, are very busily occupied in feathering
their own nests. If any one of them, at the outset of his career, had a
sense of humour we suppose that in this heated atmosphere it must have
long ago evaporated. But strangely enough, the two most prominent
politicians in Yugoslavia, the venerable Pa[vs]i['c], the Prime Minister
of this new State of Serbs and Croats and Slovenes, even as he used for
years to be the autocrat of Serbia, and his opponent Stephen Radi['c]
are, both of them, by the grace of God, of a humorous disposition.
Outwardly, there is not much resemblance between them: Pa[vs]i['c], the
picture of a benevolent patriarch, letting fall in his deep voice a few
casual words which bring down his critics' case, hopelessly down like a
wounded aeroplane, and Radi['c] the fervid little orator, the learned
man, whose life has been devoted to the Croat peasants and who is said
to find it difficult to make a speech that is under eight hours in
length. Last year when the vigorous Pribi[vc]evi['c], then Minister of
the Interior, who is determined to compel the Serbs and the Croats
straightway to live in the closest companionship, whereas Radi['c],
supported by most of the Croat _intelligentsia_, argues that in view of
their very di