no acquaintance
with the Magyar language, so that some of them drew their 8000 annual
crowns and only went to Pest if an important division was expected,
others who spent more time in the capital wasted their lives amid
surroundings just as riotous as and more expensive than the Parliament,
while only those did useful work who managed to confer, behind the
scenes, with the authorities. To some extent this was done by
Pribi[vc]evi['c] and to a greater extent by another Serb, Dr. Du[vs]an
Popovi['c], who surpassed him in capacity and geniality. It was he, by
the way, who demonstrated in the Buda-Pest Parliament that if the
average Croat deputy was ignorant of the Magyar language, there was a
greater ignorance of Serbo-Croatian on the part of the Magyars. One day
when he had started on a speech in his native tongue he was howled down
after he had explained that he was talking Serbian. He promised to
continue in Croatian, and did so without being interrupted.]

At Zagreb the fusion of the Croat and Serb _intelligentsia_ was still
very incomplete at the outbreak of the War--the Croat Star[vc]evist
party and others going their own way. During the War the
Austro-Hungarian Government ruled by means of the Coalition party; but
the latter had no choice, and throughout Croatia they were never charged
with infidelity to the Slav cause. They did whatever their delicate
situation permitted; and in October 1918, when the Slavs of Croatia and
Slovenia threw off the yoke of centuries and joined with the Serbs of
Serbia and Montenegro, one hoped that the simultaneous arrival in
Belgrade of the Coalition and the Star[vc]evist leaders heralded in
Croatia a cessation of the ancient hostility. Pribi[vc]evi['c] became
Minister of the Interior in the new State, and very soon it was obvious
that he meant to govern in a centralizing fashion, despite his earlier
assurance that no such steps would be taken without the sanction of the
Constituent Assembly. No doubt his motives were unimpeachable; he feared
lest the negative, anti-Serb mentality, which for so long had flourished
among the Croats, would not, except by drastic methods, be removed. He
was met with opposition. Now you see, he cried, there are still in
Croatia a number of disloyal Slavs, great landowners, Catholic clergy
and others whom the Habsburgs used to favour. And he continued, with
hundreds of edicts, to try to weld the State together. Consumed with
patriotism, his great black ey