ore instructive to compare them with each other. The
Slovenes need not detain us; they are a small people occupying a
surprisingly large area; if they were less well organized they would
have been long ago swallowed up. They shine as workers in the field and
mine and forest much more than as military men. They have never been
hereditary soldiers, like so many of the Croats, and it is perhaps this
want of confidence in their own military prowess which has caused them
to take measures that are sometimes too severe against the Austrians who
are under them. The Bosnian Moslems assert that, as all their links with
Turkey are now broken, they are the best Yugoslavs. But the Slovenes are
also the best Yugoslavs, because they recognize that in Yugoslavia is
their sole salvation. Some of us may regret that their tenacity so far
outstrips their idealism. They are a careful people, as may be seen from
Order No. 17024 which was issued, on December 4, 1920, by the Prefecture
of Ljutomir. Referring to sequestered property, it enjoined that the
Austrian owner should be allowed so much that he could live on it, but
not so much as to enable him to be extravagant. They are also a
relatively well-educated people; according to official statistics of
1910, 85.34 per cent. of the Slovene population know how to read and
write, while their neighbours to the east, the Magyars, can only reckon
62 per cent. and the Italians of pre-war Italy, 62.4 per cent. The most
backward part of the Slovene race, those of Istria, have 46.6 per cent.
of illiterates, while there are Italian provinces where the illiterates
amount even to 85 per cent. Rome itself counts 65 per cent.[116]

THE MONTENEGRINS AND THE SERBS

It will be profitable to compare the Montenegrins with the Serbs,
because in our impatience with those persons who would keep them
separate we may have seemed to imply that we believe them identical. The
Serbs who maintained themselves in those mountains developed certain
characteristics which differentiate them from their brothers. The Serb
of the old kingdom walks, the Serb of the mountain struts. The
magnificent Serbian warrior of the kingdom is so disciplined that
although a Field-Marshal will sit down openly in a cafe and drink wine
with some old comrade who is in the ranks, yet when the soldier is on
duty his obedience is perfect. But if the Montenegrin private thinks
that his officer has rebuked him unjustly, he will not hesitate to kill