automatically, but an effort is required in Yugoslavia
to resist the calls of friendship in appointing men to offices. The army
of officials is too numerous; yet many of them are so badly paid that
even if a great reformer could reduce by half their numbers he would be
inclined to lay no hand upon the total sum they now enjoy. But this
necessity of cleansing the public services is not peculiar to
Yugoslavia. The politicians must have courage to lay heavier taxes on
the peasants: the strange phenomenon is seen of peasants who assert that
they are quite prepared for this, and on the other hand of politicians
who are frightened lest it lose them many votes. The peasants generally
are so prosperous that some, for instance, whom I know of near
Kragujevac, men occupied in growing cereals, find that the fowls which
they keep rather as a hobby do not have to lay them golden eggs in order
to pay all the taxes. In that region it is usual nowadays for peasants
not to count their bank-notes, but to weigh them; recently a man
disposed of certain fields for his own weight in notes of ten dinars.
The peasants are not only dissatisfied with the two chief parties, the
Radicals and the Democrats, for not taxing them sufficiently--so that at
the next general election they may give a good deal more support than
hitherto to their own Peasants' party--but they complain that their
interests are neglected although, as we have seen, the lawyers and other
townsfolk of the Radical and Democrat parties are so anxious with
respect to peasants' votes.

The difficult position of the Yugoslavs--observe how in the last year
their exchange has fallen--is due in part to the deplorable activities
of other peoples (vast amounts have had to be imported for
reconstruction purposes, Rieka has been practically unavailable as a
port, and conditions have been such that the Yugoslavs have had to keep
a large army mobilized), partly their position is due to measures
ill-advised but which they were compelled to take (such as their system
of Agrarian Reform), partly to political inexperience and partly to
their lack of organizing powers. Let us hope that from now onwards
Yugoslavia will have to arm herself less heavily against the slings and
arrows of the world, and that she will be able therefore to become a
more proficient swimmer in this sea of troubles.

SERB AND BULGAR

A map of the Balkan migrations, with its curved lines leading almost
everywhere, is a b