v question goes far deeper and wider than that; it must be treated as a
whole, and of it Serbia is only a part. In any study of the Slavonic races
the first fact which emerges is that they fall naturally into two main
groups--the northern and the southern--divided by a solid wedge of three
non-Slavonic races, the German, the Magyar, and the Roumanian, stretching
from the Kiel Canal to the Black Sea. It is with the southern group that we
are concerned.

The Southern Slavs fall into four sections--the Slovenes, Croats, Serbs,
and Bulgars, who between them occupy the whole country from southern
Carinthia to central Thrace. The significance of the Bulgars will be dealt
with elsewhere, and of the Slovenes it will suffice for our present purpose
to say that they are a small and ancient race, of vigorous stock and
clerical leanings, whose true importance lies in their geographical
position and its latent possibilities for the future. The Croats and Serbs
occupy the border-line between West and East, between Rome and Byzantium,
between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Broadly speaking, every Croat is a
Catholic, every Serb an Orthodox. Broadly speaking again, the Croat
language is Serb written with Latin characters, the Serb language Croat
written in the Cyrilline alphabet.

Despite their common language, the two kindred races have never all been
united under a single ruler. From the ninth to the end of the eleventh
century the Duchy, then Kingdom, of Croatia was governed by native princes,
upon whose extinction it was conquered by Hungary. For eight centuries
Croatia has enjoyed an autonomous position under the Holy Crown of St.
Stephen; its scope has varied according to the political constellation,
but till 1912 its constant tradition had remained unbroken. Meanwhile the
Dalmatian coast towns remained a bone of contention between Venice and
Hungary; but the marble Lions on their battered walls are still the best
proof of the triumph of Italian culture within them. Ragusa alone resisted
both Venetians and Turks, and preserved herself inviolate as the home of
commerce and the muses, until her tiny Republic was destroyed by Napoleon
in 1808. The Kingdom of Serbia developed on more distinctively Slavonic
lines. During its great days in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
under the Nemanja dynasty it dominated the Balkan Peninsula, produced a
code of law which is unique in mediaeval records, developed a prosperous
commerce and minin