lies at the root of
Austria-Hungary's action in provoking the present war.

Serbia and Montenegro, however, are but one half of the problem. The issues
involved are wider and deeper than the quarrels of Vienna and Budapest with
Belgrade. Even if every man in Serbia were willingly prostrate before the
Habsburg throne, there could be no real peace until the internal problem of
Austria-Hungary's Southern Slav provinces is solved. What is at stake is
the future of eleven million people, inhabiting the whole tract of country
from sixty miles north of Trieste to the centre of Macedonia, from the
southern plains of Hungary to the North Albanian frontier. Of these,
roughly four millions are in the two independent kingdoms; the remaining
seven millions are divided between Austria (the provinces of Dalmatia,
Istria, and Carniola) and Hungary (the autonomous kingdom of
Croatia-Slavonia), while Bosnia-Herzegovina are governed jointly by Austria
and Hungary. The history of these provinces during the past generation is
one of neglect and misgovernment. Croatia has been exploited economically
by the Magyars, and the narrow interests of Budapest have prevented railway
development and hampered local industries by skilful manipulation of
tariffs and taxation. A further result is that even to-day Dalmatia (with
the exception of Ragusa) has no railway connections with the rest of
Europe, and those of Bosnia are artificially directed towards Budapest
rather than towards Agram, Vienna, and Western Europe. It is not too much
to say that the situation of those provinces had become less favourable
(if compared with surrounding standards) than it was at earlier periods of
their history; for the old system of trade-routes had broken down there as
elsewhere in Europe, but had not been replaced by modern communications.

Sec.6. _Serbo-Croat Unity._--Parallel with the new era instituted in Serbia
since 1903, a strong movement in favour of national unity took root among
her kinsmen across the Austro-Hungarian frontier. The disruptive tendencies
which had hitherto been so marked in Croatian politics began to weaken.
The so-called Serbo-Croat Coalition round which all the younger elements
speedily rallied, put forward an ambitious programme of constructive
democratic reform as the basis of joint political action on the part of
both races, and held stubbornly together when the inevitable breach with
the Magyar oligarchy occurred. The Magyar Government