lence, persecution of the Press and of the political
leaders. Yet so far from languishing under such a system, the movement for
unity gained fresh strength and extended to the kindred Slovenes, striking
root even among the extreme Clericals, who had hitherto regarded the
Orthodox Serbs with distrust and suspicion.

In the spring of 1912 the conflict culminated in the abolition of the
Croatian constitution by the arbitrary decree of the Hungarian Premier, in
the appointment of a reactionary official as dictator, and a few months
later in the suspension of the charter of the Serb Orthodox Church.

Sec.7. _The Balkan Wars._--Never in history had a more inopportune moment
been chosen for such crying illegalities. For close upon the heels of the
demonstrations and unrest which they evoked, came the dramatic events of
the Balkan War, the crushing victories of the allies, the resurrection of
the lost Serb Empire, the long-deferred revenge for the defeat of Kosovo.
The whole Southern Slav provinces of Austria-Hungary were carried off their
feet by a wave of enthusiasm for the allies, and an impossibly strained
situation was reached when the Government of Vienna placed itself in
violent conflict with Serbia, vetoed her expansion to the sea, insisted
upon creating a phantom Albanian State, egged on Bulgaria against her
allies, and finally mobilised in order to impose its will upon the Serbs.
Every peasant in the Slavonic South naturally contrasted Magyar misrule
in Croatia with the splendid achievements of his Serb kinsmen across
the frontier. I know of poor villagers in the mountainous hinterland of
Dalmatia who, having no money to give to the cause of the Balkan Red Cross,
offered casks of country wine or even such clothes and shoes as they could
spare from their scanty belongings. The total subscriptions raised among
the Southern Slavs of the Monarchy in aid of the allies far exceeded any
sums previously raised for charitable purposes among so poor a population.
"In the Balkan sun," said a prominent Croat Clerical, "we see the dawn of
our day."

The national rejoicings which "the avenging of Kosovo" evoked among the
Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes of Austria-Hungary were accompanied by lively
protests against the bare idea of an Austro-Serbian war, which, so far as
the Southern Slavs on both sides of the frontier were concerned, would have
been a civil war in the most literal sense of the word (and this civil
war, it must be re