f the educated and cultured class; but while this would
entitle Italy to demand guarantees for the maintenance of existing Italian
schools and institutions, it cannot conceivably be employed as an argument
in favour of an Italian occupation. Not only would it bring her inevitably
into collision with the Southern Slavs who already are, and are likely to
remain, a military power of no mean order; it would lead her on into the
false and hopeless path of attempting to assimilate a hostile population
by the aid of an insignificant minority which only exists in half a dozen
towns, and in all the rest of the province is simply non-existent. The
price paid would be the eternal enmity of all Slavs, the jeopardising of
Italian interests in the Balkans, the sacrifice of many of the
benefits which the new Trans-Balkan railway route
(Odessa-Bucarest-Kladovo-Sarajevo-Spalato) would naturally bring to Italy,
a challenge to one of the finest maritime races in Europe--the Croats of
Dalmatia, Croatia and Istria--a challenge which would sooner or later
involve the creation of a Southern Slav navy against Italy. So far as
Britain is concerned, to separate Dalmatia from Bosnia is not only to
prevent even the beginnings of a solution of the Southern Slav question,
but to obscure the naval situation in the Mediterranean, to alienate Russia
in a matter in which we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by
accommodating her. But even when Bosnia and Dalmatia have been united to
Serbia and Montenegro, the Southern Slav problem will still be far from
solution. Dalmatia is alike in constitutional theory and in political
fantasy, though not in sober fact, an integral portion of the Triune
Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia, and it is unthinkable that
Serbo-Croat opinion could ever consent to the liberation of the one without
the other. No solution has any chance of permanence which ignores Agram as
the centre of Croat political and religious life, of education, art and
historic memories. The Dalmatian Croats, as the most virile and stubborn
element in the race, have always formed the vanguard of political thought,
but it is to Agram that they have always turned for the necessary backing,
and it is the peasantry of Croatia who have always borne the brunt of every
attempt at repression. Latterly the Dalmatians have been the soul of
the student movement, which plays so vital a part in recent political
development.

[Footnote 1: In the West they