e Slovenes inhabiting Carniola,
Carinthia, Styria, Istria, and Goerz-Gradisca, and the Serbo-Croats of
Istria and Dalmatia, were under the direct rule of Austria. Trieste and
its district were a part of Austria. The Serbs of Hungary belonged to
Hungary proper for the most part; the Croats by a fundamental agreement
were entitled to autonomy in Croatia. Fiume, the seaport of Croatia and
Hungary, had an administration of its own. Bosnia-Herzegovina possessed
a diet and was under the dual rule of Austria and Hungary. All the
provinces or districts mentioned above were governed by the two
parliaments at Vienna and Budapest. There were, in addition, two
independent Serb states, Serbia and Montenegro. Down to 1912 Turkey
ruled over a large number of Serbs.] How did it come about that this
evolution of twelve centuries, beginning with primeval unity and passing
through a political, economic, and social decomposition of a most
bewildering character, has once more arrived at national unity and
is even now demanding the last step--political amalgamation? Is it a
doctrine or a dream or is it a reality?

I

When the Jugo-Slavs first occupied the western half of the Balkan
peninsula, they were one in speech, in social customs and ancestry, and
were divided only into tribes. The Slovenes, who settled in the northern
end of the west Balkan block, were not separated from their Croat and
Serb kinsmen by the forces of geography, but rather by the course of
political evolution. On the other hand, the Croats became separated from
the Serbs by forces largely geographical, though partially economic and
political, in nature.

The Slovenes gave way before the pressure of the Germans who swept
through the Alps and down the Danube and forced the Slovene vojvodes
to acknowledge their suzerainty and accept their religion. The Germans
would doubtless have succeeded in obliterating them had not the Magyar
invasion weakened their offensive. The Slovenes, however, were left a
wrecked nationality whose fate became blended with that of the Habsburg
possessions and who against the forces of geography--which firmly bound
them to the Croats--were politically riveted to the Habsburg north.
This division was therefore the result of forces created by man and
changeable by him. The Croats settled in the northwestern half of the
territory south of the Slovenes; the Serbs roughly in the southeastern
part of it. Here geographical influences--the direction of