the medical work produced a great
improvement, that malaria, by drainage, petroleum on the ponds, and
quininizing of the Population was stamped out in some districts and
got in hand in others counted for nothing. They "were not our
custom," they were "Schwab."

The forests also were a source of friction. In old days the peasant
cut what he pleased, where he pleased. His goats browsed the
saplings and they grew up crooked. But they made firewood and it did
not matter. No replanting ever took place. When all the wood was cut
on a hillside the winter rains washed away the whole of the soil and
left bare rock. A pity--but the will of God, sighed the peasant, and
he went on to fell the next wood.

Forestry laws infuriated him, and his disregard of them infuriated
the forestry officer. A goat-tax (slight for the poor owner of a
couple of goats) was instituted, rising according to number, to a
sum which made the keeping of a large herd impossible. An official,
to whom I remarked on what seemed to me the paucity of flocks, said,
"We do not let them keep goats and they won't keep sheep. For my own
part I should relax the goat laws for a while at least; they cause
such resentment. But the central authorities will not do it. We have
to rely largely on the sale of timber to run the country. It is one
of the most valuable assets."

All officials agreed in finding the people very difficult to move;
very childlike in their ideas and very slow to adopt new ones. A few
hated and loathed them.

It was, however, not the officials but the private residents who
were on bad terms with the native population, families who had come
for business purposes from civilized and comfortable Austrian towns,
and who would not take the trouble to learn Slav except just enough
for their marketing. I had never before been in a land under foreign
occupation, and commented on this attitude to some officers. They
jeered at me and said, "You have evidently never been to Egypt. Wait
till you have seen your own people there."

I was annoyed at the time. But when some years later I went to Egypt
I found the English attitude to the native worse and repented of my
comments about Bosnia. One race in truth cannot see with the eyes of
another.

The Austrian official really tried to adapt the law to native ideas,
and when unable to unravel complicated questions of native usage,
even summoned the ancient council of "the good men" to decide
according to local c