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cial administration of Carinthia, for instance, was in 1914 maintaining three Slovene schools and six hundred and twelve German schools, although the Slovenes formed one-third of the population. What the Austrians said was that German was a world-language and that it was a fad to want to learn Slovene. Perhaps the Slovenes told them that Welsh is not a world-language. Anyhow, being not only a patriotic but a very practical race, they built their own schools in the villages, with the result that they have to-day a far smaller proportion of illiterates--171/2 per cent.--than either the Croats or the Serbs. It was well that they were patriotic and practical; they would otherwise have reaped a bitter harvest. The Slavs of Istria, Croatia and Dalmatia were in contact with no German territories and were for that reason left in the cold shades. The Slovenes, having Germans near them and among them, had to have a share in what the Germans were enjoying and they reaped sagaciously. One must admit that it was practical on Austria's part to favour the Italian language in Dalmatia, for it was from there that she supplied herself with functionaries for the provinces of Lombardy and Venice. THE CROAT PEASANTS AND THEIR CLERGY The Croat peasants were in a much worse condition than the Slovenes, and the nobles who might have assisted them in building schools had recently been ruined by the Austrian agrarian policy, for when in 1853 the Austrians put into execution what the Diet of Croatia had resolved to do in 1848 and freed the peasants from their serfdom, the indemnity they gave the landlords was in Austrian State papers, which the landlords had to take at the face value, though this was far above what they were worth. The owners of the so-called _latifundia_, mostly German or Hungarian noblemen, lost very little; for their wide domains were cultivated mostly by hired labour, not by peasants settled on the land. But these big landlords were not eager to build schools for peasants. It is said these should have been provided by the Church. The Croatian clergy in the villages would stand in a much better light if they had, irrespective of the higher clergy, made more vigorous attempts to bring down the illiteracy figures which to-day are said to be, for Croatia and Slavonia, 65 per cent. The higher clergy worked, with very few exceptions, hand in hand with Austria's Government, which Government was, after the Concordat of 1855, th
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