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