sked to state their
religion and nationality, replied to the former question "Catholic"
and to the latter "Jew."

THE SOUTHERN SLAVS PAY PART OF THEIR DEBT TO THE HABSBURG MONARCHY

If the practices of Buda-Pest had been less flagrant one would write
of Hungary's decomposition with a certain sympathy. It is conceivable
that in the British Empire there are anti-British elements whose aims
would commonly be classed by the authorities as "mad ambitions," which
is what Count Apponyi called the separatist tendencies of the Southern
Slavs in Austria-Hungary. But--may the platitude be pardoned!--there
is all the difference between the spirit in which the alien rule of
the one government was, and of the other is, administered. No doubt
there are portions of the British Empire in which a plebiscite would
have the same disintegrating result as it would have had in most of
the regions that have been lopped from Hungary. We, with our Allies,
declined to permit a plebiscite in Hungary's late territories, since
we believed that the population had overwhelmingly displayed its
wishes at the end of the War; and an Englishman may hope to escape the
charge of hypocrisy if he does not permit the withholding of a
plebiscite from certain of his fellow-subjects to prevent him from
alluding with satisfaction to those who have been liberated from the
sway of Buda-Pest.

(a) IN SYRMIA

Everywhere the dawn was breaking for the Habsburg's Southern Slavs. At
Vukovar in Syrmia--to take an example--there was formed, as elsewhere,
a National Council. Under Baron Joseph Rajacsich, a grandson of the
Patriarch and--to all appearances--a brother of Falstaff, the Council
maintained order until the coming of the Serbian army. An Austrian
naval captain with a floating arsenal, four steamers and twenty-two
drifters, was held up, as he proposed to sail towards Buda-Pest, by
being told of a battery at Dalja, higher up the Danube. However, the
Vukovar townsfolk, in view of a possible explosion, begged that the
prisoner, who had wept at being stopped, should be sent on his way.
The German harbour-master, a lieutenant, assured the Baron that he
would assist him if he were allowed to keep his liberty. But he was
tempted, in the middle of a night, to assist two German captains who
were trying to get through, each with a string of drifters. Rajacsich,
whose armed force consisted of forty Serbian ex-prisoners and fifty of
his own workmen--he armed them with w