A GREATER SERVIA

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 50, 27 August 1914, Page 6

A GREATER SERVIA

While the present war is big with possibility for all the thirty million Slavs of Austria-Hungary, its most definite effects, so far, apply to the South Slavs, and particularly to the SerboCroatian branch thereof. To focus a somewhat complex array of racial materials, it may be ' explained that in Austria-Hungary the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and Etithenes form a Slavic belt across the north. In the south the Slovenes, Croatians, Servians, and Bulgarians dwell in a similar zone, but between the two is driven a living wedge formed by the Magyars (a non-Aryan people who have preserved their nationality in Hungary for ten centuries) and the Germans. In the north the races are so territorially intermingled, and the relations' between Czechs and Germans are sb bad, that any movement for Slav home rule could not hope for sympathy from the ruling races. In the south, however, the Serbo-Croatians outside of Hungary itself form such a compact group that their prospect of securing an ultimate autonomy was, even before the war, not unpromising. It has been stated on good authority that the assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand wa* favourable to grouping Croatia and Slavonia with the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (annexed in 1909) as a third domain of the "Dual Monarchy," to be co-ordinated with Austria and Hungary. Being very largely Serb in nationality and language, these districts ad<""t themselves to such treatment, and mignt in time even have attained to a position of, some contentment under the Austrian throne. Opposition to the movement arose chiefly from Magyar jealousy, and the rival attractions of the Pan-Serbs of Servia. A neighbouring Serb domain under the Austrian fegis was not what the free Servians of Belgrade desired. Their goal was a Greater Servia, and that is undoubtedly what the complete success of their armies would mean. Should the present war result in the defeat of Austria and Germany, a Serb reunion will be almost inevitable, but it will certainly not take place under either Austrian or Hungarian (Magyar), suzerainty. Assuming that the power of Vienna is broken, two of the most urgent questions presenting themselves to a Greater Servia would be its political relations with St. Petersburg, and its territorial and commercial position on the Adriatic. Russia will no doubt wish to continue to be the protector of Servia, but the protege may grow so large aoid popu. lous and influential that the leadingstrings of the Tsar, which for the present suit the policy of Belgrade, may grow irksome. On the Adriatic Servia-'s prospective neighbour is Italy, and here also some important questions will arise when (and if) the possessions of Austria come up for partition. That Italy, who is not well provided with an Adriatic naval base, covets Cattaro, Pola, and Trieste, as well as the Albanian port of Vallona (comma-nding the Straits of Otranto) is well known. That Servia strives for an Adriatic port is equally obvious. Apart from these immediate subjects of difference, the creation of a Greater Servia,, whether independent of St. Petersburg or not, establishes a very definite Slav-Italian rivalry in the Mediterranean, out of which may spring a whole crop of new international and in-ter-racial difficulties. After this war the map of Europe, says M. Delcasse, is to undergo a greater rearrangement than that which followed Waterloo. And not the least interesting part of the mapmakers' task will relate to the Adriatic.