THE GREAT SERVIAN DREAM

New Zealand Tablet, 6 August 1914, Page 26

THE GREAT SERVIAN DREAM

The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, (says the Scw 1 o rk Sun) serves to bring back to European attention the great dream of the Serbs,, which, after slumbering for long centuries, was wakened by the triumph of Kumanova and stimulated by thesplendid victory on the Bregalnitza. It was the sober judgment of not a few European statesmen that the Balkan wars had created a Slavic Sardinia asdangerous to Austria as the aggrandised Sardinia which was the work of the Congress of Vienna, a State ascertain to seek to achieve the liberation and unity of the Southern Slavs as Sardiania was to strive for the redemption of Italy. The bombs and bullets of Sarajevo are a prompt confirmation of this forecast. To-day the Serbs of south-eastern Europe number some 7,000,000, occupying a compact territory between the Adriatic and the brave. Half of them live in the two independent States of Servia and Montenegro, which are now to all practical purposes a single State. The other half live in the Austrian province of Dalmatia, the Hungarian province of Slavonia, and the AustroHungarian territory of Bosnia-llerzegovina. In addition there are in the Hungarian province of Croatia upward of 2,000,000 Croats, whose language is practically identical with that of the Servians, but who use a different alphabet, have a wholly separate history, are Roman Catholic, and were long loyal subjects of the House of Hapsburg. Finally, in the Austrian provinces of Istria, Carniola, and Styria there are 1,250,000 Slovenes, less closely related to the Serbs than theCroats, but Slavs. Thus, in a territory as large as the mainland of Italy and bounded by the Drave, the Adriatic, and the frontiers of Montenegro and Servia there dwell 12,000,000 Slavs.

Prior to the annexation of Bosnia-llerzegovina in--1908, the Servian dream had been limited to the hope: of reclaiming Old Servia from Turkey, inheriting thetitle to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and with the acquisition of the Sandjak of Novipasar joining hands with Montenegro and through northern Albania reaching the-' Adriatic at Durazzo. The sudden and forcible annexation of Bosnio, the veto of Austria to the Albanian-, aspirations of Servia after the great Balkan war, these wrecked the whole Servian dream. They also put the crowning touch upon the bitterness between the Serb and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had longexisted.

Had Austria, in annexing Bosnia changed her traditional policy, it is possible she might have avoided what followed. But into Bosnia she carried the spirit which brought her ruin in North Italy in the nineteenth century. In the meantime the Hungarian Government pursued a similar policy of repression and cruelty toward the Croatians. Finally the Slovenes found themselves caught between Italian and German ambitions, since in the long promised break up of Austria, both nations planned to lay hands upon Trieste, a city Italian by population but a mere island in the Slovene sea. ... ■;

Thus it was that even before the great' Serb triumph over Turkey the Southern Slavs of AustriaHungary, encouraged undoubtedly by the Pan-Slav propagandists of Russia, began to dream of a union with their independent Serb brethren. When Servia suddenly emerged from her long eclipse and won her splendid triumphs over the Turks, the imagination of the Croats and of the Bosnian Serbs was equally fired. When Austria, taking alarm, began to bully Servia, the indignation in her Serb and Croat provinces mad©

it necessary to declare martial law. When Austrian troops were mobilised as a menace to.Servia, it was necessary to send only German troops from Austria’s Teutonic provinces and Hungarians, (for the Slavs openly threatened to mutiny. The Austrian championship of the cause of the Albanians, her veto upon Servian dreams of a window upon the sea awakened equal wrath among her own subjects, who looked with ill-disguised resentment upon the attempt of Austria to defend (ho racial integrity of an alien people at the moment she was crushing out the national aspiration of her own subjects. When Austrian interference made the second Balkan war inevitable and Seryia emerged again and more splendidly victorious, with new provinces and new laurels, her place among the Southern Slavs was wholly comparable with that of Sardinia when, after Solferino and Magenta, she had with French aid freed the Valley of the Po and opened the way for Italian unity. In the pathway of the Servians’ dream stood the Archduke Francis Ferdinand. It was known that he planned to try to reconcile the Southern Slavs by seeking to satisfy their longings for national unity within the Empire, by creating a three-part Empire in place of the present dual kingdom. Alone in Austria he stood forth as a strong man, who might conceivably save the shaken structure when Francis Joscnh should die. His removal must seem more than the insane act of mere school boys, . something beyond blind protest against stupid and cruel tryanny, for in removing (he heir to the throne of a hostile country it eliminated an obstacle of real peril to the Servian dreams.