A bulwark against Germany; the fight of the Slovenes, the western branch of the Jugoslavs, for national existence

Introduction

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION is to be credited with the outburst of nationality which, surviving its overthrow, became a marked characteristic of the nineteenth century and has become a factor with which statesmen of the twentieth century must reckon. Submerged peoples who had lost their sense of importance and to whom the traditions of the past were without influence upon their present, awoke to the fact that they too had a right to exist, that they should in some way be consulted as to their destiny, if they were not to be their own masters, and that they should be united in some way and at some time with peoples of a kindred origin, although they had long ceased to have any political connection with each other and were in fact living under different governments. The spirit of subject-races and subject-peoples which had so long lain dormant asserted itself.

Americans are especially familiar with the attempt of the Hungarians to free themselves from Austrian domination, although the Magyars have unfortunately shown themselves unwilling to grant to others what they heroically sought for themselves. The world knows by heart the aspirations of the

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Italian peoples, largely realized in a united Italy and likely to be more completely achieved in the immediate future. The world also knows by heart the longings of the German peoples for unity and rejoiced when a united Germany took its place in the sun, although that expression did not then carry the odium which to-day attaches to it. What has been done can be done again. What one people has accomplished another may hope to do. As the old cock crows, the proverb has it, so the young one learns.

In the last forty years the feeling of nationality has expressed itself most strongly in the Balkan peninsula, for centuries under the boot and spur of a ruthless master. Among the people of the peninsula the Serbs have emerged and to-day govern themselves as an independent kingdom. The Montenegrins, Serbs by race and Montenegrins by location, are likewise a kingdom. Two kingdoms indeed, but one people. To the north and the west of Serbia and Montenegro, the Croatians and the Slovenes. The former are Serbs, differing from them only in speech (the literary language is identical) and in religion, although they have been politically separated for a thousand years and more. They are said to number a little less than 4,000,000. To the northwest of the Croatians are the Slovenes, approximately 1,500,000 souls, extending to the coast in the neighborhood of Trieste and Istria, a region in which they had been a predominating element within a century or two of the fall of Rome.

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Mr. Asquith has truly and happily said that many things are possible to-day which were unthinkable before the outbreak of the great war of 1914. One of these possibilities is a union of the three Slavic peoples known, because of their situation to the south of Germany and Austria, as the Jugo or Southern Slavs. They are, as a matter of fact, but different branches of one and the same race, anxious to be a united people under a government of their own choice, forming a unitary State rather than a Federation of States. With this movement, for it has ceased to be a mere aspiration, the people of the United States must have a peculiar sympathy, inasmuch as we of this part of the world believe that, irrespective of origin, of party, or of religion, "governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Or, expressed in other terms, we believe in the principle of self-determination and its application to the concrete case.

Dr. Vosnjak's little book shows how these peoples, particularly the Slovenes, deserve more than sympathy at our hands, and how the union of the Jugoslavs would be, as can be understood from a glance at the map, a "Bulwark" not only against the Germany of to-day, but against the Germany of to-morrow.

James Brown Scott.

Washington, D. C.

Preface

ONE of the primary causes of the World- War was Germany's determination in the interests of Pan-Germanism to crush the Jugoslavs; and from this point of view the cataclysm of 1914 was merely the crisis in the long and dogged struggle which has been waged for centuries between Germanism and the Jugoslavs, and of which European public opinion has been so curiously ignorant.

In this struggle the Serbs and Croats were more fortunately placed than their brothers the Slovenes, who, being the most westerly of the Jugoslavs, were compelled to bear the brunt of the German attack. In the early Middle Ages the Slovenes were first among the Jugoslavs to found an independent State, and though they were also fated to be the earliest victims of German conquest, they nevertheless continued to form a strong ethnical barrier, beyond which Serbs and Croats, sheltered from the tyrannical influence of the Holy Roman Empire, could develop their social and national characteristics. But it was not until the nineteenth century, when Pan-Germanism began to expand towards the southern seas, that the Slovenes became in truth the Bulwark of their race, and the severity of their struggle warned the rest of the Jugoslavs that their fate too

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was hanging in the balance. Owing to their northwesterly position the Slovenes form the true national, political, and economic rampart of Jugoslavdom, and like outposts on exposed ground they watched the advance of the gigantic foe whose purpose it was to destroy the Jugoslavs and enslave Italy. For the dire menace of the German peril was always felt in the Slovene north sooner than in Zagreb (Agram) or Belgrade or in the cities of Lombardy.

As the book had to be written in a foreign country, the author was obliged to draw mainly on his personal knowledge and memory, and the material at his disposal unfortunately, was not as extensive as it would have been in his own country. For this and other reasons the book does not pretend to deal exhaustively with Slovene life in all its aspects. Only a historian of literature could adequately interpret Slovene intellectual life to the American public, and illustrate the value of Slovene literature to the nation and to humanity ; for the Slovenes boast a considerable number of men of letters worthy of a niche in the world's pantheon of literary genius. And only a master of word-painting could do justice to the beauty and charm of the Slovene lands in language of sufficient wealth and beauty.

The author is conscious of being neither a poet nor a literary expert, and has therefore contented himself with sketching in broad outlines the origin and history of the Slovene people, in an endeavor to

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acquaint the American people with a small and unknown ally, but one whose pluck and perseverance has long and sturdily withstood Pan-Germanism on the shores of the Adriatic.

The chapters in this book were written in spring, 1915 — with the exception of Chapter XII, which was written in spring, 1916 — with the object of bringing the Slovenes nearer to American readers, and to unfold to them a new national world and its past and present, its aims and aspirations. It may come as a surprise to some readers to realize that German methods have been at work for a thousand years in the Slovene lands, and to trace the connection between the events and conditions described in these pages and some of the burning questions of the hour.

It is almost an article of religious faith with the Slovenes that the present crisis will decide their fate. They feel that it is a question of now or never, and that the long, grim struggle must at last lead to complete national independence, or else end in national extinction.

But the end of this struggle cannot be a matter of indifference to the world, for by the national death of the Slovenes an extremely important strip of territory would become German. In that case Germany would be the real gainer, as German Government tactics and German social ideals would triumph where to-day the Slav democratic ideal is still holding its own against fearful odds.

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My book is not conceived in a spirit of hate or controversy. It is merely intended to throw an important light on the life-or-death struggle waged by a poor but self-reliant and courageous people who are coming forward at this great moment in history, convinced of the justice and integrity of their cause.

B.V.

Contents

CHAPTER

PAGE

I. NATIONAL STRUGGLE OF THE SLOVENES OC- CASIONED BY THE POLITICAL ATTITUDE OE GERMANY 15