Serbs of Croatia, of splitting the new-found unity of Serb and Croat and of proving to the outside world the existence of a dangerous Pan-Serb movement organized from Belgrade inside the monarchy and amply justifying the countermove of annex- ation. None of these aims were attained; for the trial, which turned on the evidence of the police spy Nastic (already chief witness in the doubtful Cettinje bomb trial of 1908) degenerated into a public scandal, owing to the conduct of the judges and public prosecutor, and rallied Croat public opinion in defence of the 53 Serb victims. Serbo-Croat solidarity became still more apparent when the Austrian historian Dr. Friedjung, in the Neue Freie Presse of March 25 1909, openly charged the leaders of the Serbo-Croat coalition with being in the pay of Serbia. This article, which was based upon a mass of incrimi- nating documents supplied to Friedjung by the Austro-Hungar- ian Foreign Office, had been timed to coincide with the outbreak of hostilities against Serbia, and was to have been the first of a series convicting the Serbian Government and dynasty of aggressive and even murderous designs. When at the last moment war was averted by the surrender of Serbia and Russia, an attempt was made to withdraw the article, but the first copies had already been issued: and Count Aehrenthal now had the double embarrassment of the Zagreb trial, which no longer served any purpose of foreign policy, but suited the aggressive game of Budapest against Zagreb, and of a libel action brought against Friedjung by those leaders of the Serbo-Croat coalition whose honour he had impugned. Despite the Ballplatz's efforts at postponement, the trial took place in Vienna in Dec. 1909, and revealed the documents upon which Friedjung had relied, as impudent forgeries concocted by subordinate officials of the Austro-Hungarian legation in Belgrade, with the con- nivance of the minister, Count Forgacs. The responsibility was finally brought home to Forgacs by Prof. Masaryk in a famous speech before the Austrian delegation: and Aehrenthal pre- served an embarrassed silence when his minister was bluntly compared with Azev, the Russian agent provocateur.
The Cuvaj -Dictatorship. The triumphant vindication of Mr. Supilo and his colleagues of the Serbo-Croat coalition gave a fresh incentive to the idea of unity throughout the southern Slav provinces of Austria-Hungary. Rauch's position had become untenable, and he was succeeded by the more moderate Dr. Tomasic, ( who brought with him from Budapest the con- cession of a somewhat extended franchise (260,000 instead of 50,000 electors). His attempt to emancipate himself from the control of the coalition at the general elections of Oct. 1910 failed miserably, and after a year of temporizing, he suddenly threw off all pretence at legal forms, dissolved the Diet almost before it had met, and in Dec. 1911 ordered new elections. But in spite of wholesale terrorism he only succeeded in wrenching five more seats from the coalition, and on Jan. 19 1912 was replaced as Ban by a little known official Mr. Cuvaj, who promptly dissolved the Diet before it had even met, and proceeded to muzzle the press, to close the university and to arrest several prominent politicians. On April 3 the Croatian constitution was completely suspended by royal decree, and Cuvaj invested with far-reaching dictatorial powers. An attempt on his life by the student Jukic (June 8) was followed by still more reactionary measures, and on July 1 1 the autonomy of the Serbian orthodox church in Slavonia and Hungary was also suspended.
The Cuvaj regime had a magical effect in furthering the move- ment for Yugoslav unity. Specially significant were the Memo- randum addressed to the throne by 55 deputies of the Croat party of Right, in the Croatian, Bosnian, Dalmatian and Istrian Diets, and the political strike organized by the pupils of both sexes in almost all the middle schools of the Slavonic South. This gave rise to sympathetic demonstrations in many Dalma- tian and Bosnian towns, and to a series of interpellations and speeches by the Yugoslav and Czech deputies in the Parliament of Vienna. The Slovenes clericals no less than progressives- became increasingly active in the Yugoslav movement, and their press began to demand the abandonment of the distinctive Slovene dialect as a hindrance to unity.
Balkan War. It was peculiarly unfortunate for Austria- Hungary that the Cuvaj rigime should have been at its very height when the Balkan League achieved its dramatic victory over the Turks. The battle of Kumanovo in particular was greeted with indescribable enthusiasm throughout the Yugo- slav provinces. The Serbian and Bulgarian anthems were sung on the streets, collections were made in every village for the Balkan Red Cross funds, and when Austria-Hungary mobilized, protests were heard on every side against the bare possibility of war with Serbia, which to the Yugoslavs would be a veritable civil war. The Austrian Government committed the grave blunder of answering these demonstrations by press confisca- tions and by the dissolution of the town councils of Spalato and Sebenico. This, however, was promptly countered by a monster meeting of protest at Zara on Nov. 24, attended by all but three of the Serbo-Croat deputies of Dalmatia, and delegates of almost every municipality in the province. Doctor Drinkovic, leader of the Dalmatian clericals, openly declared that " in the Balkan sun we see the dawn of our day!" and the Catholic Bishop of Cattaro greeted the news from Monastir by reciting the Nunc Dimittis. On all sides Serbia was now regarded as the southern Slav Piedmont: and the Dual Monarchy's consistently hostile policy toward Belgrade, and its only too successful efforts to set Serbia and Bulgaria by the ears, intensified the excitement and resentment among its Yugoslav subjects. The Trialist solution (which would have united the Yugoslav prov- inces of Austria-Hungary in a third state enjoying equality with the two existing partners) rapidly lost popularity, even among the clerical parties, which had been attracted by the prospect of Catholic predominance in such a State.
On Dec. 27 1912 Cuvaj was replaced by a colourless official, Dr. Unkelhausser, who marked time until a fresh candidate for the post of commissary or dictator was forthcoming in the person of Baron Skerlecz (July 23 1913). This appointment, at a moment when Austria-Hungary was again contemplating war with Serbia, naturally increased the ferment, and on Aug. 18, a determined attempt was made upon the life of Skerlecz by a young American Croat. At length on Nov. 30 Skerlecz was made Ban, the illegal decrees of Cuvaj revoked, and general elections ordered the fifth since 1906. The coalition maintained its majority, the Government only obtaining ten seats: but though this time the Diet was allowed to meet, no attempt was made to satisfy Yugoslav aspirations or to solve the real issues at stake between Hungary and Croatia. More and more the situation in the south of the monarchy was allowed to drift. The political leaders were far more conscious than either Vienna or Budapest of the volcanic state of public opinion: but when in genuine alarm and from a sense of impotence they attempted to restrain their followers, the only result was a loss of influence over the younger generation, which had become increasingly infected by revolutionary ideas. Among the Yugoslavs the students had always dabbled unduly in politics, and this tend- ency was accentuated by the widespread unrest and excitement which followed upon the Balkan upheaval. On the eve of war the university and middle-school students had five or six news- paper organs of their own notably Jugoslavia in Prague, Val in Zagreb and Jedinstvo in Spalato which advocated more radical action alike in politics and literature. Nor is it surprising that the hotheads among them, fired by the example of Jukic and other would-be assassins of Varesanin, Cuvaj and Skerlecz, should have indulged in terrorist projects. From_this group came the young Bosnian Serb students Princip, Cabrinovic, Grabez and others, who murdered the Archduke Francis Ferdi- nand and the Duchess of Hohenberg at Sarajevo on June 28 1914, and thus lit a spark in the European powder magazine.
The World War. Immediately on the outbreak of the World War measures of extreme severity were taken by the civil and military authorities of Austria-Hungary throughout their Yugoslav provinces. The exact number of persons arrested or interned will probably never be known, but that the Yugoslavs were regarded, and treated, as a hostile population, is abun- dantly proved by the three following facts, which could be mul-
