evacuated through Siberia. In 1916 the Yugoslav Committee
had also set itself to recruiting among its compatriots in America,
but in this case its success was hampered by many cross cur-
rents of republican, clerical, Austrian and Montenegrin feeling:
and those who did actually volunteer showed considerable lack
of discipline and were not always treated with the necessary
tact by the Serbian military authorities.
The Yugoslavs inside Austria-Hungary, The accession of the Emperor Charles, and the ferment aroused by the Russian Revolution, led to considerable political changes in both halves of the Dual Monarchy, the most notable being the dismissal of Count Tisza from the Hungarian premiership (May 23 1917), the grant of a general political amnesty, and the summons of the Austrian Reichsrat, which had not been allowed to meet since March 1914. No sooner was political life thus resumed than all the Slovene, Croat and Serb deputies of Austria i united to form a " Yugoslav parliamentary Club," which entered into close alliance with the Czech Club. At the opening sitting (May 30) Czechs, Poles and Ruthenes defined their national attitude in formal resolutions, and the Slovene leader, Father Korosec, in the name of the Yugoslavs, demanded " the union of all the Yugoslav territories of the Monarchy in an independent state organism, free from the rule of any foreign nation, and resting on a democratic basis, under the sceptre of the Habsburg-Lorraine Dynasty." The last phrase was treated in some quarters as a proof of confirmed Austrophilism : in reality it was a minimum concession to the existing order, without which its framers could not have continued their activity. By this time it was sufficiently obvious that the Yugoslavs were tacitly if not explicitly agreed upon a triple parallel policy, framed for all contingencies. In Croatia the coalition was more opportunist than ever, and sent its delegates to the coronation of Charles as King of Hungary: by its compliance it obtained the appointment of its own nom- inee, Mr. Mihalovic, as Ban, and was thus able to husband Croatian resources and on occasion to practise passive resist- ance. It accepted the status quo as a working basis, but no amount of pressure could wring from it a disavowal of Trumbic and his colleagues. Meanwhile the opposition parties openly allied themselves with the Yugoslav Club in Austria, which agitated for complete national unity, but saved itself from prosecution by occasional references to the dynasty and absolute silence regarding Serbia. It was left to the Yugoslav Committee abroad to claim independence as well as unity, to repudiate the Habsburgs (in a manifesto on the eve of the Budapest corona- tion) and to exalt the achievements of Serbia and the Karagjorg- jevic dynasty. The three groups communicated secretly through Switzerland, and it was felt that the time had come for the exiles to take a fresh step forward, in view of the prominence given to the doctrine of self-determination since the Russian Revolution and' America's entry into the war. Moreover the collapse of Tsarism had deprived Mr. Pasic of his strongest support abroad, and forced him to abandon his narrowly Ortho- dox basis and bring his policy more into line with modern democratic tendencies.
Declaration of Corfu. After some weeks of negotiation the so-caUed " Declaration of Corfu " was signed on July 20 1917, between Pasic as Serbian Premier (and in this case as the mouth- piece of all the Serbian parties) and Dr. Trumbic as president of the Yugoslav Committee. The signatories were careful to dis- claim all idea of a pact or treaty, and to define the declaration as a mere statement of ideals and principles which could not acquire binding force until ratified by elected representatives of the nation as a whole. It may however be regarded as the birth certificate of the future Yugoslavia, and as fixing the lines of future development. After affirming that the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes constitute a single nation and appealing to the right of self-determination, it declared in favour of complete national unity under the Karagjorgjevic dynasty, "a constitutional democratic and parliamentary monarchy, equality of the three national names and flags, of the Cyrilline and Latin alphabets, and of the Orthodox Catholic and Mussulman religions, equal rights for all citizens, universal suffrage in parliamentary and
municipal life, and the freedom of the Adriatic to aH nations." The future constitution was to be established after the conclu- sion of peace by a constituent assembly, which " will be the source and consummation of all authority in the State." A week later Trumbic and his colleagues were welcomed on the Balkan front by the Voivode Misic with an impassioned speech in favour of unity. The Declaration of Corfu made a profound impression in Austria-Hungary, which was heightened by Mr. Lloyd George's speech in honour of Serbia at a luncheon given by the Serbian Society of Great Britain to Pasic (Aug. 8). The Zagreb press could only comment indirectly, but conveyed its meaning by insisting that the Reichsrat programme of May 30 was an absolute minimum. The growing self-confidence of the Austrian Slavs was shown by the bluntness of their refusal to cooperate with the new Premier, Doctor von Seidler, whose offer of portfolios to their leaders drew from Count Tisza a strong protest in the Hungarian Parliament. Under Magyar pressure Seidler explicitly condemned all schemes of federalism, and pledged the Government and even the crown itself not to adopt any reforms which did not leave untouched the existing provin- cial boundaries. The Czechs and Yugoslavs, finding the door thus shut in the face of their national aspirations, even in the modified Habsburg form, naturally stiffened in their opposition. On Dec. 18 they went so far as to demand national representa- tion of their own at the peace negotiations with Bolshevist Russia at Brest Litovsk.
Pact of Rome. During 1916-7 Italian public opinion, encour- aged by Sonnino and his press organs, had been definitely hostile to the Yugoslavs, whom it denounced as mere Austrian agents. The facts regarding the Yugoslav legions and the services rendered by Yugoslav deserters at Gorizia and in the Trentino were simply suppressed. The disaster of Caporetto (Nov. 1917) had a sobering effect, and the need for solidarity on the part of all the subject nationalities of Austria-Hungary, a category which included also Italians, if Italy's chief enemy was to be overthrown, became increasingly apparent. Further causes for alarms were the secret meeting between General Smuts and Count Mensdorv, to discuss a separate peace between Austria and the Entente (Dec. 1917) and the public pronouncements of President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George in favour of " auton- omy " for the subject races, instead of the independence held out to them by the Allied pronouncement of Jan. 1917. In Dec. 1917 Mr. Wickham Steed succeeded in bringing together Trumbic and his colleagues first with General Mola and Signori Emanuel and Chiesi (of the Corriere and Sccolo), and then with the Italian Irredentist Socialist leaders. Their informal discus- sions laid the basis for more serious negotiations between Trumbic and Signer Torre, representing an influential committee of Italian deputies and senators. The agreement signed between them in London on March 7 1918 laid down the basis of Italo- Yugoslav cooperation: it recognized each of the two nations to be equally interested in the completion of the other's national unity, and in the liberation of the Adriatic. It left territorial questions to be decided amicably after the war, " on the basis of the principle of nationality and self-determination," and mutu- ally guaranteed the rights of national minorities. This agree- ment is known as the Pact of Rome, because it was publicly proclaimed at a " Congress of the Oppressed Nationalities of Austria-Hungary," held on April 8 in the Roman Capitol. The Yugoslavs were represented by Trumbic and his Committee and by 12 deputies of the Serbian Skupstina, the Czechoslovaks by Benes and Stefanik, the Poles by Zamorski, Skirmunt and Seyda, the Rumanians by Draghicescu, Lupu and Mironescu. Baron Sonnino held aloof, but Premier Signor Orlando, greeted the congress with enthusiasm, and the first result was a com- bined propaganda on the Italian front, organized by Allied delegates and members of all the national committees. The effect of the congress and of this propaganda was to hasten the disintegration in the Austro-Hungarian army, and the High Command (in a communique of July 27) admitted that whole- sale defections of the Czechoslovaks and the Yugoslavs had materially contributed to Italy's brilliant stand against the
