clear and definite Southern Slav programme, or of a policy in favour of a united Yugoslavia.
Simultaneously, an experiment analogous to that made in regard to us by official Russia in the Dürich affair was undertaken in regard to the Southern Slavs. It failed; but, on the other hand, the Serbian Government put forward a scheme for a united Yugoslavia under the leadership of Orthodox Serbia—the emphasis was on the “Orthodox”—and Spalaikovitch, the Serbian Minister at Petrograd, supported it. Milyukoff, on the contrary, opposed it, and advocated the unification of the Southern Slavs irrespective of their ecclesiastical allegiances; but the “Novoe Vremya” characteristically sought to prove that the idea of unity was absurd and impossible. Even as late as February 1917 Professor Sobolevsky insisted upon this Russian official standpoint. Then came the Revolution; and, just as revolutionary Russia declared in favour of us and our programme, so it supported the idea of Yugoslav union. Notwithstanding the difficulties and wranglings among the Yugoslavs themselves and in the Southern Slav Committee, the Declaration of Corfu and the Rome Congress were, as I have said, finally brought about with the help of Steed and Seton-Watson.
When I reached Russia in May 1917 the dissensions between the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes were very acute and their respective programmes diverged considerably. The Slovenes published a periodical called “Yugoslavia” and demanded a Great Slavonia which would join Serbia and Croatia in a federation—a programme of which the vagueness and exaggeration were by no means diminished by the verbal explanations which Slovenes gave me.
One effect of these dissensions was to smash the Yugoslav Legion in Russia. The Croat and Slovene section of it, to which some of our volunteers belonged, broke away from the Serbian section and vegetated at Kieff; and the Yugoslavs in Russia suffered still further from the consequences of the unhappy episode at Salonika, where the secret society of Serbian officers known as the “Black Hand,” otherwise “Union or Death,” had begun its revolutionary activity. An attempt was alleged to have been made upon the life of the Prince Regent. On this account the former Chief of the Serbian General Staff, Dimitriyevitch, was shot in June 1917, and some of his associates were deported to North Africa. Serbians assured me that the French command on the Salonika front had insisted on the punishment of the offenders; but, in
