At that time an agitation was beginning in Italy about Dalmatia, “Our Dalmatia,” as it was called, though the Italians themselves, as distinguished from the Austrian Italians or Irredentists, paid little heed to it. They thought rather of Asia, the African Colonies, Trieste and Trent—and of Trieste more than of Trent. I advised the Southern Slavs to start careful counter-propaganda. Notwithstanding the difficulties, which were serious, they could probably have made headway among a section of the politicians and of the people; for I noticed that the people were influenced less by Imperialism than by hereditary dislike of Austria. Against the Germans of Germany their feeling was not so strong, though it was affected by the German violation of Belgium. Imperialism does not come from the people. Its vanguard and its main forces are everywhere monarchs, generals, bankers, merchants, professors, journalists and “intellectuals.” Nor ought it to be forgotten that, in 1913, Italy twice resisted an Austrian temptation to assail Serbia. But many Italians looked upon the war as something that concerned the French, the Russians and Germany, not Italy; and I often heard the argument, which Nitti repeats, that the war was a struggle between Germanism and Slavdom. This argument could be used either in support of neutrality or in favour of joining the Germans against the Slavs in the cause of “Our Dalmatia.”
Though, as I have said, I envied the Southern Slavs for having so many political men abroad, I saw even in Rome that dissensions might spring up among them. They all had one programme—the unification of the Southern Slav, or Serb, Croat and Slovene race—but they had not worked it out in detail. This was clear from all they said, and the influence of the old quarrel between Serbs and Croats could be felt. The Serbian Minister strongly favoured unity in good understanding with the Croats; yet it seemed to me that many Croats were over-insistent upon the superiority of their culture and forgot that what mattered chiefly then and in the whole war was military and political leadership. As my Southern Slav friends knew, I thought their unity should be achieved under the political leadership of Serbia, and imagined it as the result of a consistent and gradual unification of the Southern Slav Lands, each of which had its own culture and administrative peculiarities.
In December 1914 Count Tisza, the Hungarian Prime Minister, praised the Croat troops of Austria-Hungary for their “true-hearted bravery in the fight for the common
