Slovenia

“ Article 3 Slovenia is a state of all its citizens and is founded on the permanent and inalienable right of the Slovene nation to self-determination.
In Slovenia power is vested in the people. Citizens exercise this power directly and through elections, consistent with the principle of the separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers. ”

“ Serbia, on the contrary, has a very small educated class and practically no wealthy class, it being said that there is not a millionaire in the country. Slovenia and Croatia each have their aristocracies, with titles and estates and traditions; Serbia's population is wholly composed of peasants, or of business and professional men who come from peasant stock. As a result of the large sums which were spent on public instruction in Croatia and Slovenia under Austrian rule, only a comparatively small proportion of the population is illiterate. ”

“ Pursuant to a treaty ratified by the National Assembly by a two-thirds majority vote of all deputies, Slovenia may transfer the exercise of part of its sovereign rights to international organisations which are based on respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, democracy and the principles of the rule of law and may enter into a defensive alliance with states which are based on respect for these values. ”

“ It shall maintain concern for autochthonous Slovene national minorities in neighbouring countries and for Slovene emigrants and workers abroad and shall foster their contacts with the homeland. It shall provide for the preservation of the natural wealth and cultural heritage and create opportunities for the harmonious development of society and culture in Slovenia. ”

“ Already there have been manifestations of friction between the Serbs and the Croats and between the Serbs and the Slovenes, to say nothing of the open hostility which exists between the Serbs and certain Montenegrin factions, to which I have alluded in a preceding chapter. It should be remembered that the Croats and Slovenes, though members of the great family of Southern Slavs, have by no means as much in common with their Serb kinsmen as is generally believed. Croatia and Slovenia have both educated and wealthy classes. ”

“ That made their parents most happy. Their home was a beautiful combination of American and Slovene civilization. Once they invited me to an anniversary party and I found the whole family dressed in most picturesque Slovenian costumes; but everybody in the party, including even old Lukanitch and his wife and all the Slovenian guests, spoke English. Most of the guests were Americans,97 but they enjoyed the Slovenian dishes and the Slovenian music, singing, and dancing as much as anybody. ”

“ Germans.”
I omit a passage and continue:
“A few days after the seizure of Slovenia, central offices were organized for resettlement control. The headquarters staff was established in Maribor (Marburg on the Drava) and Bled (Veldes) . ”

“ There was, however, another element in the southern districts, viz. the Serbs, who, though of the same race and language as the Croats, were separated from them by religion. Belonging to the Orthodox Church they were attracted by Russia. They were in constant communication with Servia and Montenegro; and their ultimate hope, the creation of a great Servian kingdom, was less easy to reconcile with loyalty to Austria. Of late years attempts have been made to turn the Slovenian national movement into this direction, and to attract the Slovenes also towards the Orthodox non-Austrian Slavs. ”

“ In consequence of a motion by the Slovene members of the Reichsrath and a resolution of the diet of Carniola, the government also declared Slovenian to be a recognized language for the whole of Carniola, for the district of Cilli in Styria, and for the Slovene and mixed districts in the south of Carinthia, and determined that in Laibach a Slovene gymnasium should be maintained as well as the German one.
The Germans complain that in many cases the government acted very unfairly to them. They constantly refer to the case of Klagenfurt. ”

“ Laibach is the principal centre of the national Slovenian movement, and it contains a Slovene theatre and several societies for the promotion of science and literature in the native tongue. The Slovenian language is in general official use, and the municipal administration is purely Slovenian. The industries include manufactures of pottery, bricks, oil, linen and woollen cloth, fire-hose and paper. ”

“ The Slovenians are chiefly found in the Pennsylvania mines and other mining regions. The Croatians are mostly in the same regions and work, although in New York there are about 15,000 of them engaged as longshoremen and mechanics, and a small number are farmers out West. They are Roman Catholic, largely illiterate and unskilled. The Catholics do little for them, and the Protestant denominations have undertaken no specific work in their behalf. ”

“ Did you know I study the history of the Slovenian Nation?
Komar. (Looks at him, baffled.) Do not blame me . . .
Geni. You won't be writing it down in the mountains.
Jerman. Await my words . . . You won't miss the evening mass! Now I'm covering the history of Counter-reformation. At that time, they murdered half of all honest people of our lands; the other half went into exile. Only dirty animals remained . . . We are the ancestors of our forefathers.
Turns towards the door; Komar steps away; Geni and Lojzka take on their hats, stepping towards the door.
THIRD ACT
In Jerman's room. ”

“ The Slovenian stem.
6. The Srbo-Chorvat (Serbian-Croatian) stem; in which political and cultural, but especially religious, conditions have produced a separation into two nationalities, the Serbian and the Croatian. ”

“ All I have said about Serbia applies equally to Montenegro. The nations are one and the same: they are identical in every respect and only geographically divided. Montenegro is the Serbian advance guard on the Adriatic. It is the eagle’s nest of Europe, the loftiest symbol of freedom and independence. Nature herself has given this people an impregnable fortress, and placed in their hands the keys of Southern Slav liberty. From the height of their barren Black Mountains the valiant high-spirited Montenegrin has looked down for centuries on the rise and fall of his kinsmen all around him. ”

“ The line then runs close to the provincial boundaries of Croatia and Carniola before attaining the sea again in Istria. The Slovene area thus delimited comprises the duchy of Carniola, excepting the Gottschee enclave, northern Istria, the Udine region, southeastern Karinthia, southern Styria and part of the Hungarian “comitats” of Vas and Zala. This Slovene land is now but a dwindled remnant of its former extension. At one time the Slovenes extended as far west as the Pusterthal in Tyrol, while their settlements even reached the Danube (at Linz and Vienna) . ”

“ The Slovenes are the only one of the Slav peoples who have conserved as the appellation of themselves the name Slovene, by which, par excellence, the Slavs in early times designated all of their own race, implied their mutual intelligibility, and distinguished themselves from their ubiquitous German neighbours, whom they have always termed Nemtsi, the dumb folk. The frequency of the term Slovene in one form or another as a designation of Slavonic peoples for each other or for their race as a whole is most confusing. ”

“ The rest of this province to the east and the north of the Cormons-Gradišca-Monfalcone line, which comprises the mountainous region, is inhabited by 148,500 Slovenes and 17,000 Italians, of whom 14,000 are in the town of Gorica, where they constitute half the population.... The Slovenes are an advanced and civilized people, acutely conscious of their racial solidarity with the other Yugoslav peoples. We therefore ask that this district should be reunited to our State.... Istria is inhabited by Slavs and Italians. ”

“ Even in many of the towns the houses are mere cabins of wood and thatch. As in Servia, there is practically no middle class between the peasants and the educated minority; and the commercial element consists to a great extent of foreigners, especially Germans, Hungarians, Italians and Jews. Numerically this alien population is insignificant. The Italians are chiefly confined to the coast; the Germans congregate at Semlin and Warasdin; the Slovenes are settled along the north-western frontier, where they have introduced their language, and so greatly modified the local dialect ”

“ The Germans of Carinthia and Styria usually specify the Slovenes as Winden or Wenden; this has always been the generic term applied indiscriminately to all Slavs by Germans, but is now limited in its application to the Slovenes of Austria, and, as already mentioned, to the Lusatian Wends in Saxony and Prussia.
In the sixth century the Slovenes occupied a more extensive territory than that held by them to-day; they reached north to the Danube, west to the Tyrol, and covered South-western Hungary. ”

“ More than 75% of the inhabitants are Croats, the bulk of the remainder being Serbs, who predominate in eastern Slavonia. Outside Croatia-Slavonia, the Croats occupy the greater part of Dalmatia and northern Bosnia. There are large Croatian settlements in the south of Hungary, and smaller colonies in Austria. The numbers of the whole nation may be estimated at 3,500,000 or 4,000,000. The distinction between Croats and Serbs is religious, and, to a less extent, linguistic. Croats and Serbs together constitute a single branch of the Slavonic race, frequently called the Serbo-Croatian branch. ”

“ When the Slovenes of Istria, Carniola, Styria, and Carinthia, together with the Serbo-Croats, form a strong, prosperous and free, though small State, their culture will be developed to the full, crowning and unifying Southern Slav life.
This growing civilization of Greater Serbia, which may be called Yougoslavia, will gather up the scattered threads of the history of Serbian art in the past. ”

“ Meanwhile the Slavs of Croatia and those farther to the north and west, with whom was kept alive the old name of Slovene, had been at grips with various neighbours. It has been said of the Slovenes that, shepherds and peasants for the most part, they have practically no national history, seeing that when the realm of Samo, who was himself a Frank, came to an end, they were subjected to the Lombards, to the Bavarians and finally to Charlemagne and his successors. Unlike the Serbs and the Croats, they had no warlike aristocracy ”

“ They are also a relatively well-educated people; according to official statistics of 1910, 85·34 per cent. of the Slovene population know how to read and write, while their neighbours to the east, the Magyars, can only reckon 62 per cent. and the Italians of pre-war Italy, 62·4 per cent. The most backward part of the Slovene race, those of Istria, have 46·6 per cent. of illiterates, while there are Italian provinces where the illiterates amount even to 85 per cent. Rome itself counts 65 per cent. ”

“ The want of a strong native middle class may partly be traced to this tendency.
History.
Medieval historians did not use the terms Croatia and Slavonia in their present sense. The Croatia of the middle ages comprised north-western Bosnia, Turkish Croatia, and the region now known as Upper Croatia. The whole country between the Drave and Save, thus including a large part of modern Croatia, was called in Latin Slavonia, in German Windisches Land, and in Hungarian Tótország, to distinguish it from the territories in which the Croats were racially supreme (Horvátország) . ”

“ The Slavs inhabit central and eastern Istria in a compact mass. More Italians live on the western coast, particularly in the towns. They inhabit only five villages north of Pola, and their populations have no territorial unity. Istria is territorially linked with Carniola and Croatia, whereas it is separated from Italy by the Adriatic, and therefore it ought to belong to the Yugoslav State.... Triest and its neighbourhood is geographically an integral part of purely Slav territories. The majority of this town—two-thirds, according to statistics—is Italian and the rest Slav. ”

“ And it is from the Slovene Socialists that the peasants of Croatia might very profitably learn.... The Slovene influence, coming from a more highly organized province, would be beneficial both for Serbs and Croats, for the industrial workers and for the peasants. The nature of the Southern Slavs, say these Socialists, is democratic, and the State mechanism might be made more so. Now that the various parts of Yugoslavia have liberated or are liberating themselves from various yokes, they have approached one another with a different mentality; they will become much better known to one another. ”

“ There is no more sturdy stock in Europe than the Slav of Montenegro, none more ready to turn from gun to wood axe, from blood-revenge to citizenship.
The Wends, Poles, and Bohemians show in speech and life influences of their German neighbours; the Slovak in Hungary has a strong Magyar taint; the Croatian, Servian, Bulgarian, and the Montenegrin come dangerously near the Turk; the Dalmatian on the Adriatic, in spite of his resistance against it, shows influences of Venice, not only in the magnificent architecture of his churches, but also in language and character ”

“ The Servians have always been ambitious, and they wish their country to become great and powerful.
[6]
Now look at your map again, and find the river Save, which joins the Danube at Belgrade, [7] the capital of Servia. South of the Save you see a country marked Bosnia, [8] and, still farther south, another country marked Herzegovina. [9] You are sure to notice that these two countries stand between Servia and the Adriatic Sea, and that they belong to Austria. Both Bosnia and Herzegovina are inhabited by Slavs, who hate being under Austria, and are eager to join their kinsmen the Servians. ”