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1116
YUGOSLAVIA


tiplied indefinitely. Doctor Tresic-Pavici6, the Dalmatian- Croat deputy, was informed by one of the judges who examined him that over 5,000 had been imprisoned in Dalmatia, Istria and Carniola. In the single internment camp of Arad there were 3,400 deaths among the victims from Bosnia alone; and Father Nikolic, a Catholic priest from Istria, testified to having himself buried over 2,000 Istrian victims, and Doctor Martin- ovic to a knowledge of 8,000 fatal cases in the Styrian camps. In Dalmatia the leading deputies (e.g. Smodlaka, Qngrija, Tresic, Drinkovic) and many priests, advocates, doctors and other intellectuals were arrested, some being used as hostages and forced to accompany railway patrols, under the threat of instant death in case of sabotage by the population. All the municipal councils in Dalmatia (with the solitary exception of Zara, which had an Italian majority) were dissolved at an early stage in the war. Among the Slovenes of Istria and Carniola there were also numerous arrests, and the Matica Slovenska, the chief Slovene literary society, was dissolved and its funds confiscated. Press censorship was of course very rigid through- out the Dual Monarchy, but many Yugoslav newspapers were suppressed altogether. It was perhaps natural that repression should be specially severe in Bosnia. There were wholesale internments, conducted with the utmost brutality: and the horrors of the camps of Doboj, Mostar, Arad, Thalerhof, Mollersdorf, Gmund, were early in 1918 revealed by Doctor Tresic in the Austrian Reichsrat. After the Archduke's murder the headquarters of various Serbian institutions in Sarajevo had been sacked by mobs, with the open connivance of the police: after the outbreak of war practically all Serb societies and schools were closed in Bosnia. At a later stage the Orthodox calendar and the Cyrilline alphabet were prohibited, and this was actually enforced in Serbia itself during the Austrian occu- pation, and in the Serbian districts of Hungary from July 1916 onward. Bosnia was also the scene of a succession of monster political trials. In March 1915, 28 schoolboys of Banjaluka were sentenced to terms varying from two years to four months for founding a local Yugoslav society. In July 65 schoolboys from Sarajevo and Travnik received similar sentences, and again in Oct. 38 more boys from Tuzla were condemned to a total of 156 years. In Nov. 1915 at Banjaluka 151 prominent Bosnian Serbs including 5 deputies and 20 orthodox priests were put on trial for treason: and eventually 16 death sentences were passed, and terms of imprisonment totalling 858 years and a collective fine of 14 million crowns, were passed. Worse even than this was the system of wholesale expatriation adopted as a punishment for those who had shown a friendly attitude to the invading Serbian army. During the spring of 1915 the official organ at Sarajevo published list after list of Bosnian-Serb fam- ilies who were thus declared to have forfeited their citizenship: and many thousands of women and children were driven across the Montenegrin frontier, often with only the clothes in which they stood. The motive was avowedly the same which in the Middle Ages led a mediaeval garrison to drive the civil population of a town into the camp of its would-be deliverers. With every year of war the number of confiscations of property increased in the Yugoslav provinces, as in Bohemia and Transylvania vengeance upon the families at home being widely used in order to deter Slav, Italian or Rumanian prisoners from enlisting in the various volunteer corps in process of formation on the Rus- sian, Balkan and Italian fronts. In Croatia alone was there even a semblance of constitutional government. The diet of Zagreb was allowed to meet, and the Serbo-Croat coalition pursued a policy of pure opportunism, avoiding any pronounce- ment on matters of high policy, but buying a certain relaxation of regime in Croatia by supporting the Budapest Government and its nominee Skerlecz. But even this subservient and cautious House sometimes asserted itself: and on one occasion its vice- president Doctor Magdic proclaimed " the nation's constant desire for unification in a single and independent political body." Yugoslav Propaganda Abroad. Meanwhile a certain number of Yugoslav leaders had managed to reach foreign soil before the outbreak of war, and during the winter of 1914 constituted

themselves as the Yugoslav Committee. Its two foremost leaders were Doctor Trumbic and Mr. Supilo (two of the makers of the Resolution of Fiume) and it also included Doctor Hink- ovi6 (known as the chief advocate in the Zagreb treason trial), Ivan Mestrovic the sculptor, the Slovene deputies Gregorin and Trinajstic, the Bosnian Serb deputies Stojanovic, Srskic and Vasiljevic, publicists of repute such as Marjanovic and Ban- janin, and prominent representatives of the Yugoslav colonies in North and South America, such as the scientist Pupin and the shipping magnate Baburica. Their original centre was Rome, but in view of the hostile attitude of the Salandra-Sonnino Government they transferred their activities to Paris and London early in 1915. They were in close and cordial contact with the Serbian Government, but rightly insisted on retaining entire independence of action, their funds being derived from their wealthy S. American supporters, who had long been enthu- siasts for the Yugoslav idea. Their first public pronouncement was an appeal to the British Parliament and nation (May 1915) for sympathy with the cause of Yugoslav unity and the dissolu- tion of Austria-Hungary. This formed a natural complement to the unanimous declaration of the Serbian Skupstina in Dec. 1914 for a union of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in one State.

Secret Treaty of London. The entry of Italy into the war was a serious set-back to the Yugoslav cause, for under the Treaty of London (April 27 1915) she was to obtain, in the event of an Entente victory, wide districts in Gorizia, Carniola, Istria and Dalmatia, peopled by not less than 700,000 Yugoslavs. The frontier was to follow the watershed of the Julian Alps from Tarvis as far east as the Snjeznik (Schneeberg) and to reach the sea just east of Volosca, Fiume being expressly reserved to Croatia. To Italy was assigned the northern half of the Dalma- tian mainland as far as Cape Planka, and all the islands save Krk (Veglia) and Rab (Arbe) in the N., Solta and Brazza in front of Spalato, and the few which lie to the south of Meleda. The jealously guarded secret was discovered by Mr. Supilo in Petro- grad within a few days of the signature of the treaty, and the main facts becoming known in Austria-Hungary, were skilfully exploited by her to rally the Croats and Slovenes in defence of their national territory. It was easy to represent the Entente as having betrayed the interests of Serbia and her kinsmen: and as for a time the Pasic Cabinet, in deference to the narrowly Orthodox influences then all powerful at Petrograd, was pre- pared to limit its claims to the mainly Serb and Orthodox provinces of Bosnia and Slavonia, and to leave the Catholic Croats and Slovenes to their fate, there was during the summer a certain revulsion of feeling in favour of Austria-Hungary, who appointed a Serb Orthodox frontiersman (Granicar), General Boroevic, to the chief command on the Isonzo front. The con- quest of Serbia, however, once more closed the ranks of the Yugoslavs, who saw in unity their sole hope for the future: and the desertions to the Entente which were so marked a feature of the first winter, became so rife as to render necessary a drastic revision of the Austro-Hungarian regimental system. Henceforth the various corps lost more and more their territorial character, one nationality was set to watch and control the other, and espionage and delation prevailed.

The Yugoslav Legions. During the winter of 1915 delegates of the Yugoslav Committee, with the Tsar's special permission, began enrolling volunteers from among the prisoners on the Russian front; and by March 1916 a division of 23,000 men had been concentrated at Odessa, and a second was formed later. Serbian officers under General Zivkovid were sent out, and many officers of the future Czechoslovak legions first saw service in this corps. The Yugoslavs greatly distinguished themselves during the Dobruja campaign (Nov. 1916), and their wounded shot themselves or each other on the battle-field, rather than fall as traitors or deserters into the hands of Austria. It was with this corps that Dr. Elsie Inglis and a detachment of the Scottish Women's Hospitals served as medical unit. After the Russian collapse most of the survivors were gradually drafted through Murmansk, England and France to the Salonika front: one brigade was cut off by the Bolshevik Revolution and had to be