The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

flag should be raised on the forts together with those of Austria and Great Britain, and that the civil Government should be carried on by Caboga and a committee of nobles. Thus the Ragusans were betrayed and the independence of the Republic of Ragusa strangled by Austrian treachery, in which the British probably played an unwilling part.

On the following day the Austrian standard was raised on the Orlando column before the Rector’s palace, and the British fleet set sail a few days later. The Powers at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 definitely handed over to Austria the State of Ragusa and the islands pertaining to it. But the Ragusan archipelago remained under British protection until July 16th, 1815, when it was handed over to the Austrians. The Ragusans fervently hope to-day that the injustice done to them a hundred years ago will be made good now, and foreign rule over them cease for ever.

The Slay movement in Austria-Hungary for autonomy or independence seldom found sympathy in England. This was so, partly owing to mistrust of Russia and partly owing to the strange ignorance of Slav things in general. All British ideas about the Slavs have until quite recently been formed on the basis of the biassed information from German sources. For a thousand years the Germans have been constantly encroaching upon the Slav territory, and they knew

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