The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

German and Magyar masters, having at their disposal all the resources of the State and all the services of a most pliant and wily bureaucracy.

But such was the force of that ideal and such the intensity of their national feeling that nothing could quench their yearning for freedom and due recognition. They were defeated many times but never subdued. The empire was lost; but thanks to the inner fire of their soul’s ideal a nation was made, hardened by fighting and stronger after every temporary defeat. At first there was some danger that the national ideal of the Southern Slavs would be narrowed and obsecured by religious differences. But even in the most painful moments of religious dissension between the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic branches of the same people, powerful voices did not lack among them who exposed all the absurdity of a nation basing political issues on considerations of dogma and religion. The wonderful nineteenth century, by broadening men’s views and by opening up new horizons brought about a radical change in that respect and finally reduced these religious differences to their proper proportion. In spite of the repeated intrigues of Vienna and Budapest to revive old dissensions and to raise new suspicions or to create new rifts in a homogeneous national body, the feeling of national unity and community of interests became more intense and fruitful from day to day among the Southern Slavs. All the

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