The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

place necessary to completely subjugate and break up the resistance of the Southern Slavs, who were the first chosen victims to be immolated on the altar of German world grandeur and dominion. To that end the old motto of Austria, divide et impera, was applied with unexampled thoroughness during the last fifty years of her relations with the Southern Slavs. All the old methods of subjugation were perfected, and new means for the division and breaking up of their resistance were invented and diabolically applied.

In the first instance the Southern Slavs were nearly equally divided between Austria and Hungary; but this main division had many subdivisions.

Thus the Serbs in South Hungary, in Banat, Backa and Baranya, were unceremoniously handed over to the tender mercy of the Magyars, their previously granted privileges were abolished; their Church and all educational and other national institutions put under the direct and absolute control of Budapest. The Serbo-Croats in Croatia, Slavonia and Syrmia were granted a sort of autonomy under the control of Budapest. The lands of the Southern Slavs in Austria were divided into so many crown lands and provinces with local autonomy of the true Austrian type depending on Vienna. In Carinthia and Styria they were outnumbered and overruled by the Germans; in Trieste, Goritzia and Istria by the Italians, and in Dalmatia and Carniola, where

92