The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

fiscating their goods for the profit of Germans or Magyar aristocrats. So it came about that the greatest land proprietors among the Serb population in Croatia and in South Hungary are alien families who rarely visit the country in which their immense properties are situated. The chief among them are the reigning Prince of Schaumburg-Lippe, the Magyar Count Batthyany and the Roman Prince Odescalchi. Thus the entire Southern Slav aristocracy has been ruined or the nobles turned into renegades by intimidation and corruption. Even that did not stop the German spirit of ‘“‘ organisation.” The Turkish system of making janissaries of the Christian children, so much deplored as being brutal and inhuman, has been until now used by Austria against the Southern Slavs. Not only did the Southern Slavs provide the greatest percentage of soldiers for all Austria’s battles, but the children of the most prominent families were taken away and brought up in the military schools, where their education consisted mainly in imbibing them with German ideals and fidelity to the Hapsburg dynasty.

With true German thoroughness European public opinion was also organised in favour of German plans and objects. Germany had the monopoly of European information concerning the Southern Slav world, and Europe could see it only through German spectacles. Hvery protest against oppression was represented as a

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