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Updated: June 19, 2025
We may therefore conclude the first half of the historical evolution of the Jugo-Slavs with the observation that political, economic, social, and geographical divisions led to their downfall as a nation and that if they ever desired to become one, each one of these chasms would have to be bridged.
For the moment German trust in success had to repose upon the secondary efforts of her Austrian ally on the Piave, although no German troops could now be spared to give much substance to the expectation. That front had been quiescent since the winter, but a good deal had been done to strengthen it, and the Italians were doubtless well advised to stand behind their lines rather than risk an offensive until Austria was practically hors de combat. Austria herself had little stomach for the fight. Her domestic situation was deplorable; parliamentary government had been suspended; and nearly half the population of the Empire was in veiled or open revolt. Hundreds of thousands of Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs had joined the enemy, and some were stiffening the Piave front. But German demands were inexorable, and it was hoped that German tactics would supply the place of German troops. There were two battles in the offensive which began on 15 June, one in the mountains, the object of which was to turn the whole Italian front on the Piave, and the other a frontal attack across that river between the Montello, the pivot of the mountain and river fronts, and the sea. The first was the more promising, but achieved the less success. That front was partly held by French and British troops, and the insignificant advance which the Austrians made on the 15th was stopped on the following day. The attack on the Piave was at first more fortunate; a good deal of the Montello was taken, a serious impression was made on the Italian right wing at San Don
The Ausgleich between Austria and Hungary and Hungary and Croatia opened in 1868 a period which ended in 1905 it was a period, on the one hand of the greatest decay and decomposition in the political life of the Jugo-Slavs, and, on the other, of the greatest literary and intellectual unity as shaped by Bishop Strossmayer and Peter II and Nicholas of Montenegro.
There was, indeed, a bond of sympathy, for in each of the enemy capitals a ruling caste oppressed one or more subject nationalities. Prussia stood for the Junker domination of the German tribes; Austria, for Teutonic government of Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles; Hungary, for Magyar dictation to Jugo-Slavs and Rumanes; and Turkey, for the exploitation or extermination of Armenians, Greeks, and Arabs.
That the Jugo-Slavs undoubtedly exceeded in numbers the Italians in the community when it was treated as a whole made no difference to the propagandists who asserted that Fiume was Italian.
For the difficulties of the terrain, jealousy between Italians and Jugo-Slavs, and Italy's lack of the industrial means for equipping a sufficiently formidable army, put it beyond her power to threaten any vital spot in the Hapsburg dominions.
She contended that her sentiment for Dalmatia was as sincere as that of the French for Alsace-Lorraine, and ignored the difference made by the fact that Dalmatia was peopled with Jugo-Slavs. Italy therefore had little sympathy with the Fourteen Points which at President Wilson's instigation had been accepted as the basis of the armistice and the principles of peace.
Italy was also to receive about half of Dalmatia, including towns over half of whose population were Jugo-Slavs. To President Wilson's note the Allies had to reply, therefore, in somewhat general terms.
When the Jugo-Slavs first occupied the western half of the Balkan peninsula, they were one in speech, in social customs and ancestry, and were divided only into tribes. The Slovenes, who settled in the northern end of the west Balkan block, were not separated from their Croat and Serb kinsmen by the forces of geography, but rather by the course of political evolution.
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