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Updated: June 15, 2025
The Slovenes became a part of the Austrian possessions of the Habsburgs; the Croats fell under the dominion of the Hungarian crown and the republic of Venice; and the Serbs succumbed to the Turks by the middle of the fifteenth century.
On the other hand, the Croats became separated from the Serbs by forces largely geographical, though partially economic and political, in nature. The Slovenes gave way before the pressure of the Germans who swept through the Alps and down the Danube and forced the Slovene vojvodes to acknowledge their suzerainty and accept their religion.
While they had every reason to assume that Great Britain and France would live up to their agreement, it was hardly to be expected that under the changed conditions and in the circumstances attending the negotiation and signature of the Pact, the British and French statesmen would be disposed to protest against modifications of the proposed boundary if the United States and other nations, not parties to the agreement, should insist upon changes as a matter of justice to the new state of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.
One has to show a difference between Serbia and Jugo-Slavia, or the Kingdom of Serbs, Hrvats, and Slovenes, "S.H.S." as it is commonly called. The new country is three times as large as the old one, and the two new parts of Croatia and Slovenia are well-built, fruitful, prosperous, with all the glamour of Austrian civilization resting on them.
The diplomatic conflict between Belgrade and Vienna or Budapest is but the outcome of a far deeper and wider movement. We are witnessing the birth-throes of a new nation, the rise of a new national consciousness, the triumph of the idea of National Unity among the three Southern Slav sisters the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes.
The Germans would doubtless have succeeded in obliterating them had not the Magyar invasion weakened their offensive. The Slovenes, however, were left a wrecked nationality whose fate became blended with that of the Habsburg possessions and who against the forces of geography which firmly bound them to the Croats were politically riveted to the Habsburg north.
Napoleon's Illyria, created in 1809, joined for the first time Slovenes and Croats in one political unit, and the excellent administration and the schools left an undying memory of what might be if the Habsburgs cared.
It should be remembered that the Croats and Slovenes, though members of the great family of Southern Slavs, have by no means as much in common with their Serb kinsmen as is generally believed. Croatia and Slovenia have both educated and wealthy classes.
Firstly, she lays title to it on the ground that geographically Fiume belongs to Croatia, and that Croatia is now a part of Jugoslavia, or, to give the new country its correct name, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.
The Southern Slavs fall into four sections the Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and Bulgars, who between them occupy the whole country from southern Carinthia to central Thrace.
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