Semi-weekly herald., 1914-03-05
SLAVS ARE PREPARED
TO FIGHT TO THE END

BELGRADE, Servia, March g.
Five hundred war veterans, each
armed to the tooth, each as ready and
willing to die as frog is ever ready
and willing to jump into water, and
each waiting only the psychological
moment which each and all consider
inevitable. This is the nice lite war
cloud which is still nursing itself
down on the borders of the Balkans.
And this is the nice little war cloud
which Servia says that European dip
plomacy can never conjure away un.
til it has either broken out into war
and won, or broken out into war and
irretreviably lost forever.
Servia has dreamed a great dream,
and there are some psychologists
who say that great dream, if dream
ed hard enough, and if dreamed when
the person is awake and in full pos
session of his faculties, is one of the
most irresistible forces in the world.
Servia's dream is result of its sue
cess in the recent Balkan wars, a
dream dreamed in the full conscious
ness of the strength and power which
it has demonstrated it possesses. The
dream is to put back on the map of
the world the old Slav empire as it
existed before it went down before
the oyer-runninp Turks
Servia's dream, too, has one other
merit, and possibly one other source
of strength, in that it is not only
merely political but humanitarian.
The Slav race is now almost as badly
scattered as the Jews, almost a race
without country, and it is Servia' S
dream to re-create united home-
land.
Just at the present moment, as in
fact for century past, the one parti-
cular night mare in this dream is
Austria. Austria long known as the
bully of Europe, had not only been
gradually gobbling up the big Slav
provinces, but also concentrating her
strength against possible formation
of big Slav empire on her own
southern border. One by one, and
even sometimes by twos, she has come
into possession of the Slav provinces
of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Bos-
mia and Herzegovina. All of those
are inhabited solely by Slavs, who
speak only the Slav or Servian lang
uage, and who have not only the same
clinical origin but the same racial
traditions and the same desire for
political as well as racial unity.
Austria, in its century-old opposi-
tion to this possible Slav kingdom,
has had two motives. In the first
place the entire southern half of the
Austria Hungarian empire as inhabit-
ed largely by Slavs. They have never
been well treated and have never been
content under the Austrian yoke. The
formation of Slav empire to the
south would mean that a goodly por-
ton of these would hike instantly to
the other side of the Hungarian bord-
err.
The forcing of the Hungary bound
ary down through the Balkans until
Austria-Hungary should some day
have the old Turkish seaport of Sa-
onika has also been the one great
of Austria. This ambition,
however, the recent Balkan wars is
to have forever thwarted, Sa-
onika having passed into the hands
If the Greeks. The creation of the
lew kingdom of Albania, whose ex-
stence is guaranteed by the powers,
Ilso ends her dream of a mediter-
anean exit and naval base on that
'ortion of the Adriatic. While Aus
ria has thus been obliged to re-
ounce her great ambition, it hasn't
weetened in any way her attitude
gainst the Slavs and this attitude
'ervia is convinced will one day mean
var and the object of that war will
. the getting back of the Slav prov