The _Ausgleich_ was of ill-omen to the Slav subjects of Hungary. It
was not much more auspicious for the Slovenes, Istrians and
Dalmatians. The Slavs seem to have been the Habsburgs' nightmare. Why
the million and a quarter of Slovenes--people who do not approach the
Basques, for instance, in pugnacity--should be the butt of everlasting
coercion and repression may seem inexplicable. When the
German-Austrians of Triest, even after the Italians in Italy had begun
to claim the town, allied themselves with the Triest Italians "to
fight," as they declared, "the common enemy," it can surely not have
been these quiet Slovenes who had won for themselves by great industry
a place in the town which is situated in their province. The "common
enemy" to whom the German-Austrians referred must have been Russia.
And so the Southern Slavs of the Balkans and of the Adriatic owed part
of the bad treatment they received not to their own vices but to the
organizing virtues which their larger brother was supposed to have.