The conference at Rome, April 10, 1918, to settle outstanding questions
between the Italians and the Slavs of the Adriatic, has once more
drawn attention to those Slavonic peoples in Europe who are under
non-Slavonic rule. At the beginning of the war there were three
great Slavonic groups in Europe: First, the Russians with the Little
Russians, speaking languages not more different than the dialect of
Yorkshire is from the dialect of Devonshire; second, a central group,
including the Poles, the Czechs or Bohemians, the Moravians, and
Slovaks, this group thus being separated under the four crowns of
Russia, Germany, Austria, and Hungary; the third, the southern group,
included the Sclavonians, the Croatians, the Dalmatians, Bosnians,
Herzegovinians, the Slavs, generally called Slovenes, in the western
portion of Austria, down to Goritzia, and also the two independent
kingdoms of Montenegro and Serbia.
Like the central group, this southern group of Slavs was divided
under four crowns, Hungary, Austria, Montenegro, and Serbia; but,
in spite of the fact that half belong to the Western and half to the
Eastern Church, they are all essentially the same people, though
with considerable infusion of non-Slavonic blood, there being a good
deal of Turkish blood in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The languages,
however, are practically identical, formed largely of pure Slavonic
materials, and, curiously, much more closely connected with the eastern
Slav group--Russia and Little Russia--than with the central group,
Polish and Bohemian. A Russian of Moscow will find it much easier
to understand a Slovene from Goritzia than a Pole from Warsaw. The
Ruthenians, in Southern Galicia and Bukowina, are identical in race and
speech with the Little Russians of Ukrainia.
Of the central group, the Poles have generally inclined to Austria,
which has always supported the Polish landlords of Galicia against
the Ruthenian peasantry; while the Czechs have been not so much
anti-Austrian as anti-German. Indeed, the Hapsburg rulers have again
and again played these Slavs off against their German subjects. It
was the Southern Slav question, as affecting Serbia and Austria, that
gave the pretext for the present war. At this moment, the central Slav
question--the future destiny of the Poles--is a bone of contention
between Austria and Germany. It is the custom to call these Southern
Slavs "Jugoslavs," from the Slav word Yugo, "south," but as this is a
concession to German transliteration, many prefer to write the word
"Yugoslav," which represents its pronunciation. The South Slav question
was created by the incursions of three Asiatic peoples--Huns, Magyars,
Turks--who broke up the originally continuous Slav territory that ran
from the White Sea to the confines of Greece and the Adriatic.