On March 2 a gathering of Jugoslavs met at Zagrub (Wagram) which
included the Jugoslav Deputies of the Reichsrat, practically the entire
membership of the Croatian Sabor, (the Legislature which exercises a
limited amount of local autonomy,) and other representatives of the
nation. According to the Hrvatska Drzhava, extracts from whose accounts
have been translated by the Serbian Press Bureau in Geneva, they
contained the following statement:
After having discussed the general political and national
situation the assembly has agreed on the necessity of a
concentration of all parties and groups which, from the point
of view of national self-government, demand the creation of a
national and independent States of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs
founded on the principle of democracy.
The language of this passage parallels the Declaration of Corfu, by
which exiled leaders of the Jugoslav movement demanded the union of
the Jugoslav territories in Austria-Hungary with Serbia and Montenegro
into one kingdom under the Karageorgevitch dynasty. Austrian papers at
once became agitated because there was no reference to the carrying out
of this aim within the framework of the Hapsburg Empire. The fact that
many, if not most, of those present were known to be in accord with the
Declaration of Corfu, and the suspicion that practically all of them
favored it at heart, caused many protests against the "introduction of
the policy of Belgrade" in the Viennese press.
The matter was further complicated by the activity of the police in the
affair, they having broken up the first session of the assembly and
posted a guard around the hall. Demonstrations of the students against
this, which seem to have gone no further than parading up and down the
streets singing Slavic national songs, were broken up by the police
with the utmost violence, and many were arrested.
This did not prevent a large gathering, principally of students, at
the station the next day to bid farewell to Dr. Koroshetz, leader of
the Jugoslav Club in the Reichsrat. Dr. Koroshetz is taking the lead
in the organization of a Jugoslav National Council of some twenty-four
members, whose aims are euphemistically described for the present as "to
arrange the tactics of the general Jugoslav policy."
The economic conditions which contribute to the revolutionary ferment
in the Jugoslav countries were set forth in a speech in the Reichsrat
in the course of a budget discussion just before this assembly by Dr.
Matko Leginja, Deputy from Istria and Vice Chairman of the Jugoslav
Club. He quoted the appeal from an Istrian commune which ended:
We beg, ask, and demand bread, peace, and the return of our
brethren, fathers, and sons to console us, to see that our fields
are worked properly, and that there should be some one with us to
close the eyes of the dying parents.
Of many instances of starvation which he gave was one of a parish in
which in 1912 there were 67 births and 23 deaths. In 1917 there were
23 births and 68 deaths, without counting those who died in military
service.