Those who, for some reason or other, do not love the Yugoslavs will have
said to themselves, before taking up this book, that they would
certainly supply that searching criticism of this people which the
author would omit. They knew it was unlikely that a man would write at
such excessive length about the Southern Slavs if he had not a weakness
for them, and if he predicted for their State the virtue of cohesion or
more than very moderate tranquillity, his prejudice would have to be
discounted. "The Yugoslavs," said an Italian lady to me in London, and
her beautiful lips looked as if they could scarcely bring themselves to
pronounce the name, "the Yugoslavs," she said, "are very wild and
black." If I have given the impression in this book that they are white,
my fault will be much greater than the lady's, since I am not quite a
stranger to them. Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and Bulgars--they have good
and evil qualities so different that one must take them separately, and
perhaps it will be more instructive to compare them with each other. The
Slovenes need not detain us; they are a small people occupying a
surprisingly large area; if they were less well organized they would
have been long ago swallowed up. They shine as workers in the field and
mine and forest much more than as military men. They have never been
hereditary soldiers, like so many of the Croats, and it is perhaps this
want of confidence in their own military prowess which has caused them
to take measures that are sometimes too severe against the Austrians who
are under them. The Bosnian Moslems assert that, as all their links with
Turkey are now broken, they are the best Yugoslavs. But the Slovenes are
also the best Yugoslavs, because they recognize that in Yugoslavia is
their sole salvation. Some of us may regret that their tenacity so far
outstrips their idealism. They are a careful people, as may be seen from
Order No. 17024 which was issued, on December 4, 1920, by the Prefecture
of Ljutomir. Referring to sequestered property, it enjoined that the
Austrian owner should be allowed so much that he could live on it, but
not so much as to enable him to be extravagant. They are also a
relatively well-educated people; according to official statistics of
1910, 85.34 per cent. of the Slovene population know how to read and
write, while their neighbours to the east, the Magyars, can only reckon
62 per cent. and the Italians of pre-war Italy, 62.4 per cent. The most
backward part of the Slovene race, those of Istria, have 46.6 per cent.
of illiterates, while there are Italian provinces where the illiterates
amount even to 85 per cent. Rome itself counts 65 per cent.[116]