Serbia and Montenegro, however, are but one half of the problem. The issues involved are wider and deeper than the quarrels of Vienna and Budapest with Belgrade. Even if every man in Serbia were willingly prostrate before the Habsburg throne, there could be no real peace until the internal problem of Austria-Hungary's Southern Slav provinces is solved. What is at stake is the future of eleven million people, inhabiting the whole tract of country from sixty miles north of Trieste to the centre of Macedonia, from the southern plains of Hungary to the North Albanian frontier. Of these, roughly four millions are in the two independent kingdoms; the remaining seven millions are divided between Austria (the provinces of Dalmatia, Istria, and Carniola) and Hungary (the autonomous kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia), while Bosnia-Herzegovina are governed jointly by Austria and Hungary. The history of these provinces during the past generation is one of neglect and misgovernment. Croatia has been exploited economically by the Magyars, and the narrow interests of Budapest have prevented railway development and hampered local industries by skilful manipulation of tariffs and taxation. A further result is that even to-day Dalmatia (with the exception of Ragusa) has no railway connections with the rest of Europe, and those of Bosnia are artificially directed towards Budapest rather than towards Agram, Vienna, and Western Europe. It is not too much to say that the situation of those provinces had become less favourable (if compared with surrounding standards) than it was at earlier periods of their history; for the old system of trade-routes had broken down there as elsewhere in Europe, but had not been replaced by modern communications.
§6. _Serbo-Croat Unity._--Parallel with the new era instituted in Serbia since 1903, a strong movement in favour of national unity took root among her kinsmen across the Austro-Hungarian frontier. The disruptive tendencies which had hitherto been so marked in Croatian politics began to weaken. The so-called Serbo-Croat Coalition round which all the younger elements speedily rallied, put forward an ambitious programme of constructive democratic reform as the basis of joint political action on the part of both races, and held stubbornly together when the inevitable breach with the Magyar oligarchy occurred. The Magyar Government felt that every effort must be made to restore that discord between Croat and Serb which had been for a generation one of the main pillars of their racial hegemony. These designs happened to coincide with the aims of the Foreign Office in Vienna in connection with the annexation of Bosnia, and Budapest and Vienna combined in a systematic campaign of persecution against the Serbs of Croatia. "Wholesale arrests and charges of treason led up to the monster trial at Agram, which dragged on for seven months amid scandals worthy of the days of Judge Jeffreys. The Diet ceased to meet, the constitution of Croatia was in abeyance, the elections were characterised by corruption and violence such as eclipsed even the infamous Hungarian elections of 1910; the Press and the political leaders were singled out for special acts of persecution and intimidation." These tactics were revealed to the outside world in the notorious Friedjung Trial (December 1909), resulting out of a libel action brought by the Serbo-Croat Coalition leaders against Dr. Friedjung, the distinguished Austrian historian. The documents, on the basis of which he had publicly accused them of being paid agents of the Serbian Government, had been supplied to him by the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office, and the trial revealed them as impudent forgeries, concocted in the Austro-Hungarian Legation in Belgrade! The moral responsibility for these forgeries was subsequently brought home to Count Forgách, the Minister in Belgrade, and indirectly, of course, to Count Aehrenthal himself as Foreign Minister. But Forgách, though publicly denounced as "Count Azev,"[1] was not allowed to fall into disgrace; on the contrary, he had become within two years of his exposure permanent Under-Secretary at the Ballplatz, and inspirer of new plots to discredit and ruin Serbia.