The
Greater Serbia idea had really perished in 1915, as had the Greater Croatia
idea in 1878. In their place emerged Jugo-Slavia --the kingdom of the
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes--implied by the South Slav Parliamentary Club
in Austria in their Declaration of May 30, 1917, and formulated by the Pact
of Corfu of July 7, 1917, which Pasie, premier of Serbia, and Trumbie, the
head of the London Jugo-Slav Committee, drew up. The evolution had been
completed. Nationalism had proved stronger than geography, stronger than
opposing religions, more cohesive than political and economic interests.
For this, the Jugo-Slavs have not only themselves and modern progress, like
railroad-building, to thank, but also the policy of the Habsburg monarchy,
the hopeful, though feeble, Note of the Allies to President Wilson, the
Russian Revolution, and the entry of the United States into the war.
For the historian, it remains to examine the depth and the character of the
movement. He should neither lament that it succeeded, nor frown upon it
that it did not come long ago when his own nation achieved its unity. That
it is a reality is proved by the fact that the Central Powers believed
its destruction worth this catastrophic war. A nation of eleven or twelve
millions holds the path to the Adriatic and the Aegean and the gateway to
the Orient and world dominion.
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