Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/223

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THE FREEDOM OF NATIONS
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virile little peoples in Europe, and they are equipped with a remarkable country, offering coal, metals, timber, water-power, corn, and wine, and centred on the main line of railway from the Baltic and Warsaw to Vienna and the Adriatic.

Then we come to the South Slavs—Jugo means South — in their three tribes of Slovenes, Croatians, and Serbs. They number about twelve millions. They also have been sundered by the line between Austria and Hungary; moreover, they are of the rival Latin and Greek Churches. For any one who knows the Balkans, it is eloquent testimony indeed to the effect of Austro-Hungarian tyranny that the Roman Catholic Slovenes and Croatians should have made the pact of Corfu with the Greek Orthodox Serbs. The South Slavs will have access to Dalmatian ports on the Adriatic, and one of the trunk railways of the world will run down the Save Valley to Belgrade, and then through the Morava and Maritza 'Corridor' to Constantinople.

Rumania is the next State of this middle east of Europe. The natural focus of Rumania is the great Transylvanian bastion of the Carpathians, with fruitful valleys, metalliferous mountains, oil wells, and splendid forests. The Transylvanian peasantry is