five minutes, and during this short time he treated these people, who really, as a fact, represented a very important and substantial class in the Magyar community, as a masterful and overbearing schoolmaster would treat unruly schoolboys. He brushed aside their arguments and expostulations and dismissed them with so much haste and indifference that they were out in the street before they quite appreciated what had really transpired. The result was that the Crown had its way.
The monarch governs through the army, justice, police and bureaucracy, and the Church. Each of these is a power responsible only to the Crown and riding roughshod where necessary over the rights, where there are any, of the people. Justice, for instance, is administered from the point of view of the monarch's express wishes or the court's views of what those wishes would probably be.
We have already noticed that the great characteristic of the Hapsburgs is their desire to obtain territories and subject-peoples regardless of the wishes of the peoples themselves. In seizing Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria acted in accordance with this idea, but, at the same time, assumed a difficult burden which must, as things now go, tend to diminish, if not destroy, the power of the monarchy. Apart, however, from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria has had for many years past her hands more than full of Slav disaffection and trouble. Croatia-Slavonia, originally independent, but now a part of Hungary, enjoy occasionally to some extent the privileges of representative government in respect to their own local affairs. But these people are Slavs and they express the opinions and aspirations of all the Slav peoples of Southern Hungary, and to a large extent those of the Slav peoples outside the Dual Monarchy. They represent, according to their rulers, the element of Pan-Slavism or, at least, something which is just the same, "Big-Servianism." If there is one thing more than another that the Hapsburg fears, it is that the Slavs, whether inside or outside of his dominions, should have the opportunity to attain their freedom. He fears, particularly, that they may attain it through the efforts and influence of Servia. In this the Hapsburgs have the hearty co-operation of the Magyars, wherein lies the explanation for the present comparative cordiality between the Magyar element and the King-Emperor. We have already seen how the monarch treats as he thinks fit the aspirations of the Magyars themselves. But apparently they are content with this treatment, providing they in their turn may enslave still further the Slavs. So we find the Slavs of the monarchy oppressed by a people who are naturally
