or take the consequences. Notice was given to the proprietors of vehicles that during the election they should let conveyances only to the police or persons whom the police might allow to hire them. The polling day came; the freedom of the elector to express his opinions in the polling booth had apparently not been yet sufficiently curtailed, so gendarmes and soldiers infested all the streets which led up to the polling booth. In the building itself there was posted a strong detachment of troops. By about four o'clock in the afternoon the Government candidate had by some lucky chance received two or three more votes than the other two candidates; the police finding this out at once ordered no more electors to be admitted, for there must be no risk as to the Government candidate's return. A crowd of electors who were waiting outside the polling booth were refused admission; the returning officer refused to intervene or suspend the election. A town councillor who, with twelve other opposition electors, was kept outside and prevented voting, was, because he asked to be allowed to vote, forthwith arrested by the police and kept in gaol until after all the elections were concluded.
Francis Joseph and the Austrian army are in the field in this war to maintain this sort of Government; their grievance is that the Slavs prefer a little more freedom. The greatest war the world has yet seen is being waged almost as much on account of this repression of the Slavs in Croatia as on account of anything else. The terms meted out to the non-Magyar races of Hungary, under cover of the constitution, form to-day one of the worst blots upon the scutcheon of European culture. Volumes could be written about this, and even then the chief difficulty of a writer would be to render credible even one-tenth part of the truth. The following extracts from a letter written by a Chief of Police to a Government candidate just prior to the last general election, and which by some untoward circumstance got into wrong hands, only faintly indicates the official attitude towards a free election by free men:
The withdrawal of the inn-licence of Bogdaneszk is to be approved by the Court of Appeal because he voted against us . . . the teachers and innkeepers, etc., who voted for us are still boycotted, continually incited against us and persecuted, and this can be traced to the fact that I did nothing against those innkeepers and tobacconists who voted against us, and so they can calmly agitate everywhere. . . . The list of teachers and innkeepers who voted against us, I handed in to the High Sheriff at the time; but so far there has been no result. The Ministry of Finance must treat them severely, so that the rest may learn reason! . . . I bought all the copies of Libertatea [a Roumanian Nationalist journal] . . . in the very last number that dog Mocza once more agitates violently. But perhaps this time
