In

That union did not long continue. Each put forth extravagant claims regarding the nationality of the people they had freed. Macedonia, where a pell-mell of races spreads round Monastir, their claims were most violent. Turkish rule had deadened national sense among the newly liberated. Many did not know whether they were Bulgarians, Greeks, or Serbians.

In 1913 Bulgaria, without warning, suddenly attacked her allies, Greece and Serbia, and was decisively beaten. In 1915, utterly indifferent to the world-issues involved, she joined the Teutonic Powers, believing that their success was assured and that thereby she would advance her interests. In 1918, sensing their impending defeat, she abandoned her allies in the field and made peace.

In the lamentable events of the last six years it is just to discriminate between the Bulgarians and the unscrupulous German Prince who was their Tsar. The docile people submitted and followed but they did not initiate or perhaps desire the tortuous, inglorious policy of their sovereign.

In 1917 the Bulgarians constituted threefourths of the 5,518,000 inhabitants of the country, practically all communicants of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The more than 700,000 Turks or Pomaks were rapidly being absorbed.

Bulgarian is called "at once the most ancient and most modern" of Slavic languages. The grammar shows modern tendencies, but the linguistic groundwork is in close affinity with the oldest written Slavic dialect, that of the Church.

The Bulgarian birth-rate in 1910 was fortyone to every one thousand persons. In 1911 the excess of births over deaths was 18.35 per 1,000 persons-a larger excess than among any other people of Europe.

The Bulgarians are a sturdy, sober, industrious, practical people. While not vivacious or emotional, their parental and filial affection is marked. Materialistic rather than idealistic, they nevertheless appreciate education for their daughters as well as for their sons.

* THE SERBIANS

The Serbians first appear as a confederation of Slavic tribes, which, together with their near kin, the Croats, inhabited the northern slope of the Carpathians. In the seventh century the two occupied side by side all the west and northwest of the peninsula. Both recognized the Byzantine Emperor as suzerain.

The Serbians spread far and wide over present Serbia, northern Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and possibly farther north. The Croats settled to the northwest.

Christianized before any other Slavic tribe,

*See also, in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "Serbia and Montenegro" (November, 1908), and "The Kingdom of Serbia," by William Joseph Showalter (April, 1915).

geography brought the Serbians who lived eastward into the Eastern Orthodox Church and carried the Croats living westward into the Roman Church. Internal dissensions retarded their growth. Vassals alternately of Bulgarians and Byzantines, they did not attain independence until the twelfth century.

Though the Serbian kingdom lasted little more than three hundred years, two of its Tsars render it illustrious, Stephen Dushan the Great and Laza.

Ably seconded by his Bulgarian wife, the Tsaritza Helen, Dushan united nearly all the peninsula in the effort to crush the menacing Turkish power but died suddenly on his march to Constantinople. In lofty aim and ability as legislator, diplomat and warrior, this dimlyseen eastern Tsar is one of the grandest figures of the Middle Ages.

Lazar took up the task of Dushan but fell, betrayed and gloriously fighting, in 1389 at the battle of Kossova on the Plains of Amsel. Serbia prostrate, but with spirit unbroken, resisted for seventy years, but was made a pashalik of the Sultan soon after the fall of Constantinople.

The heiduks, guerrilla Robin Hoods of the peninsula, in the mountains and forests carried on the fight against the Turks. In 1804, led by the swineherd Kara George, the Serbian people rose en masse. After twenty-five bloody years, in the Russo-Turkish treaty of Adrianople the Sultan recognized their autonomy. A new leader, Milosch Obrenovitch, had arisen.

The savage rivalry of the Karageorgevitch and Obrenovitch families, though unattended by civil war, reddens the story of Serbia. Three of the former and five of the latter have reigned. The Obrenovitches became extinct in 1903.

The Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78 resulted in the full independence of Serbia which proclaimed herself a kingdom four years later. Enraged at the union of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia, Serbia in 1885 declared war but was decisively beaten at Slivnitza. More worthy was the Balkan war of 1912 when Serbia, together with Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro, freed the Christian subjects of the Ottomans. In the Balkan war of the following year she was victorious over Bulgarian attack.

The story of the Austrian ultimatum, of three invasions of Serbian territory by the Austrians, each time repulsed, and of her desperate_resistance against the combined Austrian, Bulgarian, and German armies, forms an essential chapter of the just-ended war.

The kingdom is inhabited by 4,616,000 people, almost exclusively Serbian. It is the Piedmont of the newly formed Jugo-Slav confederacy. The number of Serbians resident in former Austria-Hungary may be reckoned as 5,000,000, in great part descendants of the expatriated after Kossova. Professor Pupin, educator and inventor, is a Serbian.

Without harshness, the Serbian language is an almost perfect instrument for poetry and

ever, to enforce the Latin ritual would probably swing the dissident Jugo-Slavs into the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Another obstacle to federal union is inexperience in self-government on the part of the several groups. Except the Montenegrins, and the Serbians in the larger part of royal Serbia, all the groups have been under the blighting domination of alternating foreign masters, mainly Turks, Austrians, and Magyars, since the Middle Ages. The federal system is of all systems the most difficult and complex, requiring the largest degree not only of skill, but of self-adjustment and self-control. Yet upon such a Ship of State these Slavic landsmen would embark as officers and crew in a stormy

sea.

To the majority of these people the idea of union is novel, until recently entertained only by some score of dreamers, who, while Turkish or Austro-Hungarian subjects themselves, hardly believed in its possibility of realization. Nor do all the groups equally desire union, even now. The Slovenes, for example, are not over-enthusiastic for it. In some respects the situation is analogous to that of the thirteen American States after the Revolution and before the adoption of the Constitution.

Powerful factors exist favorable to coöperation. The peoples are racially one, confronted everywhere by foreigners. Despite minor local differences, they possess in the Serbian a language intelligible to all, though in less degree to the Slovene, spoken by the great majority, the literary language of Croat, Bosnian, Helvat, Slavonian, Serbian, and in part of the Dalmatian. Bonds of race and language are strong.

There is practical absence of inherited animosities. The fact is recognized that whoever of them fought in the Austro-Hungarian ranks did so under military compulsion. There is also appreciative recognition of decimated Serbia's natural leadership.

The one compelling factor is the consciousness that unless united the political existence of any of them is most insecure.

In the attempt of the Jugo-Slavs to rule themselves in the only possible way, they are entitled to the sympathy and patience of all who believe in self-government by the people.

THE BOSNIANS

For the boundaries of the provinces on the east shore of the Adriatic political gerrymander is responsible, begun before America was discovered. The inhabitants, subjects until recently of Austria-Hungary, are Bosnians, Helvats, Croats, Dalmatians, Slavonians, and Slovenes-a perplexing medley of Slavic peoples, among whom are found a few Jews and foreigners.

The Bosnians, so named from the river Bosna, are Serbians and Croats, who for a time maintained a small and not powerful kingdom under a ruler called Ban. They are strongly drawn by sympathy and interest to their kinsmen in royal Serbia. At their capital, Serajevo, occurred on June 28, 1914, the assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince and

his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, which preluded the European war.

THE HELVATS

The Helvats, or Herzegovinians, who are Serbians and Croats, are appropriately named, their district having been lopped off from Bosnia for the advantage of a Herzog or Archduke.

THE CROATS *

The Croats were long intimately connected with the Serbians, whom they greatly resemble. In 1908 the Austro-Hungarian sovereign appropriated the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ninety-eight per cent of whose two million inhabitants are Serbians or Croats. There is no such unanimity in their religion. Forty-two per cent are Eastern Orthodox, calling themselves Serbians; twenty-eight per cent Roman Catholics, calling themselves Helvats, and twenty per cent Moslems, calling themselves Turks.

THE DALMATIANS †

The Dalmatians occupy a long, narrow, mountainous fringe of coast land and islands cast of the Adriatic. They were often called Pagani or Pagans in derision as being the last of the Slavs to embrace Christianity. Immigrating in great numbers they quickly absorbed the native population and retained their own characteristics. Just as the Slavs gave the name of Vlachs to the Latin-speaking Rumanians, so the Slavic invaders of Dalmatia called the Latinized people they found there Vlachs, or Mavro Vlachs - Black Vlachs. In the whirligig of language, Morlach, a corruption of Mavro-Vlach, has become the term by which Dalmatian Slavs are commonly known in English.

The dalmatic, or ceremonial outer robe, worn by the Roman Catholic clergy at the divine office and by sovereigns at coronations, was introduced into Rome in the second century from Dalmatia, where it was used only by the nobility.

Dalmatia, a shuttlecock between Venice and Hungary, never experienced a national existence. During the last two centuries it has been the alternate possession of Venice, France and Austria. It furnished many of the best sailors in the Austrian navy.

THE SLOVENES OR WENDS

The Slovenes or Wends are found outside the Balkan Peninsula in the former Austrian Provinces of Carinthia, Carniola and Styria.

*See also, in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "In Quaint, Curious Croatia," by Felix J. Koch (December, 1908).

See also, in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "Where East Meets West," by Marian Cruger Coffin (May, 1908), and "East of the Adriatic," by Kenneth McKenzie (December, 1912).