One thing is certain in all this interplay of forces—­that it is too late in the day to suppress Southern Slav national consciousness, and that there can never be durable peace and contentment on the eastern Adriatic until the unity of the race has been achieved.  It would be premature to discuss the exact forms which the new State would assume; but when the time comes it will be found that the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Croatia-Slavonia, Istria and Carniola, will acclaim their liberation at the hands of free Serbia and Montenegro.  Their watchword, however, will be not conquest from without, but free and voluntary union from within—­a union which will preserve their existing political institutions and culture as a worthy contribution to the common Southern Slav fund.  The natural solution is a federal union under which the sovereign would be crowned not only as King of Serbia but with the crown of Zvonomir as King of the Triune Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia, thus reviving historic traditions dating from the tenth century and never abandoned or forgotten.  The Croatian Parliament would continue in Agrani, parallel with the Serb Parliament in Belgrade, but both would be represented in a central federal Parliament.  The only question is whether the existing provincial divisions should be allowed to survive, the Diets of Bosnia, Dalmatia, Istria, and Carniola thus forming conjointly with the Serbian, Montenegrin, and Croatian Parliaments the units on which the new constitution is based, or whether complete unification should be attempted.  The latter would be the ideal arrangement, but in view of the great divergence of local customs and institutions it would probably be premature, and it might therefore be wiser to preserve the smaller units until they were ripe for fusion, rather than to compromise by creating a dual State of Serbia and Croatia.

Sec.7. The Roumanian Question.—­I have dwelt at some length upon the Southern Slav problem, because it is as complicated as it is unfamiliar to public opinion in this country.  It has been the causa causans of the present struggle, and if neglected or mismanaged at the final settlement, may again plunge Europe into trouble at some future date.  Parallel with any solution of the Southern Slav question must come the solution of the Roumanian question, which represents the other half of Austria-Hungary’s Balkan policy.  The Kingdom of Roumania is, alike in territory, population, and resources, the leading power in the Balkan peninsula, but over five million Roumanians, including the very cream of the race, still live under foreign domination.  Of these at least 3,500,000 are in Austria-Hungary, the great majority under the grossly oppressive rule of the Magyars; and the redemption of Transylvania and the neighbouring counties of Hungary has always been the ideal of all patriotic Roumanians, even of those who looked to a distant future for its realisation.  Russia’s