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agrarian system, still suffers from some of the disabilities of serfdom, and it is on him that the burden of taxation falls most heavily. This agrarian system has always been at the root of all Bosnian troubles, and it is strange that Austro-Hungary did not at the outset take advantage of the free hand that was given her here to deal effectually with the situation. In her anxiety to respect existing rights and institutions, she hesitated to change the old system of land tenure, and she continued the Turkish plan of taxation. The greater part of the revenue is still derived from the tithe. Theoretically, there is much to be said in favour of the tithe, with its sliding scale that varies with a bad or a good harvest. But its collection presented many difficulties. The collector could not cover a large district, to assess the value of crops at the moment most convenient to each peasant, and the crops were frequently ruined while they waited for his coming; his visits and assessment, again, were often regulated by the baksheesh the peasant could afford to pay. To avoid these objections, a system is now being gradually introduced by which the land is assessed, on a carefully drawn-up scheme of valuations, for a period of ten years, the assessors being peasants elected by their fellowvillagers and controlled by an official. There seems no reason why this system should not work well in a country where there is an accurate land survey and the officials are honest and capable.

The peasant sums up his present position rather in this way: 'Well, yes, it is better now, for we are safe everywhere by day or by night, and there is justice for everyone in the land. But in old days we could go to the mountain and cut wood or feed our animals where we liked, and we might fish where we pleased, and all the wild game was ours; now that is all forbidden. And under the Sultan we paid no taxes on our vegetables, but only on our crops; now we must pay on every leek that grows, and all in money; and that is hard, for the tax collector fixes the value beforehand, and then later on we often have to sell our produce at a low price, and so we lose on our harvest. It is good for our young men to serve the Kaiser as soldiers; they learn some evil, but they see the world and to e fino-that is finethe Serb's highest expression of admiration. It is officially estimated that, at the present rate, within some twenty or thirty years all kmets, who in 1895 formed about one half of the total population, will have bought themselves free; and if this calculation proves true, it ought to discount some of the savage attacks made periodically on the administration, which describe the Bosnians as living in a hopeless state of slavery.

The other grievances of the Serbs are educational and religious; their schools and churches are, they allege, persecuted by the Roman Catholic faction. The Dinaric Alps have always formed a kind of boundary between Eastern and Western Christianity, but the Franciscans have from very early days had settlements in Bosnia, and

carried on an active propaganda there which, even under Turkish rule, was protected by Austro-Hungary, and in recent times the zeal of Roman Catholic prelates has admittedly proved an embarrassment to the Government. But religious friction seems outwardly reduced to a minimum. Mohammedans and Christians will exchange greetings on the road, and it is a perpetual source of surprise to a traveller familiar with conditions of life in Macedonia to see mixed groups of Serbs and Turks on their way to the bazaar. The Turk may speak confidentially of his Servian neighbours as 'schlechte collegen,' and I noticed that my Turkish guides were wont to hail a Christian peasant with an unceremonious 'Hé! you Serb!' whereas imagination fails to picture a kmet addressing a Mohammedan with 'Hé! you Turk!' I remember the accents of spiritual pride with which a ragged little Roman Catholic tender of goats, some eight years old, speaking of her Orthodox companion of the same age, who was also clad in a single garment, informed me, 'She is a Serb, but I am a Christian.'

Equality before the law and absolute security of life and property -these are the great benefits that the Occupation has conferred on the Provinces, and last summer, when the river Lim carried down to Bosnian waters the corpses of Christian peasants, the victims of some border affray between Albanians and Serbs in Turkish territory, and every week brought news of murder and massacre from Macedonia, it was possible to appreciate more fully the miracle that AustroHungary, by means of her admirable gendarmerie, has wrought for Bosnia and the Hercegovina.

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The Occupation is, it must be conceded, primarily a military one. The great garrisons, the ring of forts along the Eastern frontier, the fine military roads, the new railway to Vishegrad, a triumph of engineering skill, and the large sums of money these works representall this is suggestive of permanency-though the mere word annexation is almost enough to create active disturbances—and suggestive too of an eventual advance Salonica-wards; but, assuming that the motives of Austro-Hungary were in the first instance no more disinterested than those of any other Power desiring a peaceful frontier and an extension of territory seawards, it must still be admitted that she has succeeded in bringing what was the most backward part of the Sultan's dominions more or less into line with the rest of Europe. There is, there always must be, an under-current of discontent, of irritation against the foreigner who rules with a strong hand, the governing class that is separated from the governed by race, religion, and sympathy. Is it otherwise in India, or in Egypt, or in any other occupied territory?

The acquisition of a wedge of territory between lawless Albanians on the one side and ambitious independent Slav States on the other, and the addition of some millions more of disaffected Slavs, might prove a doubtful advantage to the AustroHungarian Empire.

Servian newspapers have not been slow to point out that whereas Great Britain has already granted a Constitution to the Transvaal, which she won by force of arms five years ago, the inhabitants of Bosnia and the Hercegovina are still, after thirty years of peaceful occupation, denied a direct voice in the government of their country, and are reduced to that Oriental and least satisfactory means of protest, the filing of endless petitions; and, more than this, all discussion of Bosnian affairs in the Delegations is said to meet with strong official discouragement. On the other hand, Bosniaks sit on the municipal councils, and about a quarter of the 4,000 officials who administer the Provinces are said to be of Bosnian origin, though at present these Bosniaks are to be found chiefly in the lower grades of the service.

It may be better, in the abstract, for a people to work out its own salvation, but the most confirmed believer in national independence must admit that the Provinces are not ready for self-government, if indeed self-government could ever be a possibility here, while the inhabitants remain thus divided among themselves. In the meantime, till the war which, sooner or later, must break out in the Balkans has effected changes impossible now to foresee, the present Bosnian Administration, with its high proportion of capable and conscientious officials, seems on the way to deal successfully with many of the problems bequeathed to it by its Turkish and Austro-Hungarian predecessors.

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ELLINOR F. B. THOMPSON.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake
to return unaccepted MSS.

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My distinguished successor in the Prime Ministership of Canada has during these past few memorable days asserted with a persuasiveness all his own that the British Empire' rests upon foundations firmer than the rock and as endurable as the ages.' It is a comforting reflection, but none the less, looking back over a long public career in this country and in Canada, am I convinced that it is only by a tenacious hold upon central British ideals and by a steadfast pursuit of the policy these suggest that the British Empire can be preserved from the disintegrating influences that have overwhelmed so many of the Empires of the past.

Sir John Seeley has asserted that the British Empire was won in a 'fit of absentmindedness,' and we are ready enough to believe that in some way or other we shall continue to 'muddle through' and persist as a governing and idealising force in the world. We trust to the seemingly inevitable trend of British and Colonial tendencies towards closer unity. That the inevitable trend' is there we may thankfully believe, but the more we learn of the inner history of former times the more we realise how much method there also was in the absentmindedness' of the Empire-builders of the days of

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VOL. LXI-No. 363

701

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Queen Elizabeth and William Pitt. And the guiding hand of statesmanship is as surely necessary now as then.

Outside the British Empire, Germany and the United States are recognised as the most progressive and enlightened industrial nations, and it is not unprofitable at times to see ourselves as others see us. Professor Carl Johannes Fuchs, Professor of Political Economy in the University of Freiburg, one of the most distinguished of German economists, in his great work on the Trade Policy of various countries, declares that

the British Empire, more than any other nation in Europe, is capable of becoming a self-sufficient commercial state, and the political and commercial issues are so bound together that it might be advisable for the Mother Country to purchase political advantages even at the cost of some economic sacrifices. On political and economical grounds [he adds] England needs now more than ever to retain her great Colonial Empire. Owing to the numerous and active centrifugal forces of to-day, this can only be done by a closer union, which will be worth any cost.

And writing in 1891 he makes the following striking prophetic declaration :

It remains to be seen whether time will raise up to England a statesman who possesses clear-sightedness, courage, energy, and tact enough to bring this question to a happy issue-a question which is of so much importance for the future of England, as well for her position among nations as for her trade. But it must be soon, or it will be for ever too late.

It would be easy to find confirmation of Professor Fuchs's diagnosis in the recent policy of Germany, and especially her determined though happily frustrated effort to compel Canada to extend to her the tariff preference granted in 1897 to the United Kingdom. It is enough to quote what was said in the course of a speech to the German 'Intellectuals' at Berlin on the 12th of January, 1907, when Herr Dernburg, Colonial Director, urged that Germany must develop, and develop forthwith, a trade policy applicable to the whole German Empire similar to that policy of Imperial reciprocity which is now before the British people.

Look from Germany to the United States, and we find Mr. J. J. Hill, the well-known railway president, and one of the master-minds of the United States of to-day, declaring in a speech at the Merchants' Club, Chicago, on the 10th of November, 1906, that the overthrow of Imperial Preference at the British General Election of 1906 had given the United States one further chance. Had that policy been ratified, he said,

had England really granted to the Colonies a preference in its markets for their products based on reciprocal advantages, this country [the United States] would have felt the double thrust in a decline of business with its greatest and its third greatest customers on two sides of the Atlantic. The defeat of the plan has not greatly disappointed the dependencies [he went on to say], but it has assured them that for the present they must seek commercial alliances elsewhere.

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