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visional Budget" for six months was then passed together with a Bill authorising the Government to conclude commercial treaties with Roumania, Servia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Turkey and Greece. The treaty with Roumania was to come into force on January 1, 1910; the others were still being negotiated at the end of the year.

As regards Austrian finance the Minister of Finance, Dr. Bilinski, pointed out that for the first time since 1888 it showed a deficit. The deficit amounted to 6,300,000l.; it would be reduced to 1,750,000l. if the Reichsrath would sanction the new taxes and loans which he proposed; but of this there was little prospect, as the Opposition parties continually impeded the progress of legislation by dilatory motions. Among the proposed taxes was one on bachelors and others who have to provide for only one person besides themselves.

In Hungary the Coalition Cabinet appointed in 1906 (ANNUAL REGISTER, 1906, p. 308) resigned office on April 26, having failed to carry out its engagement to introduce universal suffrage and to obtain the consent of the Austrian Cabinet to the division of the Joint Stock Bank into two autonomous, but linked banks. The Cabinet had become discredited by the dissensions among its members, and the Crown having refused to sanction a division of the State Bank or the extension of the use of the Magyar language in the regiments of the joint Army which are recruited from Hungary, as proposed by the Premier, Dr. Wekerle, the crisis dragged on to the end of the year, the Ministers remaining provisionally at their posts. On September 28 Dr. Wekerle announced in the Chamber that he had requested the Emperor-King to communicate with the leader of the parliamentary majority, M. Kossuth, as further co-operation between the parties hitherto united in the Coalition appeared out of the question, but no agreement was arrived at between him and the Crown, and subsequent negotiations carried on by a "Premier designate," Dr. Lukacs, and M. Justh, the leader of the left wing of the Independence party, were equally unsuccessful. liament adjourned without passing any Budget, actual or provisional, for 1910.

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Great excitement was produced in Austria by the prosecution for high treason at Agram of fifty-three persons charged with participation in a movement for the separation of Croatia, Slavonia, and Bosnia from the monarchy and their union with Servia. The trial began in March and lasted till October. was alleged that this prosecution was started in order to afford a justification for the annexation, and certainly there was an air of unreality about the trial which seemed to show that its object was purely political, as asserted by the Pester Lloyd. The principal evidence for the prosecution was that of an individual named Nastitch, who, after having assisted a number of Servian fanatics at Belgrade to manufacture bombs for use against Prince Nicholas of Montenegro, turned evidence against

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his accomplices, and subsequently published at Budapesth a pamphlet entitled "Finale," accusing certain of the defendants in the trial of participation in the Pan-Serb propaganda. No serious evidence of high treason was brought to light, and the time of the Court was wasted in undignified squabbles between the Public Prosecutor, the counsel for the defence, and the Judges on account of the innumerable violations of procedure committed by the latter. On October 5 the trial was concluded; thirty-one of the accused were sentenced to various terms of penal servitude and the remainder were acquitted. The trial was generally condemned by public opinion both in Austria and Hungary; and an appeal was lodged against the sentence, which was to come on before the Supreme Court in 1910. Still more scandalous as an exposure of Austrian official methods of casting odium on the opponents of the annexation was the result of a trial which took place in December of Dr. Friedjung, a wellknown Austrian historian and friend of Count Aehrenthal. Dr. Friedjung was the author of an article in the Neue Freie Presse accusing the members of the Serbo-Croatian coalition in the Croatian diet of conspiring with the Servian Government to detach Croatia from Hungary and annex it to Servia, and of receiving bribes from that Government; and forty-nine of the Croatian deputies consequently brought an action for libel against him. It was proved in the course of the trial that the documents produced by Dr. Friedjung and supplied to him by the Austrian Foreign Office in support of his charges against the Croatian deputies were forged, and he was compelled to admit that the charges were baseless, upon which the deputies declared themselves satisfied and the proceedings closed without the jury being called upon for a verdict. This trial was specially important from an international point of view, as it exploded the fabric of misrepresentation as to Servian and British intrigues against Austria-Hungary with which the Austrian public had been so long deluded. A Czech deputy remarked in the Reichsrath that "the natural consequence of this unhappy trial will be a thorough revision of the Austro-Hungarian system of diplomatic information, which in its present form has inflicted a highly unwelcome defeat upon the policy of Count Aehrenthal."

The inhabitants of Croatia all belong to the Servian race, but they had long been divided by religious dissensions; those of the Greek faith called themselves Serbs, like the people of the Kingdom of Servia, who are of the same religion, while the Roman Catholics were known as Croats. A coalition between the Serbs and the Croats was effected in consequence of the refusal of the Hungarian Government to allow the Croatian language to be used on the Croatian railways instead of Magyar (ANNUAL REGISTER, 1907, p. 314).

CHAPTER III.

RUSSIA, TURKEY, AND THE MINOR STATES OF EASTERN

EUROPE.

I. RUSSIA.

THE long and difficult process of bridging the interval between absolutism and constitutional government which was the aim of Russian moderate Liberals made but little progress during the year 1909. The reactionary elements, both at Court and among the people, were still very strong, and the local authorities, most of whom were reared in the traditions of autocracy, continued to exercise the arbitrary powers they had formerly possessed almost without a check. Although several of the death sentences passed by the local tribunals on working men who went on strike and on political offenders were cancelled or commuted by the Tsar, the number of persons executed in 1908 was stated to be 782 as compared with 627 in 1907, and of those in exile for political and other offences over 180,000.

The chief political incident in Russia during the first part of the year was the disclosure of the relations which had existed between the revolutionists and the secret police. The leading member of the Revolutionary Socialist party, Azeff, was condemned by the specially constituted secret tribunal of the party in Paris as an agent provocateur who had arranged, with the connivance of the police, most of the outrages and assassinations attempted or carried out in Russia during the previous eight years, in order to facilitate the arrest of the chief members of the party and afford pretexts for a reactionary policy. It was alleged that he had instructions to let the Terrorist organisations succeed or fail as it suited the purpose of his immediate employers in their police campaign against the Revolutionists, and even to organise demonstrations and risings, so as to gain credit to the police for putting them down. The police officials had made use of members of the revolutionary organisations to prepare crimes, in order to produce a dramatic discovery of the plan before it was carried out, and thereby to obtain advancement. In the case of the plots against M. Plehve and the Grand Duke Serge, which it was alleged were prepared by Azeff with the complicity of the police, the latter had failed to intervene in time to prevent the assassinations. These allegations produced intense excitement in the Duma and the Press, and on February 1, M. Lopukhin, ex-Chief of the Police Department, was arrested for complicity in the revolutionary organisation. His trial took place in May. The Public Prosecutor held that the evidence showed that M. Lopukhin had endeavoured to help the Terrorists and was therefore liable to the charge of complicity with them, while the counsel for the defence pointed out

that all the accused had done was to denounce Azeff to the Revolutionists as an agent of the police when he ascertained that Azeff intended to murder the Tsar in order to rehabilitate himself with his Terrorist associates. The presiding judge would not allow M. Lopukhin to make any statement as to the relations of the police with the Revolutionists, and he was sentenced to five years' hard labour and the loss of civil rights for "belonging to a criminal association." This sentence was received with profound dissatisfaction, and the President's ruling was severely criticised. Another debate in the Duma on the relations between the Revolutionists and the Secret Police occurred in December when Colonel Karpoff, Chief of the Secret Police at St. Petersburg, was killed by an infernal machine by a man named Voskresensky or Petroff, who was alleged to be a Revolutionist and a police spy like Azeff. The leader of the Constitutional Democrats suggested that the police intended to arrange a spurious outrage in order to facilitate the renewal of exceptional measures, but this view was not accepted by the majority of the Duma.

A remarkable demonstration took place in the Duma on January 2 on a motion introduced by Professor Miliukof against the death penalty pronounced on thirty-two workmen for participation in the railway strike at Ekaterinoslav in 1905 (ANNUAL REGISTER, 1905, p. 308). The motion was rejected by the Centre, upon which the whole of the Opposition left the House, M. Guchkoff, the Octobrist leader, at the same time declaring that while in his opinion the sentences were lawfully passed for acts of terrorism, justice should be tempered with mercy. The Duma was then prorogued till February 2; but the Tsar cancelled the sentences, and the number of executions afterwards greatly diminished. Much satisfaction was expressed in September at the issue by M. Stolypin of a circular to the local authorities enjoining the greatest circumspection in referring cases to courtsmartial, and stating that in view of the general tranquillity, capital punishment must be applied only in extreme cases. In March a determined onslaught was made upon the Octobrists by the extreme Right of the Duma, coinciding with an attempt by Count Witte and M. Durnovo in the Upper House to diminish the rights of the Duma to initiate Army and Navy reform, but both were defeated by substantial majorities, and a motion proposed by the Octobrists to restrict death sentences by court-martial was also carried against the Right, which now openly declared itself in opposition to M. Stolypin. He, however, continued to enjoy the confidence of the Tsar, who had conferred upon him the Order of the White Eagle on the occasion of the Russian Easter, and expressed warm recognition of his ability and patriotism in an Imperial Rescript on April 11. A month later, however, M. Stolypin and his Cabinet resigned because the Tsar had declined to assent to a bill for the reform of the Naval Staff which had been introduced in the Duma

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by the Government and passed by both Houses, on the ground that the introduction of such a bill in the Duma constituted a dangerous infringement of the Imperial prerogative as to the administration of the Army and Navy. He refused, however, to accept the resignation of the Cabinet, and issued another Imperial Rescript on May 11, expressing entire approval of M. Stolypin's policy, reaffirming his intention to maintain the existing regime, and charging the Prime Minister to draw up, in conjunction with the Ministers of War and Marine, rules within the limits indicated by the fundamental laws of the State determining what legislative affairs of the War and Marine departments are subject to the Tsar's immediate decision. These rules, as sanctioned by the Tsar, were published on September 16. Under them, all legislative questions which concern the organisation of the land and sea forces and the defence of the country are subject to the immediate sanction of the Tsar as supreme "War Lord," as well as all questions relating to the administration of the Army and Navy, including all dispositions of estimates for the naval and military departments, provided that no further appropriations are entailed. If fresh credits are necessary, supplementary amounts must be applied for in the usual legislative course, detailed statements as to their employment being first submitted in the Budget.

The bill for the annual contingent of the Army, which was fixed at 456,535 men, was passed by the Duma on May 5. There was a heated discussion, caused by attacks on the Jews by the extreme Right for wholesale evasion of the conscription. Nearly one half of the recruits came from the provinces of "Great" Russia, the remainder being furnished by the Polish and Ruthenian provinces (the Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania, Podolia, and Volhynia), the Baltic provinces, the Caucasus, etc. It was urged that as the whole Jewish contingent actually supplied to the colours did not exceed 20,000 men, it would be in the interest of the Army if the Jewish population were liberated from military service altogether, and compelled to pay a suitable war tax. This proposal was rejected by the Duma, the majority contending that the evasion of military duty by the Jews was attributable to the fact that they were placed on a footing of inequality before the laws of the Empire. A resolution was ultimately passed reiterating the recommendation made in the previous year that a more equal distribution should be made of the military burdens all over the Empire and that the existing system of utilising recruits for various noncombatant duties should be abolished; also, that Finland should be called upon to make an appropriate contribution to the military expenses of the Empire. The latter course was subsequently adopted by the Government. On December 30 the Duma unanimously voted at a secret sitting 11,000,000l. for the reorganisation and redistribution of the Army.

The keels of the four Dreadnoughts sanctioned by the Tsar

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