Reports of the state of feeling in Yugoslavia since the
shooting incident in the Skupshtina are disconcerting. The Serbs are, of course, the dominating element in the racial trinity of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and yet they are in many ways the most backward of the three races. The Croats would probably have made a much better showing in the contest for political pre-eminence if they had not been led by so erratic and inopportunely ferocious a leader as M. Raditch. There had been some signs that reason would serve them in the end in spite of this leadership but now Croat feeling is in a state of furious effervescence, to which there is no recent parallel. In every Croat town it is universally believed that the power behind the hand which fired the shots at M. Raditch and his colleagues was the power of the Government. Nothing apparently can destroy that belief. Here is a situation which needs very careful watching, for men who are as deeply moved as the Croats are now may not refrain from outbursts which will involve others besides themselves. In vain the King has taken charge of two of the orphans of M. Paul Raditch (nephew of the Croatian leader), who died of his wounds, and in vain he has sent an eminent surgeon to tend M. Raditch himself at Zagreb. The Croats are holding up the Government's policy of appeasement towards Italy, and the Nettuno Conventions may not be signed after all. • * * *
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