or keep out ideas, and the spiritual unity of the Jugo-
Slav race has already been achieved. But it is worth
while to study more closely the physical conditions of
the country, as they show what difficulties this aspiration
for unity has overcome.

The most westerly of the Jugo-Slav lands, as well
as the most civilised, is Croatia, a long narrow duchy
stretching from the upper reaches of the Drave down
to Fiume and the Adriatic in the south. A great
range of limestone mountains begins near Fiume and
runs all along the Adriatic coast to Montenegro. Unlike
all other Jugo-Slav lands, Croatia is not cut off by
mountains or rivers from access to her neighbours. The
fact has been most important in her history, for Latin
and Teutonic influences have penetrated deep into her
fibres. Fiume is a fine harbour which has nurtured a
hardy race of Croatian sailors or pirates since the early
Middle Ages. The Croats were subdued by the Magyars
from the north, and are still subjects of the Hungarian
Crown. But they have always claimed autonomy, and
have had a precarious kind of Home Rule since 1868.
Their most serious difficulty, however, has not been the
oppression of the Magyars, but the religious divisions
of their own race. Two-thirds of the Croats of Croatia
are Catholics and one-third Orthodox Greeks, and it is
only within recent times that Magyar oppression has
welded the two fragments of the race into one. The
result has been a great impulse towards realising the
unity of the Jugo-Slav race, for Zagreb (Agram) is not
only the capital of Croatia but the cultural centre of
Southern Slavdom. This home of literature and art has
nurtured the educating influences which have produced
the thought and expression of unity. If Serbia is the
steel which struck thought into flame, Croatia is the
flint enclosing the spiritual fire.

The Carst range runs, like a bare white wall, along

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