SLAVONIC nationalities are the despair of the historian.
Their story is complex beyond ordinary complexity,
and bloody beyond ordinary bloodiness. To write the
history even of that part of the Slavonic races known
as the Southern Slavs or Jugo-Slavs is like threading a
labyrinth. The only method which offers a real chance
of success is to trace the fortunes of a specific race
among the Southern Slavs and to relate it closely to
the other nationalities of that area. For this purpose
the history of the Serbians of Montenegro and of
Serbia is the simplest as well as the most important.
One has been always free until to-day, the other
constitutes a powerful unit round which the aspirations
of the Southern Slavs now centre. If there ever is a
Southern Slav federation, it will be because of the
kingdom of Serbia, which has held up the same kind
of hope and example of unity to the Southern Slavs
that the kingdom of Piedmont did to the Southern
Italians. The history of the Serbian race in Monte-
negro and Serbia is therefore the most important,
because these lands are the core of that rugged stock
which has preserved or achieved freedom, and thus
become a hope and a beacon to the Slavs enslaved under

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