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Stefan Raditch's successor as leader of the Croats is Dr. Vladko Matchek. Last week he strove grimly and discreetly to persuade General Zivkovitch not to sup press freedom of speech and assembly utterly in Croatia. Curiously enough, Dr. Matchek favored the dictature when it was first proclaimed, but last fortnight he said:
"The King wiped the slate clean and we rejoiced in the hope that this would open the way to a solution of our difficulties. . . .
"We were quickly disillusioned. . . . The five Croat representatives in the new cabinet have been carefully handpicked, not one of them representing any Croat party organization.
"Our uneasiness has been further augmented in recent days on account of numerous raids on Croat homes and by the fact that all our societies and associations, including choral and gymnastic ones, have been dissolved. This gives us the distinct impression that the new government is directed against us. . . .
" Discoursing upon this subject a few days previously, King Alexander said:
"The ministers that I have chosen are exclusively honest and capable men. There are five Croats in the cabinet, so that that part of the nation cannot claim to be oppressed."
Royal Family. The enthusiasm of Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania for her son-in-law King Alexander is well known. Her Majesty has said:
"I have never known a man who worked so hard. Then, too, he is one of the fastest walkers I know. It is extremely difficult to keep pace with him. All his movements are nervous. . . ."
As a child Prince Alexander was brought up in Geneva—since the Obrenovitches were in power at Belgrade—until he went to St. Petersburg to join the Corps des Pages of the Tsar. He was a younger son, and when his father, Peter I, succeeded the murdered Alexander Obrenovitch in 1903, he had no expectation of reaching the throne ahead of his elder brother Crown Prince George. However, a distressing malady forced Prince George to renounce his right of succession in 1909, and a similar necessity obliged King Peter to appoint Prince Alexander regent on June 24, 1914.
Possibly the young regent did not know that his prime minister, the venerable and scrupulous Nikolai Pashitch, was even then conniving at the prelude to the World War: the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo. The guilt of Pashitch has been affirmed by Ljuba Jovanovitch, the Minister of Education.
When Austria threatened Serbia (now part of Jugoslavia) on account of the assassination, young Regent Alexander sought and received the aid of Tsar Nicholas II, at whose father's court he had been a page. As the Great Powers mobilized (for their various and several reasons), and as the World War burst upon Europe, the wisdom of M. Pashitch's course was seriously in doubt. He lived to see it supremely vindicated, from the Serbian standpoint; for the peace treaties gave to Serbia additional territories of 59,400 square miles, including huge slices of Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, and the whole of the little realm of Montenegro.