Introduction 
In the days before Christ when the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, or more 
shortly, the Southern Slavs, were living together with the other Slav races some- 
where on the plains of Russia, the present territory of the Kingdom of Serbs, Cro- 
ats and Slovenes was inhabited by Illyrian and Thracian tribes. 
The fertility and natural wealth of the country made it subject from quite 
early times to the plundering incursions of many wild and conquering tribes. The 
Celts, Romans, Goths and many more passed through this country for longer 
or shorter periods. At the end cf the 5th centry A. D. the South Slavs appeared 
here for the first time, having come down to the Danube for some unknown reason 
from Russia. Inthe 7th century they were stll coming steadily and by the end of 
the 8th and the beginning of the ninth centuries this great etnographic change 
in these lands was completed. By that time practically the whole of the Balkan 
Peninsula was settled by various Slav tribes, which had their racial, but not as 
yet any state organisation. As soon as they came into new home however 
they made frequent attempts to set up their own independent state. 
They made these attempts in various places and at different times and 
in the course of the Middle Ages they succeeded in setting up smaller or greater 
states, but the desire for an independent state which should embrace all the Sout- 
hern Slaves was not fulfilled in those days. 
Even those states which were created and that partial independence of the 
Jugoslav peoples did not last long. More powerful and more numerous enemies 
wiped out the south Slav states, and the beginning of the 19th centry found the 
Jugoslavs under Turkish, Austrian and Hungarian rule. 
The Serbs and the Montenegrins were the firsy to liberate themselves from 
she Turkish yoke. The process of liberation went on from the beginning of the 
19th century until 1912, when the last Jugoslav districts were freed from the Turks 
in what were called the Balkan Wars. It was the superhuman sacrifice of the Great 
War however which finally realised the dream of the Jugoslav peoples, in the 
iberation and unification of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes into one unified inde- 
pendent state, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. 
The Serb, Croat and Slovene state, also known as Jugoslavia, is situated 
between the following states: Italy, Austria, Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria, 
Greece and Albania. It has frontiers with seven states, and is therefore a most