ON MAY 30, 1917
"The undersigned deputies, assembled as the 'Jugo-slav Club,' taking their stand on the principle of nationalities and on the rights of the Croatian state, declare that they demand that all the countries in which Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs live shall be united in an independent and democratic state organism, free from the domination of any foreign nation and placed under the sceptre of the dynasty Habsburg-Lorraine. They declare that they will employ all their forces to realize this demand of their single nation. The undersigned will take part in the parliamentary labor after having made this reserve...."
[FN: Referring to the Declaration of the Jugo-Slav Club, May
30, 1917, in the Vienna Parliament J. J. Grgurevich,
Secretary of the South Slavic National Council, Washington,
D. C., writes:
"In order to understand correctly this Declaration, it is
necessary to state that the same was presented in the Vienna
Parliament during war time, when each, even the most
innocent, word in regard to rights, principles of
nationality, and liberty of peoples, was considered and
punished as a crime and treason, by imprisonment, even
death.
"Were it not for these facts, this Declaration would never
contain the words: 'and placed under the sceptre of the
dynasty Habsburg-Lorraine.' It was, therefore, necessary to
insert these words in order to make possible the public
announcement of this Declaration; it was necessary to make a
moral sacrifice for the sake of a great moral and material
gain, which was secured through this Declaration among the
people to which it was addressed and which understood it in
the sense and in the spirit of the Declaration of Corfu.">[