APPENDIX II
THE PACT OF CORFU
At the conference of the members of the late (Serbian) Coalition Cabinet and those of the present Cabinet, and also the representatives of the Jugo-Slav Committee in London, all of whom have hitherto been working on parallel lines, views have been exchanged in collaboration with the president of the Skupstina, on all questions concerning the life of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in their joint future State.
We are happy in being able once more on this occasion to point to the complete unanimity of all parties concerned.
In the first place, the representatives of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes declare anew and most categorically that our people constitutes but one nation, and that it is one in blood, one by the spoken and written language, by the continuity and unity of the territory in which it lives, and finally in virtue of the common and vital interests of its national existence and the general development of its moral and material life.
The idea of its national unity has never suffered extinction, although all the intellectual forces of its enemy were directed against its unification, its liberty and its national existence. Divided between several States, our nation is in Austria-Hungary alone split up into eleven provincial administrations, coming under thirteen legislative bodies. The feeling of national unity, together with the spirit of liberty and independence, have supported it in the never-ending struggles of centuries against the Turks in the East and against the Germans and the Magyars in the West.
Being numerically inferior to its enemies in the East and West, it was impossible for it to safeguard its unity as a nation and a State, its liberty and its independence against the brutal maxim of "might goes before right" militating against it both East and West.
But the moment has come when our people is no longer isolated. The war imposed by German militarism upon Russia, upon France and upon England for the defense of their honor as well as for the liberty and independence of small nations, has developed into a struggle for the Liberty of the World and the Triumph of Right over Might. All nations which love liberty and independence have allied themselves together for their common defense, to save civilization and liberty at the cost of every sacrifice, to establish a new international order based upon justice and upon the right of every nation to dispose of itself and so organize its independent life; finally to establish a durable peace consecrated to the progress and development of humanity and to secure the world against a catastrophe similar to that which the conquering lust of German Imperialism has provoked.
To noble France, who has proclaimed the liberty of nations, and to England, the hearth of liberty, the Great American Republic and the new, free and democratic Russia have joined themselves in proclaiming as their principal war aim the triumph of liberty and democracy and as basis of the new international order the right of free self-determination for every nation.
Our nation of the three names, which has been the greatest sufferer under brute force and injustice and which has made the greatest sacrifices to preserve its right of self-determination, has with enthusiasm accepted this sublime principle put forward as the chief aim of this atrocious war, provoked by the violation of this very principle.