Rumours keep spreading out of Croatia about a supposed aspiration of the Serbs to create a greater Serbia and establish greater Serbian hegemony. It is a permanent refrain for all anti-Serbian actions played not only to the Yugoslav but also the world public.124 On the one hand, it purports to show the Serbs and Serbia as aggressors with high territorial pretensions, and on the other, it tends to conceal their own aggression and their own territorial appetites against other ethnic, state and historic territories.

This tactics, insofar as Croatian policy is concerned, has been known for a long time. It was inherited from former Austria-Hungary, which demonized the Serbian liberation and unification intentions to cover up its own appetites for the territories in the Balkans and its support for the German policy of the penetration of the east. According to this tactics, everything that is Serbian is invariably proclaimed to be nationalistic, with the objective of rendering impossible the realization of any Serbian interests which were at variance with the Austro-Hungarian ones. Following the tradition of the Austro-Hungarian anti-Serbian policy, in which they also participated and often even took the lead, politicians with expansionist Croatian ambitions, in all historical periods since the revolution of 1848 to this day, denounced the Serbian policy by invariably describing it as the greater-Serbian policy. Viewing the Serbs as the main competition to the greater-Croatian idea, Croatian politicians not only dreamed of a greater Croatia but they also worked stubbornly and consistently on its realization, holding on to the Machiavelist principle that all means are permitted for the reaching of this aim, including the genocidal extermination of the Serbs.

Croatia's tendencies toward territorial expansion are of old date. Numerically small, also small in the area they occupy, the Croatian people had great imperial ambitions. This is borne witness by the names which they use: "Alpine Croats" (for Slovenes), "Orthodox Croats" (for Serbs), "flower of the Croatian people" (for Moslems), followed by "Turkish Croatia" (for Bosnia), "Red Croatia" (for Montenegro), "White Croatia" (for Dalmatia) and "Carinthian Croatia" (for Slovenia). These names had been carefully nurtured for hundreds of years and rooted in the consciousness of the Croat with the idea of developing in him a conviction of the greatness of Croatia and of the numerical strength of the Croats.

Although back in 1866 Imbro Tkalac warned that states cannot be founded "upon old papers and 'virtual' territorial demands", the policy based on state and historic right could not be other than greater-Croatian. What paranoid ambitions were entertained in territorial demands for the realization of Croatian state and historic right is shown by the example of the rightist newspaper Hervatska (Croatia). In the article entitled Which is the True Croatian Policy and Who Represents It?, in No. 6 of 1871, it writes: "The lands to which Croatia's state rights extended, in terms of history and nationality, stretch from Germany to Macedonia, from the Danube to the sea and according to their separate provincial names, they are: Southern Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Gorizia, Istria, Croatia, Slavonia, Krajina, Dalmatia, Upper Albania, Montenegro, Hercegovina, Bosnia, Rascia, Serbia -have one true name - the State of Croatia. These lands extend over four thousand square miles and their inhabitants number up to eight million people." The standpoint of Hervatska was not a solitary one, it was not the product of an irresponsible newsman or politician, it was not a momentary mood. It was the natural outcome of a deeply rooted and widespread conviction. In 1869 Eugen Kvaternik wrote to don Mihovil Pavlinovic that if the policy of the Party of Right is followed, if the Croatian state and historic right is observed, then "not from Drava to the sea, but from Salzburg Alps to Kosovo and Albania, will fly the flag of the pure and unsoiled Croatia!"125

Nursed with such conquering ambitions and "armed" with the state and historic right, "the Croatian academic youth" behind which stood the father of Croatia Ante Starcevic, believed that not only Bosnia and Hercegovina but all of Albania, and all of Rascia, all of Upper Moesia or the present day Serbia, are Croatian lands!"126 One of the followers of this "specific Croatiandom" wrote that "the Croatian king is called upon to place the cross upon the church of St. Sofia in Istanbul.127

The well-known Croatian man of letters, Djuro Dezelic, follower of Starcevic's Party of Right, published in 1879 the book Croatian Nationality or the Soul of the Croatian People, in which he wrote that inhabited by the Croats and therefore Croatian provinces are: "all of the present day Dalmatia with the Bay of Kotor, Bosnia with the Turkish Croatia, and the Novi Pazar Pashalik (Rascia), present day Hercegovina which back in 1789, when Angel wrote his history book, was called Turkish Dalmatia, and finally Montenegro with Northern Albania."128

In the hope of realizing its ambitions regarding Bosnia and Hercegovina, the Croatian Sabor, on August 28, 1878, in an address to Emperor Francis Joseph, expressed the hope that Bosnia might be so constituted that "in the course of time it could be handed over to be governed by the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia".129 Desire for Bosnia and Hercegovina was such that Bishop Strossmayer bitterly wrote to Racki on March 24, 1878: "Our people are staring at Bosnia and Hercegovina but have lost sight of the fact that all our internal logic is against it. How can we be liberated by someone who would sink us in a drop of water, who is always obsessed with it, to do us in, to throw upon us an eternal anathema!"130

Barely twenty years earlier, before he became disillusioned with Austria and its policy toward the Croats, Strossmayer in his confidential memoranda addressed to the Prime Minister Count Rehberg, tried to persuade the most responsible political factors in Vienna to commit themselves more to the solution of the eastern question, hinting that Bosnia and Hercegovina, with the aid of the Croats and the Military Frontier, would fall into their hands like a ripe apple."131 Offering Bosnia and Hercegovina to Austria, the Bishop wanted these areas to be wrested away from Turkey, in the hope of getting to pass over to the Monarchy, and eventually, if possible, annex them to Croatia at a suitable moment. He looked upon Bosnia as Croat land, and in 1879 he wrote to the Banja Luka Bishop Marijan Markovic: "What is Bosnia is also Croatia, and what is Croatia, is also Bosnia."132

The Croat expansionist ambitions were also expressed in the programme of the Party of Right which was drafted at the beginning of November 1893. The first point of this progamme said: "The Croatian state and natural right must be revived, by restoring the wholeness of the Kingdom of Croatia through the unification of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Rijeka, Medjumurje, Bosnia, Hercegovina, Istria, Kranjska, Carinthia and Styria within the Habsburg Monarchy.133 When he says "restoration of the wholeness of the Kingdom of Croatia" and unification with the mentioned areas, it presupposes the fact that these areas had been together once. However, in their desire to create a greater Croatia, the rightists forged historical facts not only in this programme but in many other cases. According to the territorial demands of the Croats, there are three categories of countries. The first includes the lands which make up the "real scope", and which include what was then Croatia and Slavonia with the city of Rijeka and surroundings. The second category are the countries to which a so-called virtual claim is made, and which include Medjumurje, Dalmatia, Kvarner Islands, a part of Istria and the north-western parts of Bosnia. The third category includes the lands which the nationalist Croatian circles wanted to see as part of Croatia on the basis of the "Croatian state and natural right". In their programme of 1893, the Rightists included Styria, Carinthia, Kranjska and the whole of Bosnia and Hercegovina, although they had never been a part of Croatia. At any rate, the plan on the building of a greater Croatia, which would be implemented in stages, was fully completed in the second half of the 19th century. In the decades which followed, strategy and tactics were only elaborated for the realization of the desired targets.

For every one of their geomanias, for example for Bosnia and Hercegovina, for Vojvodina, for parts of Slovenia, for Montenegro, the Croats had many justifications: historical, natural, ethnic, geographic, economic, geopolitical and others. In this sense they worked out a well-developed system. The Croats fiercely attacked and denounced any claim or pretension to the territories which they coveted. In this connection, from the 19th century to this day, the Croats resorted to the demonization of the Serbs and they are doing so to this day. According to them, the Serbs are a bandit people, Byzantine in their cunning. They are bandits and chetniks, while the Croats are cultured, humane and peacable, the territories they claim rightfully belong to them, while the Serbs want to get hold of them out of greed, because they are an upsetting factor, a source of crises, disorder and war.134 In this manner, through an admirable tenacity and well elaborated tactics, undisturbed and often even aided by Belgrade's short-sighted and imbecilic policy, they raised their greater-Croatian demands to the degree of just and legitimate rights. Having attained that, they made it clear that they were prepared to realize their national demands at any price, even by using brutal force.135

The Serbs never found adequate replies to such Croat behaviour. Imbued by the idea of Yugoslavism, sincere and credulous champions of brotherhood and unity, they were permanently late, uncovered the truth with astonishment and with a childish perplexity, wondered why they were hated by the Croats and why they are doing them harm.

The newspaper of the Bosnian-Hercegovinian Croats, Hrvatski dnevnik (Croatian Daily) which had a purely racist approach to the solution of territorial questions, published a series of articles on whom Bosnia and Hercegovina belongs to. This series was printed in 1907 in Sarajevo in a booklet entitled The Croatian Bosnia (We and They Over There). At the very beginning, this booklet, contaminated with Franko-furtimist poison, says: "Bosnia's geographic, ethnographic and historical situation clearly determines its political position vis-a-vis the Monarchy, and still more clearly the political role of the Croats in Bosnia. It represents the cultural link between Europe and the east, the link between the Monarchy and Bosnia, which may have loosened during the difficult historical catastrophes, but was never cut off. It represents the ethnic link between the territory where the Croatian tribe founded its first albeit small state of present-day Croatia; it represents the link which legally entitles our King to feel as a ruler in Bosnia and not a mandatary, in other words Croats alone, whether of Christian or Islamic faith, represent the element which is called upon to bridge the gap existing between Europe and the Balkans.

"This feeling is alive in all of us, it clearly determines our task in our historical and cultural development: first to bring Bosnia close to Croatia, pave the way to Monarchy and to the heart of Europe, which wherever you go from Bosnia leads only across Croatia. Croatia will then resurrect again because the link of blood is harder than the link of steel!

"Everyone knows full well that we shall have to fight along this road: we have been for a long time in the eternal struggle against those elements which gravitate towards the other side of the described fatal gap, which some centrifugal force drives out of the community within the Monarchy, who yesterday pretended being loyal to the government and today are weaving threads which they throw across the Drina, who call us the Croat brothers so that in a brotherly embrace they might take away our historic right and our nationality so as to sell them at a profit - on the Terazije!

"But we are still standing on this side of the boundary, while they will remain on the other side!"136

This was the spirit which imbued the Croatian circles, and as for the future relationships in this phantasmagorical great state dreamed about for centuries, we find the answer in the newspaper Hrvatstvo. In the first issue of this newspaper, which appeared in Zagreb on May 2, 1904, in the editorial entitled Our Programme, it states: "We shall fight for the independence of the Roman Catholic Church, for its rights and institutions against whatever attack may come from any quarter. Our task will be to renew and regenerate everything within the public life in the spirit of Jesus Christ… We shall endeavour through constitutional methods to obtain the greatest possible organic extension of the Croat state right. We recognize only one political people in the Croat lands - the Croatian people, only one state flag - the Croatian flag, only one official language - the Croatian language." Fiercely attacking the Croats who were ready for collaboration and accord with the Serbs, Croatia wrote: "Here is Christ, and there is Anti-Christ. Here under the Croatian flag is the pure and glorious Croatiandom, and there is a chaos of inane principles and the confusion of different flags. Here is pride, inherited from the old Croats, who did not permit a foot of their land to be taken away without blood, and there you have men who dish out Croatian land, sprinkled with Croatian blood, like some old rags, for the sake of a supposed accord to those who will not hear about any accord with his brother, unless he allows his right hand to be cut off. What a brotherhood!

"The gap between the Serbs and Croats will become even wider because of us! Is this what you are saying to us?

"Who has bridged this gap until now? Did you? When and where? You have had enough time! So where is that accord? The kind of accord which some Serbs want to establish with you, such accord can be achieved by any ox with his butcher. All he needs is to bow his head under the axe. We don't need such accord, because then we would cease to be what we are and what we want to be - Croats. As for their (Serbian - V.K.) political usurpations, we cannot come to any accord with them until such time as they acknowledge to the Croatian lands that which was agreed under the Nagodba (of 1868 - V.K.): one Croatian flag, one Croatian language, in other words, Croatian political people."

In addition to pretensions to Bosnia and Hercegovina, which had been a stumbling block between the Croats and the Serbs, Srem also became an apple of contention after the revolution of 1848-49, particularly after 1860. Ignoring the fact that the population of Srem is both nationally and religiously Serb and Orthodox, the Croats put out their historical claims upon this province wanting to build into it a great and ethnically pure and Catholic unified Croatian state, which at that time, and much later too, acquired its clear outlines in geographic maps. In the dispute about Srem, two principles, two rights were clashing. The Serbs put forward a more modern, natural and ethnic right, arguing that Srem belongs to them. The Croats opposed this with their historic right, originated in feudal society. These two rights were mutually opposed, so the relations between the Serbs and Croats, with reference to Srem, were in the past and still are today debatable and difficult to resolve.

Croatian expansionist ambitions were not muffled even when the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes came into being. In the new and in many ways altered circumstances, nationalist Croatia was promoted not only secretly but also in public. Thus, for example, Stjepan Radic, president of the Croat Republican Peasant Party, in a statement given to the London Daily News, published on July 22, 1922, tendentiously presented untrue information that in the provinces of Backa, Baranja and Banat, which he said were "unreasonably and illogically called Vojvodina", "the Serbs were in a minority vis-a-vis the Croats" (sic!), that these provinces must not be administered as purely Serbian lands, "but a plebiscite (under the supervision of the League of Nations) must be carried out with one question: "Serbia - Belgrade or Croatia - Zagreb".

A year later, in a letter from London sent on September 23, 1923, to the Presidency of the Croatian Republican Peasant Party, Radic suggested the drawing up of a "map of Croatia and Croats" which would show, in addition to Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Medjumurje, Prekomurje with "Krka and Kastav", all the former lands of Austria-Hungary (Bosnia and Hercegovina, Backa, Banat and Baranja), and even Montenegro and Macedonia. In his instructions how to produce this map which was intended for foreign countries and had to feature explanations in French or English, Radic pointed out: "In the area from Subotica to Jadran, all the districts with more than fifty percent Croats (in Bosnia, Moslems and Catholic Croats are counted together, of course), marked in blue colour, and Orthodox in red colour."138

Stjepan Radic's successor, Vlatko Macek, consistently continued the greater-Croatian policy of his predecessor. What he wanted was to combine a state from all the former South Slav lands of Austria-Hungary under the leadership of the Croats, and possibly to link it with Serbia in an 'association of interests'." Like Radic, he too called for some kind of plebiscite with the intention of splitting Yugoslavia, up to the Drina and across the Drina river. According to one of his statements in 1936, each province, "Vojvodina, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, and even Dalmatia, could opt as they liked or rather, as the deputies of these lands, elected in the election for the constituent assembly, should decide. In other words, if Vojvodina wants to go along with Serbia - good, if she wants a special status in Serbia, it's also good. But if she wants to opt out, it's good too. If she wants to be with Croatia together or separately, it's fine again." The note about Macek's territorial demands was left by Jovan Jovanovic-Pigeon, head of the Agriculturists' Party, after a confidential talk with Prince Paul Karadjordjevic. At a meeting between the Prince and Macek, which took place before the Cvetkovic-Macek agreement, asked by the Prince "What for you is Croatia?", Macek replied: "It is the banovinas of Primorje and Savska." At another meeting Macek asked for Dubrovnik, next for the banovina of Vrbas, which had ninety percent Serbian population. In a third talk his appetites increased, and Macek claimed Srem up to Ilok, Brcko with the surroundings, Bijeljina, Travnik, Fojnica and Hercegovina.139

Croatia's incessant endeavour to spread over the broadest possible geographic area found expression during the Independent State of Croatia. Dissatisfied with its size, too, the ustashas, through Slavko Kvaternik, attempted to enlarge it. In a telegram of May 14, 1941, the German envoy Siegfried Kasche transmitted to his Foreign Ministry Kvaternik's wish to enlarge the "Croatian " territories up to the Albanian border, to include the towns of Priboj, Prijepolje and Pljevlja. Kasche supported this demand reasoning that "the Croatian troops are already stationed there", However, Italy was against it. Count Ciano described this Kvaternik's demand as "Croatian imperialism". In his Diary he

wrote on June 30, 1941: "Pavelic now wants the Sandzak of Novi Pazar. A senseless, unjustified demand. I have prepared a letter, signed by the Duce, whereby we reject such pretensions."140

One of the key men in the team of Tito's politicians from Croatia, Ivan Stevo Krajacic, according to the author of the book on the operations of the German Secret Service BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst), Erich Schmidt Enbohm, at the peak of Tito's strength and unlimited power, drafted a plan on creating a "sovereign Croatia with Bosnia and Hercegovina", within the boundaries of the former Independent State of Croatia of 1941.141 This is another of the undeniable proofs that there was method in greater-Croatian aspirations, particularly those regarding pretensions to Bosnia and Hercegovina. Political systems, forms of state and social set up, or men might have changed, but the Croatian policy remained consistent as regards pretensions of having Croatia's borders along the Drina river.

Among the many issues which burdened and will continue burdening and upsetting relations between the Croats and Serbs is Croatia's geopolitical position. According to the general assessment of all the Croatian politicians and geopoliticians, in the earlier as well as in the present times, Croatia's geopolitical position resembles, in the words of the well-known Croatian historian Vjekoslav Klaic, "a well spread out sausage".

The shape of Croatia is compared by some to a banana or crescent. A Croatia such as this, in the conviction of all the politically thinking Croats, has no chance of surviving and progressing. Antun Radic explained it in the following words: "Dalmatia united with Croatia would resemble the crust of bread, and the middle part which you would cut out would be Bosnia and Hercegovina cut out from the Croatian bread. If we want to eat to satisfaction, we also need the soft middle, we need Herceg-Bosnia."142 For Antun's brother Stjepan, Bosnia was "like the gizzard to the rest of Croatia. How can a person live if you take out his gizzard?"143 In the view of Frano Supilo, "Croatia without Bosnia would always be a toy in the hands of whoever ruled in today's occupied provinces," i.e. in Bosnia and Hercegovina.144 To gain a permanent economic and financial independence, Croatian politicians believe that they have to seize new territories. Hrvatski dnevnik of 1914 wrote about it as follows: "Croatia in its present size cannot survive because she needs some more provinces for its own economic build-up."145

The best known and highly esteemed Croatian geopolitician, Dr. Ivan Pilar, known under alias as Südland, Dr. Juricic and Florian Lichttrager, wrote that "from the geopolitical standpoint, Triune Kingdom without Bosnia and Hercegovina has no chance of maintaining itself either politically or economically".146 According to Pilar, "Croatia and Slavonia, separated from Bosnia and Dalmatia, its natural component parts, is a torso incapable of life".147 Dr. Ivan Pilar, author of the book Juznoslavensko pitanje (South Slav Question), which saw four editions within a few decades, two in Croatian and two in German, in a brochure Svjetski rat i Hrvati - Pokus orijentacije hrvatskoga naroda jos prije svrsetka rata, made it quite clear to the public what must be the strategical target of the Croats. In this brochure Dr. Pilar, alias Dr. Juricic, wrote: "The Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, with its long and narrow territory of very little depth (Dalmatia in places only a few kilometers) which extends in two directions, is not capable of being the center of any state and political structure, and in this shape as a political body has no future whatever. In our opinion this realization was the cause of a feverish search for a wider framework for our national development before year 1878, when we played around with the Illyrian and Yugoslav movements. The Triune Kingdom will obtain its elementary conditions of life only once it has annexed Bosnia and Hercegovina. The Croatian people in the territory of the Triune Kingdom has very little hope of maintaining themselves, and Bosnia and Hercegovina is seen as an essential condition for the national survival and political development of the Croatian people. Limited to the Triune Kingdom only, the Croatian people can only have a hand-to-mouth life, but will have a full life if they have Bosnia and Hercegovina."148 According to Dr. Pilar, Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia are the shell, and Bosnia and Hercegovina the core of Croatia.149

Taking up this simile about the shell and the core, the Lexicographic Institute of the FPRY from Zagreb, under the leadership of Miroslav Krleza, in the fourth volume of Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia, which appeared in 1960, in the chapter on Croatia, drew up a geographic map of that republic annexing to it Bosnia and Hercegovina, all the way to the Drina river, not omitting the smallest piece of land on the left bank of that river. When the same Institute, in the seventh volume of Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia, published in 1968, in the chapter on Serbia, attached the geographic map of that republic, it did not use the same method. It stopped Serbia upon the Drina river, hardly crossing to its left bank. Only naive and stupid, or perhaps corrupted and politically slimy Serbian members of the Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia's editorial office, could have swallowed up this insolent Croatian geomania towards Bosnia and Hercegovina.

What the Lexicographic Institute did in the 1960s is nothing new and unusual as regards Croat appetites towards Bosnia and Hercegovina. In this respect they have more than one century old tradition. Back in 1862, Josip Partas, following a design drafted by Franjo Kruzic, published a geographic map entitled "Historical Map of the Entire Kingdom of Croatia with the marked boundaries of the existing provinces and the indication of important ancient and new settlements". This map was printed in the Zagreb printing works of Dragutin Albreht. It embraced, as lands of the Kingdom of Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Montenegro, south-eastern parts of Serbia and south-western areas of Slovenia.150

In conformity with the Croatian aspirations that Croatia's eastern border should be on the Drina, is the ethnographic map by Nikola Zvonimir Bjelovucic. In his booklet Etnografske granice, Hrvata i Slovenaca (Ethnographic Borders of the Croats and Slovenes) which was published in Dubrovnik in 1954, the map Ethnographic Boundaries of the Croats in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Surrounding Countries, was published, drawn by Bjelovucic in 1933. Showing quite considerable territorial enlargements, this map is very reminiscent of Pavelic's NDH. As parts of Croatia are given the whole of Bosnia and Hercegovina, the Bay of Kotor until below Bar, the areas of western Backa, the area of Baja in the then and the present Hungary, parts of Hungary southeast of Pecz, a long belt along the left bank of the Drava, from St. Martin in the east to Donja Lendava in the west, and the whole of Srem. Intentionally drawn inaccurate, Bjelovucic's map is more the expression of Croatian territorial aspirations than an expression of real ethnic relationships. It covers all the lands which according to Croat state and historic right belong to Croatia. Ethnic relationships helped Bjelovucic to publicly state, albeit in an obscure way, Croatian national and political aims.151

Bearing in mind just what has been said above very briefly, although voluminous studies could be written about it, even the reader who has had no occasion of finding out about the expansionist Croat ambitions of the earlier generations, will easily conclude where the sources and inspirations are of the present day Croatian politicians, who want to defend Croatia on the Drina river. Like academician Dalibor Brozovic, who, together with Dr. Franjo Tudjman, on the basis of Croatian historic right, calls the Bay of Kotor theirs, want to grab hold of Backa, and at the same time wish to preserve the AVNOJ administrative republican frontiers.

In the programme of erstwhile Rightists and Franko-furtimists, these antecedents of Pavelic's ustashas, who wanted only one flag, Croatian, one language, Croatian, and one political people, Croatian, to be in a great Croatian state, is the reply to the key question of the present-day relations between the Croats and Serbs and the reasons for which they fought a war between them.

The ideas of Dr. Ivan Pilar imbued all of Croatia's politics. They formed a basis for national ideas and geostrategical aims of the Croatian people. Hence it is not by accident that the contemporary writer of the book Politicka sudbina Hrvatske. Geopoliticke i geostrateske karakteristike Hrvatske (Political Destiny of Croatia. Geopolitical and Geostrategic Features of Croatia) (Zagreb 1995), Petar Vucic makes no bones about publicly and openly writing that after the capitulation of Italy in September 1943 and the annulment of the Roman treaties, Independent State of Croatia was territorially well designed, that in terms of its size, shape and location, according to all geopolitical and geostrategic parameters, had realised its geopolitical and geostrategic ideal. The problem was only that this ideal Croatia contained "too many non-Croat inhabitants".152 In this connection the mentioned author Petar Vucic, referring to the Croatian ustasha state, as patterned in September 1943, pointed out: "Although in many respects it remained an ideal which did not come true, it nevertheless is a permanent witness to the high morals of the ustasha revolutionary movement, which with a state project (although not fully realized) has become the true heir of the Croatian historic state ideal."153 This manner of thinking perfectly tallies with the well-known statement by Dr. Franjo Tudjman that the Independent State of Croatia was really an expression of the "historic and thousand-year old aspiration of the Croatian people for an independent state". This statement did surprise and upset the naive and ignorant, for it is indeed fully in accordance with the centuries old aspirations of the Croatian politics.

That the greater-Croatia, including the whole of Bosnia and Hercegovina up to the Drina river, is the ideal state and the guiding thought of the Croats has recently been proved by a priest, preaching from the pulpit of the Church of Wounded Jesus, in the middle of Zagreb. In his sermon, he wanted Croatia to be "more beautiful, better, bigger and happier", that the center of this Croatia should be in Banja Luka, as was desired by Poglavnik Ante Pavelic. The preacher, Dominican Vjekoslav Lasic, expressed the hope that the Poglavnik's wish would come true, especially since "the present shape of Croatia is a bit strange".154

Petar Vucic and Dominican Lasic are not alone in their thinking and are not maniacs. They speak just as it used to be and still is today being thought about the state's future. They have been joined by a certain Radomir Milisic. In his book Stvaranje Hrvatske. Analiza nacionalne strategije (The Genesis of Croatia. An Analysis of National Strategy) (Zagreb, 1995), this author writes: "Since the destiny of Bosnia and Hercegovina, or rather the destiny of the Croats in that state, are inseparable from that of Croatia, in other words Croatia and Croats must do everything that Bosnia should remain as close as possible to Croatia (because the Croats there are a sovereign people, and they can defend this right only with the help of the Republic of Croatia), Croatia will have to permanently keep its eyes and ears open in this vital area. The areas which the Croats in Bosnia and Hercegovina organized and defended are the physical basis of Croatian sovereignty in that state, and a proof that Bosnia cannot be created without the Croats."155

I have quoted just for illustration's sake some examples of Croat nationalist territorial pretensions based upon the Croatian state and historic right. However, all the successors to the policies of Eugen Kvaternik and Ante Starcevic, and they are today in power in Croatia, who had based their programmes, as written by Imbro Tkalac, "upon old papers and on 'virtual' territorial claims", revealed much too great territorial appetites. There is no point in trying to prove that Ante Pavelic's ustashas based their entire policy upon the Croatian state and historic right. The worst of this policy, based on state and historic right, was revealed in war-time years of 1941-1945 in the most bloodthirsty manner before the entire world public. Although the whole world was nauseated and horrified at such bloodthirstiness, it followed as a logical outcome of a centuries-long ugly and basically sick policy which could do nothing other than create a pathological hatred for the Serbs and to bring about one of the most appalling genocides that the world has ever known.

Through persistent demands that Bosnia and Hercegovina should be a part of Croatia, "so that it might not live from hand to mouth but live a full life", the Croats, in the opinion of Stjepan Radic, "learned to think that there is no free and united Croatia without Bosnia and Hercegovina".156 If the Croats thought so while they were within Austria-Hungary and Yugoslavia, and this statement by Radic should be believed, it is then certain that today such a thought is even more widespread. Having created an ethnically pure Croatia, the Croats have come one step closer to the realization of their geostrategical aims which concern Bosnia and Hercegovina. Without Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, without this eternal upsetting factor, as they call them, they would with more force and fewer obstacles, and having a considerably more favourable geopolitical position, attack Bosnia and Hercegovina, both the Serbs and Moslems. If the Serbs should be caught unprepared, if they should again permit someone to mislead and deceive them with some new Illyrism, Yugoslavism, brotherhood and unity, or commonwealth, they would pay very dear their naiveté, shortsightedness, superficialness, ignorance and foolishness, and will never again be able to recover, because the balance of forces would then change in favour of the Croats. Furthermore, it is certain that Serbia too, as a state, like Croatia must "have its eyes and ears open" in Bosnia and Hercegovina, in this vital area for it. If it goes on quarrelling with the Serbs over there for all kinds of reasons (ideological, partisan and personal) and does not take into account the overall state interests, it is certain that it will lose its battle with the Croats, because it is also certain that the Croats will not be satisfied until they have reached the Drina and until they have come to Belgrade and taken hold of Zemun.