APPENDICES DECLARATION OF THE JUGO-SLAV CLUB OF THE AUSTRIAN PARLIAMENT
Reading edition
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."]