The idea of an independent Slovenian state may be said to have been developed by the group of Catholic »Guards« at the time before World War II, when Lambert Ehrlich drew attention to the significance of such a state. Unlike the direction taken by Ban Natlacen towards a federative Yugoslavia, Ehrlich's programme, drawn up during World War II and entitled »The Slovenian Problem«, envisaged a sovereign Slovenian state, be it as an independent or a confederative unit integrated into the Central European »Intermarium«. After World War II, the pro-independence idea was adopted by a group of emigrants under the leadership of Ciril Zebot, who founded the Action Committee for a United and Sovereign State of Slovenia in Rome on April 4, 1941. After the signing of the London Memorandum in 1954, their general idea of expanding the Free Territory of Trieste to encompass the entire Slovene territory was replaced by the aim of creating an independent Slovenia within the established borders which was in complete contradiction with the policies pursued by the pro-Yugoslav National Committee for Slovenia (NOS). Apart from some emigrant circles in Argentina, the pro-independence initiative was also embraced by the Slovenian State Movement (SDG) in Canada, which issued the newspaper Slovenska Drzava. Acting as a European branch of the Slovenian state movement, the Action Committee for an Independent Slovenia (AONS) increased its activities in Munich and Trieste where a political emigrant and former activist of the Liberation Front, Franc Jeza, took over the initiative in the early 1960s. Following the highly publicised campaign of disseminating pro-independence flyers, he turned to journalism through which he alerted the public to the need for an independent Slovenian state, first in newspaper articles and from the end of the 1970s onwards also in independent publications which he edited and largely authored. As an explicit ethnocentrist, Jeza based his views primarily on the criticism of Yugoslavdom and socialism, and advocated the right to an independent state on the grounds of a (quasi)historical constitutional legitimacy. Furthermore, together with his adherents (of whom some were also from Slovenia), Jeza laid the groundwork for a social order of the future Slovenian state on a nationalist and traditionalist basis by also taking into consideration political pluralism and parliamentary democracy. Despite the fact that Jeza did not find many followers amongst the community of the Slovenian minority in Italy, he was under close surveillance by the Slovenian State Security Service, who were well aware of the political consequences of any nationally-motivated criticism that might erupt in the wake of an economic crisis in Slovenia.