SERBIA IN LIGHT AND DARKNESS

BY

REV. FATHER NICHOLAI VELIMIROVIC

WITH PREFACE BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

_WITH 25 ILLUSTRATIONS_

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK

BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS

1916

AUTHOR'S NOTE. 

The aim of this volume is to give to the English-speaking people someglimpses into the past struggles, sufferings and hopes of the Serbiannation. I have tried to describe the Serbian life in _light_, in itspeace, its peaceful work, its songs and prayers; in _darkness_, in itsslavery, its sins, its resistance to evil and battle for freedom. 

It is only the peoples which suffer themselves that can understand andsympathise deeply with the Serbian soul. I dedicate, therefore, thefollowing pages to all those who suffer much in these times, and whoseunderstandings are enlarged and human sympathies deepened by sufferings. 

I will take this opportunity of expressing my warm and respectful thanksto His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury for his kind assistance andgenerous commendation of my work in England. 

My gratitude is due to the Rev. G. K. A. Bell and Dr. E. Marion Cox fortheir help in the revision of these pages. 

NICHOLAI VELIMIROVIC. 

London, _April_, 1916. 

CONTENTS. 

PREFACE BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

_PART I. _

LECTURES ON SERBIA ENGLAND AND SERBIA SERBIA FOR CROSS AND FREEDOM SERBIA AT PEACE SERBIA IN ARMS

_PART II. _

FRAGMENTS OF SERBIAN NATIONAL WISDOM

_PART III. _

FRAGMENTS OF SERBIAN POPULAR POETRY

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

H. M. KING PETERCROWN PRINCE ALEXANDERPREMIER N. PASHITCHKING MILUTINSOLDIER ON GUARDTHE GOAT-HERDDURING TURKISH RULE IN SERBIATHE MONASTERY OF CETINJETHE SECOND SERBIAN REVOLUTION OF 1815THE MONASTERY OF KALENICSERBIAN SOLDIERS WITH AN ENGLISH NURSESERBIAN OFFICERS UNDER ADRIANOPLE IN 1912THE CATTLE MARKETA TYPICAL MONTENEGRIN LADY--H. M. QUEEN MILENAPEASANT TYPESTHE SUPERIOR OF A MONASTERYKING PETER AND THE TURKISH GENERALWOMEN DOING THE WORK OF MEN _From a photograph by Underwood and Underwood_SERBIAN WOMEN CARRYING WOUNDED _From a photograph by kind permission of Mr. Crawford Price_WAITING FOR A PLACE IN THE HOSPITAL _From a photograph by Topical Press Agency_"MY MOTHER. "

SPLIET-SPALATO

A SERBIAN REFUGEE

SPINNING BY MOONLIGHT

DUBROVNIK-RAGUSA

PREFACE

BY THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. 

The presence of Father Nicholai Velimirovic in England during the lastfew months has brought to the many circles with which he has been intouch a new message and appeal enforced by a personality evoking anappreciation which glows more warmly the better he is known. But thislittle book is more than the revelation of a personality. It will be tomany people the introduction to a new range of interest and of thought. He would be a bold man who would endeavour at present to limit or evento define what may be the place which the Serbia of coming years mayhold in Eastern Europe as a link between peoples who have been widelysundered and between forces both religious and secular which for theirright understanding have needed an interpreter. Of recent days thesculpture and the literature of Serbia have been brought to our doors, and England's admiration for both has drawn the two countries moreclosely together in a common struggle for the ideals to which that artand literature have sought to give expression. It is not, I think, untrue to say that to the average English home this unveiling of Serbiahas been an altogether new experience. Father Nicholai's book will helpto give to the revelation a lasting place in their minds, their hopesand their prayers. 

RANDALL CANTUAR. 

LAMBETH, _Easter_, 1916. 

_PART I_

LECTURES ON SERBIA

ENGLAND AND SERBIA. 

_Delivered for the first time in the Chapter House of CanterburyCathedral. Chairman: the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. _

THE SIGN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

YOUR GRACE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, To come to Canterbury, to visit this Sion of the Church of England, thathas been my dream since my fourteenth year, when I for the first timewas told of what a spiritual work and of what an immortal glory thisplace has been the home. I dreamed a beautiful dream of hope to comehere silently, to let every man, every house and every brick of thehouses silently teach me, and, after having learned many fair and usefulthings, to return silently and thankfully home. Unfortunately I cannotnow be a silent and contemplative pupil in this place, as I desired tobe, but I must speak, forced by the time in which we are living andsuffering. I will speak in order not to teach you, but to thank you. AndI have to thank you much in the name of the Serbian nation and in my ownname. 

I thank you that you are so mindful of Serbia, of a poor and sufferingcountry that failed so much in many respects, but never failed inadmiration of the English character and civilisation. From centralEuropean civilisation we received a small light and a great shadow. FromEnglish civilisation we got--I dare say it--the light only. There is nodoubt that English civilisation, being a great light, must have itsshadow also, but our eyes, blinded by the great light, did not see thedark side of this light. 

I thank you that you gave us Shakespeare, who is the second Bible forthe world; and Milton the divine, and Newton and Herschel, the friendsof the stars; and Wellington and Nelson, the fearless conquerors of theambitious tyrant of the world; and Stephenson, the great inventor of therailway and the great annihilator of distance between man and man; andCarlyle, the enthusiastic apostle of work and hope; and Dickens, theadvocate of the humble and poor; and Darwin, the ingenious revealer ofbrotherly unity of man and nature; and Ruskin, the splendid interpreterof beauty and truth; and Gladstone, the most accomplished type of ahumane statesman; and Bishop Westcott and Cardinal Newman, theilluminated brains and warm hearts. No, I never will finish if Iundertake to enumerate all the illustrious names which are known inSerbia as well as in England, and which would be preserved in theirintegrity in Serbia even if this island should sink under the waters. 

I have to thank you for many sacrifices that the people of this countryhave made for Serbia during the present world-struggle. Many of theEnglish nurses and doctors died in Serbia in trying courageously to saveSerbian lives in the time of typhus-devastation. They lost their ownlives saving ours, and I hope in losing their lives for their sufferingneighbours they have found better ones. Their work will never beforgotten and their tombs will be respected as relics among us Serbs. Besides, Great Britain also sent military help for Serbia. It wasdictated to Great Britain by the highest strategic reasons to sendtroops to Serbia, to the Danube, in order to stop the Germans there, tohinder their junction with the Bulgars, to annihilate all their plansand dreams regarding the East, to defend Serbia not only as Serbia, butas the gate of Egypt and India, and so to protect in the proper placeand in the most efficacious manner her oriental Dominions. But seeminglyEngland sent her troops to Serbia more to protect her honour than herDominions, more to help Serbia than to defend Egypt and India. Thenumber of these troops and the time when they arrived in Serbiaindicate that. Hundreds of miles the Serbs had been driven back by theenemy before the British forces reached the Serbo-Greek frontier. Butstill they reached the Serbian land, they fought on Serbian soil andshed their noble blood defending that soil. Serbia will rather forgetherself than the English lives sacrificed for her in such a catastrophicmoment of her history. 

England is THE GREATEST EMPIRE OF THE WORLD, not only at the presenttime, but since the beginning of human history. Neither the artificialcombination of Alexander of Macedonia nor the ancient Roman Empire, neither Spain of Charles V. Nor Napoleon's ephemeral dominion werenearly so great as the British Empire of to-day. Never has a nationpossessed so much sea and so much land as the British. This wonderfulEmpire includes people of every race, countries of every climate, humansocieties of every degree of civilisation, almost all kinds of minerals, plants and animals, lakes and rivers, mountains and forests. The mostancient civilisations of Egypt, India and the Mediterranean Islands arebrought together in conjunction under the same rule as the new worlds, like South Africa, Canada and Australasia. The communication between thezones of the everlasting snow and those of the everlasting hot sun isestablished in perfection. The countries and peoples which were forthousands of years in contact with each other only through dreams arenow in real contact through business, trade, science, art, and throughcommon sufferings and hopes. 

Still it might be asked: Has such a great body indeed an aim?Short-sighted people, who are ready at once with a reply on anyquestion, will say: The only aim of this great Empire is theexploitation of every country and every body by the English with thepretext of civilisation. So may think some English too. What can we sayabout THE AIM OF THE GREATEST EMPIRE? The truth is that the real aim ofthis Empire is larger than the selfishness of any person or of anynation. The real aim is:

_First_, to exchange the material products of the countries, and so tocreate a greater comfort for the people that live in them. In thewildest islands in the Pacific you can find--I will mention only littlethings--the same fine sofas, fireplaces, draperies, modern kitchens, piano and library, electric light and cablegrams, as in London. And infoggy and smoky London you can have all the African fruits, Australianwine and wool, Canadian metals and wood, Indian beasts and Africanivory. 

_Second_, to exchange the spiritual good of races and nations. Thewisdom of the world is not concentrated in the brains of any singlenation. Every nation has some original experiences of its own about thislife. The Eskimos have certainly something new to say to the people fromthe plains of the Ganges and the Nile. And these people, thesedescendants, of Buddha and Rameses, as well as the descendants of Mosesand Hamurrabai, have things to say that never were thought possible inthe countries of perpetual snow and ice in Northern Canada. Such is ofthe greatest profit for science, religion, ethics, sociology, art. Darwin and Spencer, with their immense scientific experiences, werepossible only in such a world-Empire as the English. The words ofTagore, the Indian thinker, can be heard to-day without great delay onthe Atlantic and Pacific, as well as in India. When a genius is born inNew Zealand his message reaches the world, and his glory cannot beconcealed in the southern hemisphere. 

_Third_: this Empire is an experiment in the realisation of humanbrotherhood. I repeat, through the medium of this Empire man is broughtnear to man, and nation to nation, and race to race. It was verydifficult in the ancient Roman Empire to become _civis Romanus_, becausethis Empire was founded upon the Pagan philosophy of lords andservants. It is, on the contrary, very easy in the British Empire ofto-day to become a British citizen, because the British Empire isfounded upon the Christian philosophy of democratic equality andbrotherhood. All is not accomplished, but I say it is an experiment, anda good one; a prophecy, and a hopeful one. 

_Fourth_: Great Britain is destined by Providence to be a great educatorof nations. That is her part in history. She has democracy andtradition--two things that are considered everywhere as incongruous--andtherefore she is capable of understanding everybody and of teaching andleading everybody. She is the nurse for the sick people of the East; sheis the schoolmaster for the rough people of the wild isolated islands;she is the tamer of the cannibals and the guide of the civilised; sheinspires, vivifies, unites and guides; she equalises; she Christianises. 

I read the other day a German menacing song:

 We are going, we are going to see Who will henceforth govern the world-- England or God?

I can say certainly--God. He will govern the world. But we can sayto-day, though in due humility: _Gesta Dei per Britannos_. Would youknow assuredly through which of the powerful nations God is workingto-day? Ask only which of these nations is most the champion of therights of the small and poor nations, and you will find out the truth. For from the beginning of the world-history all the leading religionsand philosophies called the great and powerful to protect the poor andpowerless. The record of this recommendation belongs doubtless to theChristian religion. The suggestion of all the religions was like this:it is impossible to be proud and selfish under the eyes of God. Thesuggestion of the Christian religion is: Under the eyes of God the moreyou have the more you must give, and the more you give the more youhave; and if you even give your life for men, you will find a betterlife in God. 

WHAT IS SERBIA THEN?

If we Serbs look upon the English power on this planet, and then lookand see our own less than modest place on the globe, we must unwillinglyexclaim in the words of the Psalmist: O Lord, what is man, that thou artmindful of him?--or with a little change: O England, what is Serbia, that thou art mindful of her? And the poor sons of Serbia, that thouvisitest them?

A small strip of land with five million inhabitants and withoutseaboard. A peasant people devoted to agriculture and to nature, to theforest and cattle, to songs and tales. A past full of glory, of bloodand sins. A present full of tears, pains and hopes. A king carried on astretcher through the rocky desert of Albania, --a loyal parliament whichrefused to make a separate peace with the enemy even in the darkest hourof national tragedy, --an honest government which did everything possibleto save the country, and which, when the country was nearly conquered, exclaimed through its President: "It is better to die in beauty than tolive in shame!"--a fearless army, which for three years only knewvictory, now watching in snow on the mountains of Montenegro andAlbania, and lodging in the dens of wolves and eagles. [1] Another armyof old men, of women and children, fleeing away from death and rushingto death. Shall I say that is Serbia?

No: that is only a part of Serbia. 

You have heard talk of Greater Serbia. I personally think that Serbiacan never be greater than in this solemn hour of her supreme suffering, in which all the civilised world in both hemispheres trembles because ofher catastrophe and sympathises with her. I personally love my littlecountry just because it is so little; and just because its deeds aregreater than its size. I am not sure that I should love it so muchshould it happen to become territorially so big as Spain or Italy. ButI cannot help it; I must say that our Irridentists in Austro-Hungary aremore numerous than our population in Serbia. Eight millions of ourSerbo-Croat and Slovene brothers have been looking towards Serbia astowards their Piedmont, waiting their salvation from Serbia, asAlsace-Lorraine is waiting its salvation from France, and being proud ofSerbia as all slaves are proud of their free kinsmen. All the slavesfrom Isonzo to Scutari are groaning under the yoke of an inhumanAustro-Magyar regime, and are singing of Serbia as their redeemer fromchains and shame. Little Serbia has been conscious of her great historictask, to liberate and unite all the Southern-Slavs in one independentbeing; therefore she, with supreme effort, collected all her forces tofulfil her task and her duty, and so to respond to the vital hopes ofher brethren. 

Shall I say that is Serbia?

No; that is only physical Serbia. 

But there is a soul of Serbia. 

For five hundred years the Serbian soul suffered and believed. Sufferingsometimes breaks the belief. But the Serbian suffering strengthened thebelief of the Serbian people. With belief came hope, with hope strength;and so the Serbs endured the hardest and darkest slavery ever recordedin history, not so much by their physical strength as by the strength oftheir soul. Besides, it was a great temptation for the Serbs to abandonthe Christian faith and to accept the faith of the Crescent. Under thiscondition only, the Turks promised freedom to the Serbs and equalrights. Several of the aristocratic families could not resist thistemptation and became renegade to the faith of their ancestors in orderto save their lives. But the mass of the people fearlessly continued tobe faithful to the belief in the Cross. 

Allow me to give you only a few examples of the

ACTIVITY OF THE SERBIAN SOUL

in the time when the Serbian body was in chains. Although the Serbianbody was enslaved, the Serbian soul was still free and active. Here aresome proverbs made during the time of slavery and abasement of the body:

It is better not to be born than to misuse life. 

The sun sees everything and keeps silent; the foolish man knows nothingand still talks. 

Why does God send suffering to the best of His children? Because theweak cannot endure it. 

The tears of the weak are accusations of the strong; the tears of thepoor are accusations of the rich; the tears of the righteous will betransformed into diamonds under the throne of God. 

A king asks another king: How many people do you govern? But if Godspeaks to a king, he asks: How many people are you helping?

Even the dry leaves cry out when trodden on; why should not the troddenman cry out?

It is better to give life than to take life. If you give life, you dowhat God does; if you take life, you do what Satan does. 

Some men are better than others, but there is no man so good as God andno one so bad as the devil. 

Some people are dressed in silk and satin, and others are dressed inrags. Very often that is the only difference between man and man. 

There is a great difference between a learned man and a good man. Thelearned man can do good, but the good man will do good. The learned mancan build the world up, but can destroy it too; the good man can onlybuild it up. 

A man's judgment lasts as long as a man's life, but God's judgment lastsas long as God. 

It is better to dress the soul in silk and the body in rags than thereverse. 

If life does not mean work, then life is worth nothing. 

Work and virtue are sisters, as well as idleness and vice. 

Work and prayer are two eyes on the same face. The man who works only, without praying, has one eye only; and the man who prays without workingonly has one eye too. The man who neither works nor prays has no eyes, and walks in darkness. 

Neither be boastful of life nor fearful of death. Death is conditionedby life, and life by death. 

You can kill me, but my son will live; you can kill my son, but my soulwill live. 

The Kingdom of God is coming as quietly as the moonlight, and it willcome fully when men learn not to live in convulsions and not to die inconvulsions. 

There are only two nations upon the earth: that which weeps and thatwhich laughs. 

Now I would like to indicate slightly what The English PoliticalInterests in Serbia are. Little as she may seem, democratic Serbia isstill the greatest moral factor in the big Slav world. She is admired byother subjugated Slavs because she succeeded without anybody's help infreeing herself. She is envied by all other Slavs, from near and fromfar, as well as from other neighbouring nations, because of her nearlyperfect democracy. Serbia is the only democratic state among the fourindependent Slav states (Russia, Montenegro, Bulgaria). And just in thisterrible war it became clear to all the world that Serbia was the onlydemocratic state in the Near East. Turkey is governed by an oligarchy, Bulgaria by a German despot, Greece by a wilful king whose patriotism isovershadowed by his nepotism, Roumania is ruled more by the wish of thelandlords (boyars) and court than by the wish of the people. I will saynothing about the very profanation of democracy in the dark realm of theHapsburgs. 

Serbia not only means a democratic state, but a democratic nation; thatis to say, that not only are the Serbian institutions (including thechurch also) democratic, but the spirit of the whole of the nation isdemocratic. After all, this democratic spirit of Serbia must bevictorious in the Balkans as well as in the Slav world. 

You know that England's glory has always been to stand as the championof democracy. England's best interests in the Near East now more thanever imperatively require her to support democratic Serbia against heranti-democratic enemies. How different Serbia is from all herneighbours was clearly proved just by this war. She is alone in the NearEast fighting on the side of the democratic England and France againstPrussian militarism and autocracy. That does not happen accidentally, but because of the Serbian democratic spirit. This spirit is veryattractive for all the Slavs who are under the Austro-Hungarian rule. Many of them are looking towards powerful Russia to liberate them(Poles, Bohemians, Ruthenes, Slovaks). Yet they do not wish onlyFreedom, but _Freedom_ and _Democracy_ together. Therefore they arelooking with one eye towards Russian power and with another towardsSerbian democracy. It is clear that the English victory over the Germansmust have as the first consequence the liberation of all the slaves inEurope. In this case all the Southern Slav people inAustro-Hungary--Serbs, Croats and Slovenes--wish to be one unit withdemocratic Serbia, as it was formulated lately by the Southern-SlavCommittee in London, and all the others--Poles, Bohemians, Ruthenes andSlovaks--wish to be _like_ democratic Serbia. Consequently Serbia is akernel, a nucleus of a greater Southern-Slav state, and at the same timethe inspiring and revolutionising power for all the down-trodden Slavs. This kernel for five hundred years was the little, but neversubjugated, Montenegro, but lately the Piedmontal role has beentransferred to Serbia. 

The English political interest in the future Greater Serbia, orYougoslavija, is of the first importance. The Southern-Slav state willnumber about fourteen millions of inhabitants. This state will be thevery gate of the East. Yet Serbia is not only the nucleus of the unitedSouthern Slavdom, but the very nucleus of a Balkan Federation also, inwhich the Greco-Roumanian element should be a good balance to the Slavelement in it. I repeat I like my little country just because it is socomparatively little. But by necessity it is to become much larger. Bynecessity the whole of the Serbian race is to be freed and united. Bynecessity the Southern-Slav state and the Balkan Federation are to berealised. Some of our neighbours may be against that, but all theiropposing effort will be in vain. Every intrigue against the Serbianideals of freedom and unity cannot effect a suppression, but only ashort prolongation of the period of its realisation. Behold, the timehas come, the fruit has grown ripe. All the Serbian race has now beenplunged into slavery. United to-day in slavery, they have now only onewish--to be united to-morrow in Freedom. 

England is bound to Russia more by a political or military treaty, butshe is bound to Serbia, and through Serbia with all other democraticSlav worlds more by spirit--just by this democratic spirit. This spiritwhich divides the Slav world into two different camps, unites Englandwith one of them, --with the democratic camp, the champion of which hasbeen Serbia. A very curious spirit dwells in the little Serbian body, avery curious and great spirit, which will, I am sure, give form to thefuture Balkans as well as to the future democratic Slavdom. And be surethis spirit is rather panhumanistic than panslavistic. 

But after all, when I think of 400 million inhabitants of the BritishEmpire and remember such a poor topic, as my country, about which I amjust speaking, I must cry again: England, what is Serbia, that thou artmindful of her? And the poor sons of Serbia, that thou visitest them?

Still, Serbia is an admirer and friend of England, and that is a goodreason why England should look sympathetically towards little Serbia. There is a Serbian proverb: "A wise lion seeks friends not only amongthe lions, but among the bees too. " Of course Serbia needs England muchmore than England needs Serbia. I will not now dwell upon Serbia'smaterial needs; I will tell you about what are Serbia's spiritualneeds. 

To begin with the children, the Serbian children need good education. Our schools give more knowledge than strength of character and a humanecultivated will. Our national poetry and history have educated ourpeople much better than modern science did. Still we perceive thatscience is necessary for a good education in our times. Therefore wevery much need to consult England in this respect. We well know howEnglish education is estimated all over the world. England can help usmuch to educate the new Serbian generations in the best way, becausesuch a country as Serbia deserves indeed a noble and worthy future inwhich to live. Don't you agree with me? Only I am afraid that I amspeaking of the best education of the Serbian children just at thismoment when it were perhaps more suitable to speak about the best way tosave them from hunger, pain and death. 

The Serbian women need to develop their capacities more for social work, so as to take a more important part in the organisation and cultivationof their lives. The past of our women consisted in singing, weaving andweeping. I am sure that the English women, whose sympathy for Serbia inthese tragic days will remain memorable for ever, --I am sure that afterthis war they will come to Serbia and help their poor sisters overthere, teaching them and enlightening them. Yet I am again afraid todwell longer upon the topic of the enlightenment of the Serbian mothersat the very moment when those mothers with their sons and daughters, trodden down by the Prussian boot, look towards Heaven and silentlyconfess their sins, preparing themselves for a cruel death. 

What do the Serbian men need? They need civilisation, or in other words:the Bible, science, art. But they do not need the Bible of killing fromGermany, nor the science of killing and the art of killing from Germany. They do not want the civilisation which means the large and skilfulmanufacture of instruments of killing. They want the Bible which makesgood, and science which makes bright, and art which makes godlike. Therefore the men of Serbia are now looking so eagerly towards Englandand her civilisation. More English civilisation in our country, moreEngland in Serbia--that is our great spiritual need!

My illustrious chairman, the Most Reverend Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote recently in one of his books: "We are everywhere trying in theselater years to understand and to alleviate human sorrow. " [2] Yes, youare. We Serbians feel your sorrows too. "To understand and to alleviatehuman sorrow. " That is the divine purpose of a humane civilisation. Thatis the final aim of our terrestrial education--to understand each other, and to support each other. 

Do you think that it is difficult for a rich nation as well as for arich man to come into the kingdom of Heaven? I am a little embarrassedseeing rich England now coming into this kingdom. Yet she is coming intothe kingdom of God, not because she is rich, but because she beingpowerful humiliated herself, took the cross and went to suffer for thepoor and sorely stricken in this world. She humiliated herself going tosupport Belgium; she humiliates herself hurrying to support Serbia; shehumiliates herself mourning so much for Armenia. But her humiliation isthe best proof of her true Christianity, as her fighting and sufferingof to-day is the very fighting and suffering for Christianity. Do not beafraid of humiliation, citizens of the greatest Empire of the world;behold, the humiliation is the very condition of real glory and realgreatness! For more than a thousand years, from this place has beenpreached the Only Son of God, whose way to Glory, Greatness and Divinitywas through painful humiliation. 

Do persist and do not weary in this way, --it will bring your dearcountry nearer to God. Do persist in humiliation, --it will be the mostdurable foundation of a glorious young England. Do persist in supportingoppressed and poor Serbia, --it will be rewarded hundredfold to yourchildren and to the children of your children. Do persist in doing good, that is my final word to you, my enlightened brethren and sisters. Andwhen I say _do persist in good_, I repeat only what for nine hundredyears has been preached within these walls by thousands and thousands ofservants of Christ, either well-known or unknown, but all more worthythan I am. 

SERBIA FOR CROSS AND FREEDOM. 

_Delivered for the first time in the Church of the Holy Trinity, StroudGreen, London. _

I was a citizen of a small country called Serbia, and I am still acitizen of a great country called The Universe. In my first fatherlandthere is now no other light except the brightness of tears. But in mysecond fatherland there is always the splendid and silent light of thesun. My little country is now a great tear-drop, a shining and silenttear-drop. A gentleman from South Africa wrote to me the other day andasked about my country--"why it is so shining"? I replied: Just becauseit is now transformed into a big tear-drop, therefore it is so shiningthat even you from South Africa can see its splendour. I come as an echoof the weeping splendour of my country which is now plunged into theworst slavery. I come as a voice beyond the grave to your famous island, brethren and sisters, not to accuse, not to complain, but to say by whatinvisible bonds my country is tied to yours. I will say at once, plainlyand simply--by common beliefs and common hopes. 

At the time when Saint Patrick preached Christ's Gospel in heathenIreland, the Serbs were heathen as well. Their gods, with Perun at thehead, corresponded to Wothan and his divine colleagues, whose names arerecalled in your names of the days of the week still. 

About the time when Saint Augustine came over here, met Queen Bertha andbaptised King Ethelbert in Saint Martin's Church in Canterbury, theconversion of the heathen Serbs had made good progress. 

In the time of Alfred the Great, who was "the most complete embodimentof all that is great, all that is lovable in the English temper, " as anEnglish historian praises him so justly, the Serbs received God's wordin their own language from the Slav apostles, Cyril and Methodius, andsoon afterwards the Christian faith was officially introduced andestablished among them. 

In the time of the Conquest, when the Norman and Danish kings disputedthe possession of England, the Serbian provinces were fought over by theGreek, Bulgar and Avar rulers. But the belief in Christ grew more andmore uninterruptedly. 

When Richard the Lion-hearted sailed from England to the Holy Land, notto fight for the national existence, as we to-day speak of it, but tofight for the most unselfish and idealistic aim, for Cross and ChristianFreedom, Serbia was already opening a great epoch of physical as well asspiritual strength. Our king Nemanja, the founder of a dynasty whichruled in Serbia for nearly 300 years, had heard tales and songs aboutthe English king with the lion's heart, and had helped the same cause, the cause of the Crusades, very much. His son, Saint Sava, organised theChristian Church wonderfully, and wonderfully he inspired theeducational and scholarly work in the state created by his father. ThisSaint Sava, the Archbishop of Serbia, after he had travelled all overSerbia, Greece and Bulgaria, preaching the Gospel of the Son of God, died in Bulgaria. His body was transferred to and buried in a monasteryin Herzegovina. Afterwards, in times of national hardships and slavery, great pilgrimages took place to the grave of the Saint, which became thecomforting and inspiring centre for the oppressed nation; the Turksdestroyed the tomb, carried the body over to Belgrade and burnt it, inorder to lessen the Serbian national and religious enthusiasm. Theresult was just the contrary. On the very same place where Saint Sava'sbody was burnt there is now a Saint Sava's chapel; close to this chapela new Saint Sava's seminary is to be erected, and also Saint Sava'scathedral of Belgrade. And over all there is an acknowledged protectionof Saint Sava by all the Serbian churches and schools, and a unifyingspirit of Saint Sava for all the Serbian nation. 

Saint Sava's belief was the same as the belief of Saint Patrick andSaint Augustine. His hopes were the same as theirs too. He believed inthe one saving Gospel of Christ, as they did. He hoped men could beeducated by this divine Gospel, to be heroic in suffering and pure andholy in the enjoyments of life, just as the great saints of this islanddoubtless hoped and worked. 

THE BELIEF AND HOPES OF THE SERBIAN KINGS

represented almost throughout our history the model of the truereligious spirit and of the hopeful optimism of the nation. That can besaid especially for the kings since Saint Sava's time until the definiteconquest of Serbia by the Sultans, _i. E. _ since Richard and John's timeuntil the time of the Black Prince and Wycliffe, and from the BlackPrince and Wycliffe till the end of the Wars of the Roses in England. Our kings did what all the kings in the world do; they fought and ruled, they ate and drank, and danced and played, and still the majority ofthem took monastic vows and died in solitude and asceticism, and a greatpart of them were recognised by the people as saints and invoked by theoppressed in the dark times as the advocates of national justice, beforeGod. They built beautiful churches and monasteries in the towns andforests. They strove always to build the "Houses of God" more solid andmore costly than their own houses. Their castles and palaces they builtto their own glory, and their pleasures no longer exist, but thechurches they built to the glory of God still exist. In these churchesour pious kings of old prayed; in these churches afterwards our hardoppressed people wept during the time of slavery; in these "Houses ofGod" the fanatic Turks enclosed their cattle, their goats and sheep, their horses and donkeys, thus abasing and ridiculing our sanctuaries. But the more these sanctuaries have been abased and ridiculed by theenemy, the more they have been respected and adored by the people. 

We Serbs cannot complain that our Middle Ages were as dark as the peoplein Europe are accustomed to represent their own. During the threehundred years of the reign of Neniania's dynasty not one of our kingswas killed. The importance of this fact only the historian canunderstand who knows well the history of our neighbours, the Byzantinesand Venetians of that time, who in many other respects had been ourteachers. We learnt many useful as well as perilous things from them, but we did not learn their art of poisoning kings, of torturing them, suffocating them, making them blind, cutting out their tongues, etc. Itis only in modern times that we committed the great sins of the MiddleAges, namely, killing our kings and making civil wars. During the lasthundred years we killed only three of our kings: Karageorge, Michael andAlexander. In modern times three have been killed in a hundred years, and in the Middle Ages not one in three hundred years!--a fact asunusual as curious. But you should remember that our modern times inSerbia began after five hundred years of a bloody slavery and darkeducation under Turkish tyranny. 

I mention our great sins not in order to excuse but to accuse my people. I will not even accuse the Turks, our rulers and educators during fivehundred years. Our ancestors were accustomed to see human blood spiltevery day. They were accustomed to hear about strangled sultans andviziers and pashas. And, besides, they lived through the record of allthe crimes ever written in history; the Turks arranged a horrible bloodybath in executing their plan of killing all the leaders and priestsamong the Serbs! It happened only a hundred years ago, in the lifetimeof Chateaubriand and Wordsworth, in the time of Pitt and Burke, in thetime of your strenuous mission work among the cannibals. Our ancestorslived in blood and walked in blood. Our five hundred years' long slaveryhad only two colours--red and black. 

And yet I will not accuse the Turks but ourselves. Neither our kings ofold, nor our ancestors before the enslavement set us the example ofkilling kings. Rather the strangers that conquered and ruled our countryset us such an example. But it is our fault for having followed anabominable example like that. I confess our sins before you, and pray:Forgive us, good brothers! Forgive us, if you can. God will not forgiveus. That is the belief of our people. God is merciful, but still He doesnot forgive without punishment. God is righteous and sinless, andtherefore He has right to punish every sin of man. But it were amonstrous pretension for men to punish every sin, being themselvessinful, very sinful. We will forgive all your mediaeval, if you willforgive us our modern sins. Remember! God will begin to "forgive us ourtrespasses" only at the moment when we all forgive the trespasses of allthose that have sinned against us. He will forgive us then, because Hewill not have anything more to punish. God's mercilessness begins whenour mercifulness ends. God will rule the world by justice as long aswe rule it by our mercilessness. He will rule the world by mercifulnesswhen we forgive each other, but not before. 

To forgive the sins of men means for us nothing more than to confess ourown sins. To forgive the sins of men means for God nothing less than tolet the events be without consequences. And it contradicts humanexperiences or science. 

It contradicts also the experiences of our kings of old. They saw andheard of the sins punished, and they feared sin. They regarded humilityand mercifulness as the greatest virtues. On the day of the "Slava, "which means a special Serbian festival of the saint patron of the family(every Serbian family has its patron among the saints or angels which itcelebrates solemnly every year, instead of celebrating their ownbirthdays), on this day our kings themselves served their guests at thetable. It was a visible sign of their humility before the divine powersthat rule human life. Besides, on every festive occasion in the royalcourt was placed a bountiful table with meat and drink for beggars andthe most abject poor. The king was obliged by his Christian conscienceand even by national tradition to be merciful. How the people regardedthe kings is clear from popular sayings like these:

Every king is from God. If a king is generous he is from God, as a kingshould be from God. If a king is narrow and selfish he is from God, asa monkey is from God. 

A wise king speaks three times to God and only once to the people. Afoolish king speaks three times to the people and only once to God. 

Speaking to God a wise king thinks always of his people, and speaking tothe people he always thinks of God. A foolish king thinks of himselfalways, whether he speaks to God or to the people. 

Every king has a crown, but every kingly crown stands not on a kinglyhead. 

A gipsy asked a king: Of how much value are your riches? The kingreplied: Not more than your freedom. 

The smile of the king is medicine for a poor man, the laugh of the kingis an offence for the mourning one. 

A king who fears God has pity for the people, but a king who fears thepeople has pity for himself. 

The face of a good king lends splendour to his crown, and the crown of abad king lends splendour to his face. 

The sins of the people can only sooner bring the king before God, butthe sins of the king can push the people to Satan's house. 

The belief of our kings was the same belief which Saint Sava preached, their hopes were his hopes. God is the eternal and powerful king of theworld; Christ is the way of salvation from sin; good must be in the endvictorious over evil. That was the belief and hope of our kings. Was itnot likewise the belief and hope of King Ethelbert, of Saint Oswald andEdward the Confessor? Did not Richard the Lion-hearted struggle for thesame belief and hope in Palestine, which was at his time as far as avoyage around this planet to-day? Is not this same belief and hope thecorner stone of Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's, of this church andof every church on this island, and of every great and beautiful deedthat you inherited from your ancestors?

Yet the belief and hopes of our kings were never different from the

BELIEF AND HOPES OF THE SERBIAN PEOPLE. 

The Serbian people have shown their individuality only in the dark timeof their slavery. The saint and the heroic kings died, but their soulslived still in the hearts of their people, in the white churches theybuilt among the green mountains, in their deeds of mercifulness andrepentance. The enslaved people were conscious that there were no morekings of their own who represented all that was the best in the Serbiansoul, and that they, the people, have now themselves to represent theSerbian name, belief and hopes before God and their enemies. And theyhave done it. 

At the time when Columbus sailed over the seas to find a new continentin the name of the most Christian King of Spain, the Serbian sufferingfor the Christian religion had already begun. 

At the time when the famous English thinker Thomas More wrote _Utopia_, preaching brotherhood among men based upon religious and politicalfreedom, the Serbs stood there without any shadow of religious andpolitical freedom, dreaming of and singing about the human brotherhoodfounded only on the ruins of both tyranny and slavery. 

At the time when the great Shakespeare wrote his tragedies in ink, theSerbs wrote theirs in blood. 

At the time when Cromwell fought in the name of the Bible for thedomestic freedom of Parliament, the Serbian leaders gathered in thelonely forests to tell each other of the crimes that they saw defilingthe Cross, to confess to each other their cruel sufferings and toencourage each other to live. 

At the time when Milton wrote _Paradise Lost_, the Serbs felt more thananybody in the world the loss of Paradise. 

At the time when Livingstone went to dark Africa with the light of humancivilisation, Serbia was ruled by darker powers even than CentralAfrica. 

At the time when the great English philosopher Locke wrote his famousbook on the education of men, the people of Serbia had no schools and noteachers at all; they educated themselves by the memories of the greatdeeds of the heroes of the past, by looking at their kings' churches, and by glorifying a death for justice and a life of suffering. 

At the time when Adam Smith wrote his famous work, _The Wealth ofNations_, the Serbian nation possessed only one form of wealth, and thatwas the inward wealth of the glorious inheritance of strong belief andof bright hopes. All other forms of wealth that it saw around in thelarge world, including its own physical life, belonged not to it but toits enemies. 

At the time when your learned priests and bishops discussed the subtletheological questions of the relations between time and eternity, between justice and forgiveness, between the Son and the Holy Ghost, between transcendence and omnipresence, our priests and patriarchs hadto defend the religion of the Cross from the aggressive Crescent, and toprotect the lives of the oppressed, and to lead and inspire the souls oftheir flock. I think both your and our priests did their duty accordingto the time and circumstances under which they lived and worked. 

"FOR CROSS AND FREEDOM"

has been our national motto. It is written on our flag and in the heartsof each of us. Our motto never was "For existence" or "For vitalinterests. " That was an unknown form of language to our kings of old, and that is still a language very strange for our ears to hear to-day. We never fought indeed solely for a poor existence in this world. Wefought always rather for the ideal contentment of this terrestrialexistence. We fought not for life only, but for what makes one's lifeworth living--"For Cross and Freedom!"

The Cross is mentioned first, and then Freedom. Why?

Because the Cross of Christ is the condition of a real freedom. Or, because the Cross is for God's sake and our freedom is for our sake. Weshould fight for God's sake first and then for our own. That was theidea. Or, because Cross and Freedom are two words for the same thing. The religion of the Cross involves Freedom, and real Freedom is to befound only in the religion of the Cross. 

"For Cross and Freedom!"

A Serbian proverb says:

The Cross shines better in the heart and the Crescent in the hand. 

Another:

Why are there so many Mohammedans in the world? Because the Crescentpays every day during life to its followers, and the Cross pays onlyafter death. 

Have confidence in Christ and follow him even into the house of theDevil, because He knows the way out. 

Twelve poor apostles did more good to man than the twelve richestsultans. 

In vain you will ask from God any good without suffering. For sufferingis the very heart of every good, of glory, and of pleasure as well. 

Every drop of Christ's innocent blood must be paid for by a lake ofmen's blood. 

It is better to die for the Cross than to live against the Cross. 

When you fight for Freedom you are helping every slave in the world, notonly yourself. 

Freedom is an atmosphere which makes the sun brighter, and the airclearer, and the honey sweeter. 

To die for the Cross and Freedom means two lives and no death. 

A wolf never can so badly enslave a fellow-wolf as a man can enslave afellow-man. 

It is not easier to live in freedom than to fight for freedom. One mustfight for freedom as an archangel, but one must live in freedom as asaint. 

All men that God created can live on the earth. God gave space and airenough for all, if men only would give goodwill. 

When you pass the tomb of a man who died for Cross and Freedom, youshould bow your head low; and when you pass the palace of a man wholives for wealth and pleasure, only turn your head the other way. 

I observed during this world-struggle the conduct, deeds and words ofour Serbian neighbours, and I was in the end both very sorry and veryglad. I was very sorry as I read the declaration of a Bulgarianstatesman: "We Bulgars must be on the side of the victors. " I was veryglad remembering that never in the whole Serbian history have such wordsbeen uttered by a responsible person. Our kings of old said very oftenthat Serbia must fight on the side of justice, even if justice has forthe moment no visible chance to be victorious. Our saint King, Lazare, refused on the eve of the _battle of Kossovo_ to negotiate with theTurkish Sultan, whom he regarded as a bearer of injustice and an enemyof Christianity. 

I was very sorry to see that Greece broke her pledged word andthoughtlessly refused to keep her treaty with Serbia, whereas Francewith England, who had no signed treaty with Serbia, came and did what inthe first place it was Greece's duty to do. I was still more glad andhopeful in regard to the future of mankind, seeing a great difference ofmoral views between the leading nations of human civilisation like theEnglish and French, and a small nation like the Greek, which iscommencing to learn again what many hundred years ago Greece taught allother nations. And I was very glad remembering that in our _own_ Serbianhistory there is no case of such an example of infidelity or even ofhesitation to fulfil the pledged word of the nation. 

In this respect the Serbian women excelled as well as men. Therefore, and because I am speaking before you, brothers and sisters, whosecountry may be proud not only of a large number of great men of everykind, but of great and famous women as well, I must mention thememorable qualities of the Serbian women in the long fight for Cross andFreedom. What sacrifices _for Cross and Freedom the Serbian_ _women_have made cannot be enumerated from this pulpit, but only slightlytouched upon in a few examples. I take just three splendid names:Miliza, Yerina and Ljubiza. 

_Queen Miliza_ was a lady of a peaceful domestic character. But she wasalso the wife of the most tragic king in our Serbian history, of KingLazare, who perished with all his army on the field of Kossovo fightingfor Cross and Freedom against Islam rushing over Europe. 

She had nine brothers--nine brothers and a father. All were killed onKossovo together with King Lazare, and Miliza survived that catastrophe. 

After the death of King Lazare, Queen Miliza ruled the country togetherwith her son, Stephen the Tall. But Sultan Bayazet asked three thingsfrom the new rulers in Serbia. Firstly, he asked for Miliza's daughterMara for his harem. Miliza gave her daughter. Then Bayazet asked asecond, more dreadful thing, namely, that his unfortunate mother-in-lawshould build a mosque in Krushevaz, the Serbian capital at that time, soas to have a place where he could pray when he came to visit her. Thereexisted and still exists a beautiful church built by King Lazare. NowMiliza was constrained to build, close to this dear monument of herhusband, in which she prayed every day for his soul and for thesalvation of Serbia, a Turkish mosque. She agreed silently and sheprotested silently. Then Bayazet asked a third still more dreadfulthing, namely, that Stephen the Tall should help him with his troops ina time of danger for the Turkish Empire. Queen Miliza with a brokenheart advised her son to sign such a treaty in order to save the rest ofthe State and people. But very soon it happened that Bayazet needed andasked for Stephen's help against the formidable Mongol conquerorTamerlan. Stephen hated both the Asiatic monsters--Bayazet andTamerlan--equally, and it was more profitable for him to break thetreaty with Bayazet and to help Tamerlan, who had more chance. But heremained faithful to his pledged word. Bayazet was beaten, takenprisoner and encaged as a beast by Tamerlan. And Stephen, after havingfought splendidly for his ally with the Serbian cavalry, came home. Whenthinking over the present conduct of our Greek ally, I am reminded veryoften of this noble and loyal king of my country. Queen Miliza could notendure any longer all the terrible changes from bad to worse; shetransferred all the power to her son, built a wonderful monastery, Ljubostinja, near Krushevaz, where she as a nun found a retreat in whichto pray and to live, until the end of her weary and melancholy life. 

_Queen Yerina_ was the last Serbian ruler in the country, which slowlysank into slavery. She was very intelligent and very energetic. TheTurkish Sultan took two sons of hers as hostages. She gave them up, andshe continued to rule the country. But both of her sons were blinded byred-hot irons and sent back to their mother. Even this did not breakYerina's energy. She constructed great fortresses all over the countryto protect the people from the enemy's invasion. She never had any rest, thinking and working to save Serbia. She offered the most obstinateresistance to the Turks as well as to the discontented faction among theSerbs. Many of her contemporaries were ungrateful to her and called herthe "cursed Yerina, " but still posterity bestows upon her greatadmiration and sympathy. 

_Princess Ljubiza_ came on the scene of our history only a hundred yearsago, in the days of the Serbian revolution and resurrection. As QueenMiliza and Yerina sacrificed all to save the honour of Serbia, soLjubiza did her best to help her husband, Prince Milosh, to liberate thecountry from the Turks. Once after the Second Revolution broke out, theSerbian troops were engaged in a bloody battle on Morava River. But theTurks were in an overwhelming majority, besides that they had betterarms and more munitions. The frightened Serbian troops fled. Ljubizasaw that the situation was quite decisive for the whole future, ran tomeet the soldiers, and to admonish them to go back and fight. 

"What wretched soldiers you are!" she cried. "Are not the Turks made offlesh and blood as you? Cannot their blood be shed as yours? Whither areyou running? Home? But we women only are at home. Well, come home, takeour distaff and spin, and give us your rifles; we will go and fight. "

The soldiers were so ashamed and encouraged by this remarkable womanthat they turned back and began to fight anew so fiercely that the enemywas confusedly beaten and dispersed, and a decisive victory won by theSerbs. 

For Cross and Freedom fought the Serbian women directly or indirectly, not only the queens and princesses, but all the peasant women as well, if not otherwise, then at least in giving life and education to thefighters, whom powerful England repeatedly called her worthy allies. 

ENGLAND IS ALSO FIGHTING FOR CROSS AND FREEDOM, not for existence, not for sea, not for wealth, but for Cross andFreedom, for the Christian Cross and for the Freedom of the smallernations. It means in other words: for God's cause. For who created thesmall nations if not He that created all great and small things in thiswonderful world? Or who has the divine right and sad duty toexterminate, to suffocate, to enchain, the small creations of theHighest if the Highest wants them to exist? Great Britain justified hergreatness by entering this war so as to protest against the violation ofright, even by those who agreed to this right, and to protect the smalland poor. It is easy to be physically great, but it is difficult to bemorally great. 

Great is the power which violates the right, still greater is the powerwhich protects the right. To destroy is much easier than to build. To begreat and to be proud means not to be great at all. To be great and tobe modest means real greatness and belief in God. For who can be proudbelieving in God? Or who can feel God in this Universe and still say, Iam great? Our modesty is only our confession that there is a God. Sincewe see both ends of our life--birth and death--so near us, we must behumiliated. 

Yet who can see any end of God, either in the past or in the future?Where are all the greatest empires of the past? All is dust under thefeet of the Eternal. Whither are we all going, great or small? To bedust under His feet. From this dust will survive only the small portionof God's spirit that dwells in this dust. All our thoughts andfeelings, and deeds and strivings, and struggles and passions, which aredirected towards dust will die together with our bodily dust. Only thatportion of our being which is directed towards God will survive, willcontinue to live in the presence of God, will see God. For God only cansee God. 

Fighting for Belgium, for Serbia and Montenegro, for Armenia, Poland andBohemia, for all the poor and oppressed--Great Britain is fighting forGod's cause. For whose cause indeed is Belgium's and Serbia's, if notGod's cause? I wonder who would protect all the oppressed in the worldif not this country, in which God's word is more taught and learned thanin any other, and which is endowed with all good gifts that God can giveto mortals? Yet fighting for God's cause, one fights best for one's own. Yes, we fight always best for our own cause when we have it least insight. England entered this war not after a long calculation; sheentered the war spontaneously and only afterwards she put the questionto herself: Why did I enter this war?

Now England is conscious why she entered the war. She knows now thatsomebody else pushed her into this Avar, and that she is fighting forsomebody else's cause. This somebody else is--God. The sons of GreatBritain going to the East to fight are going the same pathway as theirancestors went in the time of the Crusaders. The same way, the same aim:to save the honour of the Cross and to fight for Freedom! It is thepathway of supreme suffering, but also the only pathway of real gloryand merit. Any other way for England's greatness was impossible. Englandhad to choose either the way of pettiness or of greatness. She chose thesecond. God bless England!

We pray to Thee, our Father, in order not to change Thy will but ours. Thy will be done! If Serbia is an impediment to human civilisation andan evil, as our German brothers think, Father, make of Serbia a saltlake before they make of her a cemetery. Yet Thy will be done and notours. We are thine in our righteousness and in our sins. What is, indeed, the whole of our planet? A small grain of dust. What are we, then, on this small grain of dust? We, men, either great or little? We, nations, rich or poor? We, the churches, either right or wrong? One wordonly I dare to say: the silence in Thy presence shall be our name, andour prayer. Even on the brightest and most peaceful day of our life, there is no true light except Thee. How much more we need Thy light inthe darkness of the present moment! We are a small grain of dust underThy throne, but remember, the only grain of dust which can consciouslyworship Thee. That shall be our only glory and pride among our brothers:animals, plants, and stones. But in worshipping Thee we become fellowsof the stars. Lord, be our everlasting Sun and cast Thy light on everystar, now and for ever. Amen. 

SERBIA AT PEACE. 

_Delivered for the first time at Cambridge, in the New Lecture Rooms, the Vice-Chancellor of the University in the chair. _

The most suitable language for tragedy is silence. Serbia's tragedyneeds no rhetoric, no language to describe it, to exalt it. For silence, and not rhetoric, makes tragedy greater. Serbia's silence to-day is asdeep as her tragedy is dark. The most silent suffering is the most vocalsuffering at the same time. The most silent suffering is like a screwboring into the conscience of the makers of the suffering. Such silentsuffering is the severe judge of the world who makes all rich peoplepoor, all proud humble, all pleasure bitter, all human progress abased. There is something wrong about this life. What may it be? I do not know, but suffering reminds us every day that there is something wrong withthis world. Suffering from surrounding nature is not the worst, --naturecan be governed by us; nor the suffering from God, --God can be touchedby our prayer; but the worst of all is our suffering from ourselves. Thousands and thousands of serpents live in Serbia. Yet all theserpents throughout the Serbian history, from the time of the Druids onthis island till the time of Tennyson and Kipling, effected not such apoisonous devastation of men and cattle in Serbia as lately a host ofinvaders did, who boastfully regarded themselves to be at the summit ofhuman civilisation. It is despairing to see what use of her power, her"kultur, " her science and her riches, Germany of to-day is making inSerbia, among a people who for half a thousand years struggled againstthe Turkish tyranny with the motto _For Cross and Freedom_, and wholooked sometimes from their dark corner towards the German Kaiser, theknight of many Holy Orders, as towards the champion and redeemer ofenslaved Christianity in the Balkans. Never suffered a nation fromserpents as much as the poor nation of Serbs suffers to-day from"civilised" men. Don't you think indeed that there is something wrongabout this life of ours? The Bible showed in its first sheets that thereis something very wrong with us. By the killing of his brother, Cainfore-shadowed all the history of mankind. Even the first man on earthwas not a balanced and happy creature. All our earthly time is filled upwith a passionate convulsion in a struggle for life and light. Yet ourconfusion and unhappiness chiefly come from ourselves, and neither fromnature nor from God. When will this suffering of man from man stop? Wehave been accustomed to speak hopefully about the twentieth century. Wesupposed that that century at least would show the serpents as greaterenemies of men than men themselves. We see despairingly to-day that theserpents are innocent creatures in comparison with men. The tragedy ofcrushed and murdered Serbia is a crying proof of how the serpents arecomparatively innocent creatures. Yet Serbia is silent in her tragedy. Imyself would prefer to be silent too. But I cannot, being not only anunhappy survivor of a horrible shipwreck, but above all a priest andservant of God. 

If our national pride bids us Serbs be silent in this shipwreck, myChristian honour and pride bids me cry out and protest. I am a survivingprotest of my murdered country. Yet I am still a transitory protest, aprotest only for a moment before God the Slow and the Righteous beginsto protest Himself. My protest is in words, my words are from the air. But God's protest will be, as always, from the unquenchable fire, whichburns bodies and souls. I indicate only the terrible protest which willcome. Why am I protesting now before you, sons and daughters of GreatBritain? Because you have been the champions of the Bible in the world, i. E. The champions of justice, freedom and the brotherhood of men. Because your knights have fought for the Christian Cross and Freedom. Your island has been an Island of Salvation for all the refugees, who aschampions of liberty must escape from their own countries--among others, Rousseau, Voltaire and Victor Hugo, even the sons of a very liberalnation. Your most famous generals and admirals have humiliated thegreatest conqueror of the world and granted him a cottage on a smallisland in which to live, instead of the world Empire of which hedreamed. Your statesmen--I will mention only a few of them: Pitt, Bright, Gladstone--asserted repeatedly that the domestic and foreignpolicy of this country should be founded on Christian principles. Yourwomen are famous in the world because of the fine and humane educationthat they give to their children in order to make every new generation anew proof to the world of how this island is obviously worthy of itsgreat role on our planet. Your working people possess a healthy sense ofboth reality and idealism, and avoiding all extremes and extravagances, to which poverty necessarily leads the working class in other countries, are powerfully promoting human progress, the material as well as themoral. Your nobility, far from being corrupted and degenerated by theirwealth, have filled the world with astonishment from the beginning ofthis war by their extraordinary patriotism and willingness to sacrificeeverything, including life itself, in the struggle for the honour andthe unshakable ideals of their country. 

That is why I am protesting before you, valiant sons and daughters ofGreat Britain, the heirs of the most valuable heritage that ever anation could call its own. Serbian life in peace time is the mosteloquent accusation and the mightiest protest against the crime of twogreat Christian Kaisers. These two Christian Kaisers conquered Serbia bytheir iron and mercilessness, and bound Serbia's throat so horribly thatin Serbia there is now air and light only for the conquerors and not forthe conquered. Breath-less and breadless, Serbia cannot protest, but Ican. Well, I propose to describe to you to-night Serbia and the Serbiansin peace time, in order to show you what life your smallest allies livedbefore the great storm came over their country. I will begin with:

THE SERBIAN VILLAGE. 

Why? Because the village is the very foundation of all that we possessin material, spiritual and moral good. After the Turks conquered Serbia, five hundred years ago, the Serbian population was forced by theconquerors by degrees to abandon the towns and to retreat into thevillages, and then to abandon even the villages in the plains, on thebanks of the rivers, where the soil was the most fruitful, and to escapeinto the forests, mountains and less accessible country. The villagethus became the very soil upon which has grown our democracy. That isthe difference between our democracy and the west European, where thedemocrats movement started and developed in the towns. Driven into theforests and mountains by the common enemy, despoiled of freedom andriches the upper and lower classes, the learned and the illiterate, suffered the same abasement and injustice, did the same work, ploughedand sowed, struggled against the same evil, the Turkish yoke, and sangof the same hopes. Under such conditions was born our democratic spirit, which served wonderfully afterwards, in the time of liberation andfreedom, as a base for our democratic institutions, social, politicaland ecclesiastical. 

I said that our village is the very foundation of our material wealth. We have, so to say, no industry, but every one of our peasants has hisown land. The land being fertile, our country never knew what hungerwas. It was a pleasure to see the peasants in the spring ploughing theirown soil; in the summer looking over the-golden harvest of their own; inthe autumn contemplating the stores plenteously filled; in the winterfeasting and resting in their own houses. If you should ask any of theSerbian peasants: "To whom does this house belong? or this field? orthis harvest?" he would unmistakably reply: "To God and to me!"--so inthe mind of our peasants God is the first landlord, and the second theythemselves. 

Even during the last three years of war in Serbia there was plenty ofall the necessaries of life, especially of wheat and cattle, of fruitsand hay, of vegetables and wood. 

But now--in Serbia all the wealth is in the past; it exists only in thememories of the despoiled, plundered, devastated, starved and silentslaves. In the German papers there was published a private letter from aGerman soldier in Serbia. "We are very well here. We have plenty of foodand everything. Much more abundantly than we had on the Western front!"I am sure you understand well what this soldier meant and whence such anabundance in food supply "and everything" for the German invaders inSerbia came. Almost simultaneously a German army commander wrote to aman in a neutral country these words: "Not only I permit you to comeinto Serbia and help the Serbs, but I pray you come at once. Among thepopulation in Serbia there is the greatest misery and almost starvation_en masse. _" What happened? The "civilised" subjects of Kaiser Williamwould not kill the civil people in Serbia directly as the stupid Turksdid, but indirectly in order to save the faithless honour of"civilisation. " They drove away the population--that means the old andsick men, women and children--all other Serbs serving as soldiers andbeing in retreat; they drove the population away, took food, cattle, copper, warm clothes, carpets, covers, everything, and after this wasdone, allowed the people graciously to come back "to their homes andtheir customs, " as the Kaiser declared. But to come how and where?Thousands died on the way back, thousands succeeded in coming back totheir cold and breadless homes to die there; they are considered as thehappier; and thousands fled with the Serbian troops into Albania and tothe Mediterranean islands, where they died or are still dying fromhunger, but because they died in freedom and not as slaves they areconsidered as the happiest. 

We are beggars now. This is the first year in our history that we mustpray to men for bread; until now we prayed only to God for daily bread, and God gave it to us abundantly. But we became beggars for bread onlyafter the German civilisation showed itself to be a beggar, poor inmoral, poor in truth and heart. 

Now I will try to show you how the Serbian village

BECAME THE FOUNDATION OF THE SERBIAN SPIRIT. 

No universities, no schools, no libraries, no written literature and nolectures for five hundred years! Imagine such a people. That is theSerbian people. 

The only men who could write--the priests; the only library--the memory;the only education--the mother; the only university--nature; the onlyhistorians--the blind bards; the only friend and comforter--God! Imaginesuch a people and call them--Serbs. 

Imagine the English people for half a thousand years without schools, without education, without universities, without historians, authors, friends and comforters! I am sure it is difficult for you to imagineyour country even without Shakespeare, and without Oxford and Cambridgescholarships and the British Museum, not to mention other things. It maybe of great interest to a psychologist as well as to a historian to knowwhat kind of mental activity a people shows who are deprived of all thatwe to-day consider as an indispensable need of daily life. What may sucha people be doing? Well, when by such a people are meant the Eskimos, itis clear: they hunt, eat, talk and sleep. But when by such a people ismeant a people of the European, Aryan race--what then? The Serbs are aEuropean, Aryan race. What did they do? Three things--they thought, sangand hoped. 

They _thought_. They thought about heaven and earth, about life anddeath, and man and animal, and about everything that affects humannature. They made comparisons and asked for the reason and purpose ofeverything. They drew their conclusions and expressed the results oftheir long observations. They thought a very, very long time before theyuttered a short sentence. These sentences lived in the oral traditions, and have been transferred from one generation to another. Thesesentences are very like the Proverbs in the Bible, very like LaRochefoucauld or extracts and quotations from famous works. The Serbiansentences are striking. I have read a good deal by the great writers ofEurope, but very often a popular Serbian saying strikes me more forciblythan a famous book. 

Here is just one saying:

God is on the height, Satan is in the depth, man is in the middle. IfGod will, He can be above, below and in the middle. If Satan will, hecan be below and in the middle. If man will, he can be like Godeverywhere, in the middle, or above or below. 

Another:

A bird envied the serpent; thou knowest earth very well. The serpentenvied the bird: thou knowest heaven very well. And both envied man:thou knowest heaven and earth. Man replied: "My knowledge and myignorance make me equally unhappy. "

Another:

Either snow or ice, or steam or fluid, water is always water. Eitherpoor or rich, or ignorant or learned, man is always man. 

Another:

Only a half-good man can be disappointed in this world. But a whollygood man never is disappointed because he never expects a reward for hisgood actions. 

The Serbian people _sang_ also. Sitting around the fire in the longwinter nights, the Serbian peasants sang their glorious past, their darkpresent and their hopes for the future. There is a Serbian instrumentcalled the _gusle_, more interesting than the Greek lyre, because moreappropriate for the epic songs. It looks also like the Indian instrument_tamboura_. Well, as the ancient Greek bards sang their Achilles, usingthe lyre, and as the ancient Indian singers sang their Krishna with thehelp of the tamboura, so the Serbian epic singers accompanied with thegusle their songs on their hero of old, Marko. Marko was a historicperson, a king's son. He was the never-weary champion of right andjustice, the protector of the poor and oppressed, a believer in thevictorious good, a man who left an impression on the coming generationslike a lightning flash in the dark clouds. In every village house inSerbia there is a gusle, and almost in every family a good singer withthe gusle. The blind bards sang on the occasion of the festival or ameeting. 

The great Pitt, when once asked from whom he learned the English historyso well, replied: "From Shakespeare. " To the same question we Serbs canreply: "From our national poetry. " It is very rare for a people in themass to know their past as well as the Serbs know their own. The Serbsregard their history not so much as a dry science, but rather as an art, a drama, which must be told in a solemn language. They knew theirhistory, and therefore they sang it; they sang it, and therefore theyknew it better and better. 

The Serbian men sang, but not only the men, the women sang as well. Whenthe harvest was being gathered during July and August, the women andgirls sang in the fields or under the fruit trees. In our country wehave the sun abundantly, and the outdoor singing responds fully to theluxuriance of light. What shall I say then about our women's singing inthe autumn in the dry and soft moonlight? It is the time of spinning onthe distaff. The tired men go to bed, but the women sit down in a circlein the houseyard in the open place. They chat and they sing withoutstopping their spinning. They sing two and two, in duet, but so that anew duet is begun when the other finishes. This duet singing is not onlyin one family, but in many at the same time, in different parts of thevillage. Moonlight--we have wonderful clear and white moonlight inSerbia--silence, singing from every side, from every house, from girls, nightingales and other birds. The whole of the village is the stage, hundreds of singers, moonlight and open starry space--I am sure youwould be much more fascinated by such a Serbian rustic opera than bymany modern operas on a stage in London. And now--there rushed intoSerbia:

THE KAISER, WHO DOES NOT SING, and our singing stopped. Under the Turks the Serbian people sang. Youcan find in the British Museum ten big volumes of the Serbian nationalpoetry which was composed during the time of the Turkish rule in Serbia. This rule was very hard and very dark indeed, but still we consideredourselves as the champions of the Cross against the Crescent, and weimagined that we should be the bulwark of Christian Europe, i. E. OfCentral Europe in the first place. Therefore we endured the strugglewith the Turks, singing and hoping. And now--the two _Christian_Kaisers, with a fox from Sofia, have crushed Serbia more completely thanshe ever was crushed by the Turks. "Come back to your homes and yourcustoms, " so the Kaiser William invited the Serbian refugees. 

"To your customs!" But, oh _illustrissime Caesar, _ we could reply, ourfirst and best custom is to sing. Tell us, how we could sing now? Youknow, oh Kaiser, because you preached the Bible also, you must know theBiblical complaints of the Israel of old: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hung ourharps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carriedus away captive required of us a song, saying, Sing us one of the songsof Zion? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" You arenow playing a real Babylonian role towards us Serbs, i. E. Towards apeople who fought for the Cross, who sang freedom and who were crucifiedfor justice. You are not a better man than any peasant from the Serbianvillages. Do you want a proof? The Serbian peasant can sing, and youcannot. You cannot sing, not because of your diseased throat, butbecause of your evil conscience. You stopped the singing in a countryof songs, oh ill majesty! How could we now sing our songs while ourhomes are transformed into empty caves? How could we sing, seeing ourbread in strangers' hands and cold stones in ours? How could we singnow, when all our past protests against you and all our dead aredisturbed in their graves? You covered our country with sins and crimes, and it is not our custom to sing of sins and crimes, but of virtues. When will you show us your virtues? You have shown us until now onlyyour iron and fire, your brutality and brutality, and again brutalityand brutality, --and, did I say?--iron and fire. That is the essence ofyour religion and science, of your soul and glory. We will despise allthat you brought into our country. Let us be silent, Sire, and you maycontinue to show your Mephistophelean civilisation, and after you havecrushed all those who are weaker and smaller than you, Sire, open yourlips and preach upon their ruin to your admirers: _cantate Domino!_ Butwe will not sing after our custom of old in your presence. We prefer tobe silent and to wait for God's judgment. 

The Hidden Moral Treasures of the Serbian people are now shining, asalways, throughout all the times of darkness and suffering. 

You will remember from the beginning of the war all the declarations ofthe Serbian government about the Serbian loyalty to the end. Some amongyou might have thought: such declarations are dictated by politicalreasons. No, such declarations have been only a poor expression of whatwe all in Serbia thought and felt. Loyalty to friends, devotion to ourpledged word, fidelity to the signed and unsigned treaties were alwaysconsidered in Serbia as sacred duties in the conscience of the people. Our morale is not something that was learned in the schools--do notforget we had no schools for centuries--but rather an inherited treasurewhich every man was obliged to keep in great brilliancy. It is not amorale supported by learning, sophisms and quotations, it is anelementary power which is not a possession, but which has possession ofeverybody. Our Prime Minister uttered the other day these words: "Betterto die in beauty than to live in shame!" Fifteen hundred years agosimilar words were uttered on this island of yours by a knight ofBeowulf's escort: "Death is better than a life of shame. " Every child inSerbia thinks the same as our Prime Minister about the value of life anddeath. 

"Better to die than" to live so and so, or than to do this orthat--hundreds of the Serbian proverbs begin with those words. Inproverbs is expressed our moral wisdom, in proverbs and poetry. Yet ourproverbs are poetry as well. The morale is regarded not so much as ateaching, rather as poetry, like history. History and morality arethings which shall be sung, history and morality are such dignifiedtopics that they must be expressed in a dignified, solemn language. Poetry is the very essence of things. It is the most earnest thing inthe world. That is our opinion. 

The Serbs read the Bible very little, although they had the Bible intheir own language and used it in divine service before you used it inthe church of your own. The Bible was listened to in the church, butpoetry at home. As Shakespeare can be called your second Bible, so, andstill more, our national poetry for us has been indeed a second Bible. Our poetry has been our history, our moral, our beauty, our hopes, oureducation, our encouragement--our Bible. By our poetry, as by the Bible, the morale is not only taught but inspired. What is this morale, taughtby Serbian poetry and proverbs, when uttered in a dry form?

"Dear God, we thank thee for all, " that is the usual beginning of everypoem. 

Love? Love is better than justice. 

Justice? Justice is better than injustice. 

Injustice? It must be punished. 

Suffering? It must be relieved. 

Patience? That is the great virtue of the sufferers. 

Honour? Better to die than to give up honour. 

Dishonour? It means as much as death. 

Mercifulness? It shines like the sun over the world. 

A beggar? He puts your heart to the test. 

Death? God is behind death and therefore death is no evil. 

Prayer? It shall be used always, but it never helps unless we do ourbest. 

Humility? It is always rewarded by love. 

Fearlessness? It is commended very strongly. 

Cowardice? It is repudiated and despised to the utmost. 

Obedience? Youth must be obedient and respectful towards old people. 

Chastity? Better to burn down a church than to take or to give awaychastity. 

Protection of the weak? Marko protected weak people and animals. That isa great merit. 

Chivalry? Always; towards friends and enemies. 

Work? Without work prayer does not help. 

Freedom? Man is man only in living in freedom and in fighting forfreedom. 

Wealth? It is no virtue, and if it does not support virtue, it is avice. 

God? He is the Lord of the World and thy steady companion. 

Such morals have been preached, yea, sung by our ancestors, and byourselves. Certainly we have sinned often against these morals, but inour sins and in our virtues they have been always regarded as a standardof all that is good and beautiful. 

SINNING SERBIA. 

Serbia sinned and repented her sins, and again sinned. Put yourselves, gentlemen, in the chair of a judge, and I will confess to you all thesins of Serbia. Serbia sinned and suffered. Her sins have been her hell, her sufferings--her purgatory. I don't pray you to forgive Serbia, butonly to compare justly her sins with her sufferings. The Serbs sinnedagainst all the ten commandments, it is true, but still regarded the tencommandments as the standard which is better than a nation's doings. Although the people said beautifully: "A grain of truth is better than aton of lies, " still the lie, like a parasite, had its nest in Serbia aselsewhere. Although the people said: "It is better to be blind withjustice than to have eyes with injustice, " still injustice had its seed, its growth and fruits among the same people. Although Cain's sin hasbeen abhorred by the conscience of the Serbs, still this sin of takingthe life of a brother has defiled the very soil of Serbia, which hasbeen so much sanctified by the sufferings and unselfish sacrifices ofher people. You will not find certainly in Serbia the refined viceswhich are practised in the shadow of great civilisations, but you willfind quite enough great and small sins, which the Serbian consciencedoes not justify any more than yours. 

THE SERBIAN AND THE BULGARIAN SPIRIT. 

Besides, I will confess to you one great sin of the Serbian people. Itis an exaggerated love for independence. It is a virtue as every honestlove is a virtue, but it becomes a sin if exaggerated. It is a brilliantquality like the sunshine in the time of fighting against the commonenemy, but it is a sin in peace time when organised efforts for thesocial welfare are required. This spirit of independence, theindependence from enemies as well as from friends, has considerablydisturbed our social life and progress-during the last century. Now, bythis greatest of our sins and greatest of our virtues as well, we Serbsdiffered chiefly from our neighbours. The people in Great Britain havebeen accustomed to look towards the Balkans as towards a country withone and the same spirit. This is a great mistake. There are chiefly twospirits: the Serbian and the Bulgarian, _i. E. _ the spirit ofindependence and the spirit of slavery. The Serbian spirit resisteduntil the end stubbornly and tenaciously against the Turks conqueringthe Balkans five centuries ago. The Bulgarian spirit surrendered withoutany resistance. "The Kral of Bulgaria did not wait to be conquered, buthumbly begged for mercy"; so writes an English historian. [3] Therebellious spirit of the Serbs arose first in the Balkan darkness ahundred years ago against the tyranny and the despotic wickedness of theTurkish rulers, and liberated the Serbian fatherland. The Bulgarianspirit waited until strangers came and liberated the Bulgarian country. Those strangers have been: Russians, Serbians, Roumanians and Mr. Gladstone. The Bulgarian spirit has been since 1878 under the rule ofthe German kings, as slavishly subordinate as it was for five hundredyears under the rule of the Turkish viziers and pashas. It was pureignorance which made some people exclaim some months ago: "It is KingFerdinand's war against Serbia and the Allies, and not the Bulgarianpeople's. The Bulgars will never fight against the Russians, theirliberators. " Yet the fact is and will remain: the Bulgarian people haveonly one thought, i. E. The thought of their ruler, be it Ferdinand orsomebody else, and they have only one will, i. E. The will of theirruler. They will fight against the Russians as fiercely as they foughtagainst the Turks yesterday, and against the French and British to-day, if it is only the plan and will of their ruler. 

This slavish spirit, which is a disgrace to a nation in the most tragicand decisive events of the world's history, makes the Bulgarian peoplein peace very happy and fit for peaceful organised work, when obedienceand subordination are required. This slavish spirit is the greatestvirtue and the greatest sin of the Bulgarian nation. 

Yet, I am speaking of our own sins, and I confess that our greatest sinhas been the too greatly developed love of personal independence. It isthe truest spirit of the Serbs. From this spirit originated all ourfortunes and all our misfortunes. From the point of view of this spiritconsider, please, all our sins in modern times: the killing of ourkings, the internal disturbances, and all the irregularity in thepolitical and social life of our country, and you will understand usbetter; and if you understand us better, I am sure you will forgive usmore easily. 

SERBIA IN PRAYER. 

Serbia has sinned, Serbia has prayed. If you put on one side of thescales Serbia's sins and on the other Serbia's sufferings and prayers, Iam sure the latter will send the balance down. 

Again I must come back to the Serbian village. Prayer is thereconsidered not only as an epilogue to a sin but as a daily necessity. The first duty after one's ablution in the morning is prayer. That is asanctified custom. Many songs on our national hero, Marko, begin asfollows:

 "Marko got up early in the morning, Washed his face and prayed to God. "

And all the songs begin, I repeat it, with the verse:

 "Dear God, we are thankful to Thee for all. "

But not only the songs begin with prayer, every work and every pleasurebegins with prayer as well, every day and every night, every feast, every rest and every journey. This custom has been partly broken andabandoned only in the towns under the influence of the central Europeanmaterialistic civilisation. In the villages unbelief is unknown. In ourgreen fields, under our dark-blue heaven, in our little white houses andwooden cottages, on the banks of our murmuring brooks and magnificentrivers, atheism is unknown. Every family in a house is regarded as alittle religious community. The head of the family presides over thiscommunity and prays with it. When I tell you that, I tell you mypersonal experience. I was born in a village, in a family of forty-fivemembers. We prayed together every Saturday, after the weekly work wasover. In the evening my grandfather, the head of the family, called usto prayer. We had no chapel in the house. In bad weather we prayed inthe house, in fine weather out of doors, in the yard. The starry heavenserved as our temple, the moon as our guardian, the silent breath of thesurrounding nature as our inspiration. My grandfather took a chalicewith fire and incense, and sprinkled every one of us. Then he cameforward, stood before us and bowed deeply, and his example was followedby us all. Then began a silent prayer, interrupted only here and thereby a sighing or by some whispering voice. We crossed ourselves andprayed, looking to the earth and looking to the stars. The prayer endedagain with deep bowing and with a loud Amen. 

When I recall this prayer in my memory, I feel more piety, more humilityand more comfort than I ever felt in any of the big cathedrals in eitherhemisphere where I have had the opportunity of praying. This prayer ofthe Serbian peasants, beautiful in its simplicity and touching in itssincerity, survived generation after generation, and has been victoriousover all crimes that the strangers of the Asiatic or of the Europeanfaith have committed on us. Our tenacious and incessant prayer is anevident sign of our tenacious and unbroken hope. We pray because wehope; we hope still more after we have prayed. 

Everything can be disturbed in Serbia except prayer. The invasion of theKaiser's troops in Serbia disturbed and perturbed everything in Serbia, but the prayer of the Serbian people still continues. Enslaved inSerbia, dispersed as the refugees are all over the world, we pray to theGod of Justice, now as always. Our prayer means our hope. The Kaiser'ssubjects and the Bulgarian slaves can kill everything in Serbia--and thepurpose of their coming into Serbia is killing--but they never can killour hope. Martyred Serbia, your loyal ally, oh noble sons and daughtersof Great Britain, is now silent and powerless. Enemies and friends cannow laugh her to scorn. She will remain silent. I am sure you willrespect this silence of the Crucified. I am sure everyone of you willdo his best to redeem Serbia. Well, Serbia can now give, after all, hercause to God and can wait the end hopefully. She can now say to theKaiser, her conqueror and lord, the words of one of your great poets:

 "I have lost, you have won this hazard yet perchance My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain When time and God give judgement. "

A C Swinburne (_Faliero_). 

SERBIA IN ARMS. 

Delivered before the English Soldiers. 

I propose to-night, gentlemen, to describe to you Serbia, my nativecountry, my dream of the past, my dream of the future, and one of yourAllies, loyal and faithful in life and death. I will try, of course, togive you only some glances at and slight insight into what Serbia hasrepresented with her soul, her efforts, ideals and hopes. The time isshort, yea, our time to-day is more empty than the events which surpriseus every day, every night, and overwhelm us like an avalanche of snowand ice from the Alps. How poor and insufficient is our human languageto-day, even the language of the most eloquent mortals from this islandlike Burke, Macaulay and Carlyle, to describe the events which our eyesare seeing and our ears listening to at the present moment! Do notexpect from me an equivalent description of Serbia, which has been oneof the greatest factors in this world-war during many months, and whichhas disturbed your hearts for so long and attracted thousands of yoursons and friends over the seas, to take the sword from Serbia's mangledhands and continue the struggle for the same cause for which she foughtuntil death. All that I can tell you consists in some poor instances andremembrances which will be sufficient to show you that Serbia has beenworthy to live and to be your ally, and consequently that she is worthyof your great sympathy with her and of your helping her resurrection. 

Serbia has been at war since 1912. 

IN AUTUMN 1912

King Peter of Serbia consecrated his church of white marble, built inTopola, the birthplace of his grandfather, Karageorge, the protagonistof Balkan liberation. On the same hill, on which Karageorge took theresolution to begin one of the greatest things that ever happened on thetroublesome Balkan soil, on the hill of Oplenaz, Karageorge's grandson, King Peter, erected a beautiful church and then declared war on Turkey. It was one of many wars that we had with Turkey, one of many--known andunknown to you--during five hundred years. We have had our old accountswith the Turks. We despised them as the slaves will despise their lords, and they despised us as the lords will despise their slaves. Yet werespected their virtues, and they recognised some of ours. With thesword they conquered our country, and we knew that only with the swordwe could reconquer it from them. Our Christian drama with the Turks inthe Balkans began with blood, and we all believed it must finish withblood. In our bloody conflict with the Turks we, the Christians, lostthree kings--one of them was King Constantine of Byzantium, and two werethe Serbian kings, Vukashin and Lazare--during a period of seventeenyears. As well as Serbia and Greece, Roumania also offered greatresistance to the Turks. It is a historic fact, that after the decisiveBalkan battle on the field of Kossovo, the Roumanians also foughtagainst the Turks. In the battle of Rovina between the Turks andRoumanians, our epic Serbian hero, Marko Kralevich, the last king ofMacedonia, called Marko of Prilep, also participated, and was killedthere. He was the third Serbian king killed in the defence of Christianfreedom in the Balkans. That was the time when the Albanians, too, showed their virtues more than ever before. Under Skenderbeg, theprince from Croya, they resisted the Mussulmans very bravely. But theyfell into slavery in the same way as Serbia, Greece, Roumania andCroatia. The only country in the Balkans which surrendered without anyresistance was Bulgaria. The only country in the Balkans that never wasconquered by the Turks was Montenegro. Poor Montenegro, a skeleton ofrocky mountains, has shown during five hundred years more heroic beautyand idealistic enthusiasm than many great empires in Asiatic andEuropean history, which fought their selfish battles for power andcomfort, and have been respected and adored merely because of theirnumbers and dimensions. 

Now, in the year of our Lord, 1912, two Serbian kingdoms, Serbia andMontenegro, with two other Christian kingdoms, Greece and Bulgaria, declared war on the Turks. The Roumanians were with their sympathies onthe side of the Christian allies. The Albanians, degenerate anddisorganised, very different from Skenderbeg's contemporaries, standingnow under the influence of Austria, were pro-Turks and against theChristian warriors. 

Shall I remind you of the results? I suppose the surprising fact isfresh in your memories even now that only two months after the Balkanwar had been declared the delegates of the belligerents for peace stayedin Hyde Park Hotel in London. Turkey lost and the Christians won. 

The Serbian troops crossed the frontier and fighting proceeded in threedifferent directions, towards Skoplje and Prilep, towards Adrianopleand towards Scutari. A foreigner never can realise what a Serbiansoldier thought and felt at that time. Skoplje had been the centre ofour mediaeval kingdom; in Prilep lived and ruled king Marko, ournational hero; under the walls of. Adrianople King Vukashin, Marko'sfather, was killed resisting the Turkish invasion; Scutari was the lastfree dominion of the Serbian kings Balshic before universal darknesscovered the whole of the Balkans, except Montenegro. In every directionthe Serbian soldiers faced their own history. Their past glory has beenrevived; their heroes of old excited their imagination; many saw them invisions or in dreams, all imitated them in heroic deeds and insufferings. 

Here succumbed the Saint King Lazare! exclaimed our soldier in the fieldof Kossovo. Here fell the Duke Milosh after he killed the Turkish SultanMurad! Here lived Marko of Prilep! From this fortress he protected theremnants of the Serbian people and their past glory after the fatalbattle of Kossovo! Here on the stones the hoofs of Shiraz, Marko'scherished horse, are to be seen. There are churches built by King Urosh, or Stephen, or Milutin, or Dushan, or Lazare! Here on the Mariza Riverfell Vukashin with sixty thousand of the most splendid Serbian warriorsdefending the freedom of the Balkans. There on Scutari stand loftywalls constructed by the same King Vukashin. This is the way by whichthe Byzantine princesses had come to be the wives of our kings or dukes. There is the town where King Dushan, in allegiance with Kantakusen andthe Greeks, fought against the first Turkish invaders. On this lake ofOchrida was a beautiful church with a Serbian archbishopric. That is themountain where the _villas_ (fairies) lived and from which they flewdown to help our heroes or to preserve the Serbian down-trodden rights. In this town King Nemanja met the Crusaders from the West proceeding tothe East and gave them hospitality. In that town our greatest kingproclaimed the famous codex of laws, _Zakonik_, which is comparable withthe best codexes of that kind. Here are the tombs of our patriarchs, wholed and protected the nation during centuries of oppression and slavery. There are the towers built from the skeletons of the Serbian leaders, who were slaughtered for their ideals of freedom; and there again is thespot where were hanged several _voivodas_ and _bishops_. Bones uponbones, blood upon blood, sin upon sin, heroism upon heroism! Kossovo, Scutari, Kumanovo, Skoplje, Prilep, Bitolj, Adrianople--all these nameswere well known by every Serbian soldier. In their childhood and boyhoodthey sang these very names, they sang them and knew the historicalevents and heroes connected with them. And so they came now not asguests and strangers, but they returned home after a long absence. Itseems to every one of them like a dream: the land which has been forgenerations and generations the topic of poetry now stood before theSerbian warriors as a reality. The Serbian brothers from Austria-Hungarycame to Macedonia, kissed the sacred soil, and each one took a handfulof the sacred dust from the tombs of our kings and heroes of old. Twomonths after the outbreak of war King Peter returned to Topola andprayed gratefully in his white church to God and to Saint George. Thisdemocratic king, who has been elected by the Serbian Parliament(_Skupshtina_), thanked God that he with his people had finished thework of liberation from the Turkish yoke, which work was started byKarageorge, his grandfather, who also was elected by the people to betheir leader. 

IN SUMMER 1913. 

The war with the Turks was a short one. Yet the war with the Bulgars wasstill shorter. The Bulgars attacked us in a dark night. Austriasuggested such an attack, and this quite suited the Bulgarian spirit. Itis a slavish spirit, full of slavish ambitions and slavish abjectmethods. 

When I tell you that, believe me, I tell it neither as a chauvinist noreven as a Serbian patriot, but as a man who has studied very carefullythe history and psychology of the Balkan peoples. 

The Bulgarian attack against the Serbian army was resisted not only bythe Serbs, as the Bulgars hoped, but by the Greeks and Roumanians aswell. I visited the battlefield afterwards. I have been in Stip, a townon the Bregalniza river, where the attack began. I saw the tree on thebank of the river, under which the Serbian and Bulgarian officers restedtogether the very day before the treacherous night. The Bulgarianssmiled and chatted with their Serbian colleagues; they spoke about theeverlasting brotherhood between the Serbian and Bulgarian nations; theyate and drank from the same plates and glasses with the Serbs, theirallies, while the order of the night attack lay in their pockets. Ithappened nineteen hundred years after a treacherous apostle ate anddrank in the same manner with his Master. 

The unnatural ambitions of the Bulgars were repudiated by all the Balkannations. Therefore the Bulgars saw one day against them, not one enemyas they expected, but three. Serbs, Greeks and Roumanians marchedtogether towards Sofia. The Bulgars asked for peace. In the conferenceof Bucharest, as you remember, the new frontiers of the Balkan Stateswere marked. Serbia came out from this war victorious, it is true, butwith a broken heart, for she had been forced to fight against her allyof yesterday--with a broken heart, with many thousands of her best sonskilled and crippled, and with still many more swept away by cholera, which was raging in the summer of 1913. 

THE HOME OF THE SERBIAN SOUL

is Macedonia. It must have been once a charming country worthy of thegreat men like Philip and Alexander, worthy of Saint Paul's mission toit, worthy of Byzantium's effort to save it from the Slavs, worthy ofall the Turkish sacrifices to conquer it, worthy of several Serbiankings who gave their lives defending it. It was a rich and beautifulspot on this earth. It was the centre of the Serbian mediaeval state andpower, the very heart of the Serbian glory from the time when the Serbsbecame Christians till the tragedy of Kossovo, and after this tragedytill the death of King Marko of Prilep in the beginning of the fifteenthcentury. Even during the time of slavery under the Turks, Macedonia wasthe source of all the spiritual and moral inspirations and supports ofthe enslaved nation. It happened only accidentally that the northernpart of Serbia, was liberated a hundred years ago while Macedoniaremained still in chains. In the north, in the dense forests and themountains around Belgrade and Kraguievaz, the guerilla war started agreat insurrection which succeeded. 

This guerilla war meant a gradual destruction of the Turkish dominionsin the whole northern part: in Shumadija, Bosnia, Croatia and Dalmatia. But I say the guerilla war in Shumadija, around Belgrade and Kraguievaz, was a success. Karageorge liberated a part of the Serbian country in thenorth, and this part was finally recognised by the great powers ofEurope and called _Serbia_. But neither Karageorge nor anybody in Serbiahas forgotten Macedonia. Macedonia was not only a part of our history, but it has become a part of our soul. The principal and the greater partof our national poetry, which means our Shakespeare and which meant ourBible, describes Serbian Macedonia, her heroes, her historic events, herstruggle with the Turks, her slavery, and her customs and hopes. Serbianchildren know the names of the towns like Skoplje, Prilep, Ochrida, andthe heroes' names, Urosh, Stephen, Milutin, Dushan, Marko and Ugljesha, before they learn in the school to write these names. Our nationalpoetry is our national education, our education is our soul. Macedoniarepresents a great part of our poetry, which means that she forms agreat part of our soul. To say Macedonia does not belong to Serbia meansthe same as to say, the Serbian soul does not belong to the Serbians. Could you imagine England without Stratford, the birthplace ofShakespeare? I don't think you could. So we cannot imagine a Serbiawithout Prilep, the source, yea, the birthplace of our national poetry. Every people must have some sacred soil in their country, a part moresacred than other parts, which binds them more to their fatherland, which excites their enthusiasm, and which obliges them to defend and todie for it. I was born in Northern Serbia, in a town which has been veryimportant in our modern history. But I must tell you that it was notValve, my birthplace, which inspired me to be a Serb in soul, but ratherPrilep, Skoplje and Ochrida, the places where our spirit and our virtuesof old flourished, together with Kossovo, where our national body wasdestroyed. Valevo has been very little mentioned in our national poetry, Valevo and even Belgrade, in comparison with Macedonia. Northern Serbiahas been in our Middle Ages more a part of our body than of our soul. But Macedonia.... A Bulgarian diplomat formerly in Rome once ironicallytold a Serbian sculptor in a discussion about Macedonia: 'We Bulgarsknow that King Marko of Prilep is a Serbian. Well, give us Prilep, thatis what we want, and keep King Marko for yourselves!' That is the trueBulgarian spirit. The Greeks have understood us better. They have manybrothers of their own in Monastir and Ochrida, and still they recognisedthe Serbian rights in the central and northern parts of Macedonia, claiming for themselves only the southern part, and giving to theBulgars the eastern part of it. Yet they could claim Macedonia not withless rights than the Bulgars did. Why? Because Macedonia never was thecentre of a Greek Empire, as it never was the centre of a BulgarianEmpire. It was a provincial country of the old Byzantine Empire. It wasa country temporarily conquered by the Bulgars, the centre of theBulgarian kingdom being Tirnovo and its neighbourhood. But it was quitea centre of all the best things that we Serbs created and possessed inour past. Our national soul cannot live without this part of ournational body. I remember a conversation in Nish between a French sailorand a Serbian writer. The French sailor said: "But you will perish ifyou do not give Macedonia to the Bulgars?" The Serbian writer repliedquietly: "Let us perish for the sake of our soul!" An English gentlemanasked me the other day: "Why have you been obstinate in not yieldingMacedonia to the Bulgars, while we even are ready to yield to theGreeks, offering them Cyprus?" "Yes, " I said, "we can well appreciateyour sacrifice, but still Prilep for us is rather what Stratford--andnot Cyprus--is for you. And even I, not being an Englishman, could neveragree that you should offer Shakespeare's birthplace to anybody in theworld. "

Perhaps the Bulgars would not have attacked us in this war if we hadgiven Macedonia to them, although it is not certain, because thefrontiers of their ambitions are in Constantinople, Salonica and on theAdriatic. Still Serbia could not barter her soul like Faust withMephistopheles. Five hundred years ago the Serbs and Greeks defendedMacedonia from the Turkish invasion. In 1912 it was Serbia with Greeceagain who liberated Macedonia from the Turkish yoke. Bulgaria neverdefended Macedonia from the Turks. Her first fighting for Macedonia wasin 1913 against Serbs, Greeks and Roumanians. And Serbia sacrificed notonly many things and many lives for Macedonia, but twice even herindependence--once five hundred years ago, and for the second time atthe present moment. _Yes, Serbia is now killed because of Macedonia. _Indeed, all Serbia's fighting and suffering have been because ofMacedonia. She fought against the Turks because of Macedonia. She foughtagainst the Bulgars because of Macedonia. And she now is losing herindependence because of Macedonia. Because she could not give Macedonia, which means her glory, her history, her poetry, her soul, she is nowtrodden down and killed. Serbia could not live without Macedonia. Serbiadid what she could--she died for Macedonia. And if one day, God willing, from this blessed island should sound the trumpet for the Resurrectionfor all the dead, killed by the German sword, I hope Serbia will risefrom her grave together with Macedonia, as one body and one soul. 

Serbia and the World-War. 

In three years Serbia got three decisive victories which attractedattention to her in both hemispheres. She got a decisive victory atKumanovo, against the Turks, in 1912. She got the second decisivevictory on the Bregalniza, against the Bulgars, in 1913. She got a thirddecisive victory at Rudnik, against the Austrians and Magyars, in 1914. But finally she perished, in 1915, under the blow of the allied Turks, Bulgars, Austrians and Magyars with their common lord and leader againstSerbia, the Germans. 

Why?

"Because she caused this world-war. That is a just punishment which shewell deserves, " so say the Germans and their dupes. And saying so, theythink of the assassination in Sarajevo. A Serbian boy killed the CrownPrince of Austria. Therefore Austria pretended to think that Serbia mustlose her independence. To punish Serbia for the crime in Sarajevo, Austria sent the famous ultimatum to Serbia in the summer of 1914, asking nothing less than what Shylock asked from Antonio--his life. Topunish Serbia, Germany made an alliance with the Bulgars, and sent hertroops and her iron--the best product of their culture--to destroy theSerbian state, to devastate the Serbian country, and to take more than amillion of human lives for the life of the Austrian Crown Prince. Andthis has been done with an unprecedented perfection. And thisdestructive deed has been praised with eloquent words in all theparliaments, churches, schools and papers all over Central Europe. 

We could reply to this German accusation: "Did not your greatestnational poet, Schiller, glorify William Tell, who killed Gesler, theAustrian tyrannous ruler in Switzerland? Why do you, who adore Schiller, and who praise William Tell's deed, blame the Serbian boy, Princip, whodid the same thing in killing Franz Ferdinand, the tyrant of Bosnia, hisfatherland? And after all, shall a whole nation, which was as surprisedby the affair in Sarajevo as anyone in the world, be crushed because ofthe crime of one man? Is that the principle of Frederick the Great, orLeasing, or Kant and Schiller?"

The Magyars said through their leading men: "Serbia must be punished notbecause of the affair in Sarajevo, but because she is making apropaganda to liberate and unite all the Southern Slav people, whichmeans a great blow for the Magyar interests and for the crown of SaintStephen. " Therefore the Magyars, rushing into Serbia in the firstinvasion, in August 1914, devastated a northern district of Serbia, thedistrict of Drina, in such a way that only the Bulgars could competewith them. Henri Barby, the French publicist, has visited this districtafter the invasion. His description of the Magyar atrocities and theoriginal pictures taken on the spot of the crimes committed make oneashamed to be the contemporary of such a nation. 

We could reply to the Magyar accusations: Not so much is it that Serbiahas been making a propaganda to liberate her brothers from your yoke, asthat they themselves have made this propaganda. Before the Crown Princewas killed in Sarajevo there were several outbursts in Agram on the Bansof Croatia, who were Magyar agents and tyrants just as Gesler was inSwitzerland many hundred years ago. All the outbursts and all thetragi-comic high trials in Croatia, Bosnia and Dalmatia, all thesuccesses of the Hapsburg Monarchy in the south and all the protestsprove two things:

First, that the Southern Slavs, Serbia's brothers, have suffered andhave been abased very much by the Magyar's brutal rule, and;

Second, that they have grown to be free and to live independently from anation which showed itself very inferior in many respects to the nationruled by it. 

The Bulgars even mocked the Serbs for allying themselves with the"degenerate" French, with the "faithless traders, " the English, and withthe "barbarians, " the Russians. They mocked us that we have not been"real" politicians, that we have been stupid and could not foresee theGerman victory. They accused us even in their declaration of war ofbeing "the felons" who caused the "world's conflagration. " And theyregarded as their mission to rise "in the name of civilisation" topunish "a criminal nation. "

We Serbs have nothing to reply to this Bulgar mockery, since theydistinctly claimed that they are not Slavs but Mongols; since theycondemned the English, French and Russian civilisations, and declaredthemselves to be the champions of the true civilisation. I will tell youonly how they fulfilled their "mission" in defending the humancivilisation from the Serbs. I will not speak myself, but I will repeatwhat a well-known English gentleman reported from Salonica:

"About five o'clock in the afternoon, while we still waited for orderswhere to take our guns, we saw coming out of the town towards us a long, straggling procession of Serbian soldier prisoners, about 300, surrounded by a strong escort of infantry. They were of all ages, someyoung boys of 15, some old men, bowed of back, with grey in theirbeards, hungry-looking, ragged, bearing the marks of their long fight inthe pass. They shambled along, evidently without any idea as to whattheir fate was to be, till they came close to where this newly-dug pitlay open. There the command to halt was given, and they stood or sat, surrounded by their guards, for about an hour. 

"At the end of that time another body of men could be seen coming out ofthe town. They were Bulgarian cavalry, about eighty of them, with acaptain in command. At a deliberate walk they came on towards the throngof prisoners and guards at the pit-side. When they were still severalhundred yards away, a young Serbian soldier evidently grasped what waspreparing. Making a sudden dart, he sprang through the cordon of guards, and was off, running at a surprising speed. The guards shouted, buttheir rifles, though with bayonets fixed, were not loaded, and itlooked for the moment as if he might get clear away. Then the captain ofthe cavalry troop caught sight of him, turned round in the saddle, andshouted an order to his men. Half a dozen spurred their horses, and leftthe ranks at a gallop. It was a short chase. Hearing the thud of thehorses' hoofs behind him, the young Serbian turned his head for aninstant, then ran on faster than before. The galloping cavalry were soonclose up with him. As the first man, with a shout, raised his sword, thefugitive doubled like a hare, and was away at right angles. Two morehorsemen were close behind, though. The first rode him down; the secondleaned out of his saddle and pierced him through, as he scrambled toregain his feet. By this time the guards with the rest of the Serbianshad loaded their rifles, and stood round them in a ring, with levelledbayonets, while, huddled together, their prisoners embraced each otheror sank in apathy to the ground. 

"The cavalry captain rode up to the miserable throng. 'Each man willbind the eyes of his neighbour, ' he shouted in Serbian. They did so. Ittook a long time, and was a pitiable sight. Some young boys were crying. Many of the men shouted defiance at the guards, who looked expectantlyon, and at the cavalry, whose swords were drawn ready for the butchery. They blindfolded each other with strips torn from their waistcloths, orwhatever else they had. 'Now kneel down, ' came the harsh order, and oneby one the victims crouched on the ground. The captain turned again tohis troopers. 'Start work, ' was the order he gave. The infantry guards, still keeping a circle to drive back any who might try to flee, drew offa little to give more room, and passing through the intervals of theirline, the Bulgar cavalry rode in among the kneeling throng of prisonersat a canter. With yells of cruel delight they pushed to and fro, slashing and thrusting at the unarmed victims. Some of the Serbianstried to seize the dripping sabre blades in their hands. An arm slashedoff at the shoulder would fall from their bodies. Others, tearing offthe bandages that blindfolded them, attempted to unhorse theirexecutioners, gripping them by the boot to throw them out of the saddle. But even the 300, though brave, could do nothing against eighty armedmen. 

"I could see the living trying to save themselves, crawling under thelittle heaps of dead. Others rushed towards the line of infantry, surrounding them, as if to break through to safety, but the footsoldiers, intoxicated by the sight of the deliberate bloodshed going onbefore their eyes, ran to meet them with their bayonets, and thrustthem through and through again with savage cries. 'We are doing this incharity, ' shouted some of the Bulgarians. 'We have no bread to feed you, so if we spared you it would be to die of hunger. ' The massacre went onfor half an hour. At the end of that time there was little left to kill, and the troopers were tired of cutting and thrusting. A few of themdismounted, and, sword in hand, walked here and there among the bleedinggroups of dead, pricking them to see if any still lived. Some, thoughbadly wounded, were still alive, but the Bulgarian captain did not givetime for them all to be finished off, and at his orders the whole pileof murdered prisoners, whether breathing or extinct, were pushed by theinfantry into the grave dug earlier in the afternoon, and earthshovelled at once on top of them. " [4]

"England betrayed the White Race!" So exclaimed the other day HerrDernburg, the former German minister for the colonies. Why? BecauseEngland mobilised all the races, including the black and yellow, Negroes, Indians, Maoris and Japanese, against the Germans. HerrDernburg thinks that England has very much damaged European civilisationby so doing. That is a very curious conception of the present worldsituation. I could reply to Herr Dernburg's objection:

First, the history of mankind does not report that the Negroes enslavedanybody and kept him enslaved through a bloody regime five hundred yearslong as the Turks, the German allies, did with the Balkan Christians. 

Second, I never have been told that the Japanese are more barbarouspeople than the Magyars. 

Third, I doubt very strongly that there is any madman in the world whowill even try to make a comparison between the noble soul of India and ablood-thirsty subject of Ferdinand of Coburg. 

And fourth, if Kaiser William with the Prussian junkers should governEurope through the superman's philosophy and Krupp's industry, let ushurry to open the door of Europe as soon as possible for the Chinese andJapanese, for Indians and Negroes, and even for all the cannibals, theinnocent doves, who need more time to eat up one fellow-man with theirteeth than a trained Prussian needs to slaughter ten thousand by help ofhis "kultur. "

If England is doing anything right she doubtless is doing right inmobilising all the nations, yea, all the human beings upon this planet, cultured or uncultured, civilised or uncivilised, of every colour ofskin, of every size, to protest in this or another way against amilitary and inhuman civilisation which is worse than the most primitivebarbarism of man. All the races of the world who are fighting to-daywith England against Germany may not understand either each other'slanguage or customs, religion or traditions, but they all understand onething very well, _i. E. _ that they must fight together against a nationwhich despises all other nations and tries to conquer them, to governthem, to suppress their language, their customs, their traditions andtheir belief in their own worth and mission in this world. 

ONLY SOME ANECDOTES. 

A Serbian detachment from the VIIth regiment had been ordered one nightto cross the river Sava to make explorations about the positions andvigilance of the enemy. The soldiers prepared themselves to fulfil theirtask with silence and depression. The commander of the detachmentremarked that and said:

 "Yes, our task is very dangerous, my friends; we may die to-night, but remember that English lords on the battlefield to-night are in danger of death too for the same cause as we. "

On hearing that the soldiers became cheerful. 

 * * * * *

An officer said to his private: "If I should be killed in the battle, don't leave my body here, but carry it to Kraguievaz, where my wife is, and bury it there. "

It happened indeed that the officer was killed. The private askedpermission to transfer the body as he was told. The permission was notgiven. In the night he took the dead body on his back, and after ajourney of three nights brought it to Kraguievaz and buried it. Therefore he was judged by the military court and sentenced to a veryheavy punishment. But he showed himself very satisfied, saying:

 "I did what I was ordered and what I promised to do. Now you can sentence me even to death; at least I will not be ashamed in the other world meeting my commander. "

 * * * * *

In the offensive against the Austrians in December 1914 a Serbiancompany found in a trench three Magyar soldiers. They laid down theirarms. 

"Would you kill them, Andrea?" asked the officer of one of his men toprove him. 

The man replied with astonishment:

"Marko of Prilep never killed a disarmed man"

 * * * * *

A peasant one day dug the ground behind his home. It was after theAustrian army had been beaten and repulsed, and the Serbian refugeesreturned home. The peasant was asked:

"What are you digging for?"

"Our tricolours. I put it three weeks ago under the ground. I was afraidthe Austrians would spit on it, and it means the same as to spit inone's face. "

 * * * * *

In the battle on Krivolak a Serbian was wounded in the chest. He couldscarcely breathe. He was sent to the hospital. Moving slowly, he came toa spot where he saw a wounded Bulgarian lying down among the dead andcrying with pain, his legs being broken. The Serbian stood thoughtful aminute, then he took the enemy on his back and brought him to thehospital, both very exhausted. He was asked:

"Why did you take such a burden, since you are a burden to yourself?"

He kept silent for a moment and then replied:

"You know, sire, I have been shooting with all the others. Who knows, perhaps _I_ wounded him. "

 * * * * *

"Why should not I believe in Fate?" an under-officer once asked me. "Should somebody relate to me what I am going to tell you, I could notbelieve it. But it happened to me. Once in my boyhood I cut thebranches of a tree; a gipsy woman saw me and said:

"'Don't injure the tree; a tree may once save your life when all yourhopes are gone. '"

"Now, listen! I was taken prisoner by the Austrians. In their retreatthey let me go with their column. We went through a thick forest. Ithought myself lost. All my past life came before my eyes. I rememberedthe gipsy woman and her advice. I looked around. In a few moments Ijumped aside and found myself on the top of a tree. Nobody saw me. Hoursand hours the Austrians marched close to my protecting tree. At once twoMagyar hussars rushed back looking around, evidently searching for me. They went. Then came our first advance guard, and I slipped down fromthe tree and surprised them. Is that not Fate?"

 * * * * *

Typhus fever raged most in Valevo, where the Austrian troops came firstand brought it, a worse enemy of Serbia than even the Austriansthemselves. A Serbian women's association in Nish held a meeting andconsulted a doctor how they could help. 

"Don't go to Valevo, " advised the doctor. "Whoever enters the hospitalover there must die. "

The president, a well-known woman, kept silent, went home, packed herluggage and took the first train for Valevo. After two weeks she wasbrought home infected by typhus, and died soon afterwards. 

 * * * * *

A patrician mother fled before the Bulgars with two girls. For severaldays they had nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. As they reached therocky frontier of Albania, the girls asked the mother:

"And now, whither?"

The mother smiled and said:

"I will give you now the last bit to eat, and then we will go where wewill be perfectly safe from enemy and hunger. "

And she gave to the girls and she herself took--poison. 

 * * * * *

In spring 1913 the Montenegrins took Scutari after immense sacrifice oflives. Yet they were forced by the Great Powers through Austria'sintrigues to leave the very dear town. Soon afterwards a Serbian fromMontenegro travelled from Cattaro to Fiume. An Austrian officer saw himin his picturesque costume, and said to him with irony:

"You see after all you must yield Scutari to us. "

"Yes, " replied the Montenegrin, "we Montenegrins and you Austrians areas different as lions and foxes. There are many dens of lions where thefoxes creep in and not one den of foxes where you could find a lion. "

SERBIA ON THE ISLANDS

Serbia suffered shipwreck, and her broken pieces are now dispersed allover the islands in the Mediterranean. A little island of the Serbianrefugees is formed in Greece, and also in Italy, in France, in Englandand in America. And what happened with the ship of the Serbian nation?She plunged to the bottom of a hell of darkness and suffering. Thepeople from the neutral countries coming now from Serbia describe Serbiaas a silent grave, her towns with deserted streets, with plundered orshut-up shops, her villages under a nightmare of starvation. There areonly children and women at home, and very soon there will be no moreeither children or women. The Russian and Italian prisoners are broughtto Serbia to make roads, railways and fortifications for Serbia'senemies, and all the males from Serbia have been taken away--who candivine where? The Serbian bishops and priests, and all the leaders ofthe nation have been carried away too. There are neither leaders nornation in the Serbian country. I don't exaggerate when I say that allthe sufferings of poor and sorely stricken Belgium is still only ashadow of what Serbia sutlers in that dark corner of the world which iscalled the Balkans, far off from all friendly eyes, friendly ears andhearts. Yet I will not compare the sufferings of all these nationscrucified and martyred by the Germans. I will say only that martyredSerbia, with Montenegro, has been recently ranked among the othermartyred nations: Poland, Belgium and Armenia. Her cross is very heavy, her wounds very deep, her bleeding deadly. I know, gentlemen, how yourgenerous hearts are now quite open for Serbia. But, unfortunately, Serbia is now closed to your generosity. Between your generosity andSerbia's suffering, between your medicaments and her wounds, betweenyour bread and her hunger, there stands a hedge of Germano-Bulgarbayonets. All that you can do is to save Serbia on the islands, and, ifpossible, to hurry to liberate Serbia's country from the darkest slaveryin which she was ever plunged. Serbia on the islands--it seems so--willbe the only population of the future Serbia. Those who escaped from theGermano-Bulgar annihilation will be the people who will enter into thePromised Land, into free Serbia. I am sure you will save in time theseremnants of the Serbian nation, which is now as always the faithfulEnglish ally and admirer. I am sure you will give protection to themwho have given you, in the time of light and in the time of darkness, their friendship and devotion. By this protection of Serbia, as well asof all the little and oppressed nations in Europe and Asia, you will domore for the glory of your country than by any extension of its frontieror accumulation of riches. Serbia suffers and still hopes. Serbia'shopes go to God, crossing this island of yours, crossing your hearts andsouls, as the bridge between her and God. Serbia hopes to be free withall her brothers, who are suffering under the manifold yokes ofmerciless strangers. _Serbia militans_ did every possible thing youexpected her to do. She has been for you, not only politically andmilitantly, correct, but childish, sincere and devout. Now she issitting on your threshold and looking towards you with shining tears inher eyes. And the God of Heaven knows Serbia and knows England. He waitsto see what you are going to do for Serbia. Who dares to doubt that you, descendants of Shakespeare and Pitt, of Carlyle and Gladstone, will showyourself less chivalrous towards the little Serbia than Serbia has shownherself chivalrous towards you?

_I_ dare not doubt it. 

_PART II_

FRAGMENTS OF SERBIAN NATIONAL WISDOM

Be as patient as an ox, as brave as a lion, as industrious as a bee, andas cheerful as a bird. 

Help the beggar. He is not a beggar because God cannot feed all Hischildren, but because He placed him as a beggar on the street to testyour heart. 

Every penny that you give to a beggar, God counts double as His debt toyou. 

What is the first principle for humanity?

Some say to eat, others not to eat. 

Some say to speak, others to remain silent. 

Some say to hasten, others to go slowly. 

Some say to work, others to idle. 

Some say to pray, others not to pray. 

Some say to destroy life, and others to preserve it. 

What, then, is this first principle?

It is Life and Death, and God over both. 

The moonlight accentuates the silence of the churchyard, the sunshinethe clamour of the market-place. 

By our good works we help God very little, and by our evil deeds we doHim no harm. But by our good works we help ourselves, and by our evildeeds we harm ourselves. Nevertheless, do good not for your own sake, but for God's, so that your joy may be greater and your determinationmore lasting. 

 Sin is worse than failure. Vice is worse than sin. Obstinacy in evil is worse than vice. 

To be a drunkard means making an alliance with Satan, to steal means todo Satan's work, and to kill means to become Satan's slave. 

 Whether you go slowly or quickly, Death keeps his appointment. 

There are three kinds of men: first, those who plough and sow with thedevil; second, those who plough with the devil and sow with God; andthird, those who plough and sow with God. 

The riddle of life is so mysterious that the more we try to solve it thedeeper seems the mystery, but the more we work and pray, the nearerseems the solution. 

Scrutiny magnifies the enigma of life, prayer lessens it. 

Whether righteous or unrighteous, you must die; but if you dierighteous you will be mourned, but if unrighteous you will be scoffedat. 

 * * * * *

 If I see your eyes, I know you a little. If I hear your voice, I know you still more. If I see your actions, I will know you altogether. 

When Christ Crucified was contemptuously asked by His executioners whyHis followers were not trying to avenge Him, He answered: "They will notremove your sin by committing one of their own. "

When St. Peter was asked why he would be crucified head down, heanswered: "Because in leaving this life I wish to look toward heaven, not toward you. "

A man, asked what two things he did not like, said a worm in the ear andan enemy at the door. 

A man, asked what things he disliked, said an old bachelor telling lovestories of his youth. 

A hermit, asked what excited his compassion most, said an ox with athorn in his foot and a man whose feet have never felt the thorn; or athirsty eagle in a desert and a man who has never felt thirst. 

There are two brotherhoods among men, that of purity and that ofimpurity. 

Be as courageous as the days which come and go, even when they know thatmen are waiting to fill them with impurity. 

If a man casts clay at the sun, it falls back on his face; if he castsstones against God, they fall on his head. 

The man who utters lies defiles not only the air, but his own heart. Theman who counts gold pieces in the dark has only gold for his sun and ismiserable. 

 * * * * *

Both man and the air are purified by movement. 

By using our hands we become strong; by using our brains, wise; and byusing our hearts, merciful. 

When the cow lies down to ruminate and a man goes to do evil, the cow isbetter than the man. 

When an oak turns towards the sun to enjoy its life, and a man comeswith an axe to cut it down, the oak is better than the man. 

A gold piece lying shining in the dust is better than the man attemptingto steal it. 

Life has silken wings, but Death uses iron scissors. 

Our disappointments prove only that Fate refuses to further our projectsin life. 

 * * * * *

Happiness forgets many, Death nobody. 

Life allures us with a full glass, and in the end casts us and the glasstogether into the grave. 

Life and Death are each other's heirs. 

Living, we see the bright side of life and the dark side of death, butafterwards we will see each reversed. 

As many tears and sighs are caused by life as by death. 

A man cannot understand his father until he has experienced fatherhood, nor can a woman understand her mother before she herself becomes amother. 

Our birth is a mingling of pleasure and pain; the pain sanctifies thepleasure. 

Although opposed, the pleasure and the pain lend strength to oneanother. 

Even the thief pays for what he steals, for in getting an inch of goodfor his body he loses an inch of his soul. 

In this life God follows you as your shadow, in the next you will go asGod's shadow. 

Seeing, suffering, and death are three teachers of men. Seeing makes menwise, suffering makes them wiser, and death makes them wisest of all. 

The finest music of hearts and stars is heard only in the silence ofdeath. 

In every humble superstition there is greater beauty than in anyvain-glorious wisdom. 

Man's greatest wisdom is nearer the wisdom of the horse than it is tothe wisdom of God. 

Our bodies are only bridges over which our souls communicate with oneanother. 

Our eyes are windows of our souls, Hypocrisy is a curtain covering thesewindows. 

 * * * * *

What is Death?

If you are freezing on a winter night, it is a warm couch. 

If you are hungry, it is a place where hunger is never felt. 

If you are persecuted, it is a kind-hearted overlord who welcomes you atthe open door. 

If you are alone and forgotten, it is a hall where your dearest kinsmenare expecting you. 

If you are a sinner, then it is for you a period of pain and shame. 

If you are a slave, it is your liberty. 

 * * * * *

A slave came daily to a noisy brook and, sitting down, listened insilence. "Why do you come every day to me?" asked the brook. "I amcondemned to silence by my tyrants, and I come to voice my complaintsthrough your clamorous babbling. "

A slave listened every night to a nightingale. "Why are you listening tome?" said the bird. The answer was: "My ears are denied all day by thecurses of my master, and I listen all night to your voice so that myears may be purified. "

A slave looked every day towards the clouds. "O man, why do you look atus?" said the clouds. "Because, " said the slave, "I hope you understandmy thought, and will tell them to Him to whom you are nearer than I am. "

 * * * * *

Until a man is a father he looks back to his own father; when he ishimself a father he looks forward and loses his father. 

Men with little wisdom have much passion; men with much wisdom havegreat compassion and little passion. 

Never in prayer try to teach God what He should do for you, but ratherask Him what you should do for Him. 

Too much light as well as too much darkness causes blindness. 

Construct a better world, and then you may say that this one is bad. 

When you kill a lion, you can say: "I sinned because I killed mybrother. " When you kill a man, you can say: "I sinned because I killedmyself. "

If you love God, you cannot fear Him; if you fear Him, you cannot loveHim. 

Be humble, for the worst thing in the world is of the same stuff as you;be confident, for the stars are of the same stuff as you. 

 * * * * *

When the wind blows, the fool tries to compete by shouting. 

Summer is most loved in winter, and winter in summer. 

Ugliness moves slowly, but beauty is in great haste. 

 God speaks every language except the godless, God grants everything except eternity, God takes back everything but sins. 

The best thing that the last man on earth can do is just what the firstman could do. He can kneel on the earth, his mother, and pray to God, his father. 

The fool is wisest when he sleeps; the wise man is most foolish when hedances. 

When young men stand at the bier of an old man, it is pathetic; if oldmen stand at the bier of a young man, it is grievous; but God sees alland keeps silent. Why should you lament?

 * * * * *

If you kill a solitary man, his kinsmen from the other world willpersecute you. 

Nobody can forever conceal what is good in you, nor can you yourselfconceal what is evil. 

There is no real death except the death of the soul. 

There is no real joy except the joy of a righteous man. 

The joy of the sinner is half joy and half retribution. 

The eyes are the controller of the tongue. A clever man tells his lieswith his eyes closed. 

What is the news?

There is no news but what is half old. 

It is better to talk about what you know than to talk about what you donot know. 

He who can love passionately can hate passionately. Maternal love ismost enduring, a brother's hatred the shortest. 

There is no harvest without seed. We see often a harvest of evil, theseed of which time has concealed. 

 * * * * *

In the life to come all our senses will be doubled and quadrupled, sothat when we see we shall see not only with our eyes but with our wholebeing, and when we hear and when we smell or taste it is the same. Thuswill it be where the morning sun shines always. 

We see only the beams of the sun, but the spirits also hear them; wehear the song of the nightingale, but the spirits also see it. 

In the next world what we now hear we shall see; what we now see weshall hear, and shall taste what we now smell. 

Gold shines, and by shining speaks. How can you understand its language?God does, because He sent its language to the gold. 

 * * * * *

What is man? Something between God and clay. 

What is clay? Something that God makes. 

What is God? Something of which clay and man are the shadow. 

It is no wonder that an animal should be selfish, not knowing its end. But it is wonderful that man can be selfish, knowing and foreseeing hisend. 

 * * * * *

A Turk once asked a Serb why the Serbs wept so much. The Serb replied, "To wash away your Turkish sins. "

A Turk asked a Serb why the Serbs reminded people of the field ofKossovo. "Because, " said the Serb, "our dead are better than yourliving. "

All men are born in an impure state, but only the good reach a state ofpurity in life and in death. 

Men are unhappy when striving to know all truth, because truth isgreater than their life, and for this life only a small part of truth isnecessary. 

A wolf, asked when he would stop killing sheep, replied, "When man stopskilling man. "

The grass in the field, asked if it were not ashamed always to seenothing but the feet of men, replied: "Not so much ashamed as men shouldbe when they never see our heads. "

 * * * * *

A good custom hallows life and keeps men in brotherly unity. 

Not God, but the prophets make division among men. 

God likes it more if you think, than if you speak about Him. In speakingevil of Him you do harm not only to yourself, but to your hearers too. 

Different languages, but the same prayer; different prayers, but thesame God. 

God is the spirit and form-maker; man is only the imitator of theform-maker. 

A silver piece, asked what it was worth, replied: "If a man could shineas I can, then I am merely worth a man. "

When the Lord speaks you have to be silent; and the Lord speaks in thenight through the stars, in the day through better men than you. 

The foolish man speaks much because he has to apologise his foolishness, but why must you speak so much?

 * * * * *

The man who fears customs fears the touch of dead and living. 

Under every success lies a new enemy, the demon of pride. 

Do not despise even the cicadas; their song is the only solace to theslave in prison. 

Among all immoderate things the unrestrained tongue is the mostannoying. 

Death is not a punishment for him that dies, but a warning for theliving. 

A long work and a short prayer edifies the house, but a long prayer anda short work destroys it. 

Life without prayer--night without moonlight. 

God is not hidden, but our eyes are too small to see Him. 

The smile in the sunshine is easy and common; the smile in the stormyweather is beautiful and rare. 

It is better to go to bed hungry than with a stolen supper in thestomach. 

 * * * * *

If you like to get friendship from a man, say only a good word about himin his absence. If you like to pacify a dog, say a good word to hisface. 

Life gives to every slave an empty glass to fill it either with tears orwith hopes. 

When God wishes to punish a man He lets him be born among the roughneighbours. 

The night rebuked the clouds because they were so black. The wolfrebuked the dog because he was so wicked. 

It is better to be as patient as God than as righteous as God. 

By true prayer we confess our sins; by false prayer we report our deedsto God. 

Every welcome guest may fail to come, except death, the most unwelcome. 

The grass asked a cow: "Is it right that you eat me and tread on me?" "Idon't know, " replied the cow; "but tell me: Is it right that the grassgrows up from the bodies of my parents and will grow up from my ownbody?"

 * * * * *

Solitude is full of God. Worldly clamour is godless. In solitude onefeels both eternity of time and immensity of space. In worldly clamourone feels eternity and immensity only when death intervenes. 

The birds think that men cannot understand each other. Why should notmen think better of birds?

The wise man feels God most in the silence of night; the child most inthe crash of lightnings and in the rolling waters. 

Three persons rushed the same way: a child, a learned man and a poorman. "Where to?" asked the angel. 

"To grow old quickly and to see God, " said the child. 

"To acquire profit and learning, and to know God, " said the learned man. 

"To become rich and to serve God, " said the poor man. 

The angel said:

"If the clear eyes of a child cannot see God, how can the dim eye ofpassionate man see Him?

"If the simple mind of the unlearned man cannot know God, how can thebewildered mind of a learned man know Him?

"If a poor man cannot serve God with his heart, how can a rich one serveHim with gold?"

 * * * * *

If you marry, you will repent; if you do not marry, you will likewiserepent. 

We never repent our brutality as much as our vulgarity. In being brutalwe are equal to animals, but in being vulgar we are below them. 

When two blind men sit quarrelling about what is light, they are liketwo men quarrelling about what is God. 

A bird speaks and you do not understand, but God does, for it speaks hislanguage. A lion speaks and you do not understand, but God does. Thelion speaks his language. 

A brook speaks, and you stand on the bank and do not understand it, butGod does. He made the brook's language. 

An oak speaks, and you wonder what it may say, but God does not wonder. He made the oak's language. 

 * * * * *

The devil has hopes as a man has, for he hopes that at the end God willlisten to him, and the man hopes that at the end all men will listen toGod. 

Every murder means also partly a suicide. 

If you oppose a boastful man, he will believe his own words and hateyou. If you listen to him silently and go from him silently, he willfeel himself punished, and will follow you and ask you, if you believedhis words. 

What represents a boastful man? Poverty in spirit or in heart and wealthin words. 

The universe is too big for you to ask it to serve you, and you are toolittle to hope to change it. 

Blood binds men with a thread, but love binds them with a metal band. 

 The bonds of blood hold longer, The bonds of love hold stronger. 

Easier it is for the sun to hate its own light than for a mother to hateher own son. 

 * * * * *

When men are quarrelling about the land, God is standing among them andwhispering: "I am the Proprietor!"

God may be either accompanying or pursuing you. It depends upon you. 

A lake at the foot of a mountain is a mirror for the mountain; just sois the past a mirror for mankind. 

A pine-tree looks towards heaven expecting with confidence rain, snow, or light. You can protect yourself from rain, snow and light, but thereis no roof to protect you from death. 

Our life is obscure, our death is obscure; God is the only light ofboth. 

Our body is fragile, our soul is fragile; God is the only strength ofboth. Our works are dust, our hopes are dust; God only makes bothenduring. 

From three sides God encircles us; He remains behind us in the past, Heis with us in the present, and He awaits us in the future. 

 * * * * *

Death relieves a rich man more than a poor one, for from the poor man ittakes only life, while from the rich it takes both life and fortune. 

If you cannot admire the animal's dull life, you must at least admireits noiseless death. 

The sea, when asked why it roared, replied: "To show men how petty theirnoisy quarrels are. "

An oak, when asked in what way it thought oaks superior to men, said:"We oaks are more decent in taking our food, for we hide our mouths andeat only in the darkness under the earth. "

A raven, when asked the difference between the flesh of an innocent manand a wicked one, replied: "The flesh of an innocent man supports mylife, but the flesh of a wicked man is difficult for me to find. "

A dog knows the world by smell, a wolf by appetite, a bird by hearing, aworm by tasting, and a man by seeing. 

Are you afraid to touch the unclean man? The sun which is purer than youis not afraid. 

Except his soul, there is nothing in man which can be saved fromcorruption. 

A little dog said to a wolf: "Don't eat me now; when my teeth havegrown, I will be sweeter for you. "

A calf said to the cow, its mother, who wore a heavy yoke: "You are oldenough not to be so stupid as to wear a yoke. " "Wait a little, " repliedthe cow, "and by degrees you will take my burden, if you should not beroast meat sooner. "

 * * * * *

What is it to be a gentleman? To be the first to thank, and the last tocomplain. 

The words "Thank you" show that life is founded on injustice. 

Death is the cleverest thief. He can steal a living man who issurrounded by the most formidable guard. 

The water shines because the sun shines. Gold shines because the sunshines. Snow shines because the sun shines. The sun shines because Godshines, and He shines because He is God. 

 * * * * *

Every tear is not a sign of distress; every smile is not a sign of joy. 

Wine and beauty can both intoxicate, but without passion neither cancause real intoxication. 

Death and passion are only different temperatures of man. We can changethe temperature of passion, but God only can change the temperature ofdeath. 

Copper is fine, but gold is finer. Gold is fine, but the air is finer. The air is fine, but the spirit is finer. The spirit is fine, but God isfiner. One can live without copper, but not without gold. One can livewithout gold, but not without air. One can live without air, but notwithout spirit. One can live without spirit, but not without God. 

 Many people sing, but few are singers. Many people write, but few are writers. Many people speak, but few are orators. Many people think, but few are thinkers. Many people pray, but few are religious. Many people smile, but few are happy. Many people hope, but few are not disappointed. Many people die, but few will survive. 

 * * * * *

Sweetness and bitterness are enemies, but both are necessary in thisworld. 

Light and darkness are enemies, but both are necessary. 

Poison may do no harm if used properly; nor is darkness harmful if itcomes and goes at due times. 

It is better that your good deed should be forgotten than that yourevil deed should make you famous. 

You will begin to be a good man when you prefer anonymity to false fame. 

If you offend a mother, remember that her son will be angry with you, and you will understand him because you are a son too. 

If you offend a girl, remember that her brother will be angry with you, and you will understand because you are a brother too. 

If you hate a man, remember that there is a woman who does better thanthat, for he had a mother who loves him. Can you not equal a woman?

God and a mother asked each other the same question: "How long will youcontinue to forgive your children?"

 * * * * *

A man is like a drop of water, but mankind is like the ocean. A drop ofwater cannot endure a look of the sun, but the ocean bears iron andlead. 

A man is like one blade of grass. Mankind is like a meadow. A travellergoing along does not see the blade, but the meadow rejoices his sight. 

A man's life is not one man's life, but is the life of mankind soclosely interwoven that it resembles the carpet covering the floor of aroom. 

Things happen to-day, the cause of which began yesterday; but thingsalso happen to-day, the cause of which date from the beginning of theworld. 

Man grows old, but not the world. Man dies, but the world cannot. 

The world cannot die, because it is in touch with God, and therefore isimmortal. 

Not everything is in touch with God, nor yet with the sun. 

Everything is affected by the sun directly or indirectly, and the sameis true of God. 

The best things are a bridge between God and the world, but God onlyknows what the best things are. 

Cold makes darkness deeper, just as darkness makes cold more intense. The progress of the heart is slower than the progress of the brain. 

 * * * * *

A serpent lives in the water, but the water is not poisonous; if yourtongue is poisonous, keep the mouth closed so as not to poison the air. 

Giving is pleasanter than receiving. 

A king boasted that he would rule all the earth, but the sun lookingdown upon him could not distinguish him from the clay on which he stood. 

That man is my friend who lives laboriously like the bee and diesquietly like the grass. 

When wolves and sheep are brothers, what will the wolves eat?

Lift up your hearts to heaven. The foulest water is purified when it islifted to the clouds of heaven. 

The greatest pain should not be the subject of speech. 

The headache is worse than a pain in the hand, a toothache than aheadache, crucifixion than toothache, and hopeless slavery thancrucifixion. 

A gipsy, asked what pain is greatest, said: "To be hungry and to seebread before the householder's dog. "

A mother, asked what pain is greatest, said: "To see a snake coming fromthe grave of one's child. "

A man, asked what three things he did not like, said: "To be compelledto cut down the tree planted by his own hands, to be on the watch for ablow, and to go hunting with a deaf man. "

 * * * * *

Economise in speaking, but not in thinking. 

Only an oath to do evil may you break with God's permission. 

If you have fixed to-morrow as a day for revenge, do not sleep but talkwith death, and see if it were not better to postpone your vengeance. 

If you help a beggar, you wipe out the fault of your ancestors. 

When will the world become better? When the ass stops competing with thenightingale. 

When will the world become better? When men build two bridges--one toGod and one to nature--and when rich men learn to consider themselvesgreat debtors to God. 

God is more silent than silence in observing sins, and more audible thana cart in punishing them. 

God and sinners wish to annihilate one another. 

A Turk asked a Serb what there would be at the end. The answer was: "Iknow not what there will be, but I know what there will not be--therewill not be Turkish dominion over Serbia. "

The imitator remains in the shadow of him whom he imitates. The imitatedlives in the sunshine, but the imitator remains always in shadow. 

PART III

FRAGMENTS OF SERBIAN POPULAR POETRY

 JAKSHICH'S PARTITIONING. 

 Hark! the moon is to the day-star calling: "Morning star! say, where hast thou been wandering; Tell me where thou hast so long been lingering; Where hast white days three so wasted, --tell me?" To the moon, anon, the day-star answer'd: "I have wander'd, moon! and I have linger'd, Lingered o'er Belgrad's white towers, and wondered At the marvellous things which I have witnessed: How two brothers have their wealth partitioned, Jakshich Dmitar and Jakshich Bogdana. They had thus arranged the shares allotted, Well their father's substance had divided: Dmitar took Wallachia[5] for his portion, Took Wallachia and entire Moldavia;[6] Banat also, to the river Danube. Bogdan took the level plains of Sermia, And the even country of the Sava; Servia, too, as far as Ujitz's fortress. Dmitar took the lower fortress'd cities, And Neboisha's tower upon the Danube; Bogdan took the upper fortress'd cities, And the church-possessing town, Rujitza. Then a strife arose about a trifle, -- Such a trifle; but a feud soon follow'd, -- A black courser and a grey-wing'd falcon! Dmitar claims the steed, as elder brother Claims the steed, and claims the grey-wing'd falcon. Bogdan will not yield or horse or falcon. When the morning of the morrow waken'd, Dmitar flung him on the sable courser, Took upon his hand the grey-wing'd falcon, Went to hunt into the mountain forest; And he called his wife, fair Angelia: 'Angelia! thou my faithful lady! Kill with poison thou my brother Bogdan; But if thou refuse to kill my brother, Tarry thou in my white court no longer. "

 When the lady heard her lord's commandments, Down she sat all sorrowful and gloomy; To herself she thought, and said in silence, --'And shall I attempt it?--I, poor cuckoo! Shall I kill my brother--kill with poison!-- 'Twere a monstrous crime before high heaven, 'Twere a sin and shame before my people. 

 Great and small would point their fingers at me, Saying, --'That is the unhappy woman, That is she who kill'd her husband's brother!' But if I refuse to poison Bogdan, Never will my husband come to bless me!' Thus she thought, until a thought relieved her; She descended to the castle's cavern, Took the consecrated cup of blessing. 'Twas a cup of beaten gold her father Had bestow'd upon his daughter's nuptials; Full of golden wine she fill'd the vessel, And she bore it to her brother Bogdan. Low to earth she bow'd herself before him, And she kiss'd his hands and garments meekly. 

 'Lo! I bring to thee this cup, my brother! This gold cup, with golden wine o'erflowing. Give me for my cup a horse and falcon. ' Bogdan heard the lady speak complacent, And most cheerfully gave steed and falcon. 

 Meanwhile through the day was Dmitar wandering In the mountain-forest; nought he found there; But chance brought him at the fall of evening To a green lake far within the forest, Where a golden-pinion'd duck was swimming. Dmitar loosen'd then his grey-wing'd falcon, Bade him seize the golden-pinion'd swimmer. Faster than the hunter's eye could follow, Lo! the duck had seized the grey-wing'd falcon, And against his sides had crush'd his pinion. Soon as Dmitar Jakshich saw, he stripp'd him, Stripp'd him swiftly of his hunting garments;-- Speedily into the lake he plung'd him, And he bore his falcon from its waters. Then with pitying voice he ask'd his falcon: 'Hast thou courage yet, my faithful falcon! Now thy wings are from thy body riven?' Whispering, said the falcon to his master: 'I without my pinions nought resemble, But a brother riven from a brother. ' Then the thought pierced through the breast of Dmitar, That his wife was charged to kill his brother. Swift he threw him on his mighty courser-- Swift he hurried to Bijögrad's[7] fortress, Praying that his brother had not perish'd. 

 He had hardly reached the bridge of Chekmel, [8] When he spurr'd his raven steed so fiercely That the impetuous courser's feet sank under, And were crushed and broken on the pavement. In his deep perplexity and trouble, Dmitar took the saddle off his courser, Flung it on the courser's nether haunches, And he fled alone to Belgrad's fortress. First he sought, impatient, for his lady-- 'Angelia! thou my bride all faithful! Tell me, tell me, hast thou kill'd my brother?' Sweet indeed was Angelia's answer: 'No! indeed I have not killed thy brother; To thy brother have I reconciled thee. '"

 JELITZA AND HER BROTHERS. 

 Nine fair sons possessed a happy mother; And the tenth, the loveliest and the latest, Was Jelitza, --a beloved daughter. They had grown together up to manhood, Till the sons were ripe for bridal altars, And the maid was ready for betrothing. Many a lover asked the maid in marriage; First a Ban;[9] a chieftain was the other; And the third, a neighbour from her village. So her mother for the neighbour pleaded; For the far-off dwelling ban her brothers. Thus they urged it to their lovely sister: "Go, we pray thee, our beloved sister, With the ban across the distant waters: Go! thy brothers oft will hasten to thee; Every month of every year will seek thee; Every week of every month will seek thee. " So the maiden listened to her brothers, With the ban she crossed the distant waters: But, behold! O melancholy marvel! God sent down the plague, and all the brothers. All the nine, were swept away, and lonely Stood their miserable sonless mother. 

 Three long years had pass'd away unheeded; Often had Jelitza sighed in silence: "Heaven of mercy! 'tis indeed a marvel! Have I sinn'd against them?--that my brothers, Spite of all their vows, come never near me. " Then did her stepsisters scorn and jeer her: "Cast away! thy brothers must despise thee! Never have they come to greet their sister. "

 Bitter was the sorrow of Jelitza, Bitter from the morning to the evening, Till the God of heaven took pity on her, And he summon'd two celestial angels: "Hasten down to earth, " he said, "my angels! To the white grave, where Jovan is sleeping, -- Young Jovan, the maiden's youngest brother. Breathe your spirit into him; and fashion From the white grave-stone a steed to bear him: From the mouldering earth his food prepare him: Let him take his grave shroud for a present! Then equip and send him to his sister. "

 Swiftly hasten'd God's celestial angels To the white grave where Jovan was sleeping. From the white grave-stone a steed they fashion'd; Into his dead corpse they breathed their spirit; From the ready earth the bread they moulded; For a present his grave-shroud they folded; And equipp'd, and bade him seek his sister. 

 Swiftly rode Jovan to greet his sister. Long before he had approach'd her dwelling, Far, far off his sister saw and hail'd him; Hastened to him--threw her on his bosom, Loosed his vest, and stamp'd his cheeks with kisses. 

 Then she sobb'd with bitterness and anguish, Then she wept, and thus address'd her brother: "O! Jovan! to me--to me, a maiden, Thou, and all my brothers, all, ye promised Oft and oft to seek your distant sister: Every month in every year to seek her, -- Every week in every month to seek her. Three long years have sped away unheeded, And ye have not sought me"--For a moment She was silent; and then said, "My brother! Thou art deadly pale! why look so deadly Pale, as if in death thou hadst been sleeping?" But Jovan thus check'd his sister: "Silence, Silence, sister! as in God thou trustest; For a heavy sorrow has o'erta'en me. When eight brothers had prepared their nuptials, Eight stepsisters ready to espouse them, Hardly was the marriage service ended Ere we built us eight white dwellings, sister! Therefore do I look so dark, Jelitza. "

 Three white days had pass'd away unheeded, And the maid equipp'd her for a journey. Many a costly present she provided For her brothers and her bridal sisters: For her brothers, fairest silken vestments; For her bridal-sisters, rings and jewels. But Jovan would fain detain her--"Go not, Go not now, I pray thee--my Jelitza! Wait until thy brothers come and greet thee. " But she would not listen to her brother: She prepared the costliest, fairest presents. So the young Jovan began his journey, And his sister travell'd patient by him. 

 So as they approach'd their mother's dwelling, Near the house a tall white church was standing, Young Jovan he whispered to his sister-- "Stop, I pray thee, my beloved sister! Let me enter the white church an instant. When my middle brother here was married, Lo! I lost a golden ring, my sister! Let me go an instant--I shall find it. "

 Jovan went--into his grave he glided-- And Jelitza stood--she stood impatient-- Wondering--wondering--but in vain she waited. Then she left the spot to seek her brother. Many and many a grave was in the churchyard Newly made--Jovan was nowhere--Sighing, On she hasten'd--hasten'd to the city, Saw her mother's dwelling, and press'd forward Eager to that old white dwelling. 

 Listen To that cuckoo's cry within the dwelling! Lo! it was not the gray cuckoo's crying-- 'Twas her aged, her gray-headed mother. To the door Jelitza press'd--outstretching Her white neck, she call'd--"Make ope, my mother! Hasten to make ope the door, my mother!" But her mother to her cry made answer: "Plague of God! avaunt! my sons have perish'd-- All--all nine have perish'd--Wilt thou also, Take their aged mother!" Then Jelitza Shriek'd, "O open--open, dearest mother! I am not God's plague--I am thy daughter. Thine own daughter--thy Jelitza, mother!" Then the mother push'd the door wide open, And she scream'd aloud, and groan'd, and flung her Old arms round her daughter--All was silent-- Stiff and dead they fell to earth together. 

 THE HOLY NICHOLAS. 

 God of mercy! what a wond'rous wonder! Such a wonder ne'er before was witness'd. In Saint Paul's--within the holy cloister, Gather'd round a golden table, seated In three ranks, the saints are all collected; O'er them sits the thunderer Elias;[10] In the midst are Sava and Maria; At the ends are Petka and Nedelia; And their health the holy Nicholas pledges. Pledges them their health to Jesus' glory. [11] But behold, behold the saint!--he slumbers; From his hand the cup of wine has fallen, Fallen from it on the golden table: Yet the wine's unspilt, --the cup unbroken. Then laughed out the thunderer Elias: "O my brother! O thou holy Nicholas: Often drank we cooling wine together; But it was our duty not to slumber. Not to drop the cup--And tell me, brother, Why to-day does slumber's power subdue thee?" Him thus answer'd Nicholas the holy: "Jest not thus with me, thou sainted thunderer! For I fell asleep, and dreamt three hundred, Dreamt three hundred friars had embark'd them In one vessel on the azure ocean; Bearing offerings to the holy mountain, Offerings, --golden wax, and snowy incense. From the clouds there broke a furious tempest, Lash'd the blue waves of the trembling ocean, Scooping watery graves for all the friars. Then I heard their blended voices call me, 'Help, O God! and help, O holy Nicholas! Would that thou, where'er thou art, wert with us!' So I hurried down to help the suppliants-- So I saved the whole three hundred friars So I shipped them full of joy and courage; Brought their offerings to the holy mountain, Brought their golden wax, their snowy incense;-- And meanwhile I seem'd in gentle slumber, And my cup fell on the golden table. "

 THE MAIDEN AND THE SUN. 

 A maiden proudly thus the sun accosted: "Sun! I am fairer than thou, --far fairer; Fairer than is thy sister[12] or thy brethren, -- Fairer than yon bright moon at midnight shining, Fairer than yon gay star in heav'n's arch twinkling, That star, all other stars preceding proudly, As walks before his sheep the careful shepherd. "

 The sun complain'd to God of such an insult: "What shall be done with this presumptuous maiden?" And to the sun God gave a speedy answer: "Thou glorious Sun! thou my beloved daughter![13] Be joyous yet! say, why art thou dejected? Wilt thou reward the maiden for her folly-- Shine on, and burn the maiden's snowy forehead. But I a gloomier dowry yet will give her; Evil to her shall be her husband's brother; Evil to her shall be her husband's father. Then shall she think upon the affront she gave thee. "

 FROZEN HEART. 

 Thick fell the snow upon St. George's day; The little birds all left their cloudy bed; The maiden wander'd bare-foot on her way; Her brother bore her sandals, and he said: "O sister mine! cold, cold thy feet must be. " "No! not my feet, sweet brother! not my feet-- But my poor heart is cold with misery. There's nought to chill me in the snowy sleet: My mother--'tis my mother who hath chill'd me, Bound me to one who with disgust hath fill'd me. "

 LIBERTY. 

 Nightingale sings sweetly In the verdant forest: In the verdant forest, On the slender branches. 

 Thither came three sportsmen, Nightingale to shoot at. She implored the sportsmen, "Shoot me not, ye sportsmen!

 "Shoot me not, ye sportsmen! I will give you music, In the verdant garden, On the crimson rose-tree. "

 But the sportsmen seize her; They deceive the songster, In a cage confine her, Give her to their loved one. 

 Nightingale will sing not-- Hangs its head in silence: Then the sportsmen bear her To the verdant forests. 

 Soon her song is waken'd; Woe! woe! woe betide us, Friend from friend divided, Bird from forest banish'd!

 BROTHERLESS SISTERS. 

 Two solitary sisters, who A brother's fondness never knew, Agreed, poor girls, with one another, That they would make themselves a brother: They cut them silk, as snow-drops white; And silk, as richest rubies bright; They carved his body from a bough Of box-tree from the mountain's brow;

 Two jewels dark for eyes they gave; For eyebrows, from the ocean's wave They took two leeches; and for teeth Fix'd pearls above, and pearls beneath; For food they gave him honey sweet, And said, "Now live, and speak, and eat. "

PRINTED BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. , AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESSGLASGOW, GREAT BRITAIN. 

PHOTOS

[Illustration: KING PETER. ]

[Illustration: CROWN PRINCE ALEXANDER]

[Illustration: PREMIER N. ???]

[Illustration: KING The fourteenth century]

[Illustration]

[Illustration: DURING TURKISH RULE IN SERBIA. Serbs?? away?? the????]

[Illustration: ???]

[Illustration: THE SECOND SERBIAN REVOLUTION OF 1815. ]

[Illustration: THE MONASTERY OF KALENIC. Built by Stephen the Tall. ]

[Illustration: SERBIAN SOLDIERS WITH AN ENGLISH NURSE. ]

[Illustration: SERBIAN OFFICERS UNDER ADRIANOPLE IN 1912. ]

[Illustration: THE CATTLE MARKET. ]

[Illustration:]

[Illustration: A TYPICAL MONTENEGRIN LADY: H. M. QUEEN MILENA. ]

[Illustration: PEASANT TYPES. ]

[Illustration: THE SUPERIOR OF A MONASTERY. ]

[Illustration: KING PETER: "How did it happen, General, that you Turkslost the battle on Kumanovo?"

THE TURKISH GENERAL: "Kismet!"]

[Illustration: _Photo-Underwood and Underwood_

WOMEN DOING THE WORK OF MEN. ]

[Illustration: SERBIAN WOMEN CARRYING WOUNDED. 

_From photograph by kind permission of Mr. Crawford Price. _]

[Illustration: WAITING FOR A PLACE AT THE HOSPITAL. ]

[Illustration: "MY MOTHER"

Sculptor: T. Mestovic]

[Illustration: SPLIET-SPALATO. ]

[Illustration:]

[Illustration: DUBROVNIC RAGUSA]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This lecture was delivered in December, 1915. ]

[Footnote 2: The Archbishop of Canterbury, _The Character and Call ofthe Church of England_, p. 118. ]

[Footnote 3: Stanley Lane-Poole, Turkey, p. 40. ]

[Footnote 4: _Daily Telegraph_, 5th February. ]

[Footnote 5: Kavavlashka. ]

[Footnote 6: Karabogdanska. 

_The above and following poems are taken from John BOWRING: SerbianPopular Poetry_. London, 1827. ]

[Footnote 7: Belgrad. ]

[Footnote 8: Chekmel-Juprija. ]

[Footnote 9: _Ban_, a title frequently used in Servia. Its generalacceptation is governor. It may be derived from _Pan_, the old Slavonicfor _Lord_. ]

[Footnote 10: Gromovnik Daja. ]

[Footnote 11: I napij, i u slavu Ristovn. ]

[Footnote 12: _Svezdá_, star, is of the feminine gender. ]

[Footnote 13: _Sun_ is feminine in Servian. ]