iEI Tragedy Of a Nation WRITTEN AND EDITED BY MR. AND MRS. PAUL YEFTICH 1 1 1 1 Copy of this Book can be obtained at: P. YEFTICH. THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY'' OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES IN MEMORY OF MRS. VIRGINIA B. SPORER TRAGEDY OF A NATION Written and Edited by Mr. & Mrs. Paul Yeftich FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL Ube Serbian national Hntbem. COMPOSER OAVORIN YENKO j j j rri" r ' '- -*-* 4 t * 1 ' 4 ' * 4 5 ? i M 4 * 4 9 i i a ^HH-aJLJj j< nj.^'rfr'g^ i ^ ff JT J* h Mill 'to * 'J.J.J.*" & m " -2 i ^ / r:rr ^ ^J i A | A . A , lento. TRAGEDY OF A NATION THE SERBIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM 1 God of Justice! Thou Who saved us When in deepest bondage cast, Hear Thy Serbian children's voices, Be our help as in the past. With Thy mighty hand sustain us, Still our rugged pathway trace; God, our Hope! protect and cherish Serbian crown and Serbian race! Repeat God, our Hope! protect and cherish Serbian crown and Serbian race! Serbian crown and Serbian race! 2 Bind in closest links our kindred, Teach the love that will not fail. May the loathed fiend of discord Never in our ranks prevail. Let the golden fruits of union Our young tree of freedom grace; God, our Master! guide and prosper Serbian crown and Serbian race! 3 Lord! avert from us Thy vengeance, Thunder of Thy dreaded ire; Bless each Serbian town and hamlet, Mountain, meadow, hearth, and spire. When our host goes forth to battle, Death or victory to embrace, God of armies! be our leader! Strengthen then the Serbian race! 4 On our sepulchre of ages Breaks the resurrection morn, From the slough of direst slavery Serbia anew is born. Through five hundred years of durance We have knelt before Thy face, All our kin, O God! deliver! Thus entreats the Serbian race. Amen. Author, Jooan Giorgedlch Translated by Elizabeth Christiich 2040745 TRAGEDY OF A NATION My Experience As A Red Cross Nurse Written by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Yeftich SERBIA IT was in response to an appeal which came to the women of England that caused me to volunteer my services with a mission of doctors and nurses to go into Serbia during the awful plague of Typhus fever which had been brought into that clean little country by the Austrians. They spread it by placing the germs in wells and by inoculation and by body lice. When we arrived we found conditions deplorable. It was not unusual to go on duty in the wards and find fifty or sixty patients dead. They had died during the night. Seventy- five English doctors and nurses, including Lord Chichester, gave their lives for the victims of the scourge. No greater crime was ever committed against a noble, self-sacrificing people than when the enemy sowed the seeds of Typhus among the Serbians. The Austrians in the campaign of 1914 destroyed nearly all the wood that they could get their hands on, and there was not sufficient material to make coffins. It became absolutely necessary that prisoners of war be employed to dig large trenches into which the bodies of the unfortunate victims of Teuton frightfulness were thrown like the carcasses of animals. The death toll was fearful. One hundred and eighty thousand people succumbed to the plague in Serbia before it was checked. But one never heard the Serbians complain. They are built of heroic mould. The patients were most grateful and appreciative of anything done for them and it made the work of caring for them a pleasure, sad as the surroundings and hard as the nursing conditions were. We considered it a privilege and an honor to nurse the Serbians. FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL They are a people of high ideals and of strong moral fiber. What appealed to us was the respect and consideration paid by the men to their wives and children. During the fourteen months which I spent in Serbia, I never saw one case of drunk- enness. Even the smallest boy would not think of passing the Sisters without removing his cap. There was something most appealing in the eyes of the Serbian children, a most pathetic expression. They were so timid that it was some time before we could make friends with them. Many of these poor little souls knew nothing but the horrors of war and the sight of a stranger frightened them. They did not know what kind of treatment they would receive, and would run away screaming until assured by our interpreter that we were friends. The Serbian peasants won our hearts. They are the heroes and the heroines who have sacrificed all they possessed in the world because of their fiery patriotism and supreme loyalty to the nation. Many may never see their wives and children again because they may be among the thousands sent into a Turkish harem. One day we received word that the Germans, Austrians ana Bulgarians were fast invading the country and we must prepare to leave the sufferers to receive the wounded soldiers sent from Belgrade to Kragujvatz. In five days every place available was turned into a temporary hospital. Soon the hospitals, stables and barns were overflowing. I wish I could forget the terrible sights we saw when the shattered frames of humanity were carried into the hospitals. Many poor victims of shot and shell had their jaws blown away, their thighs, hands and feet. The Germans and Austrians had used dum-dum bullets against the Serbians in Belgrade in spite of the international law. Once the bullet strikes the bone, then the explosion follows, blowing the limb away. Four thousand seven hundred men, many of them desperately wounded, were brought for treatment. The hospitals were so crowded that two and three were placed on one bed, others on the floor and in the corridors. Many we could not admit and they were left lying in the fields We ran very short of medical supplies. We had to pad splints with straw and the doctors and nurses made bandages TRAGEDY OF A NATION from their white coats and aprons. There was no heat in the hospital and we had very little food for the men as we were unprepared to receive so many wounded. Death came as a merciful release to hundreds of these poor heroes who had made such a determined stand for the freedom of their little country. We worked on for sometime at the hospital under very trying circumstances. One morning in the latter part of October, 1915, we were startled to hear and see the Austrian airplanes flying over Kragujvatz, and still more alarmed when the Austrians began to drop their bombs. One dropped near the Sisters' Home, smashing all the windows and killing one old man and wounding many children who were on their way to school. We then realized what it meant for a country to be at war. We found our wounded patients in a very excited condition, but after the first shock, they became more composed, and we began to dress the severely wounded. The wounds that were light were also cared for and dismissed from the hospital to go their way. Sir Ralph Paget, in charge of the English Mission, motored over from Nish to break the news that Lady Paget with her doctors and nurses had been made prisoners of war by the Bulgarians. He gave us instructions to dress the patients as quickly as we possibly could, as we might have to leave the hospital at any time. He told us that poor little Serbia was being invaded and overrun by the Germans, the Auatrians and Bulgarians, and it was impossible for the allies to send help. We faced a very serious situation. The work had been so arduous and the excitement had severely shaken our nerves and we were feeling very tired and worn out when the order came for us to flee from the hospital with only fifteen minutes' notice. We had an opportunity to carry away only a few necessary articles. Our deep sorrow and concern was for our patients left behind. As we looked around at our wards, leaving 4,700 shattered frames of hu- manity without heat, 'food, clothing or medical supplies, we almost doubted the existence of a God. Never can we forget the wails of agony which came from the throats of the poor unfortunate men who, through no fault of their own had been FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL drawn into this cruel war and left to suffer here at the hands of an inhuman enemy. The first night after leaving the hospital, we slept out in an open field. We were without food to sustain us on our journey the following day. It took us seventy-seven days to walk across Serbia, over the mountains of Montenegro and through the wilds of Albania. We became footsore and very weary before our flight ended. All along the way we saw wounded men, women and children drop dead in the snow many of them were frozen to death during the night. When we arrived at Mitrovitzathe, the town was filled with refugees. Men, women and children had suffered the bitterest agony which human being could know. Many were half- naked, soaked with blood, and were dying in the stables and out in the open fields. The Serbian retreat was not a retreat of a county but the retreat of a nation. It was one of the most tragic things that has happened during the war. There was no friendly hand awaiting the poor Serbian refugees at the end of their flight and truly they have paid the price of Crucifixion. When we arrived in Italy, we were half starved and covered with vermin from head to foot. We scarcely had shoes left on our feet, and truly we did say, "Thank God," when we arrived in Italy. But our thoughts wandered back to the suffering ones left behind in Serbia. The sufferings of the Serbians have brought them nearer to Christ. They have not wandered away from the Shepherd's fold and if ever there is a nation prepared to meet the changes that will come with World Peace, it is our loyal little ally, Serbia. King Peter of Serbia is much loved by his people. He is a man of very simple manners and of charming personal qualities. In times of peace he wears a small mustache, but he now wears a beard which is a custom when mourning for the misfortunes of the nation. The crown prince is another member of the royal family whose image is enshrined in the hearts of the people. He did not seek a place of safety when the troops were engaged in battle, like other royal personages in the world war, but was on the front line, sharing the danger of battle and cheering his men on to victory and standing by them when forced to accept TRAGEDY OF A NATION The above portrait is the latest of King; Peter of Serbia which has reached the country. It will be noted that the King wears a full beard, whereas formerly he had only the mustache and Imperial. This has been done as a sign of mourning. In Serbia it is customary for a father to let his beard grow as a sign of mourning for the death of a son. the bitterness of defeat. It was such leadership that did so much to make the Serbs the most effective and dashing fighters. He suffered privations like the common soldier and rose to the heights of sublimity as a leader. He is every inch a prince with the high qualities demanded of a real king. No history 10 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL of the people will be complete without giving him a leading part in the heroic struggle to beat off the Austrians and the Germans bent on the total destruction of a brave and gallant race. The Bohemians are staunch friends of the Serbians, and one of the tragedies of the horrible war was when they were forced to fight against the Serbs by Austria. Bohemian soldiers told graphically how three of their regiments were shot down by the Austrians because they refused to fight against their old friends and brothers. There is no greater or more glorious self-sacrifice than to die for a friend. The fealty and loyalty of the Bohemians to the Serbs will live ever in song and story. Serbian women have the artistic sense highly developed. They are very skillful with the needle and fashion the most beautiful and dazzling creations. The designs for their cos- tumes show great originality. They also make rugs of most wonderful beauty and variety. They are skilled with the looms and much of the clothing worn is made at their homes. They raise silk worms in more peaceful and happier times and make the finest and most beautiful silk. The girls and women present a picturesque appearance because of their attractive mode of dressing. Serbian peasant girls frequently carry their wealth around their heads. A girl of this class with a collection of gold coins on her head and her gown covered with solid gold braid is certainly a stunning creature. The married women wear a headdress. The rearing of girls is very strict and they are never permitted the liberty and license that American girls are. A Serbian girl would soon be in disgrace if she took the bit in her teeth and walked the streets alone at night. She would be severely punished. She must always be accompanied by a chaperon. The customs of the country will not brook any other sort of conduct. The Serbians are justly regarded as a highly moral people. If a Serbian boy is seen drunk in a hamlet, or village, it goes hard with him. Parents frown on him and they refuse to give their daughter in marriage to one whom they regard as a drunkard and a person of low ideals. Serbian women of wealth and distinction wear magnificent costumes. A photograph shows one of these highborn dames wearing a gown of the most dazzling kind. There are pearls on her neck, diamonds in her ears and her coat is a brilliant red TRAGEDY OF A NATION 11 of marvelous design and trimmed with gold and silver braid. A patient, uncomplaining creature is the Serbian peasant woman. They bore the burdens at home when the men went to war. They did their work and their own, and kept the "home fires of patriotism burning." The brave and cheerful conduct of these peasant women has marked them as real hero- ines. Nothing crushed the Serbians more than when the Bulgarians tore 10,000 women and girls from their homes and sent them into Turkish harems. Serbians are a deeply religious people. They belong to Lutheran Orthodox Church which is closely related to the Church of England. They cherish the hope that when the war is over all churches will be united in a common brotherhood. They are sending missionaires to the United States for that purpose. Their churches are now in ruins as a result of the vandalism of the Austrians. One of the churches located near Skopia was very ancient and of intense interest to tourists and the natives because of its great antiquity and its quaint archi- tecture. It was in this church, now destroyed, that the Serbians took their last communion before they fell into the clutches of the Turks. The monasteries suffered the same cruel fate. One at Deachany was built seven hundred and fifty years ago. It is now simply a pathetic memory. It has been said of the Serbians that they would never have had the fortitude to bear their heavy burdens if they had not had their eyes fixed on the Cross of Calvary. Reflecting their burning patriotism, is the history of their enslavement for 500 years by the Turks. Their hard masters sought to destroy every vestige of national feeling, but they could not kill the fires of nationality which burned within their breasts. It was kept alive in every humble home. Queer to relate, much of this was due to the magic of a certain musical instrument on which was played the harmony of the enslaved country. It was music that saved a nation in bondage from losing its identity. When the Serbians were again a free people they found themselves without schools and school books, and without the means of restoring their language as a medium of education. The nation had to begin the old life over again. But there were heroic souls and souls with a mighty courage and initiative. They found a way out and the nation was born 12 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL again with all of the tools to make good. That it recovered its full strength and power and made itself felt in the world though a small and comparatively weak nation has been strikingly shown by the firm place it holds in the affection and admiration of democratic countries. Before the Austrians and the Germans brought their merci- less iron fists down on the heads of the gallant Serbs, the nation was fast recovering from other wars which had taxed the re- sources and drained some of the best blood of the little nation. These people are peace lovers by nature and do not fight except when their very existence and their homes are imperiled. The Serbs, a few years before they were hammered and beaten, after heroic resistance against the Turks, were engaged in restoring their country to its normal condition. Serbia was again tasting the joys of peace and prosperity. It was rapidly acquiring wealth and stability. The sword had been replaced by the plowshare, the musket and the bayonet by the reaper and the hoe. It was a happy and optimistic nation, anxious to recover its old economic condition and though still scarred by war, the scars were not deep enough to check its onward march in the arts of peace and in preparing itself to throw its full strength when necessary to defend its national existence. Then came the day when it had to cast its fortunes with the allies or the central powers. It was promised great things by the Huns and it was a time of mighty temptation. The road to more glory and more power was pointed out if the Serbians would desert the cause of freedom and democracy. The leaders of the people saw clearly what might happen if they led them away from the Teutons, but they did not falter. The die was cast, the nation true to its traditions, its history and the glorious heritage of its past, threw itself on the side of the allies. It knew what a hard, thorny road it would have to travel because it understood the cruel and merciless nature of the Huns and something of the punishment they would inflict if they won. But no realization of the actual horrors to follow was permitted to stop the lofty purpose of these freemen. "Give me Liberty, or give me Death," was as much their national cry as it was that of the United States in the days of '76. No more pathetic situation~is that of the Serbians because TRAGEDY OF A NATION 13 they chose freedom instead of autocracy. When help failed to come from their more powerful Allies, it was not the flight of an army; it was the flight of a nation. The Serbs true to form and reputation fought like tigers and remained in the front line of battle until they were threatened with complete annihilation. Then to save the remnants they were compelled to flee. If their leaders had willed it, they would have fought until the last man went down wounded or dead. This remnant was further reduced by cholera, typhus and other terrible diseases. The nation has been denationalized. No sadder story was ever told, nor one which arouses more burning indignation and world-wide sympathy. The United States must do its bit to help this people to begin anew as a nation after the war is over. Their houses, their churches, monasteries and schools have been destroyed by the enemy, and even their orchards and their forests. Their gold, their silver, and their horses and their cattle have disappeared. They will return to the most desolate land in the world with no resources but their strong hands and their brave hearts. They must have aid from this powerful and liberty-loving country to get on their feet again. They might have been wallowing in prosperity and plenty, like the Bulgars if they had preferred to turn traitors instead of choosing the path of the free. The Serbs paid an awful price but the gain is the love and admiration of the friends of liberty every- where on the globe. Phoenix-like they will rise some day from their ashes. It is difficult to realize that the Germans and the Austrians are classed as Christian nations since they have committed such cruel acts in the name of war. They have been caught with the "goods" on them. Their brutality has been witnessed so often against the Serbians and the Belgians that the civilized world stands aghast. We have pictures showing a little Serbian girl bayoneted in the shoulder; a woman bayoneted through the armpit. A child was ravished by three Bulgarian soldiers and was found in an unconscious condition. A Serb colonel was found dead with his heart cut out of his body. One pho- tograph shows the terrible effects of the dum-dum bullet on a wounded Serb warrior. Snap shots were taken of a number 14 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL Latest Picture of the Crown Prince of Serbia. of bodies which had been burned. When these bodies were examined by doctors they found them one mass of blisters, showing conclusively that the victims had been burned alive. Another photo told the story of another form of cruelty. The enemy had been found guilty of hanging peaceful Serbian farmers by their necks in the public square. A picture of one TRAGEDY OF A NATION 15 of the victims of Hun brutality was found in the pocket of a German officer when the Serbs recaptured Monastir. According to a diary which was found at the same time, the brutes forced the women and children at the point of the bayonet to stand by and witness the murder of their husbands and fathers being hung by the neck. In order to further terrorize the population, they circulated these awful pictures to scare the people into renouncing the Serbian government and recognizing Austria as their master. It has been said that the Serbian peasants before the war were the happiest people in their little kingdom. They had their homes and their bit of land and their live stock and they lived in comfort and supreme contentment. Their lot was much more agreeable and stable than the peasantry of many other European nations. They were denominated masters of the soil. Their small holdings could not be lost through bad management or other causes so common in the history of the small home or land owner because the government fixed that. Therefore, these homes and the few acres of land had been in peasant families for generations. Because Serbia was a place of small landed proprietors she was stronger than most nations in the loyalty and patriotism of her people. Being owners and not vassals or tenants, the Serb country folk, big and little, were grounded deep in love and devotion to their native land. The peasants are a deeply religious people. They, as well as other classes, reverence their holy days with great sacredness. On Christmas morning they screen off a corner in one of the poorest rooms and lay straw in the corner and that represents the Manger in which the Lord Jesus Christ was born. Their festivities do not commence until after Christmas. Before the war the Serbian markets were very interesting and wonderful places for the stranger or traveler to view. Marketing is done in a sort of a primitive way but it adds to its picturesqueness. No matter how poor a Serbian family is, the artistic sense is highly developed among the girls and women. This artistic development, the French call it "chic" in speaking of their women admiringly, is reflected in the appearance of the Serbian femininity whether it is at the market place or in 16 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL the drawing room of a palace. So the Serb women and girls are quite as attractive, but in a different way, when offering for sale the fruits of the earth. The peasants have always been intensely devoted to the land and they are not happy in the towns and the cities. One of the most common causes of homesickness resulted from the war when the fathers and sons were forced to leave the spot where they had passed their lives in such a happy fashion. It was like tearing a great tree which had afforded shade and shelter for long years, out by the roots. For centuries the Serbs on the farms have been raising and making nearly everything eaten and worn on the farm. In most every home there was a loom and homespun cloth was made. A Serbian now in the United States said that his clothing, his shoes and his stockings were all produced on the farm of his parents. What about the regeneration of Serbia after the world war. One thing there will be, a new Serbia born again from the ruins of the old. But Serbia must have the help of a powerful friend. The United States, the giant of the western world, must aid the bravest and pluckiest little nation known in history, to get on its feet and stay there. It must loan the Serbs money and a lot of it. The Americans will never lose a dollar. A people who can fight and suffer and die like these men, women and children of the Balkans, can be trusted. They are too brave, too self-sacrificing and patient to throw down their friends. The Serbian lands are immensely rich. With the help of the industries of America, a new Serbia, a modern Serbia will rise again in the place of the old nation which the Teutons and their allies have nearly destroyed. The country will need most everything to begin keeping national housekeeping again. It will need railroads, locomo- tives, lumber for new homes, machinery such as harvesters and mowers, derricks, lathes, household goods, hardware of all kinds and a multitude of other utilities to begin life once more. How serious the present situation, is shown by the fact that the small nation is lying prostrate at the feet of the Huns. But a happier day will come for Serbia with the financial help and backing of the United States. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 17 Serbia has much to offer investors. She will prove a paradise for capitalist to invest their surplus cash. It is the center of the Balkan territory and the keystone state. Any industry started there would meet with great success. All lines of business will prosper. The manufacture of automobiles, agricultural implements, wagons, toys and other industries will flourish and expand with abundant capital to finance them. Serbia will have an outlet to the sea. It will have in time ample railroad facilities. There is only a railroad passing through the country connecting it with Asia, India and Persia, with Europe and touching the great cities of Petrograd, Moscow, Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, and other important trading points in Europe. Serbia is the gate between Europe and Asia. Before 1912 the country was surrounded by three hostile nations, Austria, Bulgaria and Turkey, and she had no outlet to the sea, and she could not place her goods on the markets of the world. She could not, therefore, develop her natural resources and she suffered for the want of adequate capital. Serbia revels in mineral riches. Her mines have not in reality been touched. She is a storehouse of underground wealth. Her soil is among the most fertile in the world and her forests are of immense value. American capital can, if it will, uncover the treasures undreamed of before in that pearl of the Balkans. She is the only barrier to pan-German control of the Balkans. She bars the pathway of the Teuton on the way to Turkey. Serbia will be eager to handle the implements of peace as she was to sacrifice her best blood and treasure to help the allies win for democracy by whipping the Teutons and the Turks. Serbia has been cleaned out by her cruel and rapacious enemies. They have pillaged everything of value they could get their hands on. When homes of the people were not de- stroyed utterly, they were robbed of their fixtures. They took the plumbing and all metals, window frames and even the hinges on the doors. This plunder was loaded on cars and sent to Austria and Germany. Serbia will welcome outside capital to help her develop her excellent resources. A law passed in 1898 authorized the 18 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL government to make concessions and very favorable terms to foreigners coming into the country willing to promote mining and manufacturing industries. The mines of Serbia are very rich. The gold and silver mines are practically untouched. Coal, iron, lead, zinc, copper, nickel, mercury, manganese, graphites, marble, oiliodine and sulphur are found in abundance. The mineral resources of the country, which are very great, are yet undeveloped. Serbia is rich in mineral springs, and they have been quite as neglected as the mines because of the need of sufficient capital to work them. Waters, rich in iodine and sulphur abound in the country. Also hot springs and mineral waters. The baths of Nish, Vranya, Obrennovatz, Valjevo and Shabatz are famous for their health-giving powers. Besides being visited by the more prosperous class of Serbians they are highly esteemed by people from other countries. Belgrade is the capital of Serbia. Before the war of Turkey and Bulgaria against Serbia it had a population of 70,000. At the beginning of 1914, the opening year of the world war its population had increased to 120,000, an advance of 50,000 within the period of a year. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 19 Serbians 1 Remarkable Feat A military writer in the Zeitung of Cologne, Germany, gives the Serbians the credit of being the best fighters the central powers have yet met in the field. The incentive of the small nation was, of course, of the strongest. The Serbians knew that the central powers, nominally Austria, had decided to wipe out their nation. They also knew that their govern- ment had made every possible concession and had done what was humanely possible to keep the peace. They could fight and die against overwhelming odds. Without hesitation they chose the latter alternative. Everybody remembers the terrific fight the Serbians put up against the first invading Austrians. The proud Austrian forces were either wiped out or driven like sheep. Hence the overrunning of Serbia by Austria was postponed. Later in the game the Austrians came back in overwhelming force, backed by numerous German regiments. The Serbians after fighting to the human limit, made their escape by an almost superhuman winter retreat, through what were considered impassable mountain gorges and so managed to reach friendly territory in such shape that they could reform their decimated ranks, refit themselves and come back into the war a formidable fighting force. History will give the Serbians full measure of the glory of their achievements. When the story of all the suffering and daring against odds is written it will form one of the most heroic chapters of the vivid war of naked heroism against the piled up brute force of 40 years of wicked scheming and cun- ningly concealed preparation. 20 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL Kossovo, 1389 And The World War By Sidney Coryn IT is not a little significant of the changing relationships of the world that such a meeting of representative American citizens should be held in San Francisco in order to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Kossovo. But I think that we are celebrating something more than the anniversary of a battle. We are celebrating also the beginning of an era of Serbian history that we believe to be now approaching a trium- phant end. We are reminding ourselves of a struggle for human freedom that is probably without its like in the history of the race. And we are looking forward to the end of that struggle with the confident belief that it will bring with it the emanci- pation of the Southern European Slavs as well as the emanci- pation of civilization itself from the threat of a most cruel and remorseless tyranny. Surely it is now time that the world should recognize its debt to the Serbian people. For we are not here to offer them the gifts of our benevolence. It is not only our charity that we would tender to them, grievously though they need it. Our debt is one of gratitude, and if we have for long been una- ware of our obligation it should now be discharged with an added emphasis. It is a debt due from a young western nation, founded on the ideals of human liberty to an eastern people already old in suffering and in martyrdom for those same ideals. For before this nation was born, the soil of Serbia, every inch of it, had been reddened again and again with the blood of her patriots who died for human freedom. It was Serbia who offered herself as a shield of flame and steel between Europe and the Asiatic invader. It was Serbia who made possible the evolution of European civilization with its promise for the western world. It was Serbia who turned back the tide of Mohammedan empire and saved humanity from the paralysis that threatened it. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 21 The imagination can hardly conceive of a world in which the battle of Kossovo had not been fought, in which Serbia had not resisted the Moslem flood, and so given to Europe the necessary time in which to save herself. Europe was almost too late, even then. The Turks had taken Buda Pesth after the Battle of Kossova. A little later and they were under the walls of Vienna. It was one of those crises in which humanity holds its breath, one of those tremendous epochs when the world seems to shiver upon the edge of irretrievable cataclysm. But for the valor of Serbia there would today be a Mohammedan empire from the Bosphorus to the Atlantic. The civilization of the human race would have been arrested, paralyzed, ossified. All this would be a matter only for the curious student of history but for the fact that we have now witnessed a repetition of the role played so magnificently by Serbia five hundred years ago. Just as she interposed herself between Europe and the Turk, so she has now interposed herself between the world and the Teutonic domination. She was shattered by the Turk in 1389. She has been shattered by Austria and Germany in the war that is now being waged. It is the same role but upon a different stage. These are among the facts that we ought to know, as we ought to know the reasons underlying them. We ought to know why Serbia has been the focus for the persistent hates of tyrants, why she has now been singled out for destruction, and as a prelude to the destruction of human freedom, why her soil was the first to be ravaged, and her people the first to be so tortured and enslaved. Serbia is now the ally of America in the greatest war that has ever been waged, and an ally of which America needs not be ashamed. For Serbia is old and worn in the struggle for human liberty. For one thousand years she has known nothing else. It is her habit to fight for freedom. Her history is one long story of resistance to tyranny, and of the vengeances that tyranny has wreaked upon her. To understand why Serbia was placed in the forefront of the present struggle it is necessary to glance at the two lines of national policy, the Austrian and the German, that converged upon this one little Balkan state. Those two lines of policy originated in the definite and distinctive greeds, ambitions and fears of the Teutonic Empires, but they approach each 22 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL other and gradually become entwined in the events of the fateful years preceding the war. It is to them and to them alone, that we must look for an explanation of the war, which thus loses the quality of the unforeseen and the unpremeditated ascribed to it in the popular mind. In that light it becomes the intended and the calculated culmination of forty years of sinister diplomacy and intrigue. Let us look first at the share of Austria in the production of this world calamity that has now engulfed America. Un- fortunately, it is a share of which we here in America have only the vaguest conception. To us Serbia is no more than a Balkan state of insignificant geographical dimensions, the scene of constant turmoil, and associated with national feuds with which we have not even cared to acquaint ourselves. But Serbia from the point of view of the Hapsburg monarchy is something far more than this. Serbia is the leader of the great Slav movement of Southern Europe. To the 28,000,000 Slavs of the Austrian Empire she appeals as the representative of their nationality, and as the hope of their coming enfran- chisement and independence. The Austrian Empire consists of four races. The Germanic people in Austria number 12,000,000. The Latin races, com- prising Italians and Roumanians, are represented by 4,000,000 people. There are 10,000,000 Magyars originally of Asiatic origin, and there are 28,000,000 Slavs, sometimes known as Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes, Slovenes and Serbo-Croats. All of these peoples, by whatever other names they may be known, are actually and practically identical, however much it may suit the policy of Austria to represent them as separate and distinct nationalities. They are substantially the same in language, tradition, sympathy and aspiration. They are not acquiescent parts of the Austrian Empire. On the con- trary they are enemies of the Austrian Empire and its victims, hating the yoke that binds them to that Empire, despising the Germans and the Magyars to whom they are immeasurably superior in virtue and intelligence, and looking forward with unquenchable hope to their ultimate assimilation by Serbia into one unified Southern Slav State. The German and Magyar elements, on their part, have returned the hate with interest, and have tried to ward off the danger of disintegration by TRAGEDY OF A NATION 23 persistent repressive measures that have never been surpassed in their brutal ferocity. There is no more shameful page in human history than this, nor one more full of a concentrated and sustained cruelty. The Germans and the Magyars of the Austrian Empire represent a feudal aristocracy that has all the worst attributes of Prussianism. The Slavs of the Austrian Empire represent a conquered but still dangerous people, dangerous by their numbers, and by the steady perse- verance of their hopes of liberation, and of an independent union with Serbia. Small wonder, then, that Serbia should be an object of dread and suspicion to the dominant Teutonic and Magyar elements of the Austrian Empire. The continuing sovereignty of Serbia meant the perpetual proclamation of free ideals, the perpetual contagion of democratic institutions. The Slavs of Austria could never become abject or acquiescent to tyranny so long as Serbia held aloft the banner of national life as a summons and an inspiration to her brethren under the Austrian scourge. The obliteration of Serbia as a sovereign state thus became the cardinal principle of Austrian policies. At once we begin to understand the events that followed the assassination of the Archduke, and which we are now disposed to regard as a pretext rather than as a cause. Apply this cardinal principle, the extinction and destruction of Serbia, to all the obscure problems of Austrian policies for forty years, and it will solve them all. Never did Rome look forward to the ruin of Carthage with half the concentrated and sustained malice that Austria directed toward Serbia. Again and again we find the expression of that destructive and malignant hate. We find Austria intervening at the end of the first Balkan war in order to deprive Serbia of her legiti- mate gains, and in order to rehabilitate the Turk. Here Austria had no lawful self-interest to serve, no honest policy to further. But Serbia at all costs must be thwarted, abashed and terrorized. The direct and intended result of Austria's action was to alienate Serbia and Bulgaria, to deprive Serbia of the advantages of her victory over the Turks, to break up the hegemony of the Balkan States and to isolate Serbia within a circle of enemies. It was Austria, and Austria alone, that produced the second Balkan war, with its revival of Turkish 24 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL misrule in Europe, and the resulting conflagration of rival passions in the Balkans. It was a step in the undeviating policy that has been outlined, an integral part of the plan by which Austria intended to relieve herself from the menace and the contagion of Serbian liberty and of the Slav ideal. It was a link in the chain that led inevitably to the war that was intended to lead to the war. To indicate all the links in that fatal chain would be to write the history of Eastern Europe for forty years. It must suffice to point out some few of the more important. It was this same policy that led Austria to violate the Triple Alliance on the occasion of the war between Italy and Turkey, and to throw the whole of her passive weight into the scales against her ally, Italy, and on the side of Turkey, the age-long enemy of Serbia. No treaty could be allowed to interfere with that policy. No consideration of right and wrong could ever be permitted so stand between Austria and her prey. The destruction of Serbia had become a sort of monomania. We now come to a point immediately preceding the out- break of the war, and to a secret page of history, that, but for the war, might never have been divulged. It is sufficiently outlined by the speech made by the Italian premier before the Italian Parliament. Austria, he said in effect, had pleaded the assassination of the Archduke as the reason for her ultimatum to Serbia, and for her hostile acts against Serbia. But, as a matter of fact, Austria had proposed a war against Serbia a year before that assassination had occurred, and Italy, as a member of the Triple Alliance, had refused to sanction it. Austria had advanced no valid reason for such an act of ag- gression against Serbia, who was wholly innocent of any pro- vocation or offense. The veto of Italy withheld Austria from the accomplishment of her designs at that time, and she was compelled to await a new opportunity. The new opportunity was not for long delayed. It was furnished by the assassination of the Archduke, a crime of which Serbia was as completely innocent as California. It was committed by Austrian subjects, and upon Austrian soil. The criminals had been in Serbia shortly before the tragedy was enacted, and the Serbian authorities, suspecting the nature of their intentions, had ordered their expulsion, but the order was TRAGEDY OF A NATION 25 'not carried into effect owing to the protest of the Austrian embassy, which took these suspected persons under its protection. Serbia disavowed all complicity in the crime, and Austria was unable to advance any valid evidence of her responsibility or connivance. But innocence was of no avail against such accusers as these. It was the old story of the wolf and the lamb. Serbia had already lain under sentence of death for forty years, and now at last had come the pretext for its execution. If that pretext had failed, some other would have been found. Austria would wait no longer. Moreover, Germany was now hailing the dawn of Der Tag. She, too, was ready for the assault upon Serbia in pursuance of her own distinctive policy that was now inextricably blended with that of the sister Teutonic Empire. No wonder Karl Liebknecht should say in the German Reichstag that the assassination of the Archduke was hailed in high German circles as a providential act. No wonder that there should be something more than a suspicion that Austria not only intended the crime, but that she initiated the means of its accomplishment. For the profit of that crime was hers. It gave her the opportunity and the pretext to crush Serbia, and so to invoke success upon the policy that she had pursued undeviatingly for forty years. Let us glance now for a moment at the policy of Germany which thus found itself in full accord with that of Austria. If Serbia was a threat to Austrian domination of the Slav peoples at home and abroad, she was no less of a threat to the German hope of an Asiatic Empire and of world power. The German Emperor soon after his accession to the throne had effected an alliance with the Sultan of Turkey, and had declared himself the protector and the friend of all Mohammedan peoples throughout the world. He had obtained from the Sultan a concession for a railroad that was to run from Constantinople through Asia Minor and Mesopotamia to Bagdad, to the frontiers of Egypt, and to the shores of the Persian Gulf. It was to be a military railroad. There was no concealment about that, no attempt to hide the purpose to which it was to be put. Connecting at Constantinople with the great International Railroad through Europe, it was to enable Germany to send her armed legions, almost without change of train from Hamburg to Egypt and India. That a war for the conquest of Asia 26 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL meant also a war for the conquest of Europe was fully rec- ognized in the German scheme. France and Italy with their Mohammedan territories, Great Britan with India, Russia with her Persian interests, could never permit so tremendous an incitement to the fierce and fanatical Moslem world. They could not remain indifferent to so vast a threat to the stability of civilization. Even China would be affected, nor need we forget that America herself has Mohammedans under her flag. But Germany intended to fight the world. Hers was no leap in the dark. Bernhardi had supplied the watchword of "Weltmacht oder Niedergang," thus following his master Treitschke. It had become the watchword of the German people; and Europe and America were asleep and refused to wake. Trace the map of that railroad for yourselves. Leaving Germany it passes through Vienna and Buda Pesth, and thus becomes a knot in the Pan-German union between Germany and Austria. And then it traverses Northern Serbia, and through the Serbian city to Nish. Thence it passes through Bulgaria, and through Turkey to Adrianople and Constantinople, and so into Asia Minor. It was to be the broad military high- road over which the Teuton armies were to march to world dominion. That the Bagdad railroad was actually intended for such a purpose is not a matter of speculation. The intention was trumpeted forth to the world. Germany in this respect had at least . the merit of a certain tremendous frankness. Certain of her strength she made no effort to hide the uses to which it was to be put. But there was a weak link in that railroad chain, and that weak link was Serbia. Turkey was already an ally of Germany and could be trusted. Bulgaria, too, was an ally, or could easily be made one by bribes or threats. Moreover, Bulgaria was now a deadly enemy of Serbia through Austrian intrigues, and would naturally gravitate toward any camp that was hostile to Serbia. Serbia, then, was the weak link, and in such a railroad chain as that, and one dedicated to such ends, there must be no weak link. A hostile Serbia might mean the cutting of that chain at the moment of greatest tension. And Serbia was certain to be hostile to any Teutonic scheme which involved the further extension of Austrian power over the Slav peoples. Austria TRAGEDY OF A NATION 27 had already seized Bosnia and Herzegovina with their Serbian populations. Her designs against Serbia herself were hardly matters of doubt. Serbia would never tolerate the passage through her territories, through her city of Nish, of Teuton armies bound on a mission of Asiatic, and then of world domi- nation. Germany knew well that the Bagdad railroad would be no more than a rope of sand in her grasp so long as any portion of that railroad was in Serbian hands. And so Germany had decreed the extinction of Serbia, and she found a ready ac- complice in Austria, whose schemes thus ran parallel with her own. Such, in brief outline, was the position occupied by Serbia in the broad stream of Teutonic policies that ran straight on to the precipice of war. On the one hand we have the Teutonic intention to dominate the world. On the other, we have the tiny kingdom of Serbia blocking the Teutonic path to Asia, a perpetual menace to tyranny, and with the record of five hundred years to sustain that menace. It was a picture as dramatic as any picture the world has ever seen, and the world is now paying in blood and anguish for its blindness to a drama that was ostentatiously unfolded before her eyes for forty years. Serbia is a long way off, and to many Americans she has been little more than a name. None the less, she is the center of the world war. Every gun fired in that war, whether it be on the Atlantic, at Verdun, or on Russia's northernmost battle .line, is a gun fired either in defense of Serbia or in attack upon her. If the Central Powers should emerge from the war with the secured domination of Serbia, then the Central Powers will have won the war, and the road to world domination will be open to them. No matter what evacuations there may be elsewhere, no matter what indemnities they may pay, no matter how far they consent to the ratification of other frontiers, they will still have won the war if they are allowed directly or in- directly to tamper with the sovereignty of Serbia. Therefore, it may be said once more that it is not charity that we owe to Serbia, but gratitude. In very truth she stood, and still stands, between America and that vast Teutonic power that has included America in its scheme of world domination. If that power should succeed in the subjugation of Serbia, it will have taken its first triumphant step along that path which 28 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL must ultimately and even speedily be barred by America alone, and in defense of her liberties, and even of her right to exist as a nation. There is no room in the world for Americanism* and for Prussianism. The waters of the Atlantic are not deep enough to separate their rivalries. If they should ever find themselves alone in the amphitheater of war, no man in America will be exempted either by youth or by age or by physical infirmities from bearing his part in such a struggle for national survival. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 29 SERBIA The Poor Man's Paradise By Herbert yioian, M. A. Written before 21 years, 1897. waste serious thought upon the sordid squabbles of corrupt republics across the Channel and the Ocean, we shed mawkish tears over the punishment of financial intrigues in Armenia and the Transvall, and we compass sea and land to gather a precarious interest for plethoric capital amid fever-swamps, wild beast, and wilder man. "Meanwhile we do not seem to suspect that within little more than two days' rail from our capital, there lies an unde- veloped country of extraordinary fertility and potential wealth, possessing a history more wonderful than any fairy tale, and a race of heroes and patriots who may one day set Europe by the ears. "The Serbians have said to me, over and over again, 'We want merely justice; relate only what you have seen.' To which I have replied, 'My good people, if I related only one-half of all the wonderful things I have seen, not a soul in England would believe me. I should be told I had written, not about Serbia, but about Atlantis, or Utopia.' "I have, therefore, taken pains to curb my enthusiasm, and have availed myself of moments of depression to dilute the rose-color which plays upon this smiling land. If I have re- mained too optimistic, the fault is not mine; for until I saw Serbia, I disbelieved in modern nations. The blame, if any there be, must be laid at the door of the strange little kingdom which has no poor within its borders, where good humor is chronic and hospitality universal. "In any case, she is a dainty miniature and cannot fail to please the eye of an artist. "Beautiful Serbia! My soul will always linger amid the rapture of thy purple hills. "The particular opportunity, however, is for the small capitalist with a few thousands, or even a few hundreds, which 30 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL avail their possessors very little in England, but which with a little effort and judgment would assure a handsome competency in Serbia. "What to do with our sons" is a favorite problem with us. I solve it by replying: "Send them out to the Balkan States where they shall be happy and wealthy, and wise." ****** "Serbia is essentially an agricultural country. Nine-tenths of her population are employed on the land, and more than nine-tenths of her wealth is derived directly from it. The typical Serbian is first and last a peasant-proprietor. "Whatever our views may be about peasant-proprietors in general, there is no room for doubt about their unvarying prosperity in this particular Peasant-State. In Serbia, there is not, I think, a single millionaire, even in dinars, (one dinar is 20 cents), and an income of 200L or 300L a year, implies af- fluence, almost wealth; while, on the other hand, such emblems of civilization as rags, hunger and homelessness are unknown. If industry and commerce are checked by the absence of capi- talists, the greatest good of the greatest number is undoubtedly attained by the corresponding absence of the poor, whom we have always with us in more modern States. The Serbian peasant nearly always has more land than he can cultivate; he can boast of savings, either banked in an old stocking, exhibited in the headgear of his womenfolk, or capitalized in the form of gold embroideries; and nothing will ever induce them to go into dependence. There are no Serbian servants. Belgrade must import from Hungary, Austria, Germany and even Italy. If you find servants of Serbian race, you may be sure they are either foreign subjects or have been recently naturalized. "To sum up the Serbian peasant: His character is the legi- timate offspring of his surroundings and his history. The struggles of centuries imbued him with a dogged determination almost amounting to obstinacy; but his smiling land has filled his soul with smiles. He is always cheerful and contented; his hospitality is boundless; his sweet simplicity is patriarchal. "Everyone in Serbia is the soul of hospitality, and a traveller in the country districts is welcomed and feasted in a manner altogether overwhelming. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 31 "For my part, I am more inclined to compare the Serbians to the Irish, but for the fact that the former have no poor and are eminently practical. They have humor and good humor; they cherish that dreamy melancholy which is begotten by centuries of subjection; they place themselves with all they possess at your disposal, and, what is more, they mean it; they know instinctively what will please you most, and the right moment to say it; their patriotism is vehement and dis- interested, almost quixotic even; they are, every one of them, keen politicians, and they accept much political direction from their priesthood. Might not all this be said equally of the Irish? What strikes a stranger most about the Serbians, as about the Irish, is perhaps a certain child-like simplicity: They are easily amused and excited, they hate and love with so much emphasis, their character is so delightfully free from complexity." 32 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL MEMORANDUM By The SERBIAN SOCIALIST PARTY UPON THE CONDITIONS IN OCCUPIED SERBIA Presented To The Russo - Hollando - Scandinavian Committee in Stockholm With A Preface By Camille Huysmans, Secretary of The International Socialist Bureau. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 33 932 Southern Building, Washington, D. C. March 15, 1918. THE following appeal is signed by two eye-witnesses of the infamous acts of the Austro-Bulgarians in the oc- cupied territory of Serbia. The first of these, Dushan Popovitch, permanent secretary of the Serbian Socialist party, has not left Serbia and since the evacuation of 1915, he was able to see, on the spot, all that the invaders have done to exterminate an entire people. The second, Katzlerovitch, is a deputy of the Socialist party. He took part in the retreat through Albania but after arriving in Switzerland he decided to return to Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian Legation at Berne, accorded him every facility and in the month of June, 1916, he left for Kraguevatz in Serbia. M. Katzlerovitch is a Serbian "Zimmerwaldian" and before returning to Serbia he had vio- lently attacked the Serbian Government and Parliament, demanding an immediate peace. The Wolff Agency hastened to reproduce their attacks and exploit them against Serbia. M. Katzlerovitch is therefore a witness particularly qualified to tell the truth regarding the horrors of the Austro-Bulgarian regime. "Messrs. Popovitch and Katzlerovitch went from Serbia to Stockholm for the Socialist conference. The Central Powers believed that the two Serbian socialists would play the game of the internationalists and that is why they permitted them to go to Stockholm. There the Serbian delegates, once they had escaped from the Austro-Germans, drew up this appeal to the civilized world, to protest against the regime of exter- mination practiced in Serbia. They handed it in the month of November to M. Camille Huysmans, who, in making it public, thus described it in his introduction: "It is not a work of hate; it is a cry of distress." In view of the documentary value of this memorandum, we publish it in its full form, regardless of the fact that we do not share the political ideas expressed on this occasion by the Serbian Socialist Party. As to the behavior of the German troops in Serbia, described by Messrs. Popovitch and Katzlero- vitch as having been less barbourous than the Bulgarian and 34 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL the Austro-Hungarian, we make a point of issuing herewith an account of the German military expedition in Serbia, by Oskar Maurus Fontana, a German writer and a Reserve Officer who accompanied the German army to Serbia. SERBIAN PRESS BUREAU. PREFACE. The war has made three martyr nations: the Belgians, the Serbs and the Armenians of Turkey. Germany has martyred Belgium; Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria have martyred Serbia. Turkey has martyred Armenia. In all three countries the aggressor has attacked an in- offensive and defenseless population. In Belgium he has put to the sword hundreds of unarmed men, women and children. In Serbia, he has been even more pitiless. He has claimed his victims by the thousand. In Armenia, his bestiality has known no bounds. He has killed with Sadie fury. Belgium has lost many civilians and will lose yet more under a regime of insufficient feeding and unendurable op- pression. Serbia has lost practically the half of her population, and unless immediate help is forthcoming, men, women and children will die like flies. Armenia, alas, cannot count the number of her victims. Will she ever after the War be able to make a list of those who survived and were reduced to slavery? The methods of murder and destruction have been applied with greater brutality and shamelessness in proportion as one neared the East, where human life is held comparatively cheap. The objects of the aggressor were not the same in each case. The generous Germany of Luther certainly did not desire to exterminate the Belgians. To begin with, the latter are too numerous! But she wanted to punish them for their unexpected resistance. She was not a secular enemy. But she had re- TRAGEDY OF A NATION 35 course to blood letting in order to terrorize the vanquished and to teach them docility for the future. Catholic Austria has done nothing but carry on her tra- ditional policy. Her aggression of yesterday was not accidental. During the whole of the 1 9th Century, she has never ceased to attack a young and gallant people, simply because it is conscious of its national strength. And the slaughter was compassed with the clear purpose of total destruction. In the Imperial Army, it was the Serbs of Austria who were always sent for preference into the fire, because one wanted to get rid of them and the Serbs of Serbia have been starved or hanged, interned or put in chains with cynically refined cruelty. And the kindred Bulgars belonging to the ruling circles have helped the Austrians in this monstrous task! They desired to be revenged for past defeats and they have remained deaf to the voice of the blood. The Sons of the Prophet pursued an indentical aim. They, too, desired the extermination of a people. And, we must admit it, they have accomplished it conscientiously, like ex- perienced scavengers. They have spared nothing. They have considered neither age nor sex. They have made a clean sweep. They have carried out Sultan Selim's command to the letter. To violence to the men they have added bestiality to women and even to children. And the Christians of Germany have watched unmoved, this slaughter of the Christians of Armenia. While attacking the human beings the invador has not forgotten inanimate objects. He has sought to ruin the victim of the occupation economically. He has taken his food. He has taken away his machinery. He has deprived him of the primary necessities. And he has crowned everything by the deportation of labour. One would think that the General Headquarters of the Turks, Austrians and Germans were acting by agreement. And how have they justified these abominations? In Belgium, they invented the legend of the francfireurs. In Armenia, they invented the legend of conspiracies. In Serbia, the Austrians invented nothing. They have too much imagination to delight in the clumsy pseudo-scientific imaginations of the German Government. Since the days of the Agram trial they have acquired too much experience to 36 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL re-edit a subterfuge which brought upon them the moral censure of the whole of Europe. They have acted boldly, without hypocrisy and, taking it all round, this attitude strikes us as being the most decent. They have the courage of their crimes. I do not mean to hold the peoples of Germany, of Austria- Hungary, of Bulgaria and Turkey responsible for all this. I know what protests have rung through the Parliaments of Berlin, of Vienna, of Budapest and Sofia. I am convinced that thousands of Mussulmans condemn the policy of the Young Turks, and if proof is required, I need only quote the touching pamphlet by Fayez El-Gosein, a Bedouin of Hauran. But what matters is that the Socialists at least, of the Central Empires, should know and should act. And that is why my Serbian and American comrades have judged it useful to do as we have done in Belgium. To what is left of the civilized world they denounce what has been done and is being done and they appeal at least to the solidarity of those who lay claim to spare their ideals of humanity and justice. And if they are told in reply that also on the other side of the barricade there are deplorable conditions. If they are told in reply, as I have already been told, that prisoners have been ill-treated elsewhere, we shall declare very clearly, that the Socialist protest must regard the misdeeds of one side as well as the crimes of the other. As for me, I refuse to admit the axiom: "Krieg ist Krieg", "War is War." This phrase is nothing but a covert form of moral cowardice. The Socialists have no right to take no interest in the fate of other human beings. For this reason I thank my friends Popovitch, Secretary of the Serbian Socialist Party, and Katzlerovitch, Deputy in the Skupshtina, for having written this phamphlet, which is ad- dressed to public opinion, without distinction It is not a work of hate, It is a cry of distress! Stockholm, December 10th, 1917. CAMILLE HUYSMANS, Secretary of (he International Socialist Bureau. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 37 MEMORANDUM By The Serbian Socialist Party Upon The Situation In Occupied Serbia 'Presented To The Russo-Hollando-Scandinavian Committee Opinions as to the culpability of Serbia in the present war are divided according to whether the holders of these opinions belong to one or the other of the two belligerent and enemy camps. But what is past all discussion for both parties is that Serbia is one of the most sorely-tried victims of the world war. The burden of the war as it has fallen upon this small and weak country is so crushing and so bloody that there is no longer any equitable proportion between crime and punishment, even if we assume that Serbia had committed the gravest faults. Still less can one take up this view if one takes into account that during the whole of last century the Serbian nation an abstraction constructedof secondary factors and responsibilities in the third degree was in a state of legitimate defense against the brutal policy of conquest on the part of a great reactionary neighbouring State, namely Austria. The whole world is more or less aware of the great distress into which Serbia has been plunged by the war, and of the sacrifices entailed upon her by the latter. But what is known of it is very superficial and incomplete. The object of our memorandum is to complete this general information by facts and data collected in occupied Serbia, in order to show the pressing need of speedy and efficacious help, both material and moral for this country cut off from all the world and forsaken by it. On The Eve of the Occupation and During The Catastrophe. Serbia had already suffered great losses since the first year of the war. During the very first months of the war she had to repel two great Austrian offensives, one in September, and one in November, 1914. Twice the existence of Serbia hung only by a thread and twice she parried the mortal blow. But 38 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL these events entailed enormous losses as well among the soldiers as among the civil population. Appalled by the horrors of the first Austro-Hungarian invasion in the neighbourhood of the town of Shabatz and in order to escape from the enemy troops which were steadily venturing further, Serbian families were compelled to fly wholesale at an unfavourable season, into the interior of the country. This second invasion was followed by a terrible epidemic which raged all winter and throughout the Spring of 1915. Hundreds of thousands of men (including 140 doctors) perished principally of typhus. The result was that already in June, 1915, the total number of war victims reached the figure of 500,000. Result of German and Austrian Kultur in an old Serbian Peasant Woman, 75 years of age, mutilated by Germans and Austrians. An official picture, by Prof. Reiss of Switzerland. Then came in October, 1915, the third invasion under Mackensen, then the Bulgarian attack in the flank. These events were followed by the migration of a whole people - women, children and old men across the Albanian mountains which had hitherto known no travellers but enthusiastic ex- plorers or blase adventurers who no longer set any value upon their life of boredom. This migration was made on foot, through the terrific frosts of winter and autumn in the months of November and December. Of 39,000 boys between 1 5 and 1 8 years of age, taken away by the commanders of the Serbian TRAGEDY OF A NATION 39 army, 31,000 perished in Albania of cold and hunger, not to speak of the considerable number of children, women and old men and soldiers who succumbed there. In Corfu, cholera lay in wait for the famished and mortally exhausted soldiers. The total number of Serbian victims reached the figure of 800,000 and even of 1 ,000,000 according to the opinion of well informed persons. This was already almost one-fourth of the total population of Serbia according to the statistics established after the peace of Bucharest. The general statistics included a considerable number of Albanians and Turks, which means that the rate of mortality among the Serb population proper was even far greater. As for the Serbia that was in existence before the Balkan wars and forms in every respect the neucleus of the Serb nation, one may say without exaggeration that pretty well ne-half of her population had perished. Nor should it be forgotten that the fate of the Serbs living in Austria-Hungary during the war has been no better. The policy of the ruling classes of Austria-Hungary has been to solve the Serbian-Austrian during the war quite simply by exterminating as many Serbs as possible. The soldiers of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, those from the old military frontier of Lika, from Croatia, from Slavonia, the Syrmia, Bachka and the Banat of Temesvar all of them Serbo-Croat lands were sent where the fighting was most dangerous, while a regiment of prison, the gibbet and famine were applied at home to the rest of the population. One need only read, for instance, the speech delivered by the Croat deputy Guido Hreljanovich a few months ago in the Hungarian Parliament, concerning the barbarity prevailing in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This speech, as also the most recent one by Dr. Antun Tresich- Pavichitch, in the Austrian Reichsrat, October 17, 1917, contains the most horrifying details. It was received in silence by the Hungarian chamber. We will not dwell upon this further. These facts lie outside our jurisdiction. We leave it to the Austro-Hungarian Social Democracy to fight this barbarous Government, whose aim is to prevent all development of the Serb people and to destroy its national consciousness. We will merely state the following: The Serbo-Croat nation which numbered more than ten million souls and whose annual increase amounted to 100,000, has lost so many of its members during 40 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL this "war of liberation" that it cannot hope to reach its old figure before thirty years after the war. The Occupation. When in the Autumn of 1915, the conquerors crossed the Save, the Danube and the Timok, all Serbia was, as it were, divided into two. One part presented the melancholy picture of a graveyard and the other that of a hospital. The invaders were no longer faced by a redoubtable adversary whose resist- ance had to be broken, but by a sorely stricken country, which according to the most elementary humanitarian principles had a claim to be treated with consideration. It is true that Mackensen within the first days of his entry into the country issued a solemn proclamation in which he invited the entire civil population to return quickly to its homes and resume its ordinary occupations, because thus it was assured by the famous General the war would not be waged against the peaceful population but against armed and fighting forces. But these were only empty words. Every Government of Occupation in Serbia has been nothing but a permanent war upon the peaceful population. And moreover it has not been a government of occupation at all but rather a punitive expedition on the part of Austria-Hungary and still more on that of Bulgaria, and this is the word which most correctly and most completely defines the character of the Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian domination in Serbia. Serbia's enemies have felt from the very first, instinctively, that this country would not remain permanently in their possession. Therefore they made up their minds to render Serbia altogether incapable of carrying on her existence. Unfortunately, they have already partially accomplished this task. It is therefore the duty of the civilized world to prevent them from carrying out their infamous purpose to the end. Passage of The German Troops. It was the German army which during its march through Serbia in October, November and December, of 1915, furnished the precedent for this horrible policy. These troops did not content themselves with the formidable booty represented by TRAGEDY OF A NATION 41 the vast property of the State abandoned everywhere in the greatest disorder and which, according to the statements of the German officers could only be compared with the booty they reaped in Russia after the break through at Gorlicz. Besides this, the Serbian people was compelled to entertain gratuitously and for several months these countless German legions, for whom the Balkans were merely a highroad on their conquering advance towards Asia Minor. The poor Serbian was compelled out of his humble means to support the grandiose plans of the German imperialists and to take part in the realization of their aims. A Starved Serbian Prisoner of War, taken by an Italian factor in Austria. All that was necessary for the army and very often much that was not, was so to say snatched out of the mouths of the population, consisting mainly of women and children, and that without any compunction or compensation. It is true that sometimes they were given requisition tickets in exchange, but this was done very rarely and always in some non-valid form. It happened for instance that poor ignorant peasants, 42 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL whose last cow had been taken were found in possession of requisition tickets bearing the following legend in German: "Peter Karageorgevitch must pay" etc. But what is worse is that in most cases the property of the public was destroyed without any necessity, out of pure spite. It would be easy to quote countless instances of this perverse and pur- poseless rage for destruction on the part of the German troops with regard to the property of the peasants, including cases which fall within the scope of camp humour, but which really cost the poor population too dear. We think it, however, our duty to declare that on this occasion the German troops, although they did not in the least respect the property of the people, never showed themselves barbarous towards the population itself. We do not know of a single case in which the German soldiers were guilty of murder or outrage or of beating anybody. If there have been such cases, they were exceptional. After the German hurricane had passed, came "normal" conditions. Order was established in Serbia. Let us see what manner of order it was, and is. The Region Occupied By Austria- Hungary. The Economic Situation. The economic life of Serbia had been disorganized and subjected to strain even before the occupation, more than has been the case in any of the other belligerent States. A far greater proportion of the population was mobilized in Serbia than anywhere else. The whole country was transformed into a veritable armed camp. After each enemy offensive and after each epidemic the last remnants of the male population in the towns and villages was called up with the result that all the labour that was left consisted of women, children and old men. Belgrade, the economic and commercial centre of Serbia was evacuated and abandoned by the population during the first days of the mobilization, because of its dangerous position from a military point of view. The same thing happened all throughout the whole of Northern Serbia, the zone extending along the Save and the Danube as well as in Western Serbia along the Drina. Thus during the very first days of the war, all economic and cultural life was brought to a standstill in the richest regions of our country, because they were all of them TRAGEDY OF A NATION 43 transformed into theatres of war and deluged with blood. At the moment of the catastrophe a great emigration took place there among that part of the population which was best fitted for economic production. People left their homes, their workshops, their affairs and their fields en masse to go across Albania into the unknown world. And what did the "bearers of culture" do under these con- ditions? To the terrible burden of the war which was already weighing heavily upon the population, they added the brutality, spoliation and corruption of a regime of occupation and by their robbery brought all Serbia to economic ruin. What the Germans failed to "put in order" during their short stay of a few months, the Austrians and Hungarians have tidied up to perfection within two years. Austria-Hungary loves above all things to lay stress upon the order-creating side of her activity in Serbia. The great neighbour state wished to prove to the whole world that her historic mission consists in curing the "fierce and rebellious" Serb nation of "politics" and educating it into habits of economy and industry. Now what has Austria-Hungary done during the last two years in order to encourage and stimulate the development of the economic and productive resources of Serbia? More Than 150,000 Civilians Interned by The Austrians. The first act of the Government of occupation was to intern in Hungary and Austria more than 1 50,000 persons belonging to the civil population for no reason and without any military or political necessity. Hereby Serbia was deprived of the last reserves in the way of labour which were still at her disposal and countless families lost their last support. Hundreds of thousands of children, women and old men were thus condemned to die of starvation. An even more horrible fate was in store for those who were interned and the country was completely denuded of the working population which alone could have helped it to carry on. This was the first and the most important act of the Military Government in its work of economic and cultural "reorganization" of occupied Serbia. In the meantime this policy of internment is one of the cruellest chapters in the whole history of the Government of occupation and we will speak of it presently in greater detail. 44 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL Pillage and Economic Ruin. After having seized upon the last remnants of the country's resources in labour, the Military Government proceeded similarly to requisition and it does so still unremittingly everything indispensable for production, all material without which the future development of productive resources is altogether im- possible. Serbia's most important factories have ceased to exist; the machinery has been dismantled and transported across the frontier, together with everything in the way of tools and raw material. Workshops were similarly dealt with. Most of the shops were pillaged in the same way. The peasants are deprived of the last of their carts, horses and oxen. These poor people are compelled to furnish the Military au- thorities regularly with draught animals and other cattle, even if they do not possess any. There have been cases in which small peasant farmers have within eighteen months supplied the Austro-Hungarian authorities with fifteen oxen. They must find that oxen even if they don't own them at all. In that case they have to buy it at top prices or obtain it sur- reptitiously at the risk of their lives on the other side of the Morava in Bulgarian territory. It is their business to know where to find it but the animals have to be furnished, otherwise the peasant or the commune in question are compelled to pay a fabulous fine. It goes without saying that in consequence of this policy, Serbia, which is rich in cattle and produces much live stock will soon be deprived of it altogether. The peasant can no longer fill his field, the artisan returns to find an empty workshop and the working man has to go unemployed because, of all the factories, nothing is left but the walls. Even assuming that after this war of extermination, there would still be hands capable of work in Serbia, the necessary material for work will be altogether lacking. This is the state of "economic improve- ment" in Serbia under the regime of the Austro-Hungarian Government of occupation. Serbian Forests Cut Down to the Last Tree. The axe is likewise a very important instrument in the spreading of Austria-Hungary culture. It is a favourable tool of the policy of occupation and a most powerful lever for en- TRAGEDY OF A NATION 45 couraging economic development in the conquered domain. The great predilection of Austrians and Hungarians for timber is, by the way, already known by the example of Bosnia. More- over, there is nothing extraordinary or amazing in this, since forests represent the best source for acquiring wealth to parvenue capitalists and adventurers in all colonies. It is possible to gauge the extent to which one country bears the character of a colony towards another by the figures of the export of timber and its by-products. In this respect, Bosnia stood remarkably high with regard to Austria. Just now it is Serbia's turn. What is being done today in Serbia as regards her forests, which are such an essential resource of a country like ours, is not merely exaggerated exploitation but down-right and complete devastation! Here is an example: The Rogot forest, which was owned by the State was a very beautiful old and dense forest in the very heart of Serbia. It was worth several millions. Today this forest no longer exists; it has been cut down to the last tree. A wide and desolate expanse marks its former site. All the other forests of Serbia, some even larger and more valuable, like those of Kopaonik, Tara and Rudnik, have suffered the same fate. The sullen thud of the Austrians axe in the depth of the ancient forests of Shumadia rings like the blow of a hammer upon a coffin. "Requisitions." And while on the one hand the felling of timber proceeds apace, we have on the other hand the systematic and uninter- mittent expropriation of all that belongs to the population. This goes by the name of "requisition." Almost all the products of the country, even those which are indispensable in every household; metal utensils, etc., are requisitioned under the pretext of serving military needs. And they are paid for at absurd rates! Indeed, all this is only a veiled form of expro- priation. The whole of the harvest is similarly requisitioned. Wheat is paid at the rate of 33 Austrian crowns per 100 kilo- grammes. Dried prunes, one of Serbia's most important export products, are paid for at the rate of 10 crowns per 100 kgs. and that at a time when the Croatian Government is supplying the municipality of Vienna, by contract, with the same kind of prunes at a rate of 50 crowns per 100 kgs. Brandy, 46 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL too, is requisitioned at a rate of. from 40 to 50 crowns, to be resold later on to the innkeepers at rates of from 200 to 250 crowns, and the superior qualities even at 500 crowns per 100 litres. Oxen are paid for at 1.80 per kilogramme. And the peasant is not even entitled to be present when the ox is weighed! This is the business of the officers and officials who by reducing the weight to be paid for by one-half or thereabouts, make a very good thing out of it indeed. Most of the requisition tickets bear, generally speaking, a round number such as 100, 150, 200 kgs., which is already in itself a clear indication of this official robbery on a vast scale. Pigs are bought for 1.50 to 2 crowns per kg., whereas in Austria-Hungary they fetch from 6 to 7 crowns. Apples, another important export article, are paid for at the rate of 25 to 40 crowns per 100 kg., to be resold at once for 80 to 100 crowns in Austria-Hungary. Nuts are requisitioned, likewise potatoes, beans, fruit, vegetables, eggs, in one word, everything. Official Robberies. An elaborately subtle system of fines pursues the same object. They are not a penalty imposed in the general interest of the community in order to enforce compliance with prescribed regulations, but a fresh means of despoiling the people and helping the military and civil employers to get rich quick. Last summer, many inhabitants of Belgrade were compelled to pay fines ranging from 1,000 to 1,500 crowns for having exceeded the prescribed allowance of water by a few litres. Village administrations are sentenced for mere nothings or under perfectly ridiculous pretexts to pay fines of 2,000, 3,000 or 5,000 gold ducats (between 4,800 and 12,000 dollars). Even peasants have to pay their fines in gold or in cash. The in- tention is obvious. The Serbian peasant is to be deprived of the last grain of gold left to him, perhaps, from the good old times of the age of patriarchal communism. Sometimes the authorities go so far in this avidity to obtain gold, that e. g. they presumed one day to force the safe of a well-known mer- chant in Belgrade in order to seize the 2,000 "napoleons" de- posited there and to reimburse him for the same at the rate of 28 crowns apiece at a time when their value on the market was 70 crowns. And this is not an isolated case! But let no one TRAGEDY OF A NATION 47 misapprehend our purpose. We have no intention of bewailing the fate of the Capitalists, who have more than one opportunity during the war to recoup themselves for losses sustained by a tenfold larger gain. We merely wish to point out that if such proceedings are permitted against the well-to-do citizens of Belgrade, the fate of the peasant in villages remote from the capital, the poor peasant handed over at discretion to the unlimited and tyrannical power of the local gendarme must be even more pitiful. As regards the forcible depreciation of the rate of exchange for Serbian money, it is neither more nor less than robbery under arms. No soomer had Serbia been conquered than an order appeared directing under threat of the severest penalties, that the Serbian franc (dinar) was not to be worth more than half an Austrian crown. As the inhabitants possessed no other kind of money they were obliged to circulate the Serbian which passed in this way at an absurdly low rate into the hands of the Austrians, Germans and Bulgars. In this way, both the authorities and private persons could indulge in most lucrative speculation in Serbian money which, thanks to the high standard of the metal, is worth twice as much as Austrian money in the international market. Even today you can, in Austria, privately change 100 Serbian dinars for something over 120 Austrian crowns. The loss caused in this way to the Serbian population, especially to the poorer people who cannot, like the rich, afford to hold back their money until the most propitious moment, is enormous and amounts to many millions. The saddest part about this speculation, is that the poor women, children and old men, forsaken by all the world had nothing but their little savings to fall back on and were thus compelled to reduce by half the small amount of food they had so far been able to procure. All these refined methods of exploitation must obviously end by exhausting what is left of the wealth of the country. In many cases moreover this exploitation is practised openly, brutally and in the most barefaced fashion. Especially during the earlier months of the occupation, it was the custom to force the doors of houses or shops belonging to absentee Serbian citizens, and to seize everything that happened to please any officer, police agent or police spy that came along. Many 48 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL private dwellings, especially in Belgrade, were looted in this way. Everything was taken, from the linen and the furniture to the pianos, which were generally sent across the Save as "war booty" for the wives and mistresses of the Austro-Hun- garian officers. The People's House, the property of our Party was not spared by these robbers and murderers. During the first days of the occupation, several articles were removed and many, especially books, destroyed. Only four months ago these gentlemen presumed to enter our People's House without any "by-your-leave" and to carry off everything that was left, without leaving any requisition tickets. Hereby our Party, which is poor, lost more than 50,000 dinars in Belgrade alone. We are by no means anxious to plead our own grievance in particular. We have merely quoted this instance as an il- lustration of the sad state of affairs in Serbia. From the fact that such attacks are permitted upon the property of a political organization, which, as everybody knows, maintains interna- tional relations and enjoys, so to say, international protection, one may easily conclude what sort of fate is reserved for the population which is protected by nobody. Briefly, then, the economic losses sustained by Serbia during the war before and especially during this disastrous occupation are so great that the restoration of the country cannot be considered anything but ficti- tious unless it is culminated by collective financial assistance organized on generous lines, over and above the reconstitution of its political independence. This financial assistance is the only means of retrieving the country from ruin and restoring it to its former standard of existence. The Food Policy. And what compensation does the Austro-Hungarian Military Government offer the Serbian population in order to make amends for all its sufferings? After requisitioning everything does it at least guarantee the people the minimum necessary to support life? Not at all! On the contrary, everything is organized and calculated in such a way that the population is doomed to die of starvation. Serbia is by nature a rich country which can easily feed its population. But for the moment this country TRAGEDY OF A NATION 49 is split up into military and administrative districts which, as regards the exchange of foodstuffs are separated from each other by veritable Chinese walls. All exchange of foodstuffs between Military districts is strictly forbidden and it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an egg to pass from one district into another in Serbia. The District Commanders dispose of unlimited powers as regards the distribution of foodstuffs in their districts and in this respect they are responsible to no one, not even upon their own Govern- ment. The result is that the whole indispensable interchange of foodstuffs between the various parts of Serbia has become impossible and that the whole surplus produce of any one part Serbian Refugees Waiting for Food. of the country, which could and ought to be employed to supply the needs of some other region is immediately exported to Austria-Hungary. Thus the authorities have ended by creating an artificial shortage of foodstuffs which is then exported by the District Commanders themselves, by the Government officials and their civil agents, in the interests of the most shameless speculation. In this way certain officers and shady civilians grow richer from day to day while hundreds of thousands of 50 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL Serbian women, children and old men lack the necessities of life and are in the grip of the most appalling famine. Austrian shops, or rather food cards are therefore the only remaining resource of the population; but only too often one fails to get even the quantity one is entitled to by the card. This system, too, has become a field for specualtion. It is known for in- stance, that Austria-Hungary has never had any reason to complain of a salt shortage. Yet this has not kept the Serbian peasant from being left for months together without salt under the pretext that there was none. Although there was still plenty in the shops. And while the peasants were being refused salt, Austrian agents, soldiers and non-commissioned officers, were selling that same salt, ostensibly surreptitiously, at the rate of 8, 10 and 12 crowns per kilogramme. Any one who knows the importance of salt for agriculture and especially for stock-raising will readily understand why the peasants were ready to part with all their produce at ridiculous prices for the sake of obtaining a little salt. As for the bread ration, it is the same in Belgrade as in Austria (e. g. not equal to the bread ration in Hungary). In spite of this, for months together the population of Belgrade received under the name of "flour", merely a special mixture which could neither be made into bread nor cooked, nor eaten, and which produced much sickness among the population. As regards the interior of Serbia, there are places where the bread ration is even more miserable*. Thus, last Spring, the unfortunate peasants of Baina Bashta received only one kilogramme of maize per inhabitant during one whole month. It may be imagined from this, what ration they will receive this winter and next spring. ****** STARVATION IN BELGRADE. This food, (or rather starvation) policy, is most eloquently discernible in the faces of the inhabitants of Belgrade. In this town it is absolutely impossible to buy anything, no matter what. It is only exceptionally and at fabulous prices that one can obtain a little fat, eggs, potatoes, or beans. One can also get a little meat and that at prices which, compared to those ruling in Austria and Germany, are not even very high. But TRAGEDY OF A NATION 51 as the population almost throughout the country is absolutely deprived of the means of earning a livelihood, these prices are relatively high. In Belgrade you see hundreds of people waiting outside the shop which sells meat. But as the amount of this offal (feet, tripe, entrails, etc.) is very limited, it has become such a delicacy that people consider themselves lucky if they succeed in getting some once or twice a month. For the present population of 50,000, the municipality of Belgrade furnishes from 2,000 to 3,000 litres of milk during the summer season and only a few hundred litres in winter. Thus only persons who are seriously ill and quite young children receive a quarter of a litre of milk (half a pint) a day, and that only after many difficulties and most complicated procedure. Last spring and spring is the best season for vegetables - the weekly allowance was only 157 grammes of vegetables for every inhabitant. One really fails to see how these people manage to keep alive. Thousands of women, children and old men roam desperately day and night along the high roads and through the surrounding, sometimes very distant villages, in order to procure a little food. Meantime these expeditions are severely forbidden. You can buy nothing in the villages, neither monopolized produce, nor anything else. An order has been published in Belgrade whereby every woman caught in the act of buying food is sentenced not only to arrest but to be beaten with a stick. The food prices fixed by the authorities are such that no peasant will furnish provisions at that price. That is precisely what is wanted by the men in power. It is they who go to the villages and buy up all the provisions at the fixed prices and export them to Austria. Their policy as regards food prices, instead of helping both consumer and producer, is directed against both and pursues only the sole object of robbing and ruining the country, and that is why Belgrade, the centre of a rich agricultural country, there is greater distress and famine than in Vienna. The desperate plight of the population of Belgrade de- termined Dr. Veljkovitch, Mayor of Belgrade, Mr. Peritch, Professor at the University and several others to sumbit a memorandum to Colonel Kerschnawi, Chief of Staff of the Military Government. The requests embodied in this memo- randum were very modest. The petitioners requested in the first place, the simplification of the extremely lengthy and 52 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL complicated procedure which the inhabitants of Belgrade have to go through in order to obtain permission to travel into the interior and that this permission should not only be granted to a few privileged speculators, but to all who stood in need of procuring a few provisions. The Government was further begged to modify the policy of maximum prices. And finally, the petitioners requested that the municiplaity of Belgrade should itself be permitted to purchase the fixed quantity of cattle to be slaughtered in order to prevent the military inten- dance from speculating in this article of food. The intendants sometimes supplied the municipality with animals the entrails of which weighed 43 kg., while the whole of the meat weighed 37 kg. This memorandum, however, struck the authorities as being an exceedingly suspicious document. First, Mayor Veljkovitch was summoned to the police station where he was officially questioned as to his real intentions. Then followed, after a long interval, an interview with Colonel Kerschnawi which was extremely brief and frigid. As a matter of fact, it was only Colonel Kerschnawi who spoke. He declared that the Memorandum was not correct in its statements, that the popu- lation did not surfer from a shortage of food, that e. g., his wife bought all her provisions in Belgrade, without any difficulty and very cheaply and he wound up by saying these matters did not concern the Municipality, but the Military Government. Upon this statement the inter- view came to an end. In order duly to appreci- ate these incidents we must not forget that Mayor Veljkovitch is an ex-Minister and chief of a party which is in opposition to Mr. Pashitch (Prime Minister of Serbia) and not at all hostile to Austria-Hungary, while Mr. Pertich is a convinced Austrophil and generally known as such. In spite of this they were both of them, and especially Dr. 1. Sketch of a cartridge with explosive bullets; 2. Chamber for Powder; 3. Base of the case bearing the date 1912 and the Austrian Eagle; 4. Guide tube; 5. Striker; 6. Chamber for No. 4. By Prof. Reiss of Switzerland. TRAGEDY OF A NATION S3 Veljkovitch, so badly used that the latter found himself obliged to tender his resignation. It goes without saying that the authorities stand even less on ceremony with the Socialist rabble. One of our comrades, Town Councillor, Mika Spasso- yevitch, presumed last year in very moderate terms to criticise this policy of starvation and to demand bread for the people. Although over 70 years of age, he was at once arrested and interned in Hungary. This intolerable situation is further aggravated by the amazing callousness shown by the authorities and the Austro- Hungarian banks. As Serbia is today deprived of all economic life, everybody in the country lives wholly upon what relief reaches him from abroad. People live upon what they receive from Switzerland and France, from their relations or friends, or from charitable missions. Now in this latter respect, Serbia has been overlooked by all the world. Twice only, in 1916, did missions one American and one Swiss come to distribute food and clothing among the population of Belgrade. The money received from relations in Switzerland and France is therefore the one vital resource of the Serbian population. The sums which the fathers of families have hitherto been able to send are very insignificant in comparison to the needs of the population. Collectively, they only amounted to about twenty million (francs) in two years. Nevertheless, this sum represents a very great deal for many families, all the more as they receive no other help. In the meantime the Austro-Hungarian banks and authorities are so cruel and so devoid of all conscience that they do not hesitate to delay the payment of these sums for months together. There have been cases in which sums de- spatched from Switzerland or France in September, 1916, were not paid out in Belgrade before March or April, 1917 after six months of speculation. It is really superfluous to explain once more that the position of the population of Belgrade will be terrible this winter and next spring, if these poor people are compelled to live without money. So far, they have, at any rate, managed to exist, or rather to vegetate, painfully, with terrible suffering and a vast physio- logical deficit, the dangerous consequences of which will not make themselves felt until after the war. But for this winter and next spring, the population will be even more cruelly tried, 54 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL because the Military Government succeeded in organizing a perfect system for seizing this year's harvest (1917) to the last grain from the Serbian population. All, for positively all is at this moment exported, so that there is nothing left for the native population but to fold its hands and die of starvation. Help, as prompt and extensive as possible, is urgently needed if this people, for all that it is endowed with great vitality, is not to be doomed to die of starvation, under most terrible conditions. THE POLITICAL SITUATION. Logically enough, the economic misery of occupied Serbia is completed by political slavery. Of course any kind of public right is out of the question- No form of collective life is possible in Serbia at the moment. All organizations, including professional, co-operative and even charitable associations are prohibited. Anyone daring to try to form any kind of association would be immediately interned, and perhaps subjected to an even more terrible fate. Im- mediately upon his arrival, the first Military Governor of Serbia published an order rigorously prohibiting all politics in the country. It is not difficult to imagine what a reactionary and military government would understand under the term of "politics." There is only one printing office in Belgrade today, the one which is run by the Military Governor General and publishes the "Beogradske Novine" (Belgrade News). All private printing offices have been closed, often having been looted. Neither machinery, nor any other material is left: it is even forbidden to print menus. A printing press according to the expression of the local authorities is equal to an enemy arsenal. If a Serb citizen were to be so bold as to solicit per- mission to edit a paper, he would at once be entered in the blacklist of the Government. It is forbidden to make use of the Serbian alphabet in public traffic, including the post. Need- less to add, all political activity is prohibited, as it is even dangerous to say openly what one thinks and even to have independent thoughts. Quite harmless humdrum citizens, ignorant peasants and even gossiping women run the risk if their harmless and naive conversation is overheard and reported TRAGEDY OF A NATION 55 by spies of being sent off to internment camps, to prison, or even the gallows. TERRORISM IN SERBIA. The most elementary rights of man, are not guaranteed in Serbia. In the villages, the gendarmes wield unlimited power and lord it over everybody. Their methods of procedure are an admirable reflection of the system applied by the Austro- Hungarian administration to the subject nationalities. Espi- onage, denunciations, exactions of all kinds, theft and sometimes even murder, are typical of the behavior of the gendarmerie in the villages. In the towns these privileges are enjoyed by the army officers and non-commissioned officers. In many towns official notices are posted up directing that the whole native population; men, women, children and old men, must uncover their heads and make a low curtesy before each officer. Sometimes you see officers using their horse whips upon rebels who fail to comply at once with these orders. Indeed cudgellings have become a means of education in which the Austro-Hungarian civilizators take a special delight. This penalty is applied on every occasion and under the most absurd pretexts. Two Belgrade college students who had been com- pelled by want to become tram conductors, were each sentenced to receive 57 blows with a stick for having failed to salute a subaltern. The poor lads fainted three times and each time the beating was recommended. After they had been subjected to this shameful punishment they were kept in prison for a month and then interned in Hungary. In the prefecture of Police in Belgrade, a certain Lieutenant Wiedmann enjoys unlimited power over the lives and liberties of all the inhabitants. It depends only upon his tyranny whether any given inhabitant of Belgrade is arrested, cuffed, beaten with a stick, and above all, interned, which, as we shall presently show, is indirectly sentence of death. All Belgrade has and that often, in the literal sense of the word passed through the hands of this gendarme, from ex-Ministers' to the humblest day-laborer. There is scarcely a person in Belgrade who has not had cause to complain of having been maltreated, insulted and outraged in his most sacred feelings by this Austrian Gessler who behaves 56 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL thus without any plausible pretext and without any offence on the part of those whom he persecutes. Serbia knows no per- sonage more hateful than this tyrant which circumstances has not prevented him from retaining his post ever since the beginning of the occupation. It is, therefore, not a case of an exception or an accidental mistake, but on the con- trary, this horrible individual personifies an entire system. This fashion of maltreation, the Serbian citizens, of reducing them to the level of mere cattle, to enslave them as completely as possible and to" let them constantly feel their degradation, constitutes the very essence of the Austro-Hungari- BULGARS PLUNDERING SERBIA Plows collected by the Bulgarian authorities in the occupied territory of Serbia, to removed to Bulgaria and distributed among the Bulgarian agricultural population. This photograph was brought from Serbia by Mr. Edward Stuart, Head of the American Red Cross Relief Mission to Serbia, in 1916. an occupation in Serbia. The name of Lieutenant Wiedmann will dwell in the memories of future generations as the symbol incarnate of Austro-Hungarian ''Kulturtraegerei" in Serbia. The courts exist not to prevent all this robbing and tyranny, but to increase them. Not one Austro-Hungarian officer accused of theft, exaction, outrage or murder, has ever been TRAGEDY OF A NATION 57 convicted, although these crimes are of daily occurrence. It is even dangerous to lodge a complaint against an officer or an official. Anyone endeavoring to defend his property, his honour, or his life, even in the most harmless way, is at once arrested, beaten, interned. It would be easy to quote countless instances of such ex- cesses. The arrests of perfectly innocent citizens and their being sentenced to incarceration and even death is one of the most ordinary occurrences. The most important auxiliaries of the courts, and indeed of the whole administration in general, are secret agents, detectives and spies, recruited from the least commendable and most depraved of the Austro-Hungarian and Serbian populations. It is upon their depositions and reports that the property, liberty, honour and life of every Serbian citizen are wholly dependent. The courts only exist in order to lend a pseudo-legal sanction to the decisions of these creatures, AN OFFICIAL PICTURE OF THE HANGING OF PEACEFUL SERBIAN FARMERS "They Crucified Them!" "They Crucified Them!" They nailed them to the tree, but like Heroes they died "For you and I". So is it not then our duty to help those that are left. "Will you be one?" who form a privileged class in Austria-Hungary and enjoy great social consideration. The most trivial denunciation can cast a man into prison, and death sentences are pronounced by the court with truly criminal unconcern. Thus 35 peasants, besides the schoolmasters, Glishitch, were shot or hanged and 250 men and women were sentenced to incarceration this year, in the village of Ramatya (in the district of Gruzha), merely because some old and disused arms and old fowling 58 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL pieces had been found in the village. As for individual death sentences pronounced by the courts or even by the gendarmes and carried out on the spot, they are quite ordinary occurrences, Many absolutely guiltless hostages have been done to death in this way. One is even tempted to think that these gentlemen take a special pleasure in the carrying out of these death penal- ties. In many towns the men are hanged and on one occasion this was even done with a pregnant woman with much ceremony in the market place, where the bodies are sometimes left hanging for several days. And this they call educating a savage people! When the Serbian people will have risen to the enviable ethic and aesthetic heights of the Austro-Hungarian officers and begin to take pleasure in these exhibitions and patronize them, the former will presumably have become capable of understanding the lofty culture of the latter. INTERNMENT CAMPS. The greatest crime committed by the Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian Governments of occupation is the internment of perfectly inoffensive and peaceful citizens and their wholesale internment. All we have so far drawn attention to, was only massacre in detail. As regards the internments, they are nothing but wholesale massacre. Merely from the region occupied by Austria-Hungary, more than 150,000 Serbian subjects have been interned, including several thousands of old men of over 60 years of age, several thousand women and even children from 8 to 15 years! In giving this truly appalling figure, we are not taking into consideration the 1 50,000 Serbian soldiers, prisoners of war, who share the fate of their interned brothers in Austria and Hungary. We should require a whole book with appalling illustrations if we wanted to depict the position and existence of these martyrs. We must abstain from doing so for the moment. We will confine ourselves to the following statement. The fate of being interned in Austria-Hungary or in Bulgaria really amounts to being indirectly sentenced to death. About thirty per cent of these poor wretches have died up to the present. The rest are dragging out a miserable existence amid infinite hardships and unspeakable suffering while waiting for inevitable death. In many concentration camps containing on TRAGEDY OF A NATION 59 an average several thousand interned persons, ten, twenty, and thirty deaths a day are the rule. But in some cases, especially in Hungary, there have been as many as 200 or 300 deaths a day. There are concentration camps where one-half of the inmates have already died. This is not ownig to some epidemic which claims innumerable victims. They die of hunger and cold. There you may observe in truly typical and only too frequent cases, how a perfectly sound organism is gradually reduced to die by hunger. During the first state the organism, although having daily to submit to a huge deficit in nutrition, still lives upon its former reserves. Then comes the second stage, that of a sensation of atrocious animal irresistible hunger. The wretched sufferers devour the grass they find along the hedges, although this kind of food is strictly forbidden. They spend whole days in turning over refuse heaps and eat everything more or less resembling food. Their guards are powerless to restrain them, even with the bayonet. This state is followed by the third and last, the period of exhaustion and apathy. The sufferer becomes completely indifferent. The best food no longer tempts him in this state of prostration and he no longer cares for life. Fully conscious, calm and impassible, he waits for the approach of his last hour. When he feels it coming he lies down, covers himself up and dies without uttering a word. Those around him watch him with equal indifference, well knowing that their own fate will be the same as that of their comrade, and that it will overtake them ere long. In countless cases the autopsy has revealed the fact that the organism was in ideal health, but that there was not one grain of fat in the whole body. Even those who still survive must be looked upon as half- dead already. These poor wretches are doomed to die within a year or two after the war. Only a very small number en- dowed with exceptionally vigorous constitutions will be able to go on living and working after the war. The horrible fate of those interned is well known to everybody in Serbia, even to the very children. And so every man sentenced to internment upon the denunciation of some spy, is followed by his distracted family, weeping and wailing as one does in following the dead. It is, therefore, not in the least surprising or incomprehensible that people are terrified at the prospect of being interned. But, 60 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL when, last year, a certain number of peasants from the district of Gruzha, who were sentenced to internment by the military authorities, presumed to hide and failed to respond to the first summons of the authorities, all these poor people, about forty in number, were summarily shot without further formality. Their houses were burnt down, all their property destroyed and their families were interned. We know very well that the civil population of Austria as well as her army, suffers likewise from lack of food and that it is not possible to give to the interned Serbs what others have to go short of. But this does not explain gratuitous cruelty. Thus, e. g. the money which the interned Serbs receive from their relations, either from home, or from France or Switzerland, is specualted upon in a truly criminal fashion in the concentration camps. There is a rule, in accordance with which, regardless of the amount of the sum sent, only a very small proportion of it, from 20 to 50 crowns a month, is paid over to the interned recipient. The rest of the money is left at the disposal of the officers and officials to employ in all manner of speculations. Now the inmate of an internment camp requires at least a few hundred crowns a month in order to supplement the wretched food he receives in the camp with such food as he can obtain at exhorbitant prices through intermediary agents from the neighboring villages. For these interned people, money means neither more now nor less than life. And so, by depriving these people of the money due to them, the concentration camp authorities deprive them in fact of their lives. This criminal playing with human life constitutes an essential part of the policy of every conqueror. Thus several Austro-Hungari- an doctors attached to these camps declined to see more than ten patients a day at a time when the death rate in the camps was from 20 to 30 a day. But the most important point of all is that these poor people ought not to be interned at all. There is no kind of military necessity for it. During the occupation by the enemy armies, for a whole year and a half there was not a shadow of trouble, not an attempt at revolt in the whole country. This fact need not be construed as a compliment to the Government of oc- cupation or as a proof of the existence of enviable conditions in Serbia. It simply proves that the Serbian people is so exhausted TRAGEDY OF A NATION 61 with suffering that it can only think of rest. In spite of this the Austrian Military Government has without any plausible reason interned more than 1 50,000 inoffensive Serbs including thousands of children, women and old men over sixty years of age. By these internments, the families of the poor wretches and likewise the whole of the country which was thereby de- prived of its last reserves of labour, were doomed to starve. And it was only after all these internments and other cruel provocations, as the consequence of ill-treatment and not as a preliminary act which might have justified it, that the revolt in Southern Serbia ensued in March, 1917. What is the true reason for these internments without number. They are partly explained by the stupidity of the Austro-Hungarian administration which sees in every Serbian child a person guilty of high treason and a bomb- thrower. On the other hand it is an outcome of that criminal disregard of human life which is peculiar to soldiers, and es- pecially to conquerors. Merely Lieutenant Wiedmann, whose name has been mentioned before, has the loss of several thousand human lives, at least, on his conscience. This official will cause a Serb to be interned simply because the latter has failed to reply immediately to his question or because he has presumed to exhibit fear during his cross examination. This is sufficient for him to do a man to death with all his family. In short, the whole method of the Austrian Administration is directed by the inexorable purpose of exterminating the last remnants of the Serbian population. We protest emphatically against this criminal policy of Austria-Hungary. We demand that an end be put to these massacres of thousands of guiltless Serbian citizens! We appeal to the entire civilized world, to raise its voice against these unheard-of crimes and to demand of the Austro-Hungarian Government that our countrymen be set at liberty and sent back to their homes. If this liberation is not brought about very speedily indeed, before the winter sets in with its rigours, all these people are doomed to die within the next few months. THE REGION OCCUPIED BY BULGARIA. Before the beginning to depict the situation in the Bulgarian 62 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL part of Serbia, we feel bound to draw attention to one very important fact which ought to gratify all Socialists in general and Balkan Socialists in particular, namely, that one ought to draw a sharp distinction between the ruling classes of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian people. One of the Signatories of this Memorandum has had the opportunity during the earlier months of the occupation of acquiring personal knowledge of both administrations, the Bulgarian, and the Austro-Hun- garian. The Bulgarian common soldier, i. e. the Bulgarian people under arms has everywhere, wherever he has come in contact with it, produced a good impression upon all the Serbian population. During the early days of the invasion, when every soldier possessed, so to say, power of life and death over the vanquished population, when his discretionary powers were unlimited and his responsibility almost nil, while there was as yet no judicial order in those regions, conditions were far better in the territory occupied by the Bulgarian army. There was far more liberty and order than later on when the Government of occupation had established itself there and "official" order was introduced by the ruling classes. During this first period cases of murder, outrage and looting were unknown, and none made a pastime of ill-using the population. The situation in the eastern part of Serbia (which was occupied by the Bulgars), was at that time better and less intolerable than that in the West, which was occupied by the Germans and Austrians. The Bulgarian common soldier felt sympathetic towards the Serbs to whom he was attracted by the kinship of race which unites them, and he fully appreciated the horrible tragedy of our position. It often happened that these sons of the Bulgarian people wept in our presence over the ruin of Serbia and were profoundly unhappy to see Bulgaria and Serbia dragged once more for the third time, into a fratricidal war. Some of them even prophesied a dark and disastrous future for Bulgaria for having consented to foment discord between the Balkan peoples. It would be false to pretend that none but Socialists spoke in this way, because among the Bulgarian soldiers who expressed such opinions, there were both ignorant peasants and humble townspeople devoid of all political education. It is only natural, moreover, that this altogether instinctive sentiment of solidarity should be so highly developed among the Balkan peoples, since TRAGEDY OF A NATION 63 they were all equally under the Turkish yoke, the slavery of which they endured for centuries. More especially this senti- ment is bound to persist between the Serbs and the Bulgars, who are really only one people, speaking different dialects of one and the same language. But a change came over the situation with the arrival of the masters of Sofia and the official policy dictated by the reactionary gang of brigands commanded by Radoslavoff. These people who have terrorized their own countrymen for decades, were little inclined to show consideration to the com- pletely vanquished population of an occupied region. By an incredible system of outrage and a policy of methodical ex- termination of the Serbs these criminals seek to prepare the ground for a Bulgarian hegemony in the Balkans and the establishment of a Bulgarian Empire under the scepter of the Coburgs. The crimes committed against the Serbian people by these individuals are without number and our report would grow far too long, were we to describe in detail the situation in the Serbian territory occupied by Bulgaria, as we have done with regard to the territory governed by Austria-Hungary. All that has been said already about the Austro-Hungarian administration is equally true of the Bulgarian with this difference, that what has been said about Austria- Hungary must be multiplied by itself, as it were, in order to be applicable to the Bulgarian administration. Bad as they are, courts at least exist in the Austro-Hungarian part. There is at least some attempt, from time to time, to clothe the despotism of the authorities in some sort of legal form. Sometimes, and were it only in appearance, public opinion is considered. One feels, and were it ever so slightly, restrained by vague forms of international law and morality. All this ceases completely as soon as you enter the domain of the Bulgarian administration. Cross the Morava River and you find yourself in Asia. The ruling classes of Bulgaria have proved that if they are not very good allies of the Turks, they are at least their very apt pupils. The Bulgarian part of Serbia knows nothing of courts. Only quite recently has a court been established in Nish, which has to do duty for the whole of the occupied territory of Serbia. It is the police, recruited from the very dregs of the populace, which is invested 64 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL with unlimited powers. The personal liberty of every Serb citizen, no less than his life, depends wholly and solely upon the arbitrary pleasure of every Bulgarian police agent or gen- darme. Beatings inflicted upon men, women, children and old men are even more common than within Austro-Hungarian territory. Old men of over 60 years of age and that not only in the country but also in the towns receive seventy- five blows with a stick for failing to salute a gendarme. A woman, who has a Bulgarian officer living in her house, and it goes without saying that he does not pay his landlady anything is sentenced to twenty- five blows with a stick if the officer fancies that the tablecloth which is laid in his room is less fine than RESULT OF A DUM-DUM BULLET. "Will you be one to help our Serbian ally. that of the mistress of the house. A Serbian judge living in Chupria, a man of superior education, is compelled every day to saw wood for the schoolmistresses who lodge gratis in his house in order to avoid being beaten. In these regions the Serbs are reduced to a veritable state of slavery such as that of which they were subjected two centuries ago under the Turks. In the Austro-Hungarian region there is at least a semblance of public order. As for the region occupied by the Bulgars, the most elementary guarantee for public safety is conspicuous by TRAGEDY OF A NATION 65 its absence. Always under threat of the penalty of death, the Bulgarian authorities resort to exactions and contributions to such an extent that many Serbs have been obliged to fly to the other side of the Morava into the Austrian domain. Numerous bands of brigands, tolerated by the authorities, roam about the country plundering and murdering as they go. Not infrequently these bandits are even secretly in league with the Bulgarian Officers, police agents and gendarmes. Such are the authorities which rule today in occupied Serbia. This is how they promote the happiness of Macedonia and "liberated Eastern Serbia." The limits of our report do not permit us to depict all these abuses in detail. For this reason we will confine ourselves to drawing attention to several special features of the Bulgarian Government of Occupation which are so unique in character that they are without parallel even in the Austro- Hungarian domain. POLICY OF DENATIONALIZATION. The Austro-Hungarian Administration was by no means innocent of a certain tendency to modify the national culture of the Serbs, and of aspiring to "Croaticize" and "Magyarize" the school youth. It also attempted a clerical propaganda among the population, which it desired to see imbued with this spirit. But it achieved very poor results in this direction. The attempt to make the Serbian population into a priest- ridden community was foredoomed to failure from the outset, because from a religious point of view, the Serbs are decidedly emancipated. The Church, as a political and social institution possesses no importance and no power with us. The clergy only exercise a very slight influence in politics. With us it is not the priests who draw the populace after them. On the contrary, it is the masses who exert their influence upon the clergy. Only such priests as have devoted themselves energet- ically to the cause of democracy, have succeeded in playing a leading part in our country. But all that has been done in this respect in the Austro- Hungarian domain, cannot be compared with the policy of denationalization as pursued by the Bulgars. The Bulgarian ruling classes deny on principle, the existence of the Serbian 66 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL race throughout the whole of the territory they have conquered, although it is precisely this region which furnished our land with its greatest national heroes who fought one hundred years ago in the Serbian Insurrection against the Turks, for Serbia's liberty and independence, and died for it (Stevan Sindjelitch, from Nish District, and Hajduk Veljko, from Negotin, etc.) But whoever would today in this occupied region declare him- self a member of the Serb nation and insist upon this description, would immediately be arraigned for high treason and would have signed his own death-warrant. All Serbian writings, not only the books in the public libraries, but even those found in private dwellings, are being requisitioned and burnt. It is expressly forbidden, even in private intercourse, to write Serbian. Even the official paper of the allied domain, the organ of the Austro-Hungarian Military Government, is severely pro- hibited throughout the territory occupied by the Bulgars, solely because it is published in Croatian, i. e. in Serbian, since "Croat" and "Serb" are only two different designations for the same language and the same people. It is likewise forbidden to bear Serbian names. One of the signatories of this memo- randum, Popovitch, could only obtain a passport in Chupria (a town situated in the region occupied by the Bulgars) under the name of "Popoff", i. e. as a Bulgar. Newborn infants are only given Bulgar baptismal names by the Bulgarian priests, so that the faithful will have to have them re-named after the war. Only Bulgarian is taught in the primary schools and instruction is given solely by Bulgarian schoolmasters and mistresses. It is the same in ecclesiastical matters. All scholastic and ecclesiastical appointments and all offices in municipal administration are filled by Bulgars. Throughout the entire territory occupied by the Bulgars you will not find even one Serbian teacher or priest. All have been interned or even murdered except those who were compelled under the threat of death to sign statements declaring that they are Bulgars and that the districts occupied by the Bulgars are all Bulgarian lands. The other Serbian officials have been similarly dealt with, excepting only a few. In proof of this, we can only quote a few cases which impressed themselves particularly upon our memories. For readily TRAGEDY OF A NATION 67 comprehensible reasons we were unable to carry away sys- tematically compiled material and written evidence from our country. Here are the* cases in question: (1) In the town of Vranja there were killed, Aksentie Mishitch, priest and George Antitch, a former member of the Serbian Parliament for that town. (2) One night, in November, 1915, the Arch-priest Stevan Komnenovitch, the priests Michailo Igniatovitch, Yosif Pop- ovitch, Trandafil Kotsitch, Svetolik Antonievitch and the schoolmaster Marko Yokovitch were led away from the town of Leskovazt, with their hands pinioned. Two years passed without any of these men having given a sign of life to his family as is usually done by interned persons. But eventually the peasants discovered, not far from the mouth of the Morava, several corpses, long-haired and with long beards, and showing signs of a violent death. (The orthodox priests of the East wear their hair and beards long in conformity with their order). There can be no doubt but that these were the bodies of these unfortunate men, who had been foully done to death. (3) One night the Bulgarian authorities carried away the priest Onufrie Popovitch from Vlasotintsi. Some time afterwards the priest's head, hidden under a heap of stones, was discovered by his family. (4) In the village of Prekoptchelitza, the Bulgarian authorities began by looting the house of a priest, Petar Tsvetkovitch, in order to rob him of 5,000 dinars in gold, and in the end they murdered him. (5) On November 9th, 1915, the Bulgarian authorities carried away 24 Serbian priests from the town of Nish, in- cluding Luka Marianovitch, Yovan K. Popovitch, Yanko Yankovitch, Dobrosav Markovitch and Koyitch. Not a sign of life from these men has ever reached their families. (6) On November 19th, 1915, a second batch of priests was carried away from Nish, including Tsvetko Bogdanovitch, George Yankovitch and Milan Tsvetkovitch. It is not known to this day what has become of them, or rather, one knows it only too well. (7) On November 14th, 1915, the Bulgars deported from Nish a retired official, Vessa Milovanovitch, brother of the late Minister for Foreign Affairs and Serbian Prime Misinter Dr. 68 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL Milovan Milovanovitch. His wife in despair finally approached the Bulgarian general Ratcho Petroff, a former personal friend of Dr. Milovanovitch. General Petroff replied by sending her the following official report: "The name of Vessa Milovanovitch is not on the list of interned persons." (8) Three priests, George Petrovitch, Sima Yovanovitch and Vladimir Rashitch were taken away from the town of Zayetchar. They were all three murdered on the road to Vidin, and their bodies thrown into a ditch, where they were devoured by the village dogs. The peasants found nothing left of the bodies, to burry them, but the bones. (9) The priest Pavle Yovanovitch, of the village of Veliko Yasikovo, was killed in the same manner. His wife subse- quently found the body and had it buried. (10) In March, 1917, four citizens of the town of Prokuplie and a priest Radivoye Vuchinitch, were killed in the open street by the Bulgars. (11) The priest Trayko, of the village of Turekovatz, was taken away and nothing has been heard of him since. His daughter who was accused of being secretly in league with the Serbian comitadjis, was hanged. But before being hanged, she was subjected to atrocious tortures by being flogged with a strand of barbed wire. The young girl's sister, wife of the book- seller I. Obrenovitch of Leskovatz, was so cruelly beaten, that not only were all her teeth knocked out, but she went mad within two days of the execution. She died shortly afterwards. Their brother Vassa, a priest, was likewise taken away and murdered together with his son, a lad of 16. And all these victims were made in one family alone! DEPORTATION AND EXTERMINATION OF THE SERBIAN POPULATION. A very large number of Serbs whom it was not possible to kill in Serbia have been deported to Asia Minor. Whole families from Eastern Serbia, women, children and old men were dragged by force from their homes and carried off to Asia Minor. And this is not intended for personal and individual punishment. It is a system, corresponding to a definite policy. All elements capable of offering any effective national resistance are first to TRAGEDY OF A NATION 69 be eliminated from that part of Serbia, and then the rest of the population is to be Bulgarized. It goes without saying that the Bulgars have here set themselves an unrealizable aim, as from this point of view Eastern Serbia does not in the least resemble Macedonia. The Slav population of Macedonia easily becomes either Serbian or Bulgarian. But as for Eastern Serbia, its national and ethical physiognomy is far too pro- nounced to permit of the country becoming denationalized. To try to Bulgarize that part of Serbia is as stupid as would be an attempt on the part of our Government to Serbicize the town of Sofia and the neighboring country bordering on Serbia. These methods of denationalization, which the Bulgars have copied from the Turks, can only result in the barbarous ex- termination of the harmless and unprotected Serbian population. Those countless Serbian families which have been deported to Asia Minor, are all doomed to perish. These deportations are in fact nothing but wholesale executions of Serbs, similar to the massacres of the Armenians organized by Sultan Abdul Hamid and the Young Turks. The revolt which broke out in March, 1917, in Southern Serbia, more especially in Bulgarian territory, furnished the Bulgarian authorities with a splendid opportunity of displaying all the bestial cruelty by which they are inspired. It is difficult to say with certainty how it was possible for this revolt to take place. But what is beyond all doubt is that the Serbian civil population had practically no hand in it. The whole insur- rection was planned and carried out by Serbian soldiers and comitadjis who had succeeded in invading the authorities. These conspirators were very probably supported by Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian deserters discontented with their fate. Nevertheless it was the innocent population which was made to answer for the whole business. As the Serbian population had been disarmed by the authorities since the very beginning of the occupation, it was not in a condition to oppose the in- surgents or to resist them. It was willy-nilly compelled to provide them with food and lodging and to assist them in other ways. It goes without saying that these acts were interpreted by the Bulgarian and the Austro-Hungarian authorities as a direct participation in the revolt and that these unfortunate people were put to death for them. And when they sought to 70 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL defend themselves before the Authorities, pleading that it had been physically impossible for them to resist the insurgents, they almost invariably received this incredibly cynical reply: "It was your duty to resist all demands on the part of these men and to let yourselves be killed, if need be. But since you would not be killed by them, we are going to do it instead." About 20,000 Serbs were killed under this pretext, of whom 3,000 at the outside had taken part in the rebellion. All the rest belonged to the innocent civil population. Neither women nor children were spared. The wife of Gaya Nikolitch, a former member of Parliament, was shot after having been kept under arrest for a week without food or water, for having started a hospital in Lebane during the revolt for the purpose of tending the victims of the insurrection. Thousands of women and children were interned and others thrown into prison. Thirty- six villages near Leskovatz were completely depopulated. Families without number were left without house or home. Almost the entire male population of Nish, some 4,000 men, was deported. One batch was sent by train to Pirot. The rest had to go on foot and have never come back. . . One police official in the neighborhood of Nish boasted in company of having with his own hands alone killed about 300 Serbs. "It was rather awkward at first", explained this meritorious individual, "it always took several slashes with the knife; but when I got into the way of it a bit, the job was quite easy. One thrust, and the man was dead." It is very likely that in his zeal this Bulgar should have somewhat exaggerated the facts. It is, however, none the less true that this incident is extremely characteristic of the mentality of the Bulgars in occupation. The cruelty of the Bulgarian authorities is so great and so revolting that it sometimes ends by rousing the indignation of the German soldiers garrisoned there, and the latter even try to protect the Serbian civilians who are being maltreated by their allies. In mixed garrisons, relations are very strained between Germans and Bulgars. Thus, e. g. the Town of Nish is divided by the main street into two sharply distinct zones. A German soldier cannot enter the Bulgarian zone except by special permission and only strictly on business. The same applies to the Bulgarian soldiers with regard to the German zone. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 71 Truly the barbarity of the Bulgarian ruling powers exceeds all limits. CONCLUSION. Our object in drawing up this memorandum was to reveal to the whole world what crimes are being committed by the Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian ruling powers against the Serbs, and to brand them as they deserve. But we do not think for one moment of confounding the people with their rulers. We do not in the least want to preach vengeance against the people of Bulgaria or against the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The common soldiers, whether Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian or German, have almost shown sympathy and pity for the Serbian people in the horrible crisis it is undergoing at present. Peoples can never go on hating each other very deeply for any length of time. At the worst, they can only be misled and blinded for a moment by chauvinists and the men in power. During the earlier months of the occupation the German soldiers often shared their food with the Serbian women and children, even as we saw Serbian women sharing their poor bread ration with the famished Austro-Hungarian soldiers who go from house to house begging for the food. This is the most touching display of the spontaneous solidarity of the great international class of those who are oppressed and exploited, and deprived of their , rights. Those who are not divided into invaded and invaders and whose misery is equally great in both camps. OUR MEMORANDUM PURSUES THE FOLLOWING AIMS: (1) We want to urge the Russo-Hollando-Scandinavian Committee to develop an energetic activity in favor of protecting the Serbian population which has hitherto been protected by nobody and forgotten by all the world. In the first place we would call upon it to work upon the Socialists of the Central Empires so that they may fight the policy of their Governments in occupied Serbia. (2) We want especially to urge the Social Democrats of Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria to develop a more energetic activity both in and out of Parliament in order to help to save 72 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL the last remnants of the Serbian population in the occupied regions. Their first duty should be to demand immediately from their Governments that all interned Serbs be sent back to their homes. They must demand this release not only for the interned civilians but also for the prisoners of war who have on the whole, with very few exceptions been separated from their families ever since the first Balkan War, for five years, in fact. There is really no military necessity for keeping these poor people in camps. They have all been disarmed and even on their return to Serbia they would still find themselves in territory occupied by Austro-Hungarians and Bulgars, and under the unlimited power of those in occupation. (3) We want to draw the attention of the civilized world to the terrible distress which prevails at this moment in Serbia, so that speedy assistance both in money and in food, may be forthcoming for this people that has been left so far to its fate. Except for the two visits referred to, one from the American Mission and one from the Swiss, who came last year to distribute a little food and clothing among the population of Belgrade, Serbia has so far received nothing from Europe, and especially from our Allies, except verbal encouragement. (4) We want the Serbian Government, as well as the other Entente Governments to display greater interest in the Serbian population which is really not in a state, under present conditions, to endure, unaided, the last phase of the war. (5) And we desire to show by this Memorandum that the vital need of the Serbian people is not a prolongation of the war, but the speedy conclusion of peace. This is the only condition under which the final ruin of the Serbian people can be prevented, and the proletariats of the whole world succeed in placing their respective Governments in the dock for the crimes which, as the last Congress of the Social Democrat Party in Vienna so truly expressed it, are not only acts of tyranny against the conquered peoples but also an offense against the peoples in the names of whom they have been committed. Stockholm, November, 1917. For The Serbian Social Democracy, DUSHAN POPOVITCH, T. KATZLEROVITCH, Secretary of the Party. Member of the Serbian Parliament TRAGEDY OF A NATION 73 German Atrocities in Serbia A Cynical Aoowal by a German Writer. (Translated from "Die Schaubuehne" January 4, 1917.) "Die Schaubuehne" a monthly political, artistic and economic review, published in Germany, printed in its number of January 4, 1917, above the signature of Oskar Maurus Fontana, a German writer and a reserve officer in the German Army, who accompanied the German troops to Serbia, the following account of that military expedition. It requires no comment "On the field of battle, military condemnations are pro- nounced in very summary fashion. There is almost no prelim- inary investigation, neither prosecutor nor defender are present. The prisoners face their judges alone and await the verdict, which can only be liberty or death. There is no penal servitude, no confinement in chains, the sentence is pronounced in the open air and by a judge who usually commands a regiment. A shell may, in an hour's time, transform him into a mass of crushed flesh and bones, so the fate of the accused man is of no importance whatever in this lost corner of territory, where the houses seem to sleep, surrounded by haystacks, which look as if they had existed for centuries. No one utters a word for or against him. In two minutes the accused is forgotten, be he still in life and smiling, or lying stretched on the ground, his limbs stiff in death. He is trampled upon and crushed like some troublesome insect. It does not last long, his fate interests no one. His mother, his children, his father, his brothers, his peasant-farm, all that is gone, before one has time to think of it, even before the condemned man realizes it himself. "One morning, I saw a young peasant; a captain was pushing him gently before him as if he were merely going with him to requisition a haystack. In this scene there was, however, 74 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL something which gripped one. There was a look in this young man's eyes, such as I have never seen and such as made me ask 'What is it all about?' The captain and the young peasant disappeared. A few seconds later I heard rifle fire. I made inquiries and was told 'a young comitadjis, who was captured here during a surprise attack, has just been shot'. It was the young man I had just seen and then I understood what the indescribable look in his eyes was; it was death I had read there. "Some days later, during a march, we came to a house which was on fire. It was a signal. Shrapnel rained on us. The soldiers put out the fire, and brought along three women and an old man, whom they had found near the fire. They are accused of having set the house on fire. They reply 'No! They are ordered to confess. They reply: 'We did nothing. It is our house which is burning; the others set it on fire.' They are then asked: 'How many Serbian troops passed here?' They reply: 'We do not know': The major says 'Shoot them.' "The troops halt. We look on, breathless, at the drama; We are so young to make war. No one tells these women in their own native tongue what is going to be done to them. But they have understood, they lower their eyes like an animal that awaits the fatal stroke. They do not protest. A mo- mentary shudder passes over their bodies. They can not believe it, they do not understand, their glances right and left seek salvation, some miracle. They march slowly with dragging feet. Before their condemnation they had looked fixedly at some of us, a mute regard without tears, so piercing, that we are forced to lower our eyes. Then we hear the crackling of the rifles. "Half an hour later soldiers returning from a reconnaissance brought in an old peasant and his son, a youth of seventeen. They had fired once, somewhere, on the Austrians, at least they are accused of having done so. They reply with a haughty air; 'No.' And they persist in their denial. They are asked: 'What do you know of the Serbs? How many have passed this way?' They reply: 'We know nothing, we have seen no one'. The major orders: 'Shoot them!'. "The father, who had been standing with lowered head, on hearing the order, turns his eyes toward his son, who is on the left. The son makes the same movement towards the father. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 75 Their eyes meet and they take farewell of one another; a tear for a moment glistens on the pupils which are dilated till they seem to fill their whole eyes. The look of the son becomes more energetic: 'I can not die', he cries, 'I am only seventeen years old. I have fifty years to live, I will flee, I will flee'. The father prays, begs and implores and again regards his son. 'Let them be shot'. "Who will command the firing party? Who will do the shooting? There's a long silence. Then some one remembers a volunteer who had declared he would like to kill traitors with his own hands. I know him very well. He has his pockets full of love letters which he reads to his com- rades, and another packet of them in his knapsack. He goes off with two sol- diers to carry out his mis- sion. The son walks with a swinging step but the old father drags his feet. They descend a slope and enter a cornfield. They await firing party. Heavens, the how long the time seems! A soft-hearted lieutenant who is in mourning for his mother, twists his hands nervously, taps the trunk of a tree and picks up mechanically the dried leaves lying on the ground. A volley, then a second. I still seem to see the wandering glance of the old father. Later I learned that the young man had tried to flee. The escort caught up with him however, and he again surrendered. The old man could not stand on his feet. They were forced to shoot him lying down. "Some months later, two prisoners were brought in suspected of being 'comitadjis'. Both are old men. One is a reserve soldier. He wears, it is true, the costume of a peasant, but his military cap, of curious shape, of violent color, shows he is a RESULT OF A DUM-DUM BULLET. Showing how the wounded men of Serbia need immediate medical help. 76 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL soldier. It may have been that he too, an hour ago fixed on us. But he is a soldier, a prisoner of war. His expressionless eyes glance from one person to another, happy and confident. He is saved. But the second is probably a brigand. He implores, he takes oath volubly but he has a look of cunning and just as if it were not his head that is at stake he bargains for it as if it were something he has to sell. "I would like to have called out to him, 'y ur head is at stake'. He became confused in his statements, more and more obstinate, he irritates everybody and in the end he is sentenced to be hanged. He remains before us in his rage, without a coat, clutching his blanket, the symbol of life in these countries, for in his mountains one may freeze to death in the night without it. He remains with his sly peasant's face, an old visage which resembles a bird's beak, he listens to the sound of words he does not understand, reading their meaning on the lips, in the eyes and on the hands of those addressing him. A shudder passes over his body, and with a gesture that reveals everything he throws, no, he drops, his blanket, his sole fortune, become suddenly a useless incumbrance. It is touching to see this single movement of a life accepting death. It is his death agony, the blanket lying on the rocks at his feet will never cover him again. "Where is the sergeant? Here he conies! The sergeant is a Vinnese, a ladies' hairdresser. He has already tried his hand at hanging people. He will be charged with this execution. The Serb has turned his back to us. He goes off with the man who will end his life; he marches bent but with a resolute step, singing a long and melancholy Slav melody. He sings his own death song. He marches more and more proudly, drawing himself more and more erect at every step. "He is two hundred yards from us, near a tree, but he still continues to sing. Everyone looks at him through their field glasses. As for me, I turn my head away. I think, oh man oh, man! I recall how the sergeant has often spoken to us at table of the women whose hair he had dressed, their negliges, blond hair, black hair, auburn curls I see his hands in their soft, silken tresses, and the same hands putting a rope round a man's neck. It is finished. The field glasses drop. The column at once resumes its march. I throw a glance at the TRAGEDY OF A NATION 77 tree. The Serb, as if he were leaning against it, is upright, stiff; his feet touch his blanket, lying in the stones still warm, but lost, purposeless, useless." When we arrived at Kraljevo we stopped at the dressing station. In three days 6,000 men passed through the place. At Pritzen we met Sir Ralph Paget. He told us that the Bulgarians had cut all the lines at Monastir and that we would have to walk back again to Prishtina. At a place called Plavitzna we were unable to find accommodations and had to sleep outside on the hard stones. One severe experience was walking over the mountain of Chakor, 7,500 feet high. The following day the Montenegrans sent a ship to Plavitzna to carry us across into Sctari. We passed through a place called Leash. There we witnessed a horrible sight. Wounded men by the hundreds lay dead in the streets, many frozen to death. Our flight took us through the wild Albanian country, dangerous to travelers because of the fierce nature of the inhabitants. At Durazzo the Italians sent over a fishing boat to convey us across into Italy. We were stranded for three days and three nights on the boat because of the danger from Austrian sub- marines. The second day out we were in great peril. An enemy submarine located the boat and commenced firing on it. Happily no shots landed. But preparation was made in case it was necessary to leave the boat. We had orders to take off our shoes and put on life belts, ready to jump overboard and fight for our lives. The third day we were escorted by eight torpedo boats to the Italian shore. We arrived in Rome Christmas morning thankful that we had been spared from death. The flight occupied seventy-seven days. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 79 THE LORD'S PRAYER A DEVOUT INTERPRETATION FATHER NICHOLAI VELIMIROVIC 80 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL FOREWORD by the Archbishop of York. THIS prose-poem of meditation on the Lord's Prayer was contributed to the "Men's Magazine" published by the Church of England Men's Society. It deserves to reach a wider circle of readers. It has an originality of spirit, method and language which distinguishes it from any other interpretation of the Lord's Prayer which I have read. It could not have been written by an Englishman. Its atmosphere is one in which our English temperament does not naturally live. But this is just its special interest. It reveals the inmost soul of the Serbian religion, nurtured by Nature, by suffering and by invincible hope. Serbia has moved all hearts by her bravery, her patience, and her sorrows. Here is this meditation of her priest-patriot she must surely move and uplift our hearts by the mystic fervour of her faith. All Saints' Day 1916 TRAGEDY OF A NATION 81 THE LORD'S PRAYER A DEVOUT INTERPRETATION OUR FATHER WHEN the clouds are thundering and the oceans roaring, they call to Thee: "Our Lord!" When the meteors fall, and fire springs up from the earth, they speak to Thee: "Our Creator!" When the flowers are opening their buds in the spring and the swallows are picking up pieces of dry hay with which to make their nests for their young, they sing to thee: "Our Master!" And when I lift my eyes up to Thy throne I am whispering to Thee: "Our Father!" There was a time, a long and fearful time, when man too spake to Thee and called Thee: "Lord, or Creator, or Master! Yea, when man felt himself to be only a thing among things. But now by merit of Thy First-born and Best Son we learned Thy right name. Therefore, I too, with Christ, dare to call Thee: "Father!" If I address Thee as "Lord," I bow in fear before Thee as a slave amongst an army of slaves. If I call Thee "Creator," I separate myself from Thee as night is apart from day or as a leaf from its tree. If I look to Thee and say "Master," I am as a stone among stones, and as a camel among camels. But if I open my mouth and whisper "Father" love takes the place of fear, earth seems lifted nearer to Heaven, and I walk with Thee, as with my comrades in the garden of this world and share Thy glory, and sorrows and strength. Our Father! Thou art the Father of us all, and I would lessen both Thee and me if I call Thee: My Father! 82 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL Our Father! Thou dost not care so much about me, a single individual, as about the whole world. Thy Kingdom is Thy aim, and not a single man. Selfishness cries to Thee: my Father! But Love cries: our Father! In the name of all men, my brothers, I pray: our Father! In the name of all things, which surround me and with which Thou hast woven me, I pray to Thee, our Father! I pray to Thee, Father of the Universe, only for one thing I pray to Thee: let soon dawn the great day when all men, the living and the dead, in harmony with the angels and stars, and the animals and things, call to Thee by Thy true name: our Father! TRAGEDY OF A NATION 83 ..... WHICH ART IN HEAVEN. WE lift our eyes up to the Heaven always when calling Thee and cast down them to the earth when remember- ing our sins. We are always in the depth on account of our weakness and of our sins. Thou abidest always in the height, as befits Thy magnitude and Thy holiness. Thou art always in Heaven when we are unworthy to receive Thee, but gladly Thou descendest to us, to our earthly housing, when we are longing and opening the door for Thee. Yet even when Thou descendest to us, still Thou abidest in Heaven; in Heaven Thou livest, over the Heaven walkest, with the Heaven together bowest down to our valley. Heaven is far, too fa r , for the man whose mind and heart are turned from Thee, or who laughs when Thy name is spoken. But Heaven is near, too near for the man who keeps always open the door of his soul and waits for Thy coming, our dearest Guest. If the most just man is compared with Thee, Thou towerest over him as the firmanent of Heaven over the valley of the earth, as everlasting life over the realm of death. We are of destructible and perishable material; how could we stand on the same height with Thee, Immortal Youth and Strength! Our Father which art always above us, bow down to us and lift us up to Thee. What are we but tongues constructed from the dust for the sake of Thy Glory? The dust would be silent for ever and could not tell Thy name without us, O Lord. How could the dust know Thee but through us? How could Thou do miracles of the dead dust but through us? Oh, our Father! 84 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL HALLOWED BE THY NAME. THOU wouldest not be holier if we hallow Thee, but in hallowing Thy name we make ourselves holy. Thy name is wondrous. The people quarrel on this earth about names: whose name is great? It is good that sometimes Thy name is mentioned in these quarrels, because all the loquacious tongues become at once slow and hesitating, and all the great human names melted together cannot match with Thy name, Holy, All-Holy! When men want to hallow Thy name they ask Nature for help. They take stone and wood to make the temples; they adorn the altars with pearls and flowers; and make fire of plants, their sisters; and take scent of the cedars, their brothers; and strengthen their voices by the voice of the bells; and call the animals for help, to hallow Thy name. Nature is pure as Thy stars, and as innocent as Thy angels, O Lord. Be merciful with us for the sake of the pure and innocent Nature which hallows Thy name, together with us, Holy, All-Holy! In what way should we hallow Thy name? Is it by innocent joy? then be merciful with us for the sake of our innocent children. Is it by suffering? then look at our cemeteries. Or is it by self-sacrifice? then remember the mothers, Oh Lord! Thy name is stronger than the steel and clearer than light. Blessed the man who depends and enlightens himself by Thy name ! The fools say: "We are armed with steel; who can resist us?" And Thou destroyest kingdoms by invisible insects! Terrible is Thy name, oh Lord! It illuminates and it consumes like a great fire-cloud. Nothing is holy and nothing terrible that is not bound with Thy name. Give me, oh Holy, give me as friends those in whose hearts Thy name is engraved, and as enemies those who do not wish to know anything about Thee. For such friends will be my friends to the death, and such enemies will kneel and surrender to me as soon as their steel is broken. Holy and terrible is Thy name, Holy, All-Holy! Let us remember Thy name every moment of our joy and of our abasement in life, as we remember it in the hour of death, yea, our heavenly Father, our Holy Father! TRAGEDY OF A NATION 85 THY KINGDOM COME. THY Kingdom come, oh great King! We are tired of the Kings who are seemingly greater than other men, but who lie in our cemeteries together with beggars and slaves. We are tired of the Kings who yesterday declared their power over lands and nations and to-day complain of toothache! We are tired of them as of the clouds which bring quails instead of rain. "Behold! this is a wise man. Give him the crown!" the crowds cried. To the crown it is all the same upon whichever head it sits. But Thou knowest, oh Lord, the wisdom of the wise and the government of the mortal. Shall I repeat what is known to Thee? Shall I tell Thee how the wisest among us ruled over us with Folly as a prop? "Behold! this is a strong man. Give him the crown!" the crowds cried again, in other times and other generations. And so the crown travelled silently from head to head. But Thou, the Almighty, Thou knowest the price of the fortitude of the exhalted ones and the government of the strong ones. Thou knowest with how much weakness the strong supported their kingdom. Now, we have learned through suffering that there is no real king but Thou. Our soul is thirsty for Thy Kingdom and Thy government. Wandering here and there, are we not enough hurt and wounded, we, the living survivors upon the tombs of many kings and kingdoms? We pray now to Thee for help. Let Thy Kingdom come in sight! Thy Kingdom of Wisdom, Fatherhood and Power! Let this earth, the battlefield of thousands of years, be a Home, where Thou art the Host and we the guests! Come, King, the empty throne is waiting for Thee! With Thee harmony will come, with harmony, beauty. We are all tired of other kingdoms, therefore, we are now expecting Thee, the great King, Thee and Thy Kingdom! 86 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. HEAVEN and earth are Thy fields, oh Father. Upon one field Thou sowest stars and angels, upon the other thorns and man. The stars are moving according to Thy will. The angels sing on the stars as on the harp, according to Thy will. The thorns grow up and sting men, according to Thy will. But man meets man and asks: what is God's will. How long will man be ignorant about Thy will, oh Father? How long will he abase himself before the thorns under his feet? Thou createdst him for equality with the angels and stars, and lo! he is beaten even by thorns. But behold, if man will he can speak Thy name better than the thorns, and as well as the stars and angels do. Oh Thou, the spirit-giver, and will-giver, give man Thy will. Thy will is wise, and fresh and holy. This will moves the Heaven: why should not the same will move the earth, which compared with Heaven is as a drop of water compared with the ocean? Thy will is wise. I listen to the tale of the bygone generations and I look up to the sky and know that the stars are moving as they have done for thousands of years, always in the same way, and are bringing in due time summer and winter. Thou never art wearied, acting with wisdom, our Father. No foolish thing ever finds a place in Thy plan. Thou art as fresh in wisdom and good to-day as on the first day of the creation, and to-morrow Thou wilt be as to-day. Thy will is holy as it is wise and fresh. Holiness is insepara- ble from Thee as we from the air. Whatever is unholy may climb up towards Heaven, but no unholy thing ever descends from Heaven, from Thy throne, oh Father! We pray to Thee, our Holy Father, that Thou mayest soon bring the dawning of the day when the will of all men will be as wise, fresh and holy as Thy will; and when all Thy earthly creatures will move in harmony with the stars in Heaven; and when our planet will sing in chorus with all Thy wondrous stars- Oh Lord, teach us! Oh God, lead us! Oh Father, save us! TRAGEDY OF A NATION 87 GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. HE that gives the body, gives the soul too; and He that gives the air, gives bread as well. Thy children, oh merciful Giver of gifts, expect every needful thing from Thee. Who would brighten their face in the morning if not Thou through Thy light? Who would watch nightly over their breathing when they sleep if not Thou, the most indefatigable of all watchers!? Where could they sow their daily bread if not upon Thy field? With what could they refresh it if not with Thy dew of the dawn? With what could they vivify it, if not with Thy light and Thy air? With what could they test it, if not with the mouth Thou formest on them? By what means should they rejoice and give thanks to Thee when fed, if not by the spirit by which Thou hast inspired the lifeless clay and made of it a miracle, oh Thou most miraculous Artist? I do not pray to Thee for my bread, but for our bread. Why should I alone have bread if my brothers around me are suffering hunger? It would be better and more just if Thou take from me such bitter, selfish bread; hunger is sweeter shared with brothers dear. It cannot be Thy wish to have the thanks of one man and the cursing of hundreds. Our Father, give us our bread! In order that we may glorify Thee in harmonious chorus. And in order that we may joyfully remember our Heavenly Father. This day we are praying for this day. This day is a great one, it is the birth of many thousands of living creatures. Thousands of the new creatures, which yesterday were not and which to-morrow will not be, to-day are rejoicing together under the same sunshine, together with us they crawl upon one of Thy stars, and together with us they call to Thee: our bread! Oh great Host! we are Thy guests from morning to evening, we are sitting at Thy table and waiting for Thy bread. No one but Thee has right to say: my bread. It is Thine. No one but Thee has any right of to-morrow's day and to-morrow's bread, but Thou alone and those of to-day's earthly 88 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL inhabitants whom Thou invitest. If it is in accordance with Thy will that the end of this day be the dividing line of my life and death, I will bow before Thy holy will. If it is Thy will that I to-morrow may be once more the companion of the great sun and the guest at Thy table, I will repeat my thanksgiving, as I repeat it steadily day after day. And I will bow before Thy will again and again, as the angels in Heaven do, oh Giver of all gifts, material and spiritual! AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES AS WE FORGIVE THEM THAT TRESPASS AGAINST US. IT is easier for a man to trespass against Thy laws than to understand them, oh Father. But it is not easy for Thee to forgive us all our trespasses if we are not forgiving towards those who trespass against us. For Thou foundedst the universe upon measure and order. How could this balance be retained in the universe if Thou observest one measure towards us and we observe another measure towards our neigh- bours? Or if Thou givest bread to us while we give a stone to our neighbours? Or if Thou forgivest us our sins while we are hanging our neighbours for theirs? How then could the measure and order in the universe be preserved, oh lawful Father? Yet behold Thou forgivest us more than we can forgive to our brothers. We defile the earth every day and night with our crimes, while Thou greetest us every day through the un- dimmed eye of Thy sun, and every night sendest Thy merciful forgiveness through the Stars, those shining sentinels at the gate of Thy court, our kingly Father! Thou makest us ashamed every day, oh most Merciful! For when we are expecting punishment Thou sendest to us Thy mercy; when we are expecting Thy thunders Thou sendest to us a quiet evening; and when we are expecting darkness Thou sendest to us the sunshine. Thou art always sublime above our sins, and always mag- nificent in Thy silent patience. Woe to the fool who hopes to trouble Thee with a sacrilegious word! He is like the boy who angrily casts a grain of sand into TRAGEDY OF A NATION 89 the sea in order to drive the whole sea from its place. But the sea silently folds only its skin on the surface and continues to emphasize mere angry weakness through its immense power. Behold all our sins are common, and we all are responsible for the sins of all. Therefore there are not on earth pure, righteous men. For all the righteous must take upon themselves some of the sins of the sinners. It is difficult to be an immacu- lately righteous man, because there is no righteous one who does not bear upon his back at least one sinner. But how is it, oh Father, give me to understand it, how it is that the more a righteous man bears the sinners' sins the more righteous he is? Our Heavenly Father who art sending bread from morning to evening to all Thy children and art receiving their sins' in payment, make less heavy the burden of the righteous people, and illuminate the darkness to the sinners. Earth is full of sins, but full of prayers too; it is full of the prayers of the righteous one and the despair of the sinners. Is not despair the beginning of prayer? Thou must be the victor after all. Thy kingdom will be founded upon the prayers of the righteous. Thy will will become the law for men as it is the law for the angels. Well, why then should our Father hesitate to forgive tres- passes to mortals and so give an example of forgiveness and mercy? LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. OH, how little it is necessary for a man to turn his face from Thee towards idols! He is surrounded by temptations as by storms, and he is as powerless as the foam upon a rough mountain brook. If he is prosperous, he fancies at once he is Thy colleague, or he puts Thee into his own shadow, or even adorns his home with Thy images as a luxury. If evil knocks at his door, he runs into the temptation to make a bargain with Thee, or even to cast Thee away altogether. If Thou callest him to sacrifices, he revolts. If Thou sendest him to death, he trembles. 90 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL If Thou offerest to him all the pleasures of earth, he will be tempted to poison and kill his own soul. If Thou discoverest to his eyes the laws of Thy creation, he murmurs, "The universe is wonderful and lawful in itself, without a Creator." We are confused by Thy light, on our shining Father, like the night butterflies. When Thou callest us to the light, we are flying into the darkness; when we are set in darkness we are crying for light. There is a network of many paths before us, but we dare not go to the end of any of them, for at each end there is a temptation waiting for us and luring us on. And the path leading to Thee is crossed by many temptations as well as by many precipices. Before temptation assails us Thou seemest to accompany us as by an illuminated cloud. But when temptation comes Thou disappearest. We turn around in confusion and we put to ourselves the painful question: What was our illusion, Thy presence or Thy absence? In all our temptations we ask ourselves: Art Thou our Father? All our temptations put into our minds the same question that all the circumstances around us are putting into our minds from day to day and from night to night, i.e.: What do you think about the Lord? Where He is and who He is? Are you with Him, or without Him? Give to me the power, my Fatherly Creator, that I can in every hour of my life, whether bright or dark, give the same answer to every possible temptation and to everything. The Lord is the Lord. He is there where I am and where I am not. I stretch always my passionate heart towards Him and my hands towards His bright garments, as a child towards its beloved Father. How could I live without Him? It would mean to be without myself at the same time. How could I be against Him? It would mean to be against myself at the same time. A righteous son follows his father with respect, quietness and joy. Breathe Thy inspiration into our soul, oh Father, to be Thy righteous sons! TRAGEDY OF A NATION 91 BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL. WHO will deliver us from evil, if not Thou, our Father? Who will stretch out hands to the drowning children, if not their father? Who concerns himself more about the cleanliness and beauty of the house than its master? Thou didst call us from nothing to be something, but we bind ourselves down with evil, and so we are transforming ourselves again into nothing. We fold around our hearts the very serpent that we most fear. With all our might we are crying against the darkness, but the darkness abides in our souls, the microbes of darkness and the microbes of death. We are fighting with one voice against evil, while evil silently penetrates our home; while we are crying, evil is forcing one position after the other, and comes nearer to our heart. Stand Thou, the Almighty Father, stand Thou between us and evil, and we will lift up our hearts, and evil will evaporate like a wayside pool under the burning sun. Thou art high above us, and Thou dost not feel the swell of evil; but we are suffocating under it. Behold, evil grows in us from day to day before our eyes and spreads its abundant fruits all around. The sun salutes us every day with "Good morning!" and with the question, What have we to exhibit before our great King? And we exhibit only our old corrupt fruits of evil. Oh God, is not the dust, unmoved and unvivified, purer than man in the service of evil? Look, we have built our houses and our mansions in the clefts and excavations of the earth. It would not be difficult for Thee to order Thy brooks to overflow all these clefts and excavations and wash earth from men and their evil doings. But Thou art above our danger and our counsels. If Thou hadst listened to men's counsels Thou wouldest by now have destroyed the universe to its foundations and been buried Thyself in the ruins. Oh, wisest among fathers! Thou smilest always in Thy divine beauty and immortality, and behold, from Thy smiles the new stars are growing! Always with a smile Thou turnest 92 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL our evil into good, and inoculatest the tree of good upon the tree of evil, and so patiently curest our uncultivated and lost Garden of Eden. Patiently Thou curest, and patiently Thou buildest. Thou buildest patiently Thy Kingdom of good, our King and Father. We pray to Thee; make us free from evil and full of good, Thou, the perfect emptiness of evil and fulness of good. FOR THINE IS THE KINGDOM, THE stars and suns are the citizens of Thy Kingdom, O Father. Do array us, too, in this splendid army of Thine. Our planet is small and dark, but it is Thy work, Thy architecture and Thy inspiration. How could anything else but great come out from Thy masterly hands? Yet by our own smallness and darkness we make our abiding place small and dark. Yes, the earth is small and dark ever when we call it our kingdom and when we foolishly pretend to be its kings. Behold there are many among us who were kings on earth and who now, standing on the ruins of their thrones, are wonder- ing and asking: "Where are our kingdoms?" And many kingdoms there are that do not know what happened to their vain-glorious kings. Blessed and happy is the man who looks through the clouds and whispers the words that Thou hearest: Thine is the kingdom! What we call our earthly kingdom is full of worms and as perishable as the bubbles on the deep river. A heap of dust on the wings of the wind! Thou only hast a true kingdom, and Thy kingdom only has a King. Take us from the wings of the wind, O merciful King, save us from the wings of the wind! And make of us the citizens of Thy Kingdom. O yes, make of us the citizens of Thy eternal kingdom, near Thy stars and suns, near Thy angels and arch-angels, yea, near Thee, our Father! TRAGEDY OF A NATION 93 AND THE POWER, THINE is the power because Thine is the kingdom. The quasi-kings are powerless. Their only kingly power is in their royal title, which in truth is Thy title only. They wander in the dust, and the dust goes where the wind wants it to go. We are the wandering shadows and moving dust. But even when we wander and move it is by Thy power. By Thy power we are and by Thy power we are going to be. Earth would be a corpse without Thy power. Thou art the breathing power in every grain of dust, and if the dust dances it dances by Thy power, or if the dancing dust is called man it is by Thy power. Thou has lent a small grain of Thy power to man. If a man does good he does it by Thy power through Thee; and if a man does evil he does it by Thy power but through himself. Everything which is done, is done by Thy power, either used or misused, either understood or misunderstood. If a man, O Father, uses Thy power according to Thy will, then Thy power is Thine, and is good; if a man, however, uses Thy power according to his own will, then Thy power is called his own, and is evil. I say, O Lord, when Thou disposest with Thy power, it is good, but when the beggars, who borrowed the power from Thee, proudly dispose with it as with their own, it is evil. So there is one keeper but many disposers of Thy power, and also there is no evil power in the world, but there are the evil dis- posers and practisers of Thy power, yea, of the particles of Thy power Thou mercifully lendest to them, from Thy plentiful table, to those poor mortals on earth. Look down upon us, O powerful Father, look down upon us and be slow in sending Thy power to the earthly dust until it prepares two rooms to take it in: good will and humility good will to use the borrowed divine gift for good, and humility to be steadily reminded that all the power in the Universe belongs to Thee, great Power-giver! Thy power is holy and wise. But when in our hands Thy power is in danger to be denied and to become unholy and foolish. 94 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL O Father, which art in Heaven, help us to know and to do every day one thing, i.e., to know that all power is Thine, and to use Thy power according to Thy will. Behold, we are unhappy because we separated what is inseparable in Thee, we separated power from holiness, and also power from love, and power from faith, and, finally which is the first cause of our fall power from humility. Unite, Father, what Thy children have foolishly separated, we pray. Bring again to honour Thy own power which has been disregarded and dishonoured, we pray. For behold, whatever we are, we are Thy children. TRAGEDY OF A NATION 95 .... AND THE GLORY FOR EVER AND EVER. THY glory is coeternal to Thee, our kingly Father. It is substantial in Thee and independent from us. It is not a glory of words like the glory of mortals, but it consists of the same imperishable essence as Thou art. Yea, it is inseparable from Thee like the light is inseparable from the burning sun. Whoever has seen the centre and the periphery of Thy glory? Whoever has become glorious without the touch of Thy glory? Thy dazzling glory is enveloping us all around and looking silently at us, half-smiling and half-wondering about our human pains and murmurings. When we become silent we are told by a secret whispering: You are children of a glorious Father! O, how sweet is this glorious whispering! What could we want more than to be the children of Thy glory? Is it not enough? Surely it is enough for a normal life. But behold, men want to be the fathers of the glory. And that is the beginning and the culmination of their misery. They are not satisfied to be children and sharers of Thy glory, they want to be fathers and bearers of Thy glory. Yet Thou art the only father and the only bearer of all glory. There are many mis-users of Thy glory and many self-deceivers. Nothing is so dangerous in the hands of mortals as glory. Thou showest Thy glory, and men argue about theirs. Thy glory is a fact, men's glory is a word. Thy glory is always smiling and comforting, men's glory when separated from Thee is terrifying and killing. Thy glory is nourishing the poor and leading the meek ones, men's glory when separated from Thee is the best arm of Satan. How ridiculous people are when trying to make a glory of their own, outside and apart from Thee! There was a fool who hated the sun and tried to secure a place out of the light of the sun and to have it as his own. He constructed a shady hut and made no windows, and entered it, and stood quite in darkness, and rejoiced that he had got rid of the great source of light. Such a fool and such an inhabitant of darkness is one who makes effort to build a glory of his own, outside and apart from Thee, O immortal source of glory! 96 FRANCO-SERBIAN FIELD HOSPITAL There is no man's glory, as there is no man's power. Thine is the power and the glory, our Father. If we do not borrow from Thee, we are lacking both qualities and fading away like the dry leaves when separated from the tree and scattered at the mercy of the wind. LET us be satisfied to be called Thy children. There is no greater honour on earth or in heaven than this. Take from us our kingdoms, our power and our glory. All that we ever called our own lies in ruins. Take from us what from the beginning belonged to Thee. Our whole history has been a foolish attempt to make our own kingdom, our power and our glory. Close soon our old history, during which time we have been fighting to make ourselves the lords in Thy house, and open a new history, during which we will try to make ourselves the servants in the house which is Thine. Behold, it is better and more glorious to be the humblest servant in Thy kingdom than the greatest king in ours. Therefore, make us, Father, the servants of Thy kingdom, power and glory, through generations and generations, for ever and ever. Amen. A 000 Q32Q58