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 
 
 
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 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.
 
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