Serbia in Light and Darkness Part 3

All men that G.o.d created can live on the earth. G.o.d gave s.p.a.ce and air enough for all, if men only would give goodwill.

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

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

I was very sorry to see that Greece broke her pledged word and thoughtlessly refused to keep her treaty with Serbia, whereas France with England, who had no signed treaty with Serbia, came and did what in the first place it was Greece's duty to do. I was still more glad and hopeful in regard to the future of mankind, seeing a great difference of moral views between the leading nations of human civilisation like the English and French, and a small nation like the Greek, which is commencing to learn again what many hundred years ago Greece taught all other nations. And I was very glad remembering that in our _own_ Serbian history there is no case of such an example of infidelity or even of hesitation to fulfil the pledged word of the nation.

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

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

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

After the death of King Lazare, Queen Miliza ruled the country together with her son, Stephen the Tall. But Sultan Bayazet asked three things from the new rulers in Serbia. Firstly, he asked for Miliza's daughter Mara for his harem. Miliza gave her daughter. Then Bayazet asked a second, more dreadful thing, namely, that his unfortunate mother-in-law should build a mosque in Krushevaz, the Serbian capital at that time, so as to have a place where he could pray when he came to visit her. There existed and still exists a beautiful church built by King Lazare. Now Miliza was constrained to build, close to this dear monument of her husband, in which she prayed every day for his soul and for the salvation of Serbia, a Turkish mosque. She agreed silently and she protested silently. Then Bayazet asked a third still more dreadful thing, namely, that Stephen the Tall should help him with his troops in a time of danger for the Turkish Empire. Queen Miliza with a broken heart advised her son to sign such a treaty in order to save the rest of the State and people. But very soon it happened that Bayazet needed and asked for Stephen's help against the formidable Mongol conqueror Tamerlan. Stephen hated both the Asiatic monsters--Bayazet and Tamerlan--equally, and it was more profitable for him to break the treaty with Bayazet and to help Tamerlan, who had more chance. But he remained faithful to his pledged word. Bayazet was beaten, taken prisoner and encaged as a beast by Tamerlan. And Stephen, after having fought splendidly for his ally with the Serbian cavalry, came home. When thinking over the present conduct of our Greek ally, I am reminded very often of this n.o.ble and loyal king of my country. Queen Miliza could not endure any longer all the terrible changes from bad to worse; she transferred all the power to her son, built a wonderful monastery, Ljubostinja, near Krushevaz, where she as a nun found a retreat in which to pray and to live, until the end of her weary and melancholy life.

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

_Princess Ljubiza_ came on the scene of our history only a hundred years ago, in the days of the Serbian revolution and resurrection. As Queen Miliza and Yerina sacrificed all to save the honour of Serbia, so Ljubiza did her best to help her husband, Prince Milosh, to liberate the country from the Turks. Once after the Second Revolution broke out, the Serbian troops were engaged in a b.l.o.o.d.y battle on Morava River. But the Turks were in an overwhelming majority, besides that they had better arms and more munitions. The frightened Serbian troops fled. Ljubiza saw that the situation was quite decisive for the whole future, ran to meet the soldiers, and to admonish them to go back and fight.

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

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

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

ENGLAND IS ALSO FIGHTING FOR CROSS AND FREEDOM,

not for existence, not for sea, not for wealth, but for Cross and Freedom, for the Christian Cross and for the Freedom of the smaller nations. It means in other words: for G.o.d's cause. For who created the small nations if not He that created all great and small things in this wonderful world? Or who has the divine right and sad duty to exterminate, to suffocate, to enchain, the small creations of the Highest if the Highest wants them to exist? Great Britain justified her greatness by entering this war so as to protest against the violation of right, even by those who agreed to this right, and to protect the small and poor. It is easy to be physically great, but it is difficult to be morally great.

Great is the power which violates the right, still greater is the power which protects the right. To destroy is much easier than to build. To be great and to be proud means not to be great at all. To be great and to be modest means real greatness and belief in G.o.d. For who can be proud believing in G.o.d? Or who can feel G.o.d in this Universe and still say, I am great? Our modesty is only our confession that there is a G.o.d. Since we see both ends of our life--birth and death--so near us, we must be humiliated.

Yet who can see any end of G.o.d, either in the past or in the future?

Where are all the greatest empires of the past? All is dust under the feet of the Eternal. Whither are we all going, great or small? To be dust under His feet. From this dust will survive only the small portion of G.o.d's spirit that dwells in this dust. All our thoughts and feelings, and deeds and strivings, and struggles and pa.s.sions, which are directed towards dust will die together with our bodily dust. Only that portion of our being which is directed towards G.o.d will survive, will continue to live in the presence of G.o.d, will see G.o.d. For G.o.d only can see G.o.d.

Fighting for Belgium, for Serbia and Montenegro, for Armenia, Poland and Bohemia, for all the poor and oppressed--Great Britain is fighting for G.o.d's cause. For whose cause indeed is Belgium's and Serbia's, if not G.o.d's cause? I wonder who would protect all the oppressed in the world if not this country, in which G.o.d's word is more taught and learned than in any other, and which is endowed with all good gifts that G.o.d can give to mortals? Yet fighting for G.o.d's cause, one fights best for one's own.

Yes, we fight always best for our own cause when we have it least in sight. England entered this war not after a long calculation; she entered the war spontaneously and only afterwards she put the question to herself: Why did I enter this war?

Now England is conscious why she entered the war. She knows now that somebody else pushed her into this Avar, and that she is fighting for somebody else's cause. This somebody else is--G.o.d. The sons of Great Britain going to the East to fight are going the same pathway as their ancestors went in the time of the Crusaders. The same way, the same aim: to save the honour of the Cross and to fight for Freedom! It is the pathway of supreme suffering, but also the only pathway of real glory and merit. Any other way for England's greatness was impossible. England had to choose either the way of pettiness or of greatness. She chose the second. G.o.d bless England!

We pray to Thee, our Father, in order not to change Thy will but ours.

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

SERBIA AT PEACE.

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

The most suitable language for tragedy is silence. Serbia's tragedy needs no rhetoric, no language to describe it, to exalt it. For silence, and not rhetoric, makes tragedy greater. Serbia's silence to-day is as deep as her tragedy is dark. The most silent suffering is the most vocal suffering at the same time. The most silent suffering is like a screw boring into the conscience of the makers of the suffering. Such silent suffering is the severe judge of the world who makes all rich people poor, all proud humble, all pleasure bitter, all human progress abased.

There is something wrong about this life. What may it be? I do not know, but suffering reminds us every day that there is something wrong with this world. Suffering from surrounding nature is not the worst,--nature can be governed by us; nor the suffering from G.o.d,--G.o.d can be touched by our prayer; but the worst of all is our suffering from ourselves.

Thousands and thousands of serpents live in Serbia. Yet all the serpents throughout the Serbian history, from the time of the Druids on this island till the time of Tennyson and Kipling, effected not such a poisonous devastation of men and cattle in Serbia as lately a host of invaders did, who boastfully regarded themselves to be at the summit of human civilisation. It is despairing to see what use of her power, her "kultur," her science and her riches, Germany of to-day is making in Serbia, among a people who for half a thousand years struggled against the Turkish tyranny with the motto _For Cross and Freedom_, and who looked sometimes from their dark corner towards the German Kaiser, the knight of many Holy Orders, as towards the champion and redeemer of enslaved Christianity in the Balkans. Never suffered a nation from serpents as much as the poor nation of Serbs suffers to-day from "civilised" men. Don't you think indeed that there is something wrong about this life of ours? The Bible showed in its first sheets that there is something very wrong with us. By the killing of his brother, Cain fore-shadowed all the history of mankind. Even the first man on earth was not a balanced and happy creature. All our earthly time is filled up with a pa.s.sionate convulsion in a struggle for life and light. Yet our confusion and unhappiness chiefly come from ourselves, and neither from nature nor from G.o.d. When will this suffering of man from man stop? We have been accustomed to speak hopefully about the twentieth century. We supposed that that century at least would show the serpents as greater enemies of men than men themselves. We see despairingly to-day that the serpents are innocent creatures in comparison with men. The tragedy of crushed and murdered Serbia is a crying proof of how the serpents are comparatively innocent creatures. Yet Serbia is silent in her tragedy. I myself would prefer to be silent too. But I cannot, being not only an unhappy survivor of a horrible shipwreck, but above all a priest and servant of G.o.d.

If our national pride bids us Serbs be silent in this shipwreck, my Christian honour and pride bids me cry out and protest. I am a surviving protest of my murdered country. Yet I am still a transitory protest, a protest only for a moment before G.o.d the Slow and the Righteous begins to protest Himself. My protest is in words, my words are from the air.

But G.o.d's protest will be, as always, from the unquenchable fire, which burns bodies and souls. I indicate only the terrible protest which will come. Why am I protesting now before you, sons and daughters of Great Britain? Because you have been the champions of the Bible in the world, i.e. the champions of justice, freedom and the brotherhood of men.

Because your knights have fought for the Christian Cross and Freedom.

Your island has been an Island of Salvation for all the refugees, who as champions of liberty must escape from their own countries--among others, Rousseau, Voltaire and Victor Hugo, even the sons of a very liberal nation. Your most famous generals and admirals have humiliated the greatest conqueror of the world and granted him a cottage on a small island in which to live, instead of the world Empire of which he dreamed. Your statesmen--I will mention only a few of them: Pitt, Bright, Gladstone--a.s.serted repeatedly that the domestic and foreign policy of this country should be founded on Christian principles. Your women are famous in the world because of the fine and humane education that they give to their children in order to make every new generation a new proof to the world of how this island is obviously worthy of its great role on our planet. Your working people possess a healthy sense of both reality and idealism, and avoiding all extremes and extravagances, to which poverty necessarily leads the working cla.s.s in other countries, are powerfully promoting human progress, the material as well as the moral. Your n.o.bility, far from being corrupted and degenerated by their wealth, have filled the world with astonishment from the beginning of this war by their extraordinary patriotism and willingness to sacrifice everything, including life itself, in the struggle for the honour and the unshakable ideals of their country.

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

THE SERBIAN VILLAGE.

Why? Because the village is the very foundation of all that we possess in material, spiritual and moral good. After the Turks conquered Serbia, five hundred years ago, the Serbian population was forced by the conquerors by degrees to abandon the towns and to retreat into the villages, and then to abandon even the villages in the plains, on the banks of the rivers, where the soil was the most fruitful, and to escape into the forests, mountains and less accessible country. The village thus became the very soil upon which has grown our democracy. That is the difference between our democracy and the west European, where the democrats movement started and developed in the towns. Driven into the forests and mountains by the common enemy, despoiled of freedom and riches the upper and lower cla.s.ses, the learned and the illiterate, suffered the same abas.e.m.e.nt and injustice, did the same work, ploughed and sowed, struggled against the same evil, the Turkish yoke, and sang of the same hopes. Under such conditions was born our democratic spirit, which served wonderfully afterwards, in the time of liberation and freedom, as a base for our democratic inst.i.tutions, social, political and ecclesiastical.

I said that our village is the very foundation of our material wealth.

We have, so to say, no industry, but every one of our peasants has his own land. The land being fertile, our country never knew what hunger was. It was a pleasure to see the peasants in the spring ploughing their own soil; in the summer looking over the-golden harvest of their own; in the autumn contemplating the stores plenteously filled; in the winter feasting and resting in their own houses. If you should ask any of the Serbian peasants: "To whom does this house belong? or this field? or this harvest?" he would unmistakably reply: "To G.o.d and to me!"--so in the mind of our peasants G.o.d is the first landlord, and the second they themselves.

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

But now--in Serbia all the wealth is in the past; it exists only in the memories of the despoiled, plundered, devastated, starved and silent slaves. In the German papers there was published a private letter from a German soldier in Serbia. "We are very well here. We have plenty of food and everything. Much more abundantly than we had on the Western front!"

I am sure you understand well what this soldier meant and whence such an abundance in food supply "and everything" for the German invaders in Serbia came. Almost simultaneously a German army commander wrote to a man in a neutral country these words: "Not only I permit you to come into Serbia and help the Serbs, but I pray you come at once. Among the population in Serbia there is the greatest misery and almost starvation _en ma.s.se._" What happened? The "civilised" subjects of Kaiser William would not kill the civil people in Serbia directly as the stupid Turks did, but indirectly in order to save the faithless honour of "civilisation." They drove away the population--that means the old and sick men, women and children--all other Serbs serving as soldiers and being in retreat; they drove the population away, took food, cattle, copper, warm clothes, carpets, covers, everything, and after this was done, allowed the people graciously to come back "to their homes and their customs," as the Kaiser declared. But to come how and where?

Thousands died on the way back, thousands succeeded in coming back to their cold and breadless homes to die there; they are considered as the happier; and thousands fled with the Serbian troops into Albania and to the Mediterranean islands, where they died or are still dying from hunger, but because they died in freedom and not as slaves they are considered as the happiest.

We are beggars now. This is the first year in our history that we must pray to men for bread; until now we prayed only to G.o.d for daily bread, and G.o.d gave it to us abundantly. But we became beggars for bread only after the German civilisation showed itself to be a beggar, poor in moral, poor in truth and heart.

Now I will try to show you how the Serbian village

BECAME THE FOUNDATION OF THE SERBIAN SPIRIT.

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

The only men who could write--the priests; the only library--the memory; the only education--the mother; the only university--nature; the only historians--the blind bards; the only friend and comforter--G.o.d! Imagine such a people and call them--Serbs.

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

They _thought_. They thought about heaven and earth, about life and death, and man and animal, and about everything that affects human nature. They made comparisons and asked for the reason and purpose of everything. They drew their conclusions and expressed the results of their long observations. They thought a very, very long time before they uttered a short sentence. These sentences lived in the oral traditions, and have been transferred from one generation to another. These sentences are very like the Proverbs in the Bible, very like La Rochefoucauld or extracts and quotations from famous works. The Serbian sentences are striking. I have read a good deal by the great writers of Europe, but very often a popular Serbian saying strikes me more forcibly than a famous book.

Here is just one saying:

G.o.d is on the height, Satan is in the depth, man is in the middle. If G.o.d will, He can be above, below and in the middle. If Satan will, he can be below and in the middle. If man will, he can be like G.o.d everywhere, in the middle, or above or below.

Another:

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

Another: