Serbia in Light and Darkness Part 5

Again I must come back to the Serbian village. Prayer is there considered not only as an epilogue to a sin but as a daily necessity.

The first duty after one's ablution in the morning is prayer. That is a sanctified custom. Many songs on our national hero, Marko, begin as follows:

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

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

"Dear G.o.d, we are thankful to Thee for all."

But not only the songs begin with prayer, every work and every pleasure begins with prayer as well, every day and every night, every feast, every rest and every journey. This custom has been partly broken and abandoned only in the towns under the influence of the central European materialistic civilisation. In the villages unbelief is unknown. In our green fields, under our dark-blue heaven, in our little white houses and wooden cottages, on the banks of our murmuring brooks and magnificent rivers, atheism is unknown. Every family in a house is regarded as a little religious community. The head of the family presides over this community and prays with it. When I tell you that, I tell you my personal experience. I was born in a village, in a family of forty-five members. We prayed together every Sat.u.r.day, after the weekly work was over. In the evening my grandfather, the head of the family, called us to prayer. We had no chapel in the house. In bad weather we prayed in the house, in fine weather out of doors, in the yard. The starry heaven served as our temple, the moon as our guardian, the silent breath of the surrounding nature as our inspiration. My grandfather took a chalice with fire and incense, and sprinkled every one of us. Then he came forward, stood before us and bowed deeply, and his example was followed by us all. Then began a silent prayer, interrupted only here and there by a sighing or by some whispering voice. We crossed ourselves and prayed, looking to the earth and looking to the stars. The prayer ended again with deep bowing and with a loud Amen.

When I recall this prayer in my memory, I feel more piety, more humility and more comfort than I ever felt in any of the big cathedrals in either hemisphere where I have had the opportunity of praying. This prayer of the Serbian peasants, beautiful in its simplicity and touching in its sincerity, survived generation after generation, and has been victorious over all crimes that the strangers of the Asiatic or of the European faith have committed on us. Our tenacious and incessant prayer is an evident sign of our tenacious and unbroken hope. We pray because we hope; we hope still more after we have prayed.

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

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

A C Swinburne (_Faliero_).

SERBIA IN ARMS.

Delivered before the English Soldiers.

I propose to-night, gentlemen, to describe to you Serbia, my native country, my dream of the past, my dream of the future, and one of your Allies, loyal and faithful in life and death. I will try, of course, to give you only some glances at and slight insight into what Serbia has represented with her soul, her efforts, ideals and hopes. The time is short, yea, our time to-day is more empty than the events which surprise us every day, every night, and overwhelm us like an avalanche of snow and ice from the Alps. How poor and insufficient is our human language to-day, even the language of the most eloquent mortals from this island like Burke, Macaulay and Carlyle, to describe the events which our eyes are seeing and our ears listening to at the present moment! Do not expect from me an equivalent description of Serbia, which has been one of the greatest factors in this world-war during many months, and which has disturbed your hearts for so long and attracted thousands of your sons and friends over the seas, to take the sword from Serbia's mangled hands and continue the struggle for the same cause for which she fought until death. All that I can tell you consists in some poor instances and remembrances which will be sufficient to show you that Serbia has been worthy to live and to be your ally, and consequently that she is worthy of your great sympathy with her and of your helping her resurrection.

Serbia has been at war since 1912.

IN AUTUMN 1912

King Peter of Serbia consecrated his church of white marble, built in Topola, the birthplace of his grandfather, Karageorge, the protagonist of Balkan liberation. On the same hill, on which Karageorge took the resolution to begin one of the greatest things that ever happened on the troublesome Balkan soil, on the hill of Oplenaz, Karageorge's grandson, King Peter, erected a beautiful church and then declared war on Turkey.

It was one of many wars that we had with Turkey, one of many--known and unknown to you--during five hundred years. We have had our old accounts with the Turks. We despised them as the slaves will despise their lords, and they despised us as the lords will despise their slaves. Yet we respected their virtues, and they recognised some of ours. With the sword they conquered our country, and we knew that only with the sword we could reconquer it from them. Our Christian drama with the Turks in the Balkans began with blood, and we all believed it must finish with blood. In our b.l.o.o.d.y conflict with the Turks we, the Christians, lost three kings--one of them was King Constantine of Byzantium, and two were the Serbian kings, Vukashin and Lazare--during a period of seventeen years. As well as Serbia and Greece, Roumania also offered great resistance to the Turks. It is a historic fact, that after the decisive Balkan battle on the field of Kossovo, the Roumanians also fought against the Turks. In the battle of Rovina between the Turks and Roumanians, our epic Serbian hero, Marko Kralevich, the last king of Macedonia, called Marko of Prilep, also partic.i.p.ated, and was killed there. He was the third Serbian king killed in the defence of Christian freedom in the Balkans. That was the time when the Albanians, too, showed their virtues more than ever before. Under Skenderbeg, the prince from Croya, they resisted the Mussulmans very bravely. But they fell into slavery in the same way as Serbia, Greece, Roumania and Croatia. The only country in the Balkans which surrendered without any resistance was Bulgaria. The only country in the Balkans that never was conquered by the Turks was Montenegro. Poor Montenegro, a skeleton of rocky mountains, has shown during five hundred years more heroic beauty and idealistic enthusiasm than many great empires in Asiatic and European history, which fought their selfish battles for power and comfort, and have been respected and adored merely because of their numbers and dimensions.

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

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

The Serbian troops crossed the frontier and fighting proceeded in three different directions, towards Skoplje and Prilep, towards Adrianople and towards Scutari. A foreigner never can realise what a Serbian soldier thought and felt at that time. Skoplje had been the centre of our mediaeval kingdom; in Prilep lived and ruled king Marko, our national hero; under the walls of. Adrianople King Vukashin, Marko's father, was killed resisting the Turkish invasion; Scutari was the last free dominion of the Serbian kings Balshic before universal darkness covered the whole of the Balkans, except Montenegro. In every direction the Serbian soldiers faced their own history. Their past glory has been revived; their heroes of old excited their imagination; many saw them in visions or in dreams, all imitated them in heroic deeds and in sufferings.

Here succ.u.mbed the Saint King Lazare! exclaimed our soldier in the field of Kossovo. Here fell the Duke Milosh after he killed the Turkish Sultan Murad! Here lived Marko of Prilep! From this fortress he protected the remnants of the Serbian people and their past glory after the fatal battle of Kossovo! Here on the stones the hoofs of Shiraz, Marko's cherished horse, are to be seen. There are churches built by King Urosh, or Stephen, or Milutin, or Dushan, or Lazare! Here on the Mariza River fell Vukashin with sixty thousand of the most splendid Serbian warriors defending the freedom of the Balkans. There on Scutari stand lofty walls constructed by the same King Vukashin. This is the way by which the Byzantine princesses had come to be the wives of our kings or dukes.

There is the town where King Dushan, in allegiance with Kantakusen and the Greeks, fought against the first Turkish invaders. On this lake of Ochrida was a beautiful church with a Serbian archbishopric. That is the mountain where the _villas_ (fairies) lived and from which they flew down to help our heroes or to preserve the Serbian down-trodden rights.

In this town King Nemanja met the Crusaders from the West proceeding to the East and gave them hospitality. In that town our greatest king proclaimed the famous codex of laws, _Zakonik_, which is comparable with the best codexes of that kind. Here are the tombs of our patriarchs, who led and protected the nation during centuries of oppression and slavery.

There are the towers built from the skeletons of the Serbian leaders, who were slaughtered for their ideals of freedom; and there again is the spot where were hanged several _voivodas_ and _bishops_. Bones upon bones, blood upon blood, sin upon sin, heroism upon heroism! Kossovo, Scutari, k.u.manovo, Skoplje, Prilep, Bitolj, Adrianople--all these names were well known by every Serbian soldier. In their childhood and boyhood they sang these very names, they sang them and knew the historical events and heroes connected with them. And so they came now not as guests and strangers, but they returned home after a long absence. It seems to every one of them like a dream: the land which has been for generations and generations the topic of poetry now stood before the Serbian warriors as a reality. The Serbian brothers from Austria-Hungary came to Macedonia, kissed the sacred soil, and each one took a handful of the sacred dust from the tombs of our kings and heroes of old. Two months after the outbreak of war King Peter returned to Topola and prayed gratefully in his white church to G.o.d and to Saint George. This democratic king, who has been elected by the Serbian Parliament (_Skupshtina_), thanked G.o.d that he with his people had finished the work of liberation from the Turkish yoke, which work was started by Karageorge, his grandfather, who also was elected by the people to be their leader.

IN SUMMER 1913.

The war with the Turks was a short one. Yet the war with the Bulgars was still shorter. The Bulgars attacked us in a dark night. Austria suggested such an attack, and this quite suited the Bulgarian spirit. It is a slavish spirit, full of slavish ambitions and slavish abject methods.

When I tell you that, believe me, I tell it neither as a chauvinist nor even as a Serbian patriot, but as a man who has studied very carefully the history and psychology of the Balkan peoples.

The Bulgarian attack against the Serbian army was resisted not only by the Serbs, as the Bulgars hoped, but by the Greeks and Roumanians as well. I visited the battlefield afterwards. I have been in Stip, a town on the Bregalniza river, where the attack began. I saw the tree on the bank of the river, under which the Serbian and Bulgarian officers rested together the very day before the treacherous night. The Bulgarians smiled and chatted with their Serbian colleagues; they spoke about the everlasting brotherhood between the Serbian and Bulgarian nations; they ate and drank from the same plates and gla.s.ses with the Serbs, their allies, while the order of the night attack lay in their pockets. It happened nineteen hundred years after a treacherous apostle ate and drank in the same manner with his Master.

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

THE HOME OF THE SERBIAN SOUL

is Macedonia. It must have been once a charming country worthy of the great men like Philip and Alexander, worthy of Saint Paul's mission to it, worthy of Byzantium's effort to save it from the Slavs, worthy of all the Turkish sacrifices to conquer it, worthy of several Serbian kings who gave their lives defending it. It was a rich and beautiful spot on this earth. It was the centre of the Serbian mediaeval state and power, the very heart of the Serbian glory from the time when the Serbs became Christians till the tragedy of Kossovo, and after this tragedy till the death of King Marko of Prilep in the beginning of the fifteenth century. Even during the time of slavery under the Turks, Macedonia was the source of all the spiritual and moral inspirations and supports of the enslaved nation. It happened only accidentally that the northern part of Serbia, was liberated a hundred years ago while Macedonia remained still in chains. In the north, in the dense forests and the mountains around Belgrade and Kraguievaz, the guerilla war started a great insurrection which succeeded.

This guerilla war meant a gradual destruction of the Turkish dominions in the whole northern part: in Shumadija, Bosnia, Croatia and Dalmatia.

But I say the guerilla war in Shumadija, around Belgrade and Kraguievaz, was a success. Karageorge liberated a part of the Serbian country in the north, and this part was finally recognised by the great powers of Europe and called _Serbia_. But neither Karageorge nor anybody in Serbia has forgotten Macedonia. Macedonia was not only a part of our history, but it has become a part of our soul. The princ.i.p.al and the greater part of our national poetry, which means our Shakespeare and which meant our Bible, describes Serbian Macedonia, her heroes, her historic events, her struggle with the Turks, her slavery, and her customs and hopes. Serbian children know the names of the towns like Skoplje, Prilep, Ochrida, and the heroes' names, Urosh, Stephen, Milutin, Dushan, Marko and Ugljesha, before they learn in the school to write these names. Our national poetry is our national education, our education is our soul. Macedonia represents a great part of our poetry, which means that she forms a great part of our soul. To say Macedonia does not belong to Serbia means the same as to say, the Serbian soul does not belong to the Serbians.

Could you imagine England without Stratford, the birthplace of Shakespeare? I don't think you could. So we cannot imagine a Serbia without Prilep, the source, yea, the birthplace of our national poetry.

Every people must have some sacred soil in their country, a part more sacred than other parts, which binds them more to their fatherland, which excites their enthusiasm, and which obliges them to defend and to die for it. I was born in Northern Serbia, in a town which has been very important in our modern history. But I must tell you that it was not Valve, my birthplace, which inspired me to be a Serb in soul, but rather Prilep, Skoplje and Ochrida, the places where our spirit and our virtues of old flourished, together with Kossovo, where our national body was destroyed. Valevo has been very little mentioned in our national poetry, Valevo and even Belgrade, in comparison with Macedonia. Northern Serbia has been in our Middle Ages more a part of our body than of our soul.

But Macedonia.... A Bulgarian diplomat formerly in Rome once ironically told a Serbian sculptor in a discussion about Macedonia: 'We Bulgars know that King Marko of Prilep is a Serbian. Well, give us Prilep, that is what we want, and keep King Marko for yourselves!' That is the true Bulgarian spirit. The Greeks have understood us better. They have many brothers of their own in Monastir and Ochrida, and still they recognised the Serbian rights in the central and northern parts of Macedonia, claiming for themselves only the southern part, and giving to the Bulgars the eastern part of it. Yet they could claim Macedonia not with less rights than the Bulgars did. Why? Because Macedonia never was the centre of a Greek Empire, as it never was the centre of a Bulgarian Empire. It was a provincial country of the old Byzantine Empire. It was a country temporarily conquered by the Bulgars, the centre of the Bulgarian kingdom being Tirnovo and its neighbourhood. But it was quite a centre of all the best things that we Serbs created and possessed in our past. Our national soul cannot live without this part of our national body. I remember a conversation in Nish between a French sailor and a Serbian writer. The French sailor said: "But you will perish if you do not give Macedonia to the Bulgars?" The Serbian writer replied quietly: "Let us perish for the sake of our soul!" An English gentleman asked me the other day: "Why have you been obstinate in not yielding Macedonia to the Bulgars, while we even are ready to yield to the Greeks, offering them Cyprus?" "Yes," I said, "we can well appreciate your sacrifice, but still Prilep for us is rather what Stratford--and not Cyprus--is for you. And even I, not being an Englishman, could never agree that you should offer Shakespeare's birthplace to anybody in the world."

Perhaps the Bulgars would not have attacked us in this war if we had given Macedonia to them, although it is not certain, because the frontiers of their ambitions are in Constantinople, Salonica and on the Adriatic. Still Serbia could not barter her soul like Faust with Mephistopheles. Five hundred years ago the Serbs and Greeks defended Macedonia from the Turkish invasion. In 1912 it was Serbia with Greece again who liberated Macedonia from the Turkish yoke. Bulgaria never defended Macedonia from the Turks. Her first fighting for Macedonia was in 1913 against Serbs, Greeks and Roumanians. And Serbia sacrificed not only many things and many lives for Macedonia, but twice even her independence--once five hundred years ago, and for the second time at the present moment. _Yes, Serbia is now killed because of Macedonia._ Indeed, all Serbia's fighting and suffering have been because of Macedonia. She fought against the Turks because of Macedonia. She fought against the Bulgars because of Macedonia. And she now is losing her independence because of Macedonia. Because she could not give Macedonia, which means her glory, her history, her poetry, her soul, she is now trodden down and killed. Serbia could not live without Macedonia. Serbia did what she could--she died for Macedonia. And if one day, G.o.d willing, from this blessed island should sound the trumpet for the Resurrection for all the dead, killed by the German sword, I hope Serbia will rise from her grave together with Macedonia, as one body and one soul.

Serbia and the World-War.

In three years Serbia got three decisive victories which attracted attention to her in both hemispheres. She got a decisive victory at k.u.manovo, against the Turks, in 1912. She got the second decisive victory on the Bregalniza, against the Bulgars, in 1913. She got a third decisive victory at Rudnik, against the Austrians and Magyars, in 1914.

But finally she perished, in 1915, under the blow of the allied Turks, Bulgars, Austrians and Magyars with their common lord and leader against Serbia, the Germans.

Why?

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

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

The Magyars said through their leading men: "Serbia must be punished not because of the affair in Sarajevo, but because she is making a propaganda to liberate and unite all the Southern Slav people, which means a great blow for the Magyar interests and for the crown of Saint Stephen." Therefore the Magyars, rushing into Serbia in the first invasion, in August 1914, devastated a northern district of Serbia, the district of Drina, in such a way that only the Bulgars could compete with them. Henri Barby, the French publicist, has visited this district after the invasion. His description of the Magyar atrocities and the original pictures taken on the spot of the crimes committed make one ashamed to be the contemporary of such a nation.

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

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

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

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

We Serbs have nothing to reply to this Bulgar mockery, since they distinctly claimed that they are not Slavs but Mongols; since they condemned the English, French and Russian civilisations, and declared themselves to be the champions of the true civilisation. I will tell you only how they fulfilled their "mission" in defending the human civilisation from the Serbs. I will not speak myself, but I will repeat what a well-known English gentleman reported from Salonica:

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

"At the end of that time another body of men could be seen coming out of the town. They were Bulgarian cavalry, about eighty of them, with a captain in command. At a deliberate walk they came on towards the throng of prisoners and guards at the pit-side. When they were still several hundred yards away, a young Serbian soldier evidently grasped what was preparing. Making a sudden dart, he sprang through the cordon of guards, and was off, running at a surprising speed. The guards shouted, but their rifles, though with bayonets fixed, were not loaded, and it looked for the moment as if he might get clear away. Then the captain of the cavalry troop caught sight of him, turned round in the saddle, and shouted an order to his men. Half a dozen spurred their horses, and left the ranks at a gallop. It was a short chase. Hearing the thud of the horses' hoofs behind him, the young Serbian turned his head for an instant, then ran on faster than before. The galloping cavalry were soon close up with him. As the first man, with a shout, raised his sword, the fugitive doubled like a hare, and was away at right angles. Two more hors.e.m.e.n were close behind, though. The first rode him down; the second leaned out of his saddle and pierced him through, as he scrambled to regain his feet. By this time the guards with the rest of the Serbians had loaded their rifles, and stood round them in a ring, with levelled bayonets, while, huddled together, their prisoners embraced each other or sank in apathy to the ground.