IV
SERBIA'S TRAGEDY
To all the English doctors and nurses
Who sacrificed their lives for Serbia
The following pages
Are gratefully inscribed by
The author
‘Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble’ – Psalm, xli.i
The Modern Nebuchadnezzar
Nothing is so sublimed as tragedy. The happy and lazy Jupiter upon Olympus seems a vulgar being in comparison with the nailed Prometheus. Aristophanes and Moliere,the authors of comedies, stand behind Shakespeare, the author of tragedies. Laughter often pollutes the soul, but tears alre always cleansing. Since the ancient people of Israel, I see no other people in the world’s history with a more tragical fate than that of the Serbian people. I listen in this country and I hear all around me the talk about the Serbian tragedy. But if an Englishman speaks about the Serbian tragedy, and if I, as a Serbian, speak on the same subject, there is this difference – an Englishman thinks only on the present situation of Serbia, and I think on the whole of the Serbian history.
The present situation in Serbia is indeed more painful than any imaginable tragedy of human life. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem, profaned the national sanctuaries, plundered all the treasures, carried the people of Israel away from the Holy Sion, and put them on the rivers of Babylon to weep over their past and to despair over their future. But you will be wrong if you expect anything else from Nebuchadnezzar, an obscure follower of obscure divinities, Baal and Astarte. Nebuchadnezzar did as he thought and spoke. He was not a preacher of Christ like the Kaiser from Berlin; he did not wash the feet of twelve old men every Holy Thursday as Caesar, His Apostolic Majesty from Vienna, servus servorum Dei does; even he was not Padishah, the son of the Prophet, and the servant of the only God, Allah. Nebuchadnezzar was no hypocrite. That is a merit in this life. He was transformed into an ox, he, the destroyer of Israel. Hereby he was very honoured, for what is more beautiful and sincere than an ox? But Nebuchadnezzar’s colleagues from Berlin, Vienna, Stamboul, and Sofia, the destroyers of Serbia, deserve in no way this honour, to be transformed into oxen. Their transformation shall be not honour but punishment, not beauty but shame. For they have destroyed Serbia, killed children, dishonoured women, executed old ones, plundered towns and and made a banquet over desolation, tears, and blood, over the ashes of Serbia, all in the name not of Ball and Astarte, but in the name of God the Righteous, of Allah the Great, and of Christ the Divine.
I have no intention to paint the present situation of Serbia. It is clear to every healthy eye and every feeling heart. But the present situation of Serbia is only one tragic scene in the Serbian tragedy, a very dark scene indeed – winter – midnight without moonlight and stars – but a scene only. The whole of the Serbian tragedy is the whole of the Serbian history.
Our national tragedy, as the tragedy of every hero man, is caused by external situation and by our internal qualities.
Serbia always in somebody’s pathway
What is our external situation? We are in the route, in the only route between Europe and Asia. Remember, please: a tragical person is always in somebody’s pathway. The birth of tragedy is conditioned in the first place by geography. A man in a corner is never a tragical hero like his fellow in the middle of the street. Greeks and Bulgars are like a man in the corner. They are protected by their geographical position. The Turks coming from Asia must conquer Serbia before the fall of Constantinople, before the conquering of Bulgaria and Greece. The battle on Kosovofield in 1389 between Serbs and Turks decided not only the fate of Serbia, but of Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, and the whole of the Balkans. We stood in the way; the other nations stood by the way, in the corner. Therefore, the Turks tried to win decisive battles against the Serbia, before they conquered Constantinople, before they conquered Greece and Bulgaria. And they won on Maritza, against King Vukashin, and lost on Plocnik, against the Voivode Milosh, and won again definitely on Kosovofield, against King Lazare. Serbia having lost, everything in the Balkans was lost. Serbia was the last to be plunged into slavery, she – the first to get up into freedom. She was and she is the key of the situation in the Near East. With this key you can lock and open the doors of the Balkans, even the doors of Asia from Europe and of Europe from Asia. As a sphinx she stood on the way and spoke to the Islamic Drang nach Westen: ‘Your way goes only over me!’ As a sphinx she stands today also on the way and speaks to the Teutonic Drang nach Osten: ‘Only over me!’ And she is trodden today by European and Christian invaders as she was trodden five hundred tears ago by Asiatic and Islamic invaders. It is very painful to see the nation of Schiller, of the great apostle of liberty and spiritual beauty, going the same abominable way and doing the same tyrannic and destructive work as the bloody Turk went and did. But human selfishness is all the same, whether it be covered by the Crescent or by the Cross. I cannot say which suffering for Serbia is the harder, either from Bagdad’s wild Islam rushing westwards, or from Vienna’s and Berlin’s perfidious Christianity rushing eastwards. But if you ask today anybody in Bosnia about the administration and prosperity of the country, the unmistakable answer will be: it was much better under the Turkish rule than under the Austro-Hungarian rule. The same answer you will hear in other Jugoslav provinces: in Croatia, Slovenia and Dalmatia. Why? Perhaps because our sincere Slav soul, choosing between two evils, prefers a wolf to a fox. And perhaps because, indeed, the rule of the more religious and God-fearing Turk must have been more just and more mild than the rule of the scientific perfidy and atheistic brutality of Germans and their servile pupils, Magyars and Bulgars.
It is characteristic that the great man of this town (This Lecture was delivered before the University of Birmingham) and the very pride of British science, Sir Oliver Lodge, in one of his recent publications, expressed very different observations about Turkey and Austria. He said: ’It is a thousand pities that Austria has been dragged into this infamous war, for it seems to treat its provinces remarkably well.’ Speaking on Turkey, he refers to the ‘devastating blight of greedy Turkish misgovernment’. As an admirer of Sir Oliver Lodge, I cannot oppose him. But as a neighbour of Austria and Turkey for 35 years of my life, I will say for my part and for the part of all Serbian people: If it please God to put us under anybody’s yoke, then we prefer to be under the Turkish yoke than under the Austrian. But, O great God, make from Serbia rather a Salt Lake, only save her from both these yokes!
I will go on. I speak on our external situation. But it is clear that our external situation consists not solely of our geographical position, which crucified us, which crucified a peasant and pastoral people coming with their flocks from the Carpathian mountains down to the plains of the Danube and Sava, with bucolic joys and naivete; our external situation consists also of what the world thought about us. That is very important, sometimes decisive – what the people think about us. Did not even Christ Himself ask what men thought about Him?
The Turkish Nietzscheanism
The Turks thought that the Serbs were the most horrible revolutionists, the continual earthquake for their Empire, or, if carried as children and educated as Janizaries in Stamboul, they became the most feared defenders of Padishah and his state. A Sultan once said: ‘All my Empire, from Mecca and Medina to Shumadia (Serbia) smells like the balsam of roses from Jenet, but Shumadia stinks always like powder in a Sheitan’s workshop.’ The Turks from their side wondered why cannot we be quiet under their rule like the other peoples, and we wondered from our side how could we be quiet in chains, surrounded by injustice, overwhelmed by tyranny? We made many revolts, small and great. During our small revolts the Turks held us in contempt, but when the first great revolution started, a hundred years ago, they feared us. And when they contemned us they were silent about us, and when they feared us they dispersed lies and calumnies about us before Europe and the other ignorant world. ‘Turkish lies’ became proverbial in the Serbian tongue.
‘They are only a band of robbers and thieves.’ said the Turks to astonished Europe. ‘For the rest, Serbia is our internal affair.’ Too costly was our Insurrection. Our best men among our people have been killed, hanged, burnt. Belgrade’s fortress looked like a forest of spears with the leading men impaled. By day the Dahies and Agas made a promenade in this horrible forest, and by night in this place wandered the dogs and mothers secretly; the dogs to satisfy their appetite, and the mothers to defend the dear martyr-bodies from dogs and to mourn, and if possible to steal them away and to bury them. O, how blessed is that stealing; how sanctified by every religion!
The Turkish watchword was: ‘We will kill all the Serbians, male and female, except the children under seven years; they will grow up and will be our obedient slaves.’ The Pharaoh from Egypt thought more ingeniously as he determined to kill all the newborn children of Israel, hoping so to see all the people gradually dying out. The extermination of the Serbian nation a hundred years ago was not a passionate word only, but an official programme. Remember, please, that this official bloody programme of the Turkish Dahies against the Serbian race was determined and executed methodically and exactly just in the days when the great Pitt spoke eloquently and enthusiastically against the Slavery of Negroes in the House of Commons.
But the Turk and God thought not the same. God intervened and saved Serbia as He saved the Children of Israel of old.
Austria’s Derriere Pensee
Now, what did Austria think about us Serbians? Nothing pure and nothing unselfish. She thought that the Turks must be banished to Asia, and that she would take the rule over the Christian Balkans. She supported and excited our little revolts against our oppressors in order not to liberate us, but in order to compromise the Sultan’s Empire in the eyes of Europe. As soon as we got free by our own moral and physical force, Austria became the chief conspirator against our national freedom. And as she was anxious before to rebuke and compromise the Turkish tyranny in the Christian Balkans, so now she was anxious to rebuke and compromise the Serbian freedom. Certainly it was a very easy business to ridicule a little peasant state coming into being so unexpectedly and standing obstinately independent between two big empires. Between the Sultan’s Empire on one side and the Austrian Caesar’s Empire on the other, little Serbia looked like a small cottage-house between two big London hotels. It was a very easy business for the idle people from Vienna to ridicule our wooden churches and our rough-looking priests, our schools in the shops of tailors and our parliament in a poor monastery, our illiterate kings and our State ministers in peasant's costume, our generals without gold, and our princess sitting in the house and spinning and weaving. We looked forward to learn something better from our Christian brethren, and we met only contempt and irony, irony and threats – threats with words: ‘We will swallow you!’ But we thought: ‘How could you swallow us, if not in the same way as the seabeast swallowed the prophet Jonah? For five hundred years we have been in the throat of the Asiatic beast, and now we are out in the sunlight again. Could your throat, the ‘Christian’ and the ‘Apostolic’, keep us any longer than another five hundred years? If yes, all right, we are ready to come in, in the darkness of your throat, in the mill of your teeth, and to wait patiently there for your death and our life. But, dear Christian brethren, take care for your Christian teeth. We are too hard food; they can be broken, your teeth, and we will be very sorry.'’ So whispered peasant voices from the little cottage between two big old hotels. By the pressure the tragedy is born, very often by the pressure of two monsters against the unsupported one.
Franco-Russian policy
What did Russia think about us? Russia is a big body, a big light casting a big shadow. Russia as a light reasoned as follows: ‘The Serbian revolution against the Turk is a very good augur for the future of the Balkans. Both as a Christian and as a Slav country I shall help the Serbian cause.’
But the shadow of Russia replied: ’No, we cannot help a hopeless cause. We cannot quarrel with Turkey. You, our Serbian brethren, go to Vienna and ask there for support, for we are Slavs, and, therefore, it will be shocking for the Kaiser of Vienna if we help you as Slavs.’ And the Kaiser of Vienna ironically replied to our requests: ’You are Slavs, and you must go to the Russians!’
And after both reasonings Russia the Big decided to support us and not to support us, or, in other words, to support us only with a little finger, and for more than seventy years she balanced between to support us and not to support us. We have been very touched even with the little help that Russia gave us. We said: ‘Thank you, our good sister!’ And we went our lonely bloody pathway,’ ever sighing, ever singing’.
But after seventy years of our hard fighting and tantalic suffering it happened that the holy Russia gave birth to a daughter named Bulgaria. And the happy mother rejoiced very much and the daughter also. And both the light of Russia and shadow of Russia have been exceedingly anxious to do everything for their new-born blessing. And both Russias planned to make Bulgaria greater on account not only of Turkey, but also of Serbia, her loyaliest friend and most active collaborator in the liberation of Bulgaria. At the Congress of Berlin, the Serbian delegate visited the representative of Russia, who said: ‘Go and speak to Beaconsfield and Bismarck and Andrassy!’ And as the Serbian delegate came to speak to Beaconsfield, Bismarck and Andrassy, they said: ‘Why do you not go to Prince Gortschakoff?’ And our delegate, ashamed, returned to our little cottage. And Serbia trembled and asked: ‘Who is my true friend in the world?’ And the earth was silent, and the poor people read more by hearts than by eyes on the heaven, the stars as the words: Be confident, I am thy friend!’
What did France think about us? Napoleon admired our persistence in fighting for freedom. But as a son-in-law of Vienna he appreciated much the friendship of the Sultan. So Napoleon – more a fine calculator of his own interests than a true liberator of nations – did not care about the poor cottage so much as about the two hotels suffocating it. In the time of Prince Michael we desired very heartily to approach to France. But it was too much to ask from the chief creator of the freed and united Italy, Napoleon III, to do another similar good and great deed, by creating a freed and united Serbia. In the new epoch of the Franco-Russian alliance the French looked upon us through the Russian eyes, even the Russian Bulgaromanie found in France also many followers.
England's good consicience
What did England think about us? The English people and Mr. Gladstone thought very well. But Serbia has not been in the English ‘sphere of interests’, or to speak in a more Christian language – in the English sphere of care, and, therefore, many people in this country thought nothing at all about Serbia. One day – it was twelve years ago – we Serbians committed a great sin, we killed a man and his wife - a king and a queen – and England was the first to cast a stone at us and the last to take this stone away. We have not been angry with England for that reason, but rather deeply ashamed of ourselves. We had always two feelings towards England – respect and fear. When England cast a stone at us and our sin, we felt fear and kept silent. We dared not to apologise ourselves. We kept thoughful and sorrowful. We thought only and dared not to say at that time what we thought. I, myself, dare now to say it, not as a Serbian, but as a minister of Christ. We thought: ‘Behold, how England is quick to condemn our sin! She is doubtless right. But oh! were she so quick to appreciate our virtues during a century of our hard fighting and suffering! Behold, we sinned before God and England in killing a man and his wife! But who will remind England that the bloody Turk, against whom we fought, and whom she supported more than a hundred years, is killing every day and every night more than one man and one wife among our brethren in Macedonia and Old Serbia, and that in the second big hotel next our cottage, in Austria, with which England stays on good footing, there are Southern Slav provinces, which are transformed into a black pit of the blackest sins of the Governmental apparatus under the protection of the most Christian Emperor?’ Certainly, it is most reassuring that there exists a civilised country which can protest at every time against every crime of every nation in the world. But we asked ourselves: ‘Did England create us to have the right to punish us? Did she educate us? Did she support our liberation or relieve our sufferings? Did she remark our virtues? As we struggled for light against the chaotic powers in south and north was she with us or with these chaotic powers? Has she the right to cast a stone at us?’ If she says: ‘Yes, I have still this right’, we will say – ‘Amen’.
Now, in this sublime moment, I will say only, that a great part of our Serbian tragedy of today is the British tragedy also. Great Britain is today fighting shoulder by shoulder with Serbia against all the countries with which the British diplomacy stood always on a more friendly footing than with Serbia. Our Serbian enemies – Turks, Bulgars, Austro-Germans, and Magyars – are now British enemies, too. The British soldiers are now washing with their blood in Macedonia what the uninformed men in this country wrote with the pen and spoke with the tongue.
Russia also participates very strongly in the Serbian tragedy. She is going to suffocate her beloved daughter, thirty-seven years old only, called Bulgaria. As she gave birth to this child she was proud, thinking and shouting all over the world that she had brought fourth an angel. Many people believed it bona fide in this as in other countries. The noble brothers Buxton have not been isolated in that belief. Unhappily it was not an angel, but a very hornish buffalo-calf. Now the holy and disappointed mother is going to kill her own mischievous fruit. That is the Russian tragic part in our Serbian tragedy.
A legend
I will finally reply to the question. ‘What was the world thinking about Serbia?’ - with a Serbian legend. Once in the old times there came on Christmas Day the Archangel Michael from heaven to the earth, and gathered some people and gave them many presents, and said: ’Go this road and do any good to any human being.’ And on this road was sitting a slave in chains, silent and motionless, like a statue. Around him there were many beasts of all kinds. The Archangel invisibly transferred himself on the other end of the road, met the people each after the other, and asked:
‘Did you see any human being on your way?’
'No', replied the first man. ‘I have seen an iron statue, and many beasts around it, roaring, ‘Give it to us!’ I gave my presents to the beasts.'
He asked the second.
'No', replied the second man. ‘I saw only a monster of clay and many beasts around it, growling, ‘Give it to us!’ I gave my presents to the beasts.'
He asked the third.
‘No', replied the third man. ‘I saw only a stone with a human image, and many beasts around it, bleating. ‘Give it to us!’ I gave my presents to the beasts.’
He asked the fourth.
‘No', replied the fourth man. ‘I saw only a silent ghostly figure, and the beasts around, mewing, ‘Give it to us!’ I gave my presents to the beasts.'
The Archangel angrily said: ’Come on!’
As they came to the place where the slave stood the Archangel exclaimed:
‘Are you iron?’
No reply.
‘Are you clay?’
No reply.
‘Are you stone?’
No reply.
‘Are you a ghost?’
No reply.
‘Are you a man?’
The human figure trembled, and said:
‘No, I am a slave. But how sweet this question is to hear! For a thousand years I stand here and no human tongue has called me man, not even in a question.’
The Archangel took all the presents from the beasts and gave them to the slave. And he turned to the men and said:
‘God sent you to make men even from iron and clay and stone, and you did the contrary, and made men into iron and clay and stone. Unhappy this Christmas Day is for me and for you.’
And the Archangel ascended to heaven.
Realities regarded as Dreams
Now, I will try to point out some of the internal causes of our tragedy. To somebody in this hall it may seem that I keep you too long. I don’t think so. I will not keep you a long time, not even five hundred minutes, telling you the tragedy which lasted five hundred years. Death was not considered the worst that could happen to a Serbian slave during such a long slavery, and the worst that can happen to you tonight in this brilliant hall, in the fine chairs, under the electric light, is the sleep, the sleep and dream of a tragedy of a nation. Is it not all a dream after all? What is your philosophy of life? ‘All is shadow and dream,’ it is said in a funeral song of ours. I read the other day in a paper: ‘The constant habit of an Englishman is to belittle everything that is his.’ That is true, as it is true that the constant habit of a Serbian is to transform all the realities into dreams, to be-sing everything, every event, every life, and every death. I never met an Englishman boasting about his nation’s grandeur and riches and glory. I oftentimes ask myself: Do the people really know geography? Do they know that their Empire is not a square but a circle on this planet? If they make the comparison between their country and Switzerland or Serbia they have very little reason to be so modest and grumbling over themselves. Of course, it is quite a different thing if they will compare their country with Mars, or the Moon, or Jupiter. But what is England, what Serbia, what all the troubles that we call history? Little episodes in time and space! The main difference between the Englishman and the Serbian consists in the fact that the Englishman tries to transform his dreams into realities, and the Serbian tries to transform the reality into dreams. What could a free and big and undisturbed and happy people like the English do, indeed, if not to create the realities out of their dreams, thoughts, ideals, chimeras? And, on the other hand, how could the Serbian race, enslaved, tyrannised, despised through centuries and centuries, conserve its existence if it did not look upon all the brutal reality as upon a dream, a transitory shadow, a cloud of smoke hiding the face of the sun.
‘To be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering,’
says the great poet of ‘Paradise Lost.’ We Serbians feared and shamed always the weakness either in doing or in suffering. You have heard that the Serbians are a poetical people. It is true. But it was a necessity for the Serbian slaves to sing so as to transform the reality into dream, and so as to get the necessary strength to endure in suffering – to be strong in suffering and in doing. I am not a follower of Darwin, but I am sure that a great part of his theory can be proved just by our Serbian history. Our poetical instinct was latent in the time of our happiness and glory before the tragedy of Kosovofield. We did not sing so much during the time of our freedom. But in the dark time of the Turkish rule our capacity to sing developed brilliantly and abundantly. With sighing came singing also. Only by the developed poetical instinct we became ‘fit’ to survive’ our superhuman suffering, to survive five hundred years of crucifixion and imprisonment of soul and body. We dreamed and dreamed, and we sung and sung; and the more we dreamed and sung, the further we stood from the ugly reality. Like an animal which sleeps all the winter through, dreaming two summers – the past and the coming – we Serbians also, living a cold and dark winter of slavery through, dreamed two summers – the summer of the past glory and the summer of the coming freedom. Now, just when you think that I have too far deviated from my subject, I am at the right point to explain how one of our internal qualities became one of the causes of our tragedy in the modern time. After our partial liberation, a hundred years ago, we still remained poets and dreamers. We had not the right sense for the reality. Poets and dreamers, we could not transform ourselves at once into the real politicians and practical organisers of the State, as a bird from the desert coming into the forest cannot once change its grey feathers into green.
The art of self-advertisement
Our great emotionalism, excited by the long suffering, was quite an inconvenient quality for the real politics. Into every affair we put as much heart as brains, or even more heart than brains. We cannot manipulate in the politics with all those means and methods by which the nations of the ‘reinen Vernunft’ are so coolly playing, jumping, getting and losing, and again getting. An English friend of mine asked me one day: ’Why did not you Serbians make such an active propaganda in England for your cause, as the Bulgars did, for so many years? Why did you not speak and write about yourselves and advertise the people about your country, and get friends and supporters of your rights? I reply simply: ‘Because we could not.’ Yes, indeed, we could not. We are a silent, melancholic and discreet people. We are far from imposing ourselves on anybody. We are too proud of our history, of our great heroes and their immortal deeds to look upon politics as upon an acrobatic, skilful game. The Bulgars have the advantages – or disadvantages in our eyes – they have been freed not by themselves, and they have had kings not of their own people. They have been cherished and recommended by Russia, and as every cherished child they are too talkative. And having their kings from Austria, they have been educated during the last thirty-seven years quite in the Austrian manner of thinking and doing and making politics. Russia gave them the body, and Austria breathed her spirit into this body. In the modern political acrobacy the kings played a very important part. The imperialistic Germany knew it better than the democratic France and England. Germany’s conviction was that it is better to have a German king in the Near East than a dreadnought. I suppose that now France and England also are convinced that a German king in the Balkans – whether his name be Ferdinand or not - represents a more destructive force than any dreadnought or any howitzer. These German kings, our neighbours, and their next great protector, the Emperor from Vienna, with their unscrupulous political game, with their quick monkey’s face changing, with their infernal conspiracies and intrigues against Serbia, were for our peasant people the representatives of the European culture. Our people looked upon these German Kulturtrager, and have been disappointed and disgusted, and, therefore, also reserved and sceptic in regard to all the cultured peoples of Europe, but the reserved and sceptical make no friends. The German kings of our neighbouring nations have been a laisser passer to them for Western Europe. Our kings descended not from the European noblesse; they have been our noble peasants, without kinsmen outside from Serbia, without riches, and, consequently, without influence on the politics-making potencies. That was our disadvantage in the political game of the world. But still we considered it as sounder and more harmonious to have a king of our own people. It was doubtless a fine thought, but also a pathway of greater suffering.
Did you read the other day that the Kaiser is anxious to find a new German prince for the throne of Serbia? He thinks seriously to continue the same game with the little nations and his royal proteges. But the German game is no secret any more for anybody in the world, and the Kaiser rather should be anxious to think where to house tomorrow the German Royal refugees from the Near East!
Bad and good results of fatalism
Besides, our misfortune is partly due to our fatalism. We are greater fatalists than any Christian nation. The explanation of our fatalism lies in our sufferings. Sufferings makes infallibly a man a fatalist. A happy man is never a fatalist. We suffered horribly through all our history, from our furious enemies, as well as from our half-and-half friends. I was witness of a touching scene a year ago in a hospital of a little town in Serbia. I saw an English nurse, sick of typhus, lying in bed. A Serbian old lady stood at the bed and bitterly wept. ‘Why do you weep?’ I asked. ‘How not to weep, sir? replied the lady. ‘She, poor one, came so far to suffer and perhaps to die here. Why did she come in this country of suffering? The suffering is our part and not the English.’ That is a very popular thought in Serbia: the suffering is our Serbian part more than anybody else’s. The whole of our popular philosophy is founded on the conception of suffering.
‘In suffering only the true hero can be recognised’, says a Serbian proverb. Fatalism is like opium. It enables the slaves to endure in suffering. But it hinders the free men from acting freely and progressively. Our fatalism was our friend during the time of our slavery, but it was our enemy during the newest epoch of our history. Fatalism, together with our melancholy and poetical sensibility are our qualities; very useful qualities, indeed, for great deeds and sufferings, but very unwelcomed qualities for clever political propaganda, for minute social organisation, detailed advertisement, and quick diplomatic game. We have more capacity to hunt a lion than to catch a fly. Therein is our force, but therein is our weakness also. This is a humoristic side of our tragedy. In his admirable lecture on ‘Humour in Tragedy,’ Sir Herbert Tree proved how the humour is important for a perfect tragedy. ‘At this time,’ he said, ‘it is only the force and calm of humour which can stay us from crossing the borderland which separates despair from madness.’ The happy people of Piccadilly Circus joked the other day to our poor Serbian Government with words: 'The Serbian Governemnt is now scooting to Scutari!"
We smile and hope after all
The most divine thing in a tragedy, after suffering, is a smile. Even Christ smiled Himself in the time of His agony in the garden, seeing ‘a great multitude with swords and staves coming out as against a thief.’ A smile in a tragedy makes the tragedy greater. We Serbians are now smiling to our friend of old – death – who is now making in our country a rich harvest by the sword of Kaiser, as it did five hundred years ago by the sword of the Sultan. With a smile, we are asking: ‘Where is indeed the human progress? A Christian Kaiser does today the same diabolic destruction of Serbia as a Mohammedan Sultan did half a thousand years ago. Where is the progress?’
With a smile we see now that this strip of Albania which was called three years ago the Serbian window of the Adriatic is now the whole of Serbia. The whole of Serbia in a window!
With a smile we are wondering how it happened that we are perishing in the very great and exceptional moment in history as we happily got to have as real allies and supporters great Russia, England, and France?
With a smile we are asking: ’In what regard is our century better than the century of Nebuchadnezzar, the great ox-king, or king-ox, from Babylon?’
And still we hope. We are fighting for Freedom and Justice. Our fighting for such ideals could be a definite failure only in the case if there were no God. But there is a God; the whole of Serbia believes in a God. Our fighting cannot be a failure, as our God cannot be a chimera.
When I speak here Death is at work in Serbia, paving Serbia with dead corpses, making from Serbia a mournful cemetery, a ‘valley of Death’. Serbia is now very similar to a cemetery, full of silence, bones, and hyenas.
Still, the last act of a great tragedy is not Death but Resurrection.
I don't believe that Serbia will entirely die. But if that should happen, even for a short time, I would write on the sacred tomb of my martyred country the most suitable epitaph: 'Here rests a loyal friend of England.'
PUBLISHED BY
THE FAITH PRESS AT THE FAITH HOUSE
22 BUCKINGHAM STREET, LONDON, W.C. 1916
Електронско издање: Славјанка
