I
THE SOUL OF SERBIA
'It is not in mortals to command success;
But we will do more, my friend, we will deserve it.'
Addison
The great Belgian poet, Maeterlinck, believes in the soul of plants and even of material things and elements. Is there anybody among you who doubts that Serbia has a soul? Is there anybody, brethren and sisters, with the conviction that Serbia lives ‘by bread alone’, and that she fights by muscles alone? If there is one person only who thinks so, I would consider myself very happy to engage all my time and all my force to correct such a conviction. I would be happy to prove that not by muscles so much as by soul Serbia was enabled to endure five hundred years of slavery under the Turks, to suffer during such a long time without being annihilated, to get rid of the Asiatic yoke lately without anybody’s help, to resist indomitably the greediness of almost all her neighbours, to be so brilliantly victorious over the Austro-Magyars in November, 1914, and finally to defend in our days her independence against the organised attack of the Kaiser’s troops, allied with the troops of the Austrians, Magyars, and Bulgars, and allied also with the perfidious treachery, Mongol brutality, and all kinds of worms which have grown up through centuries and centuries in the mist and darkness of Balkanic slavery. The Serbian history was a voyage on a long, thorny way, – on a very thorny way indeed. The only physical force, without being doubled – oh, much more than doubled! – by the moral and intellectual force, i.e. by the soul itself, was certainly not sufficient, not even for a bigger national body than the Serbian, to make such a thorny pilgrimage, ever struggling against oppression, and ever striving for an independent being. But
Killers of the Body are not Killers of the Soul
Our physical being is not superior in any way to the physical being of our enemies. Compared with the Turks in robustness and corpulence, the Serbs are the losing party. Naturally a race of conquerors must be more robust and more stout than a race of slaves.
At the moment of the first Serbian conflict with the Mongol race, the Turks might have been weaker individually in bodily strength than we Serbs. Only by their immense number they succeeded in overwhelming us. Three Turks were engaged in fighting against one Serb in the famous battle of Kosovo (A.D. 1389), just as now three Germano-Bulgars are against one Serb. Two of our kings have been killed during seventeen years in these engagements against the Turks – King Vukashin under the walls of Adrianople and King Lazar on the field of Kosovo. You can now easily imagine how many of our noblemen and brave fighters must have perished when two kings in seventeen years’ fighting in the first ranks were killed. But you cannot easily imagine, without reading the historic documents, how many hundred thousands, yea, millions, of our people have been killed by the fierce invaders from Asia during five centuries! The massacres have been ordered by the Turkish rulers and robbers, carefully prepared for like the great festivals, and carefully executed, from year to year, from century to century. Western Europe remembers with horror one bloody St. Bartholomew’s night. I have not time enough to count for you all the blood-red nights in our history of five hundred years. Europe is now beginning to learn Serbian history.
In learning Serbian history under the rule of the criminal Turks, Europe will probably forget all the ‘standard-crimes’ of men and nations in her West. It happened once after a long, long butchery that the Turks looked all around and saw only cripples and blind beggars in the Serbian country, in the Fatherland of the great heroes of old. The body of the Serbian nation was obviously killed. But still the soul lived. The cripples and the blind were certainly not representatives of the Serbian physical force of old, but they were always the representatives of the national soul. If you look a little deeper in the human life you will be astonished to see how humble is the soul in the Universe. The most sublime soul sometimes dwells in the poorest and ugliest house. The blind Milton, the hunch-backed Pope, and the lame Byron certainly cannot be taken as examples of English physical strength, but why not as examples of the English soul? The Serbian blind beggars, the miserable physical constructions they must have been, sang the national past, prophesied the national future, formulated the national rights and hopes, and spiritualised the terrible national suffering – widening with their clairvoyance the horizon of history.
Like the dark cellar in which the vegetables are preserved fresh and green during the winter until the spring, so our blind bards preserved the soul of the Serbian people throughout the cold winter of slavery until the spring of freedom. The barbarous killers of the body could not kill the soul. But
The Modern Killers of the Body
cannot kill the soul either. You are all witnesss of that. Poland is today more physically killed than ever in history, but who dares to say that the Polish soul is killed too? In America there exists a New Poland, new in body and soul.
What do you think about the Armenians? Did not Lord Bryce affirm the other day that 800,000 of them have been slaughtered in the recent massacre? The rest are now persecuted systematically, and who knows at this moment, while we are here comfortably sitting and speaking, how many of these unhappy Armenians are flying before their oppressors looking towards Mount Ararat, where Noah found his salvation, and searching in vain for an ark to save themselves from the deluge of the overflowing Turkish fury? And still the soul of Armenia cannot be killed.
And Belgium? Wealthy and industrious Belgium, though she has lost her body, has found her soul. 'I saved my soul', said the King of Belgium. Never in modern history has the soul of Belgium been seen so clearly as in this war, since the great trial came in the form of the German invasion and the sore desolation of Maeterlinck's country.
What, then, should I say in this connection about my poor country? The modern killers of the body have shown skilfulness in their murderous work even more in Serbia than in any other corner of the world from Hamburg to Bagdad. The Germans invaded Serbia with one plan: to conquer. But they drove away all the Serbian population from all the northern districts into which they came. You may ask, Why? In order to take corn, hay, cattle, metals and everything from the deserted houses. And so they killed thousands and thousands not directly with their hands but indirectly through hunger. And then they plundered all the towns and villages under the pretext that they found them deserted. The Magyars and Bulgars, the nations which received just as much of the German chemical and atheistic civilisation as is necessary to make them fittest for the crime – these Magyars and Bulgars invaded Serbia from north, west and east, with two plans: to conquer and to exterminate. More capable of carrying out the second than the first purpose, they availed themselves of German troops and German howitzers to conquer the Serbian land – that land detested with a deadly hatred, yet envied for its glory. The extermination they accomplished with a diabolical accuracy. The old men and women, the sick and wounded, the crippled and blind, have been slaughtered with joy and satisfaction. The houses, schools, and haystacks with the sheltering Serbian fugitives have been burnt, the bishops and priests insulted, the churches transformed into stables, the beautiful Hebrew synagogue in Belgrade reduced to ashes. The whole of the Serbian land is now nothing but the clay of the bodies of the innocent – nothing but a chaos of dead human bodies with the criminal spirit of the killers triumphing over that chaos.
If you ask me, ‘What is Serbia now?’ I will reply:
‘The Serbian language is no longer spoken, but only whispered on the soil of Serbia.’
If you ask me again, ‘What is Serbia now?’ I will reply:
‘The Babylonian king of old, the destroyer of Jerusalem, would be ashamed if he could look today upon the ruined Serbia; so imperfect was his destructive work in comparison with the work of the great Hunter and his dogs. Then how could I otherwise call the Kaiser from Berlin and his company than by the name: ‘the great Hunter and his dogs’!
If you ask me again, ‘What is Serbia now?’ I will reply:
‘A great heap of the slaughtered dead despising the living killers.’
Shall I give one more reply?
‘Serbia is now and will be henceforth the conscience of her enemies and her friends. The enemies will be, like Richard the Third, disturbed in their sleep by the pale face of the destroyed Serbia, whispering like spirits:'Why did you sin so much against me?' And her friends will be henceforth frightened in their dreams by the phantom of martyred Serbia, with the everlasting reproach: ‘Why did you not help me in time?’
But no, I am wrong – the dead reproach no one. Allow me now to resume what I said with the following statement: The modern killers succeeded perfectly in accomplishing their crime against Serbia, to kill Serbia’s body, but they succeeded in no way in killing the Serbian soul. Serbia’s body being dead, Serbia’s soul is now more alive than ever.
Our Soul is Full of Tears
Will you believe me when I say that no people in the world weep so much as the Serbian people? That is in no way our physiological failure, but rather our soul. Our soul is in our tears. We wept in our joy and we wept in our distress. In our joy we wept because our joy has been only a rare and surprising visitor, and in distress we wept because distress has been our perpetual householder. With tears, with ‘holy water’ – as Shakespeare called them – with only ‘holy water’ upon the earth, as we dare to say, Serbia is inundated more than any big empire in the world. If this holy water sanctifies, as presumed, then Serbia is surely sacred soil.
Even our national hero and our model, Marko Kraljevich, the hero of our national poetry, and the hero of Mestrovich’s sculpture also, wept very much. He wept on hearing about the wicked deeds of the Turks; on hearing how the Turks killed and plundered the poor ‘raya’; on hearing how they robbed the Serbian girls and carried the Serbian boys to Stamboul. He wept on seeing the Serbian people in rags and the robber Turkes in silk and satin; on seeing the Christian Cross overshadowed by the Crescent; and on seeing the Turks defiling the Serbian sanctuaries and carving the eyes of the Serbian saints’ pictures. He fought many duels and killed many Turkish tyrants, but he wept even when he once killed a Turk – Mussa, whom he considered a greater fighter than himself. He possessed a gigantic body – as the popular tradition described him – though he had a melancholy soul, sorrowful and tearful. That is quite the Serbian soul – melancholy, sorrowful and tearful! We Serbs, we are lovers of tears!
‘Better is a bath in tears than in Jordan’, says a Serbian proverb.
Another proverb says: ‘So many worthy prayers as many tears.’
And another: ’A temple will be built on every spot on which a tear-drop fell.’
And another: ‘With tear-drops the sins also come out.’
And another: ‘It is better to weep with the wise than sing with the foolish.’
Another again: ‘There are only two nations upon the earth: that which weeps and that which laughs.’
And another again: ’The mourning of a sufferer awakes the angels, the laughing of a drunkard awakes the devil.’
(I remember a sentence of St. Bernard who said, ”The tears of penitents are the wine of angels!’ If that is true then all the angels are in Serbia!)
Now somebody may think that tears made the Serbian people wiser. That is the topic which may be discussed. But it is clear and out of all discussion that the long suffering affected our hearts so much that they became more soft and humble. You have probably heard that we Serbs had a very strong aristocracy in the Middle Ages, in the time before our suffering and weeping in Turkish chains. But certainly you did not hear at what time our aristocracy, our princes, dukes and velmoges disappeared. I myself cannot precisely indicate to you the date. But I can tell you with certitude, that it happened during the slavery, during, and because of, the common hardships and common humiliation. And if you wish me to speak more precisely I can say: it happened on the day when our rich and poor, our noble and ignoble, united their tears, having been equally injured and downtrodden by iniquity and brutality. Consequently the Serbian democracy was born in tears. That is a point that I should especially accentuate to an English audience. Your country is the home and hearth of the European democracy. Your democracy was formed after long experimenting and reasoning. Wisdom is the foundation of your democratic organisation. Yet our Serbian democracy is quite different. It is very similar to the American democracy. It is something unplanned, unprepared, spontaneous and genuine. For a long time we have had a democracy without knowing its name. Many other peoples first invented the name ‘democracy' and then went to find that for which such a name may be suitable. One day when the origin and essence of our democracy shall be studied the world will be surprised, as it was by our coming into independent being a few hundred years ago.
Our democracy is in some ways very similar to the American.
Serbia is the little America
or America in Europe. A hundred years ago, as the famous Burke wonderfully advocated the New World and prophesied a grand future for it, America numbered less than three million inhabitants. That was an entire world in ovo. Serbia of today has five million. America’s population at the present time is nearly a hundred million. I have, of course, no intention of making a comparison of America’s and Serbia’s bodies, but only of their souls. What was the spirit of America from the beginning, if not the protest against Europe? Except in the case of the curiosity of Columbus and his comrades, America from the very beginning has coloured herself with an anti-European colour. The many grotesque qualities of the physical and spiritual civilisation in the America of today are the product of the old desire to differ as much as possible from Europe.
Well, we Serbs arose a century ago as a protest against Europe.
We protested against the Turkish tyranny which abased us to stupid animals or dead things. Our blind bards excited the soul of the slaves against the inhuman dominators. They sang about the equal right of all men, consequently of Serbs also, to live freely upon the earth. They passionately rejected and condemned the Turkish pretension to exploit Serbian property, to dispose of Serbian lives freely and irresponsibly. They even argued that the laborious and sober Serb should possess greater rights than the lazy and vicious Turk. We protested, and we arose to fight. Yet the whole of Europe supported the Turk and applauded his intention of punishing the Serbian rebels. But our loud protest against the bloody Turk was at the same time a silent protest against Europe.
We protested soon afterwards against Metternich’s Austria. When I say Metternich’s Austria, I mean the most anti-Christian rule in a Christian country. As Turkey represented in the Balkans the most perverse Mohammedan regime, quite contrary to the true and beautiful Islamic spirit of righteousness, so Austria represented, and unfortunately still represents, the most perverse Christian regime, quite contrary to the true Christian spirit of national and personal liberty. Perhaps you will ask: ‘How does the Christian, or anti-Christian, rule in Austria concern you?’ Certainly, if you suppose the frontier between Serbia and Austria to be a national and natural one, as the frontier between England and France, or between France and Italy, you were quite right in putting such a question. But please take notice of the fact that the Kingdom of Serbia, with Montenegro, includes only a minority of the Serbian race. This minority numbers something over five million. But there are over eight million of our brethren (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) in the monarchy of the Hapsburgs. How could we not be troubled with the question of what life they live and what government they have?
We did right, I am convinced, or at least we did what the English people would do if they had eight million of their brethren under the yoke of any unscrupulous foreigners. We protested and protested. Our protest was ridiculed by Austrian diplomacy and journalism, and, so ridiculed and caricatured, came to English and French ears. Self-sufficient and comfortable Europe was afraid only of any trouble, and therefore Austria, with her peaceful perfidy calumniating ‘troublesome’ Serbia, found a more willing listener than protesting Serbia. What could poor Serbia do in such a case? She protested loudly against Austria and silently against the whole of Europe. Certainly her protest, loud or silent, was like a voice ‘in the desert’. Yet she still protested melancholically and waited hopefully. Her thought at that time were as these: -
‘Both the Sultan and the Kaiser have golden crowns but hearts of coal.’
Or, as a Turk asked a Serbian: ‘Why are you Serbs so poor and naked?’ the reply was: ‘Because justice is our only clothing.’
Or another Serbian proverb: ‘Better thinks the horse of a Turkish Bey than the Bey himself. The Bey sees Beys and slaves in the world, and his horse sees men only.’
Or another word: ’What is the earthquake? The earth trembles because of the injustice of man to man. What means the eclipse of the sun? The sun hides its eyes so as not to see how the brother kills his brother.’
The suffering people comforted themselves with sayings like these: -
‘Fools only laugh in this world, but sufferers and God will laugh in the other.’
Or: ’For a long time God did not make Paradise, but after He saw the sufferings of the Serbs He made it.’
Poor people! Their hopes saved them. The force of their soul endured all the physical pain and privation. The killers of the body never succeeded in killing their soul.
Beautiful Death
In no country in the world can you hear the people speaking so much about beautiful death as among the Serbian people. Even lately you may have read the message of the Serbian Premier, Mr. Pashich, that the Serbs have decided to fight until the last man, because, he said: ’It is better to die in beauty than to live in shame.’ ‘To die in beauty’ – to have ‘a beautiful death’ – that is quite the Serbian spirit of old and modern times. The Serbs in Montenegro sang with passion and envy every heroic death. Such popular songs habitually ended:
‘Happy is he, now and for ever,
For he died such a beautiful death.’
And the Sloven poet from Ljubljana (Laibach), Simon Gregoric, sang, quite in the national spirit:
'To die, my brethren, is not painful;
To abandon hope, that is painful.'
As a young Serbian monk, Avakum, was impaled by the Turks, his mother stood below and wept. And the son looked toward her and said:
‘Mother, dear, my thanks for your motherly milk. But do not weep; the Serb is Christ’s follower and enjoys death.’
Another Serbian martyr said to his torturers: ‘My pain is only for a short time, but your shame is for ever. I am going to the place where I can despise your life. Sweet is to be dead without you, as it is bitter to live with you.’
Not to fear death was the most-recommended dogma of Serbian conduct of life for centuries. ‘Fear very often dishonours life,’ said a great Serbian prince from Montenegro.
Life is not worth so much that honour may be sacrificed for it. Life in slavery is uglier than death. A beautiful death seems sometimes to be the very aim of life. It is considered as a bath for all the impurities of a sinful life. I remember a Serbian officer whose life was lax and impure. In the battle on the Drina he died a hero’s death, and at once the whole of his life was transfigured in the eyes of all the people. His life was dignified and ennobled by his death. The shadows vanished and the light was exaggerated. That has always, and for everybody, the same great effect – I mean a beautiful death. A witness of the present war, an English gentleman, Rev. R. J. Campbell, writes of the ‘higher command’ that men in the war oftentimes heard and consequently rushed into death. He described ‘an exultant joy in losing everything, forsaking everything, crucifying everything dear to the natural man.’ And then he adds: ’Witness Serbia today; old men, sick men, women, girls, little children dying with arms in their hands. This is Serbia’s hour of agony and glory. Her people are not merely being defeated; they are being exterminated. They need not be, and at first sight one wonders why they should consent to be. All they have to do is to throw down their arms and submit to the invader. They might have to suffer a little more, endure an ignominious subjection, but at least this tide of slaughter would be stayed. And they will not. The world, with parted lips and straining eyes, beholds that they will not. Yet these very people not so long were mean, ignorant, chaffering, thieving, petty traders and pig-breaders. Any who have had to deal with them know they were no models of all the virtues. (Sunday Herald, December 5, 1915). So writes Mr Campbell, the well-known preacher and moralist. And I can say only: Yes, we have been a mean, ignorant, chaffering, thieving people, and we never have been models of all the virtues. I was once in the parish of Mr. Campbell. There is a tube-station, as in many others in London, and in this tube-station I read the same words that I read in every tube-station in London: ’Beware of pickpockets!’ I was ashamed, because I thought, ’Doubtless by this we Serbs are meant!’ Yet the beautiful death is like a white snow cover hiding all the black spots of mud and dirt. An unselfish death may be the atonement for a selfish life. A heroic death may be a great light for a dark life. Mr Campbell seems to think that the present suffering of Serbia is recovering or rather re-creating Serbia. Like a snow-white cover, a glorious and beautiful death covers now the whole of Serbia, of the mean, sinful Serbia. There is no more mud and dirt to be seen over there. There came suffering and sanctified Serbia. Yes – sancta Serbia!
The Triumph of the Soul.
I will remind you of a curious psychological fact that only in this world-war became obvious to everybody. This fact is: Opression of the body results very often in a revival of the soul. Do you think that Zeppelins brought only damage to the people of London? Or that the German submarines destroying the Lusitania and Arabic did purely harm to English interests? Methinks not so. Methinks that the Zeppelins and submarines were destructive only for English bodies and constructive for English souls. Physical suffering awoke the conscience and patriotism of this country. Lord Kitchener’s call ‘for more men’ was even strengthened by the raids of Zeppelins and submarines and by the martyr death of Miss Cavell. By their inhuman warfare the Germans killed some thousands of bodies, but stirred and kindled some millions of souls in Great Britain.
Our Serbian history gives an experimental proof of how oppression of the body results in a revival of the soul. The more the Serbian body was oppressed the higher the Serbian soul was uplifted. In the happy time of peace and pleasure man lives more the physical life, and in the dark time of bodily oppression man lives more the spiritual life. It seems to me sometimes that life is identical with freedom. When the body is quite free, then it becomes the centre of a man’s life. When the body is in the chains of slavery, then only the soul can be free; and being free it becomes the centre of a man’s life. You will mention that the harmony of the two is ideal. You will say: The best is when a man is free in body and soul. I were shortsighted should I not agree with you. But it is unfortunately stated as a rule that in the case of the freedom of body and soul practically only the body is free.
During the time of our sufferings our Serbian soul was similar to the lightnings in the black clouds; the body was despised, the soul exalted.
‘My body belongs to the Turks and dogs, but my soul is mine,’ was a Serbian saying.
The intensity of the life of the soul corresponded to the intensity of bodily oppression. The soul endured, survived, triumphed. That is the lesson of the Serbian past. That is the lesson of the present time in Serbia too. Do not think, please, that our belief in the supreme victory of good over evil is shaken by our present suffering. Do not believe that our hopes are banished by the present catastrophe. Many times in our history we have been cast by Fate to the very bottom of Hell. Yet on this bottom of Hell we still believed in Heaven.
We cannot Command Success
One of your great poets, Addison, wrote this true and beautiful sentence: -
‘It is not in mortals to command success;
But we will do more, my friend, we will deserve it.’
These words can be applied very well to our Serbian fate. So can we Serbs say: It was not in our power to command success, but we did our best, and we deserved success. For eighteen months Serbia fought victoriously for her freedom, for the freedom of all her Southern Slav brethren under the yoke of Austro-Hungary, and for the common cause of her powerful Allies. You can hardly imagine all the privations and hardships which Serbia has endured since this world struggle began.
And now! What a catastrophe! The country conqured by the modern Nebuchadnezzar of Berlin; the army pressed to the Adriatic coast; many thousands of old men and women, of helpless children and their mothers, fled to the Kingdom of the German King Constantine, to the inhospitable Albanian desert, or to the heroic but breadless Montenegro. Without home, without food, without aim! Their life is nothing else than a silent – a slow –dying out.
And still the soul of the suffering Serbia is not dead. She is again put on the bottom of Hell, but still she looks towards Heaven with belief, hope, and expectation. She looks over the sea towards this blessed and Leading Island, whispering:
'I am dying for the cause for which England has been living. That cause comprehends the Christian ideals of freedom and of humane civilisation. But my Soul cannot die, my Day will come. I am very sorry that England must suffer so much because of my suffering. (She has suffering enough of her own.) I did not get success, but I deserved success. When England, the leading country of human civilisation, thinks that I deserved success - and she does think so - I am satisfied. The killers of my children have not killed my soul. I did my duty – I saved my soul.’
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