If we Serbs look upon the English power on this planet, and then look
and see our own less than modest place on the globe, we must unwillingly
exclaim in the words of the Psalmist: O Lord, what is man, that thou art
mindful of him?--or with a little change: O England, what is Serbia,
that thou art mindful of her? And the poor sons of Serbia, that thou
visitest them?
A small strip of land with five million inhabitants and without
seaboard. A peasant people devoted to agriculture and to nature, to the
forest and cattle, to songs and tales. A past full of glory, of blood
and sins. A present full of tears, pains and hopes. A king carried on a
stretcher through the rocky desert of Albania,--a loyal parliament which
refused to make a separate peace with the enemy even in the darkest hour
of national tragedy,--an honest government which did everything possible
to save the country, and which, when the country was nearly conquered,
exclaimed through its President: "It is better to die in beauty than to
live in shame!"--a fearless army, which for three years only knew
victory, now watching in snow on the mountains of Montenegro and
Albania, and lodging in the dens of wolves and eagles.[1] Another army
of old men, of women and children, fleeing away from death and rushing
to death. Shall I say that is Serbia?
No: that is only a part of Serbia.
You have heard talk of Greater Serbia. I personally think that Serbia
can never be greater than in this solemn hour of her supreme suffering,
in which all the civilised world in both hemispheres trembles because of
her catastrophe and sympathises with her. I personally love my little
country just because it is so little; and just because its deeds are
greater than its size. I am not sure that I should love it so much
should it happen to become territorially so big as Spain or Italy. But
I cannot help it; I must say that our Irridentists in Austro-Hungary are
more numerous than our population in Serbia. Eight millions of our
Serbo-Croat and Slovene brothers have been looking towards Serbia as
towards their Piedmont, waiting their salvation from Serbia, as
Alsace-Lorraine is waiting its salvation from France, and being proud of
Serbia as all slaves are proud of their free kinsmen. All the slaves
from Isonzo to Scutari are groaning under the yoke of an inhuman
Austro-Magyar regime, and are singing of Serbia as their redeemer from
chains and shame. Little Serbia has been conscious of her great historic
task, to liberate and unite all the Southern-Slavs in one independent
being; therefore she, with supreme effort, collected all her forces to
fulfil her task and her duty, and so to respond to the vital hopes of
her brethren.
Shall I say that is Serbia?
No; that is only physical Serbia.
But there is a soul of Serbia.
For five hundred years the Serbian soul suffered and believed. Suffering
sometimes breaks the belief. But the Serbian suffering strengthened the
belief of the Serbian people. With belief came hope, with hope strength;
and so the Serbs endured the hardest and darkest slavery ever recorded
in history, not so much by their physical strength as by the strength of
their soul. Besides, it was a great temptation for the Serbs to abandon
the Christian faith and to accept the faith of the Crescent. Under this
condition only, the Turks promised freedom to the Serbs and equal
rights. Several of the aristocratic families could not resist this
temptation and became renegade to the faith of their ancestors in order
to save their lives. But the mass of the people fearlessly continued to
be faithful to the belief in the Cross.