_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 God,--God 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 passionate convulsion in a struggle for life and light. Yet our
confusion and unhappiness chiefly come from ourselves, and neither from
nature nor from God. 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 God.
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 God the Slow and the Righteous begins
to protest Himself. My protest is in words, my words are from the air.
But God'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--asserted 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 class in other countries,
are powerfully promoting human progress, the material as well as the
moral. Your nobility, 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: