Why? Because the village is the very foundation of all that we possess
in material, spiritual and moral good. After the Turks conquered Serbia,
five hundred years ago, the Serbian population was forced by the
conquerors by degrees to abandon the towns and to retreat into the
villages, and then to abandon even the villages in the plains, on the
banks of the rivers, where the soil was the most fruitful, and to escape
into the forests, mountains and less accessible country. The village
thus became the very soil upon which has grown our democracy. That is
the difference between our democracy and the west European, where the
democrats movement started and developed in the towns. Driven into the
forests and mountains by the common enemy, despoiled of freedom and
riches the upper and lower classes, the learned and the illiterate,
suffered the same abasement and injustice, did the same work, ploughed
and sowed, struggled against the same evil, the Turkish yoke, and sang
of the same hopes. Under such conditions was born our democratic spirit,
which served wonderfully afterwards, in the time of liberation and
freedom, as a base for our democratic institutions, social, political
and ecclesiastical.
I said that our village is the very foundation of our material wealth.
We have, so to say, no industry, but every one of our peasants has his
own land. The land being fertile, our country never knew what hunger
was. It was a pleasure to see the peasants in the spring ploughing their
own soil; in the summer looking over the-golden harvest of their own; in
the autumn contemplating the stores plenteously filled; in the winter
feasting and resting in their own houses. If you should ask any of the
Serbian peasants: "To whom does this house belong? or this field? or
this harvest?" he would unmistakably reply: "To God and to me!"--so in
the mind of our peasants God is the first landlord, and the second they
themselves.
Even during the last three years of war in Serbia there was plenty of
all the necessaries of life, especially of wheat and cattle, of fruits
and hay, of vegetables and wood.
But now--in Serbia all the wealth is in the past; it exists only in the
memories of the despoiled, plundered, devastated, starved and silent
slaves. In the German papers there was published a private letter from a
German soldier in Serbia. "We are very well here. We have plenty of food
and everything. Much more abundantly than we had on the Western front!"
I am sure you understand well what this soldier meant and whence such an
abundance in food supply "and everything" for the German invaders in
Serbia came. Almost simultaneously a German army commander wrote to a
man in a neutral country these words: "Not only I permit you to come
into Serbia and help the Serbs, but I pray you come at once. Among the
population in Serbia there is the greatest misery and almost starvation
_en masse._" What happened? The "civilised" subjects of Kaiser William
would not kill the civil people in Serbia directly as the stupid Turks
did, but indirectly in order to save the faithless honour of
"civilisation." They drove away the population--that means the old and
sick men, women and children--all other Serbs serving as soldiers and
being in retreat; they drove the population away, took food, cattle,
copper, warm clothes, carpets, covers, everything, and after this was
done, allowed the people graciously to come back "to their homes and
their customs," as the Kaiser declared. But to come how and where?
Thousands died on the way back, thousands succeeded in coming back to
their cold and breadless homes to die there; they are considered as the
happier; and thousands fled with the Serbian troops into Albania and to
the Mediterranean islands, where they died or are still dying from
hunger, but because they died in freedom and not as slaves they are
considered as the happiest.
We are beggars now. This is the first year in our history that we must
pray to men for bread; until now we prayed only to God for daily bread,
and God gave it to us abundantly. But we became beggars for bread only
after the German civilisation showed itself to be a beggar, poor in
moral, poor in truth and heart.