_The following editorial article, headed "A New Marathon" on the
Servian victory, appeared in the Greek newspaper Patris of Athens on
Dec. 3, (16, New Style,) 1914, expressing the views of the Hellenic
Government:_
The reoccupation of Belgrade by the Servians is one of those military
feats which amount to historical phenomena. The Servians not only
contributed the greatest feat of the European war, as far as results
are concerned, but won for themselves an immortal page in the world's
history.
Greece alone has to show an analogous achievement, although greater,
when she expelled the Persian invasion.
Only the achievements of Arhangelovatz, Ouzhitse, and Lazarevats can
compare in a certain degree to the brilliancy of Marathon and Plateae.
And the Servian achievement appears all the more Hellenic if analogies
are to be considered.
The Servians, until yesterday a little people, with an army almost
insignificant in face of the masses of the Austrian columns,
submissive in times of peace, in the face of the most oppressive
demands of Austrian diplomacy--considered like all the small peoples
to be living at the mercy of the great--when the hour of supreme
defense for altars and hearths struck, and in the face of an enemy
threatening to swallow their country, they arose, terrible in their
vengeance, and repeated the feat of the routing of Goliath by their
small but invincible power.
This was possible because their regiments were not moved by the hope
of effectively beating the enemy, which hope springs from the
consciousness of numerical superiority, but they were enlivened and
strengthened before death by the undying fire of freedom, national
pride, and the conviction that they were thrust into the most honored
struggle, after which there would not be left for them anything but to
live or die.
And the Austrians, who considered their campaign against Servia as
mere child's play; the Austrians with their German military
organization; the Austrians, who constitute one-sixth of the entire
European military power, started against Servia with the same logic,
the same haughtiness, the same bombastic prediction of the result of
the unequal war with which the Persian masses moved against
Greece....