The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

nation has been obliged to spend centuries of its existence in fighting Avars and Bulgars and, later on, their cousins the Turks and Magyars, and last, but most dangerous of all, the modern Huns of Germany. In this incessant warfare the Serbo-Croat race has acquired a warlike character and displayed fighting qualities which have found their best application in the last successful resistance to, and complete rout of, the overwhelming Austro-Hungarian forces. The Serbian army has won a reputation that fears no comparison, yet, in spite of the true fighting qualities amply displayed by the SerboCroat soldiers, the writer, who has been intimately acquainted with them, having followed them through the many vicissitudes of the Balkan wars, sharing their life and their difficulties, can say that by nature the Serbian peasant-soldier is not warlike; he cherishes no dreams of conquest or aggression. From time to time he would sing some of those official war-songs learned in barracks, but ever as he marched rapidly through the fertile fields of Old Serbia and Macedonia, as he climbed the steep, snow-clad crests of Albanian mountains, or pushed on through narrow gorges of rushing rivers, his heart was with his parents and children at home, he dreamt only of his orchards on the hills of Sumadia, of his maize fields in the Valley of the Morava. And when his heart was filled with home-sick longing, he would 27