The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

a terrible calamity and are very glad if they can escape it; and this is easily understood. The soul and character of the Serbo-Croat nation were formed during long centuries of prehistoric life. The old prehistoric home of the Southern Slavs was in the woodlands of the Carpathian mountains and the vast plains of Russia stretching from the Black Sea to the Baltic. Mingling with other Slav tribes, they dwelt there peacefully during long centuries. They had no history and therefore we may presume that they were happy and content, ignorant of war and without any ambition for conquest.

The Carpathian woods supplied them with rich hunting-grounds; the rivers running north and south abounded in fish, and the vast steppes of Southern Russia, with their rich black soil, were a splendid granary then, as they are to-day. They lived without history, but it does not imply that they lived like savages, without any material civilisation. Far from that, they had long since passed from the state of nomadic tribes to the civilisation of settled agricultural peoples. They lived in large families—Zadruga —just as they live to-day; and the Russian Mir—the village Land Commune—probably dates back from those prehistoric days. They possessed a developed religious system based upon the worship of natural forces and the cult of ancestors. They had formed no State, but lived

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