Heroic Serbia (1916.) - Victor Berard
Heroic Serbia (1916.) - Victor Berard
Heroic Serbia (1916.) - Victor Berard
1-03 A,
M. VICTOR BERARD.
M. VICTOR BERARD is one of the ablest and
most cultivated French political writers. Born in
1864 and educated at the Ecole Normale Sup6rieure
he rapidly distinguished himself by the brilliance
of his intellect and the versatility of. his talent.
His Hellenic studies stimulated his interest in
2045480
4 HEROIC SERBIA
her off from the rest of the world and she had not
yet become, like Switzerland, a road and railway
centre where the travellers of half Europe meet.
Switzerland has been called the shunting pivot of
the railway engines and tourists of the West. The
Serbia of 1912 remained what she had been for
five or six centuries past the battlefield on which
the ambitions and diplomatic intrigues of the East
met. Already neighbouring armies were marking
it out as the rendezvous for the battles of the
morrow.
For five or six centuries Serbia had never
known complete independence. During the close
of the Middle Ages, before the arrival of the Turks
in Europe, she had been a great and prosperous
state stretching from the Save to the Adriatic.
Joseph had
(born in 1830), the idea of substituting
"
for this Dual system a project of Trialism," more
firmly planted on the triple base of the three
kingdoms which would be obtained by annexing
all the Jugoslav peoples and thus adding a Serbo-
pleasant week.
For fourteen years (1894-1908) it had been
possible to lay the responsibility for these excesses
upon the Sultan himself, who is at the same time
the supreme pontiff of Islam, the Mussulman Pope
or Caliph. At that time the Sultan-Caliph of
Constantinople was Abdul Hamid, who affected
extreme religious fanaticism. By his massacre of
Armenians he had earned the name of the " Red
Sultan," in Macedonia he continued his Armenian
exploits and he alone was believed to be responsible.
But when in the month of June, 1908 the outbreak
of the Young Turkish revolution had changed the
political facade of the Ottoman Empire, and when
the coup d'etat of August, 1909 had replaced the
Bulgaria Bulgaria
;
in her turn was attacked by
the Turks and the Roumanians. The Bulgarians
were punished for their aggression when the Greeks
defeated a Bulgarian army at Kukush. The Serbs
on the lines of the Bregalnitza made a heroic stand
who, on
order, he said, to defend his Austrian ally,
that very day, had given her complete adherence
to the Russian proposals. It is thus that Austria
Slobodan P. Jovanovic.
Sub-Lieutenant of Infantry, commanding the
3rd Company, 4th Battalion, ist regiment of the
Morava division, wounded 3Oth November before
Belgrade, died i8th December, 1914, buried in the
churchyard of Mali-Pozarevac.
"My son! I saved thee seven times from illness
and from death. I saved thee, I brought thee up to
thy nineteenth year, to see thee my first born give
thy life for thy country. Thou \vast hardworking,
intelligent, loyal. When thy comrades found time
to return to house and family, thou didst remain
at the frontbecause thou couldst not, and wouldst
not neglect thy work. Thy masters, comrades
and officers preserve thy memory. If thy father
had lived he would have been too old to take his
place in this Holy War. Thou hast replaced him
and hast done thy duty, thou hast given thy life to
deliver our hearths and our country which has
suffered so terribly. Thy young brother, thy
mother and thy three sisters weep for thee. But
thou hast found again thy father and thy colonel
Milutin Petrovic, who was killed beside thee. We
know that thou hast died as an intrepid hero for
the salvation of Serbia, We
pray God to recom-
pense thee. May thy ancestral soil which has
suffered so much rest lightly on thee. Thy
unhappy mother Vasilja."
The Victory of the Serbs is the triumph of a
free and conscientious nation. It is the victory
Zadrugas, for
permanent association of property
and work, under the authority of the eldest or
most able member. The property is not partitioned
up; the lands, flocks and houses are held in
common ; all the children are educated together,
and all live in one big menage round the same
court in different apartments.
The Zadrugas are united by the same solidarity.
On the day fixed for the harvest or the vintage, in
this or that field or vine-yard, all work without
remuneration for the Zadruga. which provides
food and drink for its voluntary workers. A
beginning is made with fields which have lost their
men and are cultivated by widows or orphans.
The commune is an hereditary association of
Zadrugas. where all common interests are freely
discussedand dealt with under the influence of the
most respectable and capable.
But the sentiment of national unity and racial
affinity dominates this particularist life. In even-
Serbian hamlet children are taught that not only
"
the " brothers make up the Zadrugas, the kingdom,
the country, but that beyond the existing frontier
they hold the sister countries and kingdoms of
HEROIC SERBIA 31
well-to-do peasant.
In mid-winter of 1912-1913, the Serbian troops
at last reached the Adriatic coast at Durazzo, after
two weeks of forced marching in the snow and icy
water of the Albanian highlands. On the last
heights when the sea came in sight an immense
joy overcame them all. They all understood that
in the history of the race and nation, it was a
lungs.
1
They ran
towards Durazzo before entering the town the
;
to give ground. A
ray of sunshine suddenly
illuminated the old tower of Marko above the river.
An officer started one of the Pesmes which cele-
brated the " "
hero's exploits. Forward and
Marko himself led
avengers.the
By evening
Prilep was in Serbian hands.
Ljuba Kovacevic, the former minister, is a
well-known Serbian historian. He had five
36 HEROIC SERBIA
daughters and a son, Vladeta Kovacevic, former
student of the University of Paris. At the battle
of Kumanovo, where he commanded the Mitrail-
I am
proud of thee. Thou hast joined the heroes
whose sufferings and death of old saved by millions
the lives and souls of our nation. Tell the
heroes of Kosovo, Dushan and Lazar and all the
martyrs of former days, that to-day Kosovo is
avenged."
Heroic Serbia
FROM THE FRENCH OF
VICTOR BERARD
PRINTED
FOR
THE KOSSOVO COMMITTEE