GREECE ACCLAIMS.
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....
Little Montenegro Speaks
The following Montenegrin message to Italy appeared in La Gazetta del Popolo of July 21, (Aug. 3,) 1914:
THIS terrible European war, if one takes away from it the diplomatic ornaments with which the Chancelleries are wont to decorate it, dates from a century back. It is, let us hope, the final revolt of the nations oppressed by the unjust work of the Congress of Vienna.
The nationalities of which the powers of the Triple Entente, and especially Russia, have made themselves the champions have not provoked this bloody struggle. It was imposed on them by the reactionary spirit of the Germanic world, which desired to consolidate its hegemony, based on the sufferings of the weak, impossible to describe, and on the contempt of right, which was proclaimed as a system of government.
The neutrality observed up to now by your august Italian country has been a powerful assistance to the cause of right against the cause of oppression.
We Serbs of Montenegro and Servia are now on the point of conquering that national unity, which our poets, our thinkers, and our sovereigns have sung, implored, and prepared, and, following the trail opened by Mazzini, Cavour, and Garibaldi, we put our confidence in Italy, this mother of civilization, who by her smile embellishes the sun-kissed Slav shores of the Adriatic.
Help us in conquering the place which is awaiting us at the altar of justice! We firmly believe that Italy, when at the price of new sacrifices she shall have all of her exiled sons united under her glorious standard, will inaugurate a new era of friendly and intimate connections with the young Slav world, who from her hands received so many benefits and who in exchange offers her the collaboration of young and enthusiastic people in the great task undertaken by our protectors in the name of civilization and liberty.