Belgrade, October 21.—The declaration of war has not set the Serbians singing in the streets. In the chief café there is displayed a great war map. Young soldiers not yet sent to the front lounge about in all the cafés and are lionised by the older men. They are the only signs of war.
Underwood & Underwood
BULGARIAN INFANTRY
The patriotic Serbian illustrates his case against the Turk by taking you for a ramble around his capital. The old Turkish quarters of the town are made up of narrow unpaved muddy lanes lined with low hovels. The modern Serbian town has handsome buildings markedly Russian in architecture, electric trams, and wood-blocked pavements. Near the railway station one side of a street is as the Turks left it and shows a row of hovels: the other side is occupied by a great school. The shops, because it is war-time and business is largely suspended, are mostly closed. But a few remain open with reduced staffs. The goods displayed are as a rule woefully expensive when they are not of local origin. Landlocked Serbia, surrounded by commercially hostile countries, finds imports expensive. British goods are very much favoured, but are hard to obtain.
The Serbians speak bitterly of the efforts of Austria "to strangle them commercially." "Whenever they wish to put diplomatic pressure upon us," said one Serbian to me, "they discover that swine fever has broken out in our country and stop our exports of pigs and bacon—our chief lines of export. What can we do? Once, in retaliation, we found that we suspected a consignment of Austrian linen goods of carrying swine fever and stopped it on the frontier. It almost caused war."
Nish (Serbia), October 22.—A military train carrying some members of the army and Staff has brought also a band of war correspondents this far. We were a merry but rather a hungry lot. The train has been sixteen hours on the journey, and as we started at 6 a.m. most of us did not bring any stores of food except such as were packed away and inaccessible in the big baggage. The wayside refreshment rooms are swept clean of all food. Finally we manage to obtain some bread, and five hungry correspondents in one carriage eat at it without enthusiasm, whilst in a corner sits a Serbian officer having a good meal of sausage and onions and bread. We make remarks, a little envious, a little jocose, in English, on his selfishness. "He is a greedy pig, anyhow," said one, putting the final cap on our grumbles. The Serbian officer had not betrayed by a smile or a frown that he understood but now in good English he remarked: "Perhaps you gentlemen will be so kind as to share this with me." We all laughed and he laughed then: and we took a little of the sausage, and liked that Serbian rather well: and no reference was made to what had gone before. At nightfall we stop at Nish and all my Press comrades leave the train to go on in the rear of the Serbian army. I push on to Sofia. Clearly these Balkan peoples are not quite so savage as I had thought once.
Sofia, October 24.—The position of the Bulgarian nation towards its Government on the outbreak of the war is, I think, extremely interesting as a lesson in patriotism. Every man has gone to fight who could fight. But further, every family has put its surplus of goods into the war-chest. The men marched away to the front; and the women of the house loaded up the surplus goods which they had in the house, and brought them for the use of the military authorities on the ox wagons, which also went to the military authorities to be used on requisition. A Bulgarian law, not one which was passed on the outbreak of the war—they were far too clever for that,—but a law which was part of the organic law of the country, allowed the military authorities to requisition all surplus food and all surplus goods which could be of value to the army on the outbreak of hostilities.
The whole machinery for that had been provided beforehand. But so great was the voluntary patriotism of the people that this machinery practically has not had to be used in any compulsory form. Goods were brought in voluntarily, wagons, cart-horses and oxen, and all the surplus flour and wheat, and—I have the official figures from the Bulgarian Treasurer—those goods which were obtained in this way totalled in value some six million pounds. That represented the surplus goods, beyond those necessary for consumption by the Bulgarian people, at the outset of the war. The numbers of the Bulgarian people represent half the population of London. The peasant population is very poor. Their national existence dates back only half a century. But they are very frugal and saving; that six millions which the Government signed for represented practically all the savings which the Bulgarian people had at the outbreak of the war. I am told that the gold supply in the Bulgarian Treasury at the declaration of war was only three million pounds. So that there was an army of 350,000 men put into the field, and only three million pounds as the gold supply.