Of the four million inhabitants of Serbia proper, the larger number belong to the Orthodox Greek Church, but there are also a good many Roman Catholics and some Moslems. Though their life is in general very simple, Serbians are not wholly untouched by modern progress. Many towns have electric lights and telephones, and electric trams are by no means unknown. Serbia has rich mineral resources, which the State is undertaking to develop. Among their manufactures is a remarkable wool carpet and a certain kind of coarse linen. Though they have a fairly large output of silk, silk fabrics as well as finer textiles are imported. A man who has a salary of three thousand dollars is an exception, and considered very prosperous. Salaries of cabinet ministers hardly exceed this sum, and court life does not tend to any magnificence.
Serbians marry young. There is little illegitimacy in the country and infrequent divorce. They have been called automatically eugenic—on account of their strict marriage laws forbidding marriage under certain degrees of relationship. The Serbians are a domestic people, devoted to their children; hence, the present condition of the country is especially tragic.
The people of Serbia have the greatest admiration for Americans, and for the independence and political ideas of America.
The valorous struggle of little Serbia against Austria, its tireless enemy, astonished the world at the beginning of the present war. It accomplished hardly less for the cause of the Allies in the East than the resistance of Belgium in the West. Yet, at first, the sufferings of the more distant Serbians attracted less attention than the case demanded. Their agony continues acute and terrible.
V. SERBIA: SIGHING
Then, at last, Serbia reached the sea. Unexpectedly, it is true, and not at the point that she had long had in mind. Sad and bereft, was she deserted by God as well as by man? As she sat there alone she heard a confused murmur of voices, and she vaguely distinguished the cries of children for their fathers, and wives for their husbands—and tales echoed in her ears that were sadder, more horrible, than the most horrible tales of the Turkish night. Poor Serbia! Her garments were torn and stained with snow and mud, her face was bruised. Gone, gone her aspect of happy prosperity. Yet in spite of all she had suffered there was a light in her eyes—the light of her soul shining through the sadness. She was not bowed down, though her attitude spoke of sorrow. She was disturbed not for herself, but for her people. How they had suffered! She did not try to shut her ears to the murmurs that still came to her—children crying faintly and oh, so pitifully! and strong men, yes, she heard the moaning of strong men. Then as she looked in the direction of the sound, she saw a mother bowed in grief beside a long snowy road, yet uttering no word as old men, strangers to her, found a place for the little frozen body under the hard ground. She saw a long, long line winding up the narrow, shelving road, where a false step at any moment might send a man to death into the river five hundred feet below. "The best fighters in the world!" It had made her proud to hear this, but now how could they fight the savage winter? Worst place of all, Kossovo, where not so long before she had celebrated Mass triumphantly, Kossovo, again to be as when it was first named "The Field of Black Birds," "The Field of Vultures." Now the stricken lay never to rise again and for a moment Serbia could look no longer.
There were other things along the road—rifles, and cartridge belts, burdens too heavy to carry far, and she wished that all such things might lie on the ground forever, never to be used by young or old.