Dr. Inglis describes ‘the long peaceful summer,’ with its hopes of an advance to their aid on the part of the Allies. The Serbs were conscious the ‘Great Powers’ owed them much, for how often we heard the words, ‘We are the only one, as yet, who has beaten our enemy.’
‘Not till September did any real sense of danger trouble them. Then the clouds rolled up black and threatening on the horizon—Bulgaria arming, and a hundred thousand Germans massing on the northern frontier. They began to draw off the main part of their army from the Danube towards the east, to meet their old enemies. The Powers refused to let them attack, and they waited till the Bulgarian mobilisation was complete. The Allies discounted the attack from the north; aeroplanes had been out, and “there are no Germans there.” There are no signs whatever of any military movements, so said the wiseacres. The only troops there are untrained Austrian levies, which the Serbs ought to be able to deal with themselves, if they are up to their form last year.
‘Then the storm broke. The 100,000 Germans appeared on the northern frontier. The Bulgars invaded from the east, the Greeks did not come in, and the Austrians poured in from the west. The Serbian army shortened the enormous line they had to defend, but they could not stand against the long-distance German guns, and so began the retreat.
‘“What is coming to Serbia?” said a Serb to me, “we cannot think.” And then, hopefully, “But God is great and powerful, and our Allies are great and powerful too.” Strong men could hardly speak of the disaster without breaking down. They looked at one so eagerly. “When are your men coming up? They must come soon.” “We must give our people two months,” the experts among us answered, “to bring up the heavy artillery. We thought the Serbs would be able to hold the West Morava Valley.” “It is too hilly for the German artillery to be of any use,” they said.’
Dr. Inglis goes on to relate how all the calculations were wrong, how the Austrian force came down that very valley. The Serbs were caught in a trap, and that 160,000 of their gallant little army escaped was a wonderful feat. ‘That they are already keen to take the field again is but one more proof of the extraordinary recuperative power of the nation.’
Dr. Elsie gives an account of the typhus epidemic. The first unit under Dr. Soltau, in 1914, was able at Kragujevatz to do excellent work for the Serbian army after its victories, and it was only evacuated owing to the retreat in October 1915. The unit had only been a fortnight out when the committee got from it a telegram, ‘dire necessity’ for more doctors and nurses. The word dire was used, hoping it would pass unnoticed by the censor, for the authorities did not wish the state of Serbia from typhus to be generally known. We shall never know what the death-rate was during the epidemic; but of the 425 Serbian doctors, 125 died of the disease, and two-thirds of the remainder had it.
The Scottish Committee hastened out supplies and staff.
‘For three months the epidemic raged, and all women may ever be proud of the way those women worked. It was like a long-drawn-out battle, and not one of them played the coward. Not one of them asked to come away. There were three deaths and nine cases of illness among the unit; and may we not truly claim that those three women who died gave their lives for the great cause for which our country stands to-day as much as any man in the trenches.’
Dr. Inglis speaks of the full share of work taken by other British units—Lady Paget’s Hospital at Skopio, ‘magnificently organised’; The Red Cross under Dr. Banks ‘took more than its share of the burden’; and how Dr. Ryan of the American hospital asserted that Serbia would have been wiped out but for the work of the Foreign Missions.