“America is the land of rapid changes,” he said, when I told him that I was that boy, and he added: “You must have changed much, looking as you do like a real American; but we here and our dear old Austria are like all old people; we do not change except to grow older and more decrepit.” He expressed exactly what I felt as I looked to the right and to the left of the train which was taking me to Budapest. Everything seemed to move slowly, with the deliberate step of feeble old age. Budapest looked small, and the suspension bridge, which had nearly taken my breath away eleven years before, when I first saw it, looked puny in comparison with the Brooklyn suspension bridge.
I spent no time in looking around to explore the virtues of the Magyar metropolis, but hustled, and presently I was on the boat which eleven years before had brought me to Budapest. I could hardly believe that it was the same boat. It must have shrunk incredibly, I thought, or else my life in America had changed the vision of my eyes. Everything I saw looked small and shrivelled up, and if I had not seen the snow-covered giants of Switzerland as viewed from the top of Titlis, Europe itself might have appeared to me as small and shrivelled up.
When supper was served I noticed that everybody had atrocious table manners, even people of high official rank, several of whom I discovered among my fellow passengers. Eleven years before everybody on the boat had looked so high and mighty that I was almost afraid to look at them, but this time I was much tempted to imagine that I was considerably above most of my fellow passengers. I resisted the temptation. It was a good thing that my climbing of the Titlis had nearly floored me; it suppressed much of that haughtiness which naturalized American immigrants bring with them when they visit Europe.
The next morning I noticed a group of Serb students who were returning home from the universities of Vienna and Budapest. They were from my native Voyvodina, and not from Serbia, as I found out later. Their appearance did not impress me very agreeably, but nevertheless I quivered with delight when I heard their Serb language. They spoke freely, although they must have noticed that they attracted my attention. One of them remarked that I could pass for a Serb, if it were not for my manner, my dress, and my very ruddy complexion. The voyage across the Atlantic and a week’s tramping in Switzerland were responsible for my exaggerated ruddiness. A second one thought that young Serb peasants in Banat are just as ruddy, particularly during the harvest season, but he admitted that my appearance did not suggest that my occupation was that of a peasant. Another one suggested that I was probably a rich South American with very much red Indian blood in my veins. I laughed and, introducing myself, informed him, speaking Serb with some difficulty, that I was neither a South American nor an Indian, but just a Serb student who was a citizen of the United States. A Serb from the United States was a very rare bird in those days and, needless to say, I was invited most cordially to join the group, which I did. Not one of them reminded me of the alert, well-groomed, athletic, and playful American college boys. They all had long hair brushed back in a careless fashion, affecting the appearance of dreamy poets or disciples of radical doctrines. Most of them had slouch hats with wide brims, indicating radical tendencies. Their faces looked pale and suggested excessive indoor confinement in Vienna and Budapest cafés, playing chess or cards, or discussing radical doctrines. Most of them would have been hazed if they had matriculated in any American college without modifying much their appearance and manner. They certainly took themselves very seriously. They knew, I thought, many things which they had read in books, principally in books dealing with radical social-science theories. Tolstoy’s name was mentioned quite often, and the latest apostles of socialistic doctrines also had their share of adulation. They must have observed that conversation about these things bored me, and they asked me, with some display of sarcasm, I thought, whether American college students took any interest in modern advanced thought. “They do,” said I, considerably irritated, “and if it were not for Maxwell’s new electrical theory and for other advanced theories in modern physics I should not have come to your moribund old Europe.” “Advanced thought in social and not in physical sciences,” they said, explaining their original question, and I answered that the most popular American doctrine in social science still rested upon foundations laid a hundred years before that time, in a document called the Declaration of Independence. They knew very little about it, and I knew even less about their radical social-science theories, and we changed the subject of our conversation.
Late in the afternoon the boat approached Karlovci and the hills of Frushka Gora. I could not help reminiscing, and entertained my Serb acquaintances with a description of my experiences with the theological students eleven years before, including the disappearance of my roast goose. My Serbian vocabulary was quite shaky, but nevertheless I made quite a hit, and they begged me to go on with my reminiscences. Whenever I was at a loss for a word, they helped me out. Toward sunset Belgrade hove in sight, and its majestic appearance thrilled me and made my Serb vocabulary run as smoothly as ever. I saluted Belgrade as the acropolis of all the Serbs, and expressed the hope that it might soon become the metropolis of all the southern Slavs. “This is the kind of advanced thought in social and political science that American students are interested in,” I said, reminding them of their former question, and I added a few sarcastic remarks about advanced thoughts in social and political science which are not born in the heart of a nation but imported from the dens of French, German, and Russian theorists. They quickly caught what I called the American point of view, but they did not oppose it, for fear, I thought, of offending me. They saw the American chip on my shoulder, and did not care to knock it off.
I had not seen Belgrade since I was a little boy, and as the boat approached it I saw its high fort rising like a Gibraltar above the waters of the Danube and looking anxiously across the endless plains of Austria-Hungary, which, like wide-open jaws of a hungry dragon, seemed to threaten to swallow it up. Everything I saw in Austria-Hungary looked small and shrivelled up, but Belgrade looked to me as if its proud head would touch the stars. The history of the long-suffering Serb race was grouped around it, and that lifted it up in my imagination to sublime heights. I was much tempted to stop there and climb up to the top of Mount Avala, near Belgrade, and from there send my greetings to heroic Serbia, just as I had sent my greetings to heroic Switzerland from the top of snow-covered Titlis. But I was told to look sharp if I wished to catch the last local boat to Panchevo, and so I bade good-by and au revoir to white-towered Belgrade, as the Serbian guslars call it.
When the local boat arrived in Panchevo a delegation of young men, including one of the Serb students who had come with me from Budapest, transferred me to another boat, which was crowded with what looked like a gay wedding-party. The singing society of Panchevo had chartered this boat to take it and its friends to Karlovci, where a great national gathering of Serbs was to take place on the following day. The earthly remains of the great Serb poet Branko Radichevich were to arrive there from Vienna, where, when still a youth, he died and had been buried thirty years before. His body was to be transferred to and buried near Karlovci, on Strazhilovo hill, which was glorified by his immortal verses. His lyrics were messages to all Serbs, calling upon them to nurse their traditions and prepare for their national reunion. Representative Serbs from all parts of Serbdom were to assemble in Karlovci to escort the earthly remains of the popular poet to his last resting-place. I was to represent America, hence the invitation to join the Panchevo delegation. Serb nationalism flamed up in my heart again.
Our boat arrived at Karlovci in the early hours of the following morning, and there we found many singing societies and delegates from Voyvodina, Serbia, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro—a most picturesque gathering of splendid-looking young men and women, many of them in their national costumes of brilliant colors. The funeral procession started early in the afternoon. The singing societies from the principal centres of Serbdom, lined up in the march in proper succession, took up in turn the singing of the solemn and wonderfully harmonious funeral hymn: “Holy God, almighty God, immortal God, have mercy upon us.”
The Orthodox church permits no instrumental music. Those who have had the good fortune to listen to Russian choirs know the power and the spiritual charm of their choral singing. Serb choirs are not their inferiors. No music appeals to our hearts so strongly as the music of the human voice. Every one of the singers in that procession at Karlovci felt that he was paying his last vocal tribute to the sacred memory of the national poet, and his voice rose up to the heavens above as if carried there by the wings of his inspired soul. The effect was irresistible, and there was not a single dry eye in the great national gathering. A dismembered nation united in tears was a most solemn and inspiring spectacle. One could not help feeling that these tears were welcome to the thirsty soil which nourished the roots of Serb nationalism. A nation which is united in song and in tears will never lose its unity. If the governments of Vienna and Budapest had foreseen the emotions which that solemn ceremony would arouse in the hearts of that vast and representative gathering coming from every part of the dismembered Serbdom, they would never have permitted it. But that would have meant the exercise of the perceptions of subtle psychology, which these governments never had.