We could reply to the Magyar accusations: "Not so much is it that Serbia has been making a propaganda to liberate her brothers from your yoke, as that they themselves have made this propaganda. Before the Crown Prince was killed in Sarajevo there were several outbursts in Agram on the Bans of Croatia, who were Magyar agents and tyrants just as Gesler was in Switzerland many hundred years ago. All the outbursts and all the tragi-comic high trials in Croatia, Bosnia and Dalmatia, all the successes of the Hapsburg
Monarchy in the south and all the protests prove two things:
First, that the Southern Slavs, Serbia's brothers, have suffered and have been abased very much by the Magyar's brutal rule, and
Second, that they have grown to be free and to live independently from a nation which showed itself very inferior in many respects to the nation ruled by it.
The Bulgars even mocked the Serbs for allying themselves with the "degenerate" French, with the "faithless traders," the English, and with the "barbarians," the Russians. They mocked us that we have not been "real" politicians, that we have been stupid and could not foresee the German victory. They accused us even in their declaration of war of being "the felons" who caused the "world's conflagration." And they regarded as their mission to rise "in the name of civilisation" to punish "a criminal nation."
We Serbs have nothing to reply to this Bulgar mockery, since they distinctly claimed that they are not Slavs but Mongols; since they condemned the English, French and Russian civilisations, and declared themselves to be the champions of the true civilisation. I will tell you only how they fulfilled their "mission" in defending the human civilisation from the Serbs. I will not speak myself, but I will repeat what a well-
known English gentleman reported from Salonica:
"About five o'clock in the afternoon, while we still waited for orders where to take our guns, we saw coming out of the town towards us a long, straggling procession of Serbian soldier prisoners, about 300, surrounded by a strong escort of infantry. They were of all ages, some young boys of 15, some old men, bowed of back, with grey in their beards, hungry-looking, ragged, bearing the marks of their long fight in the pass. They shambled along, evidently without any idea as to what their fate was to be, till they came close to where this newly-dug pit lay open. There the command to halt was given, and they stood or sat, surrounded by their guards, for about an hour.
"At the end of that time another body of men could be seen coming out of the town. They were Bulgarian cavalry, about eighty of them, with a captain in command. At a deliberate walk they came on towards the throng of prisoners and guards at the pit-side. When they were still several hundred yards away, a young Serbian soldier evidently grasped what was preparing. Making a sudden dart, he sprang through the cordon of guards, and was off, running at a surprising speed. The guards shouted, but their rifles, though with bayonets
fixed, were not loaded, and it looked for the moment as if he might get clear away. Then the captain of the cavalry troop caught sight of him, turned round in the saddle, and shouted an order to his men. Half a dozen spurred their horses, and left the ranks at a gallop. It was a short chase. Hearing the thud of the horses' hoofs behind him, the young Serbian turned his head for an instant, then ran on faster than before. The galloping cavalry were soon close up with him. As the first man, with a shout, raised his sword, the fugitive doubled like a hare, and was away at right angles. Two more horsemen were close behind, though. The first rode him down; the second leaned out of his saddle and pierced him through, as he scrambled to regain his feet. By this time the guards with the rest of the Serbians had loaded their rifles, and stood round them in a ring, with levelled bayonets, while, huddled together, their prisoners embraced each other or sank in apathy to the ground.