A third group of deracinés whom I came across in Serbia was an artel of Rostof engineers. I met a family I had known in Russia. Last time I had seen them it was one evening with their children scampering round a tall Christmas tree on which all the candles were lighted. They were comfortable and capable people, and proud in their way of what they could do and of what they possessed. Now, with all the other engineers of the Vladikavsky Railway, they had fled from the "terror" and were giving their services for the reconstruction of Serbia.
Serbia did not particularly want them, and was not ready for their grand schemes.
"You can't start anything in this country," said Engineer N—— regretfully. "Every one wants to make money out of it. The administration lives on the enterprise of the people. We have presented the Government with a complete plan for the reorganization of the Serbian railroads. We have brought the treasury of the Vladikavsky Railway with us, so we have a little capital, and given the authority we could make a gigantic improvement in Jugo-Slavia. But all we have been able to do so far is to arrange a few services of motor transport to places not reached by railway."
My friends were in a poor little wooden hut on the outskirts of Belgrade, very courageous and very sad, and their children, once petted and even pettish, were now grown and serious and facing life earnestly for themselves and for their parents' sake.
A great chance for Serbia lay in the use of these Russian engineers. And the alternatives for the engineers are either to make good in Serbia or to drift back eventually to Mother Russia. I am personally inclined to think that the Serbs will let the chance slip through their fingers. Serbs and Russians, though they like one another, do not seem to be able to work together very well. The Serbs are a smaller people, more intense and less adaptable than the Russians. The difference between the two races as one sees and hears them on the streets of Belgrade is very remarkable. The soft pervasive accents of Russian speech are pregnant with a great race-consciousness and a feeling of world destiny.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
VII. FROM BUDAPEST
The ill-health of our new Europe needs no demonstration. "She's an ailing old lady," says Engineer N. "She's a typhoid convalescent," says Dr. R. "She's deaf and dumb and paralytic and subject to fits. She has sore limbs and inflamed parts—in fact, a hopeless case," says a cheerful Hungarian. "But what does it matter whether Europe lives if her young daughter Hungary survives her?"
"That young daughter Hungary has already been in the Divorce Court," I hazarded.
"Well, Hungary is not going to alarm herself over the health of Mother Europe, anyway. Hungary has to look after herself. Mother won't look after her."