After serving through one campaign, a disastrous one for Serbia, I came to America, and with the assistance of Miss Catherine Burke raised $38,000 for the American unit of the Scottish Women's Hospital. I was only too eager to accept when it was suggested by the Serbian Relief Committee that I return to the war zone to see that the money was properly administered.
This explains how I came to be in Ostrova on a certain evening last October, seated at dinner next to Prince Alexander of Serbia, whose generosity of heart led him to overestimate my service to his nation.
"Would you like to go to the front?" he asked me.
I had been behind the battle lines, and I wanted to tell my countrymen just how the Serbs were fighting.
"I would like nothing better," I said, "but, of course, it is impossible."
The Prince smiled. "Madam," he replied, "nothing that you may wish is impossible."
I thought at first that it was merely his innate politeness, but with the least possible delay Prince Alexander delivered me into the care of Col. Sondermayer, chief of the medical service of the Serbian army.
"She is to go wherever she wishes to," was the command delivered to the Colonel.
And so we started out in a somewhat rattly automobile and went upward into the mountains, passing a continuous stream of soldiers—French going to Kisova and Serbians to Dobrpolje. Ammunition trains and convoys of wounded rumbled over the roads day and night. They were the back currents, the eddies of the war we were traversing.