"On the first view Belgrade does not seem to have suffered to any great extent from the bombardment. Walking up the broad thoroughfare of the Rasia, you arrive nearly at the top before you see a house with the upper story blown away and with a fragment of what appears to have been the roof—an imminent peril to passers-by.
"But appearances are specious. Many buildings whose facades are intact are skeletons. Projectiles with high trajectory have fallen through the roof and wrought destruction within. This is the case with a wing of the Royal Palace. The windows are shattered, but the masonry has not suffered. Within, however, all is devastated. Among the public buildings the museum is a shapeless heap of débris, and the university is so much knocked about that the plainest and cheapest remedy will be an entirely new edifice.
"The higher part of the city has suffered most, with the exception, perhaps, of the district around the station, which is completely battered down. Rents in the pavement show that shells charged with very high explosives were employed. One huge gulf I noticed at least twelve feet deep by fifteen long and eight wide.
"There are many instances of the vagaries of these missiles of destruction. I visited a house in which M. Nikovitz, who accompanied me in my peregrinations, had occupied an apartment. There was nothing the matter with the front, but a neat hole in the side marked the passage of a projectile which had traversed the building and exploded in the adjoining house, now a mound of brick-bats and matchwood. One half of a large establishment in Prince Michael Street was completely wrecked, but the other half was undamaged, and rolls of textile fabrics were in order on their shelves or piled on counters. The best shops are in this street, and much havoc has been wrought.
"I picked up spherical shrapnel bullets on several premises. Shrapnel has no battering force. Its object is to kill or disable men. It can do no harm to walls. Its employment in this instance was a wanton act intended to inspire terror and doubtless augmented the loss of life among the citizens.
"The principal hotel, the Moskwa, situated at the highest part of the town, has been devastated partially within, but the framework of the building is intact. On the other side of the street a row of houses far less conspicuous has been demolished. In one street we met a little girl of 12 coming out of a house opposite to one which was a heap of ruins. We asked her if she had seen it destroyed. She said she had and was very frightened. Shortly afterward a shell fell in their own garden; then they ran away and took refuge with friends at the other end of the town. An old woman had a stall containing tins of shoe polish and other trifles. A jumble of charred wood and twisted iron behind had been her shop. The caretaker at the house occupied by M. Nikovitz, a cheerful old dame, told us how she had hid herself at the other end of the long garden, but it was terrible.
"We asked some urchins, who would be at school in normal times, but whose occupation and delight are now to hold officers' horses, if they were not frightened. 'At first,' they replied, 'but not afterward. They make a great noise, but they never catch us, and we do not mind them—the shells.' A boy of 12, who was carrying on his father's hair-dressing business single-handed during the latter's absence on service, expressed a similar opinion.
"I am told that about 3,000 people remained, out of the normal population of 100,000, during the bombardment. I cannot ascertain the number of killed and injured, but it certainly runs into the hundreds. Those of the inhabitants who left the city but remained in the neighborhood returned after the bombardment and were here during the eleven days of the Austrian occupation.
"The practice of taking hostages, which it has been reserved for this twentieth century civilized war to revive, was resorted to at Belgrade. I am assured on unimpeachable authority, supported by accounts of several eyewitnesses, that not fewer than 1,000 persons were carried off to Austria. Among them were boys of 15 and 16. Nor were foreign residents immune. M. Bissers, the Belgian Consul, who is also a Director of the electric tram and light company, was of the number. He was handcuffed like a common criminal. Neither the fate nor whereabouts of these civilian prisoners of war is known.
"The plate-glass fronts of many shops in the principal thoroughfares are smashed, and the interiors present a picture of desolation, overturned cash registers and objects that have not been stolen lying broken and scattered on the floor, but the majority of the establishments that have been ransacked do not show outward signs of it. The system seems to have been to obtain ingress from the back.