THE SERVIANS AS FIGHTERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1465, 28 October 1915, Page 2

THE SERVIANS AS FIGHTERS.

Skrvia, which is now putting up such a gallant fight against the Austro German invaders, has experienced the most fighting of all the countries in the Balkans, although in actual territory, up to 1913 she had gained the least. Her people are a race of fighters. “They have,” say N. and C. R. Buxton in “The War and the Balkans,” “fought more than any other Balkan people. They fought the Turks in 1806, 1576, 1877 and 1912 ; Bulgaria in 18S3 and 1913, and now the most powerful antagonist she has ever confronted. In the array which has diiven Austria hack is a man who Is now fighting in his sixth war. The present war has' proved more strikingly than ever the brilliant military quality of the Servians; they are not the less redoubtable in the field because they are deeply sentimental and devoted to poetry and art. Their national songs, or rather epics, pieced together by wandeiiug bards and handed down by oral tradition, are part cf the education of every child. Their character resembles the Russian in many respects. They have the dreaminess ot the Slav, bis mercurial changes of feeling, his childlike devotion to the Church and its ceremonies, its light and colour, its consolations ; but they are conscious ot a marked difference, and while feeling a deep sympathy with their fellow Slavs, they set their faces towards the West, send their young men to study at Paris, and claim for themselves a civilisation more practical aud more progressive. The force which has supported them in their gigantic efforts has been the peasant life, founded upon the soil and on a wide distribution of property. Their policy is genuinely democratic. And their dynasty, unlike that of every other Balkan State, except Montenegro, is a native one. The family ot the Karageorges does not derive its claim from ancient descent, but from the fact that the first Karageorge, grandfather of the present King, a simple swineherd, raised the national standard and defeated the Turks.”