“I SHALL SEE VICTORY
KING OF SERBIA'S WISH
King Peter, of Serbia, said to an American interviewer recently : “The war is the supreme, the last, effort of feudalism, a fight to a finish between the feudalism of yesterday and freedom of- tomorrow. That is why it had to break out on the banks of the Danube and not elsewhere, for the Danube separates by so little the most obstinate feudalism maintained by unworthy intrigues, like those of the smaller Italian States in the Middle Ages, from the most stubborn ideal of the liberty implanted in those ready to fight to the last man to realise that ideal. It is part of our creed to live, on good terms with our neighbours. Often I have looked from my windows in Belgrade at the fields and mountains of Austria on the opposite side of the Danube and said to myself, ‘Now is it possible we should not be able to live and let live as between neighbours ? But it is of the nature of a feudal State thnt liberty cannot and must not flourish in the same vicinity, and Austria arranged all that in the time of the Obrenovitches. Serbia was made merely a tributary of Austria. But we cannot stand that. We are peasants, but free peasants. I, the King, I come from the people, but that heroic people who preferred death to comfortable and shameful slavery. My grandfather was a peasant, and I am prouder of that than of my throne. Crowns are lost, but the pure, clean blood of those who have lived of the earth does not die. I believe |n the liberty -of Serbia as I believe in God. It was the dream of my youth. It was for that I fought throughout manhood. It has become the faith of the twilight of my life. I only live to see Serbia free, I pray that God may let me live until the day of redemption of my people.. On that day I am ready to die if the Lord wills. I have struggled a great deal in my life, and am tired, bruised and broken from it, but I will see, I shall see triumph, I shall not die before the victory of my country.’’
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/MH19160425.2.17
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Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1542, 25 April 1916, Page 4
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378“I SHALL SEE VICTORY Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1542, 25 April 1916, Page 4
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