THE BRAVE SERBS.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 January 1916, Page 6

THE BRAVE SERBS.

THE MOS'T DEMOCRATIC RACE IN EUROPE. (By Crawford Price in the Daily Mail). (Mr. Crawford Price has spent the last six years almost exclusively in the Balkans and is a recognised authority. Abdul Uamid's counter-revolution against the Young Turks in 1909 found him attached .to Mahmud (Shcfket Pasha's victorious Salonika army. Since then he has been an eye-witness of most of the fighting in the Balkans). Away in the backwoods of Europe there is a little country which is fighting desperately against overwhelming odds. She is guarding now, as she has guarded since the war began, the German road to Constantinople. Twice have Austrian armies, her superior in numbers, equipment and technical impedimenta, thrust themselves into her land. Twice have they been driven back to their own frontiers—a beaten, panic-stricken rabble. And to-day the Serbs, tired and weary after three years of continuous warfare, are struggling manfully against overwhelming odds, fighting bravely and tenaciously against foes which arc attacking them with fury and venom from north, east and west. They are near the end of their tether. Two Austro-Germans or Bulgarians are opposed to one Serbian; 12in guns aro battling against their small field guns. Help is coming; but it is too late. Warning after warning has been ignored by great and powerful Allies, and now we have sacrificed Serbia —her crucifixion is at hand.

A RACE OF PEASANTS. These men who have astonished the world by their courage and endurance are a race of peasant farmers—the descendants of the Serbian tribes who in the seventh century (or earlier) swept down across the Danube in search of fertile pastures. Their 7iiartial qualities were early manifested, and just prior to the Turkish invasion they established ii powerful empire, under their famous Emperor Dushan, which spread over the greater part of the peninsula. Beaten at length by the Osmanli (Turks) at Kossovo, they lay under the heel of the Turk for five centuries, but at the commencement of the nineteenth century their chieftain Karageorge raised aloft the standard of liberty, and they, the first of the Balkan nations, fought themselves free of Ottoman rule. PINE PHYSIQUE.

The Serbs are a hardy race, generally big, blonde fellows of fine physique. They live a simple, natural life on their fertile plains and cultivate their fields, breed their pigs, and pick their prunes in perfect contentment. They neither wish interference nor desire to interfere. Every peasant has his five acres of land and certain implements which cannot be taken from him even for debt. They often farm in family communities, dividing the results of their labours between them, and most of their activities are based upon the spirit of co-operation which penetrates the land. They are possessed of a certain happy-go-lucky temperament, but, withal, demonstrate strong emotional tendencies, to which may be attributed the dash and elan which they invariably display in battle. Crime and immorality alike are rarely found, and the traveller may walk from one end to the other of the country meeting with nothing save civility and hospitality—hospitality rendered the more sincere by an absence of "gush."

The Serbs are the most democratic of races. Socially and politically all are equal There are no rich and, in norma; times, there are no poor. All have sufficient for their.meagre requirements. Suffrage is universal, and the voice of the electorate is never made the plaything of the party in power as, for example, happens in Bulgaria. The legal code affords equal rights for all, and no social barrier exists to prevent the humblest from rising to the highest position in the land. In the army also democracy is the keynote. Birth or patronage is never a passport to promotion, and the peasants' offspring may rise to command, armies. The father of Field-Marshal Putnik was a schoolmaster, and Misitch and Stepanovitch and other generals who are now making history are sons of the soil. Rumania, Greece and Bulgaria took their Kings from the reigning families of Europe,' but King Peter is the descendant of the Karageorge who freed Serbia from the Turkish thrall. He is an old man now, racked with pain and confined to a bed of suffering. His people look up to him more as a father than a King, and as such lie is revered in every Serbian homestead.

THE LEADERS. In his indisposition, the mantle of leadership has fallen upon the shoulders of the Prince Regent Alexander, a young man only twenty-six years of age, who is possessed of a charming personality, ,to which he adds a keen military instinct and an unusual knowledge of European politics. The Serbian Kings meddle as little in the affairs of government as docs King George. .' The Constitution is allpowerful, and is at present vested in the Parliament (Skupshtina), over which M, Pasitch presides. Pasitch himself is one of the ablest diplomats in Europe, and no better prbof could be offered oi the esteem in which he is held by the people than the unanimity with which the nation acquiesced in his proposal to sacrifice its most vital interests in an effort to fall in with the unhappy Balkan diplomacy of the Entente Powers. The chief direction of the army is in the able hands of Field-Marshal Putnik, the Chief of Staff. As a result of much suffering he is to-day feeble in body, but his mind remains brilliantly alert, and to his genius and the confidence reposed in him by the troops must be attributed much of the remarkable success which has fallen to Serbian arms. To know the Serbs is to love and admire them. I well remember my emotion as I stood upon the battlefield of Suvobor in December last and watched those peasant soldiers turn upon the mighty legions of the Hapsburgs and drive them in rout from the land. 1 thought then, as I think now, that men who can so transform themselves from a horde of demoralised warriors into an army of conquering heroes are worthy allies for Britain.