WITH SERB! iMTt) EXIL - FO&IER.? JONES ^-. / iSafe- 1 76 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Date Due m^ H^SSTtJ — c i J/W* M4ff e? ^-^^ j PRINTED IN U. S. A. (M^ NO. 23233 Cornell University Library D 561.J76 With Serbia into exile; 3 1924 027 948 870 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027948870 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE \ \ WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE An American's Adventures with the Army That Cannot Die BY FORTIER JONES PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1916, by The Centuks- Co, Pvitlished, Augitst, 19ii MADE IN V. 3. A. TO THE MEMORY OF THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA THIS BOOK IS REVERENTLY DEDICATED TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 3 II THE CHEECHAS OP SERBIA 46 III EVACUATION SCENES 61 IV GETTING AWAY 84 V SPY FEVER 120 VI ALONG THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 162 VII ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" J177 VIII BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 211 IX PRIZREND 252 X THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 263 XI OVER THE MOUNTAINS . . 305 XII WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 338 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Serbian peasants fleeing from their homes before the approaching Germans . . . . . Frontispiece Miss Eden's Bosnian expedition 6 A Bosnian refugee boy 7 Soldiers from the Drina trenches receiving their daily allowance of bread . . . . 7 A Serbian peasant's home 38 A bridge built by the Romans at Ouchitze and still in perfect condition . '38 A Cheecha and his dwelling. One of the numerous guards along the Orient Railway ...... 39 Wounded Cheechas being transported to a hospital . 54 A Qieechas flashing army dispatches by means of a heliograph 54 We arrive at the Colonel's headquarters wet, cold, and very hungry . . .... 55 Refugee family from the frontier driving all their possessions through a street in Valjevo ... . . 55 "A man does not die a hundred times," said the Little Sergeant 86 Mme. Christitch distributing relief supplies at Valjevo . 86 The refugees at Chupriya . . 87 Tichomir and some of his rela;tives .... . 103 General Putnik, Serbia's oldest general, and a popular hero . 102 'Misses Helsby, Spooner, and Magnussen in the author's car . 103 The departure became an exodus 134 Serbians about to be shot as spies by the victorious Austrians . 135 Rashka in tlfe valley of the Ibar 135 Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia 166 After the blizzard in the Ibar valley 166 A silhouette against the hills moving as in a pageant 167 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE Long trains of oxen were pulling the big guns from the camps along the wayside 182 In many places on Kossovo swift torrents swept acros the road 182 Eossovo stretched away in the dreariest expanse imaginable . 183 Now and then the storm lifted its snow veil . . . . 183 Last night I found no shelter, but followed the ox-carts to a camp outside the town 214 A group of transport drivers . 215 What had been a country was now a desert 215 iWhere the Bulgarians threatened the road 262 King Peter of Serbia 263 Prizrend from the river bank . . 263 Soldiers of Serbia . . . ... 278 The army that cannot die 279 A Serbian gun just before it was blown up at Ipek .... 310 The beginning of the mountain trail above Ipek 311 Trackless mountains of Albania . . 326 A mountain home in Montenegro 326 Albanians of the type who murdered the refugees .... 327 "Mon cher Capitaine" . ... . ... 327 King Peter and a party of refugees crossing a bridge in the Albanian Alps . . . . . 342 The only street in San Giovanni di Medua . . ... 343 The forty British women of the Stobart mission waiting for the boat at Plavitnitze . 343 The ancient fortress at Scutari 358 Albanian chiefs assembled at Durazzo to aid Essad Pacha against the Austrians 359 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE CHAPTER I BATTLE LINES AT PEACE I 'HAVE to thank a man on a Broadway ex- press for the fact that at the close of Septem- ber, 1915, 1 fomid myself in a remote valley of the Bosnian momitains. The preceding June this person, imknown to me, threw a day-old newspaper at my feet, and because it fell right side up, I be- came aware that men were wanted to do relief work in Serbia. In an hour I had become a part of the expedition, in a week I had been "filled full" of small-pox, typhus, and typhoid vaccines and serums. Three weeks more found me at Gibraltar endm-ing the searching, and not altogether amica- ble, examination of a young British ofiicer, and within a month I was happily rowing with hotel- keepers in Saloniki, having just learned in the voy- age across the Mediterranean that submarines were 3 4 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE at work in that region. With a swiftness that left little time for consideration the next few weeks passed in camp organization at Nish, in praying that our long-delayed automobiles would come, and in getting acquainted with a country about which I had found but little trustworthy information in America. Then because an English woman. Miss Sybil Eden, with the intrepidity and clear-sightedness which I later found characteristic of British women, decided that rehef must be carried where, on ac- count of great transportation difficulties, it had never been before, I spent six wonderful weeks among the magnificent moimtains of Bosnia at the tiny village of Dobrun. On a certain day near the end of this sojourn my story of the great retreat properly begins. I sat chatting with a Serbian captain of engineers beside a mountain stream six miles behind the Drina River, where for almost a year two hostile armies had sat face to face, watching intently but fighting rarely. It was a beautiful day, typical of the Bosnian autumn. The sunshine was delight- fully warm and drowsy ; the pines along the rugged slopes above us showed dull green and restful, while the chestnut-grove near which we sat show- BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 5 ered hosts of saffron leaves into the clear stream at our feet. Overhead an almost purple sky was flecked with fluflpy clouds that sailed lazily by. Peace filled the Dobrun valley, peace rested un- naturally, uncannily over the length and breadth of beautiful Serbia, and our talk had been of the preceding months of quiet, imbroken except for vague, disturbing rumors that were now taking more definite form and causing the captain grave concern. On the other side of the little valley ran the nar- row-gage railway which bridged the roadless gap between Vishegrad, on the Drina, and Vardishte, the frontier post between Serbia and Bosnia. It was down-grade all the way from Vardishte to Vishegrad, which was fortvmate, for the Austrians had smashed all locomotives before they retreated, and Serbia had been imable to get any more over the mountains to this isolated little railway. As we talked, two large trucks thundered by loaded high with the round, one-kilogram loaves of bread that were baked at Vardishte, and thus sent down daily to the men in the Drina trenches. Ox-teams had laboriously to pull these trucks back again to the bakeries. A truck filled to a wonderful height with new-mown hay for the oxen at Vardishte now 6 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE stood on a siding to let the bread-train go by. It looked very queer being pulled along the railway track like a farm-wagon by ten teams of huge oxen. From the army blacksmith's shop near by came the pleasant sound of ringing steel as the peasant smiths fashioned shoes for the cavalry horses, and the steady rat-tat-tat of hammers came from down the river where the army engineers with the simplest sort of tools were constructing a permanent bridge to replace the one destroyed by the retreating enemy. Some refugee children, in filthy rags and suffering from scurvy, splashed about in the creek, shouting and laughing as if there were nothing in all the world but sunshine and sparkling water. It was hard to think that less than six miles away, be- yond two thin lines of trenches and a rushing river, the sway of the great war lord began and stretched unbroken to Berlin. The evening before we had gone down to Vishe- grad to see the trenches. One always had to choose the darkness for these visits, because the Austrian guns from an impregnable position across the river commanded all approaches to Vishegrad. Only imder cover of the night were we allowed to venture in, although Serbian soldiers came and went throughout the daylight hours by devious ■Ms t S g la '^ H = m O A Bosnian refugee boy Soldiers from the Drina trenches receiving their daily allowance of bread BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 7 paths known only to themselves. To get there one had to mount a hand car — "wagonette," the officers called it — take oflp the brake, and sit clear of the handles. Starting at a snail's pace, we soon gath- ered very creditable speed, and shot through tunnel after txmnel without lights, but whooping at the top of our voices to warn any imwary pedestrian who might be on the track. Along the beautiful mountain gorge we sped, sometimes by the river-bank, sometimes hundreds of feet above the torrent, along walls of solid ma- sonry built up from the bottom of the canon. The stars came out, and a fuU moon was rising over the eastern mountains as we flashed through a last long tunnel and brought the car to a stop in a weed- grown railway yard. The commandant of the place and a group of officers welcomed us in sub- dued tones, and we set off down the rusty tracks toward the town. Thoughtlessly a companion stuck a cigarette into his mouth and struck a match. No sooner had it flashed than a large hand slid over his shoulder and crushed the flame, while an officer in polished French begged that monsieur would forgo smoking for a little while. Brief as the flash of light had been, this request was punctuated by the whiz of a rifle-bullet overhead and a distant 6 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE report on the forbidding-looking slope on the oppo- site side of the river. Stepping carefully, we came to the railway sta- tion, a large building that had just been completed before the war began, but now a pile of empty walls through many jagged holes in which the moonlight poured. We came into what had been the town. In the moonlight it looked just like Pompeii. Whole por- tions of it had been pounded to ruins in successive bombardments, but now and then, due to the con- formation of the terrain, patches of buildings had escaped uninjured, being out of range of the high- perched Austrian guns. There was deathly silence, which we dared not break except with guarded whispers, and distantly the rush of the Drina could be heard. Beckoning me from the rest of the party, a former resident of Vishegrad, a druggist, led me up a side street and by a back court into a ruined apothecary shop. Here I could use my pocket flash-light to advantage. For months the shop had been unoccu- pied, yet there was a curious appearance of the pro- prietor having just stepped out. After demolish- ing the houses that adjoined it, a shell of large cahber had burst in the front entrance of the shop. BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 9 All the well-filled shelves at that end were blown to splinters, and drugs and glass were scattered over the place in a fine powder. But on the j agged end of one of these shelves a large bottle of pink piUs stood jauntily, and below it hung a barometer filled with purple liquid, absolutely untouched. There was a glass case of tooth brushes standing in the center, with debris piled two feet deep around it. On the prescription-counter at my right a set of druggist's scales stood, delicately balanced, some unfinished prescription in one pan and weights in the other. Hanging from the torn edge of the ceil- ing a pulchrious maiden in strong flesh tints hailed the rising sun, across the face of which the name of a German shampoo was spread, while she luxuri- ously combed straw-colored locks of great abun- dance. I flashed the light here and there, revealing these curious freaks of chance, and suddenly just at my feet I saw something gleam white. I stooped, and picked up a small handkerchief of filmy lace, crumpled as if it had been tightly gripped in a little hand. As I shook it out a faint odor of violet perfume rose, bringing as nothing else could the sense of tragic change between the tense moments of Europe at that hour and those f ar-oflf, happy days when youth and lace and violet 10 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE perfume went their careless way together through the streets of Vishegrad. Emerging into the ruined, moonlit street, we found otu- party had disappeared, but just ahead were two of our soldiers. With these as guides, we stole with increasiog care to a spot near the river-bank where some trees cast a black shade. From this vantage-point we could see clearly the ancient stone bridge about one hundred yards away. It is a beautiful bridge, more than five hun- dred years old, and consists of eleven arches, which evenly decrease in size from the middle one imtil they melt into solid masonry on each bank. The central arches were blown away at the beginning of hostilities, and in the moonhght the two remnants jutted out into the river like facsimiles of the fa- mous pile at Avignon. Later in the evening, when I dined at a sheltered house less than two hundred yards from the Aus- trian trenches, in a comfortable sitting-room, I smoked Austrian cigarettes and drank beer from Sarajevo while a companion played American rag- time on a grand piano. At the same time, I fancy, behind the Austrian trenches the officers were smoking Serbian cigarettes and drinking Serbian wine. For until a day or so previously there had BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 11 been a truce lasting several weeks, and across the gap in the blown-up bridge the two hostile com- manders had exchanged delicacies and greetings by means of an old tin pail hung on a rope. New troops had come to the other side, however, and the truce had ended as suddenly as it had begun. At the approach to the bridge a guard was always kept, and to shield the men, while changing this guard, a rough wall of corrugated iron had been constructed for about fifty yards from the end of a trench to the sheltered position on the bridge. Toward this barrier we now crept until we were leaning against it and could peep over at the river just below us, dimly across which we could see the earthworks of the Austrians, where we laiew silent watchers were tirelessly waiting night and day, alert to kill some enemy. It gave one a peculiar feehng, that sense of myriads of human beings peeking at one another behind dirt banks with rifles poised and fingers on the triggers. It is the new warfare, the sort that this war has brought to high perfection. My interest was such that I leaned too eagerly upon my sheltering sheet of iron. With what I am sure is the very loudest clangor I shall ever hear, it timibled away from me, and fell into the 12 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE river. The clash echoed and reechoed through the silent town and up the valley. If I had pulled Schonbrunn crashing down about my ears, I could not have felt more conspicuous. Also I became, aware that I was standing up there in the moon- light with nothing whatever between me and war, and I lost no time in placing the rest of the wall between that stem reahty and myself. The oppo- site bank was as silent as before; not a rifle rang out. The soldiers in the trenches near by did not know what to make of it, but we soon had another piece of iron in the place of the one that had fallen. One of the sentries said he supposed it made such a dreadful row that the boys across the way thought some trick was being played on them. Such tricks as this were more or less common. On one occasion, after two or three weeks of ab- solute quiet, a violent artillery and rifle engage- ment was precipitated when some Serbian wags tied tin cans to the tails of two dogs, and set them off down the trail in front of the Serbian trenches. The dogs kicked up a great noise for a couple of miles, and the Austrians, thinking an attempt to cross the river was in progress, rained shot and shell for hours along the two-mile front, while the Serbians sat snugly in their trenches. The dogs BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 13 were unhurt. Also, if one was to believe report, the commandant at Vishegrad knew to a nicety what was going on in the enemy trenches. Every other night an Austrian officer of high rank was said to row across the river at a secluded spot and make a full report to the Serbians as to the number, nationality, and intention of the forces in his trenches. It is quite reasonable to believe this is true, and also that the Austrians were equally well informed as to what went on in Vishegrad. After dining with the commandant, we were asked if we would like to see a "potato ball," which the soldiers and village maidens were holding at a small cafe in one of the islands of safety. Nothing could have been more bizarre than a ball, even a "potato ball," in that crumbling city, so we ac- cepted the invitation with interest. Again we sneaked through the melancholy streets, making detours aroimid huge holes that bursting shells had dug and piles of debris from fallen buildings. We entered a large, square room jammed full of people except for a clear space in the middle. Heavy black cloths draped all openings, so that no ray of light shone outside. Everything was shut tight, causing the air to grow vile, full of cigarette smoke and the odor of the dim kerosene lamps that 14 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE lighted the place. At one end of the room a jolly- looking, middle-aged woman bent over a stove, makiQg Turkish coffee which she dispensed copi- ously. On our entrance she came forward, secured us chairs, and smilingly brought us trays of her very excellent coffee. The hubbub had stopped when the officers ap- peared with us, and I looked about on the silent, curious faces that peered at me. They were mostly young soldiers and girls. Among the latter I rec- ognized some who had come to our relief station the day before destitute of food and clothing. Many of these young people, chnging tenaciously to the ruins of their homes, were the last remnants of families that the war had blotted out. The sol- diers had the mud of the trenches on their clothes, and on their faces the smiles of young fellows out for a night of it. A little way across the river the enemy watched, or perhaps they, too, were dancing, for the width of a trench does not change human 'nature. At a few words from the officers, the leading spirits overcame their diffidence and forced the old fiddler, who sat on the back of a chair, with his feet on the seat, to strike up a favorite dance. The boys fell into line, and, passing the group of girls, each chose a partner for the simple, crude. BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 15 happy dance that followed. Plaintively pounding out the rhythm, the fiddler fiddled, perspiration poured from the gallant young soldiers, the maid- ens' faces flushed with the quickened dance, the atmosphere grew unbearably hot and heavy, and shrill, care-free laughter fiUed the room. So Pier- rot danced his brief hours away in the stricken city. In the small hours of morning we made our weary march back to Dobrun, for it was up-grade now, and easier to walk than to work the hand car. Talking to the captain there on the river-bank, I remarked that this year of peace in war seemed strange to me. When first I came to Serbia in July I had heard a rumor of a great Teutonic drive through the country. Mackensen had massed half a million men along the Danube, it was said, and German troops were coming. The Aus- trian commander would lead, and the way to Con- stantinople up the Morava valley would be opened with Bulgaria's aid. But everywhere things were quiet. Along the Save and the Danube affairs might not be so sociable as at Vishegrad, but were just as peaceful. As I knew her last summer, Serbia was a land of pleasant places. There was still destitution among her refugees, but the traces of war were fast being obliterated. For a year she 16 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE had been resting, merely toying with war, building up her army in every possible way after its won- derful victory against an invading force that out- numbered it three to one. A few weeks earher, at Semendria, now immor- tal in Serbian history, I had lunched in full sight of the Austrian guns. I recall the sleepy medieval street, the beautiful Danube, with vineyard-draped banks, yellow with sunshine, purple with grapes. I remember, with a feeling of unreality now, the charming, simple hospitahty of the prefect as he came to greet us, perfectly attired in morning cos- tume, and offered us a good lunch of the dishes of old Serbia, with excellent wine. I was motoring on an inspection tour with Mr. Walter Mallory, leader of the Columbia University Relief Expedi- tion, and M. Todolich of the Interior Department, supervisor of Serbia's gendarmerie. These gen- darmes, because of certain disabilities, could not serve in the regular army, but were drafted into the police force. When destruction fell on Bel- grade, it found the trenches held mainly by these men who could not be real soldiers. They held those trenches for two horrible days while fire fell like snow on the city, held them until there were no trenches to hold, and those that were left fought BATTLE LINES AT PEACE ITj the enemy through the streets of their beautiful little capital. From home to home they retreated until none was left to retreat, only piles of blue- coated bodies that with the thousands of dead civil- ians littered the streets. They knew they could not hold the city. It was merely a delaying action until the army could take up new positions, one of those rear-guard engagements so common in Bel- gi\im and France when the German army was sweeping on, in which the men who stayed behind faced sure defeat and certain death. It was just about two months before this hap- pened that we three, with a Serbian interpreter, left Nish at three o'clock one morning in the midst of a violent storm. There was a gale blowing, and rain was falling in solid sheets as our car pluckily splashed through mud above the axles on the road down the Morava valley to Alexinats. Motoring in Serbia is a strenuous occupation. If one makes forty or fifty miles a day, one has done well. Shortly out of Nish, one of our mud-guard sup- ports snapped, and could not be mended. It meant that the whole guard had to come off, and that meant some one must "get out and get under" to unscrew the taps. For a mile we dragged along, looking for a dry place. There was no such thing 18 WITH SERBIii^ INTO EXILE in Serbia at the moment, I think, so at last I crawled under the car and did the job, lying in slush several inches deep which did not improve my appearance. M. Todolich spoke not a word of I English when we started, but, after a few blow- outs, carburetor troubles, etc., he had learned some. "How is it now?" Mallory would frequently ask me, and my short "All right" seemed to amuse M. Todolich greatly. Soon at each stop he was piping: "How ees it naw, Guspodin Yones? Awlright, eh?" I knew next to nothing about the inner mysteries of an automobile, but am sure I impressed om* Serbian guest with that "All right." Soon he be- came exasperating as troubles increased and muddy disappearances under the car became more fre- quent. "Awlright, awlright," he would peep over and over again, as if it were the greatest joke in the world. Once, when I was at the wheel, we were starting down a very steep incline, and com- ing to a sharp "switchback," the brakes did not hold, and I had to take the hair-pin turn at an awful speed. For a minute the car simply danced on its front wheels along the edge of a high cliff. Then I got past the curve and into the road again. BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 19 I glanced back, and saw "Nick," our interpreter, hanging far over toward the landward side, tongue sticking out and eyes staring; but M. Todolich was huddled unconcernedly in his corner, and flung out "Awlright" at me, as if I had n't scared us all to death. After a while the rain stopped, and we made good time on the perfectly level road that runs along the broad floor of the Morava valley, which many ages ago served as an easy highway for the Third Crusade. For miles on each side stretched smooth fields of Indian com, small grains, and magnificent truck-gardens. Despite the primitive methods of agriculture, the Morava valley, which runs almost the length of Serbia, is one great garden plot, and is as beautiful and fertile as the valley of the Loire, in France. Last summer, viewing this valley and its lesser counterparts along the Mlava, the Timok, and in the Stig country, the possibility of famine in such a rich land seemed too remote to consider. There were many workers in the fields, but all were women and children. It was they who gathered the ripened com into the primitive ox- carts, reaped with scythes the waving wheat and rye, or plowed with wooden shares the rich, black loam. Women drove the farm stock along the ^'0 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE highways, women filled the market-places in every village, and women for the most part waited upon us in the cafes. Almost the only men we saw were the lonely cheechas sparsely scattered along the railway to guard the bridges from the spies that lurked everywhere. We passed many prosperous villages in which, with the exception of the scarcity of men, life seemed to move on as prosaically as in times of peace. We stopped and looked over the large sugar mills at Chupriya, now silent on ac- count of the war and the scarcity of labor, and we passed some of Serbia's best coal-mines. Finally, at dusk, we came to Polanka through a narrow road where the mud was so bad that we had to be hauled out. The inns of Serbia are never luxurious and not always clean. The one we found at Polanka was no exception. MaUory and I shared a room on the ground floor. It had a single large window over- looking the sidewalk at a height of about seven feet. We retired early and, being worn out, slept soundly. I was awakened next morning by "Nick's" unmusical voice, saying, "Meester Yones, eet ees time to get up." A minute I lay in bed rubbing my eyes, trying to recall where I was, then I decided to take revenge on MaUory. BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 21 "Mallory," I shouted, "get up at once! Don't you know it 's terribly late?" But Mallory was already dressing. I cast a glance about the room, carelessly at first, then with an interest that quickly turned to anxiety. "Mallory," I sternly demanded, "where are my clothes?" He looked up unconcernedly, took in the room at a glance, and shrugged his shoulders. "Why, how should I know? I 'm not your valet," he said. "Look behind the wash-stand or under your bed. The rachiya we had for dinner may have been stronger than I supposed." Loath as I was to admit this insinuation, I looked, but with no success. Then I gradually re- membered where I had placed them the night be- fore, but I would not admit the horrible suspicion that arose. "Mallory, if you do not produce my trousers at once, I '11 cable the President. A man of your age should know that a sovereign American citizen cannot suffer these indignities in foreign lands without — " But my ultimatum was cut short by Nick, who thrust his ridiculous head in at the door. "Meester Yones, the hotel maid wants to know eef thees ees yours," he happily interrogated, hold- ing up a garment. "And, een addition, thees and 22 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE thees and thees," and he held up in turn certain other garments, including my coat. "She says she found 'em scattered along for two hundred yards down the street outside your window. She says she hope you had nothing een your pockets, for there ees nothin een them now." "This is not all, Nick," I screamed. "You have more, say you have more, or I am lost. Where are my trousers, Nick? Tell the maid to go down the street again, farther down the street, and see if she cannot find a pair of khaki trousers. Maybe they are hanging on a tree or on somebody's wall. They must be somewhere; they wouldn't fit any one but me." "How ees everything? Awlright, eh?" M. Todohch drifted into the door, demurely, then stopped in amazement at the sight of me waving my incomplete costume about and entreating Nick. The interpreter explained to him my situation, whereupon he grew greatly excited. What, an American Guspodin had his trousers stolen and that, too, when he was traveling with the chief of gendarmes. Outrageous! He would caU the mayor at once, and order the gendarmes to make a thorough search of the town. No visitor from America should be able to say that he could not BATTLE LINES AT PEAXJE 23 safely leave his trousers wherever he wished in Serbia. Then he shouted down the hall, and brought to the scene of my humiliation the hotel proprietor, his wife, his daughter, the maid, the valet, and the cook, so that precipitately I sought refuge under my sheets. He soundly berated the hotel-keeper because he had not personally stood guard over my trousers all night, made scathing remarks about the citizens of Polanka, and not once allowed himself a remark as to the mentalit}?- of people who hung their clothes in open windows on ground floors. "Send for the mayor at once," he ordered, "and all the gendarmes." This was too much. I saw the haute monde, the elite, and the rank and file of Polanka convoked around me trouserless. I sensed the mayor's stupefaction at his city's deep disgrace, and the gendarmes' merciless fury as they made a house to house search for my khaki trousers. "Nick," I weakly implored, "please, Nick, per- suade the old gentleman to let the matter stand. Tell him I was going to throw them away. Tell him it was my fault ; probably the wind blew them somewhere. Tell him anything you like, Nick, but don't let him start a riot. I did n't lose my money. 24 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE so it does n't matter. You must go to a shop right away and get me a pair of soldier's trousers. I have always wanted some, anyway. And, Nick, clear this mob out of my room!" Soon Nick's ever-ready tongue straightened mat- ters out, and I had a brand-new pair of soldier's trousers. When I was dressed I walked the street that had been bedecked with my wardrobe, and saw a familiar-looking document fluttering in the gut- ter. I raced for it, and vdth a sigh tucked it into my pocket, for it bore the seal of the United States and "requested" whomever it might concern to let me freely pass. From Polanka we had come next day for lunch at Semendria, and after a pleasant chat with the prefect and his son, a very likable young fellow with happy manners, we took the road to Belgrade. For fifteen or twenty kilometers the way ran on the bank of the Danube, there being barely room for a first-hne trench between it and the river. Three himdred yards away the Austrian trenches were in plain sight across the river, though some- times masked behind willow-trees. Leaving Se- mendria by way of the old fruit-market, where were for sale at very low prices unlimited quanti- ties of white and purple grapes, huge plums, large BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 25 red apples, figs, pears, and fine peaches, we were at once exposed to the fire of the enemy's cannon. Only there was no fire. The guns were there, the trenches, and the men, but xmconcernedly we sailed along for an hour, flaunting our car in their faces, as it were, without calling forth as much as a rifle- shot. This was disappointing, for we had been told that they seldom let automobiles pass without taking a pot-shot or two, and for the first time since coming to Serbia we had seemed in a fair way for a war thrill. The Serbian trench was deserted ex- cept for sentries at great intervals, but higher up in the vineyards, on the other side of us, were rnore trenches and, beyond these, dug-outs where the sol- diers lived. Now on another such day, two months later, sud- denly a rain of shell began on that town and stretch of road. It continued for forty-eight hours until there was no town and no road and no trench. Then across that quiet, beautiful river men put out by fifties from the Austrian side in large, flat-bot- tomed boats and, confident that nothing remained alive on the other shell-torn shore, made a landing. They were met by men who for two days had sat crouched in dug-outs under an unparalleled fire. The fighting that ensued was not war de luxe, with 26 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE all the brilliant, heartless mechanisms of modern war. It was with rifle and bayonet and bomb and knives and bare hands, and it raged for a long time, until finally the enemy was driven back across the river, leaving more than a thousand men behind. Only at Posharevats did they cross. The rear- guard at Semendria was nearly annihilated but it won the fight. An eye-witness, writing in the "Nineteenth Century," gives this description: There was no demoralization amongst the survivors in the river trenches. For that the Serbian temperament has to be thanked, which is perhaps after all only the temperament of any unspoiled population of agricultural peasants that live hard lives and have simple ideas. The effect of the bombardment had rolled off them like water off a duck's back, and they set to in the twilight and bombed and shot the landing parties off their side the river with great energy and application. So that was what was hanging over the sunshiny piece of road that we so bhthely sped along, while the two prosaic-looking battle-lines watched each other across the Danube — at peace. In the late dusk we came to the heights behind Belgrade, and looked down on the lights of the city stnmg along the Save and the Danube, while just beyond the river the towers of Semlin gleamed in the waning hght. London and Paris svere dark BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 27 every evening last summer, but Belgrade, always within range of the Austrian guns, was lit up as usual. With the exception of the section along the rivers that had been bombarded during the first invasion, and one hotel on the main street, which a shell had demolished, Belgrade might have been the capital of a nation at peace. The street cars were not run- ning, but in such a little city no one missed them. We ran up a very rough street and placed the car in the yard of a private residence. Then M. Todo- lich took us over to his home which, when the capi- tal was removed to Nish, he had had to lock up and leave like all the other government officials. One could see the pride of the home-loving Serb as he showed us over the charming little viUa built around a palm-filled court where a small fountain played. Belgrade being the only one of their cities which the Serbs have had time and resources to make modem, I found them all very proud of it, with an almost personal affection for each of its urbane conveniences. With great enthusiasm monsieur showed us the mysteries of his very up-to-date lighting and heating apparatus. "All the Serbian homes must be so some day >vhen peace comes to us," he said earnestly. His 28 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE was typical of many homes in Belgrade before Oc- tober 6. In a fairly good hotel we spent the night. My window overlooked the Save, from the moonUt sur- face of which, as stark and melancholy as the ghost- ship of the "Ancient Mariner," jutted the great, black steel girders and tangled iron braces of the blown-up railway bridge. Now and then a dim light traveled slowly along the water on some tiny boat that, manned by Enghsh marines, was pa- troling the water-front of Semlin. I was awake early next morning and, dressing hurriedly, went out into the brilliant August sun- shine. The air was wonderfully clear and bracing. Newsboys cried along the streets, which many sweepers were busily at work cleaning. Nothing but peace in Belgrade! Searching out the auto- mobile, I found a curious audience around it. There was Mitar, twelve years old, as straight as a young birch, with blue-black hair that fell in soft curls to his shoulders, and jetty eyes that peered with burning curiosity into every crevice of the motor, which he feared to touch. His beautiful body was tightly clothed in a dull-green jersey and white trousers that ended at the knees and left bare, sturdy legs very much bronzed. And there was his BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 29 little brother, Dushan, age seven, with still longer Hair, but a dark brown, large hazel eyes, pug nose, and freckled face, furnished with a toothless grin, for he was at that exciting age when one loses a tooth almost every day. He stood behind his big brother and admonished him not to touch the car. In the seat, bravest of the lot, saucy, impudent, naughty, sat Milka, age five, dressed in a blue wisp of cloth that left tiny throat and arms and legs bare to the summer sun. She had hold of the wheel, and was kicking at the foot-levers in wild delight, quite obviously driving that battered Ford at ten thousand miles a minute. But when suddenly she heard the step of the funny-looking American, one screech of laughter and fear, and Milka, hke a flying-squirrel, was safe on the doorstep, demurely smiling. I tried to coax her back, but could not. Even when I lifted the hood, and Mitar danced about with excitement at sight of the dirty engine thus disclosed, and Dushan stood with eyes of won- der, Milka remained smiling at me, poised for flight. As I worked about the car, a woman came out of the house toward me. I heard her light step upon the paved court and looked up. She was dark, not very tall, but dignified and wonderfully graceful, as all Serbian women are. Smiling pleasantly, she 30 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE offered me on a tray the inevitable shlatko. This is a time-honored custom in Serbia, and is ob- served very generally, though, of coiu'se, as West- ern ideas come in, the old customs go. When a guest comes to a Serbian home, the hostess — always the hostess in person — brings in a tray with pre- served fruits. On it are spoons, and the order is for each guest to help himself to a spoonful of shlatko, place the spoon in a water-filled receptacle, and take a glass of water. Then Turkish coffee follows, and a liqueur, usually plum brandy, from the home-made store which every Serbian home keeps. It is a sort of good-fellowship pledge and charming in its simphcity. Now the lady of the house was observing the honored rights of the shlatko to this foreigner who late the evening be- fore had deposited a very muddy automobile in her courtyard. There was still a good half hour before M. Todo- hch would be ready, so I determined to take thef children riding, my ulterior motive being to win over Milka. They had never been in an automo- bile before. We rolled the car out of the court, and started the engine. No sooner had the auto- mobile appeared in the street than the neighbor- hood became alive with children, all running toward BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 31 us, the traces of half -finished breakfasts showing on many of their faces. I piled them all in, on top of each other, in layers, and hung them about in the tonneau. Milka had deigned to come to the side- walk, where I pretended not to notice her, but took my seat at the wheel. If you had never, never had a ride in an automobile, and would hke to very, very much, and if you were to see one just about to go away with everybody else in it and you left behind, what would you do? Milka did not set up a yeU or smash anything. No, at five she knew a better way than that. Calmly, but very quickly, before the automobile could possibly get away, she stepped upon the run- ning-board, pushed two youngsters out of her way, bobbed up between me and the wheel, climbed upon my knee, and gave me, quite as if it had been for love alone, a resounding kiss on the cheek. I am sure she might have had a thousand Fords if she could have got in one such coup with the great De- troit manufacturer. So on that cloudless August morning we had a "joy ride" through the streets of Belgrade, and the noise we made could, I know, be heard in the enemy-lines. This was only a few short weeks before the sixth of October, 1915. Of course war is war, but let us get a picture. 32 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE Suppose on a perfect day in Indian summer you sat in that tiny, flower-filled court with the hos- pitable mother ; Mitar, the handsome ; Dushan, the cautious ; and Milka, the coquettish. As you romp with the children, you hear distantly a duU clap of thunder, just as if a summer shower were brew- ing. A second, a third clap, and you walk out to the entrance to scan the sky. It is deep blue and cloudless, but away over the northern part of the city, while you look, as if by magic, beautiful, shiny white cloudlets appear far up in the crystal sky, tiny, soft, fluffy things that look like a baby's pow- der-puff, and every time one appears a dull bit of thunder comes to you. For twelve months off and, on you have seen this sight. You think of it as a periodic reminder that your nation and the one across the way are at war. You know that hereto- fore those powder-puffs have been directed at your own guns on the hills behind the city and at the in- trenchments down by the river. But there are many things you do not know. You do not know, for instance, that Mackensen is just across the river now with a great Teutonic army outnumbering your own forces five or six to one. You do not know that for weeks the Austrian railways have been piling up mountains of potential powder-puffs BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 33 behind Semlin, and bringing thousands of ponder- ous machines designed to throw said puffs not only at the forts and trenches, but at your flower-filled court and its counterparts throughout the city. I You do not know that aeroplanes are parked by fifties beyond Semhn, and loaded to capacity with puffs that drop a long, long way and blossom in fire and death wherever they strike. You do not know that from a busy group of men in Berhn an order has gone out to take your city and your na- tion at any cost, and if you knew these things, it would now be too late. For as you look, in a few brief moments, the thunder-storm rolls up and covers the city, such a thunder-storm as nature, with all her vaunted strength, has never dared to manufacture. Mitar and Dushan and Milka stop their play. Worried, the woman comes out and stands with you. You say the firing is uncom- monly heavy to-day, but it will mean nothing, and I as you say this, you notice the powder-puffs on the slopes of the hills far short of the forts and over the town itself. High above you two of them sud- denly appear, and the storm begins in your region, in the street in front of you, on the homes of your neighbors. With increasing rapidity the rain falls now, five to theminute, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty- 34 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE five, every sixty seconds, and every drop is from fifty pounds to a quarter of a ton of whirling steel, and in the hollow heart of each are new and strange explosives that, when they strike, shake the win- dows out of your house. Looking toward Semlin, you see the aeroplanes rising in fleets. Some are already over the city, directing the fire of the guns across the river, and others are dropping explosive hombs, incendiary bombs, and darts. In a dozen places already the city is blazing terribly. A thin, shrill, distant sound comes to you and the waiting woman, almost inaudible at first, but quivering hke a high violin note. It rises swiftly in a crescendo, and you hear it now tearing down the street on your left, a deafening roar that yet is sharp, snarl- ing, wailing. Two hundred yards away a three- story residence is hfted into the air, where it trem- bles hke jelly, and drops, a heap of debris, into the street. Your friend fives there. His wife, his children, are there, or were, until that huge sheU came. Milka, Dushan, and Mitar have come in time to see their playmates' home blown to atoms. Without waiting for anything, you and the quiet, frightened woman seize the children and start out of the city. As you come to the road that winds tortuously to the hills behind the town, you see that BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 85 it is black with thousands and thousands of men and women dragging along screaming Mitars and Dushans and Milkas. Hovering above this road, which winds interminably on the exposed hillside before it reaches the sheltering crest, flit enemy aeroplanes, and on the dark stream below they are dropping bombs. There is no other road. You know you must pass along beneath those aeroplanes. lYou look at the woman and the children, and wonder who will pay the price. Oh, for a conveyance now 1 If only the American were here with his automobile, how greatly would he increase the children's chances! Carriages are passing, but you have no carriage. Railway-trains are stiU trying to leave the city, but there is literally no room to hang on the trains, and the line is exposed to heavy fire. Only slowly can you go with the children down the street already clogged with debris. Now in front you see a friend with his family, the mother and four children. They are in a coupe, drawn by good horses. How fortunate! The children recognize one another. Milka shouts a greeting. She is frightened, but of course does not realize the dan- ger. Even as she is answered by her playmate in the carriage, all of you are stunned by a terrible 36 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE concussion, and there is no family or carriage or horses any more. There is scarcely any trace of them. The fierce hvmger of a ten-inch shell sent to wreck great forts is scarcely appeased by one little family, and, to end its fury, blows a crater many feet across in the street beyond. Along with you Mitar has reahzed what is going on, and not the least of the trouble that overwhelms you is to see the knowledge of years drop in a minute on his childish face when those comrades are murdered before his eyes. If he gets out of this inferno and lives a hundred years, he will never shake off that moment. The shell has blown a crater in his soul, and because he is a Serb, that crater will smoke and smolder and blaze until the Southern Slav is free from all which vmloosed that shell or until he himself is blown beyond the sway even of Teutonic arms. He grasps his mother's hand and drags her on. Now you are in the outskirts of the city. No word can be spoken because of the constant roar of your own and the enemy's guns — a roar unfal- tering and massive, such as in forty-eight hours sixty thousand huge projectiles alone could spread over the little city. On the road you pass fre- quently those irregular splotches of murder char- BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 37 acteristic of bomb-dropping. Here only one man was blown to pieces by a precious bomb, yonder two women and a child, farther along eight people, men, women, and children, lie heaped. Here again only a child was crippled, both feet or a hand gone. It is hard to be accurate when sailing high in the air, hard even for those fearless men who with shrapnel biu-sting aroimd their frail machines calmly drop death upon women and children. I think they are the bravest, perhaps, of all the fighting men, these bomb-droppers in whatever uniform. For, it is not easy to face death at any time, but to face it while in the act of dropping murder on the bowed heads of women, on the defenseless heads of sleep- ing, playing, or fleeing children, surely it requires nerve to face death thus engaged. Two loyal subjects of the Kaiser were dexter- ously dropping bombs on Kragujevats one morn- ing. They pitched some at the arsenal, which they missed, and some at the English women's hospital camp, which they hit, one bomb completely destroy- ing all the unit's store of jam. A nurse was a few feet away, unaware that anything was threatening until orange marmalade showered her. Then she and all her colleagues went out into the open to watch the brave Germans. They were saihng 88 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE about nicely enough until a stray piece of shrapnel hit their gas-tank. Then the eagle became a meteor, which by the time it hghted in the middle of the camp was burned out. The two obedient sub- jects of the German emperor were incoherent bits of black toast, and the women came and picked souvenirs off the aeroplane. They showed them to me. So you passed with the mother and children by these patches of horror that mark the trail of the newest warfare. Or perhaps you lingered in the city until the second evening, when no one any longer dared to linger even in the scattered sheltered spots. Per- haps with the mother, Mitar, Dushan, and Milka, you came out at dusk of the second day, when the remnant of the population was leaving, when the enemy had effected their crossing, and hand-to- hand combat raged down by the river, when the guns were being dragged away to new positions, and the troops were falling hurriedly back. If you did, you left in a final spm-t of the bombard- ment, and on the crest of the hiUs behind Belgrade you stopped to look back for the last time on that city. For the city that in future years you may come back to will have nothing in common with the A Serbian peasant's home A bridge built by the Romans at Ouchitze and still in perfect condition fr~ d .2 .2 a O I BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 89 one you are leaving except location. Major El- liot, of the British marines, stopped at this time to look back. A few days later he told me what he saw. There was a dvmap-heap, an ash-pile, several miles in extent, lying along the Save and the Dan- ube. In hundreds of spots great beds of live coals glowed, in hundreds of others roaring flames leaped high into the sky, and over the remaining dark spaces of the heap, where as yet no conflagration raged, aeroplanes, sailing about, were dropping bombs that fell and bm-st in wide sprays of liquid fire, sprinkling the city with terrible beauty. Thirty or forty to the minute huge shells were bursting in the town. You may get away with the family, or you may not. You and the mother may be killed, and Mitar left to lead the yoimger ones. All three may be blown to pieces, and only you two left with the memory of it. More than seven thousand just like you and yours, hundreds of Mitars with bright dreams and curling hairs, hundreds of little, freckled, pug-nosed Dushans, hundreds of dainty, laughing Milkas, reddened the rough paving-stones of Belgrade or smoldered beneath the glowing ruins of homes such as M. TodoUch had proudly shown me. 40 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE We have supposed our picture, and every impor- tant detail of it is supposed from things that many- eye-witnesses told me, among them Serbian ofl&cers of high rank, and Admiral Troubridge, Major El- liott, Colonel Phillips, and the British marines who helped in the defense. If still the details are wrong, there is one little fact that cannot escape attention: something has become of seven thousand civiUans who on the sixth of October were in Bel- grade. When I asked Admiral Troubridge if the estimate that this many had been killed was too high, he replied that it was certainly too low. Innumerable such pictures as ours, I feel sure, God on high might have seen in Belgrade during those forty-eight hours. But perhaps God on high was not looking. It seems more than likely that He was too busy. Belgrade is tiny. In smiling lands to the west He had five hundred miles of thim- der-storms to watch, many beautiful towns more im- portant than Belgrade, where lived and died Mitars and Dushans and Milkas in numbers just as great. And on the other side of two old and charming countries, He had a thousand miles more of thim- der to superintend, and farther to the east, where another nation flaunts a rival to His avowed only Son, He had certain other matters to oversee, a mil- BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 41 lion people massacred beside the soldiers on the bat- tle-line. Also over His wide, gray oceans there were great ships with Milkas and Dushans and Mitars on them, and their fathers and mothers. He must witness the destruction of these, for surely, like the rest of us, God loves the brave sailors. So a Mttle forty-eight hour thunder-storm on the banks of the "beautiful blue Danube" could not have claimed very much of His attention. As the ed- itors say. He must be "full up on war stuff," and, anyway, there are not enough of the Serbs to make them so terribly important; hke us, for instance. Besides, people in the great world tell us war is war. After the fine morning ride with Mitar, Dushan, and Milka, we left Belgrade, retraced our steps over the peaceful road along the Danube, but at Semen- dria turned eastward and so, after nightfall, neared Velico-Gradishte, also on the Danube, and nestled in the very first f oot-hiUs of the Carpathians. Just before sunset we had passed through Posharevats, headquarters for the third Serbian army. Shortly beyond to the northward lies the famous Stig coun- try, broad, level, and fertile as few lands are. We climbed a hill, from the top of which we overlooked the wide valley ahead. For many miles, until lost 42 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE in the deep blue of the distant Carpathians, the land was as smooth as a floor, and in the slanting rays of the sun a rich gold color was spread over all of it so unhrokenly and evenly that we could not imagine what it was. Mallory and I guessed and guessed, but could not make it out. Then we descended into it down a two-mile barren hill, and immediately the road became a narrow lane between sohd walls of tasseling Indian com, the wide-flung gold of which had puzzled us. In no part of America have I seen com superior to that of these fields, cultivated though they were by the most primitive methods. One of the things that brought Mr. Mallory there was to see to the transportation with his tinit's auto- mobiles of some three hundred thousand kilograms of com which the Government had bought for the destitute in Macedonia. The cars were to haul it to the railway station about twenty kilometers dis- tant. This com was of the crop gathered two years previously. That of the preceding year was stored untouched in the peasants' bams, and now we saw' this wonderful crop almost ready to gather. This shows how lack of transportation hampers every- thing in Serbia. People in southern Serbia were on the point of starvation, while here was food BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 43 enough for the whole nation. The Teutonic alhes have taken a rich country. For two hours we ran at top-speed across this level farm, and then, crossing a thin strip of woods, came to a long tree-hned avenue, very similar to a route nationale in France. We were bounding along this, our head-lights making plain the road, when a mounted gendarme rode into the way ahead and held up his hand. He made us put out aU lights and sneak along very slowly, for we were now imder the enemy's guns again, and at this point they were more disposed to pop at anything they saw, particularly automobile-lights. So we crept into the httle place, which was knocked to pieces al- most as much as Vishegrad, had our supper, and went to bed in houses where every crevice was care- fully covered to conceal the light. It was considered an act of foolhardiness and daring to cross the public square of Velico-Gra- dishte in daylight. The main street of the place cohld be swept by gun-fire across the river at any time. So the few remaining citizens, and there were more than one would think, took devious ways down side streets to get from one place to another. We stopped most of the next day, a very hot, still 44 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE day, in which it seemed very incongruous that we had to sneak ahout like thieves, and in the afternoon left, making a wide detour through the Stig coun- try fmiher to inspect the harvest. Another trip which I made from Nish to Zaj echar ' along the valley of the Timok further revealed to me the vast, potential resources of Serhia. We saw little of armies on this trip, hecause we were along the Bulgarian frontier, and it was then too early for Serbia to have heavy forces massed there. Everywhere the peasants pointed to the eastward and told us: "There lies the Bulgarian frontier. There it is, just on top that mountain. From here it is only half an hour's walk." They spoke of it as if it were a thing alive, which was being held back by them by main strength and awkwardness, and they spoke of it with awe. How well, in that peaceful summer, they realized what a move on the Bulgarian frontier would mean to them. During this year of peace in war there was no anxiety on the part of the Serbs as to their Aus- trian frontiers. I spoke to scores of oflScers and soldiers, and not once was anything but confidence expressed. But their frontier to the east they al- most without exception distrusted. I do not think that there was one Serbian in Serbia who did not BATTLE LINES AT PEACE 45 firmly believe that Bulgaria would attack when fully prepared. It was a thing that called for no more discussion, a thing so patent to all observersi of affairs in the Balkans that only alhed diplomacy was too stupid to see. I know now that while I was talking to the captain about it, there in Bosnia, the Enghsh papers were full of an entente cordiale with Bulgaria, but also as we talked that afternoon an orderly rode up, handing his superior a note. The captain glanced at it and turned to me. "At last," he said in French. "The blue order has come. We must be ready to go in half an hour." And this for me was the bell that rang up the curtain on what is without doubt one of the greatest tragedies our century will see. It came on a nation almost as much at peace as Belgium was, a country much larger than Belgium, with no good roads, with no France, no England to offer refuge, noth- ing but wild mountains devoid of food. It came not in the days of summer, when shelter is a habit and not a necessity, but at the beginning of the sav- age Balkan winter, when a roof very frequently means life, and it lasted not three or four weeks, but ten. CHAPTER II THE CHEECHAS OF SEEBIA WHEN the long expected "blue order" came, it meant that Serbia was stripping her war frontiers of all reserves and most of her first-line troops. It meant that on the Drina only a skeleton army was left, while along the long frontiers of the Save and the Danube perhaps a hundred thousand men were spread, and all the others — Serbia's whole army numbered about three hundred and fifty thousand — were to be massed along the Bulgarian border to guard the nation's one hope — the single line of the Orient Railway from Saloniki to Belgrade. At about this time the English Parliament was being regaled with "the cordial feehng that always existed between Eng- land and Bulgaria." The next morning I watched the garrison at Vardishte file over the Shargon Pass to Kremna, the chief post of the Drina division, while the fourth-line men, the cheechas, were sent down to Vishegrad to take the first-line places. Of all the fresh, xmhackneyed things that Serbia 46 THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 47 offered abtindantly to the Western visitor, perhaps none is more indicative of the nation's real spirit, certainly none is more picturesque and appealing, than these cheechas of the army. Cheecha means "uncle," and in Serbia, where men age more swiftly than anywhere else on earth, it is popularly applied to men more than thirty. But the cheechas of the fourth line range from forty five to an indefinite limit. The Serb seems never too old to fight. They had no uniforms, these patriarchs of the army, and, marching by, presented a beggar's array of tattered homespuns at once ludicrous and touch- ing. To see their grandfathers in dirty rags, un- washed, half starved, blue with cold, drenched with rain, many of them suffering with rheumatism, scurvy, neuralgia, and in the last days of their na- tion's life dying by hundreds of wounds, cold, and starvation, was one of the things the Serbs had to bear. It was the cheechas who first welcomed me to Serbia. I shall never forget my feelings when at Ghevgheli, the border town between Greece and Serbia, I looked out of the train window at my first cheecha. I wondered if this was the typical Ser- bian soldier, for he looked not a day under seventy, despite the broad grin on his face when he saw the 48 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE party of American workers. It was midsummer and as hot as southern Italy, but the old fellow was dressed about as heavily as we would be for a bliz- zard. On his shoulders he had a thick woolen cape of brown homespun, attached to which was a peeked hood designed to slip over the head in wet weather, and which, when in place, added a monk-like touch to the rest of his outlandish costume. Un- derneath the cape he wore a sleeveless jacket of sheepskin, with the thick wool turned inside, and this in July. Beneath the jacket was a shirt of linen, home manufactured, and he wore long trousers that fitted skin tight about his calves and thighs but bagged like bloomers in the back. He had on thick woolen stockings, which he wore pulled over the trousers up to his knees, like golf hose, and which were resplendent with wide borders of bril- liant colors. On his feet were the half -shoe, half- sandal arrangements known as opanki. His queer get-up made one forget how old and forlorn he must be, for despite his cheerful face, he could not have been but wretched with nothing in life before him except to guard that scorching railway track while his sons and grandsons died on the frontiers. As I saw him standing there in the dust and heat, some dialect lines of Lanier's came to me: THE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 49 What use am dis ole cotton stalk when life done picked my cotton? But that was because I was ignorant of Serbia. Not by a long way had "Life done picked" those cheechas' "cotton." Nearly a million Germans, Austrians, and Bulgarians did it a few months later, but the harvest, thank God! was not all one- sided. As the slow-moving train crept north into Ser- bia, our acquaintance with the cheechas grew. At every httle bridge there were four of them, two at each end, living in tiny tepee-like shelters built of brush. At the stations companies of them were drawn up along the track, grotesque groups, non- descript and filthy, with rifles of many makes slung over their stooping shoulders. They never failed to salute us and cheer us, their enthusiasm being mingled with a charming, naive gratitude when we scattered American cigarettes among them. While we were camping just outside Nish dur- ing the last weeks of July there were three ancient cheechas who passed our camp every afternoon at sunset on their way to sentry duty, and every morn- ing just after sunrise they returned. We could never say anything to one another except "Dobra- vechie" ("Good evening") and "Dobra-utro" 50 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE ("Good morning") , but a friendship sprang up be- tween us, nevertheless. Month after month this was their occupation, oscillation between their filthy, vermin-infested abodes in Nish and that desolate hilltop where they watched through the starlit or stormy nights. They had beaten out a narrow, dusty path through the upland pastures, monoto- nously treading which, munching hunks of black bread and large green peppers, they symbolized the cheechas' existence. Their childhke natures might lead one to suppose that as guards they would not be worth much, but this would be wrong. Most guard duty is simple. You stand up and watch a place, and when some one comes you challenge him. If his answer is satisfactory, good; if not, you cover him with your rifle and then miarch him in to your superior. If he disobeys, you shoot. Nothing is said about exemp- tion. A sentry is no respecter of persons, and the simpler minded he is, the less of a respecter is he inclined to be. One evening a man of our camp wandered to the precincts sacred to our three cheechas. He heard a loud "Stoy!" to which, instead of halting, he re- sponded, "Americanske" and kept going. An- other "Stoy!" brought the same result, and so a THE CHEECHAS OE SERBIA: 51 third. Then out of the dimness loomed a hooded figure, and with an obsolete rifle blazed away, above the trespasser's head, of course, but not greatly above it, a sort of "William Tell" calculation. Swifter than the roebuck came our wanderer home, down the dusty trail, hatless and breathless, wise in the ways of cheechas. Near Belgrade one night a gentleman of some mihtary consequence decided to inspect certain trenches. Depending upon his uniform and well- known name, he did not bother to get the password. "And do you know," he told me, "two baUy old chaps from Macedonia who spoke no known lan- guage marched me a mile and a half to their cap- tain, and it was all he could do to convince the stern beggars that I had a right to my uniform and was really the British military attache." When fighting was going on with the Bulgarians, not very far from Nish last autumn, one of the American Sanitary Commission, a hopelessly col- lege-bred person, with strong laboratory instincts, wandered alone and unaided about the environs of the city, dreaming of hypothetical water- supplies; and dreaming thus, he wandered into realms he wot not of, and, what mattered more, into the snug nest of two valiant cheechas set to guard 52 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE a road. Two days later inquiring government offi- cials, set in motion by stiU more inquisitive friends, found him living the life and eating the food of the cheechas. They had orders not to leave that post, and they were determined that he should not imtil an officer had seen him. Despite this inconvenient, imflinching devotion to the letter of the law, I found a softer side to the cheechas. One afternoon at Nish I climbed a steep and dusty trail up one of the neighboring hills which overlooks for thirty miles or more the broad sweep of the Morava. Accompanying me was a delightful, but really distressingly proper, English lady whom I had recently met. A rich Balkan sunset across the vaUey was well worth the climb, we thought, but to the gay old cheecha we found at the top it seemed incredible that any one not touched with divine madness would make that exertion just to see the sun go down. With ingenuous and em- barrassing signs he made it known that duty held him there, but that we need not mind; and there- upon, with a wink as inconspicuous as the full moon, he turned his back upon us and so remained. We stood that back as long as it was humanly possible to stand it, and then rose to go ; but he motioned us to stop, and running to a clump of bushes, he pulled JHE CHEECHAS OF SERBIA 63 out a luscious melon, — all his supper, I am sure, — ; and with as obvious a "Bless you, my children!" as I ever saw, presented it to us. They are made of a fine timber these cheechas. With amazing endurance and wearing qualities, nothing seems to shake them. On one of my trips with M. Todolich we stopped for coffee in a httle village near Zajechar. Of course the only men in the cafe were very old, too worn out even for Ser- bian mihtary service. Several of these gathered about our table to hear what news M. Todohch could give, and one among them I specially noticed. I am sure that Job in the last stages of his affliction approached this old fellow in appearance. He had had six sons, aU of whom had been killed. His wife had died shortly before, and just the previous week a great flood on the river had completely destroyed his home and livelihood, and had drowned his one daughter-in-law with her two httle sons. What would you say to a man of seventy five who has watched his life go by like that? M. Todohch tried to say something, and I heard the cheecha reply in a few Serbian words the meaning of which I did not understand, nor how he could reply at aU in that level, uncomplaining, perfectly calm tone. 54 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE "What did he say?" I asked the interpreter. "He says, 'God's will be done.' " And that was all we heard him say. At Dobrun four old cronies were detailed to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to our camp, and tirelessly they hewed and drew. When, one considers the deep-rooted, constitutional aver- sion to work which is without doubt the Serbs' worst drawback, this industry on their part appears at its true value. A woman journalist, measuring with her profound gaze the length and breadth and depth of Serbia, and the hearts of its people, in a junket of a couple of weeks or so, has insinuated the un- gratefulness and cupidity of the Serbs. Nothing could be further from the truth. For the smallest acts their gratitude overflows all botmds, and as for pride, no peasants of Eiurope can approach these lowly people in their dislike of dependence. An appealing desire to show us at least their sense of thankfulness actuated even these old codgers to do things which by nature they despised to do. At first our Bosnian menage rotated about a refugee cook from Vishegrad, who, had she not been Serb, would certainly have been Irish. She was a leisurely soul who refused to let any exigency what- ever make her hasten. On the first pay-day we 'Wounded Cheechas being transported to a hospital A Cheecha flashing army dispatches by means of a hehograph [■"" J^^^^ WT ^ ^> -vi! .^r^a»«:~.- -■ ^., V .^ c3 d 5 Ji^?* ■■^Jt .y-; J THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 167 had real food for him. Next morning we had to leave him by our smoldering fire with the scanty food I felt justified in taking from the stores. Con- tinually during these dreary weeks we had thus to make compromises with our better feelings. To leave a man like that in the wilderness was simply murder, but there were the women of our party to be thought of. And why choose him for life when hundreds and thousands of his fellows were in a like predicament? The only respite from such try- ing decisions came when they had grown so common that no one felt them any more. In watching Serbia die, we came to attain what Nietzsche terms "metaphysical comfort," and the heroism of the Serbs supplied the exaltation of a Greek tragedy, showing as nothing else could the strange, paradoxical pathos and yet utter insignifi- cance of individual lives. When heroes die by tens of thousands, each is none the less a hero, but how inconsequential each! To get into Mitrovitze is hke chasing a mirage. About eleven in the morning we came to it. It was perhaps three miles away, but the swift, treacherous current of the Ibar lay between, and there was no bridge. So for four hours we followed the river as it wound about the city in a series of broad curves, 168 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE until on the opposite side from which we ap- proached we found a long bridge spanning it. On the hilltop, just before we descended to this bridge, we passed a brand-new cemetery by the roadside. It had the unmistakable, extemporaneous air which the swift ravage of typhus last year gave to many Serbian burying grounds. There were perhaps fifty graves, none of them more than a week old. Typhus was beginning in Mitrovitze, and two vic- tims were being buried as we passed. On crossing the bridge I found it impossible to get our cart into the town itself because of the refu- gees, and left it outside among the innumerable kommorras then encamped there. With Tichomir as the best excuse for an interpreter I could get, I went into the town to find Sir Ralph Paget, who I knew was there, as well as many English nurses. It was about three-thirty in the afternoon, and I was anxious that the very tired women should have some shelter that night, because for three nights they had had none. I thought to hand them over, with the remainder, thank Heaven! of the mutton and biscuits, to Sir Ralph, and then decide what I should do. Alone I could travel fast, and the re- treat, despite its terror, was intensely interesting. I should have to trust to luck about finding food. THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 169 My alternative was to stay in Mitrovitze until the Germans came, and then return home through Aus- tria and Switzerland. By this time my personal appearance was truly awful, and the gendarme at the other end of the bridge kept me almost half an hour before Tichomir could persuade him to let me go on. He would never have dreamed of stopping me if I had worn a smart vmiform. What inquiries we could make among the anxious crowd brought us no informa- tion. 'No one seemed ever to have heard of Sir Ralph Paget, but somebody said they thought there was an English mission in the casern by the hospital. As corroborating this, I suddenly sighted an Eng- lish nurse standing on a corner watching the crowd. She informed me how to reach the casern, and told me a special train at that moment was leaving Mitrovitze with a hundred and twenty nurses who intended to reach England as soon as possible. Their train journey would be only three hours, when they would again have to take ox-carts and start for the mountains. But there were many more nurses left in Mitrovitze, for, even as late as this, some still hoped to be able to remain and work. These would stay as long as possible. To have arrived a few hours earlier would have enabled my three nurses to 170 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE join this hundred and twenty. To come in one end of the town as they were going out the other, did not tend to put one in an enviable humor. After a few minutes I found Dr. May at the casern. She could give me only general directions where to find Sir Ralph, but offered me a room for the nurses, having secured more shelter than her party needed. Grateful for this aid, I set off to find Sir Ralph, and met his secretary, Mr. Leslie, in the street. I put the situation of the three nurses before him in detail, with the assurance that, as previously, I was ready to do all in my power to aid the British women in any manner. I asked him to bring the matter to Sir Ralph's attention as soon as possible, for it was then late, and I could not go in person, but had to return to my party outside the town to bring them to the quarters Dr. May had kindly loaned me. Mr. Leslie said he would tell Sir Ralph at once, so that I felt the nurses' safety was assured, at least to the extent of the other British women in the place. While we were talking, Cap- tain Petronijevich came up, and the comic side of my predicament seemed to strike him forcibly. We laughed together, and I went away feeling greatly relieved. All of our party were dead tired and could not be THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 171 thankful enough for a roof that night, as it rained heavily. Despite a warning I had received that the people in the house could not be trusted, I slept soundly on the floor in the hall of a Turkish house Vi^here we were. Relieved of the necessity of get- ting under way next morning, we all slept late, and it was nearly nine o'clock when I went out from the secluded court where our house stood, through two outer courts, to the street. One of the liveliest scrimmages I have ever seen was in session. There was a terrific jam, automo- biles, ox-carts, and carriages grinding mercilessly into one another, and the town could not be seen for the people. Acquaintances were shouting excit- edly to one another across the street, and children were howling. The gate through which I came opened on a large square where nearly all the streets of the town emptied, and from which the road to Prishtina ran. The trouble was that everybody was trying to take this road at the same time, and no one was succeeding very well. In the center of the square I suddenly spied Enghsh khaki, and recognized Admiral Troubridge and Colonel Phillips. They were seated in an ancient fiacre, and wasting a good deal of energy trying to impress on a nondescript coachman the 172 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE necessity of speedily getting free from the tangle. The Admiral caught sight of me, and beckoned me to him. "Where are the three nurses? You wiU have to get out before noon," he said aU in a breath. "I have reported them to Sir Ralph ; he has made arrangements for them, I presume. What is the matter, anyway?" "The Serbs seem to have had an awful knock. Word came after midnight to evacuate this town at once. The road to Prizrend may already be cut; if so, think of Ipek. Remember what I say : think of Ipek as a refuge. And if you want to see Sir Ralph, you had better hurry to his house; but he has already gone, I think. Good-by, good luck, and remember Ipek," he shouted at me as the f,acre plunged through an opening in the crowd. I hurried down the street, dimly recollecting some directions, crossed a bridge, and, turning to the left along the river bank, saw Sir Ralph just getting into his touring-car, which was piled high with lug- gage of various descriptions. He saw me coming, and ceased arranging his baggage. "Good morning, Mr. Jones. I began to think I should go away without seeing you. Mr. Leslie told me about the three nurses. I am extremely THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 173 sorry that I can do nothing to help you. I hope you understand how it is." "But, Sir Ralph, you know the circumstances under which I have these English nurses? Having no official standing and no interpreter, I am unable to get anything for them. Also, I feel that the re- sponsibihty is growing too great." "I am very sorry, but I can do nothing. The General Staff has been ordered to go, and I must go with them. After they go I am powerless. I should advise you to go on to Prizrend, where there are sure to be parties forming to go over the moxm- tains. Really I am most awfully sorry." "Had I not better turn them over to Dr. May? My oxen are getting weak, and our food is almost gone. I am sure that unaided I can never get the nurses to Prizrend." With the sort of accent that American actors strive a hfetime to attain, looking back at me as the chauffeur started the car, "Yes," he said, "that is best, if you can persuade Dr. May to take them." "Good morning. Sir Ralph." "Good morning, Mr. Jones." I turned on my heel and walked away. At least I had expected a brief note recommending that Dr. May look out I for these English women, who were in a very dan- 174 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE gerous situation. I had gone only a little way when I heard running steps behind me, and Mr. Leshe rushed up shoving three books into my hand. One of them was in a postal wrapper, the other two were * tmcovered. "Sir Ralph wishes to know if you will be kind enough to deliver this book to its owner, if you hap- pen to find her, and the other two he thought you might like to read in your spare moments." Saying this, he fled to catch the moving motor. I stood gazing stupidly down at the books in my hand, and finally became aware of two words star- ing blackly at me from a yellow cover. "Quo Vadis?" they impishly screamed at me, "Where are you going?" "Quo vadis, quo vadis?" And I could not answer at aU. Subtle humor to meet in an Enghshman! Having told my nurses the night before that everything was sure to be all right now, I had no heart to go back to them with these fresh complica- tions. Instead, I wandered up the street a short way to think, though the crowds that swept me along left little time for mental gymnastics. It is a Turkish custom for women to mix bread at home ; then they take it in large shallow pans to the public bake-shops, where it is baked for a small con- THE VALLEY OF THE IBAR 175 sideration. The good Turkish housewives were now engaged in this daily pilgrimage along the streets of Mitrovitze. As every one was ravenously hungry, they were the cynosiu-e of all eyes as they marched gracefully along, the wide, round pans ex- pertly balanced on their heads. Going forward in a "brown study," I quite unpremeditatedly collided with the fattest and ugliest of these bread women and both of us were showered with the sticky, yel- low maize batter. It ran down the good woman's face like broken eggs, and down my back in nasty rivulets. Immediately there was a throng, with shouts and excitement, while the old woman seized the copper pan and started for me. A wall of grin- ning soldiers cut oflp all retreat ; so ignominiously I bought forgiveness and liberty with ten francs. This collision brought me to my senses, as it were, and I decided to try another appeal on Dr. May. It was about ten o'clock when I arrived at the casern and found my way to the huge room the party of forty had occupied. They did not seem alarmed by the general exodus, and were only then eating breakfast. I found Dr. May seated before a bowl of por- ridge, which she generously wanted to share with me, but I had no appetite. She, of course, wished 176 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE to know what Sir Ralph had done with the nurses. I told her about the brief interview, repeated my predicament, and asked if she did not see her way clear to taking on the three nurses. She replied that she sympathized with me deeply, but that Dr. Curcin had refused to take on any more, and she did not think she could do it. I then remarked that I had done all in my power for the three Enghslj women, and if their own countrywomen would not make the very small sacrifice that receiving them into their own unit would require, now that my power had ended, I did not know what would be- come of them. Again she expressed her sympathy for their position and regretted exceedingly not to be able to take them. However, she made the same offer as at Rashka, namely, that our cart might come along with theirs, and whereas food and shelter could not be provided, in case of capture the women would have the advantage of being with them. This was the final arrangement, and Dr. Curcin agreed that when it was possible to get bread from the Government he would ask for an allowance for us. In the middle of that same afternoon, the six- teenth of November, we all left Mitrovitze together, taking the road over the Plain of Kossovo. CHAPTER VII ON THE "riEID OF BLACKBIBDS" TO American readers the name Kossovo doubt- less calls forth little recognition. But to every Serbian, Kossovo brings up an image of past glory when the present dream of every Ser- bian heart was a reality. A powerful Slav nation existed until more than five hundred years ago, when the Turks won a crushing victory on the Plain of Kossovo, and the ancient kingdom, whose power stretched from Mitrovitze to Prizrend, be- came a memory. The great battle that took place here resulted in such slaughter that for generations it became the synonym for all that was terrible. Because of the great flocks of vultures that were said to have gath- ered over the plain after the battle, it has always been known as the "Field of Blackbirds." To me the name of Kossovo calls up one of the most terrible spectacles I shall ever see. The plain on the day after we left Mitrovitze epitomized all that is sordid, overwhelming, heartrending, and in- 177 178 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE termingled in that strange maze, which is ever the wonder of onlookers at the tragic puzzle of war, all that is noble, beautiful, sublime. Until that day I did not know the burden of the tiny little word "war," but never again shall we who traversed the "Field of Blackbirds" think of war without living again the snow-filled horrors of our march. From Mitrovitze to Prishtina is scarcely more than twenty-five kilometers. I am sure that never before in human history has more suffering, hero- ism, and patriotism been crowded into so small a space. As usual, we were with the army, or, what the day before had been an army. I think from the Plain of Kossovo what had been the most stoical fighting body in a war of valiant armies became for the time being no more an army, no more the expres- sion of all the hope and valor of a nation, but a ghost, a thing without direction, a freezing, starv- ing, hunted remnant that at Belgrade, Semendria, Bagardan, Chachak, Babuna Pass, Zajechar, and many other places had cast its desperate die and lost, and needed only the winter that leaped in an hour upon it on the "Field of Blackbirds" to finish its hxmailiation. For it was on the dreary stretches of Kossovo that the cold first came upon us. In an hour a delightful Indian-summer climate changed ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 179 to a temperature so savage that of all the dangers it was the greatest. Forty English women made the march that day. They made it without food and without drink; most of them made it on foot and in clothing intended only for Balkan summer. I think it can be said that the party of English women stood it better than the Serbian refugees and fully as well as the Serbian army. Of course girls who entered the march mere girls came out in the evening old in ex- perience. They saw the things that generations of their sisters at home live and die without the shght- est knowledge of — the madness of starvation, the passion to Hve at all cost, the swift decay of all civ- ilized characteristics in freezing, starving men. They understand now better than any biologist, any economist, could have taught them the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. At the end they smiled, made tea, slept forty in a Turkish harem, and next day marched their thirty kilome- ters. They are the heroines of the Serbian tragedy, and they realized it not at all. When we left Mitrovitze at two-thirty in the aft- ernoon, we were in the center of that ever-surging refugee-wave along the crest of which we sometimes moved, but behind which never. Just out of Mitro- 180, WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE vitze the road climbs in steep ascents over a small range of hills, then dips to the level of the plain. There are no trees on Kossovo, a detaU; but have you ever seen an army in zero weather go into camp without wood? The plain continues almost to Prishtina, where the road begins to climb once more in snake-like zigzags, every curve of it a bog, until from the top of a range Prishtina is visible, lying in a snug cove among the mountains. We had scarcely descended to the plain outside of Mitrovitze when the early dusk came on, and we turned aside to camp in a corn-field, having come about six kilometers in two hours and a half. There was a warm breeze from the south, and the clear sky looked Uke midsummer. Our little party camped near by, but separately from the main Icommorra. As we were once more partaking of mutton and sweet biscuit, about a brightly blazing camp-fire. Dr. May came over to see us. She said she had a "bargain to drive" with me, and I said, "All right." She told us the nurse who had been shot on the road to Rashka had had to be left at Mitrovitze with two women doctors and a nurse. Mitrovitze was expected to fall any day, but she desired to send back the one motor- ambulance they possessed to see if the sister could ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 181 be moved. The young British chauffeur she hesi- tated to send back to ahnost sure capture, but I was neutral. If I would take the ambulance when it caught up with us next day and return with it to Mitrovitze, there to place myself at the absolute disposal of the doctors, either to bring the wounded girl on or to stay with them and be captured or go anywhere they might send me, she agreed to take the three nurses as her own and see them through with the rest of her party. I replied that I was ready to do this, and she took on the nurses at once. The ambulance did not reach us until Prishtina, however, so I made all of the march next day and returned from Prishtina to Mitrovitze, but more of that later. At last I had secured the safest pos- sible provision for the nurses. From this "bar- gain" on, I cannot say too much for the kindness and consideration shown me in every way by the English women. Later when I fell iU during a bitter cold speU, I feel that I owed my life to the attention which some of them found time to give me despite their own hardship and sufferings. [Nor can I exaggerate the thoughtfulness and un- selfishness of both Dr. May and Df. Curcin in . looking after the comfort and security of the mis- sion ia every possible particular. 182 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE On the stretch of road we had traversed that afternoon I counted fifteen army-motor lorries hopelessly bogged in the mud. The mire was well above the hubs of our ox-carts, and it was all the powerful beasts could do to pull the carts along. Before, as far as one could see, was a squirming, noisy, impatient stream of carts, automobiles, and carriages, while behind us from the thousands of camps spread about Mitrovitze an unbroken tor- rent of vehicles flowed out on the road. I esti- mated that without an instant's pause day and night, at the rate oxen could go, it would require at least three days for the ox-carts about Mitro- vitze so much as to get on the road. Indeed, many hundreds were taken there by the Germans five days later. There were crowds of Austrian prisoners at work along this part of the road, their best efforts only being sufficient to prevent the way from becoming absolutely impassable. Here I saw my first and only German prisoner. For some reason he was not working with the others, but stood on the road- side looking down on them. The Austrian prison- ers were in tatters. For weeks they had not had sufficient to eat. The German presented a strik- ing contrast. Superbly equipped, helmet shining, Long trains of oxen were pulling the big guns from the camps along the wayside In many places on Kossovo swift torrents swept across the road r Kossovo stretched away in the dreariest expanse imaginable '£&^suf,*iit^- Now and then the storm hfted its snow veil Crossing the "Field of Blaclsbirds" in the blizzard ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 183 his wonderful gray-green uniform successfully withstanding the hardest usage, a comfortable great coat over his shoulders, weU shod, and exhib- iting every indication of being well fed, I concluded he had not been captured very long. He was lo- quacious enough, and while we listened to the Ger- man guns then booming not very far from Mitro- vitze he naively asked: "But why is every one going in a hurry ? What does it mean ?" If it was irony, it was well veiled, and I turned the subject to Frankfort, his home, and found him an enthusi- astic reader of Goethe. He was a fine soldier, but I do not forget what the cheechas of Chachak did to his kind. Plowing along with our kommorra, I had seen many carts overturned while trying to go around the motors that were en panne. Especially do I remember one handsome carriage, drawn by a fine pair of blacks and containing a man, his wife, and several children, to say nothing of what was in all probability their entire household possessions. In attempting to pass a motor, this carriage tumbled over a ten-foot bank into a miniature swamp. Owing to the softness of the ground, the family escaped serious injury, and immediately continued their journey on foot, leaving all in the bog, not 184 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE even waiting to finish the horses, which were lying in distorted positions entangled in the harness and wheels. Thousands of soldiers were marching by us aU this time, and when we camped it was in the midst of them. Soon after Dr. May's visit, we went to bed in the open, there being, indeed, no other place to go. At twelve o'clock we were awakened by rain-drops in our faces, and until daylight the rain continued in torrents. We got under way about five o'clock the next morning, while it was yet pitch dark, in the hope of doing several kilometers before the creeping gla- cier of vehicles should begin again. This was hope- less, however, for every one else had the same in- spiration, and already the road was full. I use "road" from habit; on this day it was a turbid stream, sometimes ankle-deep, sometimes up to the drivers' waists where wet-weather torrents had broken their banks and overflowed it. Through this highway, long before it was hght, thousands upon thousands of ox-carts, carriages, and automobiles were plowing their way. For the most part the road was so narrow that there was no chance of passing those in front, the grovmd on each hand being impassable mire. After an hour ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 185 or so, when all the gaps were filled, this meant that if far ahead in the environs of Prishtina an ox slipped his yoke or a cart-wheel broke or a horse balked or an automobile stuck or a driver wished to light a cigarette or any other imaginable con- tingency came to pass, a few minutes later carts just leaving Mitrovitze would be held up until the other carts twenty kilometers ahead should move. This was the condition on all the mountain roads of Serbia. It added at least fifty per cent, to the time required to finish one's journey. Every one was drenched. Few people had had any sort of shelter during the night, and the rain had been such as to come through the tiny tents some of the more fortunate soldiers possessed. The women of the English mission took the road soaked to the skin. Either in their miserably covered carts, imcomfortably perched on top of the meager luggage that they had been able to save or walking along beside the drivers when it was possible, I saw them pass from the flooded corn-field where they had slept, or, rather, spent the night, on to the road. The army, too, was beginning to awaken. Long trains of oxen — the army, of course, had all the best oxen, huge powerful animals, far better than horses for the Serbian roads— were pulling the big guns 186 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE from the camps along the wayside. From twelve to twenty teams were required for each gun, and even then they had to strain every muscle in the frequent mud-holes. They would go forward a few meters, all pulling together in a long line, then, as the heavy guns sank deeper, some of the wilder ones would begin to swing from side to side, oscil- lating like a pendulum, each swing wider, until all the teams were in hopeless disorder, while yokes broke, and drivers cursed. At last they would come to a standstill, all the waiting thousands be- hind perforce following their example, bringing comparative silence, in the midst of which the Ger- man and Serbian cannon could be heard incessantly, like rumbling thunder. Then the caravan would move on again, only to stop once more. This was repeated all day long, each day for weeks and weeks. During one of these lulls we heard a great com- motion behind us. There was a loud trampling of men's and horses' feet, and a lot of shouting, which steadily grew louder, and finally sounded abreast of us. Out in the marshy fields along the road I sav/ a thousand or fifteen hundred Serbian youths, ranging in age from twelve to eighteen. They were the material out of which next year and ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 187 the succeeding years Serbia was to replenish her army. Not yet ripe for service, the Government had ordered them out at the evacuation of every place, and had brought them along with the army in order to save them from being taken by the enemy into Austria, Germany, and Bulgaria as prisoners of war. For it is these boys the invaders are especially anxious to get. They are the force of to-morrow, and to-morrow, it has been my ob- servation, the Teutonic allies now dread above all else in the world. One of the Austrian official communiquis re- cently read, "And here we also took about one hun- dred and fifty youths almost ready for military service." It is the only official mention I have ever seen of such captures, although in the fighting of last year they were common. It is a bare state- ment of one of the most terrible aspects of the Ser- bian retreat. The boys I saw in the flooded fields were not strangers to me, but now for the first time I saw them bearing arms. When the trouble first began I had seen these and other thousands all along the railway-line from Belgrade. Many for the first time in their lives were away from their own vil- lages, and most of them had never before been 188J WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE separated from their families. There was no one to look after them. They did not even have the advantage of a soldier in getting food and shelter. If there was hread left over at the military stations, they got it; if not, they did not. Never were they sheltered, but slept where they happened to stand when night came on. Few of them had sufficient clothing; only those whose mothers had been able to supply them with the warm, durable, homespun garments which the peasants make were adequately protected. I used to see the smaller of them sit- ting on top the railway-cars crying together by the dozens. They were hungry, of course; but it was not hunger or thirst or cold; it was pure, old-fash- ioned, boarding-school homesickness that had them, with the slight difference that they longed for homes which no more existed. "The capture" of such as these to be honored with an official commu- nique I When the retreat took them from the railway,; they marched over the country in droves. There ^ were no officers to oversee them. They were like antelope, roaming over the wild hills along the Ibar. They ate anything they could find, rotten apples, bad vegetables, the precious bits of food foimd in j^Sabandoned tins, and yet most of them had arrived ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 189 safe and sound at Mitrovitze, where the Govern- ment had large magazines of munitions. Now, when the order came at midnight, like a clap of thunder, to evacuate Mitrovitze immedi- ately, they were rounded up hy some officers on horseback, and to each was given a rifle, a canteen, and absolutely all the ammunition he could stagger imder. They were delighted, tickled to death to have real guns and to be real soldiers, and as the officers were insufficient, they were soon riddling the atmosphere with high-power bullets in every direction, creating a real danger. If a crow flew over a mile high, half the company banged at him on the instant. A black squirrel in a wayside tree called forth a fusillade that should have carried a trench in Flanders. They were not particular about the aim. There were plenty of cartridges and, after all, it was the first good time they had had in many a week and perhaps the last. Joyously they had left Mitrovitze with us the afternoon before and, like us, they had camped in the open, but here the analogy must rest. We had tried to sleep, at any rate, whereas they had made night hideous with violent attacks on bats, rats, rabbits, and even the moon before the clouds came 190 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE to her rescue. But they had been soaked and had had nothing for breakfast and were getting tired of their own exquisite sport. So they were loath to march with that enthusiasm and at the rate the officers on horseback desired. This accounted for the commotion. It was very simple. A few would lag, then more and more, and soon the entire thousand would sim- ply be paddling about in the fields like so many ducks. Then the officers, infuriated, would ride full tilt into them, heavy riding-whips in their hands, and spurs in their horses' sides. I saw many of the boj^s ridden down, tumbled in the mire, and stepped on by the horses. Blood streamed from the faces of scores of others whom the whips had found. The rest at once regained their enthusiasm, and rushed forward with cries of fear. I saw this performance recur several times before the herd passed out of sight around a curve. Months later I was to learn by sight and report the staggering denouement of this childliood drama. An account in the "New York Evening Sun" sums it up with a clarity and fidelity to detail that is ter- ribly adequate: When the frontier between Serbia and Albania was reached a gendarme told the boys to march straight ahead ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 191 and pointing to the west, he added, that there would find the sea and ships, and then left them. Without a leader or guide the boys crossed the frontier and marched through Albania in search of the sea and the ships which they hoped to find in a couple of days at the utmost. They were overtaken and passed by columns of old soldiers, armed, equipped, and officered, who gave them all the bread they had and encouraged them to fol- low. No one has described how long it took these boys to reach the sea, and how much they suffered from hunger, exposure, and fatigue. They ate roots and the bark of trees and yet they marched on toward the sea. At night they huddled together for warmth and slept on the snow, but many never awoke in the morning and every day the number decreased until when the column reached Avlona only fifteen thousand were left out of the thirty thousand that crossed the frontier. It is useless to attempt a description of what they suf- fered, as the story of that march toward the sea and the ships is told and understood in a few words. Fifteen thousand died on the way and those who saw the sea and the ships "had nothing human left of them but their eyes." And such eyes ! The Italians at Avlona had no hospital accommodation for fifteen thousand. They could not possibly allow these Serbian boys covered with vermin and decimated by contagious diseases to enter the town. They had them encamped in the open country close to a river and gave them all the food they could spare, army biscuits and bully beef. The waters of the river had unfortunately been con- taminated as corpses in an advanced state of decomposi- 192 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE tion had been thrown in, but the Serbian boy soldiers drank all the same. By the time that the ship to convey them to Corfu ar- rived the fifteen thousand had been reduced to nine thou- sand. About two thousand more boys died during the twenty- four hours' journey between Avlona and Vido, and thus only seven thousand reached the encampment in the grove of orange and olive trees by the sea on the island of Vido. The French and Serbian doctors attached to the en- campment said that if it were possible to have a bed for each boy, an unlimited supply of milk, and a large staflF of nurses, perhaps out of the seven thousand boys landed at Vido two thirds could be saved. There are no beds, no milk, no nurses at Vido, however ; and despite the hard work of the doctors and their efi'orts to improvise a suit- able diet, during the last month more than one hundred boys have died every day. As it is not possible to bury them on the island, a ship, the St, Francis d'Assisi, steams into the small port of Vido every morning and takes the hundred or more bodies out to sea for burial. The allied war vessels at Corfu lower their flags at half-mast, their crews are mustered on the deck with caps off, and their pickets present arms as the St. Francis d'Assisi steams by with her cargo of dead for burial ia that sea toward which the boys were ordered to march. And the survivors lying on the straw waiting for their turn to die, "with nothing human left of them but their eyes," must wonder as they look at the sea and the ship with the bodies of their dead comrades on board whether this is the sea and the ship that the only leader they had, ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 193 the Serbian gendarme that saw them safely to the frontier, alluded to when he raised his arm and pointed to the west and told them to march in that direction. To go through long weeks of horror and pain to achieve victory at the end is not easy — ^we call it by superlative names. To go through what the young boys of Serbia tasted first in full tragedy on Kos- sovo and in succeeding weeks drank to the dregs of lonely painful death, is a thing that I, for one, can- not grasp. But any American worthy of the name who has seen such aspects of life as it has come to be in the world would gladly make any eflfort in order to show the honest disciples of unprepared- ness in this country even a little of the real terror of invasion by a ruthless enemy — and enemies have a habit of being ruthless. The Alps of Albania and the islands of Greece bear on their gleaming passes and their rocky shores the lifeless bodies of twenty- three thousand hoys, but the Alps of Switzerland still are undotted with the dead of Switzerland, and the plains of Holland, separated from a conqueror- created hell only by electrified barriers and well- trained troops, are not yet soaked with the blood of Holland's boys. Of course we felt sorry, but something else claimed the attention of all. The rain had stopped. IM WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE Every one began to hope for a bright day, but the clouds still hung low, heavy, and purplish gray and as we watched the stream of refugees go by a breath of distinctly cold wind struck us. These refugees were inextricably mixed with the army. A rickety little cart drawn by scrawny oxen, and containing a whole family's treasured possessions, would follow a great gun pulled by its fifteen splendid spans. A handsome limousine la- boriously accommodated its pace to a captured Aus- trian soup kitchen. Theoretically the army always had the right of way; but when there is only one way, and it is in no manner possible to clear that, theory is relegated to its proper place. Few people had sufficient transportation to carry even the barest necessities, so they waded along in the river of dirty water. Dozens of peasant women I saw leading small chil- dren by each hand and carrying Indian fashion on their backs an infant not yet able to take one step. Old men, bent almost double, splashed about with huge packs on their shoulders, and many young girls, equally loaded, pushed forward with the won- derful free step the peasant women of Serbia have, while children of all ages filled in the interstices of the crowd, getting under the oxen and horses, hang- ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 195 ing on the automobiles, some whimpering, some laughing, some yelling. Every one was wet, every one was a mass of mud, every one was hungry, but simimer was still with us, and no one was freezing. Affairs were rapidly approaching the limit of hu- man endurance for many in that snake-like, writh- ing procession, but as yet none had succumbed. Then it began to snow. It was about eight o'clock in the morning when the blizzard began, first some snow flurries, then a bitter cold wind of great velocity and snow as thick as fog. The cart in front, the cart behind, the pe- destrian stream on each side, and one's-self became immediately the center of the imiverse. How these fared, what they suffered, one knew. Beyond or behind that the veil was impenetrable. We were no more a part of a miserable mob. We were alone now, simply a few wretched creatures with the cart before and the cart behind, struggling against a knife-like wind along a way where the mud and water were fast turning to ice. In less than an hour our soaked clothes were frozen stiff. From the long hair of the oxen slim, keen icicles hung in himdreds, giving them a glit- tering, strange appearance, and many of them de- spite the hard work were trembling terribly with 196 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE the cold. For a short time the freezing wind ac- celerated the pace of the refugees on foot. The old men shouted to the women, and the women dragged along their children. But soon this energy was spent. The hopelessness of their situation was too obvious even for Serbian optimism to ignore. Why were they hurrying? There still remained a good hundred and fifty miles before the sea, and most of this lay over the wildest Balkan mountains, infested with bandits, over trails where horses could hardly go, and which frequently reached an altitude of seven or eight thousand feet. Along that way were no houses for days, and not one scrap of food. Also, whereas this gale had blown from us the sound of the German guns behind, it brought — ^the first time we had heard it — ^the soimd of the Bulgarian guns ahead. For as the Germans were sweeping down from Kashka, the Bulgarians were striving to cut o£P the line of retreat between Prishtina and Prizrend. The last line of hiUs had been taken. No more than six kilometers of level ground and the Serbian trenches lay between them and the road. For four weeks retreating from one enemy, at last we had reached the wide-spread arms of the other and, by aU Serbians, the more dreaded invader. The plight of these refugees seemed so hopeless^ ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 197 it brought us the ever-recurring question, Why did all these people leave their homes? Surely nothing the invader could or would do could justify them in a thing hke this. But all the peasants had heard stories of the fate of Belgium, and many had seen what the Bulgarians were capable of doing. So here they were. It seemed foolish to me, but for them it was obedience to an instinct. While the wind at no time diminished, now and then the storm lifted its snow veil as if to see how much was already accomplished in the extermina- tion of these feeble human beings. At such times we came once more into the life of the throng, and it was possible to form some idea of what this whim of nature meant. Less than two hours after the beginning of the snow the mortality among oxen and horses was frightful. Already weakened by long marches and insufficient food, the animals now began to drop all along the line. When one ox of a team gave out, the other and the cart were usually abandoned, too, there being no extra beasts. An ox would falter, moan, and fall; a few drivers would gather, drag the ox and its mate to the side of the road, then seizing the cart, they would tumble it over the embankment, most frequently contents and all ; and then the caravan moved on. Automo- 198 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE biles also were being abandoned, the occupants con- tinuing their journey on foot. I find in my notes of this date the following im- pressions : "On every side the plain stretched away in the dreariest expanse imaginable. At great intervals a tiny group of miserable huts built of woven withes and mud, typical of the Sanjak, was visible through the storm. Other than these there was nothing, not a trace to indicate that human beings had ever be- fore traversed Kossovo. Tall, sear grass and very scrubby bush covered the ground as far as the eye could reach, until they in turn were covered with the snow, leaving only a dead-white landscape de- void of variety or form, through the center of which the thousands of people and animals crept, every one of us suffering, the majority hopeless. Scores of dead animals were strewn along the road, and many others not yet frozen or completely starved lay and moaned, kicking feebly at the passers-by. As the day wore on, I saw many soldiers and pris- oners, driven almost insane, tear the raw flesh from horses and oxen, and eat it, if not with enjoyment, at least with satisfaction. "In many places swift torrents up to the oxen's bellies swept across the road. In these carts were ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 199 lost, and two huge motor lorries that I saw. It was impossible to salvage anything. The swift current caught the weakened oxen, and before even the driver could jump from the cart all was swept off the roadway to deep pools below. Sometimes the occupants were rescued, sometimes they were not. One of the wagons of our kommorra, filled with in- valuable food, was swept away, lost beyond re- covery. "This was heartrending, but as nothing compared with the sufferings of the peasant refugees who splashed along on foot. By making wide detours, they were able to cross these streams, but each time they emerged soaked to the skin, only to have their garments frozen hard again. "We now began to overtake many of the peasant families who earlier in the day had gone ahead of us, walking being about twice as fast as ox-cart speed. They were losing strength fast. The chil- dren, hundreds of them, were all crying. Mothers with infants on their backs staggered, fell, rose, and fell again. "Into our little snow- walled circle of vision crept a woman of at least sixty, or, rather, we overtook her as she moved painfully along. Methodically like a jumping- jack, she puUed one weary foot and 200 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE then the other out of the freezing slush. She had no shoes or opanki. She was utterly alone, and seemed to have not the slightest interest or connec- tion with any that were passing. Every effort she made was weaker than the preceding one. Death by the side of the fleeing thousands stared her in the face. A soldier came up, a man of the second line, I judged, neither yoimg nor old. Hunger and fatigue showed on his unkempt face. The woman bumped against him, and the slight impact sent her over. He stooped and picked her up, seeing how weak she was. Impulsively he threw down his gun and heavy cartridge-belt, and half carrying the old woman started forward. With every ounce of strength she had she jerked away from him, snatched up the gun and ammunition, and, holding them up to him, motioned where the cannon could be heard, and she cursed those horrible Serbian oaths at him, saying many things that I could not understand. Again he tried to help her, but she flung the gun at him, and began creeping forward again. She must have known that before the next kilometer-stone she would be lying helpless in the snow. So did we witness a thing that medieval poets loved to sing about. It had happened almost before we knew. Like a flash of lightning, her act ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 201 showed the stuff of that woman and of the people from which she came ; but it was n't poetic. It was primitive, crude, and cruel, and it was n't the sort of thing I want ever to see or hear about again. "For some time I had noticed an old peasant cou- ple who moved along just at our speed, staying within view. They were very aged even for Serbs, and carried no provisions of any sort that I could see. The old woman was following the old man. I saw them visibly grow weaker and weaker until their progress became a series of stumbling falls. We came to a place where low clumps of bushes grew by the roadside. The snow had drifted around and behind them so as to form a sort of cave, a niche between them. This was sheltered from the gale to some extent. By imspoken con- sent they made for it, and sank down side by side to rest. Their expression spoke nothing but thank- fulness for this haven. Of course they never got up from it. This was quite the happiest thing I saw all that day, for such episodes were repeated with innimcierable tragic variations scores of times. The terrible arithmetic of the storm multiplied them until by the end of the day we had ceased to think or feel. "At last a change came over the army. I think 202 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE it was the young boys to whom arms had been given at Mitrovitze who began it. After a few hours of marching that day every ounce one had to carry counted greatly. Rifles, camp things, and over- flowing cartridge-belts are heavy. At first I no- ticed now and then a belt or canteen or rifle by the roadside. Soon it seemed as if the snow had turned to firearms. The surface of the road was thickly strewn with them ; from every stream bayonets pro- truded, and the ditches along the road were clogged with them. The boys were throwing away their guns and, like a fever, it spread to many soldiers imtil the cast-away munitions almost impeded our progress. "Although scarcely four o'clock, it began to grow dusk. The aspect of the plain seemed exactly the same as hours before; we did not appear to have moved an inch. Only the road had begun to climb a little and had grown even muddier. The snow ceased, but the wind increased and became much colder. No one seemed to know how far we were from Prishtina, but all knew that the oxen were worn out and could not go much farther. How- ever, to camp out there without huge fires all night meant death, and there was nothing whatever with which to make fires. ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 203 "We climbed a hillside slowly. It was darker there than it would be on the crest, for the sun set before and not behind us. A little before four we reached the top. At most we could not travel more than thirty minutes longer, but we did not need to. Below us lay Prishtina. "This ancient Turkish town was very beautiful in the dusk. It stands at the head of a broad val- ley, and on three sides is surrounded by hills which now were gleaming peaks. Lower down, the mountains shaded from light blue to deep purple, while a mist, rising from the river, spread a thin gray over the place itself. Hundreds of minarets, covered with ice and snow, pierced up like silver arrows to a sky now clear and full of stars. The snow was certainly over, but it was incredibly cold on the hill-crest, where the wind had full sway. Some bells in a mosque were ringing, and the sound came to us clear, thin, brittle, icy cold. But no place will ever seem so welcome again. It was blazing with lights, not a house, not a window un- lighted, because, as we soon learned, not a foot of space in the whole place was unoccupied. On the right, down the broad stretch of a valley, for at least five miles, was a remarkable sight. We had moved in the middle of the refugee wave. The crest had 204 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE reached Prishtina the day before, had surged through its narrow, crooked, filthy streets, and de- bouched over the plain beyond in thousands and thousands of camps. Now this huge camp-ground was lighted from one end to the other by camp-fires for, blessing of blessings, along the river was fire- wood. There must have been five thousand carts in that vaUey. This meant ten thousand oxen and five thousand drivers, and every driver had his fire. The thing stretched away along the curving river like the luminous tail of a comet from the blazing head at Prishtina. The contrast from the plain we had come over brought exclamations of pleasure from every one, and for a minute we paused there, watching the plodding refugees as they came to the top and gazed down into this heaven of warmth and .light. "A woman dragging three children came wearily up. There was a baby on her back, but for a won- der it was not crying. She stopped, sat down on a ^bank, and had one of the children imfasten the cloths that held the baby in position. Then she reached back, caught it, brought it aroimd to her lap. She shook it, but it was frozen to death. There were no tears on her face. She simply gazed from it to the children beside her, who were almost ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 205 exhausted. She seemed foohsh, sitting there hold- ing it. She was bewildered. She did not know what to do with it. Some men passed, took in the situation, and promptly buried it in two feet of mud and snow. The whole affair had lasted per- haps ten minutes. "We moved on down the hill into the town, no longer a town. It was an inferno. The tens of thousands rushing before the Bulgarians and the tens of thousands ahead of the Germans met and mingled at Prishtina before pushing on their aug- mented current to Prizrend. The streets of Prish- tina are narrow, so two carts can pass with diffi- culty. They wind and double upon themselves in the most incongruous maze, and they are filthier than any pigsty. The mob filled them as water fills the spillway of a dam. There were Turks, Albanians, Montenegrins, Serbs, English, French, Russians, and thousands of Austrian prisoners. They crowded on one another, yelled, fought, cursed, stampeded toward the rare places where any sort of food was for sale. Sneaking close to the walls, taking advantage of any holes as shelter from this human tornado, were numerous wounded soldiers, too lame or too weak to share in the wild melee. Here and there in some dim alley or in 206 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE the gutter dead men lay unnoticed. And every- where, on the sidewalks, in the streets, blocking the way, were dead animals, dozens and dozens of them. There was here not even the semblance of law that had obtained at Mitrovitze. The Government was crumbhng, a nation was dying, and all such super- fluities as courts of justice and police were a thing of the past. In lieu of street-lamps, however, flar- ing pine-torches had been stuck at dark corners, and the weird Hght they afforded put the last imearthly touch to the scene. "Fighting one's way down these lanes of hell, stumbling over carcasses, wading knee-deep in slush and refuse, looking into myriads of wild, suffering eyes set in faces that showed weeks of starvation and hardship, the world of peace and plentiful food seems never to have existed. Yet less than two weeks before this town was a sleeping little Turkish city where food and shelter were to be had for a song, and where life took the slow, well-worn chan- nels that it had followed for a hundred years. If ever there was a hell on earth, Prishtina, which from the hilltop yesterday afternoon looked like heaven, is that hell. "In an hour and a half I came about six blocks to a street where shelter had been found for the ON THE "FIELD OF BLACKBIRDS" 207 forty English women in a harem where absolutely none of this turmoil penetrated. Never before have I realized what is the peace of the harem." In regard to this remark in my notes, I would say that at Prishtina, at Prizrend, Jakova, and Ipek, when the retreat had reached its last and most terrible stage, before it was shattered to bits on the Albanian and Montenegrin mountains, the harems invariably proved to be havens of refuge. However wild the struggle in the streets without, however horrible the situation of the unnumbered thousands that descended in a day on these towns, however imminent the danger of invasion, life be- hind the latticework and bars moved uninter- ruptedly, steadily, peacefully, tenderly amid in- cense and cushions. The Turk did not suffer for food because, at the first hint of danger, each had laid in a supply for months. In this region they alone had any money; they are the buyers and sellers, the business lords of the country, and they had nothing to fear from the invasion, for were they not of the Teutonic allies? Their kindness to the English, French, and Russian nurses every- where throughout the retreat is one of the fine things to be found in that awful time, and many Enghsh women I know have gone home with a con- 208 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE firmed conviction that "the terrible Turk and his harem" are a very decent sort after alL My notes continue: "Last night I found no shelter here [Prishtina] and was forced to follow my ox-cart outside the town, where thousands of others were incamped. All night long the freezing crowd wandered in the streets. Most of them had no blankets. They could not lie down on the snow and hve. From fire to fire they wandered, and always in search of food. My blankets were soaked from the rain of the night before, but I wrapped them about me and lay in the bottom of my cart, an affair made of lat- ticework through which the wind whistled. Soon the covers were as stiff as boards, and sleep was im- possible. Through the night I listened to the oxen aU around moaning in the plaintive way they have when in pain, for there is no hay about Prishtina, and they are starving. I "The sun came up this morning in a perfectly clear sky except for a slight mist over the moun- tains that turned it for a while into a blood-red baU. It touched the peaks to pearl and the hundred min- arets of Prishtina to shafts of rose. Also, as far as the eye could see, it caused instant activity in that mighty camp. Men roused themselves and began ON THE "FIELDTOF BLACKBIRDS" 209 by thousands to cut wood along the river. Fires were replenished, meager breakfasts cooked, oxen still more meagerly fed. Along the slope behind me I saw a small squad of soldiers approaching. There was an army chaplain among them, and some men in civilian clothes. They trudged up the hill towards the rising sun. I looked on a moment, and then followed. Soon they halted. When I came up I saw five empty graves. In each a wooden stake was firmly driven, and the five men in civilian clothes were led to them, forced to step into the graves and kneel down with their backs to the stakes, where they were tied. Three of them were middle-aged and sullen. Two were young, scarcely twenty, I judge. They obeyed the quiet orders mechanically, like automata. One of the younger ones turned and gazed out over the camp just breaking into life, then he looked at the shining peaks and the minarets. From the town came the sound of morning bells. For a moment his face worked with emotion, but neither he nor his com- panions spoke. An officer stepped forward, and before each read a long ofiicial paper. He spoke slowly, distinctly, in the somewhat harsh accents of the Serbian language. After this the priest came forward and read a service. The men remained 210 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE jsilent. When the priest finished, they were Blind- folded and ten soldiers shot them at a distance of thirty feet. They pitched forward out of sight, and iwere buried at once. They were Bulgarian spies. Along the road below, the kommorras were getting under way, more than I had as yet seen, more than at Mitrovitze. As I returned down the hill and neared the highway they were moving away end- lessly, ceaselessly, to renew the endless, hopeless march. Ten kilometers down the road the cannon began to boom, and the tramping of the oxen on the snow and the creaking and rumbling of the thousands of carts were like the beating of torren- tial rains or the surge of the sea at Biarritz." CHAPTER VIII BEHIND THE UVING WAYE THE day following the great blizzard was warm and full of sunshine, so that most of the snow was turned to muddy slush, making, if possible, the highways more difficult. But cold winds soon began again, and while there was no more snow, the way of the refugees from Prish- tina was anything but easy, the Bulgarian lines, only five kilometers distant, adding nothing to its attractiveness. But I did not move at once with the hordes along this part of the way. Instead, I waited for Dr. May's ambulance to arrive from Mitrovitze, in or- der to make the trip back to that place, according to our arrangement. The main part of the EngUsh unit went on at once, but one Englishman remained behind with his cart to take on the man who was bringing the ambulance. He was to have over- taken us the day before, but did not, and so we were momentarily expecting him. However, not until late afternoon did he arrive; so that I had a whole 211 212 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE day of idleness in Prishtina, and did not start back to Mitrovitze until next morning. Although unnumbered thousands were leaving all the time, more poured into Prishtina to take their places, and all that day the congestion remaiaed constant. As soon as the English party had gone, I wandered out into this maelstrom purely as a sight-seer. It felt queer, after so many weeks of retreating, during which always "the great affair was to move," to have nothing to do but loaf and watch others flee. In the bright sunshine the streets were not weird, as they had appeared the evening before, though quite as revolting and terri- ble. I went first out on a long search for small change. Every one had been hoarding their silver money for weeks, and things had come to such a pass now that one could not buy even the scant things that were for sale unless he had the exact change or was willing to give the seller the difiference. After a dozen or more futile attempts I foimd a druggist who was willing to give me silver francs for gold, but franc for franc, although gold was now at a great premium. Shortly after this fortunate find I wandered to the principal square of the place, on one side of BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 213 which stood an immense stone building which was temporarily occupied by the General Staff. Strings of new American touring-cars were drawn up in front of it. They were piled high with baggage, and the chauffeurs were standing alertly around, as if expecting urgent orders. No one knew when instant evacuation might be necessary. On another side of the square was the office of the narchelnik stanitza, whom the Englishman, Mr. Stone, and I now sought out on some trivial busi- ness. At his outer door we met Mrs. St. Claire Stobart, who, unknown to Dr. May's section of her unit, had come into Prishtina that morning with the second army. When hostilities were renewed last autumn, Mrs. Stobart left her main unit at Kragujevats, and with several ambulances, hospital tents, doctors, nurses, and orderhes formed what was imofficially known in Serbia as the "flying corps." They followed the army in all its moves from northern Serbia to Ipek. This necessitated forced march, sometimes of thir- * ty-six hours' duration. It frequently meant three or four moves in twenty-four hours, and much more traveling at night than in dayhght. It required taking automobiles where automobiles had never been before, and where it will be long before they 214 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE are again. It entailed an endless routine of put- ting up and hauling down tents, of scanty meals and broken rest, of being cold and soaked and tired to death. The chauffeurs were men, but much of the most arduous labor was done, and done su- perbly well, by young girls. For instance, the authoritative person who was responsible for the proper putting up and taking down of the numerous tents was a London girl of scarcely twenty. How would you like to see to the striking of f ovu- or five large tents in the dead of a freezing night, while the wind was blowing great guns, and the orderlies, whose language you could not speak, were so numb they would not work? How would you hke to be held responsible for the placing of everything in the proper order, only to be forced to pitch the lot again after a sleepless ride of hours in a springless cart, or perhaps spent in pushing an ambulance through mud-holes, when all the army had gone past and nothing remained be- tween you and the enemy, but a few kilometers of road? How would you like to subsist on black bread and thin soup and get so little of it that when meal-time came you felt like a wolf in famine. Three months after I saw the flying corps at Prish- tina I met this young lady again. It was Sunday A group of transport drivers What had been a country was now a desert BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 215 evening, and we were dining in the pretentious restaurant of a pretentious New York hotel. The room was filled with beautiful women iu beautiful clothes, who laughed and sparkled, sipped their wine, and toyed with their food; but none of them laughed or sparkled or sipped or toyed with greater yivacity and light-hearted charm than this luxuri- ous girl whose pastimes it had been to watch Ger- man "busy-Berthas" drop seventeen-inch shells about her hospital in Antwerp, or to pitch frozen tents on bleak Serbian hiUs for shot-riddled men to die in. Since seeing the English women in Serbia and elsewhere, a wonder which never troubled me previously has been daily growing in my mind. Why does n't England turn over this war to her women? This by way of digression. Mrs. Stobart had business at general headquarters, and we accom- panied her there, I being secretly gratified. I had been wishing for some pretext to take me into that building, teeming with its harassed and desperate oflBcers, but in war-time, and such war, one does not scout about without some good excuse. Quite in- tentionally I got lost for a little while, and went about peering into doors to see what the general staff of an army such as the Serbian one was at that 216 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE moment looked like. The main thing I rememBer is that in many of those rooms where the staff offi- cers worked were piles of hay in the comers where they slept, littered boxes standing about off which they dined, and portemanteaux out of which they lived. Ordinarily the Serbian officer is the smart- est and most faultlessly got up of any of the armies. There were haggard-looking men at the rough tables covered with maps and documents. Halting cheechas went to and fro as messengers, and here and there in dark places orderlies cleaned much- bespattered gaiters or burnished dull swords and rusty pistols. Of course nowhere that I stuck my head was I wanted but at the simple remark, "Engleske mission," all my imbecility seemed cov- ered by a cloak, or at least explained to them; so much so that I decided to use it instead of "Ameri- canske" in future, and continued to wander a bit. They were faced with awful things, this General Staff who dined from tin-cans and slept on hay, but in some manner they seemed to be getting their work done. It was now about eleven o'clock, and as Mr. Stone and I had breakfasted early on a handful of corn-bread and some cognac, we followed Mrs. Sto- bart with what may be described as the keenest BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 217 pleasure back of the general staff building, where the flying corps were serenely encamped in a side street. We had dined the previous evening, after that blizzard march, on a bit of cheese, some tinned meat, and hard tack, and before that we had dis- pensed with lunch, and stiU before that had break- fasted on tea and biscuits, and before that a back- ward vista of tinned mutton and sweet biscuit too long and monotonous to be recounted in one modest voltmie. Hence when we saw the Austrian gou- lash, Kanone that the flying corps had acquired steaming in the midst of the automobiles, we looked upon the world and saw that it was good. We had coffee and cheese and cocoa and rice and nearly white bread and a hearty welcome from the corps. Greatly did I fortify myself, for I saw no chance of anything more imtil I should arrive at Mitro- yitze next day. In mid-aftemoon the long-expected ambulance arrived, much the worse for the wear of the road. By this time the traffic had completely destroyed all effects of any road-building that had ever been done on the Plain of Kossovo. The rest of the day I spent fitting on new tires, plenty of which the fly- ing corps let me have, and overhauling the car in general. 218 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE An English clergyman, Mr. Rogers, had come over on the ambulance from Mitrovitze, but was determined to go back with me, there to remain with the women doctors and nurses who were stay- ing behind with the wounded sister. In aU likeli- hood this meant his internment until the end of the war, whereas there was a good chance for the women who stayed being allowed to return home. Also, there appeared to be no great necessity of his re- maining; but he knew and I knew that it would make the women feel a little more protected. It seemed to me an act thoroughly in character with the best sort of Englishman, and the kind I had al- ways expected from them, though after what I had seen of British men in Serbia, it came as a distinct surprise to me. I was indeed glad to have him as a companion for the return trip to Mitrovitze the next day. That night I discovered a hay-loft belonging to a jolly old Turk who would not let me set foot in his harem, but assured me of an imlimited welcome to his hay. The mercury dropped to the neighbor- hood of zero as night came on, and it was a great comfort to be able to burrow into the very center of a great stack of warm hay, a fine improvement on my cart of the -previous night. BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 219 About five next morning I rolled out of my nest, and spent an hour in violent contortions incident to cranking the frozen motor before daylight. Mr. Rogers had some dry bread, which we ate, and then we started on our return journey. On the top of a hill outside the town we came to four large guns standing beside the road, and be- yond, in a muddy grain-field, we saw a httle group of tents. "It must be some of Admiral Troubridge's men," said Rogers. "I should like to stop and speak to them a minute." "All right," I repUed. "I '11 sit in the car." In a few minutes he came back and asked me if I would like a cup of hot coffee, real coffee. Would I! We wallowed through the field to the tents, where we found a cheecha broiling meat over a camp-fire, and between times watching a large ket- tle of porridge and the coffee-pot. We entered the largest of the tents, which we found warm and dry, hay a foot deep on the groimd, and braziers of coals making everything comfortable. I think there were eighteen or twenty men lying about, and a more cheerful, hospitable crowd could not be found anywhere. We had excellent jams, coffee, tea, rice, and beef for breakfast, and thejr made Rogers 220 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE bring away some potatoes and beans to help out his provisions at Mitrovitze. These things had mostly been sent out from home before the trouble began. More than half of the men looked scarcely older than boys. I remember one "mother's boy" who did not look eighteen, with his innocent blue eyes, curly hair, and cheeks as fresh as a baby's. But they had all seen hard enough service, having been unrelieved at Belgrade since the preceding March. They gleefuUy related to me how they had got into Serbia. They left England on a battle-ship which tooK them to Malta. There they disembarked, and their tmif orms were taken from them, but each was given a suit of citizen's clothes. They assured me that these were the worst clothes that anybody ever had to wear for the sake of his country. Rigged out in this ludicrous raiment, — the Government had seen no necessity of taking their measures, — ^they boarded a passenger-boat, and came to Saloniki as "commercial travelers." They were allowed Mttle time to ply their trade, however, for a traia was waiting to whisk them across the Serbian border, where they resumed their real character. These marines represented all that England did toward the actual defense of Serbia until the last BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 221 attack. There were eight guns stationed in and around Belgrade, and a forty-five-foot steam- launch that had been ingeniously fitted with tor- pedo-tubes. In the first encounter that this heavy craft had with the enemy, it attacked two Austrian monitors, sinking one and forcing the other to re- turn to Semlin, where afterward it succeeded in keeping such dangerous boats bottled up. The work of their guns, they said, had been greatly hampered by the activity of Austro-German aero- planes. These immediately spied out any position they would take, and directed the enemy's fire ac- cordingly. In Belgrade and throughout the re- treat the French aviators appeared either unable or unwilling to give any protection against scouting and bomb-throwing. The opinions which those marines expressed would, to say the least, have shocked the boulevards. In expressing freely adverse opinions about their allies, the marines were no exception to other Brit- ish soldiers with whom I came in contact. My ex- perience among British military men has not been wide, but within its narrow scope I never heard one of them say a good word for anybody except the Germans. It seems to be an axiom among them, a tradition from which there is no appeal, this in- 222 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE significance of all but the British and of the enemy that has taught them many things. I heard very httle mention of German atrocities in Serbia, but generous praise from British men and oflBcers of German efficiency and bravery. These marines despised the Serbian soldiers, spat on the Italians, tolerated the French. I am not sure they knew Russia was fighting. "What do you think?" one of the older of them said to me. "These Serb boys don't get anything for serving! Now, is n't that calculated to make a man fight with a good heart, not getting a penny, and knowing that his wife or mother won't get any- thing! Aren't they a fine lot, now?" This man was a fine fellow, and, I am sure, as unselfish and brave a soldier as England has, al- though he would be horrified if you told him so. His own solid, well-ordered, comfortable system represented to him all that could possibly be good in the world. Of the indefinable, even mystic, mo- tive force which drove hundreds of thousands of ignorant Serbian peasants, in a fight that from the first was hopeless, to face separation from every- thing which himaan beings prize, and to endure tor- tures the hke of which armies have seldom known in order that those who did not die might return to BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 223 renew the holy war, of a very practical patriotism for a very beautiful and ideal cause, he knew noth- ing. If you had asked him why he was fighting, he would have told you because it was his business, and to his business, whatever it may be, he has a de- votion that makes him one of the most formidable of enemies. Government says fight, and ages of experience have taught him that Government usually has something worth while up its sleeve when it says fight ; so, voltmteer or regular, he fights with bravery and abandon. It seems to me that the average British soldier foUows his Government with an implicit faith surpassed only by the Ger- mans. The difference in this war lies in the wide gulf that separates the somewhat less dangerous desires of the one Government from the altogether dan- gerous and abominable ambitions of the other. The soldiers of both nations follow without very much thought as to the real objects at stake. But most French know pretty well why they are fight- ing, and you can be assured the average Serb knows why. Whether you believe in the Serb's ambitions or not, you instantly see that he believes in them, worships them, dies for them with a gladness that takes little accoimt of self or family. It would be 224 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE utterly impossible for a Serbian statesman to hold his nation at bay while he wrote half a dozen notes on such a thing as the Lusitania, no matter how big the offender. If it meant sure defeat, they would still jump in and fight for their liberty xmtil utterly exhausted. They can not help it; they are built that way. They may or may not be too extreme in this. It is well for Americans, who can sit calmly and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of fighting no matter what is involved, to realize that such peoples do exist. Of course, in trying to make even the shghtest analysis of the feelings of various armies, one is treading a path hopelessly confused by mmierous exceptions; but, after all, there is a common type which can be more or less sharply defined. I sim- ply wish to state the impression, perhaps entirely erroneous, which the British soldiers I saw, and the Serbian soldiers I lived with, made on me. As Mr. Rogers and I breakfasted, they told us of their work at Belgrade and their retreat. Near Nish they had lost two of their guns. These had become bogged on a mountain-side, and the enemy was so close behind that there was no time to dig them out, but only to blow them up and hiury away. There were four guns with them at Prishtina, but BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 225 ammunition was rimning low. "Only fifty rounds left," one told us, "but fifteen of them are 1915 lyddite, and, I tell you, sir, when you name it, take off your hat, for you're in the presence of your Maker!" The next morning — for I returned that way next day — I stopped to leave some mediciae which Mr. Rogers had sent them, and had breakfast with them once more. This was the last I saw of them until three weeks later, when we again met on the bleak, wind-swept pier at Plavnitze, where we waited to take the tiny boat across the lake to Scutari. No one would have recognized them. For two weeks they had been crossing the mountains. Their own stores having been exhausted, they had had to live as the Serbian soldiers had been living for at least ten weeks. It was an interesting compari- son in endurance. Under regular conditions all of these men would have been pitched into an ambu- lance and taken to a base hospital. One week more, and most of them would surely have died. Their spirit was splendid. One staggered up to me, — ^he of the lyddite worship, — and when I in- quired how he felt, said he was all right, and even had something to be thankful for. His gun was the only one that had not been destroyed. They 226 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE had dug a hole and buried it intact! His devotion to that gun was as sincere a thing as I ever saw. Hardly had he finished speaking when he fainted before my eyes from exhaustion and starvation. Several of his comrades also had to be carried on to the boat. When finally we returned to our car and took the road again, we encountered a difficulty which was entirely imforeseen. Bottomless mud-holes, deep ruts, impossible hill-climbs I expected as a matter of course, but I had not exactly realized what it meant to go against the tide of refugees even yet pouring toward Prishtina, to be the only persons in the country going toward the invader. The am- bulance explained us to some in the incredulous mass we passed, but many there were who, seeing we were foreigners, and concluding we had lost our way, made frenzied gestures indicating the folly of our course. Some of them would not be deterred from their well-meant warnings, but, placing them- selves in oxir path, forced us to stop and listen to their harangues, which we could not understand. As we drew away from Prishtina, however, the refugees thinned, and before we came to Mitrovitze we had seen the last of these hordes. Around Mitrovitze itself there were great camps BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 227 of army-transports, which were delaying to the last minute and never got away. When we came into the town we found its aspect much changed. All traces of the mad riot in which I had seen the Ad- miral and the Colonel were gone. The dirty, prim- itive streets were empty and silent ; where had been terror and panic, was only ominous solitude. Nearly every house was tightly shut, boards hav- ing been nailed over the windows of many of them. Only soldiers were to be seen, and now and then a leisurely Turk waddling by. Around the casern a large number of soldiers were bringing field-guns into position, and also about the hospital, not far away, air-craft-defense guns were being set up. Feebly armed, Mitrovitze awaited her inevitable fate. My mission was in vain. The unfortunate nurse could not be moved again in any circumstances. She had already been completely exhausted by thirty-six hours of continuous journey in a spring- less cart over roads so rough that the automobile was thought worse than the primitive cart. Imagine making a trip hke this when one had been shot through both lungs and the temperature is about zero. Think of being put down in an over- crowded military hospital, with cannon guarding 228 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE it from bombs and with the enemy expected any hour. Picture having to lie there day after day listening to the guns without and the moaning of the wounded within, deprived of proper food. Can you conceive of a mere girl living through such an experience? Yet I understand that she has re- covered. Needless to say, she is a British woman. It was decided that I should return to Dr. May, whom I would find at Prizrend, with the ambulance, taking letters, and, if possible, come back to Mitro- vitze with whatever provisions could be spared by the unit. The food situation at Mitrovitze was serious. This plan meant a race against time. The Germans were right on the town, and would certainly come in after two or three days. I would have to return before they took the place or I could not get in. Although my bargain with Dr. May in return for the care of the three British nurses placed me unconditionally at the orders of her doc- tors at Mitrovitze, they kindly put the matter up to me as to whether I cared to return to Mitrovitze. No one could have been anything but glad to be of the slightest service to these women who were cheerfully remaining behind with their wounded companion. However, the question was arbitra- rily settled for me within forty-eight hours. BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 229 A well-known army surgeon, an Austro-Serb, who had been attending the wounded girl was to accompany me to Prizrend. In all probability, capture for him meant summary execution, and while he was loath to go, the others insisted that it was a useless sacrifice for him to remain. There were other physicians who could care for the pa- tient. This doctor was a man of broad education, unusual culture, and polished manner. He spoke five or six languages, and, besides being a physician of high rank, was a delightful conversationalist on almost any subject. He was a man who had a com- prehensive, intelligent, sympathetic view of inter- national questions, a fine product of the best in civilization. He was the sort of man the United States seems rarely to get as an ambassador any- where. All that kept him from being maz'ched out into a corn-field and shot like a dog was a few kilo- meters of road. He had left the land of his birth, and had gone to the land of his choice to join him- self to the people whose nature corresponded to his own; for this he would be shot. His case is a glimpse at the under side of Balkan politics. The method which without doubt would be applied to him if he were caught has been applied unnum- bered times perhaps by all the Balkan countries, 230 WITH SERBJ2S INTO EXILE but certainly on a greater and more heartless scale by Austria. It is logical and simple. It is the only way to hold together polyglot empires made up of unwilling remnants that have been torn from peoples burning for that illusive thing called na- tionality. The correct definition and establishment of this nationality seems to me to be the greatest question in the world to-day. It can never be based on racial differences, because the blood strains are hopelessly mixed; nor on language boundaries, be- cause people who could not possibly live together frequently speak the same tongue ; nor on religious differences, because peoples of the same faith vary widely in location, temperament, and progress; nor on topography, because such "natural barriers" mean less and less as communication is perfected; nor on the previous ownership of territory, for whereas one nation may be the possessor to-day, another was the day before: on the preference of the people concerned, and on that alone, will any sort of satisfactory scheme ever be built up, di- rected, of course, and modified somewhat by essen- tial economic considerations. When this principle is followed, Austria will find herself no longer forced to hang whole villages, and shoot and burn BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 231 and terrorize as in Bosnia since 1878 she has had to do, because Bosnia will no more be Austrian. However, several million pages may still be writ- ten about this matter without exhausting its dif- ficulties, and mine is not the story of things as they might be, but of things as they were in Serbia dur- ing the ten weeks it took to make her once more a jtart of the polyglot system. This interesting doctor, whose name I do not feel free to mention, and I started from Mitrovitze in the freezing dawn of the day following the after- noon on which I had arrived. We faced a chilhng wind as we descended to the bleak and now empty Plain of Kossovo. It had been only three days since I had taken the same road, but how different now! Ragged patches of snow still spotted the earth, souvenirs of the blizzard, but where was the creaking procession that had suffered so that day? The question came to mind, and with it a picture of them as they must be, still floundering some- where farther along the road. Their trail had been left there on the desolate plateau, written in a waste of debris and objects too repulsive for description. What had been a country, was now a desert, strewn with unburied people and ani- mals, in which there was no food, no drink, no eco- 232 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE nomic life, no trace of happiness. The whole world suggested a feeling of suspense, a waiting for some- thing unknown, such as one feels in a theater when the warning bell has rung. The road had dried somewhat, so we went along with less difficulty. We came within view of Prishtina about ten o'clock, but it was one before we had traversed the town. This delay was due to the fact that the huge kommorras about the place were all breaking up, and the narrow streets were hterally deluged with ox-carts. New York traffic policemen could not have handled that mass, and there was no guiding hand. The result was a jam so inextricable that for two days many carts in the town did not move at all. People camped under their chariots, and the oxen lay down by their yokes. At last we found a way that skirted the town and which, because it was nothing but a marsh, was less crowded than the central streets. The liquid mud came up into my motor when we ran along the shallowest part, a narrow strip in the cen- ter of the roadway; on each hand was mire that would have swallowed the machine whole, as some ox-carts that had strayed there only too plainly told us. Luck and that marvelous httle engine vs^ere with us, and just at lunch-time we came in BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 233 sight of the Stobart "flying corps," camped on the farther side of the town. I was surprised to see them still in Prishtina, but also dehghted, for it meant some sort of lunch. We were welcomed, fed, and again took the road, but with an addition to the party. In case the Germans took Mitrovitze before I returned from Prizrend, I, of course, would not come back. In this contingency Mrs. Stobart wished the ambu- lance with her corps, though I was at a loss to see why, for it was then most obvious that everything had gone to smash, and nothing was left but for the units to get out as best they could. However, she asked to send a Serbian chauffeur, Peter, along with us to bring back the car in case I should not need it. Peter was a typical Serbian chauffeur; when I have said that I have said the worst thing I can. About fifteen kilometers out was the most threat- ened spot in the whole route. For a short time the Bulgarians had succeeded in taking the road here, but had been driven back again, and the line was then three or four kilometers east of the road, the ground between being almost level farmlands. Here the Serbians had temporarily intrenched themselves, and were endeavoring to hold the enemy back from the road as long as possible. Farther 234 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE on, the road drew away from the battle-line, and in the rear, Prishtina was not as yet threatened. It was simply this small salient which was in immedi- ate danger, and, as it happened, here the road was not at all bad. It was level and smooth, and wide enough to enable us to run past the trains of mih- tary transports, hospitals, and artillery that were hastening to get past this danger-point. For some inscrutable reason a deep hole had been dug on our side of the road, a pit perhaps five feet deep, four feet long, and three wide, rvmning lengthwise with the road. We were going fast, the hole was plainly to be seen, and there was ample room to right and left of it, but Peter, with splendid nonchalance, preferred to take it straight ahead, on the jump. The front wheels hit the farther edge, bringing us to quite the quickest stop, with the exception of one that was to follow a few hours later, which I have ever made. When we picked ourselves off the floor of the car, we found our Ford with its nose in the ground and its heels in the air, like a terrier digging for a chip- munk, a position never dignified for an automobile and particularly out of place, it seemed to me, just four kilometers behind a very fickle battle-line. Peter crawled out first, remarking casually in veryj BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 235 bad German, his only language besides Serbian, that he did not know what in heaven was the mat- ter with the steering-gear. Whatever may have been its previous state and condition, that impor- tant feature of an automobile's anatomy was cer- tainly "on the blink" now. Yet nothing other than the triangle was injured in the slightest. I reaUy never wrote an advertisement in my life, and shall not begin now, but when a car can stand up against Peter's idea of sport with nothing except the tri- angle injured (which was not made at Detroit, but in a Serbian shop), it deserves honorable mention in the despatches, and a new triangle. The moment I looked at those tortured, twisted rods, I knew that we would never be able to straighten them so that they could be induced to fit again. But the optimistic Peter did not share my views, and was confident we could straighten them in a jiffy. It was then about three o'clock, the sun was nearing the horizon in a perfectly clear sky, and the temperature was not far above zero. In passing, it may be said that every account I have ever seen of the Balkans in winter lays fre- quent and eloquent stress on the peculiarly pene- trating cold. One writer who had endured the un- believable temperatures of Siberia, said that he had 236 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE never felt anything like this damp, searching, con- gealing chill, which nothing seems thick or warm enough to shut out. They do not exaggerate ; the Balkan cold cannot be overstated. I tried my best , in stem Anglo-Saxon to do it while I wrenched and hammered and squeezed with gloveless hands the frozen steel, but it was hopeless. Nothing I could think of to say even approached an adequate ex- pression of that cold. A good part of my conver- sation on the weather was really meant for Peter, but he was none the wiser. Yet even at this stage I had not lost my temper. I was sorry afterward that I had not ; it left me with so much reserve force a little later when I really did blow up. I was holding the misused triangle as firmly as it is possible for numb blue hands to do while Peter attempted inexpertly to smooth out the numerous spots where the rods had buckled. My appearance would have done credit to a Gipsy. I was ragged, covered with mud, and my coat, which a tall Eng- lishman had given me at Prishtina to replace the one torn by the ox, was yards too long for me. It flapped sadly about my knees in the biting wind. As I bent over the iron rod, my face was hidden by a tattered felt hat. So intent was I on the work that I did not see a major ride up and dismount. BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 237 He was a smart officer, whose glory, however, had been somewhat tarnished by sleeping in haystacks and pigstys. This also had not improved his tem- per. From the demeanor of his attendants it was plain that he was a dreaded man. What he saw was an ambulance in trouble, with the doctor in spotless uniform standing beside it and a fairly decent-looking Serbian soldier hammering on some steel rods which were being infirmly held by a non- descript beggar evidently requisitioned for the job. It was not any of his business, but, oh, cursed spite ! he was the sort bom to set all things right. I first became aware of stentorian tones shouting what I recognized as the vilest Serbian epithets. The voice threatened instant annihilation, and looking up in astonishment, I saw his gestures threatened likewise. I was not holding the rod to suit him. My feet were ice, my ears were ice, my nose was ice, my hands aching, skinned, covered witK frozen blood, all because of an idiotic chauffeur who had run us into a hole and insisted on trying a job I knew to be hopeless, and now — this specimen! You know the sensation — all your injured feelings, acquired and inherited, coming suddenly to a head in the sublime detestation of one person. With ex- quisite rehef I turned on him a torrent of abuse, an 238 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE orgy of anger, saying everything that as a little boy I could remember I had been taught not to say. StiU, what I said to him did not equal what he had said to me ; nothing can equal Serbian oaths in vile- ness. But the next minute I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. The troop had stood petrified when I had shouted at him. They could not believe their ears, but when he heard my English and saw my face, he slumped completely. I never saw a deeper humiliation. Of all things, the Serbs avoid most even the appearance of impohteness to foreigners, especially neutrals engaged in relief- work. The major's mistake, not my retaliation, crushed him. Sputtering some sort of broken apology, he meekly mounted his horse and rode away, leaving me quite as conscience-stricken as he. After wasting three precious hours, Peter came to my way of thinking and agreed to f oUow out an arrangement which I had suggested some time be- fore, and which was made more reasonable when a military hospital came by and took the doctor with most of his luggage along with them. Peter was to walk back to Prishtina, secure a new triangle from the flying corps' supplies, and return early next morning. We would then fix the car, pick up the doctor at the next town, where he said the hos- BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 239 pital would camp, and go on our way. I was to stay with the disabled ambulance in the meantime. Soon I was left alone, with half a pound of black bread for dinner and only one blanket for covering. The bare fields round about afforded no material for a fire. My three heavy blankets had been stolen from the car on the previous day, leaving me in a bad situation. Woolen blankets were getting to be worth a great deal, for it was impossible to buy them. Fortunately, the English unit had evacu- ated with a plentiful supply, from which I was later refurnished. It was ridiculous that a person's life should depend upon two or three blankets, and yet this was virtually the case at that time. This night, after closing as tightly as I could all the curtains of the ambulance, I lay down in the place designed for stretchers, with my piece of bread and my blanket. It was not warm there, but after my night in the cart at Prishtina, it did not seem so bad. Of course it would have been much better to have spent the night tramping about to keep up circulation, but fatigue made this almost impossible. So I lay and shivered, watching the blue moonlight through the rents in the curtains. The noisy traffic on the road had ceased. The tired men and oxen had long since turned from the 240 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE melancholy road to desolate camps, those behind thinking that on the morrow they would pass the danger-point, those ahead feeling a sense of com- parative security because it was passed. But I thought I heard more distinctly than formerly the rapid-fire guns and rifles crackHng across the fields. It seemed to me the firing was freshening, but I was too tired to think about it very much and dozed for a time. I was awakened by the sound of an automobile rushing by at full speed, with the cut- out wide open. Then began a stream of cars tear- ing past, which, crawling from my shelter, I recog- nized as the motors of the General Staff. Prishtina was being evacuated at midnight and seemingly in something of a hurry. Furthermore, beyond the cornfields things were unmistakably getting more lively. I was not left long in doubt as to what was hap- pening. A large touring-car slowed up as it ap- proached me, and from the running-board a figure sprang which I recognized as Peter carrying the coveted triangle. The automobile had not stopped completely, but shot away again without losing a minute. In German, Peter announced that Prish- tina was being evacuated, that the Serbs expected to retreat across the road, and that we had three BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 24ri hours in which to repair the car and get away. "We must work very quickly, very quickly," he remarked, and in true Serh fashion therewith put down his burden, seated himself on the running- board, leisurely pulled out a package of tobacco, then cigarette-papers, carefully made a beautiful cigarette, hunted listlessly through each of his many pockets, and at last asked me for a match. When I handed it to him from imder the car where I had scuttled at his first words, he lighted the cigarette, and began smoking, rapturously drawing in the fumes as if he were passing a dull hour gaz- ing out of a club window. Nor did my heated re- marks move him to hasten. Lying there in the freezing mire, hammering my fingers in the dark- ness, I hated him almost as I had hated the major. The fighting came closer. We could now spot in a general way the position of the machine-guns as they sputtered, and the rifle-fire became a host of separate sounds, like raindrops falling, rather than the conglomerate cracking we had heard before. A triangle is a troublesome thing for two inexpert men to put in at any time; now it seemed as if it would never be made to fit. We had no light, and under the chassis it was almost pitch-dark despite the placid arctic moon that sailed overhead. I did 242 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE not know I had so many fingers to smash, I did not know lying in freezing mud could be so uncomfort- able, I did not know that there ever lived so big a fool as Peter seemed to be. While the sounds of battle drifted over the moonlit, frosted fields, I lay under the car and battered away, thinking of the hot summer days in Long Island City, where I had seen the operation I was trying to perform done in the twinkling of an eye. How simple! how easy! and now how — ^hellish! Two hours and a half went by, in which we got the rounded knob at the apex of the triangle almost fitted into its socket; but it would not slip in, despite innumerable manipulations with levers, jacks, and hammers, and turning of wheels and straining the front axle. Then four soldiers came by whom Peter persuaded to help us, and witH the combined strength of these the job finally was done. We had fifteen minutes left of the pre- scribed time. Slightly wounded soldiers were straggling back from the trenches. We had only to put back several important screws, that was all; but Peter discovered he had lost two of them. We had no extra ones, and the chance of finding them in that trampled mud by moonlight was nil. For the first time Peter swore; and it was not at high BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 243 heaven or me or the Bulgarians or even himself; it was at the two screws for letting him lose them. I could not help but laugh, and we stuck in some wire, hoping it would hold. The four soldiers who had helped us Peter now insisted would be much offended if we did not give them a hft. I objected that it would overload our tires, which I knew were weak, but he finally gained his point. I also hated to ride away from them when they had aided us. At last, just on the three- horn" limit, we started. Within half a mile one of the tires blew out. I then ordered the soldiers to get out and Peter to drive on with the flat tire. This he did, for the battle was rolling on behind us and the camps along the road were breaking up in the wildest confusion, the tired oxen being forced once more to take the road. The countryside now became lighted with dozens of fires, where the re- treating soldiers burned haystacks, granaries, and supplies which they could not take. Now and then a peasant cottage would break into flames, and the farm stock ran about. In an hour we came to the town the doctor had spoken of. Oiu* inquiries failed to bring any in- formation as to the whereabouts of him or the hospi- tal. I told Peter we would spend an hour search- 244 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE ing for him, and that, while he did this, I would put on a new tire. The arrangement appealed to him, but at the end of the hour the only information we had was from the commandant, who said the doctor could not be found, and that he would doubtless go on with the hospital to Prizrend. So we started on without him. Our lamps were out of commission, but for two hours the moon afforded quite enough light, even though we had to run along the left, boggy fringe of the road because of the ox-cart trains. The ox-drivers were worse humored that night than I had ever seen them. To our con- stant horn and cry of "Desno! desno!" ("To the right"), they paid no attention whatever, purposely sticking in the middle of the road, leaving not enough room to pass on either side, and forcing us to accommodate our pace to theirs. We were con- tinually running on first speed on account of this and the heavy roads, and water boiled out of our radiator in a very short time. Then I would de- scend, break the two-inch ice on the stream-fiUed ditches along the way and fill up with the freezing water, which instantly gave the tortured motor re- lief for the moment. Once when the drivers were particularly irritat- ing about not giving the road, Peter descended, like BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 245 the wrath of heaven, and beat one of them soundly with a stick, screaming hair-raising threats mean- while. After this we fared somewhat better, for the news passed along that line far faster than we could travel. Once we were stopped by an old sol- dier who could hardly drag himself along. He was wounded in the leg and was faint from loss of blood. He asked a ride, and we put him in the ambulance, where now and then he moaned a little. Peter had brought me some bread, which I had not eaten, and it occurred to me this old fellow might be hungry. I do not believe he had had anything to eat for days. He seemed considerably "bucked up" afterward, and when we had to stop because of darkness, during the brief period between moonset and dayhght, he left us, hobbling away we knew not where. At dawn I took the wheel, and almost at once we came up with what I always refer to as the "long hommorra." It was where the road leaves the plain and begins in gradual, tortuous ascents to wriggle up a narrow gorge. Of necessity the way is narrow, too, cut out of the canon's side, with an unspeakable surface. There is no balustrade on the outer edge; only the crumbling brink, unsafe for any heavy weight. This stretch is between 246 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE twenty and thirty kilometers long, and without a single gap the whole was clogged with trains of carts. A more harrowing fifteen or twenty miles I hope never to drive. Even when the carts crowded against the inside bank, there was no room safely to avoid the dangerous edge. But seldom could my hoarse shouts of "Desno! desno!" re- peated unceasingly, persuade the drivers to go so close in, and so the car had to run on the narrowest margin — a margin that in some instances I could distinctly feel give beneath me. Peter slept through it all, loudly snoring in the back of the am- bulance. At last it ended in a steep ascent on which I passed the head of the procession, and climbed on a road that had now become very good to the top of the range. I had not reahzed we had climbed so high. In the morning sunlight I looked over a tremendous expanse of hiU ranges and thickly wooded valleys, now brown and gold and blue with the tints of late autimm. Down the side of the mountain on which I was the road ran in endless leaps and turns on a regular, but steep, grade, nar- row, but with a perfect surface, as smooth as glass. I could see it gleam for miles and miles ahead until it was lost in the valley, only to rise again on the BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 247 farther side, and lead over the next crest. Not that I stopped to take in this picture. It flashed on me in the brief time in which I glimpsed it as, with power shut off, I glided on top of the divide. I had shut off my power so as to begin the downward run as slowly as possible, for long before I had received the ambulance all the brakes had been worn out. Also, the reverse was gone, and the first speed so worn that I dared not use it as a brake. Up to that time this lack had inconvenienced me little, but as I looked at the long coast ahead, I knew that I should have to do better driving than I had ever done before if I got to the bottom. Of course I had virtually had no sleep for two days and nothing to eat except a httle bread for twenty-four hours and was fagged with the train of misfortunes that had followed us, and especially with the drive just ended. I was really in a sort of coma, which kept me from realizing what driving that stretch without any brakes meant. Peter was still snoring. In two minutes we were going like an express- train, in three twice as fast, for we had hit the steep- est grade, and at its bottom was a short turn to the right, almost a switchback. It was there that Peter got the joke on me. I did not drive that curve;it drove itself. What I did was reflex. All 248 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE that I know is that, when headed like a cannon-Bali for the five-hundred-foot precipice, I waited until the road turned and then swung the wheel for all I was worth. I am confident that all four wheels left the earth; but we had made the curve, only to see another, sharp to the left, right ahead. Before I even realized there was another turn, we had gone straight ahead into a deep, muddy ditch, and the front wheels and radiator face were buried in a soft clay bank. It was a quicker stop than Peter had given us, and a more violent one. It threw Peter over my shoulder upon the radiator, and woke him up. I was whirled into the middle of the road. Neither was hurt, and we set to work inspecting the wreck. But there was no wreck. As I said before, I do not write advertisements, but when a car can stand up against Peter's and my ideas of sport, it does deserve honorable mention in the despatches. Nothing was injured except the triangle; that was buckled as before. Now by the deep contempt with which Peter looked at me, I reaUzed how much he must have despised himself for running into that hole. I looked over the car, and saw that the rod was bent in only one place, and coiild be straightened with patience. I was sure it would take a long BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 249 time, however, and I was afraid that Dr. May- would leave Prizrend next morning. So when I was told it was only a five-hour walk to Prizrend, I took a small bag on my back, gave Peter two na- poleons to salve his feelings and hire helpers, and pushed on alone. It had been the unit's intention to go to Monastir by way of Albania from Prizrend. Once at Mon- astir, they could take the railway to Saloniki. This trip would require six or seven days on horseback. The road had long been cut by the Bulgarians, but of coiu"se I did not know this. There were two al- ternative routes. Either they could go by horse- trails through Albania to Scutari, or they coidd go north by cart to Ipek, and from there cut across Montenegro by horse-trail to Androvitze, where a wagon-road led to Scutari via Podgoritze and Scu- tari Lake. When I set out to walk to Prizrend, I knew none of this. I only knew that they intended going to Monastir, and that, if they left Prizrend before I arrived, I could not overtake them; and although the road back to Mitrovitze had been cut so that I could not hope to return there, I still wished to deliver the letters to Dr. May. I was right in my supposition that they would be leaving next morning, for we did actually all leave to- 250 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE gether then, though it was by the route to Ipek. I had been told that it was five hours to Prizrend. I began walking at eight o'clock, and at one I was told it was three hours to Prizrend. By this time I was completely fagged, mainly on account of sleep and hunger. At two I descended the last range of hills and began crossing a plain, dimly on the farther limit of which I saw for the first time the savage heights of the Albanian Alps. I could not see any sign of Prizrend, and could walk only about half as fast as formerly. I was thirsty, and left the road a minute to get a drink at a clear moun- tain stream. While standing on the bank, I heard a motor and, looking up, saw Peter flying by in the ambulance. If only I had been on the road! I resumed my march with many refugees, who were growing much more in evidence. Luck at last fa- vored me, for I soon spied the ambulance standing in the road, and, hurrying, I came up just as Peter, with two soldier comrades, was ready to set off. In the distance Prizrend showed indistinctly, cranmied right against the moimtains. In fifteen minutes we could see the surly old fortress on the hill above Prizrend, and soon neared the outskirts of the town. As I looked out, I had BEHIND THE LIVING WAVE 251 a curious sensation of being among familiar sur- roundings. It puzzled me a minute, and then I knew it was the refugees. We were in the thick of them again. By the tens of thousands they swarmed around Prizrend, ants in an ant-hill, bees in a hive, flies about a carcass. We were sub- merged in them, buffeted, hindered, stopped, amal- gamated with them. Swirhng with them into the narrow maw of Prizrend, we became a part of them again. The old life had begun once more — the life it seemed to me I had led a thousand years in- stead of a few short weeks, the astounding, restless, tragic hfe of the living wave. CHAPTER IX PEIZKEND ABOUT four o'clock in the afternoon I ar- rived at Prizrend, and at four next morn- ing I left it. It was not a long stay, but quite long enough to leave an indehble picture with me. The Ufe of the retreat was always crammed full of incident, rich in striking or colorful detail, a pageant that day and night rolled over Serbia cost- ing thousands and thousands of hves and a nation's existence. To have marched with it was to see the most savage face of hf e and to become the familiar of death. To look back on it is to feel its dream-like quality seemingly extending over years and years. To write about it is to contend with a bewildering maze of narrative threads, the brightest of which it is not easy to choose; but Prizrend, in the sunset half -hour that I saw it and in the misty dawn as I left it, certainly deserves to be picked out of the tangle. I came there trailing the refugee masses, just ahead of the battle-storm, dangerously late. All 252 PRIZREND 253 three Serbian armies were converging on the Al- banian and Montenegrin frontier between Prizrend and Ipek, some of them planning to take the route across Albania to Scutari, the rest to go through Montenegro by way of Ipek, Androvitze, and Pod- goritze to Scutari. The road to Monastir, as we learned at once, had been cut ; the General Staff had already announced the evacuation of Prizrend, and were preparing to go to Scutari by the Albanian route. In time of peace Prizrend numbers about fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants. It lies on the edge of a broad valley so close to the mountains that a good half of it clambers up a steep slope for hun- dreds of feet, and ends in the huge gray fortress which gives an appearance strangely reminiscent of Naples around San Martino. At the foot of this slope, through the center of the town, runs a swift moimtain river, the quays on each side being lined with the spacious harems of the wealthier Turks. Farther up-stream these quays become grassy banks, and instead of old houses, are deep groves of sycamores. Where the main street strikes the river is an ancient stone bridge that con- sists of one incredibly long arch springing from massive piles of masonry on each side. 254 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE When we came to the bridge, Peter and I were at a loss to know where to turn, when we spied one of the English nurses in the crowd. She had seen us, and was soon guiding us by a precarious road along the river-bank to a filthy alley a little way up which was the house which the ever-watchful Dr. Curcin had succeeded in getting for the mission. I was met with the news that the unit was leaving for Ipek the following morning. Dr. May was happy to get what slight good news I could bring of the wounded girl — they had expected her to die — and as all question of sending back the ambulance was settled, kindly invited me to travel along as one of the unit. This I was happy to do, and am frank to say that at this late date I do not know what I should have done otherwise; for although I had gold, food was not for sale. I made the journey as far as Rome with the imit, and can never forget the kindness shown me without exception by aU the nurses and doctors. Soon after I arrived I met Admiral Troubridge again. He seemed worried; as near it, that is to say, as I ever saw him. Major Elliott had been sent with fifty marines to go out by way of Mon- astir, and soon after he left the Admiral had got in- formation that the road had been cut by the Bui- PRIZREND 255 garian forces. Since then he had had no word from his men; so whether they were captured or not he did not know. As a matter of fact, they succeeded in getting out shortly before the enemy came. To add to the imcomfortable situation. Colonel Phil- lips had fallen ill, and was in no condition to make the trip across Albania to Scutari. What caused the Admiral most anxiety, however, was the condi- tion of the prisoners at Prizrend. He said that the Enghsh women must be got out of the town as soon as possible, next day at the latest. The Serbs had about fifty thousand prisoners in the old fortress, with insufficient guards, and more were coming in all the time. There was no food for them, and they were going mad with starvation. What he feared was that they would overpower their guards and deluge the town, looting, murdering, and burning. As he talked, I got a vivid picture of what fifty thousand haggard, ragged, freezing, starving men , would do if turned loose in that place. I believe ' with him that this could easily have happened, for there were very many more prisoners than soldiers in the place, and with the wild confusion that pre- vailed they would meet with little organized resist- ance. Affairs certainly bore no pleasant aspect. The phenomenally good behavior of the prisoners 256 WITH SERBIiV: INTO EXILE of war will always remain something of a mystery to me. Beside the tremendous number of prisoners, there were more refugees gathered at Prizrend than at any other place din-ing the retreat. At last the stream, which had arisen in the north along the Save and the Danube and in the east along the Bulgarian frontier, and which had inundated the entire nation for two months, was dammed. The dam stretched away to north and south in a wild, beautiful tangle of shining peaks. When the refugees looked at the mountains ahead and heard the guns behind, they realized finally that Serbia was lost, aban- doned to three strong invaders, betrayed by three strong allies. This was the general sentiment. I heard it continually from civilians, soldiers, oflScers, and government officials. "Why did not Russia come? Where are the French? Has England forgotten us?" These questions were so common as to become a sort of national threnody. ' When I came, there were at least eighty thou- sand refugees here, with perhaps ten thousand more to come ahead of the moving armies. These hordes, combined with the fifty thousand prisoners, overwhelmed the little city. There was no food to be had for the masses. The Government was faced PRIZREND 257 with three starving armies beside the one hundred and thirty thousand civilians and prisoners. In all that crowd I am sure not one had enough to eat, and thousands were facing actual starvation — thou- sands of women and children without any food, without any shelter at the close of November, and in the town congestion so great that contagious diseases were only a question of days. I find myself wondering what Prizrend is hke to-day. The refugees had to remain there. To cross the mountains was an impossibility for fami- lies of women and children without food. After two months of untold hardship, at last they had to sit here and starve until the enemy came, only hop- ing that he might bring food. If he was unable to do so, Prizrend is indescribable now. It is about fifty kilometers from the railway, and in winter the road is terrible. Only by ox-cart can food be brought in, and the armies operating in Albania must be provisioned. It was not a bright outlook for the refugees. The streets of Prizrend are precipitous and tor- tuous, and down their whole length, from houses on each side, old grape-vines hang in graceful fes- toons, which in summer must cast the town in deU- cious shade. Now of course there was no fohage. 258 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE only tHe serpentine stems under the forlorn net- work of which unnumbered thousands of starving, homeless peasants fought their way about, filling the streets with an unending stream day and night that crushed against the houses and swirled in rest- less pools around each dirty square. The red and white fezzes and gorgeous bloomers of the Turks; the Albanians, with their white skuU-caps and great flaming sashes; the tall Montenegrins, with their gay jackets and tiny round hats; the people of the Sanjak, with glaring, pirate-like turbans; the Ser- bian peasant women, with their vari-colored, bril- liant stockings, multiform opanJci, exquisitely em- broidered short skirts and jackets, and bright head-dresses; the Serbian men in their brown and black homespun trousers, tight as to leg, volumi- nous as to seat; French majors and colonels and captains in dress imiform; English and Serbian officers tarnished and business-like; gendarmes in bright blue, with gold lace and braid; the royal guard, with red breeches and sky-blue tunics; the bluish gray of the Austrian prisoners ; the grayish green of the Bulgarians, the greenish yeUow of the Serbian soldiers — all flowed in barbaric masses of color through the streets of Prizrend, like Prishtina, but on a larger and more varied scale. Such street- PRIZREND 259 scenes were one of the most remarkable aspects of an invasion unique in many ways. In no other circumstances could one ever see such a conglomera- tion of races in a setting that is still medieval. Up these streets in the dusk, playing havoc with the crowds, luxurious French limousines, shining American touring-cars, huge snorting motor-lorries nosed their way. The life of a whole nation had suddenly burst upon Prizrend, and everything was confused, turned topsy-turvy, business destroyed, and shops closed because, if opened, they were wrecked by the crush of too eager customers. Only the life of the harems moved on. The world might go to smash, but the Turk had his larders full, his money in gold, his own philosophy, and alone he walked the streets unperturbed. As night drew on, I stood in a little niche of the old bridge's balustrade. Lights were sprinkling the heights around the dark fortress, and the river's surface below was spread with ruddy and golden reflections from the latticed windows along the quays. There was the usual heterogeneous clamor of great crowds. Soldiers came toward the bridge shouting in Serbian and pushing a way through the throng. I was pushed hard against the wall as they opened a way before them. They were 260 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE followed by some dim figures. A hush came over us. As the party came within the circle of light opposite me, I recognized for an instant the thin, keen features of King Peter. It was a curious set- ting for a king, and brought to mind a fleeting memory of the Grcrman emperor reviewing his in- comparable army on the plain near Mainz in 1913, a wonderful illustration, I thought, of cause and effect. The crowd began to heave and squirm again, restless as before. I had never happened to see the King before, but of course had heard and read the many wild con- flicting tales about his checkered life — whispers of a young man's Bohemian existence in Paris around the Cafe du Helder before he dreamed of being a king; stories of a care-free hfe at Geneva not un- mixed with plots; descriptions of him as an almost penurious, threadbare man in Petrograd, choosing the less-frequented streets to bring his children to and from their royal school, where royal favor per- mitted them to go. These I remembered now, and wondered if he, too, were not lost in memories of beloved Paris, or feeling again the sweet breeze that on summer evenings sweeps in from Lake Leman, or walking with the young princes along the quiet streets of Petrograd. Certainly his ex- PRIZREND 261 pression was one of brooding, and well it might be, for this was his last day on the soil of his kingdom. iThe following morning he plimged into Albania, and before reaching Scutari had to be carried on the backs of his soldiers. Not one tenth of the refugees could get shelter in the town. Broad camps stretched about the place, filling the numerous Turkish cemeteries. A Turkish cemetery is the most desolate thing in the world. They plant their dead — and how innumer- able their dead seem ! — on any barren space that lies near at hand, for they always live in the midst of their departed. They stick up rough-hewn slabs of stone, which seem never to fall completely, but only to sag from the perpendicular, adding much to the chaotic ensemble. Then they seem promptly to forget the graves forever. In space of time these sink, leaving depressions which, when the wind is right, are partly sheltered by the grave- stones. Filled with hay, they are not bad couches — for a refugee, Now all about Prizrend in the November dusk camp-fires burned brightly amid the tipsy gravestones, and hundreds of inert forms were stretched beside them on the grave. A weird sight, those living cities of the dead, but only in retrospection strange. For there is a point which 262 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE people sometimes reach when nothing is strange but peace and happiness, and nothing natural but the instinct to exist. Prizrend's self-invited guests had reached it. a bB (c) Underwood & Underwood King Peter of Serbia Prizrend from the river bank CHAPTER X THE AKMY THAT CANNOT DEE IN that future for which all Europe hopes, when stability and peace shall have come to the Bal- kans, Serbia will doubtless become a tourist's playground such as is the Midi or Switzerland. Then the road from Prizrend to Ipek will be as famous as the Corniche Road or the Briinig Pass. It winds along broad, fertile vaUeys, skirting the northern Albanian Alps. There are old and very beautiful arched stone bridges, carrying it across canons of savage magnificence. The finest of these is the thin half -circle of masonry that marks the border between Montenegro and Serbia. At Jakova it breaks into narrow Eastern streets full of the yet unspoiled glamour of the Orient, and winds about the crumbling Turkish fortifications that loom upon the grassy plain like the battlements of Aigues-Mortes. Then it dips into the foot-hills, and leads after a time to the mouth of a deep and narrow valley two kilometers up which, surrounded by crag-tipped heights and dark forests of pines, 283 264 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE is a large monastery with a fourteenth-century church, the interior of which is still covered with unrestored frescos of the period. 'Its final stage is straight over another plain to Ipek, lying at the foot of roadless mountains. The peaks that over- shadow it are majestic as few mountains are, but to us who as refugees came that way, they spelled only hardship, and the road itself was very bad. If we had known at Mitrovitze that the way to Monastir was cut, we should not have gone to Priz- rend at all, but should have gone directly from Mitrovitze to Ipek, a distance of only twenty-five kilometers. As it was, the march to Prizrend had required four days, and now, reversing our direc- tion, the march from there to Ipek would require two more, although on ordinary roads, in an auto- mobile, it could be done in two hours. Thus five days' unnecessary march were made in describing the two legs of a triangle, the base of which lay on the line between Mitrovitze and Ipek. Having come to Prizrend, however, we chose the Ipek route to Scutari rather than the one across Albania, be- cause the latter had been rendered exceedingly un- safe by the wild native tribesmen, who were rising everywhere and attacking all parties not strong enough to offer formidable resistance. Had the THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 265 refugees at Prizrend wished to do so, they could have made the additional two days' march to Ipek, but comparatively few of them did. Having been driven to a reahzation of the hopelessness of their situation, they decided that it was just as well to starve at Prizrend as farther along. The total absence of news or reliable information of any sort, which had brought us so far out of our way, was one of the striking things of the retreat. Even the army was for the most part ignorant of what was taking place at other points, so great was the problem of communication in the general con- fusion. There was a field wireless or two which did good work interrupting German messages, and couriers were riding this way and that, , but the rumors which came to the masses were of the wild- est character and always of rosy burden — a half milhon Russians through Rumania, a quarter mil- lion troops of the Allies from Saloniki, and the rail- way freed again. We heard that Germany was withdrawing her troops to protect her borders from the French, who had driven them beyond the Rhine. No one believed these stories ; all repeated them with additions. Always one moved blindly with the throng, itself a blind leader, knowing nothing for certain except 266 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE the never-ceasing guns behind. The fortunate people who came out early met little of this chaos, and, arriving at Prizrend, made the journey to Monastir before the cold set in, if not in comfort, at least with a fair degree of safety. The members of the American Sanitary Commission were able to do this, as well as a good many Russian and French nurses. Most of the English sisters ar- rived too late, and made the trip to Scutari either through Albania or Montenegro. Those who came out late saw the real retreat. The far more for- tunate earlier ones heard only the distant rum- blings. Early in a foggy dawn we passed through the streets of Prizrend, still crowded with the abnormal life that all night had not ceased to stir, and got out upon the road among those dreary graveyards, now turned into huge bivouacs. Just outside the town two automobiles passed us filled with queer, furry creatures who were hardly recognizable as men. Himg aU over the cars were rucksacks, bales, and bags, all tightly stuffed and quite obviously in- tended to be transported on pack-horses. Each figure carried a rifle, which made him look like a trained bear in a circus. Cheery French chatter came to our ears as they passed, and, inquiring, we THE AKMY THAT CANNOT DIE 267 learned that they were a party of aviators and me- chanics starting on the Albanian road to Scutari. They would be able to go only a few kilometers in the cars, which they would then burn and take to pack-horses. The entire party would number about fifty, all well armed. I found myself wish- ing to be with them. The march to Jakova was one of the longest we ever made in a single day. Part of the caravan, indeed, did not go all of the way, but camped by the roadside and came on the next morning. It was a beautiful day, fuU of sunshine, and cold enough to make walking a pleasure. Strange as it may seem, tramping was really becoming pleas- ant to many of the nurses. They were now experts at it. They had learned the steady gait that does not tire, and they found the deep sleep that is bought only by long hours of hard exercise. The sparkling air and savage mountains delighted them, and the knowledge that they were playing a part in the wildest drama even these old, romantic lands had ever known added much to their pleasure. So the hunger and cold and exhaustion, even the mul- tiple tragedies around them were, to a degree, com- pensated for. "I should love to tramp forever and ever," they would say after a cold night in the 268 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE open, when the warming dawn brought a nameless dehght just because it was dawn and warm. We know they are heroines, but they would say they were merely happy tramps. Not only was the march to Jakova one of the finest because of the mountains that always watched over us, but its pleasure was undisturbed by many refugees. Few were travehng the road with us. A good many soldiers were on the road, however, and our ambulance had an exciting episode with one of them. At Prizrend the ear had been turned over to Mr. Boone, a fine Enghsh boy of scarcely eighteen who had come out with the Stobart unit and who, although iU most of the time, showed an unfailing cheerfulness and good hvmior that threw him into glaring contrast with most of his country- men whom it was my fate to meet in Serbia. If I had never seen any Englishmen except those who dumped themselves, or were dumped, on that im- happy land, I would conclude without difficulty that the percentage of the species we know as men among them is so small as to be negligible. For- tunately, it was possible to reahze early that Serbia had been made the military and diplomatic scrap- heap of England and France, and that the speci- THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 269 mens to be f ovind there were no more to be taken as representatives of those two great nations than the contents of an ash-can can be held to be the true symbol of the mansion from which it comes. Wholesale criticisms are seldom in good taste and rarely true. If here and in other portions of this book the opinions expressed seem too sweeping, the only apology is that they never pretend to a wider experience than was actually the case, and are not foimded on any personal opinion of what may or may not be wise or stupid, but are rather the outcome of an indignation aroused on occasions too numerous to enumerate. I speak of the unre- strained and oft-repeated expressions of mean, ly- ing, and contemptible sentiments from men sent out to help Serbia. The wide-flung declaration of facts, obviously false, the cynical, egotistical criti- cisms of the nation which was dying through the fault of these critics' own nations; the iU-timed, vulgar, and abominable mouthings of persons whose business it was to fight and keep their mouths shut, but who showed no perceptible liking for do- ing either; and finally the cold heartlessness of an English journalist whose only apparent conception of a country's crucifixion seemed to be that it was 270 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE a God-sent opportunity for him to spread pictur- esque slanders, make it impossible for me to keep such paragraphs as this out of my story. In perhaps the widest circulated of our weeklies an article appeared entitled "The Difficult Truth about Serbia." It is a fine reading. About no country, in my knowledge, is it more difficult to get the truth. The truth about Serbia is, indeed, diffi- cult to learn, but a pleasure in these days to teU. It is a truth at which, in a stay of less than a month, even the perspicacity of the woman journalist who wrote the article could not hope to arrive. Filth is no criterion by which to judge nations who have faced what the Balkan nations have. It is like criticizing Milton for the lack of a manicurist. To say that of late years Serbia has had time to re- cover from the effects of centuries of degradation is, through ignorance or design, to ignore many things. With the easy grace characteristic of a certain type .of feminine mind the author of that article leaps 'over the economic isolation of Serbia, the deadly trade wars with Austria, soars over the most signifi- cant factors in the growth of nations, knocking down not a single fact. You cannot learn a nation in a week. You cannot measure the potentiahties of a people by their lack of smart fiacres or the THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 271 abundance of vermin in their inns any more than you can fairly revile them because, with world dramas on every side, as yet the cinematograph has failed to bring them the "Perils of Pauline." After a stay of a fortnight you cannot convincingly im- pugn the honor, kindness, pride, and hospitality of a people in whom for a generation Enghsh, American, French, and German travel-writers have praised these quahties almost without exception, i When you attempt to do such things you become to [the informed reader stupid or laughable, but to the ^imsuspecting millions pernicious. : The right to this opinion I do not base upon as intimate a knowledge as I could desire, but it is given on at least two months' extensive travel over tiie country and close association with all classes, on four additional months of "root-hog-or-die" ex- istence with the soldiers of the line, with their offi- cers, with their martyred wives and children, and finally on the illimainating sight of Serbia in the moment of her death, that moment which on the road to Ipek we were fast approaching. The Serb is not an angel, frequently he is not clean, but, thank Heaven ! he is a man. All of which is by way of digression. Boone was bounding along in the ambulance alone except for 272 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE two wounded soldiers that he had picked up, and who, with the suppUes he had to carry, were all the car would hold. Some slight trouble forced him to stop, and before he could start again a Serbian petty officer, who had called to him in French a short time before, ordering him to stop, came up. He wasted no words, but harshly ordered Boone to give him a place in the car. Boone refused to do this, showing him the wounded soldiers. When he saw the soldiers, the young brute became furious, and ordered Boone to throw them out and to take him. Boone again refused to obey the order. Then the officer drew his automatic and pressed it against Boone's temple, repeating the demand. Boone still refused to throw out the wounded men, but they had seen the situation, and of their own accord got out. The officer then forced the Eng- lish boy to get in and drive him on, holding the pis- tol to his head all the time. Finally a tire blew out, much to Boone's relief, and as repairing it required some time the officer went away swearing. Such incidents as this were inevitable at such a time. Examples of brutality are not lacking in any army anywhere. When I read wild tales of Serbian sol- diers having mutinied, murdered their officers, and looted the houses of their countrymen, I cannot but THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 273 think they have their foundation in more or less isolated crimes. The splendid dignity, the great restraint, and the almost perfect behavior of the sol- diers and civilians after their Government had cnraibled caused frequent comment among the foreigners making the retreat. Had the gentle- man who described Krushevats as dead drunk seen this episode, the world might have been treated to an account of how the Serbian officers in a delirium of fear turned on the Red Cross workers, and we at home would have believed it! At about three in the afternoon those of us in the front party crossed over the bridge which marks the boundary between Serbia and Montenegro, It was dusk when we came to Jakova, and almost an hour later before we found a resting-place in a Turkish school-room. Jakova furnished a good illustration of the isolation that still exists in this region. Thirty kilometers away was the inferno of Prizrend. At Jakova, the day we arrived, one would not have known that there was such a thing as war. Silver money could be easily obtained, and food was for sale. Next morning I bought quanti- ties of cigarettes, and because we had had no sugar for some time, a store of raisins and sticky "Turkish Delight." But with us came the first sign of the S74 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE deluge, and on the second day after we arrived enough refugees and soldiers had come to give the inhabitants a sense of uneasiness, so that when I went out to shop on this day, I found conditions much changed. In vain I hunted for more "Turk- ish Delight" and cigarettes. They and nearly every other article had disappeared. I did not be- lieve the stock had been sold out so quickly, and was puzzled. Finally in the window of a httle shop I saw an empty box that had without doubt contained the coveted sweet. I went in and directed the ancient Turk's attention to it, mentioning divers moneys. He shook his head stohdly. I repeated the opera- tion, although I was confident he had understood the first time, but with no more success. Then I had an inspiration. At college I had learned a disgusting trick, which consisted of smacking the hps and rubbing the stomach in unison, a perform- ance that made up in buifoonery what it lacked in elegance. I now had recourse to this, nodding meanwhile at the empty box. At first the good Moslem brother looked startled, as if I should not be loose; then over the wrinkled, inscrutable pie- plate that he called his face a grin flickered, and diving into a back room, he brought half a dozen ,THE AKMY THAT CANNOT DIE 275 boxes and sold them to me, thus proving that not everything learned at college is useless. The shop- keepers had begun to hoard, taking all tempting ar- ticles out of the sight of the soldiers, who might not prove overscrupulous about a httle raid. I continued my search for cigarettes. There were any number of tobacco shops where on the previous day these could be had, but now nothing but smoking tobacco of a very inferior grade was for sale. I could think of no vaudeville stunt cal- culated to soften the dealers' hearts. Disconso- lately I looked into a tobacco-shop window when a Turkish gamin of ten came by, puffing a cigarette as large as his two fingers. He stopped and looked at me as I looked at the empty window. I patted him on the head, told him in English he should not use tobacco, pointed to his cigarette, and held up five dinars. He promptly led me around a corner, winked, and disappeared. Soon he was back with two hundred excellent cigarettes. I pocketed them, and held up five more dinars. Again I re- ceived two hundred, and he pocketed the ten dinars. My conscience now suggests that in the evening when papa Turk came home to his harem, he may have worn out an embroidered velvet slipper caress- : ing the anatomy of my sly friend, but I wager he 276 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE saw nothing of the ten dinars. Dans la guerre comme dans la guerre! At Jakova I sold one pair of the oxen I had bought about six weeks before at Alexandrovats. They had come all that distance through terrible hardships and were much weakened; but I received thirty dinars more than I had paid for them, and I sold them to a Turk! All things considered, it was the greatest financial stroke I ever performed. One day's journey away was Ipek, where aU the oxen would have to be abandoned. There a few days later I gave the other and larger pair to Ticho- mir, who sold them for eighty dinars. Our noble chariot was burned to warm his lazy limbs. We left Jakova in the beginning of our second snow-storm; but it was not so cold as on the Plain of Kossovo, and there was no wind. Also the way was not so encumbered with refugees, though full of the army. The fall was exceedingly heavy, and delayed us some, so that it was nearly dark when we turned up the canon to seek refuge in the monastery where Dr. Curcin had made arrangements for the unit to stay, the journey on to Ipek requiring only about three hours. For thirty mirmtes we fol- lowed a makeshift road between ever-heightening mountains. The creaking and rumbling of our ,THE AHMY THAT CANNOT DIE 277 carts was the only sound in the snow-laden forest. Far ahead we saw the great building, with hundreds of ruddy windows sending rays of light down the valley. It looked cheerful enough, and even had something of a festive air, which made me suddenly remember that it was Thanksgiving day. Being the only American in the party, I had quite forgot- ten this occasion. When we floundered up to it, we found the great quadrangular building as white as an Eskimo hut, and entering by a high arched por- tal we plowed about the extensive courtyard, deep in great snow-drifts. On the eastern side of the court stood the ancient church, streaming light from the windows illuminating in patches its rich facade of colored marbles, while the numerous gar- goyles in the shadows above had become terrible pale shapes that grinned and writhed, strained and snarled,, in the gathering night. No doubt they have seen many strange sights, these odd, old creatures, which were white with the whiteness of new marble when the Serbia of ancient days was ground to death under the Turk- ish heel, from which the rest of Europe had only with great difficulty been delivered by a valiant Pole imder the very walls of Vienna. They had looked on while for five centuries a race, persecuted 278 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE with every conceivable form of atrocity and oppres- sion, had kept alive the dream of the Southern Slav, and in times so recent that to them it must have seemed but yesterday they saw that dream come to flower in a httle nation which, whatever its faults, is certainly as brave and as unfortunate as any na- tion ever was. Four years ago they saw it redeem a large stretch of territory from its ancient enemy, and then, buUied by a treacherous ally, turn and inflict a stinging defeat upon her. They saw this new-bom nation live through those breathless days of 1914, when the whole world watched her. They saw her confronted with demands more humihat- ing than any free nation had ever been called upon to accept, and they saw her make broader concessions than any free nation had ever done before, but to no purpose. Then they saw her invaded by an army three times the strength of her own, they saw her desperate and suddenly, be- fore the world realized, gloriously victorious under General Mishich's briUiant leadership, but wounded and exhausted, so that disease and famine spread over her for six months, creating a situation terrible enough to call the whole friendly and neutral world to her aid. That Thanksgiving night they were witnessing the passing of a shattered, starving CC a g S THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 279 army, the plight of a hopeless, starving people, and now without doubt Bulgarian officers pass to and fro beneath them. It seems impossible for one who saw it to speak or write coldly about this period of the retreat. It was the death moment. After it the flight over the mountains seemed merely the instinctive departure of men who for the most part did not care whether they lived or died. Two or three days later all three armies would be in Ipek, except several thou- sand who already had gone into Albania from Priz- rend. The road having been cut, part of the sec- ond army was coming across country, without any roads at all, over frozen plains and snow-covered hills, fording icy streams every few miles, dragging their cannon and ammunition with them. The three field commanders would soon hold their coun- cil in Ipek. King Peter, the crown prince. Gen- eral Putnik, and the general staff were already on their way to Scutari. The Alhes had failed her; ' Serbia was lost. Throughout the long night carts struggled up to the monastery, and men bearing stretchers filed in. They carried Serbian officers, many wounded, some dead from cold and the cruel exhaustion of the carts. All night long the queer monastery boys, 280 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE ^ in their tight, bright-red trousers and abbreviated blue jackets, ran up and down the long corridors with flaring lights, while the brown, silent monks stole to and fro. There were cries and groans and curses, and every hour chimes in the old tower. It was bitter cold. A more grotesque night I never expect to spend. No, one cannot write calmly of Ipek then. No matter where one's sympathies may lie in this war that has divided the world, if one knows patriotism and has any admiration for pure grit, that last camp of the Serbian army, already on foreign soU, could caU forth nothing but the deepest feeling. We came to Ipek after two days' delay at the monastery, which allowed the weaker of the party to regain a little of their strength. It was a great question at this time whether we should ever get to Ipek, or, at any rate, out of it, before the Germans came. Mitrovitze had been in their hands for sev- eral days, and Mitrovitze was distant only twenty- ^ five kilometers. A part of this way the invaders had already come, and we did not know whether they would be opposed by the Serbs or not. But it is not easy to arrange quickly at such a time for a party of forty women and the necessary attendants, guides, guards, and food to cross the mountains of THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 281 Montenegro. Dr. Curcin and some Serbs had gone ahead to make such arrangements as were possible. On the second day we started for the town. As soon as we reached the canon's mouth and turned into the main road, the coldest wind I had ever felt struck us full in the face as it swept off the bleak, Alpine peaks behind Ipek and raced unbroken across the icy plain. In crossing this plain we un- doubtedly suffered more bitterly from the cold than anywhere else on the whole retreat. Nor was it cheerful to think that, if we were freezing on this plain, what would happen when we took the two- foot trail across the summits of those mountains, now so blinding in the bright sunshine that we could scarcely look at them. I could see great clouds of driven snow swirling around those lofty ice-fields, just as on any clear day they may be seen blurring the summit of Mont Blanc and showing the violence of the gales. Perhaps it was foolish, certainly it was no compliment to the oncoming Teutons, that in a choice between them and the cruel desolation of those vast, trackless wastes the women of England unanimously chose the latter. But I do not think it was really fear of the invader at all. In the first place, as far as we could learn, there had been no reason to fear the Teutonic invaders in Serbia. I 282 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE say as far as we could learn, for we were ahead of the army, and hence would naturally not come in contact with atrocities, if any had been committed. But according to Admiral Troubridge, Colonel Phillips, and Serbians with whom I talked, they had no reason to believe that the Germans were not following a humane policy in Serbia. We heard that on entering Belgrade — what was left of Bel- grade — they sealed the houses which had been left intact, and disturbed nothing except to take all the brass, copper, and bronze which they found. Since coming out of Serbia I have heard many seemingly authentic stories of barbarities committed there by the Teutons and by the Bulgarians, but from per- sonal experience I know only what I have stated. I think it was the strong aversion the nurses felt at the possibility of having to nurse back to fitness for the trenches the men whom their fathers and brothers were fighting that was the deciding factor in their decision to go over the mountains. To see, any live thing suffering made these women almost wild unless they could do something to relieve it; and then it seemed to me that they were rather jubilant, their professional feeling drowning every- thing else. A prisoner never failed to draw sym- pathy from them, but when it came to being pris- THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 283 oners themselves and nursing men who would be sent back to fight — ^well, the unknown, icy trails were preferable, even though they were ragged and starved, footsore and weary. The wind that nearly took us off our feet and whistled through our clothing, chilling us to the bone, also removed the light layer of feathery snow that lay under foot, and uncovered a solid expanse of slippery ice on which every moment animals and people lost their balance and fell heavily. It was like a skating-lesson. At times it was impossible to move at all against the wind with such insecure footing, and many ox-carts stood immovable in the road, with both oxen vainly trying to rise. In the sheltered canon we had met wild, little Gipsy boys who did a brisk trade in wormy apples about the size of lemons, wormy chestnuts, and hard, green, little pears. Lead a precarious exist- ence out of tin cans for weeks, and see if you would not welcome such fruit as this. We did abma- dantly. But those pears were dum-dum bullets. They raised all their mischief inside, and, combined with many a chill among us, was many a stomach- ache of the real, near-fatal, small-boy variety. At last with eyes that smarted and wept under freez- ing slaps of the wind, we saw Ipek splotching the '284 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE arid, white waste at the base of the mountains, a straggling, irregular, crimson-and-yellow blot on the snow. It looked as if a Titan had dropped a titanic tomato of titanic over-ripeness. I do not love Ipek, but I shall be dust and ashes before I forget it. Of course we did not have so many refugees to make life terrible, but here it was the army that took the star role in our masque of horror. There were just enough civihans to make the town really congested. Around it on the ice and snow the army camped, or, rather, lay down in the frosty open, nursed its wounded, and took stock of its dead. When I saw the Serbian soldiers at Ipek I said to myself that I had seen the hardiest men on earth reduced to the furthest limit of their endur- ance. Again, hke the quick-trip journalists, I was very ignorant and foolish. Had a pressing con- tract to write up the court etiquette of Timbuctoo in 1776 called me hurriedly away at the moment, in all good faith I would have cabled any newspaper that had been unfortunate enough to retain me that the Serbian army had reached the end of its rope, was merely scratching around in the snows of Ipek for a place in which to die, and would never get ten miles over the mountains toward Scutari. I might THE AKMY THAT CANNOT DIE 285 have padded this information with more or less veracious details of hungry soldiers eating hve oxen on the half-shell, and fastidious officers living on consomme made from expensive Russian boots, and in all probability I would have established myself as an authority on Serbia. ! As a matter of fact, two war correspondents, one English and one American, did find time and inspiration to make part of the retreat. They took the route through Albania to Scutari and thence to Rome. They were the first two; I happened to be the third curiosity to arrive in the Eternal City from the great retreat. As such, Ambassador Page questioned me extensively, with his habitual Southern courtesy. Among other things, he asked how many Serbian soldiers came through. When I repUed, not less than one hundred thousand, he laughed pohtely, but very heartily. It was impos- sible ; it could not be ; besides, the two eminent cor- respondents differed radically from me. One said about thirty, and the other about forty thousand, had escaped. Mr. Page was inclined to split the difference at thirty-five thousand. Last week His Highness Alexander, Prince Regent, announced that one himdred and fifty thousand Serbs were now completely reorganized, reequipped, and suffi- 286 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE ciently rested to fight again on any battle-field. Sixteen thousand of these came out by way of Sa- loniki, the rest through Albania and Montenegro. So much for the quick-fire reporters. Despite their manifest shortcomings, what would we do without them? The army that huddled around the cheerless town of Ipek really did not seem to have enough reserve strength to make any further exertion. I knew, as I looked at the drab, bedraggled groups clustering about fires that their transport-wagons fed, that these men were doomed to death or cap- ture at Ipek. Three weeks later, watching the same men crawl into Scutari, I knew that I had been mistaken previously, but that, unless Scutari was safe for months and ample food and clothing came, they would die or surrender there. Further mountain retreating for that mechanical mass, scarcely instinct with life, was impossible. Again I would have cabled lies to my paper. I was igno- rant again. They did not get rest at Scutari nor at San Giovanni di Medua, but they made the inde- scribable march to Durazzo on rations that were criminally short, hundreds and hundreds perishing by the roadside, and then they fell into boats, and only on the islands of the Adriatic and in southern JHE AHMY THAT CANNOT DIE 287 Italy did they find food and rest. Now, after scarcely two months, comes the amazing announce- ment that they are ready and eager for the battle again! Such were the men I saw evacuating the ' hospitals, such were the men I saw crowding the long refugee-trains in indescribable discomfort, such were the men I saw, wounded and bleeding, tramping the muddy roads through the wilderness ; such were they whom I saw freezing and starving around Ipek, who died by the hundreds there and by the thousands in the mountains ; such were they who, when they could have surrendered with bet- terment to themselves, and dishonor for their coun- try, did not, but made a retreat as brave and as glorious as any victory of this or any other war — a retreat that dims the flight from Moscow in suf- fering. Such is the Serbian army, the army that cannot die. The economic hfe of Ipek was interesting. Splendid oxen could be bought here for ten or fif- teen dollars a pair, their former price being about one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The food situation was acute, but not so bad as at Prizrend. However, the supply, such as it was, was purely temporary, and before I left had been completely exhausted. The price of boots was a phenomenon. 288 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE Since the first day of the retreat footgear had sold at constantly increasing prices, until the amount paid for a pair of boots was fabulous, amounting to sixty or seventy dollars. In the streets of Ipek there were quantities of excellent Russian boots for sale at four or five dollars, the normal price of these in Serbia being about twenty dollars. Government magazines had been thrown open to the soldiers, and many of those who happened to be more or less decently shod preferred to sell. So the bottom dropped out of the boot market. Bread, however, was at the same famine prices that had prevailed before. I saw a pound loaf sell for eight dollars. The council between the three generals was on. All commimication with the General Staff was cut off. It devolved upon the field-commanders to de- cide upon the final abandonment of Serbia. Their conference lasted two days, and, according to all reports, was stormy. General Mishich was for an offensive even at that date. With those emaciated regiments out there in the frozen fields, killing their transport-beasts for food, burning their transport- wagons for fuel, and having enough of neither, with most of his ammunition gone, together with a great part of the very insufficient artillery which the army had possessed, he stiU felt that there was a chance, THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 289 and that is all that is necessary for the Serbian sol- dier. They are not fools, they do not die need- lessly, as the Montenegrins are popularly reported to do, but if there is a chance life counts nothing to them. During the months that I hved with them, slept with them on the ground, ate their bread, saw their battle-lines, I learned this beyond all else. Soldier for soldier, I believe them to be the best jSghters in the world. Most soldiers are brave men; the Serb is also a marvelous stoic, a rare op- timist, and built of steel. *But the odds there were too great. The other two generals favored the course which was carried out with a very remarka- ble degree of success — a general retreat through the mountains with as many of the smaller guns and as much ammvmition as possible. So the evacuation of Ipek was announced. The next morning loud explosions were heard at one end of the town. The purchase of horses was keeping us in Ipek, and I found myself with noth- ing to do, so, with my camera, I wandered toward the explosions. At the edge of the town, where the highway that was a skating-rink led out, a lot of field-guns were finishing their short, but checkered, career. They were just about obsolete and worn out, anyway. Fate had not been very kind to them. 290 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE and few vacations had been theirs since, new and efficient, they had been turned on the Turks in, 1912 with a result too weU-known to recall. In 1913 they had been reversed, and had spoken suc- cessfully the Serbs' opinion of the Bulgarians. In 1914 they blew Austria's cumbersome legions to shreds, and stuck up a "Keep ofip" sign over Serbia that Austria did not feel justified in disregarding until Germany and Bulgaria could aid her. After that they had been dragged and carried the length of Old Serbia until fatd had concentrated them in groups of two or three along the Ipek road. The men who were smashing their breeches or blowing up their carriages looked as if they hated themselves. The army lined the road to watch. The only sounds were the ringing sledges and the detonations of the explosions. As I photographed some of those yet untouched, it came to me rather forcibly that this was the first time I had ever seen Serbian soldiers work without laughter and song. A gunner whose gun I had photographed came up to me and in broken German asked if I would send him a photograph. I took out my note-book and pencil and told him to write his address. He hesitated. He had forgotten something; he had no address any more. He had nothing but that gun. THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 291 which he had worked since 1912. In a few minutes he would not have that. We could hear plainly the enemy fighting with the rear-guard out toward Mitrovitze. The man hegan to curse, and war was the object of his curses. Again I was forcibly im- pressed; it was the first time I had ever heard a Serb curse war, though aU had lamented it. Also for the first time I was seeing a Serbian man weep. I could hardly beheve it. Standing there with his back to the mountains and his face turned toward the enemy, shaking with the cold, the man, for a Serb, went to pieces: four tears rolled down his cheeks. Turning to me, he said, "America dohra, dobra, dobra, dohra" ("America good, good, good, good"). Then they came and knocked his gun to pieces. Most forcibly of aU there came to me the conception of a new sort of value in artillery — a value that is not strictly military, nor particularly effected by the model or life of a gun. In Ipek there were many automobiles — ^motor- lorries, limousines, and touring-cars. They were drawn up aroimd the public squares in imposing rows. Apparently from habit the chauffeurs pot- tered about them, polishing the plate-glass and nickel and cleaning the engines. But when evacu- ation was announced they drove a little way out of 292 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE the town. Some of them had brought hand-gre- nades, and leaving the engines running, they hfted up the hoods, struck the percussion-caps of the bombs, which they dropped beside the cylinders, and then ran. A Serbian grenade explodes in from seven to ten seconds after the cap is struck, so that one could not get very far before the racing motor was blown to scrap-iron. Fire usually consumed the body. Other chauffeurs saturated their cars with petrol and set them on fire. In the case of limousines this was spectacular. With aU the up- holstery soaked well with benzine, and everything closed tight except a small crack in one window through which the match was thrown, the luxurious cars became roaring furnaces for a minute, and then literally exploded into glorious bonfires. But these methods were as nothing compared with what one chauffeur conceived and, by setting the fashion, brought several others to adopt. The man who thought about it ought not to be a chauffeur at aU; he ought to be at the head of a cinematograph com- pany. The mountain horse-trail does not begin in Ipek itself, but is approached by three or four kilometers of regular road, which at a rightangular turn shrinks into the two-foot trail. At this point it is THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 293 cut in the side of a sheer cliflF three or four hundred feet above a little stream. There is no balustrade ; the earth simply ends, and space begins. Having arrived at this point, to step out of the car, let in the clutch, and push down the accelerator was less dangerous than the grenade, easier, quicker and far more exciting than the fire. It was a great game. There was a long gray Cadillac that took the brink hke a trained hunter, leaping far out over the edge. As its power was suddenly released from the friction of the road, the car roared and trembled like a live animal during the infinitesimal instant that it hung upright, held by its own momentum. Then the motor dragged its nose downward as true as an arrow until it struck the steep slope, down which it did quick somersaults, the tires bursting with bangs that could be heard above the crash. Before it had rolled into the stream it became a ball of fire. A ponderous Benz limousine followed, and tucked its nose into the slope without a spec- tacular leap. It was like a fat old lady falling down-stairs. Its tires blew out, and its body came loose from the chassis, both running a race to the river. An expensive-looking Fiat behaved much in the manner of the Cadillac, and was followed by a large French motor-lorry, which plowed a terri- 294 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE ble path down the cliff, pretty well giving knock for knock, and finally grinding to splinters the wreckage on which it hit at the bottom. Others followed, each taking the leap in an individual man- ner. Sometimes they flew almost to bits. The tires invariably blew out with loud reports. Since it had to be done, one did wish for every small boy in America to watch it. I think the chauffeurs who burned or blew up their cars were sorry. It is doubtless permissible to add that one very famous and very cheap American car made the leap. It had up good speed and its well-known characteristic of lightness sent it far beyond the brink, where it floated four hundred feet above the river. It acted quite as if it wanted to fly, and with a little encouragement and experience might have sailed on over the mountain-tops, headed for De- troit. But once started on its downward course, it gyrated with incredible swiftness, quite as fast as its wheels had ever turned, and, bouncing on the river-bank, flew beyond the other cars, swam the stream, and came to an eternal resting-place on the farther side. It was just the sort of a stunt one would expect from a nervy little thing like that! Buying horses at Ipek was a diflicult gamble. By the time we arrived, the horse-market had been THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 295 thoroughly picked over, and everything that could he mistaken for a real horse had already been taken through the mountains. After three days' strenu- ous search, one horse for every two members of the unit was procured. They were miserable, weak animals, with large sores on their backs and dis- couragement enshrouding them hke a cloak. It took a lot of will power to put the rough, wooden pack-saddles on those raw backs and to load them down with what to a regular pony would have been feather-weights. You may be wondering what there was to carry. The largest item in our outfit was our bedding. Every person had not fewer than three heavy, woolen army blankets, and most of the women had twice as many ; but six were frequently insufficient. Then there was the irreducible minimum of luggage which the nurses had to carry. This was usually rolled up in the blankets, and a piece of rubber sheeting tied over the outside as a protection from the rain and snow. Eortxmately, the unit had evac- uated Kragujevats with large quantities of rubber sheeting. Had it not been so, they would oftener than not have slept in soaked blankets. We gathered together three days' rations, consisting of two loaves of bread, tea, coffee, and a httle bit 296 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE of sugar, a can of Oxo, and two small tins of con- densed milk, for each person. Every one was sup- posed to see to the carrying of his own provisions. In addition, there was a community cheese, a , glorious cheese, three pounds of oleomargarine, a ' few tins of buUy-beef , and a little extra milk. The remainder of the stores, which had been carefully hoarded because none knew what lay ahead; we could not take with us, and gave away. We had been told it was three days to Androvitze, and we beheved it. At Androvitze a wagon-road led to Scutari. There were rumors of Montenegrin autos awaiting us there. Thus our provisions would be sufficient, we thought. It was little enough for a party of fifty to start off with on a journey through the most barren part of barren Montenegro. We thought to find provisions of some sort at Androvitze. For fifteen days, how- ever, we had to live on the country, never having the sHghtest idea where our next meal was coming from, but frequently knowing that it would not come at all. Light as oiu" possessions were, when we came to pack the horses, they seemed endless. The giant Montenegrin whom we had retained as a guide, Nikola Pavlovitch, was the only pack-horse expert THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 297 among our men, and he could not pack twenty horses. Packing a horse properly is far more diffi- cult than higher mathematics. To begin with, it requires a born diplomat to persuade the owner of the pack to throw away half of his belongings be- fore the packing is begun, and half of the residue after the first tumble. In the second place, one must be an animal-trainer to conquer those moun- tain ponies ; third, only a juggler with a wire-walk- ing instinct of balance and with a stock of patience such as would make Job look like an irascible edi- tor, is adequate for this work. There is no such thing as perfection in the art. A perfect pack is a purely hypothetical joy. It is an intangible, spiritual ideal to the outer court of whose sanctuary Nikola approached, while the rest of us floundered in pagan darkness. I say "us," because I deter- mined to pack Rosinante myself. Rosinante was a horse I had bought ; more about her later. After two hours I turned out a job that stopped Nikola, passing by, and made him exclaim in horror. He acted as if I had blasphemed the cult of horse- packing by what, to me, looked like a masterpiece of cunning and ingenuity. Nikola was wise. He did not argue ; he said nothing. He simply seized the bridal and led Rosinante at a fast walk for ten 298 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE yards. Then Rosinante found herself in what she must have felt to be an exceedingly undignified and embarrassing position. She was low and short; the pack, as I had created it, was high and bulky. When it neatly slipped under her belly she was pivoted on it, her toes — she had toes I know, or later she could not have done all she did — ^barely touching the ground. Nikola started to untie my pack, but grew faint before the maze of knots, and slashed the ropes. In ten minutes he had my stuff and some more besides on Rosinante, and his pack was perhaps a third as large as mine. Nikola was severely classic in his pack building. I fear mine leaned — leaned is the right word — toward the most flamboyant of Gothic creations. I am going to detail the costume which I finally assumed at Ipek. Not because it was typical, but because it was not. Despite the fact that some of the nurses, after considering the peaks before them and the general uselessness of skirts, discarded the latter in place of jackets and trousers which they themselves had fashioned from red, brown, and gray blankets, despite the well-known eccentricities of Albanian and Montenegrin tailoring, I boldly lay claim to being quite the oddest creature in the Balkans at that moment. Since September the THE AKMY THAT CANNOT DIE 299 iron hand of circumstance had been impelhng me toward this consummation. I had come out pre- pared only for the summer. It was now emphati- cally winter, and what I had brought from New York in June seemed grotesque at Ipek in Decem- ber. It had not been possible to buy. I had had to forage, plucking my fig-leaves where I might. I claimed the distinction of originating the prac- tice of wearing "Porosknit" during the Ipek win- ter season. It was a case of greatness thrust upon me. As for hosiery, my wardrobe contained at this date one pair of green silk socks. These I put upon my feet, and over them a pair of amor- phous gray things that all too plainly had been knitted at the opera for some defenseless refugee. I thought this would do, but when I had to buy a pair of high boots three sizes too large, I saw it would not. I went into the town and secured two pairs of real Montenegrin socks. They were hand-knit of thick snow-white wool. One pair was sprinkled with embroidered red roses and green leaves. The other had a moimtain-scene, with lakes, forests, rivers, and snowy peaks, very striking, if not convincing. The design was not the same on any two socks, and as I wore both pairs to fill up the boots, this was a convenience: I did 300 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE not have to worry to match them. I still had some trousers. In the deeps of my bag, secretly hidden away against the day when I should be compelled to plunge once more into civilization, was a pair jof vivid-blue summer trousers from a Broadway ' tailor. They were old, but dear to my heart, and would, if cherished, I thought, serve very well in the first moment of reappearance into the world. I could not cherish them longer. I put them on, and the combination with the socks was such that I was in a hurry to get on my boots. First, how- ever, I concealed their vivid blue under a pair of English refugee trousers. These were the rem- nants of the suit which the ox had butchered weeks before. They were made of brown paper-thread reinforced with stiff clay. Over them I placed a third pair of trousers, stout, but stained, khaki, the product of a degenerate tailor in Athens. I had only flimsy brown shirts meant for the warm weather, but I received as a gift a lovely garment of heavy gray flannel. It was a lady's shirt, perpetrated by school-girls in some neutral land for what must have been their ideal of the fattest woman in the world. In the neck they had allowed for ample room. When I buttoned it, it fell away as gracefully as a hangman's-noose. I 1 THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 301 could easily have crawled right out through the neck of the shirt. Decollete was not en regie then, so I gathered the collar up Uke the mouth of a meal-sack and secured it with a safety-pin. This curious rosette-hke bunch out of which my head emerged was all of the shirt that appeared to a cruel world, for I wore two sweaters. The first, counted from inward outward, was of white near-wool, cut like a Jersey, with no collar. The second was a heavy gray woolen coat sweater of excellent quahty, but distressingly ragged. One more touch was added to my costume be- fore I put on the nondescript gift-coat mentioned before. Remember it was cold in Ipek, and every one knew the temperature there would not be a cir- cumstance to what it would be on the mountain- top. In the general ransacking that preceded the transfer from carts to pack-horses, the nurses un- earthed many things, some of which were showered upon me. I had four "cholera-belts." These are broad knitted bands of wool with clasps at the ends, and are intended to be fastened securely around the abdomen. They were the easiest things to take oif or put on as the temperature required, so I wore them on the outside. One was deep lavender, one was orange, one was coral pink, and one was green. 302 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE I buttoned the orange one under my arms, then the others followed, overlapping one another, the lavender one being drawn about the hips Uke the scarfs that Spanish dancers affect. They gave " me the torso of a brilliant segmented bug. At last came the coat, which flapped about my knees and enveloped my hands in long and shapeless sleeves. It had been a nice coat, it was a gift coat; never look a gift-coat in the hning. Drawn over my head I wore a gray, crocheted "slumber-helmet." This is an affair much on the order of an aviator's cap or a medieval hood of mail. It was splendid for the ears and, in con- jvmction with the meal-sack shirt, kept the throat very warm. On top of it I wore my broad-brimmed felt cow-boy hat, tied with shoestrings to the back of my head. By the time I had dressed on the morning of our departure I was dizzy with trying to remember what I had on, and as for reahzing just what I looked like, it was impossible. After one glance, an Irish nurse enlightened me. For the first and only time I saw her perplexed; but only for an instant did she study me as if trying to remember something. "Oh, I know," she said; "you look like a piece of French pastry with a nut on top." THE ARMY THAT CANNOT DIE 303 Nineteen days later, in that identical costume, l)ut a good deal the worse for wear, my landscape socks peeptQg out through my toeless hoots, and a four-weeks' growth on my face, I drove up one Sunday morning to a gilded Roman hotel in the Via Ludovise, and, unflinchingly stepping out of my fiacre^ faced the obsequious liveried staff. I have not heen decorated for it, hut that is no proof that I do not deserve it. In the end the horses were packed, and about nine o'clock in the morning of December first, un- der an entirely cloudless sky, we began to worm our way through the crowded town. Several packs were scraped off in the crush, and these delayed us almost an hour; but in the outskirts the crowd lessened and, dropping into the single-file order of march that we were to follow for many days, we passed out on the ice-covered road that led to our mountain-trail. In the edge of the town whom should I meet but the daring Peter? He embraced me with emotion, remarked apropos of nothing at all that he considered me a wonderful chauffeur, and struck me for another napoleon, if not in the same breath, at any rate with a swift- ness that took mine. Soon we passed the place where the automobiles 804 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE had gone over, the nurses wondering at the twisted wrecks below. They were to get used to twisted wrecks in the next few days — ^wrecks of pack- trains dotted with human bodies. At the begin- ning of the trail we faced about due west up the profound crag-shadowed valley of the Lim, a rush- ing mountain torrent that filled the whole canon with sound, so that it was difficult to speak. The trail led under overhanging walls of rock a thou- sand feet high, and beyond, through a vista of pines and gray aiguilles, were the high mountains in gleaming, receding ranks. There, faintly above the voice of the Lim, came the voice of the big guns. We did not know it, but we were hearing them for the last time. An hour later they came to us no longer. Those women might freeze, they might starve, bandits might get them, they might even tumble over a precipice, but they had put- distanced the Teutonic thunder. w CHAPTER' XI OVER THE MOUNTAINS HEN we left the sound of the German battle-line on the Montenegrin trail it was just about six weeks since I had evacuated iValjevo with the Christitch party. Then the Ger- man army had been a good twenty or twenty-five kilometers away. In these six weeks they had fought their way through Serbia under a con- tinual rain that turned such roads as the country possessed into ribbons of swamp worse than the fields and mountains through which they ran. With the aid of no railway, they had had to pro- vision their troops almost entirely from Austria. They had marched through densely wooded hills and through barren mountain-passes, constructing bridges as they went. In the last part of the march they had faced terrific winter. We had marched ahead of them. There was nothing in particular detaining us except necessary rest for the weaker. Our business was to get away. After six weeks the German army had gained ten or fifteen kilo- meters on us. They were not farther than that 305 306 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE from Ipek. The secret of this rapid advance was superior artillery and aeroplanes. They stood safely out of range, and accurately knocked the Serbian positions to pieces. We thought, however, that tlie mountains would hold them for a while, and when they did come iato Montenegro, it would he from Prijepolje in the north and Cattaro on the coast. In choosing the mountains rather than the Gler- mans, the niu-ses undoubtedly made as great a gamble as they ever will, no matter how near the front they go, and all were determined to go back to war as soon as they were reequipped. They were gambling on the weather in December, on the mountains of Montenegro. If the weather re- mained as it was that morning, all had excellent chances of coming through. If a blizzard like the one we had faced coming into Ipek or the snow- storm we had weathered on the "Field of Black- birds" caught them on the high precipices, only the very strongest of them had any chance, and that was very meager. It is hard to realize just how deserted and wild those mountains are, and just how slender, makeshift, and primitive are the com- munications between Ipek and Androvitze. Only 3,t long intervals on the trail are there places where OVER THE MOUNTAINS 307 it is even possible to lie down. The precipices arei on the one hand, the steep mountain-side out of which the path has been cut on the other. Some- times there are trees on this slope, but frequently not. When we went over, two or three feet of snow covered the ground. It would have been ut- terly impossible to make a camp along the higher parts of that trail. It would have been equally impossible to go ahead on the path that was like pohshed glass. We could not have had a fire. The horses would certainly have fallen over the cliffs, our food would have been lost, and those who did not freeze would have starved. Strong Mon- tenegrins might have come through it ; those weak- ened English women would have little chance. For three days this gamble lasted. The weather we had was remarkable for that season, almost un- precedented. Had nature been in a different mood, there is no doubt at all that England would have mourned the death of all those women in a single day. Everybody appreciated the chance keenly, consequently no one mentioned it until we arrived at Androvitze. Then they looked back at the upheaved barrier which they had crossed and mianimously shuddered. "Good heavens! if win- ter had caught us there!" they said. 308 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE There are two routes from Ipek to Androvitze. The one we took is supposed to be shorter, steeper, and more dangerous. We took it on the advice of Nikola, for everybody else in the place said that, ice-covered as it was, it would be impassable, and many who had started that way had turned back. It is the path by way of Chakar. The other trail was being used by the army and refugees. That is why Nikola advised the shorter one for us. He was undoubtedly right. He said he would guar- antee it was not impassable and where there was a great deal of danger he would lead the horses across one by one. Nikola had his nerve. He went ahead as a scout, and chose our stopping-places for the night. In the mountains he was invaluable. A small party of nurses, including the three who had formerly been with me, accompanied by two Englishmen and some attendants, left Ipek a day earlier than we, but by the army route. They had a horrible time. On one occasion they tramped from six o'clock in the morning imtil two o'clock the next morning in search of shelter, and finally shared an old shed crowded with soldiers, who had built a fire. Had they stopped sooner they would have frozen to death. One of these women was well past middle age. Such things as this by such OVER THE MOUNTAINS 309 women are not done by physical strength, but by an indomitable sporting will power. Under such conditions it is vastly easier to lie down and die. Some French, Russian, and Norwegian nurses also faced these ordeals, but in general suffered less, I think, because they came through earlier. There were four Norwegian girls with us. The mountains were home to them, and they invariably led the pack. Only Nikola could outdistance them. They looked and felt their best climbing up or racing down steep places. Those who took the army route saw sights more terrible than those we saw. With us mainly it was pack-horses that we looked down on, dashed to death at the foot of the precipices. The other route was full of human wreckage, with oflBcers, soldiers, artillery, and horses jumbled together in the gorges below them, and dead refugees lying on the slopes above them. We met numerous wounded soldiers, stragglers, hardy mountain refugees, and mihtary couriers. There were not enough to inconvenience us. We had that for- bidding trail pretty much to ourselves. Trusting to Nikola, we clung to the icy thread that led al- ways to wilder and more remote mountain refuges. 1 Whatever might lie before us, we considered the 310 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE present hour, and found it good as we followed the gradually ascending path that was now hunt- ing determinedly for a way out of the gorge in order to run along the ridges above. The sun con- tinued to beat down on us, and the snow melted a bit, ameliorating the aggravating shpperiness of oiu" path. The exertion of climbing warmed us up, too, so that I began to regret the thoroughness with which I had dressed. At the top of a spe- cially steep climb I stopped to wait for a group of the nurses toiling up behind me. They were part of the Irish contingent, and scrambled up the slip- pery incline with true Gaelic abhorrence. They had on heavy coats and sweaters and knitted hoods and thick mitts, so that all I could see of the real Irish was a small patch of face. Blowing and pufiing, the foremost, and the most insuppressible, reached the top. Under her woolen helmet her forehead streamed with perspiration, and she began tearing off her thick gloves before she stopped scrambling. She looked like an Arctic explorer. "Oh, isn't the heat terrible!" she panted, and sat down in a snow-drift. It was terrible, and grew more inconvenient as noon approached. With the afternoon, however, the chill of the mountains came on, and we were ,M o d s 3 o gs OVER THE MOUNTAINS 311 glad of our elaborate arrangements to meet it. Only once in the day-time did we suffer from cold while crossing the mountains. Then it was for the two or three hours when we were crossing the bald snow-fields of Chakar, a mountain that is swept by gales from every direction and which is on the divide between the Adriatic and the ^gean. L We never stopped for a midday meal in the mountains. We had neither the time nor the meal. As we trudged along, we gnawed on pieces of sol- diers' biscuit or stale bread, and SLery delicious it was, too. We had got a comparatively late start, so that the ice had time to thaw a httle, making it possible for the horses to keep on their feet nearly all the time. Of course half a dozen packs or so fell off just at first, but after a while each driver learned the one position in which his pack would ride, and our trouble in that direction lessened. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when we began to descend once more into the narrow valley. Here it was suflSciently widened out to allow the "road" to run along the morass of rounded boulders which ages of furious floods had piled there. This valley was spooky enough. The Sim, disappearing behind the high peaks ahead, left blue shadows among the pines that were al- 312 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE most as dark as night. I crunched along on the snow, now and then stumbhng when one foot would go into a crevice between the rocks. Here I met a specter. I was alone. I had forged ahead of the party, expecting to find Nikola and the camping- place soon. Intent only on watching my footing, I was startled by a cry out of the shadows on my right. "Americano^ Americano/" it said, and then, "Dohrun, Dohrun, Americano, Dobrun." Out of the shadow something seized my arm, and on the instant I saw a strange Serbian soldier very much the worse for wear, ragged, emaciated, hollow-eyed, but smiling pleasantly. How on earth he had recognized and placed me I did not know, nor could he teU me very clearly, for he spoke only a little French, though he imderstood it fairly well. I asked him how he knew me as an American, and he pointed to my hat. None but an American could be under a hat hke that. As for Dohrun, he informed that he had been there when we were, and was one of "the captain's" men. He was hurrying back from Androvitze to Ipek with des- patches. He had messages for my Dohrun cap- tain, who, he informed me, had been at Ipek several days. I was greatly disappointed that I had not seen my good friend there, but meeting this soldier OVER THE MOUNTAINS 313 in the wilderness, and at least hearing that he was not dead, made the whole trip more cheerful. Nikola had made heroic efforts to get us shelter that night and, considering the circumstances, had succeeded very well. Where the valley spread in- to a little flat a quarter of a mile long and a third as wide were two Montenegrin taverns built to house the natives who passed that way. One at the west end of the flat was built of stone. The ground floor was a stable for the horses, as is always the case in small Montenegrin inns. The second floor was one medium-sized room, without any furniture to speak of, and a tiny kitchen, with a stove built into the wall. Fifty or sixty people had engaged accommodations there for the night, and though the landlord was perfectly willing to take us, too, as Nikola quite seriously put it, it would be "a little crowded." The other edifice stood at the opposite end of the flat. Its first story was also built of stone and used as a stable. On top of this a wooden shack had been erected. There was one fairly good-sized room with four windows, an old stove, and some benches. A second room adjoined it, but was only about a third as large, and there were two tiny rooms hke cupboards. Also there was a loft filled with hay. By lying hke sticks in a wood- 314 WITH SEilBIA INTO EXILE pile all the women could have slept in the hig room, which Nikola had procured for their henefit. The cracks in the floor allowed the steaming air from the stable imderneath to spread to the chamber above. On the ground all about the place was deep snow, but the weather was perfectly clear. Eight of the women said they would sleep on the snow more comfortably than in the hotel, "Hotel de I'Ecurie" we called it. Soon after we had partaken of abxmdant tea and coffee, and of cheese and tinned meat sparingly, I found them spreading their blankets upon the smooth snow. A hilarious mood prevailed. They were in for something which generations of their ancestors had never done. They had slept in every conceivable place and con- dition except right on the snow, and now they were going to do that. There was no acting; they were really hilarious. They had tramped only ten con- tinuous hours, and had dined on what at home they would never have touched. They had only four- teen hours of march to do next day. With their insufficient blankets spread neatly on the snow, I saw them come up to the cook's fire, where three kettles of water were now boiling. Erom the httle rucksacks which they carried, each OVER THE MOUNTAINS 315 drew out a hot- water bottle and with the best bed- room air of comfort filled it 1 Side by side with my; enigma of why England is not run by her women stands my enigma of the hot-water bottle. It was not the first or the last time that I saw that perform- ance. They carried hot-water bottles to bed with them when they slept as the little tinned sardines are thought to sleep ; they carried them when they went to bed on the dry grass ; they filled the kettles from rivulets, and heated them in the shelter of a wagon when their bed was to be in the puddles about the wagon ; no harem resting-place was com- plete until the astonished old Turk had brought enough hot water to fill forty bottles. When they finally got on board ship to cross the Adriatic at its most dangerous point, while submarines were chas- ing them, they ferreted out the ship's galley, filled their hot-water bottles, lay down on deck, and slept or were sick as the case might be. No matter what happened, I never heard one of them grumble as long as she had a bottle magically warm. No mat- ter what our good luck, I never saw one satisfied when she could not have her bottle filled at bed- time. I believe if the British Government would furnish every miUtant suffragette with a nice, warm hot- water bottle every evening, they would be found 316 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE as docile as lambs. Going to bed with three blankets on that snow, and carefuUy preparing a hot-water bottle, seemed to me hke Jess WiUard having his hair cm-led before a championship fight. It seemed to me fated to be about the most transient pleasure I had ever met, but if it made women like those happy, nothing tmder heaven was too dear to buy it. My view of the matter amused them immensely, but they heartily disagreed with it. Thdy said not only was a hot-water bottle a fine thing to sleep with, but in the cold mornings before the march began the water stiU retained enough warmth to make it agreeable for a wash. Next morning one let me try it, and what she said was true. After that lots of them wanted to lend me a bottle. They nearly all had extra ones. They had thrown away their clothing, their precious souvenirs, they could not carry as much food as they needed; but they had extra hot- water bottles ! A bell tent had been brought along in case we had to camp where there were no houses at all. It occurred to me that this, spread as a groimd sheet over a lot of hay, would aid the hot-water bottles. So I searched it out. From the landlord, a stingy old codger who had charged only twenty dollars OVER THE MOUNTAINS 817 for that stable, more than he would ordinarily make in a year, I bought some hay, and soon had a fairly decent place for the eight to sleep side by side. They at once declared it the best bed they had had in a long while. There appeared to be a scarcity of fire-wood about "Hotel de I'Ecurie," though there was no excuse for it, because the mountains round about were weU wooded. This had deterred the women from having a fire at their feet. One does not sleep out many times without discovering that a fire at one's feet is a luxury that should not be missed. While making an excursion down the stream, I came upon a big pile of fat pine planks. They were hidden there, with heavy rocks piled on them. Not wishing further to annoy the landlord, as quietly as possible I dragged about nine tenths of this lumber to our "camp." Then we had a great fire, which, so the nurses said, was the final touch to their comfort. But my sins came home to roost. On a carpenter's-table which I dragged from the side of the inn I lay down by the side of the fire to sleep. What little wind there was blew the fire away from the women toward my table. I had piled the most massive planks I could find along the edge of their bed to guard against the fire 318 WITH SERBIA' INTO EXILE spreading there. In my position I got the warm air with but little smoke, which floated above me, and soon with the others I was asleep. I closed my eyes on the wonderful Montenegrin sky, sprinkled with its magnificent stars, and on the glittering peaks about us. The women, I fancy, were already at home again in quiet old Edinburgh, in London, wonderful London as it was before 1914, living their wonted lives in the Scotch High- lands or amid the wild beauty of Wales. I, too, dreamed. Despite the dead slumber which fatigue brought to us, we always dreamed, mostly of home, seldom of war. I remember distinctly I had dined at an uptown restaurant. I was going to hear "Siegfried." At One Hundred and Fourth Street and Broadway I got into a taxi, and directed the chauffeur to drive as fast as possible to the Metro- politan. It was cold in the taxi. I looked to see if the windows were up. They were, but it grew colder, while Broadway became brighter and brighter. I thought I had never in my life seen the city so brilliant, animated, gay. At Sixty-sixth Street the glare seemed to hurt my eyes, and, as we rounded Columbus Circle, the illumination be- came a blinding flash, rising and falling, flickering, but extending everywhere. I woke up, and my OVER THE MOUNTAINS 319 first impression was that I was much colder than when I lay down. Also the whole place was fiUed with bright light that made the snow glisten. In a few seconds I took in what had happened. The wind had shifted away from me, had caused the barrier to catch fire, and the edge of the women's palet was blazing high. Due to the snow under- neath, the flame could be easily stamped out, and when there was only smoking straw, for the first time I became aware that not one of the women had waked up. The edge of the straw, the tent, the fringes of their rugs, were burnt within six inches of their feet. They were sleeping as calmly as ever. That is what fatigue and cold mountain air will do. I raked the fire farther away, fixed a new barrier, heavily plastered with snow, which, melting, would keep it wet, and convinced that everything was all right, I lay down again without waking any one. I had not intended going to sleep, but after moving my table nearer to the fire, for it was now incredibly cold in the valley, I dozed off again. I heard the huge icicles that hxmg from an old mill-sluice near by snapping and cracking, and the trees on the moimtain-side crackled and popped with the frost. The women told me later they were having various 320 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE dreams with one common characteristic: in all of them their feet were delightfully comfortable — "All cozy and warm," one said. I do not think I dreamed any more, but after a while I waked up. It was the second time in my life that I ever understood what people seem to mean when they talk of "Providence." The other time was also in Serbia. Sir Ralph Paget and I were motoring on one of the most thrilhng roads in Bosnia. There was the usual tremendous precipice on one side, the lip of the road being only crumbling dirt. What looked like a horrible death came to an officer on horseback just as we passed him. Sir Ralph was in the front seat with me. For perhaps twenty seconds we both looked back, sick with the horror of what we had seen. There was a slight curve in the road just ahead, but I had not noticed this. What made me turn round again at the end of certainly not more than twenty seconds I do not know. I had not finished looking behind; I had forgotten for the time all sense of danger. But a feeling I shall never forget turned my head, as if by force, without any thought on my part, to the road ahead. There was not any road there. Over the steaming radiator I looked down, down, down on feathery treetops waving in an abyss. My OVER THE MOUNTAINS 321 radiator was banging over the cliff. As I spun the wheel, I had not the slightest idea the car would answer; I knew my front wheels were already over. They were not. With the fountain-pen that is now writing these words the distance between my track in the crumbling dirt and the sheer drop was meas- ured. When the butt was placed on the outer edge of that deep rut, the point jutted into space. Sir Ralph had looked round when I had spun the car. "We weren't looking," he said, smiling quietly, and in the very best English fashion that was the end of the matter. This same feeling now woke me up. I was not cold ; there was no noise. The time had come when somebody ought to wake, and somebody did. The wind had freshened, and changed more directly to- ward the women. My barrier had caught fire again, and the dry hay, the canvas, and the rugs beyond it were blazing, while the wind fanned it like a fur- nace. Almost simultaneously with me the women awoke. Most of them were tied up in sleeping-bags which they had sewn their blankets into. All were tangled up, and the fire was simply snapping at them. This time the deep snow on which they slept undoubtedly saved them from horrible burns, if not from death. I had on high boots of heavy leather. 322 WITH SERBIA! INTO EXILE and this fact, joined with the deep snow and my blanket as a flail, made it possible to put out the fire. It had burned the lower edges of their cloth- ing, had destroyed their shoes, which they had re- moved and placed near their feet, and had burned about half their rugs. In the middle of this tangle, — smoking rugs, bags, woolen scarfs, tent canvas and straw, — out of which they could not extract themselves they sat up and laughed. Another new experience ! Planning how to borrow one another's extra boots for the march in the morning, they fell asleep, but this time I had no desire to neglect that fire again. It had not been what one would call a peaceful night for us around the fire, though those within the "hotel" were unaware of all the excitement. Just before dawn the final foray came. There was not supposed to be much danger from bandits on the route which we had chosen, especially as the Montenegrin Government had taken precautions to police it. Still, as Nikola had expressed it to me, whenever we went into camp at night, "some of those dogs would be pretty likely to be sneaking about." As I lay there looking up at the paling sky, I was startled by some rifle-shots a little way up the path by which we had come. Bullets whistled OVER THE MOUNTAINS 323 through the forest, and a rather steady crack, crack kept up for some time on both sides of the valley. Everybody was startled, and none knew what to expect; but the firing did not come closer, and we never discovered what was the occasion of it. When we got under way this second day a clammy mist enshrouded everything and shut off from our path the thawing sunlight. The follow- ing four or five hours were exceedingly difficult. .We began climbing out of the valley almost at once by a forty-five-degree ascent which "switch-backed" in the shortest possible distance to the ridge above. The higher up we climbed, the steeper became the path. This was most unfortunate. The lead- ing ponies feU down and shd rapidly backward, losing their packs and knocking those behind off their feet. It was like knocking down a row of dominoes which one has stood on end. When a front pony fell hard, it was "Look out, all below! Stand from under, and get away from the precipice edge!" As many as six or eight ponies were down at once, and the contents of their packs scattered everywhere, while the rest of the bimch slipped and pawed, struggling to keep their balance. Some of the nurses helped matters by going ahead, and with butcher-knives, hatchets, and bayonets chip- 324 WITH SERBIiV! INTO EXILE ping the surface of the ice. Finally pieces of blan- kets were tied about the horses' hoofs, and this solved the problem almost completely. Rosinante never slipped down. From Ipek to Androvitze she bore my meager luggage and much of the time invalids of the party, and she never so much as stumbled badly. I think every other horse was down at least once, but, despite the fact (which I had discovered only after I bought her) that her wind was broken, and on every slope she sounded like a second-hand street-organ, she kept on her feet. This saved me much trouble, for after the first day I led her myself, and had she slipped like some of the others, I would have been there yet, trying to put the pack on her back. In the late afternoon we came up a narrow, heav- ily wooded gorge of marvelous beauty to the foot of Chakar, and there stopped for the night ia a stone inn which was not large or clean, but dry and warm. Most of the snow was gone on the lower slopes of Chakar, but on top we could see the high winds blowing the snow-clouds about. One cannot skirt about the lower shoulders of this mountain or escape its highest snow-fields. The way to the sea leads squarely over its rounded summit — a way that in summer must be a delight to scramble up. OVER THE MOUNTAINS 325 Cut in December was not so inviting. Nikola en- couraged us with cheerful promises. Once over that summit, he said, all our way to the sea would be "down-hill." At that stage of our march, next to flying, "down-hill" represented the summum bo- num to us. In a broad geographical sense Nikola was right. Chakar was the divide, but in a practical tracking tramp's understanding of the case. Heav- ens! he was a har! He did not mention the Little Kom, If he had, I think I should have passed the winter on the Oriental side of Chakar. Next day we crossed Chakar, but that is all we 'did. Like a famous nursery hero, we simply went up and came down again. That night we passed in a Montenegrin village. All that I can remem- ber about it is that I saw here a most beautiful child, a boy of ten whose father had just been shot; that we sat around a camp-fire while the Irish girls sang songs ; and that Nikola paid forty dollars for enough hay to feed twenty horses two times. The fourth day, through mud the like of which I never want to see again, we came to Androvitze, only to find no provisions there, and to hear the glad tidings that because of a wash-out no automo- biles could come up. From then on began a tramp of nine days, each day filled with hopes that the 326 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE next would see us in automobiles or carts. They never came; we walked into Podgoritze. Just as I was putting the finishing touches to Rosinante's saddle before leaving Androvitze, I felt a hand fall heavily on my shoulder and, turning around, beheld "mon cher Capitaine," him of the f ar-ofif, happy Dobrun days. The captain loves his country, and so do I. After a while, when we did speak, it was of other and trivial things. We prom- ised if possible to meet at Podgoritze, and if not there, at Scutari, and if not there, in Paris, and, as a last resort, in New York. The captain's physique and stoicism are Serb; his perfect manner, his hon- Tiomie, his warm humanity are French, and the mix- ture makes "mon cher Capitaine" a very charming companion. There is nothing Teutonic about him. The moist, warm breath of the Adriatic came up to meet us at Androvitze. We began to have mists and heavy rains, with now and then a clear day and the skies of southern Italy. The invaders and the savage mountains were behind, and somewhere down the very good road that now led on before us was the sea. During that monotonous succession of days before we came to Podgoritze, the sea and how we should get across it, became the main sub- ject of conversation, the constant thought in our v.-' ,..">;>' 'i'"^ C>t*^ Trackless mountains of Albania A mountain home in Montenegro o OVER THE MOUNTAINS 327 minds. For weeks the sea had been our goal, a practical goal to us, an impossible dream of escape to the starving himdred thousand at Prizrend. Ru- mors began to float up to us by courses we could not trace of ships that would take us to Italy. One said that all would have to go down the coast to ' Durazzo. Several told of an American sailing-ves- sel, the Albania^ which would be waiting at San Giovanni di Medua to take off all neutrals, all women and children, and the men who were over military age. The rest would have to go to Du- razzo. Still others told of British transports wait- ing to help the army and the refugees, and some spoke of no hope at all, saying that the Adriatic was too dangerous. The mythical sailing-vessel was the favorite, and we all believed in it more than in any other. Then one day a young Englishman in clean, new khaki came riding up the road to meet us. He was a representative of the British Serbian Relief Fund sent out to survey the field in Montenegro. Two weeks before he had been in London, and gave us the first news of the world we had had in six weeks. He had crossed the Adriatic on a torpedo-boat, sending his luggage by a small vessel which had been torpedoed. He brought a cryptic message;. 828 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE saying that Sir Ralph Paget wished all the British to hurry to Scutari as fast as possible. This was encouraging. It even seemed as if those in author- ity were at last taking cognizance of the fact that there were British women who might need aid. We almost dared to hope it might mean a break in the policy of laissez-faire, which, during the retreat, had left the units to shift for themselves as best they could, with the purely voluntary aid of Serbians, who brought them out of Serbia, saw to housing and provisioning them, and made them as safe as possible. The things which a British representative might have done for them, such as going ahead and securing what food could be had, seeing to accom- modations at the places where they stopped, collect- ing horses at Prizrend and Ipek, establishing tem- porary camps in the mountains at easy stages, where on arrival the women might have found tents and plentiful fires, and finally some semblance of system which at least would not have allowed them to feel utterly abandoned by their own Government were not done at all. The doctors and nurses recognized early that they could stay and be captured or starve without any apparent concern on the part of the ofiicials whom they had thought responsible for them. The English women should have been forced OVER THE MOUNTAINS 329 to come out earlier than they did, and, to be per- fectly fair, I understand that Sir Ralph Paget sug- gested this to them, but they refused. After they were allowed to remain, a little system, a little thought, foresight, and trouble could have alleviated immensely their hardships. By using half a dozen men and horses, fixed camps could have been estab- lished which would have rendered the mountain- trails much less arduous. Not until Scutari, where there was a British consul, did anything resembling official aid come to the British women, and here it was in a shpshod, slap-dash fashion. Soon after leaving Androvitze we came to the Little Kom, a mountain rising some eight thousand feet, flanked on the east by a magnificent snow peak much higher. The blizzard that had struck us at Ipek had caught many refugees, soldiers, and pris- oners here. Forty Bulgarians are said to have been found frozen to death in a space of a hundred yards. Snow lay deep upon its summit when we climbed it, but in the valleys below the day was like early autumn. After the Little Kom, Nikola's oft-re- peated promise of a down-hill trail became more or less true. It was our last really hard climb, and I was not sorry, for going up it I fainted three times, a thing I never knew I could do before. 330 WITH SERBIiS: INTO EXILE The weaker women rode up, but one was so afraid of horses she would not mount. I shall never for- get her at the end of that day ; but no one heard a word of complaint from her. One night we stopped at a Montenegrin village of most primitive aspect. The people were all in native costume. No trace of civilization as we know it was evident. At one of the huts I applied for shelter. The peasant who came to the door to meet me was dressed in skin-tight trousers of white wool, richly ornamented in fancy designs of black braid. His shirt was yellow linen, and his short jacket of the same material as the trousers, but even more ornate. He wore upon his head a white skull-cap, and around his waist was a flaming knitted sash. His feet were clothed in brilliant socks and opanki. He was six feet tall at least; his black eyes flashed, and his black hair fell long and thick from under his white cap. As pictur- esque and primitive a model as any artist could wish! Behind him in the smoky "kitchen," on the earthen floor of which a fire burned while the smoke wandered where it would, stood a fierce Montene- grin beauty, proud, disdainful, but not inhospitable. In her arms was a yoimg edition of the man. These wild people fiUed me with admiration, gave me the OVER THE MOUNTAINS 331 iasie of remote, unbeaten paths which every traveler loves. Here vi^as the real thing, a native family just as it was on that hillside four centuries ago. I made signs to my charming bandit host. "Come in," he said. "I am from Chicago; where do you come from?" A dozen years in Chicago had given him enough money to return to his ancestral home, buy a good farm, marry, and revert in luxury to the hfe of his fathers. I believe a greater percentage of Mon- tenegrins have been to America than of any other nation. Because of my hat, they were continually hailing me, and they ruined that unbeaten-trail taste for which I sought so avidly. Several incidents broke momentarily this part of our march, but, for the most part, it was of a sameness — day succeeding day consumed in quick marching. Every morning there was the rush to get on the road, and every waning afternoon the wonder when and where we would camp, and whether it would be grass and a fragrant wood-fire or sloppy mud and a vile inn. There was the ex- citement when "Sunny Jim," the bright and youth- ful Serbian orphan whom one of the women was bringing from the wilds of Serbia to the wilds of London, was accused of making off with an officer's 332 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE pocket-book. Our indignant declarations of Jim's impeccable honesty helped not at all until a search, which inexorably extended to the accused's young skin, proved beyond doubt his innocence. Then there was the morning when just above our camp a firing-squad ended the career of two deserters, and the day when, almost starving, we came to a beau- tiful river and purchased a forty-pound fish, the very best fish ever caught. So gradually we neared Podgoritze. At least from there we hoped to get conveyances for the three hours' drive to Plavnitze, on Scutari Lake, there to take a boat for Scutari. We had come to consider Podgoritze as marking the end of our troubles. Near it one morning I was leading Rosi- nante, who carried one of the women. She had been one of the strongest until at Jakova a Turkish dog of doubtful lineage, but imdoubted fierceness, had attacked and bitten her badly. At home she designed dainty costimies for actresses. This was her first experience at roughing it, but she was enjoying everything immensely. "I am so happy!" she said, looking down at her dress and at me. "We are going to be home just in time for the January sales!" So after a week. OVER THE MOUNTAINS 333 a good part of it spent in resting, we came to Pod- goritze. On leaving Androvitze we had come each day more in contact with the army, for the route they had taken joined ours there. Many thousands were about Podgoritze when we arrived, and many more thousands had ah-eady reached Scutari. Looking at these filthy, ragged, starved, ill men, one wondered if it were still permissible to call them an army. How could any feeling of nationality or cohesion now be alive in this dull, horror-stricken horde? Could this frayed remnant, these hollow- eyed, harassed officers, these soldiers, as mechanical and listless as automata, be really considered a mih- tary force? Had not that rugged, surpassingly brave thing, the almost mystical esprit de corps which had endured a continuous and hopeless re- treat for ten weeks, died when the peaks above Ipek shut off the distant Serbian plains? Had not the story of Serbia ended in death and destruction at the evacuation of Ipek? It is true that the retreat through Albania and Montenegro was only a tour de force in the business of getting away. At the moment the need for armies had ceased; there was no country to defend. 334 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE It was a flight without military manoeuvering, merely sauve qui pent. A few thousand were able to find food and equipment sufficient to aid the Montenegrins, and ia Albania about twenty thou- Isand were actively engaged. The sole object of all the others was to reach Scutari, where it would be "up to" the Allies to reclothe, rearm, and provi- sion them. From one thousand to fifteen hundred were lost in Albania by savage native attacks. Many hundreds at least must have died on both lines of march from cold, exposure, and starvation. A good part of the smaller artillery was saved. The soldiers, weakened as they were, went through in- credible hardships to effect this. In many places on the Montenegrin route it had been necessary to take the guns to pieces, and the men had had to carry the heavy barrels on their shoulders. The paths were shppery with ice, the ascents long and yery steep, the precipices at times dizzying, the cold .severe, and there was little or no shelter. ' But we did not see a disorganized, soulless mass about Podgoritze. We saw the cream of Serbia's fighting men, the nearly superhuman residue which remained after shot and shell, disease, exhaustion, cold, and starvation had done their cruel censoring; after the savage teeth of frozen peaks had combed OVER THE MOUNTAINS 335 out all but the strongest. And the near-annihila- tion of their bodies only allowed to be seen more clearly the unfaltering flame of their determination and their devotion to the glorious quest, the tem- porary loss of which hurt them more deeply than all they had to bear. Dauntless and alone, they had fought the unequal battle, and defeat was more bit- ter than death. Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria did not destroy the Serbian army, nor did it die of utter despair at Ipek, though well it might have. The Serbian army cannot die. In two months they have re- organized, reequipped, and rested. The himdred and fifty thousand of them will not be a pleasant army to meet. Remember their position. Nearly every one of these men has left a family behind him, and that family is pretty sure to be starving. At best it is exposed to the dangers of very dangerous invaders. This may dishearten a man, but it also makes him desperate. The sufferings of that fugi- tive army gathered about a fugitive prince in a friendly, but foreign, country is not even half phys- ical, however great their burden is in that direction. To realize at all what the loss of Serbia means to the Serb, one must consider not only the separation from home and family; one must imderstand a 336 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE little the strength and depth of the Southern Slav's desire for a free Slav nation. One must know the extent to which this idea has permeated all his thoughts, all his hterature, all his folk-songs for five hundred years. One must have learned that it is his rehgion. And to know this one must have seen what Mme. Christitch has charmingly pointed out in her comments on "The Soul of the Southern Slav," namely, how his very life is hound up in the instinct of brotherhood. A man's brother or cousin in Serbia is more to him than his wife and children, devoted as he is to them. The loss of a brother is the direst of all calamities, and, to the Southern Slav, all lovers of Slavic hberty are brothers. This feeling has re- sulted in an idealistic patriotism that only those who have come in contact with it can realize. It is a patriotism that is astoundiog in its capacity for sacrifice. It is firmly and irrevocably resolved on the liberation or the extermination of its people. Whether one agrees with its desires or not, its pres- ence is undeniably there, fiercely blazing in the deso- late, disease-swept camps of that exiled army. Its sorrow is not of physical discomfort or even of per- sonal loss. Centuries of dogged fighting have OVER THE MOUNTAINS 337 taught the Serb to accept such things as part of the day's work. Their grief is deeper than that. It is the crushing sense of a supreme idol broken. CHAPTER XII ■WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME PODGORITZE, a straggling white blot on the Plain of Zeta, facing fertile prairies southward as far as Lake Scutari, flanked on the north by utterly barren peaks, for many centuries has had a rugged history dotted with incidents of more than local significance. Its environs gave the great Diocletian to the Roman Empire and even at that time it stood high among the cities of Illy- rium. Around it have raged many desperate con- flicts between the Turks and the ever-victorious Montenegrins. To-day — or yesterday — it was the business capital of Montenegro, and but for its proximity to the Albanian border would doubtless have been the political capital also. It has been said that nowhere west of Constantinople could such colorful and astounding market-scenes be met as in Podgoritze. The color, when I saw it, was dis- tinctly drab but the scenes were no less exciting. To get down to intimate things : we were htingry, although at the "hotel" we made a pretense at meals 338 WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 339 — a bit of imclassified meat, bread made of bran and sand, Turkish cofPee, and creme de menthe, a whole bottle of it, which made us feel civilized beyond words. In the market-place were still a few things for sale. There were tiny fish from Scutari Lake which were peddled around by old men in incredible filth and the odor of which caressed the very stars. Also one could get — by fighting one's way to them — decayed apples, a little sausage that rivaled the fish in smell, and now and then a ham. But the hams which at this time still survived the mob- hunger were old, battle-scarred veterans which re- mained intact through the self -same weapon as the fish and sausage. One wonderful unsullied thing we found, many pounds of fresh Mmdk, a sort of clotted cream which in the Balkans passes muster for butter. It is very delicious and nothing could have been more tempting to us. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw it on a little table in the market-place, guarded by two comely peasant women. A large crowd was already aroimd and more were gathering each minute, but no one was buying and I wondered if none of them had any money. Forcing my way through the by-standers, I found a Montenegrin policeman in violent argu- ment with the proprietors of the popular himak 340 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE and with certain indignant memBers of the crowd. This did not worry me at all. My whole attention was centered on that cream-cheese with a concentra- tion that would have delighted William James. Upon the table I laid ten dinars and, picking up a knife, began the attack on a large and eleganlE chunk. The women, the policeman, and part of the mob yelled protests and made threatening ges- tures, but some of the crowd cried "dobro Ameri- kanske" and evidently approved my direct method. The policeman, who was a walking museimi of beau- tiful, barbaric arms, ancient pistols of ivory and silver, sabers and daggers thrust into a marvelous crimson sash, began addressing me in English. Of course he had been in America, everybody has in Montenegro. It is the prerequisite to possessing a small fortime, marrying, and living happily ever afterward. He said the women would not be al- lowed to sell any of the kimak for more than four dinars a kilogram, that being a fair price, no matter how much we might need it. The women insisted that in extraordinary times extraordinary prices were permissible and flatly refused to sell for less than ten dinars, their determination being strength- ened by numerous offers from the crowd of twenty and even thirty dinars a kilo. Around this impasse WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 341 there seemed no way. They would not sell at the legal price and they never did, I suppose. That cheese remained there all day with a ravenous crowd round it and at nightfall the women went away — most likely to meet a wealthy purchaser in some corner far removed from the somewhat tmcompro- mising arm of the Montenegrin law. At Podgoritze I met the Captain once more, and with elaborate courtesy he invited me to dine with a group of officers in the evening. The hour was at six but we were having such an absorbing time investigating Podgoritze and recounting expe- riences that we were fifteen minutes late in arriving at the dingy place where the officers had mess. I shall never forget the little scene as we entered, though why it remains so vivid I scarcely know. The cormnissariat of the inn had failed almost com- pletely and what we saw was a dozen officers in bedraggled uniforms and a look in their eyes that I cannot define. It was common to all of them and had in it at once suffering and starvation, humiliated pride, and the deepest patriotic grief. It was always only from their gaze that one could tell what hell these refined and highly educated men were su£Pering; in their speech they were always either Iterse and practical, or cheerful and witty. At each 342 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE end of the bare, greasy pine table was an empty; wine bottle with a tallow candle stuck in it, giving the only hght in the evil-smeUing room. Lying on three or four heavy earthen platters were scanty \ stacks of almost meatless bones which the gentlemen eyed with a most ludicrous air of apology when we unexpectedly appeared. They sat there, elbows on the table, their faces resting on their hands, one or two of them smoking, all silent. To one who had known the past fastidiousness of the Serbian oflScer, the picture was indeed an epitome, but a wicked grin spread over the Captain's face. "M'sieur," he said to me, "I have invited you to dine with me. On the way I have the delight and honor to exhibit my kennels !" His brother officers rephed with as good as he sent, however, and after a little we went away laughing, the Captain vastly amused at having invited a guest to a dinner that did not appear. Once out in the open again under ;. the cold Montenegrin stars, because we knew it was 'useless to seek a repast that night, we contented ourselves with gastronomic memories of the city of cities. "Ah, to be on the boulevards again, to smell Paris once more!" exclaimed the Captain. "To quietly sit at a table all white and gleaming in a little cafe The only street in San Giovanni di -Medua ^'y-%:i^'^''-^^^-^ 'h'<^'^i'*^ fes:- ^ The forty British women of the Stobart mission waiting for the boat at Plavitnitze WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 343 clean as heaven, to glance at the radiant ladies — a droite^ a gauche — as one selects a civilized repast, to see the passing crowds so great and happy whom pleasure and not war have brought together, to hve like a human being, mon ami, to breathe once more the blessed air of France!" His perfect French turned to a shout of guttural Serbian as he hailed a passing friend and together we sought solace in Turkish coffee. I hope that for many years to come he and his comrade cavaliers may live to breathe that blessed air and carry to their indomi- table, struggling country the culture and the fine intellectual wealth of that incomparable nation. I saw King Nikolas come riding through Pod- goritze next day on a milk-white horse. He wore a gorgeous costume with silken sashes, and gold- embossed pistols and saber, many medals, and gold embroidery. His gaze was very stern, and he frowned heavily but returned our salute cordially ' enough. Even then he had issued a proclamation saying that his subjects must not be alarmed if the court were moved from Cettinje, and preparation for this was already under way. After two or three days horse wagons were pro- cured for us to go to Plavnitze to take the boat to Scutari. It required four hours, and most of the 344 WITH SERBIi5^ INTO EXILE time we were facing a freezing wind, so that we were numb when we arrived at the large warehouses near the boat dock. The boat had been expected to be waiting for us, but it did not come until nearly noon next day. We had brought virtually no food, thinking to reach Scutari by night, so that the delay was more than inconvenient. As night came on, the authorities were persuaded to open up one of the immense empty storehouses for us — "us" being the regular unit with the addi- tion of eight or ten members of an Enghsh hospital that had been working in Montenegro. The roof of our abode was very high and full enough of holes to afford fine ventilation, and the floor was of con- crete, so we soon had a large camp-fire going. It proved to be one of the most comfortable camps we had, the feeling that our troubles were nearing the end adding much to our content. However, we were ravenous. Some one had found two hams, which they bought without very close scrutiny, and these with a little bread were our supper. Unfor- tunately one of the hams was distinctly the worse for age, but some of the party were hungry enough to try the doubtful experiment of separating the good bits from the less good, and during the night more than one suffered. That evening we sat long WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 345 around the fire, the Irish girls singing songs and all of us telling the biggest lies we knew, thus beguiling ourselves into forgetting for a little the things behind us. Next morning while we waited for the boat on the pier, Lieutenant-Commander Kerr arrived with his party of marines. I have already described this plucky little band who refused to talk about their troubles, although suffering so terribly. It does, indeed, seem strange to me that with such magnifi- cent fighting material England has so far been dis- tinctly unfortunate. When the boat came we stiU delayed until the arrival of a general and his staff, who were going to cross with us. During this time we heard heavy firing down the lake from the direc- tion of Scutari, and in a little while saw an Austrian aeroplane coming toward us, flying at a great Height. There were no anti-aircraft gims about, and nothing but a few rifles to protect us if he saw fit to bomb the narrow pier, which was crowded full of Serbian soldiers, the marines, and ourselves. On nearing us he came quite low and circled about several times, but flew away without dropping a bomb, but not without causing a good deal of ex- citement because we were in a pretty bad position to be bombed. If he had some bombs, but re- 346 WITH SERBIi5£ INTO EXILE framed, I bow to him here; if he wished for some, I hope he dropped into the lake. Shortly before the boat sailed an Austrian pris- oner crawled down the pier toward us. This is not an exaggeration, certainly he apparently crawled. Every movement showed great exhaus- tion, and he bent far over so that his hands almost swept the ground. Steadfastly his face was turned to earth, though his head oscillated with a swinging glance from side to side. When we did catch a glimpse of his features, we saw only a grayish bunch of matted beard, caked and tangled with filth, which spread up to meet shaggy locks of almost snow- white hair. His mouth remained continually open. Mechanically he was searching the ground for food in a manner startlingly identical with that of a hungry dog or a pig. On a pile of loose stones there were some small pieces of maize bread which had fallen as some one ate a hunk of the crumbling concoction that the Montenegrins make. The Aus- trian prisoner came upon this find. While a nurse was canvassing the crowd to see if any bread re- mained among us, this creature, who had ceased to be human, searched the pile of stones through and through, tearing them apart and, as the crumbs ever sifted lower, scattering them with a studious WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 347 attention to the minutest particle which they hid that seemed to me more eloquent than any frenzy. A little bread was foimd for him and he managed to get on the boat. If he had not, he would have died, for it takes two days for strong men to go aroimd the lake. In his eyes, and in the dumb glances of how many thousands more, we read the deep damnation of those responsible for war, whoever they may be. By most trustworthy estimates I know now that more than forty-four thousand Austrian prisoners died from starvation and exposure on that eight- weeks retreat, and the most of them, of course, "played out" in the mountains. With aU the sin- cerity that I can display I want to bear witness to the truly admirable attitude of these prisoners as I saw them. It is true that many thousands of them were Austro- Serbs, whose hearts were with their kinsmen, but in no instance did I see one of them guilty of any brutal act, not even when they stood in torture at the door of death. Out of the fifty thousand that Serbia held, six thousand came, more dead than alive, to the sea. At last we scrambled on board and our argosy weighed anchor. It was a strange, hybrid craft, built originally for a sail-boat, but since endowed 348 WITH SERBIil INTO EXILE with a reluctant gasolene motor that pushed us leisurely through the placid water, so placid thai the mountains under the surface seemed as real and solid as those that formed the shores. There was scarcely more than standing-room on the entire hoat, only infrequently an opportunity to sit, and the odor was terrific. We had a good many wounded soldiers on board, as well as the many uninjured ones whose condition was far from pleasant. In some miraculous manner (for there were many more important who could find no room) a wild Gipsy had sneaked on board with his battered violin. He was merely a shambhng skeleton draped with brown skin, his jet eyes sunken deep beneath his brows, his cheeks hoUow and rough as potato peel. As soon as we got a little way from land he began playing weird, squeaky things that, imder the circumstances, were worse than the very worst ghost-story I ever heard. The cruise of the Ancient Mariner certainly knew no more grotesque hours than those we spent in the deathly stillness of Scutari Lake among the tottering remnants of men who had played to the world one of its greatest masques of human misery. The battered little ship loaded with its desperate freight ghded with WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 349 scarcely a gurgle across the wild, silent, beautiful lake. We on board only mumbled and mostly stood facing southward, straining our eyes toward Scu- tari, or now and then scanning the sky to see if the aeroplane were not returning to sink us. Inces- santly this wild, brown phantom rasped wilder music from his fiddle. Hour after hour we stood thus until we ached in every muscle, until the stench and misery everywhere visible was enough to drive one insane. Sometimes we were near the gray shores and cruel, barren peaks, again far enough away for distance to tone doAvn the rugged land. We became unutterably fatigued and hungry and, as the afternoon waned, very cold, for a high wind which nearly stopped our progress swept down upon us and froze us to the bone. We huddled even closer to each other to keep warm and looked every minute to see Scutari — where there was a British consul and food and rest and news from home, per- haps. The sun set about five o'clock and left a cold, wind-swept sky, a sheet of orange doubled by the lake. About eight we fought in the teeth of the wind around a sharply jutting shoulder of solid rock and came upon a cluster of hghts, above which we could discern the mass of the huge ancient fortress of Scutari. 350 WITH SERBIiS INTO EXILE The port affords no landing facilities worth speaking of. The landing must be made in tipsy* leaky boats domineered by savage specimens, two to a boat, who doubtless would also answer to the adjective tipsy. A drove of these farouche boat- men wabbled out in their terrifying craft to meet us. They were like so many flitting chips on the dark, wind-tossed water. Nikola, who had been sent ahead to herald our coming, was commanding them, in strong, uncomplimentary tones that the high wind split up and bore to us in screeching frag- ments. But they were a stupid, unruly lot, and his admonitions continued to explode fast and furious, the expletives flying by our ears like whistling shrapnel. Upon the ship the human tangle ap- peared inextricable. No one could do more than face about. It seemed as if we must be shoveled off like so much coal. But the freezing, starving soldiers were far from inanimate. No sooner had the boats come near us than these soldiers began to scramble for places near the rail where rope ladders hung down to the water. The resulting confusion was like a herd of badly frightened cattle in a corral. The whole crowd was rocked this way andthat, and, only because there was not room to fall, did many of the women escape being trampled. This state WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 351 of affairs was aided by the darkness, which made it impossible to see how anything should be done. The crowd began to shout, Nikola and his crew took up the cry, so that the very stars knew we were land- ing at Scutari. When finally the boats which Nikola had reserved for our use were brought up to the ship, most of them were on the starboard side while nearly all our party had congregated to port. It was next to impossible to cross the ship. I happened to be by the starboard rail where I had been all day, and, as an apparition from the watery confusion below, I saw Nikola ascending the rope-ladder. He cried to me to come down at once and help hold one of the boats to the side of the ship. I descended, holding by one hand, with the other grasping my rucksack that contained my films and notes. I got into a boat with an Englishman. The men had crowded their boats so close together that it was not possible for those next the ship to push off when fiUed, and this came near causing a complete debacle for our expedition. ' No sooner was I seated in the stern of the boat than soldiers began pouring over the ship's side into it, dropping several feet and landing with an im- pact that each time threatened disaster. In two 852 WITH SERBIiV! INTO EXILE minutes we had all we could possibly take and the water was in a few inches of overflowing the gun- wales. I yelled to the boatmen to push off, but that was foolish because we were hemmed in and could not move an inch except straight down. A wave dashed us with freezing water and a good deal slopped into the bottom of the boat. Dressed as I was, I did not believe I could swim a dozen strol^es and the Englishman felt likewise. The rest of us were soldiers. The women were all on the other side and we could hear sounds which told us there was trouble over there too. Seeing their comrades dropping on to the mass of boats below, the men above followed like goats going over a wall, quite unconcerned about where they hit. In spite of our imprecations, a young giant whom we knew would sink us in an instant climbed half-way over the rail and hung pendant above us. Shouting did no good. It had become a heedless stampede of men whose nerves. Heaven knows, should already have been shattered. We looked around to choose another boat into which to jump before that human sword of Damocles should drop, but all of those adjoining us were already full! I remember how I mentally bade farewell to my cherished fihns and note-book, and believe I would have drawn my WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 853 automatic and shot that hanging idiot if I had not seen that he would drop then and sink us anyway. He let himself over a httle more and kicked his bare feet right in my face as I stood up cursing him. The reader will probably not believe it, but those bare heels and George Bernard Shaw saved us. I solenmly affirm it. In the instant that he dangled before my eyes an incident in which the shocking young hero of "Fanny's First Play" chases the startling young heroine up-stairs pinching her an- kles came vividly to me. With all the venom I could muster I got that man just above the heel with my finger and thimib and there I stuck. He howled as if he had been ham-strung — ^he must have thought somebody had knifed him — and j erked himself back over the rail in a highly gratifying manner. Two more pairs of legs already threat- ened us, but we had found the charm. We quickly pinched them back on board, for the soldiers' opanki offered no protection against our method of attack. For fully ten minutes we maintained our rocking, perilous neutrality until the swearing Achilles gang above us became so ludicrous we enjoyed it. Their opanki-sheathed extremities certainly proved our opportunity. Altogether it was a unique land- ing, unlike any I had ever made. 354 WITH SERBIiV! INTO EXILE After every one of the unit had landed without iany serious mishaps, though with several narrow escapes; we walked behind the crazy Albanian carts that carried our luggage, for more than half an hour through the streets of Scutari. How civilized they looked to us, those streets which to the traveler from Italy seem so primitive! Our tramp ended before the wide wooden doors of a court-yard upon which we read a placard — ^the first instance I had seen of ofiicial British aid for the women, except at Mitrovitze the special train that had carried a hun- dred and twenty of the nurses for three hom-s on their way to the sea under the guidance of a volun- teer Serb leader. The sign read "Mission An- glaise" and underneath, "Sir' Ralph Paget." It was, indeed, pleasant for the nurses to find within even bare rooms, but somewhat clean, and spread with dry hay on which to sleep. It did not seem to me that such arrangements would have been impossible along most stages of the retreat, if some definite plan had been arranged and followed. That night a hot stew of meat and potatoes was brought to us with bread and coffee. We had had nothing but the doubtful ham and a bit of tinned mutton since leaving Podgoritze thirty-six hours before. WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 355 It was arranged that early next morning we should leave for the coast, a two days' journey, to take "an American sailing vessel, the Alhama" which would carry only the refugees of neutral or non-military status. There was deep gloom among the yotmg Englishmen. This meant seven days march to Durazzo over rough trails where blood- thirsty bandits hid. I was the only American in the place and as such my inmiunity from that march made me the recipient of much congratulation. I searched for an American consul but as yet our new diplomatic representative to the Serbian Govern- ment had not arrived at Scutari. In a way I was sorry not to have a longer stay in Scutari. It was exciting and instructive to watch the broken Serbian Government reshaping itself there, to view the fagged army as it sank down into camps that, desolate though they were, prom- ised — so the men vainly thought — a surcease from the suffering of the past months, a chance to rest, wash, and feed. No such thing happened, but when I was at Scutari people believed it might. "The poor devils, to think they will have to camp around here the rest of the winter with almost no wood!" one oflScer said mournfully to me. Not even such cold comfort as that was vouched to them, 356 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE Each clear day without fail there was an aeroplane bombardment which did small damage, but served to remind the army that their relentless enemies were hounding them still, and though balked for a moment by the mountains yet cherished hopes of reaching them. It may also have been a gentle hint to Essad Pasha of how long is the Teuton's arm and how ready it would be to strike any who offered a refuge to their prey. But whatever the Albanian ruler's faults, he showed himself not fool enough to be persuaded that a precarious capital in the hand is worth the good-will of inevitable victors. "Will they come here, do you think?" was a ques- tion on every tongue. A winter campaign in Mon- tenegro and Albania seemed almost incredible, yet I believe those in authority foresaw it. The great deciding factor was food and ammunition, and these the Italians seemed imable to transport in any safety across the Adriatic. The reason, however, may have been deeper than that; Italy may very well have wished only to hold Avlona and to let the war take its course with Serbia and Montenegro. The eastern littoral of the Adriatic has been for ages a diplomatic chessboard, and there is no reason to believe now that deep-laid schemes for its domi- WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 857 nation are not going forward. Whatever the causes, the results are obvious enough. The addi- tional march from Scutari to Durazzo cost Serbia many thousands of her precious men. Deadly as the deadliest fire was that intolerable extra bm-den coming at the end of their miraculous retreat. As one more reason why the whole world loves France with a personal affection it should be noted here that, far removed from Corfu and fighting the "lion's share" — Chappy phrase — of war on the west- ern front, France has shouldered the care of those thousands of shattered heroes who, while two of them stand together, will ever be known as the Serbian army. From San Giovanni to Durazzo, from Christmas to the middle of January, was a via dolorosa more terrible than shell-torn trenches full of bodies and at the end was the island of Vido about which Mr. Grouitch, under secretary of foreign affairs for Serbia, tells in an accoimt in the "New York Evening Sun" : I went to visit the island where are the sick soldiers. The Greeks call it the island of Vido, but the Serbs call it now the Island of the Devil, or more often, the Island of Death. To that island are sent the soldiers who are suffering not from any particular disease, but are sim- ply starved and exhausted, so that they need, not only ^ood, to recover but care. 358 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE Food they get and very often they die as soon as they take it. Care and nursing there is, unfortunately, none, and many die from want of it who would otherwise live. The sights one sees there are terrible, and it would need a Dantesque pen to describe them. The island is a small one opposite Corfu. It has only one building which serves as a habitation for doctors and the personnel. The rest is barren lands and ruins of old fortifications destroyed by the English be- fore they gave the island to Greece. As soon as I arrived near enough to have a good view of the shore, I found that the name "death" had been rightly given to the island. A few paces from the land- ing was a small inclosure screened with tent sheets, behind which the corpses were piled. A few meters away was a large boat tied to a sort of wooden jetty already full of bodies, and on the jetty two men were unloading a stretcher by simply turning it over and throwing another corpse atop the others. And that operation was being performed regularly, one stretcher following another, corpse after corpse falling from a height of two meters into the boat until there was such a pile that no more could be taken, and the boat- load with legs and arms protruding here and there, some hanging overboard, was taken to the sea which became the grave for those unfortunate people who had suffered so much and had died just as they thought they were safe. There are one hundred buried that way every day. They die not from sickness, but simply because they are so tired, so exhausted physically, so famished, that it is only with the most careful nursing, by treating them like I 1 i ' ''i ■ i 'iK\ mi' ^■, iff fr, i » • j3 a '3 C3 o3 Oh H c3 ■a WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 359 children, putting them in warm beds, etc., that one could save them. But tents are few and beds are fewer. There is no wood to burn and therefore no fires are made. Some drag themselves to a tree, where they sit and sleep and do not wake again. They have starved too long and cannot support food any more. The worst sight was under three or four tents, old, rickety, dirty, big and black, as if in harmony with the sights thet7 covered. In each of them from forty to sixty soldiers were lying, not in beds, not on straw, not on the earth, but in the mud, because there were neither beds nor straw. Our good intentions to get away early from Scu- tari were thwarted by several accidents. As- sembled at the British consulate, we waited for hours before the carts that were to carry the luggage and the nurses came. Here we saw Admiral Trou- bridge again for a few minutes. He had arrived shortly before by way of Albania and had had to walk most of the way, but he seemed quite as deb- onnaire as ever; and, because he had been able to secure supplies for his men, was cheerful. When our carts did come, we filed out through intermin- able muddy streets to the end of the town and there a halt was called. There was no one definitely in charge of the party, and none seemed able to tell why we had stopped, Nikola had been sent ahead, yvhiie Dr. 360 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE V Curcin had stayed behind to see about the unit's passports and money matters. The British consul was supposed to have made arrangements. For three hours we stood where the drivers had suddenly I deserted us, taking ten of the carts with them. (When they returned they had enough hay for the round trip of four days. Under the best conditions, it is two full days' journey by ox-cart from Scutari to Medua, but now the roads were in a frightful condition. In places the wide Bo j ana threatened to overflow them utterly. Everywhere was deep mud, and frequently for hundreds of yards stretched continuous ponds. So an early start was imperative if we were to reach the half-way village where Nikola hoped to secure shelter. Our being delayed brought about a series of adventures and at the last almost caused us a cruel disappointment. It was about two o'clock when we got under way again and a cold, driving rain had set in which soaked the women, perched on top the groaning cart between those tremendous wheels, the riddle of which the bottomless mud soon explained to us. They sat upon the hay, which soon became like a sponge, making quite as uncomfortable a seat as can well be imagined. WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 361 The rain continued steadily until late afternoon, when the clouds broke into a sunset of marvelous splendor that deluged the ruddy crags about Scu- tari with royal purple shades and splotches of yel- low light, that glorified our road into a ribbon of iridescent reflection leading straight away westward to the blessed sea and rest, that transmuted the swollen Bo j ana to a rushing flood of gold, all echoes of the beauty of the sky. Although we were soaked to the skin and tramped in the midst of a savage wilderness at nightfall with no habitation in sight and knowing not at all where we would sleep, the scene laid its magic upon us. We were now tra- versing the perfectly flat bottom of the valley, cov- ered by tall, withered grasses fragrant with the rain and bending imder the breeze that raced over it. Disregarding the distant mountains, it had the quality of a windy Dutch landscape under clouds that were fading to dun and ashen, and brought a sense of isolation from the world, of having for the instant ceased to be a part of it, of watching it as from a star. Always in the mind of each of us was Serbia, the tragic manner of her death, the great beauty of her primitive heroism. Already "The Retreat" was merging into a unit of the past, into a 362 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE finished experience whose memory tinged our every thought, as in fact it has continued unceasingly to do. At Scutari grewsome accounts had come to us of whaf Befell many refugees and weakened soldiers on the route through Albania from Prizrend. Several high officers, includiag a French major, had been murdered, as well as some fifteen hundred soldiers and many hundreds of civihans. Although from Durazzo, Essad Pasha was doing all in his gower to succor and protect the Serbs, he was im- able to control the wild northern tribesmen when once the all-pervasive unrest of war had penetrated their mountains. People had their throats slashed as they slept simply for the rings on their fingers. In narrow defiles they were cut off and shot down, and in lonely villages, stopping for the night, their huts were surrounded and all were butchered. As a consequence we did not view with too much faith and complacency the twenty-five outlandish beings who came along to drive the oxen. The Montene- grin Government sent along with us two young ser- geants as guides and protectors. They were surly, ill-humored fellows, inexpressibly lazy and utterly nonchalant about everything except their own com- fort. They seemed to be frightened themselves, for S^^HEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 363 when night came they began to insist that we stop right where we were in the fields without shelter and roost on the carts until dawn. This did not seem to promise more safety and certainly not as much comfort as pushing on, so we refused to stop. The cloud-rack had blown away almost entirely now and a brilliant moon, just beginning to wan, rose after a while and made our traveling easier. Also the road had become firmer, and while we waded in water continuously we did not stick very much. We tramped along for two or three hours after the moon rose. Just ahead of our party three Enghshmen walked, the guards came along in the middle, and a young medical student from Edin- burgh whom we had met at Podgoritze brought up the rear with me. This young man was named Bobby Burns and was half -American. Walking along in the wilderness together we amused our- selves discussing New York, books, the theater, and settled quite easily many profound social prob- lems. Under the surface of this chatter, however, we considered with more or less interest every dark place on the road. He was very soft-spoken and pohte, even to a fault, and his diction was always most polished. His gentle manner and his almost girlish face made him seem to have just stepped out 364 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE from some sequestered school. As a matter of fact, he had been comiected with an army division for months, had undergone terrific strain, hardship and exposure, had witnessed many horrible things while retreating with the army, about all of which he spoke with a cool detachment that I envied. No trace of the ordeal was on him, only always his thought was for the comfort and safety of the women, and his good humor imfailing. I liked to think that he was English, and I liked even more to know that he was American, too. Between nine and ten o'clock when the drivers, were just about ready to mutiny, apparently, we heard a shout ahead and Nikola came to meet us, saying that he had got us shelter for the night in a tiny village, for it would not be possible to reach the half-way station before far into the night. To stop meant that it would hardly be feasible to reach San Giovanni di Medua next day, but we knew of nothing to make us think a little further delay would matter. The "village" consisted of a half-dozen huts. The forty women were to sleep all together in a fair- sized room in the largest house, while guards were to sleep outside the door. We men shared another room at a little distance. The head of the family WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 365 village, at whose hut the women were to sleep, was a villainous old chap of amazing age, who boasted dozens of sons and dozens-times-dozens grandsons, all of whom congregated around to watch us. I could n't imagine where they all came from. They j poked around our luggage in the most naively in- quisitive manner and had a disconcerting habit of sitting tailor-fashion and staring straight at one for ten minutes without winking an eye, stern and unsmiling. They were, indeed, a rummy crowd to descend into at ten in the evening in search of shel- ter. They appeared cold, haughty, and distrustful, although they committed no overt act of hostihty. When we began to "feed" before turning in, the old mummy walked calmly in, sat down among us, and stared and fingered us to his heart's content, , while his clan packed the porch outside. He spoke a little Serbian, but his Albanian no one of our Serbs could understand. Stepping out of this room suddenly, I found the crowd investigating our baggage which was on the porch. Their de- meanor was such that I thought it best not to yell at them, but I went over and sat down on my bag, whereupon the bunch formed round me in a half- circle and stared me out of countenance, not utter- ing a sound, until they became for me a pack of 366: WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE coyotes sitting on their haunches with their tongues hanging out. Then a curious thing happened. The old fellow came out. Nikola had evidently impressed upon him the importance of leaving English people alone, and as a matter of fact he eyed us a bit dis- dainfully. My cowboy hat took his eye and that meant that he had to touch it or he would die. He shuffled over, lifted it off my head, and examined it. "Engleske?" he murmured, using the Serbian word to me. "Amerikanske," I rephed with a result that indeed surprised me. He and all his innumerable progeny showed the keenest interest at once, and smilingly gathered around me, saying grotesque words which I took to be kindnesses. They patted j me all over, and the ancient patriarch thrusting his ; savage face — it was not so bad in its way — right' into mine, repeated in a voice of greatest interest and cordiality, "Amerikanske, Amerikanske — braati" ("American brother"), and again he began patting me until I felt hke a patty-cake. He of- fered tobacco, and I produced some dried figs. From then on I felt their attitude had changed to- ward us. It does seem strange to me that the only time in my life when American citizenship per se brought WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 36T me the slightest consideration should have been among a clan of semi-savages in the middle of a howling Albanian wilderness. In many thousands of miles of traveling throughout western and south- ern Europe and in the Balkans, I have always , counted myself lucky if I found my passport at par; to have it appear at a premium is an expe- rience from which I have not yet recovered. I think through Montenegro some rumors of America as a land of wild liberty had come to them, and the Al- banian loves wild liberty. Through misunder- standing my country, he liked me. That at any rate is the only explanation I can devise. The night passed away for me in a great de- fensive battle with husky Albanian vermin, punc- tuated by a constant drip-drip of filthy raindrops that leaked through the rotten roof in such quan- I titles it seemed impossible to escape them — all the ; more as one did not have a wide choice of resting- places, the floor being carpeted with prostrate natives, men, women, and children. "Sunny Jim," the little Serbian orphan boy who came along with us, found a corner near me, and in his dreams would murmur things I could not understand, but in a childish voice that was wretched enough. Once when he was very quiet and I thought at last he 368 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE was fast asleep I saw tears trickling down his still babyish face. I had never suspected him of the slightest sentiment. He had seemed so wild and tough, full of high spirits, and enjoying the excite- ment of the march. In the horrible upheaval, con- fusion, and carnage of the retreat from the northern frontiers, he had lost his family — ^his father had been shot — and at thirteen was thrown upon his own resources in a situation that might weU try the nerves of a strong man. To see him weeping silently in the night, when he thought no one was looking, gripped the throat and made one realize even more than the bodies by the roadside the real tragedy of war. I knew if I tried to console him, it would only humiUate him — ^he already fancied him- self a man. I never intimated to him or any one that I had caught him off his guard. Dr. May and Nikola had had a great argument as to how far we should go next day. Nikola held that it would be foolish and unnecessary to try to reach Medua in one day, but Dr. May said the unit must try it. I thick it was nothing short of an iu- spiration on her part. She had no reason to believe that a day more would make any difference, but she held to her purpose. So at four next morning we were up and at five om* twenty-five carts creaked WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 369 down a swampy lane to the main road to ISegin the last day's march — ^the end of an eight weeks' jaunt for the women, during which they had tramped about three hundred and fifty miles. Full day- light found us two or three miles on our way, track- ing over perfectly level ground but close to the rocky hills that border the Bojana valley. Moun- tain climbing was finished for most of us, but an accident gave three Englishmen, three nurses, and myself one more occasion to test our Alpine prowess. Quite by mistake we took a short-cut that led for miles by mere goat trails over the mountains, but which saved a long distance. Several of us had pushed ahead of the carts and coming to a fork in the road confidently took the one that seemed most traveled, and led in the right direction. For a few miles this continued to be a good road, but then it climbed to a decayed village where two thirds of the houses, at least, were un- tenanted and tumbling to pieces. A little farther along it suddenly turned into a moxmtain trail From this point the other road could be seen far across the valley below us, so that we were con- vinced that our path was a short-cut which" would lead eventually into the main road. The nurses had taken a rest perhaps a mile behind, and it oc- 370 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE curred to me that when they came to this spot, they would be at a loss to know whether to take the path or return many weary miles to the other way. So I returned quickly and brought them along — they were asleep under a tree — ^while the others went for- ward. For hours we climbed the steep hiUs and wished heartily that we had taken the longer route. Doubts began to come and we f oimd no trace of the Englishmen. We had no food with us and when in mid-after- noon we did emerge into the road agaia we had no way of knowing whether the caravan was ahead or behind. However, we could not afford to linger, so went on at once very hungry and chagrined. One of the women was so dead tired, she could scarcely walk at all. In the late afternoon we came upon some soldiers who told us that an "Eng- leske mission" had gone past them. This made us want to push on all the faster, but later we found out that they were mistaken. At sunset we came to the long bridge across the Bo j ana at Alessio. On the other end stood the main town, and soldiers of Essad Pasha in out- landish uniforms were parading up and down the farther half of the bridge, for the river marked the boundary of Essad's doubtful sway. In the center WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 371 of the road, we spied Nikola calmly waiting for the caravan to come along. We told him what we had done and he said we must he several hours ahead of the main party, and he added, as if it were nothing at all, that San Giovanni di Medua was just one hour of our walking away. A steamer, he told us, was waiting there to take us every one to Italy! That was all he knew. It is only after hving the life which I have tried to picture in this account, only after doing without everything that civilization gives to make existence less of a dog fight, that one could get the full flavor of that announcement. Italy ten hours away! Where there was clean, fresh food in unlimited quantities, where one could eat, eat, eat — that is what we thought of — ^to reple- tion, then go to sleep in a bed until time to eat again, and where, oh, dream of ecstasy, one could have a boiling bath in a gleaming tub! Remember that for four months before the retreat began, we had been living under what we then thought terribly primitive conditions. Add to this the swampy, cornfield camps, the cold, the dirt and vermin, the hunger, the limitless and continuous horror, the anxiety which a four-months' lack of any news had brought, and the fear that the Adriatic would at last prove an insurmountable obstacle — then youi C'-" n> WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE can see what a steamer waiting to take us all to Italy meant. We could smell the sea in the gentle wind that came up the rough road to meet us, and the widening river presaged the beach soon to come in sight. Night had now fallen, but an immense red moon soon bulged over the hills which we had left behind and stood — ^majestic sight — ^mirrored a hundred times in the endless mud puddles through which we splashed. Each of us strained our eyes and ears to be the first to hail the sea. A small cavalcade came splashiog toward us, and soon we were halted by a British officer who, with his comrades, was at Medua seeiog to the landing of supplies and the hke. He asked where the rest of the party was and upon hearing that they were far behind ex- pressed anxiety that they would not catch the boat. It had only come in that morning and was sailing before midnight, so as to be somewhat out of the torpedo zone by daylight. There had not been a boat for a week, and Heaven only knew when there would be another! This appeared strange to us, but soon we were to see for ourselves a grewsome explanation. Only a few minutes after the officers rode on, we came upon a rocky spin- of bills along the face of WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 373 which the rude road twined. Looking down from this point we discovered immediately beneath us E reed-grown estuary, so untroubled, like dull-green glass, that for a moment we thought it simply an inland pond until looking westward we saw it ex- pand into a shoreless ocean of silver, and faintly we heard a muffled lapping on the sand. After our thxee-hundred-and-fifty-mile promenade we had come to the sea, and how easily the smooth im- broken water carried one's thoughts endless miles home ! Straight ahead only a httle way, the sparse lights of San Giovanni were visible close by the beach and up on the cliifs behind. Having passed two large army camps, we came through a short defile to the little bay. An even swell lifted the water and sent soft, winding lines of shining foam along the beach, but the surface of the harbor was smooth and oily and, at first, seemed unbroken ex- cept for the small steamer riding at anchor two hundred yards from shore. Soon, however, we no- ticed that the bay was spotted with funnels and * mast-tips that protruded a few feet above the water, and a good deal of flotsam was strewn along the sand. That brightly lighted steamer was an- chored among a veritable cemetery of ships, and the wrecks' gaunt hands reached up on every side 1374 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE of her. Upon the white sand we saw a giant cigar glistening moistly in the moonlight which, on closer acquaintance, became a very business-like Austrian torpedo. Failing to explode, it had been washed there after its venomous comrades had sent down eleven ships within twenty minutes — ships loaded with food, every pound of which would have saved a life. Such had been the fate of the last cargo brought from Italy eight days before. No wonder boats did not come often, no wonder hundreds of nurses had been waiting almost a week there, not knowing if another boat would ever come. Twelve hours away was Brindisi, Italy's great naval base, but two hours away was Cattaro and Austrian sub- marines. If ever there was a perfect final scene to any tragedy, San Giovanni di Medua was an adequate finish to the life we had lived. It is only a few stone huts on the side of cliffs too rocky to support vegetation. There is a tiny pier and a few small warehouses, a goat-run that does service as a street, and that is all. Everybody had already gone on board when we arrived. Early in the day Sir Ralph had arranged for the ship to take all to Brindisi. In the late afternoon every one had em- barked, so we found no one expecting us, appar- 5VHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 375 ently. When Sir Ralph heard we had arrived, his secretary came ashore and told us where to get some bread, and said that aU should come on board as soon as the rest arrived, or sooner, if the nurses I would. Under no circumstances could the boat be held. About ten-thirty the carts began arriving and the imit started to embark without having had time for food, or scarcely to draw breath. They had been traveling steadily since four in the morn- ing and were nearer dead than alive. Most of the carts soon arrived, but the one carry- ing my pictures and notes did not come. Finally all the others came in and I was told that this par- ticular cart had had a breakdown. It was then eleven o'clock and every one said that I should not miss the boat for there was no telling when another might come. I was determined, however, to be left rather than abandon my records after all those weeks. At eleven-twenty it came creaking in. I had gone down the road to meet it, and snatching my bag, I raced for a rowboat, jumped in, and got on the ship just before she weighed anchor. From her deck where there was only standing room — almost as bad as the Scutari boat — we looked back at the pier, black with a mob of refugees who clamored to get on the boat but who, for rea- 376 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE sons I know not, were not allowed to. We had, perhaps, aU we dared to carry. They shouted there, and some fought, while long lines of soldiers carried the supplies, which the ship had brought, from the shore to places of safety on the hillside, for at dawn they feared a raid by air and water. One line I especially remember seeing before I em- barked. They were unloading little square wooden boxes filled with gold for the Government. Each box held two htmdred thousand francs and there was wild excitement when one of them disappeared. Above^ the creaking of the anchor-chain, the noise of the disappointed mob came to us, and in the half- light the restless throngs dotted the white quays in ghostly groups, while the funnels of the sunken vessels admonished us not yet to be too sure of Italy. In atmosphere and composition the picture was Dore at his weirdest. To leave behind that army and that people seemed aU at once hke treason and desertion, and the knowledge that one could no longer be of service to them did not help much. Our boat was the ill-fated Brindisi which very soon afterward was blown up just outside Medua harbor, the hundreds of Montenegrin soldiers on board shooting themselves rather than die by the enemy's hand. Had a torpedo found us, the situa- WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 377 tion would not have Keen pleasant. There were about two hundred and fifty women on board, French, Russian, and English, and hundreds of sick and wounded soldiers and civilians. They lay up- I on the decks so thick that it was almost impossible to move about without treading on them and, as we got into rough water on the open sea, fully nine tenths of them became violently ill — a horrible scene that even the moonhght could not tone down. How strange it seemed to be going somewhere and not having to walk ! In twelve hours we would be in Italy. In that time we moved for all prac- tical purposes a thousand years. We came from a cold, dreary, desolate land, filled with the dying and the dead, from an atmosphere of hopeless gloom into a heaven of simshine and golden fruit, where war seemed never to have passed, and repose and cleanliness could be known once more. On the boat I met the three nurses whom I had not seen since Ipek, and I was indeed happy to know that they had come through without any serious mishaps. Their courage and readiness to make the best of things, I shall always remember, and I know that none of us will ever forget our vagabond days together from Trestenik to Mitro- vitze, over the autumn hiUs and through the far- 378 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE flung wilderness of the Ibar. Sir Ralph, also, came to me and courteously thanked me for the insignifi- cant aid it had been in my power to render the nurses. He said that he regretted not having been able to aid us at Mitrovitze. He had had "to think of the greatest good to the greatest nimiber and so could not remain" with us. It was scarcely his presence that we had needed there. A word from the official representative of the British Serbian Re- lief, asking that the nurses be taken with the others, would have been more welcome than his or any one's presence with us at that moment. However as a lucky chance had made services which I could' render valuable enough to "persuade the unit to take them on" and we were all right at last, I saw no reason to pursue the subject. I still hate to think about what those women would have suflfered if, on the eve of the terrible day on Kossovo, shelter and food had not been assured them. I remarked that it had been a strenuous time for all of lis and J Sir Ralph heartily agreed. He told me that he was "worn out from looking after the women," and "that I could have no idea what a burden the care of the tmits had been" to him. Subtle humor to meet in an Englishman. The Brindisi steamed in the center of a good- WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 379 sized Battle squadron. Because of the valuable cargo she had brought to Medua, the Italian Gov- ernment had furnished a strong convoy. No sooner had we left the harbor than the lights of two boats appeared to port, and two to starboard, while one was ahead of us, and one behind. They kept at a distance varying from a quarter to a half-mile. When day dawned, we saw that there were five Italian torpedo-boat destroyers and one British cruiser, the Weymouth. Looking at the latter steaming near by to starboard, dull gray on the green water and the sunlight picking out her guns, one realized under the circumstances the beautiful practicability of a battle ship. I was told that thir- teen more vessels were around us and that, during the night, we had been chased by submarines which the strong convoy had scared off. 1 On the Brindisi I met again Miss Eden, the head of the expedition into Bosnia, where I had been when the storm was gathering over Serbia. I had seen her faced with very grave and trying situa- tions there which had been met in a manner that could only call forth admiration. Now she was very weak from starvation and suffering, and could hardly stand because of frozen feet, but she was al- ready full of plans to return with full medical 380 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE equipment to aid in the preservation of that army which we all admired. It was about ten-thirty in the morning when we came to anchor in Brindisi harbor. So much red- tape had to be gone through that not until three o'clock did we get on shore and there we were kept an hour, not being permitted to enter the town. A string of police barred every street and the popu- lace came down to stare as if we had been a circus. There was no food on the boat and most of our unit had been without anything since early morning of the preceding day — this, too, when they had made that long forced march. No food was brought to us and we were not allowed to go in search of any. From ten- thirty in the morning to f oinr in the after- noon we could even smell the bakeries, but had to wait. Finally Sir Ralph arranged for a special train to take the whole party straight to Milan, and thence to Paris and London. It was the eighteenth of December — the nurses would get home for Christmas. We were led in a gang to the station about an hour before the train started, and our rush on the station restaurant was a sight to see. Imagine what piles of oranges, grapes, apples, and bananas looked hke to starving people who had seen noth- WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 381 ing decent to eat for months ; picture the seductive- ness of lunch-counter sausages and boxes of sweets and dried fruits; think for an instant of tall cold glasses of creamy beer and delicious light wines, and ' put down into the midst of it all three hundred famished people. When the train came, for thq moment the restaurant had become a restaurant in name only. Enough coaches had not been procured to afford seats for more than two thirds of the party, but that mattered little to us. On board the Milan Express a weariness which even the excitement of going home could not conquer came over us all. We lay down on the corridor floors, in the vesti- bules, xmder the seats. Wrapped for the last time in our soldier-blankets, we roughed it one more night in the midst of civilization. It is indicative of my mental state that I took it for granted the train was going to Rome, and thence to Milan. I intended to stop in Rome. It never occurred to me to ask, so when a lot of people stumbled over me in the middle of the night as I lay directly in the entrance, and I distinguished shouts about changing for Rome I was appalled. I did not know whether we had passed the junction, or if that were it. My movements were merely reflex — due in part to what S82 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE had happened in that restaurant — and I tumbled out of a window when I could not open the door, and sat upon my bag between some tracks, where I immediately fell asleep again. The feeling of ab- solute indifference as to what under the sun became of me was deUcious. One train was as good as an- other to me, so I climbed on the first one that woke me up without worrying to make any inquiry. It happened to be a third-class train full of troops re- turning from the front on Christmas furlough. Some of them spoke Enghsh and they all imme- diately concluded that I was starving and penni- less. I shall not soon forget their generous, whole- hearted proffers of food and even money! When the guard came through and had the hardihood to ask me if I had a ticket or a pass they almost mobbed him. These soldiers were magnificently equipped and looked so well-cared for and happy, they made all the more startling the contrast with that other tortured army less than twenty-four hours away. It would take many pages to record the sensa- tions which I imderwent on coming back to Rome and — a bath! I cannot even enumerate the kind- nesses which were extended to me as a "refugee," especially by the charming Enghsh people and their WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 383 friends in the hotel where I stopped. The trip from Albania had bfien so rapid that I found my- self wondering if I were not blissfully dreaming in some moimtain hut. Thirty-six hours from the time that I was slopping through mire up to my knees in a heavy downpour, suffering from hunger and fatigue, with no idea when I might get away from that horror-stricken land, I was luxuriously feeding (I did not lunch or dine, I fed those jfirst few days) in a perfectly appointed Rome hotel with kind people to talk to — even though I had no shoes ! I had arrived on the nineteenth of December, ex- actly two months after I had boarded the train at Valjevo with the Christitch party to begin the Great Retreat. Of those days following my arrival I have no notes and a very clouded memory. Just as people still feel the swaying decks beneath them after landing from a long voyage, my mind was still in a state of retreat. To all intents and purposes for a few days I continued to hve the refugee life and seldom ceased to feel the cold of Kossovo, the hunger of Prizrend, the despair of the mountains. The very food that I ate sometimes seemed like murder when I thought of the dead at Scutari. I wish I could comprehend and record the feel- 384 WITH SERBIA INTO EXILE ings of the men at Corfu and Vido to-day. Sit- ting around the dinner table on Christmas evening — for my new friends' hospitahty had extended so far — one of them asked, "What of the soldier of the line? Does he still think that the game is worth the candle?" My mind went back to a dark freezing dawn near Prizrend when by the road side I had found a man. He lay on a pile of soaking, rotten straw under an old cow-shed carpeted with filth, and he was wounded. A miserable fire smoldered beside him — a fire that might outlast him. To my surprise he spoke a httle Enghsh and we discussed common- places, as is the way in desperate circumstances. Very near, the Serbian and enemy guns were boom- ing in a lively duel. "How far away are those guns?" I asked, ex- pecting him to answer "an hour," or "a haK-hour," as is the Serbian custom. But with difficulty, he rose on his elbow and looking somewhere beyond me he said: "Maybe they are a hundred years nearer than they were four weeks ago, but not more than a hun- dred years!" Not more than a hvmdred years, if any Serb be left to drive them out ; and what is a hundred years WHEN THE FIRST SHIP CAME 385 %"o a nation that has not lost its individuality through "five hundred years of durance" ? "They do not count the cost," I answered. "They are not made that vray. They only fight and hope." As I recall it now, that seems to me the best epitome I can give of the Serbian people. For five centin-ies they have unflinchingly fought and hoped. To all who have intimately known them, their present misfortvme is as the keenest personal sorrow. For if a calm and dignified spirit imder the dreariest of skies, if unfaltering and unquench- able patriotism under tests that may well be styled supreme, if splendid bravery, and endurance that passes understanding, if simple immovable faith in a great and simple hberty, if deathless devotion to what one conceives as right and honorable, be any longer of use in the world, the land of Serbia and the national soul of the Serbs is worth preserving. They have a bright destiny to which the vast re- sources of their beautiful country and the blood of their innumerable heroes entitle them, and they will be allowed to work it out. This at any rate is what the Retreat taught me so clearly that never again will I doubt it. THE END FOUR TIMELY BOOKS OF INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE I ACCUSE (J- ACCUSE By a German. A Scathing ^ Arraignment of the German War Policy. At this vital time in the nation's history every patriotic American should read and reread this wonderful book and learn the absurdity of the German excuse that they wanted a "Place in the Sun." Learn how the German masses were deluded with the idea that they were making a defensive war to protect the Fatherland. Let the author of this illuminating book again show the sacrilege of claiming a Christian God as a Teutonic ally and riddle once more the divine right of kings. PAN-GERMANISM. By Roland G. Usher. The clear, graphic style gives it a popular appeal that sets it miles ap«rt from the ordinary treatise, and for the reader who wishes to get a rapid focus on the world events of the present, perhaps no book written will be more interesting. It is the only existing forecast of exactly the present development of events in Europe. It is, besides, a brisk, clear, almost primer- like reduction of the complex history of Europe during the last forty years to a simple, connected story clear enough to the most casual reader. THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTURE. By Roland G. Usher. A glance into America's future by the man who, in his book'P AN- GERMANISM, foretold with such amazing accuracy the coming of the present European events. An exceedingly live and timely book that is bound to be read and discussed widely because it strikes to the heart of American problems, and more especially because it hits right and left at ideas that have become deep-seated convictions in many American minds. THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE. By James M. Beck, LL. D. , Formerly Assistant Attorney-General of the United States, Author of the "War and Hu-, manity." With an Introduction by the Hon. Joseph] H. Choate-jLate U. S. Ambassador to Great Britain, i No work on the War has made a deeper impression throughout the world than "The Evidence in the Case," a calm, dispassionate, but forceful discussion of the moral responsibility for the present war as disclosed by the diplomatic papers. Arnold Bennett says that it "is certainly by far the most convincing indictment of Germany in existence." GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK JOHN FOX, JR'S. STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS May bs had wherever booKs are sold. Ask for Grossot snd Dnnlap's list. THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE . / Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. The "lonesome pine" from ■which the story takes its name was a tall tree that stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pine lured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when he finally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but the foot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and the trail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chase than "the trail of the lonesome pine." THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "King- dom Come." It is a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which often springs the flower of civilization. " Chad." the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence he came — ^he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and mothered this waif about whom there was such a mystery — a charming waif, by the way, who could play the banjo better that anyone else in the mountains. A'KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND. < lUustrated by F. C. Yohn. The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland: the lair of moonshiner and f eudsman. The knight is a moon- shiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely chris- tened "The Blight." Two impetuous young Southerners' fall under the spell of "The Blight's " charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making of the mountaineers. Included in this volume is " Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some of Mr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives. Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction Grosset & DuNLAP, 526 West 26th St. , New York THE NOVELS OF WINSTON CHURCHILL THE INSIDE OP THE CUP. Illustrated by Howard Giles. The Reverend John Hodder is called to a fashionable church in a middle-western city. He knows little of modem problems and in his theology is as orthodox as the rich men who control his church could desire. But the facts of modem life are thrust upon him; an awakening follows and in the end he works out a solution. A FAR COUNTRY. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer. This novel is concerned with big problems of the day. As The Inside of the Cup gets down to the essentials in its discussion of re- ligion, so A Far Country deals in a story that is intense and dra- matic, with other vital issues confronting the twentieth century. A MODERN CHRONICLE. Illustrated by J. H. Gardner Soper. This, Mr. Churchill's first great presentation of the Eternal Feminine, is throughout a profound study of a fascinating young American woman. It is frankly a modern love story. MR. CREWE'S CAREER. Illus. by A. I. Keller and Kinneys. A new England state is under the political domination of a rail- way and Mr. Crewe, a millionaire, seizes a moment when the cause of the people is being espotised by an ardent young attorney, to fur- ther his own interest in a political way. The daughter of the rail- way president plays no small part in the situation. THE CROSSING. Illustrated by S. Adamson and L. Baylis. Describing the battle of Fort Moultrie, the blazing of the Ken- tucky wilderness, the expedition of Clark and his handful of follow- ers in Illinois, the beginning of civilization along the Ohio and Mississippi, and the treasonable schemes against Washington. CONISTON. Illustrated by Florence Scovel Shinn. A deft blending of love and politics. A New Englander is the hero, a crude man who rose to political prominence by his own pow- ers, and then surrendered all for the love of a woman. THE CELEBRITY. An episode. An inimitable bit of comedy describing an interchange of per- sonalities between a celebrated author and a bicycle salesman. It is the purest, keenest fun — and is American to the core. THE CRISIS. Illustrated with scenes from the Photo-Play. A book that presents the great crisis in our nattonal life with splendid power and with a sympathy, a sincerity, and a patriotism tliat are inspiring. RICHARD CARVEL. Illustrated by Malcolm Frazer. An historical novel which gives a real and vivid picture of Co- lonial times, and is good, clean, spirited reading in all its phases and interesting throughout. Grosset & DuNLAP, Publishers, New York ZANE GREY'S NOVELS May be had wherever tooks sre sold. Ask for Grosset t Dunlap's list THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS Colored frontispiece by W. Herbert Dtmton. Most of the action of this story takes place near the turbulent iBexican border of the present day. A New York society girl buys 4 ranch which becomes the center of frontier warfare. Her loyal cowboys defend her property from bandits, and her superintendent rescues her when she is captured by them. A surprising climax brings the story to a delightftil close. DESERT GOLD Illustrated by Douglas Duer. Another fascinating story of the Mexican border. Two men, lost in the desert, discover gold when, overcome by weakness, they can go no farther. The rest of the story describes the recent uprising along the border, and ends with the finding of the gold which the two prospectors had willed to the girl who is the story's heroine. RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE Illustrated by Douglas Duer. A picturesque romance of Utah of some forty years ago when fflformon authority ruled. In the persecution of Jane Withersteen, a rich ranch ovraer, we are permitted to see the methods employed by the invisible hand of the Mormon Chtirch to break her will. THE LAST OF T HE PLAINSMEN Illustrated with photograph reproductions. This is the record of a trip which the author took with Buffalo Jones, known as the preserver of the American bison, across the Arizona des jrt and of a hunt in ' 'that wonderful country of yellow crags, deep canons and giant pines." It is a fascinatmg story. THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT Jacket in color. Frontispiece. This big htmian drama is played in the PaiJted Desert. A lovely girl, who has been reared among Mormons, learns to love a young New Englander. The Mormon religion, however, demands that the girl shall become the second wife of one of the Mormons* Well, that's the problem of this sensational, big selling story. SETTY ZANE Illustrated by Louis F. Grant. This story tells of the bravery and heroism or Betty, the beauti- tsX young sister of old Colonel Zane, one of the bravest pioneers. Life along the frontier, attacks by Indians, Betty's heroic defense of the beleaguered garrison at Wheeling, the burning of the Port, and Betty's final race forlife,make up this never-to-be-forgotten story. Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York f