With the Serbs in Macedonia

THE SERBIANS 247
to make any sacrifice for the good of the joint
cause.
Undoubtedly they are a fine and a fascinating
race, and it is a pity that we do not know more
about them. Serbia is their religion much more
than the Greek Orthodox Church. They have
faith in their country and themselves. They
mean Serbia some day to be a great nation,
mean it passionately, with a determination that
will not be denied.
No longer can they be thought of as ignorant,
superstitious peasants. War and sacrifice have
educated and developed them ; poverty has
chastened them. All these years of bitter
fighting and misfortune have wrought a change
in their Slavonic temperament. In mud and
blood, with everything lost and their loved ones
in the clutches of the enemy, they have lived
with a Dream. The vision of a Greater Serbia,
of a fusion of all their blood brothers into a new
and powerful Southern Slav Empire that shall
settle the Balkan Question and make them
great has sustained them in their unexampled
sufferings.
Brave and simple, genial and generous, always
''
facing their Fate with heads that were bloody
but unbowed " ; all out to win, from the old
men crippled with rheumatism who marched
beside t *"
j pack-mules, to the young and sturdy