Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Soul of Serbia

St. Nikolaj Velimirović

Royal Archives

2026

Copyright

The source text and this English translation are in the public domain.

The cover design is © 2026 Royal Archives.

Published by Royal Archives

First published 2026

Source: The Soul of Serbia: Lectures Delivered Before the Universities of Cambridge and Birmingham and in London

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:soul_of_serbia:en:1

The Soul of Serbia

“It is not in mortals to command success; but we will do more, my friend, we will deserve it.” —Addison.

The great Belgian poet, Maeterlinck, believes in the soul of plants and even of material things and elements. Is there anybody among you who doubts that Serbia has a soul? Is there anybody, brethren and sisters, with the conviction that Serbia lives “by bread alone,” and that she fights by muscles alone? If there is one person only who thinks so, I would consider myself very happy to engage all my time and all my force to correct such a conviction. I would be happy to prove that not by muscles so much as by soul Serbia was enabled to endure five hundred years of slavery under the Turks, to suffer during such a long time without being annihilated, to get rid of the Asiatic yoke lately without anybody’s help, to resist indomitably the greediness of almost all her neighbours, to be so brilliantly victorious over the Austro-Magyars in November, 1914, and finally to defend in our days her independence against the organised attack of the Kaiser’s troops, allied with the troops of the Austrians, Magyars, and Bulgars, and allied also with the perfidious treachery, Mongol brutality, and all kinds of worms which have grown up through centuries and centuries in the mist and darkness of Balkanic slavery. The Serbian history was a voyage on a long, thorny way,—on a very thorny way indeed. The only physical force, without being doubled—oh, much more than doubled!—by the moral and intellectual force, i.e. by the soul itself, was certainly not sufficient, not even for a bigger national body than the Serbian, to make such a thorny pilgrimage, ever struggling against oppression, and ever striving for an independent being.

Killers of the Body Are Not Killers of the Soul

Our physical being is not superior in any way to the physical being of our enemies. Compared with the Turks in robustness and corpulence, the Serbs are the losing party. Naturally a race of conquerors must be more robust and more stout than a race of slaves.

At the moment of the first Serbian conflict with the Mongol race, the Turks might have been weaker individually in bodily strength than we Serbs. Only by their immense number they succeeded in overwhelming us. Three Turks were engaged in fighting against one Serb in the famous battle of Kosovo (A.D. 1389), just as now three Germano-Bulgars are against one Serb. Two of our kings have been killed during seventeen years in these engagements against the Turks—King Vukashin under the walls of Adrianople and King Lazare on the field of Kosovo. You can now easily imagine how many of our noblemen and brave fighters must have perished when two kings in seventeen years’ fighting in the first ranks were killed. But you cannot easily imagine, without reading the historic documents, how many hundred thousands, yea, millions, of our people have been killed by the fierce invaders from Asia during five centuries! The massacres have been ordered by the Turkish rulers and robbers, carefully prepared for like the great festivals, and carefully executed, from year to year, from century to century. Western Europe remembers with horror one bloody St. Bartholomew’s night. I have not time enough to count for you all the blood-red nights in our history of five hundred years. Europe is now beginning to learn Serbian history.

In learning Serbian history under the rule of the criminal Turks, Europe will probably forget all the “standard-crimes” of men and nations in her West. It happened once after a long, long butchery that the Turks looked all around and saw only cripples and blind beggars in the Serbian country, in the Fatherland of the great heroes of old. The body of the Serbian nation was obviously killed. But still the soul lived. The cripples and the blind were certainly not representatives of the Serbian physical force of old, but they were always the representatives of the national soul. If you look a little deeper in the human life you will be astonished to see how humble is the soul in the Universe. The most sublime soul sometimes dwells in the poorest and ugliest house. The blind Milton, the hunch-backed Pope, and the lame Byron certainly cannot be taken as examples of English physical strength, but why not as examples of the English soul? The Serbian blind beggars, the miserable physical constructions they must have been, sang the national past, prophesied the national future, formulated the national rights and hopes, and spiritualised the terrible national suffering—widening with their clairvoyance the horizon of history.

Like the dark cellar in which the vegetables are preserved fresh and green during the winter until the spring, so our blind bards preserved the soul of the Serbian people throughout the cold winter of slavery until the spring of freedom. The barbarous killers of the body could not kill the soul.

The Modern Killers of the Body

But the modern killers of the body cannot kill the soul either. You are all witnesses of that. Poland is to-day more physically killed than ever in history, but who dares to say that the Polish soul is killed too? In America there exists a New Poland, new in body and soul.

And what do you think about the Armenians? Did not Lord Bryce affirm the other day that 800,000 of them have been slaughtered in the recent massacre? The rest are now persecuted systematically, and who knows at this moment, while we are here comfortably sitting and speaking, how many of these unhappy Armenians are flying before their oppressors looking towards Mount Ararat, where Noah found his salvation, and searching in vain for an ark to save themselves from the deluge of the overflowing Turkish fury? And still the soul of Armenia cannot be killed.

And Belgium? Wealthy and industrious Belgium, though she has lost her body, has found her soul. “I saved my soul,” said the King of Belgium. Never in modern history has the soul of Belgium been seen so clearly as in this war, since the great trial came in the form of the German invasion and the sore desolation of Maeterlinck’s country.

What, then, should I say in this connection about my poor country? The modern killers of the body have shown skilfulness in their murderous work even more in Serbia than in any other corner of the world from Hamburg to Bagdad. The Germans invaded Serbia with one plan: to conquer. But they drove away all the Serbian population from all the northern districts into which they came. You may ask, Why? In order to take corn, hay, cattle, metals and everything from the deserted houses. And so they killed thousands and thousands not directly with their hands but indirectly through hunger. And then they plundered all the towns and villages under the pretext that they found them deserted. The Magyars and Bulgars, the nations which received just as much of the German chemical and atheistic civilisation as is necessary to make them fittest for the crime—these Magyars and Bulgars invaded Serbia from north, west, and east, with two plans: to conquer and to exterminate. More capable of carrying out the second than the first purpose, they availed themselves of German troops and German howitzers to conquer the Serbian land—that land detested with a deadly hatred, yet envied for its glory. The extermination they accomplished with a diabolical accuracy. The old men and women, the sick and wounded, the crippled and blind, have been slaughtered with joy and satisfaction. The houses, schools, and haystacks with the sheltering Serbian fugitives have been burnt, the bishops and priests insulted, the churches transformed into stables, the beautiful Hebrew synagogue in Belgrade reduced to ashes. The whole of the Serbian land is now nothing but the clay of the bodies of the innocent—nothing but a chaos of dead human bodies with the criminal spirit of the killers triumphing over that chaos.

If you ask me, “What is Serbia now?” I will reply: “The Serbian language is no longer spoken, but only whispered on the soil of Serbia.”

If you ask me again, “What is Serbia now?” I will reply: “The Babylonian king of old, the destroyer of Jerusalem, would be ashamed if he could look to-day upon the ruined Serbia; so imperfect was his destructive work in comparison with the work of the great Hunter and his dogs. Then how could I otherwise call the Kaiser from Berlin and his company than by the name: ‘the great Hunter and his dogs’!”

If you ask me again, “What is Serbia now?” I will reply: “A great heap of the slaughtered dead despising the living killers.”

Shall I give one more reply? “Serbia is now and will be henceforth the conscience of her enemies and her friends. The enemies will be, like Richard the Third, disturbed in their sleep by the pale face of the destroyed Serbia, whispering like spirits: ‘Why did you sin so much against me?’ And her friends will be henceforth frightened in their dreams by the phantom of martyred Serbia, with the everlasting reproach: Why did you not help me in time?”

But no, I am wrong—the dead reproach no one. Allow me now to resume what I said with the following statement: The modern killers succeeded perfectly in accomplishing their crime against Serbia, to kill Serbia’s body, but they succeeded in no way in killing the Serbian soul. Serbia’s body being dead, Serbia’s soul is now more alive than ever.

Our Soul Is Full of Tears

Will you believe me when I say that no people in the world weep so much as the Serbian people? That is in no way our physiological failure, but rather our soul. Our soul is in our tears. We wept in our joy and we wept in our distress. In our joy we wept because our joy has been only a rare and surprising visitor, and in distress we wept because distress has been our perpetual householder. With tears, with “holy water”—as Shakespeare called them—with only “holy water” upon the earth, as we dare to say, Serbia is inundated more than any big empire in the world. If this holy water sanctifies, as presumed, then Serbia is surely sacred soil.

Even our national hero and our model, Marko Kralevich, the hero of our national poetry, and the hero of Mestrovich’s sculpture also, wept very much. He wept on hearing about the wicked deeds of the Turks; on hearing how the Turks killed and plundered the poor “raya”; on hearing how they robbed the Serbian girls and carried the Serbian boys to Stamboul. He wept on seeing the Serbian people in rags and the robber Turks in silk and satin; on seeing the Christian Cross overshadowed by the Crescent; and on seeing the Turks defiling the Serbian sanctuaries and carving the eyes of the Serbian saints’ pictures. He fought many duels and killed many Turkish tyrants, but he wept even when he once killed a Turk—Mussa, whom he considered a greater fighter than himself. He possessed a gigantic body—as the popular tradition described him—though he had a melancholy soul, sorrowful and tearful. That is quite the Serbian soul—melancholy, sorrowful, and tearful! We Serbs, we are lovers of tears!

“Better is a bath in tears than in Jordan,” says a Serbian proverb.

Another proverb says: “So many worthy prayers as many tears.”

And another: “A temple will be built on every spot on which a tear-drop fell.”

And another: “With tear-drops the sins also come out.”

And another: “It is better to weep with the wise than sing with the foolish.”

Another again: “There are only two nations upon the earth: that which weeps and that which laughs.”

And another again: “The mourning of a sufferer awakes the angels, the laughing of a drunkard awakes the devil.”

(I remember a sentence of St. Bernard who said, “The tears of penitents are the wine of angels!” If that is true then all the angels are in Serbia!)

Now, somebody may think that tears made the Serbian people wiser. That is a topic which may be discussed. But it is clear and out of all discussion that the long suffering affected our hearts so much that they became more soft and humble. You have probably heard that we Serbs had a very strong aristocracy in the Middle Ages, in the time before our suffering and weeping in Turkish chains. But certainly you did not hear at what time our aristocracy, our princes, dukes and velmoges disappeared. I myself cannot precisely indicate to you the date. But I can tell you with certitude, that it happened during the slavery, during, and because of, the common hardships and common humiliation. And if you wish me to speak more precisely I can say: it happened on the day when our rich and poor, our noble and ignoble, united their tears, having been equally injured and downtrodden by iniquity and brutality. Consequently the Serbian democracy was born in tears. That is a point that I should especially accentuate to an English audience. Your country is the home and hearth of the European democracy. Your democracy was formed after long experimenting and reasoning. Wisdom is the foundation of your democratic organisation. Yet our Serbian democracy is quite different. It is very similar to the American democracy. It is something unplanned, unprepared, spontaneous and genuine. For a long time we have had a democracy without knowing its name. Many other peoples first invented the name “democracy” and then went to find that for which such a name may be suitable. One day when the origin and essence of our democracy shall be studied the world will be surprised, as it was by our coming into independent being a few hundred years ago.

Our democracy is in some ways very similar to the American.

Serbia Is the Little America

Serbia is the little America, or America in Europe. A hundred years ago, as the famous Burke wonderfully advocated the New World and prophesied a grand future for it, America numbered less than three million inhabitants. That was an entire world in ovo. Serbia of to-day has five millions. America’s population at the present time is nearly a hundred millions. I have, of course, no intention of making a comparison of America’s and Serbia’s bodies, but only of their souls. What was the spirit of America from the beginning, if not the protest against Europe? Except in the case of the curiosity of Columbus and his comrades, America from the very beginning has coloured herself with an anti-European colour. The many grotesque qualities of the physical and spiritual civilisation in the America of to-day are the product of the old desire to differ as much as possible from Europe.

Well, we Serbs arose a century ago as a protest against Europe.

We protested against the Turkish tyranny which abased us to stupid animals or dead things. Our blind bards excited the soul of the slaves against the inhuman dominators. They sang about the equal right of all men, consequently of Serbs also, to live freely upon the earth. They passionately rejected and condemned the Turkish pretension to exploit Serbian property, to dispose of Serbian lives freely and irresponsibly. They even argued that the laborious and sober Serb should possess greater rights than the lazy and vicious Turk. We protested, and we arose to fight. Yet the whole of Europe supported the Turk and applauded his intention of punishing the Serbian rebels. But our loud protest against the bloody Turk was at the same time a silent protest against Europe.

We protested soon afterwards against Metternich’s Austria. When I say Metternich’s Austria, I mean the most anti-Christian rule in a Christian country. As Turkey represented in the Balkans the most perverse Mohammedan régime, quite contrary to the true and beautiful Islamic spirit of righteousness, so Austria represented, and unfortunately still represents, the most perverse Christian régime, quite contrary to the true Christian spirit of national and personal liberty. Perhaps you will ask: “How does the Christian, or anti-Christian, rule in Austria concern you?” Certainly, if you suppose the frontier between Serbia and Austria to be a national and natural one, as the frontier between England and France, or between France and Italy, you were quite right in putting such a question. But please take notice of the fact that the Kingdom of Serbia, with Montenegro, includes only a minority of the Serbian race. This minority numbers something over five millions. But there are over eight millions of our Serbian brethren (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) in the monarchy of the Hapsburgs. How could we not be troubled with the question of what life they live and what government they have?

We did right, I am convinced, or at least we did what the English people would do if they had eight millions of their brethren under the yoke of any unscrupulous foreigners. We protested and protested. Our protest was ridiculed by Austrian diplomacy and journalism, and, so ridiculed and caricatured, came to English and French ears. Self-sufficient and comfortable Europe was afraid only of any trouble, and therefore Austria, with her peaceful perfidy calumniating “troublesome” Serbia, found a more willing listener than protesting Serbia. What could poor Serbia do in such a case? She protested loudly against Austria and silently against the whole of Europe. Certainly her protest, loud or silent, was like a voice “in the desert.” Yet she still protested melancholically and waited hopefully. Her thoughts at that time were as these:—

“Both the Sultan and the Kaiser have golden crowns but hearts of coal.”

Or, as a Turk asked a Serbian: “Why are you Serbs so poor and naked?” the reply was: “Because justice is our only clothing.”

Or another Serbian proverb: “Better thinks the horse of a Turkish Bey than the Bey himself. The Bey sees Beys and slaves in the world, and his horse sees men only.”

Or another word: “What is the earthquake? The earth trembles because of the injustice of man to man. What means the eclipse of the sun? The sun hides its eyes so as not to see how the brother kills his brother.”

The suffering people comforted themselves with sayings like these:—

“Fools only laugh in this world, but sufferers and God will laugh in the other.”

Or: “For a long time God did not make Paradise, but after He saw the sufferings of the Serbs He made it.”

Poor people! Their hopes saved them. The force of their soul endured all the physical pain and privation. The killers of the body never succeeded in killing their soul.

Beautiful Death

In no other country in the world can you hear the people speaking so much about beautiful death as among the Serbian people. Even lately you may have read the message of the Serbian Premier, Mr. Pashich, that the Serbs have decided to fight until the last man, because, he said: “It is better to die in beauty than to live in shame.” “To die in beauty”—to have “a beautiful death”—that is quite the Serbian spirit of old and of modern times. The Serbs in Montenegro sang with passion and envy every heroic death. Such popular songs habitually ended:

“Happy is he, now and for ever, for he died such a beautiful death.”

And the Sloven poet from Ljubljana (Laibach), Simon Gregoric, sang, quite in the national spirit:

“To die, my brethren, is not painful; to abandon hope, that is painful.”

As a young Serbian monk, Abakum, was impaled by the Turks, his mother stood below and wept. And the son looked toward her and said: “Mother, dear, my thanks for your motherly milk. But do not weep; the Serb is Christ’s follower and enjoys death.”

Another Serbian martyr said to his torturers: “My pain is only for a short time, but your shame is for ever. I am going to the place where I can despise your life. Sweet is it to be dead without you, as it is bitter to live with you.”

Not to fear death was the most-recommended dogma of Serbian conduct of life for centuries. “Fear very often dishonours life,” said a great Serbian prince from Montenegro.

Life is not worth so much that honour may be sacrificed for it. Life in slavery is uglier than death. A beautiful death seems sometimes to be the very aim of life. It is considered as a bath for all the impurities of a sinful life. I remember a Serbian officer whose life was lax and impure. In the battle on the Drina he died a hero’s death, and at once the whole of his life was transfigured in the eyes of all the people. His life was dignified and ennobled by his death. The shadows vanished and the light was exaggerated. That has always, and for everybody, the same great effect—I mean a beautiful death. A witness of the present war, an English gentleman, Rev. R. J. Campbell, writes of the “higher command” that men in the war oftentimes heard and consequently rushed into death. He described “an exultant joy in losing everything, forsaking everything, crucifying everything dear to the natural man.” And then he adds: “Witness Serbia to-day; old men, sick men, women, girls, little children dying with arms in their hands. This is Serbia’s hour of agony and glory. Her people are not merely being defeated; they are being exterminated. They need not be, and at first sight one wonders why they should consent to be. All they have to do is to throw down their arms and submit to the invader. They might have to suffer a little more, endure an ignominious subjection, but at least this tide of slaughter would be stayed. And they will not. The world, with parted lips and straining eyes, beholds that they will not. Yet these very people not so long ago were mean, ignorant, chaffering, thieving, petty traders and pig-breeders. Any who have had to deal with them know they were no models of all the virtues.” So writes Mr. Campbell, the well-known preacher and moralist. And I can say only: Yes, we have been a mean, ignorant, chaffering, thieving people, and we never have been models of all the virtues. I was once in the parish of Mr. Campbell. There is a tube-station, as in many others in London, and in this tube-station I read the same words that I read in every tube-station in London: “Beware of pickpockets!” I was ashamed, because I thought, “Doubtless by this we Serbs are meant!” Yet the beautiful death is like a white snow cover hiding all the black spots of mud and dirt. An unselfish death may be the atonement for a selfish life. A heroic death may be a great light for a dark life. Mr. Campbell seems to think that the present suffering of Serbia is recovering or rather re-creating Serbia. Like a snow-white cover, a glorious and beautiful death covers now the whole of Serbia, of the mean, sinful Serbia. There is no more mud and dirt to be seen over there. There came suffering and death and sanctified Serbia. Yes—sancta Serbia!

The Triumph of the Soul

I will remind you of a curious psychological fact that only in this world-war became obvious to everybody. This fact is: Oppression of the body results very often in a revival of the soul. Do you think that Zeppelins brought only damage to the people of London? Or that the German submarines destroying the Lusitania and Arabic did purely harm to English interests? Methinks not so. Methinks that the Zeppelins and submarines were destructive only for English bodies and constructive for English souls. Physical suffering awoke the conscience and patriotism of this country. Lord Kitchener’s “call for more men” was even strengthened by the raids of Zeppelins and submarines and by the martyr death of Miss Cavell. By their inhuman warfare the Germans killed some thousands of bodies, but stirred and kindled some millions of souls in Great Britain.

Our Serbian history gives an experimental proof of how oppression of the body results in a revival of the soul. The more the Serbian body was oppressed the higher the Serbian soul was uplifted. In the happy time of peace and pleasure man lives more the physical life, and in the dark time of bodily oppression man lives more the spiritual life. It seems to me sometimes that life is identical with freedom. When the body is quite free, then it becomes the centre of a man’s life. When the body is in the chains of slavery, then only the soul can be free; and being free it becomes the centre of a man’s life. You will mention that the harmony of the two is ideal. You will say: The best is when a man is free in body and soul. I were short-sighted should I not agree with you. But it is unfortunately stated as a rule that in the case of the freedom of body and soul practically the body only is free.

During the time of our sufferings our Serbian soul was similar to the lightnings in the black clouds; the body was despised, the soul exalted.

“My body belongs to the Turks and dogs, but my soul is mine,” was a Serbian saying.

The intensity of the life of the soul corresponded to the intensity of bodily oppression. The soul endured, survived, triumphed. That is the lesson of the Serbian past. That is the lesson of the present time in Serbia too. Do not think, please, that our belief in the supreme victory of good over evil is shaken by our present suffering. Do not believe that our hopes are banished by the present catastrophe. Many times in our history we have been cast by Fate to the very bottom of Hell. Yet on this bottom of Hell we still believed in Heaven.

We Cannot Command Success

One of your great poets, Addison, wrote this true and beautiful sentence:—

“It is not in mortals to command success; but we will do more, my friend, we will deserve it.”

These words can be applied very well to our Serbian fate. So can we Serbs say: It was not in our power to command success, but we did our best, and we deserved success. For eighteen months Serbia fought victoriously for her freedom, for the freedom of all her Southern Slav brethren under the yoke of Austro-Hungary, and for the common cause of her powerful Allies. You can hardly imagine all the privations and hardships which Serbia has endured since this world-struggle began.

And now! What a catastrophe! The country conquered by the modern Nebuchadnezzar of Berlin; the army pressed to the Adriatic coast; many thousands of old men and women, of helpless children and their mothers, fled to the Kingdom of the German King Constantine, to the inhospitable Albanian desert, or to the heroic but breadless Montenegro. Without home, without food, without aim! Their life is nothing else than a silent—a slow—dying out.

And still the soul of the suffering Serbia is not dead. She is again put on the bottom of Hell, but still she looks towards Heaven with belief, hope, and expectation. She looks over the sea towards this blessed and Leading Island, whispering: “I am dying for the cause for which England has been living. That cause comprehends the Christian ideals of freedom and of humane civilisation. But my Soul cannot die, my Day will come. I am very sorry that England must suffer so much because of my suffering. (She has suffering enough of her own.) I did not get success, but I deserved success. When England, the leading country of human civilisation, thinks that I deserved success—and she does think so—I am satisfied. The killers of my children have not killed my soul. I did my duty—I saved my soul.”

The Struggle Between Super-Man and All-Man

“Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law,” says Super-Man.

“Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted,” says All-Man.

If the little children, our posterity, should ask us, how long have you lived upon this earth, we, brethren, should answer: thousands of years. And our answer would be true.

All that our eyes have seen, and our ears heard, and our hands made, and our hearts felt, and our minds created during our life upon the earth: all that is not easy of accomplishment in a thousand years.

And in our answer we can also say that the time for us has not been long. Indeed, we have not felt it, because our generation has kept on growing, not by reason of long time but because of our great sorrows, and died, not old in years, but exhausted in working and creating.

The contents of our time have been the very essence of good and evil of many, many centuries. By this essence, but only diluted, will live many after-generations, through whom fate will continue our own life upon this unquiet and terrible planet.

Now in these “essential” times when human life is measured not by days but by deeds, and when the greatest events have happened since the creation of the world, in this time our Serbian people have not been merely spectators but active participants and creators of these events, and first in point of time as well as in energy. Our Serbian people have occupied on the page of to-day’s world history a place almost parallel with the greatest and most famous modern nations, with English, Russian, and French.

Is this fact only accidental and ephemeral? Will it be that at the end of this war the Serbian nation will be forgetful of its Allies and maliciously despised by its neighbours?

Will this nation be punished by Fate, as a bold parvenu who succeeded momentarily in reaching the heights and in mingling with a society which is not its own? In a word: What place henceforth, in the world’s history, will the Serbian nation occupy?

But before we answer our question as to what place it will occupy in the future, we must first enquire what place it has occupied in the past, and what place it has at the present time. We need to have two points to be able to draw a straight line which we can prolong into the future, and by which we can measure the future.

If we had the same point of view as the modern German philosophers of history and law, we would not put the above question. For almost fifty years past, these philosophers have conducted a fanatical propaganda of the idea that the little nations have no right to existence, and that all small national and political entities have to be merged in the greater ones who alone, according to this famous theory, have the right to independent being and capability for cultured creation. Read: Max Stirner, Nietzsche, Treitschke, Bernhardi.

But we cannot possibly accept this German theory, because it is desperate from every point of view; it is desperate for small nations because it threatens the destruction of the body of the small nations, and it is desperate also for the great nations because it threatens the destruction of their souls. We must not accept this theory as Christians because that would mean we were falling back to the pagan times when the weak were cast down from the Tarpeian Rock, and we cannot as Christians again experiment with Neros and gladiators, with adoration of pagan idols and with the slave-trade. And we cannot accept this theory as human beings because it approximates us to the animal life, and the superiority of our human life over the animal life consists in greater sociability, in greater indulgence towards the weak, in common support of each other, and in the accomplishment of all—and not only of some human beings, and of rising from the beast up to God.

This political Nietzscheanism whose theorists have been Treitschke and Bernhardi, and which has been carried into practice by Bismarck, the Prussian Junkers and Kaiser William, not only cannot avoid the individual Nietzscheanism, but would be the most servile guide, who would go ahead and carry this individual Nietzscheanism just as a body carries its shadow. For as soon as it is said and accepted that a stronger state possesses the full right of domination over a smaller neighbouring state, at once it must be conclusively said and accepted that a stronger man, too, possesses the full right of domination over his weaker fellow man. And as soon as the notion of a physical super-nation and super-state may be fixed in the mind of human kind, the notion of a physical super-man must be subsequently fixed and acknowledged too. Once the physical super-man is acknowledged as the ideal of men, the history and culture of mankind will be thereby brought down to South Sea cannibalism, singing the words of Richard the Third: “Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.”

Shall indeed the dramatic history and the glorious culture of mankind end so miserably? No! This philosophy, which means the negation of the greatest moral achievements to which mankind climbed up through blood and tears,—this philosophy must never be ours. Our ideal is not the super-man but the All-man.

The Son of God designed the same ideal by His words, and sanctified it by His blood upon the earth. By degrees, during many centuries, this ideal was carved in the ethical consciousness of European mankind, and was in detail elaborated and accentuated by the most spiritual and most gifted men of the European and American continents: Emerson, Victor Hugo, Dickens, Tolstoi, Longfellow, Dostoievsky, i.e. the men whose works came to be the first and most sacred after Holy Writ for nine-tenths of reading people.

According to this philosophy, which is presented lastly more and more as the Slavonic philosophy and which consequently is ours too, we confess that no man has the full right over his fellow man and that no nation has the full right over its fellow nation. The first principle of this philosophy is—freedom, the second—love.

We consider ourselves not as the lords of this world. We look upon this world as upon God’s field and upon human beings as upon God’s seed. The great Sower has sown the seed upon His field. Who gave us the right to say: this and that seed is not good, therefore He shall root it out? Who gave us the right to say: this and that creature must be burnt because it is not of our colour, of our smell and of our fruit? Who made us judges of the world, so that we could pronounce these pretentious words: this nation must be exterminated because it is too small; and this one must be dispersed because it is perilous; and this one must be subjugated because it speaks not our tongue and prays to God not according to our rite? No; we have not one right without a corresponding obligation.

We have the right to live in this world, but also the obligation to let other people live too.

We have the right to be free, but also the obligation to make other people free.

We have the right to our daily bread, but also the obligation to take care of our hungry neighbours.

We have the right to demand the protection of our person, but also the obligation to protect people in danger.

We have the right to look upon ourselves as the sons of God and upon our nation as God’s nation, but the obligation, too, to look upon all men as the sons of God and upon all nations as God’s nations.

We Serbians uphold such a philosophy not because we are little but because this philosophy is great and sublime. The day will come when this philosophy will be generally acknowledged as the only salutary philosophy for the soul and body of humankind. It will draw man nearer to man, nation to nation, state to state, and it will join all in one brotherhood, one love, one kingdom of God upon the earth. We keep this philosophy because we have sufficiently experienced throughout the centuries the perniciousness of the opposite philosophy of our neighbours, that, namely, which is appropriated by the Germans as their national, political and social guide in this world, and which is completely expressed in the words: Might is right!

We have never been the followers of such a philosophy but we have never feared it. Our struggle against the nations who follow this watchword (“Might is right”) fills the whole of our history.

Before and After the Battle of Kosovo

“I would, and my horse could, but God consented not.” —Serbian proverb.

Let us now consider more closely what place we have occupied and what rôle we have played in the world’s history.

Our known history began at the time when we came in contact with Byzantium, at the very time of the great Settlement of Nations, which meant a new start in the game of world-history. Hundreds of years of our earlier history are shrouded in darkness. We do not know our Carpathian history—our bucolic and pagan antiquity, shared by the Russians and all the Slav brethren in common—we know only our Balkan history. From the earliest times the Balkans may be compared to a theatre in which the worst places were the most expensive; and here from the very first, Destiny has exacted from us Serbians very heavy entrance-prices. From the first day our task was to protect ourselves against the lack of scruple and the Nietzscheanism of cultured and uncultured nations; firstly against the decadent cultured Byzantines, afterwards against the barbarous Huns and Avars, Bulgars and Magyars, then against the new invaders, the Turks, and finally against the artful Venetians and the Germans.

At the very moment when Byzantium ceased to be dangerous to us we took up the task of defending Byzantium from her horrible enemy, the Turk. Our Tsar Dushan made the alliance with the Byzantine regent Cantacuzene so as to defend the Balkans against the Asiatic flood which approached nearer and nearer to Constantinople.

After Tsar Dushan, the King Vukashin excelled as the great champion of the Christian Balkans against the Osmanlis. For before the famous battle of Kosovo in Old Serbia we had to sustain a similar battle at Adrianople, on the river Maritza. On the threshold of Bulgaria, which country was unable to give any resistance to the Turks, King Vukashin fell with a splendid Serbian army of 60,000, the victims for the freedom of the Christian Balkans. This happened in 1371; and only eighteen years later was the famous battle on the field of Kosovo. Here fell Tsar Lazar with the rest of the Serbian kingly splendour and might. The enslaved Serbian people sang this heroic battle in wonderful poetry, and even found an explanation for the terrible conflict of Kosovo in the religious sphere.

The battle of Kosovo was symbolised as the battle of Heaven and Earth. Mystically King Lazar was asked which he preferred, the Kingdom of Earth or the Kingdom of Heaven? In the first case he might be victorious over the Sultan, in the second case he might be beaten by the Sultan, the bearer of entirely earthly ambitions.

“Tsar Lazar! thou Tsar of noble lineage, tell me now, what kingdom hast thou chosen? Wilt thou have heaven’s kingdom for thy portion, or an earthly kingdom? If an earthly, saddle thy good steed—and gird him tightly, let thy heroes buckle on their sabres, smite the Turkish legions like a tempest, and these legions all will fly before thee. But if thou wilt have heaven’s kingdom rather, speedily erect upon Kosovo, speedily erect a church of marble; not of marble, but of silk and scarlet; that the army, to its vespers going, may from sin be purged—for death be ready: for thy warriors all are doom’d to stumble; thou, too, prince, wilt perish with thy army!”

When the Tsar Lazar had read the writings, many were his thoughts and long his musings.

“Lord my God! what—which shall be my portion, which my choice of these two proffer’d kingdoms? Shall I choose heaven’s kingdom? Shall I rather choose an earthly one?—for what is earthly is all fleeting, vain, and unsubstantial; heavenly things are lasting, firm, eternal.”

So the Tsar preferred a heavenly kingdom rather than an earthly.

Tsar Lazar, a saint in his noble character, preferred the Kingdom of Heaven, and he fell with all his dukes and armies as a holy and necessary victim for Justice. Was it not a struggle between Christianity and Nietzscheanism? Was it not the struggle of the same principles which are fighting to-day against each other? The Turks are to-day again on the scene allied with the nation which produced Nietzsche and which believes in Nietzsche as the Turks believe in the Coran or in their sword.

But let us continue.

The Turks were a terrible power. But soon there came from Central Asia a still more terrible power threatening the Turks. It was Tamerlane with his wild Mongol hordes. Now Tsar Lazar’s son, Stephen the Tall, hastened shoulder to shoulder with his brother-in-law, the Sultan Bayezid, to stand against the bloody flood of the Mongols. The Serbian co-operation in the memorable battle at Angora is related as very prominent. The noble son of Lazar, King Stephen the Tall, perhaps the most noble person amongst the old Serbian kings, was constrained and determined by circumstances so hardly as to ally himself with the evil in order to fight against the worse.

When all had been done on the part of the Serbian people that it was possible to do by unaided human might to save the freedom or even the semi-freedom of Balkan Christianity, Fate placed the weights on the contrary side of the scales, so that the balance was reversed and the shadow of the Coran covered all the land and people from the Bosphorus to the Danube.

So began the slavery that was a great period in our history, immense in its tragedy. What did this slavery mean? The Serbian slave must be disarmed and must serve the armed master. He must not only take off his shoes, but with his own hands put them on the feet of his despots. He must take the bread from his own children and give it to the dogs of the strangers. He was a human being, but he must never say so aloud. He had the constant memory of his kingly past, yet he must still live from hour to hour like an insect. In a word he had to suffer, lest all Christian Europe should suffer. For the Asiatic invaders, occupied with the frequent Serbian insurrections, with the Serbian haiduks and guerrilla fighters, with the Serbian cross-roads and bushy forests, the home of all the valiant lovers of freedom—were obliged very often to abandon their daring projects for the ultimate conquest of Europe—and that of Central Europe in the first place.

The Insurrection of the Humble Against the Proud

“No bad winter without wind, no bad guest without Turk.” —Serbian proverb.

“The first spontaneous national movement against the Turks was the Serbian rising of 1804, and the following years. It cannot be too often repeated that Serbia, unlike her Balkan neighbours, achieved her own freedom. What she has, she won almost unaided.”—R. W. Seton-Watson.

This continued till the beginning of the nineteenth century. And when all the world thought that midnight reigned in the Balkans, there began the dawn of day. The Serbian people, who were the last to lay down their arms before the Turks, were the first to take them up against the Turks. These were not the arms of steel but the hearts of steel. A handful of such hearts with justice on one side and a great empire with injustice on the other!

Such was the great Beginning; the End of which was on the battlefields of Kumanovo, Monastir, and Adrianople, and the last sanctification of which will be the fall of Constantinople.

Look, what a wonderful thing; to-day the English, the French, and the Russians are carrying to the end the deed begun by the peasants of Shumadija a hundred years ago—to drive out the Turks from Europe and to free the enslaved Christians! The generals of the three great nations who are now fighting under the walls of the towns of Constantine, are busy on the same work on which were engaged the heroes from Misar and Ljubić—Kara-George and Milos Obrenović; and they shake each other by the hand.

Is not that a great and wonderful thing?

Is it not a great and wonderful thing that a little enslaved nation traces out the right path and sees soon afterwards the greatest nations following the same path with glory and pride?

Our fighting a hundred years ago was like a mustard-seed sown at its time and grown up to-day into a big tree, the branches of which reach to Siberia and South Africa. Behold, Siberia and South Africa are now the allies of the Serbian peasants! Behold, we fought against Byzantium—Byzantium vanished; and then against Tamerlane—Tamerlane vanished with all his bloody glory; and then against the Avars and Bulgars—where are they to-day? And then against the Turks—they are vanishing like the shadow of the Prophet’s sword; and finally we are engaged in the struggle against Austria—Austria’s case is now hopeless.

Remember: throughout our whole history we have been fighting against men or peoples great in might and injustice, and therefore condemned to destruction.

Hereby is our history justified. Hereby is our place in human history defined. We never have been so much a geographical as a historical power; our history has always been greater than our geography. For about four hundred years we disappeared from geography, but never from history. History is often made under the earth. The first pages of the history of Christianity were written down in the catacombs. The history of millions of the working people in the mines is hidden in subterranean darkness. During four hundred years our Serbian history was written by blood and tears and hopes, in the darkness of slavery. We lived in the Sultan’s state, invisible to the rest of the world, like the fire under the ashes. Strangers looked—if they looked at all—and saw the ashes but not the fire beneath.

The Insurrection came, the Insurrection of the slaves, of broken hearts, and scattered the ashes—and the fire grew bright and was seen. I speak not only of Kara-George’s Insurrection. The Serbian Insurrection has lasted a hundred years. It is now at the climax and at the same time in its final phase. The goal of this Insurrection was designed and proclaimed from the first day as liberation from the yoke of tyranny. Our Insurrection like a volcano produced several violent commotions for the greater part of mankind. The first shot was fired in Topola (1804), and the Insurrection began; the second shot was fired in Nevesinje (Herzegovina, 1875), and the Insurrection continued; the third shot was fired in Kumanovo (1912) and the Insurrection approached its end. Our Insurrection caused also this world-war, the greatest commotion in history. And so our cause becomes to-day the cause of the greatest nations upon the earth.

Too small a cause for so big a war, it may be said. Not at all. The national cause of Serbia, i.e. of a small spot on the globe, is the justice of the Universe. Therefore it may be said to our great allies: You are not fighting for the Serbian interests but for universal justice. The principles which lay at the root of our Serbian Insurrection, and which have met very often with the bitterest irony and contempt of the world, are now the chief principles of our powerful allies.

We have been fighting against the Turks during the last century for the freedom of our enslaved brethren; and to-day the French people are fighting for the same freedom for their brethren in Alsace and Lorraine.

We have been fighting against the Austrians for the respect of the independence of a small nation such as we were,—the British declared war on Germany just because Germany so scornfully trampled on Belgian independence.

The tendency of our Insurrection has been to set free not only ourselves but all our Slav brethren in the South and everywhere,—Russia has waged this costly war because of the brotherhood and solidarity of the Slav race.

It is clear that the principles which England, France, and Russia of to-day are fighting for have been the very principles of the Serbian people from Kara-George and his peasant collaborators up to to-day. For a hundred years we have been desperately fighting against the brutal idea now upheld by Germany, that the small peoples have no right to life and freedom, against an idea which is as old as degenerate Byzantium, as old as Tamerlane and the Turkish Sultanate, as old as the Austrian watchword divide et impera, and even as the most brutal instinct of men.

Democracy and Heroism in Theory and Practice

“If you would have pity on me dying, have pity on me while I am still alive.” —Serbian proverb.

All the small nations may be thankful to the Serbians because they, before all other nations in the nineteenth century, arose to fight for the rights of the small nations, and not only did they arise, but they persisted, too, in their fighting. “Nationalism”—that is the watchword of the nineteenth century, that is the inspiration of the greatest modern politicians and the commonest topic of the endless discussions throughout the last century of European history. But this European theory of nationalism appeared after the Serbian practice of the same theory. For, behold, it was a whole generation after the insurrection under Kara-George and Serbia’s hard struggle for national independence that the national spirit awoke in Italy and Prussia. When as yet the Piedmonts of Italy and Germany were still scarcely conscious of their own theories, the Piedmont of Southern Slavdom, Serbia, was practically at work. And how much the idealism of Serbia to-day differs not only from the idealism of military Prussia but even from that of Italy, it is easy to prove.

In a declaration in the beginning of the world-war the Serbian Government said: “Serbia is fighting for the freedom of all her enslaved brethren, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes under the yoke of Austria.” Contrast these simple idealistic words with the declaration of Signor Salandra last May. “Italy,” he said, “entered the greatest war recorded in history solely to defend her ancient aspirations and vital interests.”

Writing on Serbia, Dr. Dillon said: “Like a phoenix from the ashes, so Serbia rose from her unbeing into being, and became at once the Piedmont of South Slavdom and the chief factor in the international situation.”

“The Serbians, the poor defenders of European civilisation for many centuries, these heroes in rags and sandals, deserved the admiration of the whole world.” So spoke Maurice Barres, the famous French author.

“The Serbians fulfilled their duty brilliantly. They have been fighting during a century for freedom and independence. Serbia deserves to be now supported materially and morally, and after this war she must be supported to unite all the Serbs, together with their brethren the Croats and Slovenes in one and the same state with a population of fourteen millions.” So said M. Hervé, the leader of the French pacifists.

On the 13th of March last, a “Serbian Day” was fixed throughout the whole of France. On this occasion the French teachers in the schools explained to Young France the history of the Serbian people and commended it as the most heroic history in the world.

In such terms the world wrote and spoke of Serbia in the spring of 1915, after a series of splendid Serbian victories over the Austrian army at Tser, Rudnik, Valjevo, Kosmaj, and Drina.

But a hundred years ago, in the year of our Lord 1815, nobody knew anything, nobody wrote or spoke anything of Serbia. In the year 1815 there did not as yet exist a state of Serbia. In the spring of the same year a handful of unlettered peasants prayed in the little wooden church of the village of Takovo just on the day celebrated as that of Christ’s solemn entry into Jerusalem. After sincere and hearty prayer, the peasants gathered under a shady oak next the church and in fearful and hopeful whispers determined to make a new insurrection against their Asiatic oppressors. They pledged each other their word of honour to fight until death against the common foe. The little wooden church, the shady oak and the great blue spring heaven over the poor peasants assisted their firm and touching resolution.

I cannot believe that the story of William Tell and his compatriots in Switzerland could be any more touching than the story of the Serbian revolutionists, of these humble and pious peasants of Serbia, who, beginning the greatest deed in their history, could look only towards Heaven and seek there a support, because all the earth around them, near and far, was peopled by their enemies, or oppressors, or despisers.

A Hard Struggle for a Great Idea—That Is All

“Serbia cannot accept a lesser programme without betraying her kinsmen across the frontier, who look to her to-day as their representative before Europe.” —R. W. Seton-Watson.

Evidently our place in human history is not marked either by big commerce like America’s, nor by an excellent fleet like England’s, nor by large towns like London, New York, Paris, and Moscow, nor by the brilliancy of science and literature, nor by the great mines and factories, neither by the Louvre nor by Windsor. But it is marked by something that is more precious because it costs more sacrifices, more persistence and more blood—it is marked by the struggle of a people for their freedom, by struggle and success. This success of the Serbian people is not to be considered solely as a material success. It is a success indeed of a religious character, and therefore a universal, all-human success. This is the victory of the Christian idea over the anti-Christian or pagan idea. The pagan idea is the Super-man (Übermensch), the Christian idea is the All-man. The pagan idea may be expressed as “Right in Might,” the Christian as “Might in Right.” The pagan idea means that the earth belongs only to the strong; the Christian, that the earth belongs to all God’s creatures. The small peoples have the same right to exist upon the earth as have the big ones, or as the insignificant blades of grass have the right to grow under the sun close to the big oak. Indeed the struggle of the Serbian people has put this to a practical proof. The small peoples make with the big peoples a necessary and beautiful mosaic in history. History is just for this reason interesting and beautiful—it is just for this reason dramatic. Every nation has its dimensions—its space and number,—has its strength, intellectual and moral. That is to say—every nation has its colour. The world-history is a drama; it is also a colour-painting, too. But it could not be either drama or painting, if one nation conquered all others and forced upon them its own individuality. In that case there would be one colour only, and therefore monotony and death.

Now it is evident what is our place and part in our human history. Upon our flag is written: “For the Christian faith and golden freedom.” This watchword is written to-day over the most Christian countries, over Russia, Great Britain, and France. Our fighting to-day widens out to the furthest corners of the wide world. How wonderful is the shining of justice! Like the reflector’s light, so justice shines and its shining widens more and more as it goes further and further from the burning point. Serbia is to-day easily seen from Boston as well as from India and China. What a change! Only a hundred years ago unknown Serbia was born. It is a youth, a fire, an enigma. Enigmatic Serbia may well seem, alike to her neighbours and to the remotest inhabitants of the earth. She kindled a little fire a century ago, and this fire has grown into a world-war. She rose at first against Turkish tyranny, and nine-tenths of mankind was on the side of the Turk. She succeeded. She rose again, against Austria-Hungary, and most of the world was on the side of Austria-Hungary. For the conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary has lasted more than fifty years. Serbia was supported by God and Austria-Hungary by the world. But what a change to-day! The more civilised part of the world is fighting to-day against Austria-Hungary, the ally of the Turks—and divine justice is once more on the side of Serbia.

Always True to Her Own Self

“To thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” —Shakespeare.

How, it may be asked, did the whole civilised world come to adopt the Serbian point of view?

Because, we reply, the Serbian point of view from the beginning of Serbia’s Insurrection was grounded on Christian foundations. The world of to-day is pretty clearly divided into two camps: the anti-Christian and the Christian. Three great Caesars (of Stamboul, Vienna, and Berlin), with their tyrannous little servant, the Cesar of Bulgaria—that is the pagan camp. And the rest of the world is the Christian camp. Serbia’s justice and Serbia’s struggle for divine justice divided the world. That is the last conflict between Christianity and Paganism. That is the decisive struggle between Christ and Antichrist.

In the world a revolution in the opinions about Serbia is already in evidence. Russia abandons altogether the artificial policy of Count Ignatieff. Great Britain is in a hurry to correct her failures of the Berlin Congress. France most warmly greeted our victories and expressed her admiration and friendship for Serbia. Greece and Roumania are with us in spirit. The Bulgarian people respect us (although with hatred) after their defeat on Bregalniza. Our Southern Slav brethren from the Roumanian frontier as far as Trieste, and from Cattaro to Gratz, look towards Heaven and towards us, awaiting freedom and union with us.

What was the Serbian past? The struggle for a Christian idea. What is the Serbian present? The same struggle for the same Christian idea. The difference is that we have been struggling alone in the past, and now our struggle is supported by the most powerful and most noble champions upon our planet.

Now we have found two points in our history and hereby the straight line connecting them and leading us some steps towards our national future.

We began our struggle alone, a struggle for the best cause—that is the first point. To-day, we meet in the same struggle as our friends the best nations in the world—that is the second point.

What may be our future? Since we are to-day allied with the best amongst the nations in the struggle we shall be to-morrow allied with them in the work of peace—that is our future. The peaceful carrying out of the work of culture! Peaceful creative work! We will show in the peace of to-morrow that our national and human qualities are of the superior kind in the work of culture, as they have been superior in war.

There is a heroic peace as well as a heroic war. A nation can be heroic in peace as in war. For what indeed is peace if not a fight with nature, with the things and elements of nature? We Serbians have a good hope that we shall be able to show ourselves equally heroic in the second kind of fighting as we did in the first. Some people speak about a greater Serbia. Never was Serbia so great as she now is, in her suffering, in her heroism, and in her enthusiastic and optimistic belief in the Victory of Good over Evil. Young Serbia was always true to her Destiny, true to her own Self. Serbia’s truth is at last recognised and accepted by many of her friends and critics. She recognised her cross from the beginning and she took it willingly—always true to her own Self.

“To thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Religion and Nationality in Serbia

Dedicated to the memory of the great Croatian patriot Bishop Strossmayer, on the centenary of his birth (1815–1915). “Sve za Vjeru i za Domovinu.” (“All for Faith and Fatherland.”)

“Love first, and then logic,” says Dostoievsky.

“First we understand, and then we can love,” is the watchword of ancient paganism.

The first of these watchwords leads to Christian humility and to general good; the second to worldly pride and general evil.

Five years ago I wrote in the Guardian upon the reunion of the Churches. The underlying idea of my article was the above-mentioned quotation from the great Russian thinker and poet. I subsequently read the controversy between Charles Kingsley and Cardinal Newman—the controversy on soul and logic—and I became still more confirmed in my belief that love, and not logic, must play the leading part in the reunion of the Churches. In other words, let us be united first in practical matters, in our daily, useful dealings with society and humanity, let us more frequently join hands in the charitable work in which we both share; for this will lead us to tolerance, and tolerance in its turn will build the bridge towards the finding of a common logical ground.

To-day I see with pleasure the Roman Catholic and English Churches in England working together in the same grand patriotic and national cause, united by the same inspiration, the same desire, and the same prayers.

The dogma that divides them lies three hundred years behind them, but the love that unites them in the same labours is with them now. And I see with joy how the representatives of both these Churches in England are united in sympathy and love towards others—towards ravaged Belgium and sorely stricken Serbia. The Bishop of London is president of the Serbian Relief Fund, Cardinal Bourne has permitted lectures on behalf of the Serbians to be given in Westminster Cathedral, and himself honoured these lectures by his presence. Divided in dogma, these two great Christian Churches are nevertheless united in work. Considering all this, I to-day insist more strongly on my thesis, that all Christian Churches have sufficient logical ground in common, on which they may range themselves side by side in the same work, the same mission, and the same charity. The differences in their points of view concerning transcendental formulæ, unrealisable in life, can reasonably take a second place.

The Jugoslav Ideal

A proof of the above may be seen in the life of a whole nation throughout several centuries. I mean the Jugoslavs—Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes—who are one and the same nation in language, in blood, in destiny, and in their aspirations, and who to-day as one man desire to shake off the Austro-Hungarian yoke, and to build up a single undivided State with free Serbia and Montenegro. The proof alluded to consists in this, that in the great national struggle for national union and freedom which Serbia has now waged for a hundred years, her people have risen superior to all divergencies of creed between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, and have held fast only to that which unites, not to that which divides in religion.

That the Orthodox Church is the best spiritual medium of the national ideal is known throughout the world. The Serbian Orthodox Church has been this throughout the history of Serbia, from the days of St. Sava, her founder and organiser. St. Sava, the son of King Nemanja—the most famous of the Serbian kings and founder of the Serbian State—succeeded in setting upon it the seal of Orthodoxy for centuries to come. If the father endowed the Serbian State with a body, the son gave it a soul. And later on, when the body of the Serbian State was destroyed by the Turkish invasion, the soul lived on through the centuries, and suffered, and nothing remained unconquered in this soul but her faith, and the tradition of the freedom of the past. The monasteries were centres of trust and hope. The priests were the guides of the people, upholding and comforting them. The Patriarchs of Ipek were in truth patriarchs of the people, and, like the patriarchs of old, true representatives of the people and their protectors. When the tyranny of the Turks and Albanians over-stepped all bounds in old Serbia, and the nation was in danger of being exterminated, the Patriarch Arsen Crnojević transferred thirty-six thousand Serbian families across the Save into Syrmia and Slavonia. Catholic countries were considered brother-lands in which these exiles could find shelter. In the eyes of the people both Orthodoxy and Catholicism were subordinate to the one name—Christianity, and contrasted under this single name with cruel and bloodthirsty Islam.

In 1804, on the eve of the Serbian revolt against Turkey, priests were present at the secret gathering in Orasac, and the leadership of the rising was offered to one of them, Prota Atanasije; when he refused, it was offered to Kara-George. Both before and during the rising the Church suffered great hardships. Many priests were impaled near Stambulkapia in Belgrade, among them Iguman Paissi and his deacon Avacum. In 1815, at the beginning of the second rising, another Iguman, Melentije in Takovo, blessed Prince Milos, encouraged him, and accompanied him in battle. And when the Serbian forces gave way before the Turks at Ljubić, this same Melentije himself seized the drum and restored the courage of the soldiers. From this he was called “the Drummer,” and this nickname clung to him ever afterwards, even when he became Metropolitan of Serbia.

The Catholic Clergy as National Leaders

It is less well known that the Catholic clergy in Jugoslavia have also proved themselves both nationalist and patriotic, but it is nevertheless an historical fact. In the struggle with the Turks the Catholic clergy (Croats and Slovenes) followed in the steps of their Orthodox brothers, and on countless occasions sacrificed themselves for the nation. Several Ban-Bishops of Zagreb (Agram) organised the defence of Croatia against the Turks; many Roman Catholic priests in Croatia, sword in hand, defended their country against the enemy, such as (in the sixteenth century) the Canons Jurak and Fintić, and (in the seventeenth century) Frater Lika Imbrisinović in Slovenia and Father Marko Mesić in the Lika district of Croatia; and there were Franciscan monks who languished in Venetian dungeons because they dared to defend their country. It is still less known that through the whole of last century both Churches, the Orthodox as well as the Catholic, carried on an active propaganda for Jugoslav freedom and union, but this also is a fact.

In the eighteenth century the consciousness of the identity of the Southern Slav nations began to awake, whether under Turkish, Hungarian, German, or Italian rule. A Catholic priest from the Dalmatian islands, Don Andrew Kadčić, composed poems in imitation of the Serbian national poetry. Dositej Obradović, an Orthodox monk, after acquiring a wider culture in his travels through all Europe, including Great Britain, began to write in the popular tongue. Lukian Musicky, an Orthodox Bishop, was also devoted to the Serbian and Slovenic cause. Ivan Raic, the Orthodox Archimandrite, wrote a history of the Serbo-Croats in the Serbo-Croatian tongue. Sundecic, an Orthodox priest, was read by all Jugoslavs in preference to many finer authors, simply because he, too, was inspired by the idea of national union, and because he went so far in his identification of Serbs and Croats that he had one of his books printed in Roman and Cyrillic characters side by side, and some others in Roman characters only, and this although he was an Orthodox priest. Valentin Vodnik, a Slovene Catholic monk of Napoleon’s time, was also inspired by the idea of a union of all Jugoslav peoples in one State, which was to be called Illyria, and Napoleon also had this idea. In 1811 Vodnik wrote his hymn to “Illyria Resurrecta,” by which he hoped to influence Napoleon to create the Jugoslav State.

Napoleon said: “Arise, Illyria.”

This poor Slovene monk had to pay dearly for his ideals. Cruelly persecuted by the Austrian authorities and cast from one prison into another, he finally died in 1819. And when the Croat, Ljudevit Gaj, in the forties of last century, arose with his “Illyrian”—this was only another name for the Jugoslav ideal of to-day—he was enthusiastically welcomed and supported by the Catholic theologians of the seminary in Zagreb, who thenceforth became the most active champions of his ideals.

During the first forty years of the nineteenth century the idea of a united Jugoslavia so far materialised that the Orthodox Patriarch of Karlovci (Karlowitz) could install Jelačić, the celebrated Ban of Croatia, with the unanimous approval of all the Croatian Catholic clergy.

The following is a still more striking example of patriotism before clericalism. In 1848 the Catholic clergy of the diocese of Zagreb met in conference and passed a resolution including the following provisions:—

1. The union of Serbs and Croats.

2. Toleration of creeds.

3. The use of the Old Slav tongue in Divine service in the Jugoslav Catholic Church.

The Catholic priest Ragki, one of the most eminent Jugoslav historians, was a great champion of these ideas of reunion, and endeavoured to introduce the “Cyrilitza” (Cyrillic alphabet) among the Croatians.

Austrian Reaction

The reaction of 1849 brought with it a brutal suppression of all national agitation and aspirations in Austria-Hungary. Austria artificially created different nationalities in her provinces, and called into existence the Dalmatians, Croatians, Slavonians, Istrians, Carniolians, etc., as separate nationalities, even as—after the occupation of Bosnia—the new nationality of the “Bosnians” immediately arose in the world.

But the Austrian terror only succeeded in awakening the Jugoslav national consciousness in all these provinces, which are inhabited by one nation, homogeneous as the inhabitants of Northern and Southern France. And thus the Austrian plan of converting geographical conceptions into historical, national, and religious conceptions was frustrated. This was very clearly shown after the first Austrian defeat. One result of the battle of Solferino was the revival of the old agitation. The enlightened Prince Michael, who at this time ascended the Serbian throne, was not only an enthusiast for Jugoslav ideals, but strove actively towards their realisation. At his own expense he sent many Slovenes, Croats, and Bulgarians to college for their education, thus preparing an entire generation for the realisation of his plans—even the Bulgarians; for they, too, as represented by the best of their nation, were at one time enthusiasts for the Jugoslav cause.

In Slovenia the Catholic clergy were the strongest representatives and champions of the same cause. Among them Antun Askerc and Don Simon Gregoréic undoubtedly distinguished themselves above all others. Both were poets; the former was the greatest Slovene composer of epic and ballad poetry. “My muse is a Spartan,” he said. “In one hand she holds the sword, and in the other a torch.” Simon Gregoréić was the greatest lyrical poet of his nation. His most beautiful poems are patriotic songs. In contrast to the warlike Askerc he was a gentle-souled optimist, a pure anima candida.

Two Great Bishops

But above all the divines of Southern Slavdom the Orthodox Prince-Bishop of Montenegro, Peter II, Njegos, and Strossmayer, the Catholic Bishop of Djakovo, tower as the mightiest champions of national union.

In all his writings Njegos gave eloquent expression to his grief and bitter distress that religious tradition could break up a nation into separate fragments, each sick and unhappy without the other. In short, the sum of his experience is this:—

“Be a Serb and believe what you believe.”

Further on he says:—

“Do not ask how a man crosses himself, but whose the blood that warms his heart and whose the milk that nourished him.”

Njegos did not speak thus from a lack of reverence, but rather because of his heartfelt piety. He conceived religion as a force for unifying, not for disuniting, and it grieved him to see in his country everywhere the destructive results of religious discord. To-day the illustrious Bishop of Montenegro is equally beloved by Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. This was made evident in Zagreb on the 1st of March, 1914, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth. On that day Zagreb was gay with Serbian flags, and at a solemn gathering lectures about Njegos were delivered by a Slovene, a Croat, and a Serb, successively. Catholics and Orthodox alike jointly celebrated their national hero. The Austrian authorities were plunged in consternation by this unexpected manifestation of brotherly solidarity between the very elements among whom they were unceasingly endeavouring to promote discord.

Bishop Strossmayer is probably better known to the Western world than the Vladika Peter. He was that great Bishop who so distinguished himself as a Catholic divine and orator at the Vatican Council in 1870. Equally great in his broad religious views and in his national ideals, Strossmayer was in very truth a God-sent blessing to his people. A son of the people, he lived and worked for his people. Everything great that Croatia to-day possesses in the way of national and cultural wealth is bound up with the name of Strossmayer; everything was created, revived, or amended by him.

But he was not unaided in his efforts and his ideals. He had the unfailing support of the entire Catholic clergy of Croatia at his back—as the fiery defender of true Catholicism in Rome; as leader of the propaganda of liberation for all Jugoslav lands from the Austrian yoke, and the union with Serbia under Prince Michael; as the founder of the Jugoslav academy in Zagreb, or as the tireless builder-up, stone by stone, of the material welfare of the Croatian people. He was in constant correspondence with Prince Michael, with Michael, Metropolitan of Belgrade, and with Gladstone. His political ideas were readily accepted by the Serbian Prince, and his love of peace and religious toleration earned him the friendship of the Orthodox Metropolitan. His broad-minded culture and sincere sorrow for his people deeply touched Gladstone, who, as is well known, did his utmost to help the cause of Jugoslav freedom.

Strossmayer’s generation and that which succeeded him, whether clergy or laity, fully appreciated his teaching. Nor did the Austrian Government fail to understand it, and they strove by every means in their power to uproot or to destroy the seed sown by the Bishop of Djakovo. But this seed germinated and sprang up in the field, tall and green, till both Germans and Magyars contemplated this dangerous crop with rage and envy. They inaugurated new terrors, new tortures, new inhumanities, new calumnies. Serbia was represented as the black plague-spot of the earth. But these calumnies were not well received by the Austrian Slavs. Then—especially since 1894—Austria began her Clerical propaganda; but this also failed to influence the souls of the Croats and Slovenes. Various attempts were made to supersede the Serbo-Croat language by the Magyar; but this only roused such vehement opposition that even those who had learnt Magyar from interest or curiosity ceased to use it. Then the Magyar Government endeavoured to influence the elections in Croatia in an anti-Slav sense by new political combinations, i.e. by an arbitrary redistribution of the electoral districts; but so far from being successful, this measure only resulted in a coalition between Serbs and Croats, who, under the influence of Austrian and Magyar intrigue, had hitherto always voted separately. This coalition has, in fact, during recent years been the dominant factor in Croatia.

The Legacy of Strossmayer

Strossmayer died in 1905, but his physical death only meant the resurrection of his ideals. Austria-Hungary rejoiced over his death, but her joy was short-lived. In 1908 Austria burdened her conscience with a further crime—the annexation of Bosnia. Instantly it became evident that Strossmayer still lived—indeed, that he was more than ever alive. For the annexation of Bosnia was a blow that fell equally upon Zagreb (Agram), Ljubljana (Laibach), Trieste, and all Dalmatia no less than upon Serbia and Montenegro. The harvest that Strossmayer and Njegoš had sown was now ripe. Austria saw with sorrow that her prisons were too small to contain an entire nation; but she herself was a dark dungeon for the Jugoslavs, irrespective of creeds, for at this juncture she discovered that she could reckon as little on the Catholic clergy as the Orthodox.

Several Bishops sided with their clergy in the national struggle. Thus Ucellini, the Catholic Bishop of Kotor (Cattaro), translated the “Divina Commedia” and dedicated his translation to the Serbo-Croat nation, and because of his wish to introduce the Slav tongue into the liturgy, Archbishop Dvornik had to fly from his native town of Zadar (Zara) in Dalmatia to Constantinople, where he died. The Catholic clergy of Dalmatia especially distinguished themselves in this struggle against Austria, and in Zadar, where Archbishop Dvornik had lived and worked, another priest, Don Jure Biankini, preached Nationalism with religious fervour.

Then came the Balkan wars. From these wars Serbia three times emerged victorious—against the Turks, against the Bulgarians, and against the Albanians. In Austria-Hungary the Jugoslavs looked upon Serbia’s war as their war, and felt the Serbian victories as their own. Although themselves in servitude, they nevertheless contributed to these victories. Numerous doctors, nurses, volunteers, medical stores, and money were sent by one brother-nation to the other, and Austria found herself compelled to close her Serbian frontier by a cordon of soldiers. But all in vain! Hearts were full to overflowing, and love waxed stronger than ever. Then came the world-war. All ties between Austria and her Slav subjects were broken. Austria’s declaration of war on Serbia was in many respects also a declaration of war to the Jugoslavs in Austria. Arrests, wholesale hangings, and shootings became the order of the day. All Orthodox and Catholic Bishops were placed under police supervision. Nikodim Milaš, Orthodox Bishop in Dubrovnik (Ragusa), suffered such gross ill-usage at the hands of the police that he died within a few days.

The Southern Slavs Under Austrian Terrorism

In Dalmatia, Croatia, Istria, and Carniola the prisons were filled to overflowing with Catholic priests. So far as voices from Dalmatia have been able to reach us, we learn that Ivo Separović, Ante Antić, Mate Skarica, and Ivo Lutić have been imprisoned in Dalmatia, and in Istria the following priests who are also national delegates: Luka Kirac, Anton Andrejčić, Sime Cervar, the canons Santić, Zavladal, Mandić, Matić, and two Franciscans; in Carniola fifteen priests of the Slovene Clerical party. About ten of the leading men of the nation—journalists, artists, and writers—both Catholic and Orthodox, fled to Serbia, England, Russia, and America. They fled but to repeat the smothered cry of tens of thousands of their brothers in Habsburg prisons. And this cry is all the more terrible because it rings through the twentieth century as terrible as the cry that rang through the Catacombs and the Circus Romanus nineteen centuries ago. It is the cry of the priests of Christ, who preached the Way of Truth before God and man; the despairing cry of the martyrs of the nation, who are giving their life for the salvation of the people; the cry of the shepherd whose flock is being harried by the wolf; the cry of noble and enlightened men who open their eyes in vain to behold the light, for around them is only darkness: they open their mouths, but instead of bread, iron is placed upon their lips; they stretch forth their trembling hands, seeking the cheerful warmth of the fire, only to find instead the cold stones and mildew-covered walls of a dungeon; they cry for help, but their cry falls dead upon thick stone walls, and returns like an echo into their hearts. But, as Njegos says:—

“From their blood will spring flowers for some far-off generation.”

Religion as a Unifying Force

The great fact, to which I have alluded at the beginning of this article, is the fact of the unifying influence of religion in the history of Jugoslavdom during the past century, and especially during the tragic happenings of the present war; Orthodox and Catholics found themselves united in the self-same practical work—in this case in one and the same idealistic struggle for nationality and in common suffering. In this common struggle and suffering they have realised that they are brothers, and were amazed to think that religion could even for one moment have divided them. They were amazed to think that such abstract details of religion as the dogma of the filioque, could divide them, brothers, who shared so much common ground in their beliefs—the belief in the Trinity, belief in the Saviour, in immortality, in righteousness, in one Apostolic Church, in the Sermon on the Mount, in the beauty of self-sacrifice for others, and in suffering for what is good and ideal.

It may be objected that this may be so in the day of trouble, but that all may be different to-morrow, with the return of peace. For even in the early days of Christianity there was no division in the Church because of the common suffering, but as soon as persecution ceased, the spirit of sectarianism crept into the world.

On this point I venture to say that history will not repeat itself; what has been will never be again. No sacrifice of blood and human life has ever been made without causing a great stride in history and a great change in human life. The present World-war, which is calling for unprecedented sacrifices in blood and life, must mean a correspondingly great stride (forward let us hope) for humanity, and fundamentally change the aspects of history.

The nations will be drawn more closely together, with or without the approval of the Churches. But the Churches, too, should be drawn together, and ultimately be united. They will be united on those great matters, which they all have in common—evangelical, theological, and in the forms of Divine Service. The Churches, too, must learn their lesson from this war. They must be careful always to unite in practical work, which needs the inspiration of the Christian spirit and Christian love. For if the Catholic, English, and Presbyterian Churches in Great Britain, the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany, and the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in Southern Slavdom have in war-time found one another in the self-same charitable work and the same patriotic enthusiasm, surely they can be united in peace-time in the sublime work of human civilisation.

You will object that there are differences. And I reply: “Certainly there are differences; but the individual differences between myself and my neighbour are much greater than those between the Christian Churches, yet nevertheless my neighbour and I meet in the same road, in the same work, and at the same table, and we live together under the same laws; we both rebel against the same evil, and we both defend the same good.” You will repeat, that there are differences. And again I reply: “As these differences could be forgotten in war-time, they can also be forgotten in peace-time.”

A Plea for Christian Charity

At least this must be the case with us Jugoslavs. During the last centuries we have passed through a repetition of the sufferings of the early Christians. Common struggle and common suffering have taught us to live under the Christian spirit, which animates both the Orthodox and Catholic faiths. The State for which Serbia is now fighting will include many Orthodox and Catholic members. The people of this State who have learnt, not from theories, but from life and suffering, will always know how to respect the faith of their neighbours in so far as it differs from their own, and to love it in so far as it coincides with theirs. And as the similarities between the Orthodox and Catholic faiths are in a proportion of ninety per cent, there will be ninety per cent of reasons for mutual love inspired by faith, and only ten per cent scope for mutual tolerance as regards their “individual” differences. The future Jugoslav State will contain about fifty dioceses, half of them Catholic and the other Orthodox. All the inhabitants of all these dioceses are at this moment praying that Serbia and her allies may be victorious, even as the Bishop of London and Cardinal Bourne are praying. The people who were united in bondage will certainly not be divided in freedom, otherwise freedom would not be better than bondage, but rather worse. The people who learnt the lesson of love in bondage will surely continue in love in freedom, otherwise freedom would merely mean a worse temptation for them. The people who learnt tolerance in bondage will not forget to be tolerant in freedom. Therefore the Serbian Government was merely the mouthpiece of the Serbian people when, directly after the Balkan wars, it proceeded to place Serbia’s relations with the Catholic Church on a proper footing, because with the extension of Serbia the number of her Catholic inhabitants would likewise increase. In the midst of the war, the Skupstina in Nis discussed the project of the Concordat with the Holy See and accepted it. It is known in the Vatican and elsewhere with how much sincerity and broad-minded goodwill the Serbians strove to meet the needs and wishes of Catholics living within the borders of Serbia. All future Governments in Serbia will be, we confidently believe, as sincere and broad-minded in religious matters as the Cabinet which has created the Concordat; and it behoves the Orthodox and Catholic clergy to be unanimous in upraising their people in cultural respects, even as during the dark centuries of slavery they were active in awakening the national consciousness and now are unanimous in suffering with their flocks and in the struggle for righteous ideals of freedom and unity.

All we Jugoslavs are sure that there will be harmony and unanimity between the two priesthoods, the two confessions, and the two Churches in the future Serbian State. It is very difficult for us to prove this beforehand. Whatever may now be said or written, people will reserve the right to believe nothing until they see it, just as they reserved their right to believe in Serbia’s physical strength until it could no longer be denied. But we have this conviction because we know ourselves. Our national watchword after this war will be “Love first, and then Logic!”

This watchword should be the watchword for all the Christian Churches, for it is true to the Gospel, to which all the world—now plunged into a terrible war because of logic without love—must eventually return. The fences set up between the Churches are incredibly petty. But it had to be that for a thousand years men lived isolated and secluded within these fences, and for a thousand years there was isolated labour and development, strife and discord, passionate reproach and logical recrimination, much blood and many tears, the sin of Cain, and the ever-repeated Crucifixion of Christ, and in the end the European War became necessary. All this had to be, so that Christian humanity might ripen and grow, and outgrow these petty fences, and that each man might behold his neighbour over the fence, that he might feel his heart, hear his lamentations, and might extend a helping hand over the fence and clasp him in a brother’s embrace. All this was necessary through thousands of years, till Christian men became convinced that the distance between man and his brother is not to be measured by miles, as he had imagined, but by inches! All this had to be, so that all Christian Churches, and all humanity, might repeat with conviction:—

“Love first, and then Logic!”

The Modern Nebuchadnezzar

To all the English doctors and nurses who sacrificed their lives for Serbia the following pages are gratefully inscribed by the author.

“Blessed is he that considereth the poor; the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble.”—Psalm xli. 1.

Nothing is so sublime as tragedy. The happy and lazy Jupiter upon Olympus seems a vulgar being in comparison with the nailed Prometheus. Aristophanes and Molière, the authors of comedies, stand behind Shakespeare, the author of tragedies. Laughter often pollutes the soul, but tears are always cleansing. Since the ancient people of Israel, I see no other people in the world’s history with a more tragical fate than that of the Serbian people. I listen in this country and I hear all around me the talk about the Serbian tragedy. But if an Englishman speaks about the Serbian tragedy, and if I, as a Serbian, speak on the same subject, there is this difference—an Englishman thinks only on the present situation of Serbia, and I think on the whole of the Serbian history.

The present situation in Serbia is indeed more painful than any imaginable tragedy of human life. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem, profaned the national sanctuaries, plundered all the treasures, carried the people of Israel away from the Holy Sion, and put them on the rivers of Babylon to weep over their past and to despair over their future. But you will be wrong if you expect anything else from Nebuchadnezzar, an obscure follower of obscure divinities, Baal and Astarte. Nebuchadnezzar did as he thought and spoke. He was not a preacher of Christ like the Kaiser from Berlin; he did not wash the feet of twelve old men every Holy Thursday as Caesar, His Apostolic Majesty from Vienna, servus servorum Dei does; even he was not Padishah, the son of the Prophet, and the servant of the only God, Allah. Nebuchadnezzar was no hypocrite. That is a merit in this life. He was transformed into an ox, he, the destroyer of Israel. Hereby he was very honoured, for what is more beautiful and sincere than an ox? But Nebuchadnezzar’s colleagues from Berlin, Vienna, Stamboul, and Sofia, the destroyers of Serbia, deserve in no way this honour, to be transformed into oxen. Their transformation shall be not honour but punishment, not beauty but shame. For they have destroyed Serbia, killed children, dishonoured women, executed old ones, plundered towns and made a banquet over desolation, tears, and blood, over the ashes of Serbia, all in the name not of Baal and Astarte, but in the name of God the Righteous, of Allah the Great, and of Christ the Divine.

I have no intention to paint the present situation of Serbia. It is clear to every healthy eye and every feeling heart. But the present situation of Serbia is only one tragic scene in the Serbian tragedy, a very dark scene indeed—winter-midnight without moonlight and stars—but a scene only. The whole of the Serbian tragedy is the whole of the Serbian history.

Our national tragedy, as the tragedy of every hero man, is caused by our external situation and by our internal qualities.

Serbia Always in Somebody’s Pathway

What is our external situation? We are in the route, in the only good route between Europe and Asia. Remember, please: a tragical person is always in somebody’s pathway. The birth of tragedy is conditioned in the first place by geography. A man in a corner is never a tragical hero like his fellow in the middle of the street. Greeks and Bulgars are like a man in the corner. They are protected by their geographical position. The Turks coming from Asia must conquer Serbia before the fall of Constantinople, before the conquering of Bulgaria and Greece. The battle on Kosovofield in 1389 between Serbs and Turks decided not only the fate of Serbia, but of Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, and the whole of the Balkans. We stood in the way; the other nations stood by the way, in the corner. Therefore, the Turks tried to win decisive battles against the Serbs, before they conquered Constantinople, before they conquered Greece and Bulgaria. And they won on Maritza, against King Vukashin, and lost on Plocnik, against the Voivode Milosh, and won again definitely on Kossovofield, against King Lazare. Serbia having lost, everything in the Balkans was lost. Serbia freed, the Balkans were freed. Serbia was the last to be plunged into slavery, she—the first to get up into freedom. She was and she is the key of the situation in the Near East. With this key you can lock and open the doors of the Balkans, even the doors of Asia from Europe and of Europe from Asia. As a sphinx she stood on the way and spoke to the Islamic Drang nach Westen: “Your way goes only over me!” As a sphinx she stands to-day also on the way and speaks to the Teutonic Drang nach Osten: “Only over me!” And she is trodden to-day by European and Christian invaders as she was trodden five hundred years ago by Asiatic and Islamic invaders. It is very painful to see the nation of Schiller, of the great apostle of liberty and spiritual beauty, going the same abominable way and doing the same tyrannic and destructive work as the bloody Turk went and did. But human selfishness is all the same, whether it be covered by the Crescent or by the Cross. I cannot say which suffering for Serbia is the harder, either from Bagdad’s wild Islam rushing westwards, or from Vienna’s and Berlin’s perfidious Christianity rushing eastwards. But if you ask to-day anybody in Bosnia about the administration and prosperity of the country, the unmistakable answer will be: it was much better under the Turkish rule than under the Austro-Hungarian rule. The same answer you will hear in other Jugoslav provinces: in Croatia, Slovenia and Dalmatia. Why? Perhaps because our sincere Slav soul, choosing between two evils, prefers a wolf to a fox. And perhaps because, indeed, the rule of the religious and God-fearing Turk must have been more just and more mild than the rule of the scientific perfidy and atheistic brutality of Germans and their servile pupils, Magyars and Bulgars.

It is characteristic that the great man of this town (this Lecture was delivered before the University of Birmingham) and the very pride of British science, Sir Oliver Lodge, in one of his recent publications, expressed very different observations about Turkey and Austria. He said: “It is a thousand pities that Austria has been dragged into this infamous war, for it seems to treat its provinces remarkably well.” Speaking on Turkey, he refers to the “devastating blight of greedy Turkish misgovernment.” As an admirer of Sir Oliver Lodge, I cannot oppose him. But as a neighbour of Austria and Turkey for thirty-five years of my life, I will say for my part and for the part of all Serbian people: If it please God to put us under anybody’s yoke, then we prefer to be under the Turkish yoke than under the Austrian. But, O great God, make from Serbia rather a Salt Lake, only save her from both these yokes!

I will go on. I speak on our external situation. But it is clear that our external situation consists not solely of our geographical position, which crucified us, which crucified a peasant and pastoral people coming with their flocks from the Carpathian mountains down to the plains of the Danube and Sava, with bucolic joys and naiveté; our external situation consists also of what the world thought about us. That is very important, sometimes decisive—what the people think about us. Did not even Christ Himself ask what men thought about Him?

The Turkish Nietzscheanism

The Turks thought that the Serbs were the most horrible revolutionists, the continual earthquake for their Empire, or, if carried as children and educated as Janizaries in Stamboul, they became the most feared defenders of Padishah and his state. A Sultan once said: “All my Empire, from Mecca and Medina to Shumadia (Serbia) smells like the balsam of roses from Jenet, but Shumadia stinks always like powder in a Sheitan’s workshop.” The Turks from their side wondered why cannot we be quiet under their rule like the other peoples, and we wondered from our side how could we be quiet in chains, surrounded by injustice, overwhelmed by tyranny? We made many revolts, small and great. During our small revolts the Turks held us in contempt, but when the first great Revolution started, a hundred years ago, they feared us. And when they contemned us they were silent about us, and when they feared us they dispersed lies and calumnies about us before Europe and the other ignorant world. “Turkish lies” became proverbial in the Serbian tongue.

“They are only a band of robbers and thieves,” said the Turks to astonished Europe. “For the rest, Serbia is our internal affair.” Too costly was our Insurrection. Our best men among our people have been killed, hanged, burnt. Belgrade’s fortress looked like a forest of spears with the leading men impaled. By day the Dahies and Agas made a promenade in this horrible forest, and by night in this place wandered the dogs and mothers secretly; the dogs to satisfy their appetite, and the mothers to defend the dear martyr-bodies from dogs and to mourn, and if possible to steal them away and to bury them. O, how blessed is that stealing; how sanctified by every religion!

The Turkish watchword was: “We will kill all the Serbians, male and female, except the children under seven years; they will grow up and will be our obedient slaves.” The Pharaoh from Egypt thought more ingeniously as he determined to kill all the new-born children of Israel, hoping so to see all the people gradually dying out. The extermination of the Serbian nation a hundred years ago was not a passionate word only, but an official programme. Remember, please, that this official bloody programme of the Turkish Dahies against the Serbian race was determined and executed methodically and exactly just in the days when the great Pitt spoke eloquently and enthusiastically against the Slavery of Negroes in the House of Commons.

But the Turk and God thought not the same. God intervened and saved Serbia as He saved the Children of Israel of old.

Austria’s Derrière Pensée

Now, what did Austria think about us Serbians? Nothing pure and nothing unselfish. She thought that the Turk must be banished to Asia, and that she would take the rule over the Christian Balkans. She supported and excited our little revolts against our oppressors in order not to liberate us, but in order to compromise the Sultan’s Empire in the eyes of Europe. As soon as we got free by our own moral and physical force, Austria became the chief conspirator against our national freedom. And as she was anxious before to rebuke and compromise the Turkish tyranny in the Christian Balkans, so now she was anxious to rebuke and compromise the Serbian freedom. Certainly it was a very easy business to ridicule a little peasant state coming into being so unexpectedly and standing obstinately independent between two big empires. Between the Sultan’s Empire on one side and the Austrian Caesar’s Empire on the other, little Serbia looked like a small cottage-house between two big London hotels. It was a very easy business for the idle people from Vienna to ridicule our wooden churches and our rough-looking priests, our schools in the shops of tailors and our parliament in a poor monastery, our illiterate kings and our State ministers in peasant’s costume, our generals without gold, and our princesses sitting in the house and spinning and weaving. We looked forward to learn something better from our Christian brethren, and we met only contempt and irony, irony and threats—threats with words: “We will swallow you!” But we thought: “How could you swallow us, if not in the same way as the sea-beast swallowed the prophet Jonah? For five hundred years we have been in the throat of the Asiatic beast, and now we are out in the sunlight again. Could your throat, the ‘Christian’ and the ‘Apostolic,’ keep us any longer than another five hundred years? If yes, all right, we are ready to come in, in the darkness of your throat, in the mill of your teeth, and to wait patiently there for your death and our life. But, dear Christian brethren, take care for your Christian teeth. We are too hard food; they can be broken, your teeth, and we will be very sorry.” So whispered peasant voices from the little cottage between two big old hotels. By the pressure the tragedy is born, very often by the pressure of two monsters against the unsupported one.

Franco-Russian Policy

What did Russia think about us? Russia is a big body, a big light casting a big shadow. Russia as a light reasoned as follows: “The Serbian revolution against the Turk is a very good augur for the future of the Balkans. Both as a Christian and as a Slav country I shall help the Serbian cause.”

But the shadow of Russia replied: “No, we cannot help a hopeless cause. We cannot quarrel with Turkey. You, our Serbian brethren, go to Vienna and ask there for support, for we are Slavs, and, therefore, it will be shocking for the Kaiser of Vienna if we help you as Slavs.” And the Kaiser of Vienna ironically replied to our requests: “You are Slavs, and you must go to the Russians!”

And after both reasonings Russia the Big decided to support us and not to support us, or, in other words, to support us only with a little finger, and for more than seventy years she balanced between to support us and not to support us. We have been very touched even with the little help that Russia gave us. We said: “Thank you, our good sister!” And we went our lonely bloody pathway, “ever sighing, ever singing.”

But after seventy years of our hard fighting and tantalic suffering it happened that the holy Russia gave birth to a daughter named Bulgaria. And the happy mother rejoiced very much and the daughter also. And both the light of Russia and the shadow of Russia have been exceedingly anxious to do everything for their new-born blessing. And both Russias planned to make Bulgaria greater on account not only of Turkey, but also of Serbia, her loyallest friend and most active collaborator in the liberation of Bulgaria. At the Congress of Berlin, the Serbian delegate visited the representative of Russia, who said: “Go and speak to Beaconsfield and Bismarck and Andrassy!” And as the Serbian delegate came to speak to Beaconsfield, Bismarck and Andrassy, they said: “Why do you not go to Prince Gortschakoff?” And our delegate, ashamed, returned to our little cottage. And Serbia trembled and asked: “Who is my true friend in the world?” And the earth was silent, and the poor people read more by hearts than by eyes on the heaven, the stars as the words: “Be confident, I am thy friend!”

What did France think about us? Napoleon admired our persistence in fighting for freedom. But as a son-in-law of Vienna he appreciated much the friendship of the Sultan. So Napoleon—more a fine calculator of his own interests than a true liberator of nations—did not care about the poor cottage so much as about the two hotels suffocating it. In the time of Prince Michael we desired very heartily to approach to France. But it was too much to ask from the chief creator of the freed and united Italy, Napoleon III, to do another similar good and great deed, by creating a freed and united Serbia. In the new epoch of the Franco-Russian alliance the French looked upon us through the Russian eyes, and the Russian Bulgaromanie found in France also many followers.

England’s Good Conscience

What did England think about us? The English people and Mr. Gladstone thought very well. But Serbia has not been in the English “sphere of interests,” or—to speak in a more Christian language—in the English sphere of care, and, therefore, many people in this country thought nothing at all about Serbia. One day—it was twelve years ago—we Serbians committed a great sin, we killed a man and his wife—a king and a queen—and England was the first to cast a stone at us and the last to take this stone away. We have not been angry with England for that reason, but rather deeply ashamed of ourselves. We had always two feelings towards England—respect and fear. When England cast a stone at us and our sin, we felt fear and kept silent. We dared not to apologise ourselves. We kept thoughtful and sorrowful. We thought only and dared not to say at that time what we thought. I, myself, dare now to say it, not as a Serbian, but as a minister of Christ. We thought: “Behold, how England is quick to condemn our sin! She is doubtless right. But, oh! were she so quick also to appreciate our virtues during a century of our hard fighting and suffering! Behold, we sinned before God and England in killing a man and his wife! But who will remind England that the bloody Turk, against whom we fought, and whom she supported more than a hundred years, is killing every day and every night more than one man and one wife among our brethren in Macedonia and Old Serbia, and that in the second big hotel next our cottage, in Austria, with which England stays on good footing, there are Southern Slav provinces, which are transformed into a black pit of the blackest sins of the Governmental apparatus under the protection of the most Christian Emperor?” Certainly, it is most reassuring that there exists a civilised country which can protest at every time against every crime of every nation in the world. But we asked ourselves: “Did England create us to have the right to punish us? Did she educate us? Did she support our liberation or relieve our sufferings? Did she remark our virtues? As we struggled for light against the chaotic powers in south and north was she with us or with these chaotic powers? Has she the right to cast a stone at us?” If she says: “Yes, I have still this right,” we will say—“Amen!”

Now, in this sublime moment, I will say only, that a great part of our Serbian tragedy of to-day is the British tragedy also. Great Britain is to-day fighting shoulder by shoulder with Serbia against all the countries with which the British diplomacy stood always on a more friendly footing than with Serbia. Our Serbian enemies—Turks, Bulgars, Austro-Germans, and Magyars—are now British enemies too. The British soldiers are now washing with their blood in Macedonia what the uninformed men in this country wrote with the pen and spoke with the tongue.

Russia also participates very strongly in the Serbian tragedy. She is going to suffocate her beloved daughter, thirty-seven years old only, called Bulgaria. As she gave birth to this child she was proud, thinking and shouting all over the world that she had brought forth an angel. Many people believed it bona fide in this as in other countries. The noble brothers Buxton have not been isolated in that belief. Unhappily it was not an angel, but a very hornish buffalo-calf. Now the holy and disappointed mother is going to kill her own mischievous fruit. That is the Russian tragic part in our Serbian tragedy.

A Legend

I will finally reply to the question “What was the world thinking about Serbia?”—with a Serbian popular legend. Once in the old times there came on Christmas Day the Archangel Michael from heaven to the earth, and gathered some people and gave them many presents, and said: “Go this road and do any good to any human being.” And on this road was sitting a slave in chains, silent and motionless, like a statue. Around him there were many beasts of all kinds. The archangel invisibly transferred himself on the other end of the road, met the people each after the other, and asked:

“Did you see any human being on your way?”

“No,” replied the first man. “I have seen an iron statue, and many beasts around it, roaring, ‘Give it to us!’ I gave my presents to the beasts.”

He asked the second.

“No,” replied the second man. “I saw only a monster of clay, and many beasts around it, growling, ‘Give it to us!’ I gave my presents to the beasts.”

He asked the third.

“No,” replied the third man. “I saw only a stone with a human image, and many beasts around it, bleating, ‘Give it to us!’ I gave my presents to the beasts.”

He asked the fourth.

“No,” replied the fourth man. “I saw only a silent ghostly figure, and the beasts around, mewing, ‘Give it to us!’ I gave my presents to the beasts.”

The archangel angrily said: “Come on!”

As they came to the place where the slave stood the archangel exclaimed:

“Are you iron?”

No reply.

“Are you clay?”

No reply.

“Are you stone?”

No reply.

“Are you a ghost?”

No reply.

“Are you a man?”

The human figure trembled, and said: “No, I am a slave. But how sweet this question is to hear! For a thousand years I stand here and no human tongue has called me man, not even in a question.”

The archangel took all the presents from the beasts and gave them to the slave. And he turned to the men and said: “God sent you to make men even from iron and clay and stone, and you did the contrary, and made men into iron and clay and stone. Unhappy this Christmas Day is for me and for you.”

And the archangel ascended to heaven.

Realities Regarded as Dreams

Now, I will try to point out some of the internal causes of our tragedy. To somebody in this hall it may seem that I keep you too long. I don’t think so. I will not keep you a long time, not even five hundred minutes, telling you the tragedy which lasted five hundred years. Death was not considered the worst that could happen to a Serbian slave during such a long slavery, and the worst that can happen to you to-night in this brilliant hall, in the fine chairs, under the electric light, is the sleep, the sleep and dream of a tragedy of a nation. Is it not all a dream after all? What is your philosophy of life? “All is shadow and dream,” it is said in a funeral song of ours. I read the other day in a paper: “The constant habit of an Englishman is to belittle everything that is his.” That is true, as it is true that the constant habit of a Serbian is to transform all the realities into dreams, to be-sing everything, every event, every life, and every death. I never met an Englishman boasting about his nation’s grandeur and riches and glory. I oftentimes ask myself: Do the people really know geography? Do they know that their Empire is not a square but a circle on this planet? If they make the comparison between their country and Switzerland or Serbia they have very little reason to be so modest and grumbling over themselves. Of course, it is quite a different thing if they will compare their country with Mars, or the Moon, or Jupiter. But what is England, what Serbia, what all the troubles that we call history? Little episodes in time and space! The main difference between the Englishman and the Serbian consists in the fact that the Englishman tries to transform his dreams into realities, and the Serbian tries to transform the reality into dreams. What could a free and big and undisturbed and happy people like the English do, indeed, if not to create the realities out of their dreams, thoughts, ideals, chimeras? And, on the other hand, how could the Serbian race, enslaved, tyrannised, despised through centuries and centuries, conserve its existence if it did not look upon all the brutal reality as upon a dream, a transitory shadow, a cloud of smoke hiding the face of the sun.

“To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering,” says the great poet of “Paradise Lost.” We Serbians feared and shamed always the weakness either in doing or in suffering. You have heard that the Serbians are a poetical people. It is true. But it was a necessity for the Serbian slaves to sing so as to transform the reality into dream, and so as to get the necessary strength to endure in suffering—to be strong in suffering and in doing. I am not a follower of Darwin, but I am sure that a great part of his theory can be proved just by our Serbian history. Our poetical instinct was latent in the time of our happiness and glory before the tragedy of Kosovofield. We did not sing so much during the time of our freedom. But in the dark time of the Turkish rule our capacity to sing developed brilliantly and abundantly. With sighing came singing also. Only by the developed poetical instinct we became “fit” to “survive” our superhuman suffering, to survive five hundred years of crucifixion and imprisonment of soul and body. We dreamed and dreamed, and we sung and sung; and the more we dreamed and sung, the further we stood from the ugly reality. Like an animal which sleeps all the winter through, dreaming two summers—the past and the coming—we Serbians also, living a cold and dark winter of slavery through, dreamed two summers—the summer of the past glory and the summer of the coming freedom. Now, just when you think that I have too far deviated from my subject, I am at the right point to explain how one of our internal qualities became one of the causes of our tragedy in the modern time. After our partial liberation, a hundred years ago, we still remained poets and dreamers. We had not the right sense for the reality. Poets and dreamers, we could not transform ourselves at once into the real politicians and practical organisers of the State, as a bird from the desert coming in the forest cannot at once change its grey feathers into green.

The Art of Self-Advertisement

Our great emotionalism, excited by the long suffering, was quite an inconvenient quality for the real politics. Into every affair we put as much heart as brains, or even more heart than brains. We cannot manipulate in the politics with all those means and methods by which the nations of the “reinen Vernunft” are so coolly playing, jumping, getting and losing, and again getting. An English friend of mine asked me one day: “Why did not you Serbians make such an active propaganda in England for your cause, as the Bulgars did, for so many years? Why did you not speak and write about yourselves and advertise the people about your country, and get friends and supporters of your rights?” I reply simply: “Because we could not.” Yes, indeed, we could not. We are a silent, melancholic and discreet people. We are far from imposing ourselves on anybody. We are too proud of our history, of our great heroes and their immortal deeds to look upon politics as upon an acrobatic, skilful game. The Bulgars have the advantages—or disadvantages in our eyes—they have been freed not by themselves, and they have had kings not of their own people. They have been cherished and recommended by Russia, and as every cherished child they are too talkative. And having their kings from Austria, they have been educated during the last thirty-seven years quite in the Austrian manner of thinking and doing and making politics. Russia gave them the body, and Austria breathed her spirit into this body. In the modern political acrobacy the kings played a very important part. The imperialistic Germany knew it better than the democratic France and England. Germany’s conviction was that it is better to have a German king in the Near East than a dreadnought. I suppose that now France and England also are convinced that a German king in the Balkans—whether his name be Ferdinand or not—represents a more destructive force than any dreadnought or any howitzer. These German kings, our neighbours, and their next great protector, the Emperor from Vienna, with their unscrupulous political game, with their quick monkey’s face changing, with their infernal conspiracies and intrigues against Serbia, were for our peasant people the representatives of the European culture. Our people looked upon these German Kulturträger, and have been disappointed and disgusted, and, therefore, also reserved and sceptic in regard to all the cultured peoples of Europe, but the reserved and sceptical make no friends. The German kings of our neighbouring nations have been a laisser passer to them for Western Europe. Our kings descended not from the European noblesse; they have been our noble peasants, without kinsmen outside from Serbia, without riches, and, consequently, without influence on the politics-making potencies. That was our disadvantage in the political game of the world. But still we considered it as sounder and more harmonious to have a king of our own people. It was doubtless a fine thought, but also a pathway of greater suffering.

Did you read the other day that the Kaiser is anxious to find a new German prince for the throne of Serbia? He thinks seriously to continue the same game with the little nations and his royal protégés. But the German game is no secret any more for anybody in the world, and the Kaiser rather should be anxious to think where to house to-morrow the German Royal refugees from the Near East!

Bad and Good Results of Fatalism

Besides, our misfortune is partly due to our fatalism. We are greater fatalists than any Christian nation. The explanation of our fatalism lies in our sufferings. Suffering makes infallibly a man a fatalist. A happy man is never a fatalist. We suffered horribly through all our history, from our furious enemies, as well as from our half-and-half friends. I was witness of a touching scene a year ago in a hospital of a little town in Serbia. I saw an English nurse, sick of typhus, lying in bed. A Serbian old lady stood at the bed and bitterly wept. “Why do you weep?” I asked. “How not to weep, sir?” replied the lady. “She, poor one, came from so far to suffer and perhaps to die here. Why did she come in this country of suffering? The suffering is our part and not the English.” That is a very popular thought in Serbia: the suffering is our Serbian part more than anybody else’s. The whole of our popular philosophy is founded on the conception of suffering.

“In suffering only the true hero can be recognised,” says a Serbian proverb. Fatalism is like opium. It enables the slaves to endure in suffering. But it hinders the free men from acting freely and progressively. Our fatalism was our friend during the time of our slavery, but it was our enemy during the newest epoch of our history. Fatalism, together with our melancholy and poetical sensibility are our qualities; very useful qualities, indeed, for great deeds and sufferings, but very unwelcomed qualities for clever political propaganda, for minute social organisation, detailed advertisement, and quick diplomatic game. We have more capacity to hunt a lion than to catch a fly. Therein is our force, but therein is our weakness also. That is a humoristic side of our tragedy. In his admirable lecture on “Humour in Tragedy,” Sir Herbert Tree proved how the humour is important for a perfect tragedy. “At this time,” he said, “it is only the force and calm of humour which can stay us from crossing the borderland which separates despair from madness.” The happy people of Piccadilly Circus joked the other day to our poor Serbian Government with words: “The Serbian Government is now scooting to Scutari!”

We Smile and Hope After All

The most divine thing in a tragedy, after suffering, is a smile. Even Christ smiled Himself in the time of His agony in the garden, seeing “a great multitude with swords and staves coming out as against a thief.” A smile in a tragedy makes the tragedy greater. We Serbians are now smiling to our friend of old—death—who is now making in our country a rich harvest by the sword of the Kaiser, as it did five hundred years ago by the sword of the Sultan. With a smile, we are asking: “Where is indeed the human progress? A Christian Kaiser does to-day the same diabolic destruction of Serbia as a Mohammedan Sultan did half a thousand years ago. Where is the progress?”

With a smile we see now that this strip of Albania which was called three years ago the Serbian window of the Adriatic is now the whole of Serbia. The whole of Serbia in a window!

With a smile we are wondering how it happened that we are perishing in the very great and exceptional moment in history as we happily got to have as real allies and supporters great Russia, England, and France?

With a smile we are asking: “In what regard is our century better than the century of Nebuchadnezzar, the great ox-king, or king-ox, from Babylon?”

And still we hope. We are fighting for Freedom and Justice. Our fighting for such ideals could be a definite failure only in the case if there were no God. But there is a God; the whole of Serbia believes in a God. Our fighting cannot be a failure, as our God cannot be a chimera.

When I speak here Death is at work in Serbia, paving Serbia with dead corpses, making from Serbia a mournful cemetery, a “valley of Death.” Serbia is now very similar to a cemetery, full of silence, bones, and hyenas. Still, the last act of a great tragedy is not Death but Resurrection. I don’t believe that Serbia will entirely die. But if that should happen, even for a short time, I would write on the sacred tomb of my martyred country the most suitable epitaph: “Here rests a loyal friend of England.”

Colophon

The Soul of Serbia
by St. Nikolaj Velimirović.

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The text is set in Palatino and Georgia.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 16, 2026.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- The Soul of Serbia

- Killers of the Body Are Not Killers of the Soul

- The Modern Killers of the Body
- Our Soul Is Full of Tears
- Serbia Is the Little America
- Beautiful Death
- The Triumph of the Soul
- We Cannot Command Success
- The Struggle Between Super-Man and All-Man
- Before and After the Battle of Kosovo

- The Insurrection of the Humble Against the Proud

- Democracy and Heroism in Theory and Practice

- A Hard Struggle for a Great Idea—That Is All

- Always True to Her Own Self
- Religion and Nationality in Serbia
- The Jugoslav Ideal
- The Catholic Clergy as National Leaders
- Austrian Reaction
- Two Great Bishops
- The Legacy of Strossmayer
- The Southern Slavs Under Austrian Terrorism
- Religion as a Unifying Force
- A Plea for Christian Charity
- The Modern Nebuchadnezzar
- Serbia Always in Somebody's Pathway
- The Turkish Nietzscheanism
- Austria's Derrière Pensée
- Franco-Russian Policy
- England's Good Conscience
- A Legend
- Realities Regarded as Dreams
- The Art of Self-Advertisement
- Bad and Good Results of Fatalism
- We Smile and Hope After All
- Colophon