Janko Sršeň

“ When they start to shoot, he will lie in a hole, and as soon as they stop he will go over to them.”
“Anything may happen in the war.”
“Oh, no, they won’t kill our papa. When the Cossacks get to him and he will say: ‘Brothers, I am going with you,’ and you will see they won’t kill him. Why the Russians are our brothers, too,” Janik assured his mother. ”

“ In the house there is a living room, a small kitchen and a tiny bedroom from which a little window looks out on the street through a fence covered with bean plants, and in the house lives an old widow.
For two months she received no news from her only son, who had been taken into the army. Every morning she went out before the gate and watched for the mail carrier.
“Please look once more, Andrew—” she begged the mail man, “perhaps there is a little card in there from my Jožko. He has been such a good boy and he surely could not have forgotten me. ”

“ In Russia he was active as a journalist and was sent to the United States a year ago with messages from the Slovaks in Russia.
*****
The stories given below were written by him in Russia in the early days of the war and give a key to the sentiments of the Slovak peasants, when the war started.
Dusk was falling.
On the street corners posters were put up. Men and women crowded around them and stared at them. ”