M. E. Durham

“ Powers burked this.
The war was over. All through I used to say to myself: "War is so obscene, so degrading, so devoid of one redeeming spark, that it is quite impossible there can ever be a war in West Europe." This was the one thing that consoled me in the whole bestial experience. War brings out all that is foulest in the human race, and the most disgusting animal ferocity poses as a virtue. As for the Balkan Slav and his vaunted Christianity, it seemed to me all civilization should rise and restrain him from further brutality. ”

“ Njegushi cannot fail to make a most vivid impression on the mind, for it is the entrance to a world that is new and strange. The little stone-paved room of the inn, hung with portraits of the Prince and the Tsar and Tsaritsa of Russia; the row of loaded revolvers in the bar; the blind minstrel who squats by the door and sings his long monotonous chant while he scrapes upon his one-stringed gusle; and the tall, dignified men in their picturesque garb, all belong to an unknown existence, and the world we have always known is left far below at the foot of the mountain. ”

“ But the ballads of Grand Voyvoda Mirko—King Nikola of Montenegro's father—gloating over slaughter, telling of the piles of severed heads, of the triumph with which they were carried home on stakes and set around the village, and the best reserved as an offering to Nikola himself for the adornment of Cetinje; and the stripping and mutilating of the dead foe, give us a vivid picture of life resembling rather that of Dahomey, than Europe in 1860.
In the breast of every human being there is a wolf. It may sleep for several generations. ”

“ Across the gold-brown plain rise the blue mountains where lies that invisible line the frontier. The slim minarets of the old Turkish town shoot up and shimmer white on sky and mountain; the river Ribnitza flows between the old town and the new, and over the bridge passes an endless stream of strange folk, the villagers of the plain and the half-wild natives of the Albanian mountains passing from the world of the Middle Ages to a place which feels, however faintly, the forces of the twentieth century. ”

“ Grass grows knee-high in streets that, even now, are thickly strewn with rusty fragments of shells; beautiful pieces of mouldings and a window or two tell of the old town of the Venetians, and the remains of fresco still fade and crumble on the church walls. Man has departed, and nature has stepped in, and is surely and silently finishing the work of destruction. We wandered for an hour in this ghostly spot, looking over the battlements, a sheer drop into the valley below, wrestling with the vegetation, and haunted by a feeling that in spite of the blue sky and sunshine none of it was real. ”

“ I lay awake for hours thinking of the fate of thousands of human beings dependent on such men as Petar Karageorgevitch, with his blood-stained hands; his hoary father-in-law, Nikola, weaving spider webs; the decadent Russian, fanatical and cruel; the Levantine Slav, agent of France; the Italians like a pack in full cry with the victim in sight; the Greek Varatassi mainly playing bridge, but plotting behind the scenes with the Greek bishop, and probably with Essad too. All bent on war, and meaning to have it in some form. ”

“ In Turkey it is grey desolation; the untilled land, the wretched Christian peasantry, the squalid huts, sodden and soaked, seem all rotting together in a land whereon the sun will never shine again. We splashed on. No one took any notice of us, for we were going to market. The Turkish blockhouses, "half an hour apart" along the frontier, were left behind us. We slopped past a yellow guard-house and more gaunt Nizams and rode into Berani, a small town of, for the most part, crooked houses of timber and mud, a wide main street, a large market-place, two wooden mosques, and a fortress. ”

“ For me this war is the struggle of the Slav and the Teuton for the only unexploited lands in Europe. We always knew it would come. But in the past we have never reckoned that England will range herself with Russia and permit her to take Constantinople. That would mean the end of Roumania, of Bulgaria, of Serbia, of us, and of you, too, Gospodjitza, if you are not careful. Therefore we ranged ourselves with Austria. Those who have travelled in Austria know that the Slavs there are richer, better educated, and better off in every way than we poor devils of Serbia and Montenegro. ”

“ The road from Cattaro to Cetinje has been so often written of that it is idle to describe it once again, nor can any words do it justice. After some three hours' climbing, we pass the last Austrian black-and-yellow post, and the driver, if he be a son of the mountain, points to the ground and says, "Crnagora!" (Tsernagora) . Crnagora, gaunt, grey, drear, a chaos of limestone crags piled one on the other in inextricable confusion, the bare wind-swept bones of a dead world. The first view of the land comes as a shock. ”

“ What surprised him most was that the English thought Russia a Great Power and were even afraid of her. I explained that Russia was a monster ready to spring on our Indian frontier—that she possessed untold wealth and countless hordes. He laughed scornfully. In halting German he said "Russia is nothing—nothing. The wealth is underground. They have not the sense to get it. Their Army is large, but it is rotten. All Russia is rotten. If there is a war the Russian Army will be—will be—" he stammered for a word—"will be like this!" ”

“ Quantities of cut glass chandeliers hang from the roof, and from these again dangle numbers of ostrich eggs. Dim gilt ikons and holy pictures, blackened by the tapers that with pious zeal are stuck on their frames by a blob of hot wax, hang on the walls. Reading desks, taper stands, candle-sticks, all are of the most early pattern and the rudest make. A curious seat, under a canopy hung with dingle-dangles, is the throne upon which was crowned Stefan Dechanski, the Sveti Kralj. And this curious primitive art, that now looks exotic, Eastern, foreign, once swayed the art of all Europe. ”

“ Small wonder that in May 1913 the Montenegrins boasted to me: "We, the Serb nation, are a danger to Europe. We have all the Russian army with us, and shall take what we choose." Small wonder, too, that Austria, realizing she must soon fight for her very existence against a very strong combine, approached Italy in September 1913 and asked what would be her attitude in case of an Austrian war with Serbia. Italy, who was already dabbling with the Entente, though nominally a member of the Triple Alliance, replied: "Such a war would be a most dangerous adventure." ”

“ There is nothing more characteristic of the up-country tribesman than those ever-searching eyes. I have met him many a time in the Montenegrin markets, in the weekly bazaar in his capital, and on the prowl with his rifle far in the country. Up hill or down hill, over paths that are more like dry torrent beds, it is all the same to him; he keeps an even, swift pace, and he watches all the time. Dressed as he is, in tightly-fitting striped leg-gear and in a short black cape, his appearance is extraordinarily mediæval, and he seems to have stepped straight out of a Florentine fresco. ”

“ The Dutch officers, who had flung away their uniforms and bolted down to Valona in civilian dress before the Greek onrush, gave terrible accounts of the mass of struggling refugees in their flight across the mountains; the dead and dying children en route; the aged falling by the wayside; the jam of desperate creatures in a pass; the hideous cruelties of the advancing Greeks. It had been impossible, said the Dutch officers, to hold Koritza with irregular troops against an army with artillery. ”

“ The street is dead still till a sword clanks and the patrol marches past. The lights are extinguished in the mosque. The darkness is dense and dead, and there is no sound. It is only nine o'clock, but all Skodra seems asleep.
Skodra the town, as distinguished from the bazaar, has not a great deal to show. It is a big town with some 40,000 inhabitants, and as all houses of any size stand in a large yard or garden, it covers much space. Here every man's house is his castle, and the high walls are not only for seclusion but for defence. ”

“ The whole guilt rests with Serbia, for it was she who broke her pledged word and threw down the glove.
Kosovo Day was a melancholy spectacle. Nothing is more dolorous than a people forced "to rejoice" by an army of occupation. All shops are shut, and the population summoned to church to celebrate the "freeing" of the land. Once how pleased I should have been. Now I have seen and know too much! The people of Ochrida had to officially rejoice that their nationality was destroyed, though it had survived some six centuries of the Turk. ”

“ Coming as I did, straight from Cetinje, I spent the first few days in wondering whether the very dark, short people who crowded the trams of Belgrade, for lack of energy to walk up the street, were really blood-relations of the long-legged giants who stride tirelessly over the crags of Montenegro with never a sob. ”

“ The more I saw of the Albanians and of the Slav intrigues for their destruction, the more I thought Albania worthy of help. The enterprising and industrious Albanian was worth a dozen of the conceited idle Montenegrins. Except Prince Nikola and the hotelier Vuke Vuletitch, it was hard to find a Montenegrin in Cetinje who used his brains—if he had any. An educated Albanian is often a highly cultivated man, whereas even Lobatcheff was forced to admit that Paris and Petersburg could not make more of a Montenegrin than a Petar Plamenatz or a Marusitch. ”

“ In the bazaar down by the river, with its maze of narrow crooked streets, its crazy wooden booths and its vile pavement, life goes on much as it did with us ages ago. Each trade has its own quarter, as in all Eastern bazaars. And narrow ways, called Mercery Street, Butchers' Row, Goldsmiths' Alley, in many an English town, still tell of the time when so it was in England, in days when timber was as cheap, streets as crooked and narrow, and pavement as bad as they are now in Skodra. ”

“ Serbia throughout the nineteenth century was rent by the ceaseless blood-feud between the Karageorgevitches and the Obrenovitches, a history bloody as that of the Turkish Sultans, the results of which are not yet over—one that has so largely influenced the fate of yet unborn generations that we must understand its outlines in order to follow modern events. ”

“ The plain is very obviously the bed of the now shrunken lake of Skodra, and the water-worn pebbles are covered with but a thin layer of soil. But both maize and tobacco seem to do well upon it, and every year more land is taken into cultivation. The rough land is covered with wiry turf and low bushes, and swarms with tortoises which graze deliberately by the roadside. The river Moracha has cut itself a deep chasm in the loose soil between us and the town, and tears along in blue-green swirls and eddies. ”

“ The doctor, a Dalmatian Slav, looked at them sadly. "Why do you do these things?" he asked. "You are forcing on war. You will ruin Austria. We admire everything English, except your Dreadnoughts. Each time you build one, we of the Triple Alliance are forced to build one too. We Austrians have no colonies, and never want any. We need no navy. We are already overtaxed, and the breaking-point must come one day. You eat us up with your terrible wealth. To my mind all Europe is mad. We have one common danger—the peoples of Africa and Asia, who are developing rapidly. ”

“ Two slim minarets show that it was once Mohammedan, and a fat new church, bloated with cupolas, proclaims its orthodoxy. The buffalo carts in the streets, the variety of peasant costume, the wild luxuriance of crimson roses in the Park, the pretty wooden trellis bridge over the river, the number of houses still remaining with screened windows, the silver filigree workers and the veiled women give it picturesqueness and a dash of the Orient; but you must not tell it so, unless you wish to hurt its feelings. If a long pedigree be a claim to respect, Nish deserves much ”

“ A fundamental doctrine of the Great Serb Idea is a refusal to recognize that history existed before the creation of the Serb Empire, or even to admit that Balkan lands had owners before the arrival of the Serbs. Nothing infuriates a "Great Serbian" more than to suggest that if he insists on appealing to history another race has a prior claim to the land, and that in any case the Great Serbia of Stefan Dushan lasted but twenty years. ”

“ When he had finished, and the cavern was a-twinkle with tiny flames, he approached the shrine. Removing the covering, he fumbled with the lock, opened it, and then threw back the lid slowly and respectfully. There lay the embalmed body of the saint; the slipper-clad feet, the embroidered robes, and the gold crucifix on the breast, only, showing. Modern science and ancient faith had combined for perhaps the first and the last time, and the face and hands of the saint were neatly covered with carbolised cotton-wool. I was jolted back into the twentieth century with a rough shock. ”

“ You cannot get a native to tell you folk-tales while you draw the interior of his hut, if a policeman is sitting waiting till it is done. Nor can you live with a family and see its habits. Just as I had plodded round Serbia in spite of the police, so I would not be put off Bosnia, but to this day I regret the great amount of most interesting material that was there at my hand and which I could not gather. Bosnia was a mine of old-world lore and belief. As in Serbia, however, it was obvious that there was something the authorities wanted to conceal. ”

“ A row of hoary old war-dogs had come out to sun themselves and see what sort of a show the younger generation made; grand old boys—long, lean, sinewy, with white hair and bright deep-set eyes, their old war medals on the breasts of their ragged coats; some of them arrayed martially for the occasion with silver-mounted handjars, or flintlocks, thrust in their sashes. And about the Serdar's popularity with young and old there was no mistake. He introduced me to the old soldiers. The Montenegrins' pride in the veterans who have helped to redeem the land is very touching. ”

“ I went to the Montenegrin Consulate and found Petar Plamenatz almost in tears with a red-hot proclamation of Prince Nikola's in his hands, calling on all Serbs of all countries to unite and denounce the breaking of the Berlin Treaty, and laying great stress on the fact that all his ancestors were buried in the Herzegovina, which was now seized by Austria. Petar was of opinion that war was inevitable, otherwise all the plans of the Serbs for Great Serbia were ruined. Serbs and Montenegrins must act as brothers. ”

“ A bas-relief of Diana—a mediocre enough specimen of art—lies among the bushes on a bank, gaining a strange pathos from her surroundings, as she stares with stony eyes, the only survivor of the dead capital. All around stand the everlasting hills, keeping majestic watch over the ruins which have seen the passing of two empires, and the river tears along through a stony chasm hard by, and the lean rugged figures of the one or two peasants among the ruins only add to the loneliness. ”

“ In the Balkans you may change your mind any number of times, but you never change your sky full of Power-clouds.
All Europe was represented at Scutari, as in Cetinje, but by Consuls, not Ministers. A difference mainly in name, for they were there for the same purpose, and in Turkish territory even a Vice-Consul, if of an energetic and bullying nature, had almost as much influence as a Minister Plenipotentiary. For the Turks lived in terror of the Great Powers who squatted round the edge waiting an opportunity to pounce, and allowed consuls to do things unthinkable in any other land. ”

“ The peasants load their beasts—they are adepts at pack-saddling and you rarely see a sore back—and trail slowly across the plains towards their mountain homes. The bazaar is shut up, darkness comes on fast, and belated foot passengers pick their way with lanterns.
Night in Skodra is uncanny. The half-dozen tiny oil lamps do not light it at all. When there is no moon, the darkness is impenetrable and absolute, save perhaps for a long streak of light from the door-chink of the next shop and the lighted windows of the mosque opposite. ”

“ With a grotesque lack of a sense of the fitness of things, the Turkish army, when it has a washing-day, uses the largest graveyard as a drying-ground, and a shirt or a pair of drawers flaps on each tombstone. It was not until I saw this sight that I had any idea that the Turkish soldiers ever had a washing-day. A lean, unkempt, ragged lot of poor dirty devils with scowling faces, they look more as if returning from a disastrous campaign than as if quartered in the barracks of the capital. ”

“ The cavemen and the prehistoric lake-dwellers cannot have lived less luxuriously than do these strange wild folk now, in Europe in the twentieth century. When I met them upon the road, they seemed to have walked out of another age, another world. Untrustworthy and dishonest are the mildest terms applied to them, and they are said to be responsible for a large proportion of the crime of the land. More extraordinary than their filth and their savagery, more wonderful than their superb vitality, is their marvellous gift—a gift that amounts to genius—for playing stringed instruments. ”

“ In bad winter weather they are often unable to return, and are put up at the school for many nights. Or there will pass a gang of Albanian horse-dealers, their tight striped leg-gear, their scarlet sashes and shaven heads looking outlandish even in this out-of-the-way spot. Sitting high on their saddles, they amble smartly past, driving a herd of ponies in front of them. The Albanian does not let the grass grow under his feet, and his movements are full of nervous energy.
Wildest of all in appearance are the gipsies—brown untamed animals, long, lean, sinewy, and half-clad. ”

“ The church, which dates from the days of the Great Tsar Dushan (circa 1350) , alone has survived the warring of the nations. Used as a powder magazine by the Turks and all the interior decoration destroyed, the exquisite details of its tracery still make Krushevatz worth a journey; its delicate pierced work, round windows laced with stone, strange monsters and wild Byzantine fancies—in a word, its barbaric imaginativeness, struck me as more characteristic of its land and times than anything I met with in Servia. ”

“ Now I never cross his frontier without hoping soon to be able to witness his departure from Europe.
A shattered fortress frowns on the hill, a row of ramshackle buildings lines the shore, a filthy crowd fills the custom-house steps. Scutari—Albanese, Skodra at last. Time rolls back from the invisible boundary against which the centuries have beaten in vain, and before us lies the land of a prehistoric people and the life of past ages. Canoes big and little come paddling out in a scrambling hugger-mugger ”

“ Milosh is dead that slew Tsar Murad, and dead also is Banovich Strahinja that fought knee-deep in blood. All lie dead on the field at Kosovo; all save Yuk Brankovich, whose name be for ever accursed. He betrayed the Emperor; upon the field of battle he betrayed all glorious Lazar!"
On the hill in the midst of Krushevatz there stands one shattered lonely fragment of the white castle up against the sky—all that is left of Tsar Lazar's palace. But time has worked its revenges, and the Turkish mosque that was built of its stones in the town below is now too but a heap of ruins. ”

“ Here in the market the pigs were the most important personages present, and knew it. They are great woolly beasts, some of fair complexion, beautifully curly as to their backs. Their snouts are long and unringed. Being of a highly practical nature, the first thing they did on arriving at the market field was to dig themselves cubby-houses. Those that were lucky enough to find a hole full of water sat in it, and were supremely happy. Some quite small mud-holes were packed with pigs lying on the black ooze and crammed together like sardines in oil. ”

“ Civilisation brings knowledge and many, many wonders, but it does not bring happiness. These poor good people, they have no idea what life is out in the great world, and it is coming to them. And I know what it means, this civilisation. I have lived in Paris—in Paris, savez-vous," he said vehemently. "All I can do is to help them to keep their faith. Till now they have lived with God and the mountains. Here they come to me, the poor, the afflicted, they come to me for help. Some nights I give shelter to as many as fifteen wayfarers. ”

“ Thou shalt not go to the fight at Kosovo. Thou shalt yield up thy banner and remain with me at Krushevatz." But Boshko the barjaktar replied unto her, "Go thou to the white tower, my sister. Not for all Krushevatz would I return with thee, nor will I give up my standard, that all men may say 'Boshko Jugovich is afear'd; he dare not go to Kosovo to shed his blood for the cross and to die with his fellows,'" And he spurred his horse through the gates. Then followed old Yug Bogdan and seven sons in battle array and all in order, and they would not look upon her. ”

“ I have seen a large sow walking with dignity down the middle of the road, followed by a number of human retainers, each carrying one of her piglets like a baby in arms, while she set the pace, stopped to grubble at anything that interested her, and looked back from time to time with her beady little eyes to see that her infants were being properly cared for. ”

“ The rest of the journey along the beautiful valley of the Tara was easy and uneventful, and we reached Kolashin early in the evening. Kolashin is tiny, primitive, and most kindly. Rich grass meadows surround it; wooded hills, thick with fir and beech, ring it round, and over them tower the rugged blue peaks of the mountains; a new Switzerland waiting to be explored. Timber is cheap, the houses are I wood-roofed with shingles which bleach to a warm silver-grey, and the upper storeys of such houses as possess them are mainly of wood. We pulled up at the door of a small drink-shop. ”

“ SKODRA.
I have no space to describe the dresses of the various tribes; the women with stiff, straight, narrow skirts boldly striped with black that recall forcibly the dresses upon the earliest Greek vases; the great leathern iron-studded belts; the women with cowries in their hair; the wild men from the mountains in huge sheepskin coats with the wool outside; town Christian women blazing in scarlet and white, masses of gilt coins, silver buttons and embroidery ”