M. A. Stobart

“ Everything in Nature points to the sky except man, who keeps his eyes upon the ground. I stood for a precious moment of uplifting, then I returned to crawl, and creep, and stumble, during that day, in mud worse than any yet encountered. But I wanted to take a photograph of the starting of the column. The group of men, women, and pack ponies, all in flight—emblems of this transient life—outlined, in the frail light, against the dark mountains—emblems of eternity. I placed my whip, and gloves, upon the ground whilst I took the photo. ”

“ The fate of humankind, whilst this war lasts, is in the balance. The fight between the Allies and the Central Powers is not merely a struggle between one form of civilisation and another; between a society which believes in full-blown militarism, and a society which believes in a milder form of militarism. There is more than that at stake. The struggle is between militarism and human evolution. ”

“ Our skeleton column was followed by other skeleton columns, and during all that day we tramped and splashed, and slipped, and scrambled, over rocks, and through scrub, in mud, and over slopes of ice and snow—a route impossible for carts.
Roads had now ceased, and even the tracks were only those which had been trampled by the multitudes in front of us; over passes 5,000 feet high; between mountains 8,000 feet high; through snow, ice, boulders, unbroken forest, mud-holes, bridgeless rivers. And always those pitiless mountains glaring at the tragedy ”

“ And never for a moment had the sounds ceased, of the creaking of wagons, and the squish, squish of oxen-hoofs pressing glutinous mud. Sometimes my horse would stumble, in the dark, over a little flock of sheep that was being driven with a convoy for the purposes of food; or a scared and tiny shrew mouse, absorbed in its own affairs, would dart across the road and escape death by a miracle. ”

“ We had been in luck's way here, with plenty of wood, and that, to a Serbian, is almost of as much importance as bread. I think that perhaps one of the reasons why Serbian soldiers disliked Montenegro, was the universal lack of firewood. War brings men back to primitive ideas, or lack of ideas, about things. For those engaged in war, a tree is never an oak, a beech, a willow, a fir, the marvellous result of growth and decay, birth and death, in mysterious process, during hundreds of years—a thing of beauty to be admired—it is firewood. ”

“ The kolo and the gusla are to Serbia, what the reel and the bagpipes are to Scotland. The kolo, like Serbian music and Serbian literature, reflects the spirit of their tragic history; even when the steps grow quicker with increased excitement, the feet are scarcely lifted from the ground; the movements are never movements of joy; the high kick, the leap, the spring, indicative of a light heart, are always absent. ”

“ The beauty of Nature depends, for each one of us, upon what the mind reads into it, and the mountains of Montenegro, reflected from every stone, the hungry hearts of an exiled people.
By the evening we were amongst the hill-tops; the mountains of Montenegro and Albania were all around us, naked, precipitious, and inhospitable rocks, with occasional gloomy forests of beech, and fir trees, interspersed. Majestic, magnificent, and the magnitude of outlook, wonderful, no doubt, but my heart refused to praise this sarcophagus of hope. How could mountains be beautiful which enclosed such sorrow? ”

“ The Serbian people whom I had met during the first six months had appealed strongly to me. Lovers of poetry and of peaceful arts; intelligent and imaginative; impressionable to new ideas; warm-hearted, gay, with a keen sense of humour; brave as soldiers, courageous as citizens; responsive to the best within reach, whilst aiming at ideals possibly beyond reach: how could they fail to awaken a sympathetic response? Is there any other of the Balkan nations which could more safely be entrusted [295] with responsibility for the evolution of culture in the Near East, than our youngest ally? ”

“ The idea of votes for women, or justice for women, is not here my concern; the idea, which, as a result of my small experiences, engulfs all others, is the necessity of votes for life, justice for humankind. This can only be achieved by the suppression of war, and wars will never be suppressed by men alone. Man, says Bacon, loves danger better than travail; man, says Nietzsche, loves danger better than play. Men still regard battles as magnified football scrums; war is still for many men a glorified sport, as letters from the soldiers at the front daily testify. ”

“ Serbia had existed during 500 years of material annihilation under Turkish rule. Through all that wilderness of time, the ideal of freedom had been her pillar of cloud by [310] day, and of fire by night, pointing to the Promised Land. Serbia is again in the wilderness, and the same light guides and cheers her. She is full of courageous faith, because she understands that a nation means, primarily, not physical country (mountains, rivers, valleys) , not State, not Government, but a free and united spirit. ”

“ The Bulgars had taken Vranya, the Germans were at Valievo, and also at Michaelovatz, close behind us. The Serbs had been badly beaten in the morning. An unending stream of refugees passed along the road, and whole families of women and children, babies in arms, infants that could just toddle, boys and young girls, all sheltered at night near us in the wood, constructing as best they could, rough arbours of branches, for protection from rain and wind. We had no time for practical sympathy with these forlorn people, who would, in all probability, never see their homes or their menfolk again. ”

“ As the physical difficulties of the route increased, the difficulty, for all the columns, of securing bread for men, and hay for oxen, and for horses, increased also, with the result that the track became more and more thickly lined, with the dead bodies of oxen, and of horses, and worse still—of men. Men by the hundred lay dead: dead from cold and hunger by the roadside, their eyes staring at the irresponsive sky; and no one could stop to bury them. But, worse still, men lay dying by the roadside, dying from cold and hunger, and no one could stay to tend them. ”

“ Likewise, man, the evolutionary keystone in a process of marvels which we can only dimly divine, is not a human body, the shrine of an immortal soul: he is a soldier, reared like a pheasant, to be shot. And yet the Churches, which should lead the evolutionary movement of progress, adopt the attitude of the lamb before the shearers, and raise no protest. The human race flatters itself that it is advancing in civilisation: it mistakes the movement of the merry-go-round for progress. ”

“ The priests stood in line behind the coffin, facing the altar, and chanted their prayers in the old Slavonic language, common to Serbia, Bulgaria and Russia, and the trained choir of men and women in the gallery behind, sang exquisite responses. The music—a great surprise—was enchanting; it produced that atmosphere of faith and divine love, of which the best music is a revelation, and bad music the negation. Better no music than bad music in churches. ”

“ Colson and Jordan cheered it on with bundles of hay, and a touch of stick, and brought it into our night's camp. This latter was in a thick beech wood. The ground was our bed, and the dead beech leaves were our mattresses. During the night we had a scare of Arnauts, when a number of men rushed past us, shouting excitedly, but they were only in pursuit of a thief. If he was caught, he would be shot; if he was not caught, he would die of starvation. Death! Death! everywhere. Always Life fleeing from Death, and always Life overtaken in the end. ”

“ The night was now pitch dark, though there should have been a moon, and as we moved away from the slight shelter of some haystacks, into the road, the heavens shook, and thunder, lightning, wind, and hailstones, hurled themselves in unrestrained fury on us from the folds of night, and progress on the invisible road, which was full of mud-holes, was difficult. ”

“ But it was obvious to us all that the Serbian Army, with its inferiority of artillery, might check, but it could not stem the tide of the enemy's advance. The big guns now roared and thundered mercilessly, louder and nearer, almost continuously day and night. I could never understand why, being so near, the enemy did not make a dash and cut off our retreat. It might be expected any minute, and the tenacious defence that was made by this Serbian Army, in the face of terrific odds, was indeed worthy of admiration. ”

“ Modern militarism involves tortures and extermination, not only of the fighting, but of the non-fighting portion of the population, in a manner which would have shocked even the heroes of the Old Testament.
War is not merely an encounter between rival armies of men. War is, in these days, an encounter between equipped armies, and unequipped women and children, with results that are bestial and humiliating; between equipped armies and unequipped civilisation, with results that are destructive of civilisation. ”

“ But bad and treacherous as the track was, there was never time for hesitation; thousands of animals, and of soldiers, were pushing into you from behind, and if, leading your pony, you fell, you would be trampled on, and your pony would never rise again.
The most imaginative dreamer, after a supper of lobster and port wine, could scarcely dream a more complete nightmare. But our staff came through, as usual, with flying colours, smothered from head to foot with the aggressive red mud, but without loss of an ox or pony. ”

“ I should like incidentally to suggest that uniform for women employed in public work, should be as compulsory always, as it is for men. Occasional hobble skirts, and low-cut blouses, reminiscent of the indecorums of the Society puppet, struck a peculiarly jarring note amongst a boat-load of people prepared for life-and-death realities, on a mission of humanity.
Of all these doctors, nurses, orderlies, administrators, chauffeurs, interpreters, how many would return? One should be taken and the other left? ”