signatures of all the principal Somali chiefs and
elders living in Jubaland.]
When King Peter Re-Entered Belgrade
[From The New York Evening Post, Feb. 15, 1915.]
PARIS, Jan. 29.
So King Peter himself became priest; and the great cathedral was filled
with the sobbing of his people.
Everybody knows the story of the deliverance of Belgrade; how the little
Serbian Army fell back for strategic reasons as the Austrians entered
the city, but finally, after seventeen days of fighting without rest,
(for the Serbian Army has had no reserves since the Turkish war,) knit
its forces together, marched 100 miles in three days, and drove the
Austrians headlong out of the capital.
King Peter rode at the head of his army. Shrapnel from the Austrian guns
was still bursting over the city. But the people were too much overjoyed
to mind. They lined the sidewalks and threw flowers as the troops
passed. The soldiers marched in close formation; the sprays clung to
them, and they became a moving flower garden. The scream of an
occasional shell was drowned in the cheers.
They are emotional people, these Serbians. And something told them that,
even with death and desolation all about them, they had reason to be
elated. A few hours before, the Austrians had been established in
Belgrade, confident that they were there to stay for months, if not for
years. Now they were fleeing headlong over the River Save, their
commissariat jammed at the bridge, their fighting men in a rout.
So King Peter rode through the streets of the capital with his army, and
came to the cathedral. The great church was locked, because the priests
had left the city on errands of mercy. But a soldier went through a
window and undid the portals. The King and his officers and some of the
soldiers and as many of the people as could get in crowded into the
cathedral. And, lacking some one to say mass, the King became a
priest--which is an ancient function of Kings--and, as he knelt, the
officers and soldiers and people knelt. There was a vast silence for a
moment; and then, in every part of the church, a sobbing.
This account is a free translation of a woman's letter, in Serbian,
received in this city a few days ago by Miss Helen Losanich, who is here
with Mme. Slavko Grouitch to interest Americans in helping her
countrymen back to their devastated farms. Mme. Grouitch is an American
by birth; but Miss Losanich is a Serbian, with the black hair and
burni
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