And the alternatives for the engineers are either to make good in
Serbia or to drift back eventually to Mother Russia. I am personally
inclined to think that the Serbs will let the chance slip through their
fingers. Serbs and Russians, though they like one another, do not seem
to be able to work together very well. The Serbs are a smaller people,
more intense and less adaptable than the Russians. The difference
between the two races as one sees and hears them on the streets of
Belgrade is very remarkable. The soft pervasive accents of Russian
speech are pregnant with a great race-consciousness and a feeling of
world destiny.

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

VII. FROM BUDAPEST

The ill-health of our new Europe needs no demonstration. "She's an
ailing old lady," says Engineer N. "She's a typhoid convalescent,"
says Dr. R. "She's deaf and dumb and paralytic and subject to fits.
She has sore limbs and inflamed parts--in fact, a hopeless case," says
a cheerful Hungarian. "But what does it matter whether Europe lives if
her young daughter Hungary survives her?"

"That young daughter Hungary has already been in the Divorce Court," I
hazarded.

"Well, Hungary is not going to alarm herself over the health of Mother
Europe, anyway. Hungary has to look after herself. Mother won't look
after her."

The best train for Budapest leaves Belgrade at ten o'clock at night.
From the capital of Serbia to the neighbouring capital of Hungary is
only two hundred miles, formerly five or six hours' journey in a fast
train without hindrance or anxiety. In a state of good health, to go
from one main artery of Europe to another ought to be almost as quick
and as easy as thought. But now it is labour. No facilities are made
by Serbia for Hungary or Hungary for Serbia. International trains with
sleeping cars carefully avoid what are known as ex-enemy capitals. In
this night-train from Belgrade all the arrangements are discouraging
and fatiguing. First, second, and third class carriages are the same,
all wood, but some are marked "1" and others "2" and others "3." There
are no lights in the train, and it is very crowded. You crawl all
night through the ex-Austrian territory now part of Serbia. At four in
the morning you arrive at Subotitsa and wait six hours. You wait in a
queue and show passports to Serbian police; you take your baggage
through the Serbian _douane_ and it is searched for articles liable to
export duty. You se