re had sold his harvest while it was still green (zeleno) to the
local usurer (hence called the "Zelenac"), now demanding every day by
telegram _via_ Belgrade or Smederevo the market prices at Antwerp. In
1895 Serbia had sunk to such depths that a Dalmatian leader said
openly to a German journalist that the Yugoslav idea could only be
realized by Bulgaria; in 1910 the "Narodna Odbrana" (or Organization
for National Defence), that was not, as the Austrians alleged, a
nursery for murderers but a patriotic body--it no doubt reminded the
people of their brothers in Macedonia, the Voivodina and Bosnia, but
at the same time urged them to cultivate the land more rationally, to
visit the doctor rather than some old woman, to dress, sleep and eat
in accordance with hygiene, and to take steps against illiteracy--in
1910 the efforts of the "Narodna Odbrana" had had such success that an
inquiry, in which the French participated, found that out of a hundred
recruits from a backward region 61 per cent. could read and write, 99
per cent. had some knowledge of the battle of Kossovo and the reign
of Du[vs]an, while 82 per cent. could enumerate the provinces
inhabited by their unredeemed brothers. The rise of Serbia was due to
the happy direction that was now given to the virile spirit of the
people; standing back to back in their own land, they were soon able
to arouse the despondent hearts of their countrymen who languished
under various tyrannies outside the national frontiers.

Those who in Old Serbia acknowledged their Serbian nationality were
the constant victims of Albanian intolerance. One massacre followed
another--that people which, according to some of its present
champions, is mild and noble and misunderstood, with a particular
aptitude for silver-work and embroidery--Miss Edith Durham asks that
this poor nation should not be robbed of its country, its one
ewe-lamb, which they love intensely and which, to everyone's
admiration, they defend with great heroism; one cannot expect her, the
Secretary of the Anglo-Albanian Committee, to refer to the numerous
lambs, etc., which the Albanians, armed with machine guns, carried off
in 1919 from a Serbian monastery near Tetovo; and in 1903 the
Albanians, waiving their mildness, appear to have been more
conspicuous in attacking others than in defending themselves. The
monks of the old Serbian patriarchate of Pe['c] were obliged to have
Moslem and Albanian attendants, and it does not stri