was wondering if I would ever understand the
people of the Balkans. One hour and then another slipped away, and the
lakes began to be illuminated by the setting sun. A handful of
prospective travellers and their friends were also waiting, and as one
of them produced a violin we all began to dance the Serbian Kolo,
which is performed by an indefinite number of people who have to be
hand-in-hand, irrespective of sex, forming in this way a straight line
or a circle or a serpent-like series of curves. They go through
certain simple evolutions, into which more or less energy and
sprightliness are introduced. The stationmaster looked on approvingly
and then decided to join us, and after a little time he was followed
by the porter. Our violinist was in excellent form, so that we
continued dancing until some of us were as crimson as the sun, and
presently, while I was resting, what with the beauty of the scene and
the exhilaration of the dance, I found myself thinking that, after
all, I might within a reasonable time understand these people. Then a
new arrival, a middle-aged, benevolent-looking woman with a basket on
her arm, came past me.

"Dobro ve[vc]e," said I. ["Good-evening."]

"[vZ]ivio," said she. ["May you live long."]

Nevertheless, I hope in this book to give a description of how the
Yugoslavs, brothers and neighbours and tragically separated from one
another for so many centuries, made various efforts to unite, at least
in some degree. But for about fifteen centuries the greater number of
Yugoslavs were unable to liberate themselves from their alien rulers;
not until the end of the Great War were these dominations overthrown,
and the kindred peoples, the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, put at last
before the realization of their dreams--the dreams, that is to say, of
some of their poets and statesmen and bishops and philologists, as
well as of certain foreigners. But listen to this, by the censorious
literateur who contributes the "Musings without Method" to _Maga_: "We
do not envy the ingenious gentlemen," says he, "who invented the two
new States Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia. Their composite names
prove their composite characters. That they will last long beneath the
fanciful masks which have been put upon them we do not believe." Even
so might some uninstructed person in Yugoslavia or South Slavia
proceed to wash his hands of that ingenious man who invented _Maga's_
home, North Britain. I see that our friend i