as a base for our democratic institutions, social, political
and ecclesiastical.

I said that our village is the very foundation of our material wealth.
We have, so to say, no industry, but every one of our peasants has his
own land. The land being fertile, our country never knew what hunger
was. It was a pleasure to see the peasants in the spring ploughing their
own soil; in the summer looking over the-golden harvest of their own; in
the autumn contemplating the stores plenteously filled; in the winter
feasting and resting in their own houses. If you should ask any of the
Serbian peasants: "To whom does this house belong? or this field? or
this harvest?" he would unmistakably reply: "To God and to me!"--so in
the mind of our peasants God is the first landlord, and the second they
themselves.

Even during the last three years of war in Serbia there was plenty of
all the necessaries of life, especially of wheat and cattle, of fruits
and hay, of vegetables and wood.

But now--in Serbia all the wealth is in the past; it exists only in the
memories of the despoiled, plundered, devastated, starved and silent
slaves. In the German papers there was published a private letter from a
German soldier in Serbia. "We are very well here. We have plenty of food
and everything. Much more abundantly than we had on the Western front!"
I am sure you understand well what this soldier meant and whence such an
abundance in food supply "and everything" for the German invaders in
Serbia came. Almost simultaneously a German army commander wrote to a
man in a neutral country these words: "Not only I permit you to come
into Serbia and help the Serbs, but I pray you come at once. Among the
population in Serbia there is the greatest misery and almost starvation
_en masse._" What happened? The "civilised" subjects of Kaiser William
would not kill the civil people in Serbia directly as the stupid Turks
did, but indirectly in order to save the faithless honour of
"civilisation." They drove away the population--that means the old and
sick men, women and children--all other Serbs serving as soldiers and
being in retreat; they drove the population away, took food, cattle,
copper, warm clothes, carpets, covers, everything, and after this was
done, allowed the people graciously to come back "to their homes and
their customs," as the Kaiser declared. But to come how and where?
Thousands died on the way back, thousands succeeded in coming back to
their c