old and breadless homes to die there; they are considered as the
happier; and thousands fled with the Serbian troops into Albania and to
the Mediterranean islands, where they died or are still dying from
hunger, but because they died in freedom and not as slaves they are
considered as the happiest.

We are beggars now. This is the first year in our history that we must
pray to men for bread; until now we prayed only to God for daily bread,
and God gave it to us abundantly. But we became beggars for bread only
after the German civilisation showed itself to be a beggar, poor in
moral, poor in truth and heart.

Now I will try to show you how the Serbian village

BECAME THE FOUNDATION OF THE SERBIAN SPIRIT.

No universities, no schools, no libraries, no written literature and no
lectures for five hundred years! Imagine such a people. That is the
Serbian people.

The only men who could write--the priests; the only library--the memory;
the only education--the mother; the only university--nature; the only
historians--the blind bards; the only friend and comforter--God! Imagine
such a people and call them--Serbs.

Imagine the English people for half a thousand years without schools,
without education, without universities, without historians, authors,
friends and comforters! I am sure it is difficult for you to imagine
your country even without Shakespeare, and without Oxford and Cambridge
scholarships and the British Museum, not to mention other things. It may
be of great interest to a psychologist as well as to a historian to know
what kind of mental activity a people shows who are deprived of all that
we to-day consider as an indispensable need of daily life. What may such
a people be doing? Well, when by such a people are meant the Eskimos, it
is clear: they hunt, eat, talk and sleep. But when by such a people is
meant a people of the European, Aryan race--what then? The Serbs are a
European, Aryan race. What did they do? Three things--they thought, sang
and hoped.

They _thought_. They thought about heaven and earth, about life and
death, and man and animal, and about everything that affects human
nature. They made comparisons and asked for the reason and purpose of
everything. They drew their conclusions and expressed the results of
their long observations. They thought a very, very long time before they
uttered a short sentence. These sentences lived in the oral traditions,
and have been transferred from one gene