The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

British Medical Missions have done really a herculean work. With devotion and unsurpassed self-sacrifice they have organised a fight against epidemic disease, the most dreadful of Serbia’s enemies, many members of them falling as victims of that campaign. It was a work of love and human pity, and has won the hearts of every Serbian for the noble sons and daughters of the British Islands. And as is always the case with sincerely loving men, those who have done most for Serbia, even imperilling their own lives, have been openly protesting how little they have done for Serbia, and how great a debt Great Britain owes to her. All of them, like the correspondents and independent writers on Serbia, have been the best eye-witnesses of the hardships, endurance and bravery of the Serbian soldiers, of the unspeakable sufferings, of the terrible losses sustained by the entire nation. But more than that. They have spread through Great Britain a better knowledge of Serbia and the character of her people. They have brought the testimony that the Serbian peasant, who constituted 90 per cent. of Serbia’s population, is not only a brave soldier, but a gentle and lovable creature, very modest and endowed with a deep feeling of gratitude for the good done to him. They have bravely denied the poisonous calumnies about the Southern Slav nation, systematically fabricated in Vienna for reasons now obvious to every one. All of them have gone 219