It was clear that if there was this urgent need for help amongst the peasants in our district, there would be an equally urgent need in other districts. Therefore, as soon as the success of the Kragujevatz dispensary was assured, and Colonel Guentchitch and the local authorities had expressed approval, I determined to extend the work and to establish a series of roadside tent dispensaries, within an average radius of thirty miles around Kragujevatz, in the Schumadia district, the heart of Old Serbia. Accordingly, on May 9th, I cabled home to Mr. Christian, the Chairman of the Serbian Relief Fund, explaining the scheme, and asked his Committee to send out, without delay, material, equipment, and personnel for additional dispensaries. "I should like twelve," I said, "but I must have six." Colonel Harrison also cabled to his wife, asking her to collect money for our purpose; she responded nobly, and in the North of England held meetings which brought in several thousand pounds.

Each dispensary was to comprise one woman doctor, two nurses, one cook, one interpreter, and one chauffeur, the latter to drive the motor ambulance which would convey to the mother hospital at Kragujevatz, patients who needed operations or prolonged treatment. Tents were to be used as long as weather permitted, partly to avoid infectious buildings, partly to escape the difficulty of finding suitable houses, and also in order that the dispensary could be placed wherever it would be most likely to be useful—along the roadside, and probably where cross roads met.

The scheme received the hearty approval of Sir Ralph Paget, who was acting as British Commissioner for Serbia, and of Colonel Hunter, Chief of the Royal Army Medical Mission in Serbia. The latter told me that he had mentioned the dispensary scheme, and also the hospital work, in despatches to the Foreign Office, and had asked that all facilities should be granted us. I felt confident, therefore, that the scheme would be supported.

The Serbian Relief Fund rose to the occasion, and the Chairman cabled approval and agreed to send material and personnel for six additional dispensaries. Dr. King-May kindly agreed to go to London and help to make arrangements for the medical requirements. She left Kragujevatz on May 20th, and returned on July 23rd. But there was no need to wait till the latter date to start the new work. Time was of life-and-death importance to the peasants. The first consignment of stores and tents came on July 13th, and as Dr. Iles, who had cabled from India acceptance of service, had arrived on June 29th, we established a dispensary at Natalintzi, about thirty-five kilometres from Kragujevatz, on July 14th.

The site had been selected on June 29th by Major Protitch, and the District Prefect, Dr. Hanson, and myself.

We had intended to go to Natalintzi on the 28th, but the Prefect remembered that this was a fast day, in commemoration of the Battle of Kossovo, and that he must attend cathedral service. At Kossovo, in 1389, more than five hundred years ago, the Serbians had, upon the field of blackbirds, lost their independence to the Turks. I little guessed that I should, before long, be riding over that plain of Kossovo, with the Serbian Army, whilst it once more fought for independence.

June 28th (15th in the Serbian calendar) was also the anniversary of the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife.

A motor drive on a Serbian road is always an interesting adventure, owing chiefly to the mud, which is, literally, in places feet deep, and of a substance peculiar to the Balkans, owing partially also to the neglect of road-mending during many years of warfare. But the motor will now probably arouse a new conscience about roads. Any road has been good enough for the ox-wagon, and we shall see in the near future whether the ox-wagon is the cause of the continuance of bad roads, or whether the bad roads are the cause of the ox-wagon. Perhaps the Germans will make themselves useful during their temporary visit to Serbia, and will remove the question from the vicious circle in which it now rotates. It is possible that the cloven hoof of the ox has an advantage over horse hoofs and motors by its power of gripping that glutinous and skiddy substance euphemistically termed mud.

During our drive to Natalintzi we saw something of the beauty of the Serbian country. Mountains girt with maple, beech, and oak forests; valleys fertile with ripening grain—wheat and oats, and endless fields of the dignified kukurus (Indian corn or maize), its tall, green, large-leaved stalks hugging the half hidden yellow cobs. And orchards, and orchards, and always orchards of purple plums.

Maize, vines, and plums are the mainstay of national food and drink. The people make bread, and porridge from the maize, and rakiya, as well as wine, from the grapes. Rakiya—with, of course, a different flavour—is also brewed from plums.

The universal plum also provides huge quantities of jam, known as pekmez.

We were surprised to find how much land had, in the continued absence of the menfolk, been cultivated by the women.

Our route to Natalintzi lay through the village of Topola, the village which fired the first shot in 1804, during the rebellion of the Serbs, under Kara George (Black George), against the tyranny of the Turkish janissaries, three years before the Battle of Ivankovatz, the turning-point in the destiny of Serbia.

A sharp curve in the road brought us in view of a surprise range of hills. Upon an isolated kopje, which commanded the whole land, an exquisite church of white marble shone, against a brilliant sky of blue, silver in the sunlight, which was elsewhere clouded. The marble had been quarried partly in Serbia and partly in Italy, and the church, of best Byzantine architecture, had been built by order of King Peter. The King had also built, not far from the church, a fine hospital and a school. He had as yet no palace for himself; he had first built houses for God, for the sick, and for the children; his own house he had left till last. But it will be built some day. He was living meanwhile with the Topola priest, sharing an unpretentious, one-storied house, opposite the church.

We wrote our names in the King's visitors' book, and then spent a quarter of an hour inside the church. For many months our eyes had dwelt chiefly upon maimed and diseased bodies—desecrated shrines of the human spirit. Here, at last, was a shrine of the Greater Spirit, conceived and perfected with a true sense of religion—the noblest of the arts.

The proportions of the church were beautiful, and a happy effect of ethereal atmosphere was produced by some windows of blue glass. But I wondered if we should not some day look back with curiosity on the custom of churches. We enclose a small space, within walls of marble, brick, or stone, and think that we entrap God. We are not far from the days of Moses and of the mercy seat for God's special use in the Jewish Ark of the Covenant, and we are, I'm afraid, very far from realisation of the vision of St. John, of the New Jerusalem, churchless, because the worship of God should be universal. The absence of cheap, ugly chairs and pews, interfering with the architectural lines, gives the interior of Greek churches an Æsthetic advantage over Protestant churches, though the compulsion to stand is, for most people, probably a grievance. Man adopts more and more the crumpled, sitting posture, as though he were not happy at getting away from the ape attitude. But we had no time to spare for thought and sentiment; there never is time for such essentials of civilisation in these barbaric, anti-Christian days; and we were soon again on the high road, all thoughts centred on how we were going to persuade the car to leave a deep mud-hole, into which it had sunk, in the middle of the road. It ended in the visual way—ignominiously, with oxen.

We had one narrow escape. We were deep in another mud-hole, when some peasants who had stopped to help us, remarked casually that a few hundred yards ahead of us, there was a bridge over a flooded stream, and that there was a big hole in the centre of the bridge. The warning was opportune, for the bridge was so narrow that there was barely room to pass, and the hole could not be avoided; only by emptying the car of passengers, and by the exercise of much care and skill was the bridge safely crossed. If we had come upon it unawares, a disaster must have occurred.

But we arrived safely at Natalintzi. The village consisted of a picturesque street of one-storied houses, lined on both sides with acacia trees. We drove first to the cafÉ; here we met the Prefect, and then we all drank Turkish coffee, sitting round small tables on the pavement under the trees.

Major Protitch and our Kragujevatz Prefect explained to the Natalintzi Prefect our intention of establishing a roadside dispensary. The idea was warmly welcomed, and stories were told us of the appalling need for medical help among the peasants. Meantime the inhabitants of the village crowded round us, and listened with delightful naÏvetÉ to our conversation. They followed us as we moved to see the site proposed—around the school. But this site was not large enough. The priest then joined us, and we went to the church. This was at the end of the street, and a little way back. Around it was a large enclosed grass space, with fine shady trees; an excellent site, for churchyards in Serbia are never graveyards, and we promptly accepted it. The dispensary tent would stand near the road, and tents for doctor and staff on the other side of the church. The priest kindly offered us the use, as kitchen, of one of the two tiny rooms, not adjoining the church, which he used as vestry. This was shaded by a long veranda, which subsequently served as dining-room. Without further parleying it was arranged that we should start work as soon as we liked; that is, as soon as our doctor and stores should arrive.

The Prefect kindly invited us to "slatko" at his house. We were shown into a drawing-room and were introduced to his wife and daughters, who at once went out to prepare the slatko tray. The rest of us sat round the room talking to our host. Presently Madame and the daughters came back. One of the girls carried a tray upon which was a little silver dish with jam, and another dish with spoons; also tumblers filled with water. The girl came first to me, and I was seized with nervousness; for the life of me I couldn't think what I ought to do. There was water and jam, but no bread. Would bread follow, or must I now take a spoonful of jam? And what about the water? Must I dip my fingers in it or drink it? I slighted the water and concentrated on the jam. I must do something, immediately. All eyes were fixed on me; I made a dash for a spoon, plunged it in the jam, and boldly put a spoonful in my mouth; that seemed right. But the girl didn't go away. Was she waiting for me to take another spoonful of jam? I should have liked to; it was my favourite strawberry, and I was hungry. But I glanced at the girl, and I didn't see consent to that in her face. Ah, yes! The spoon! But what on earth was to be done with the spoon? Ought I to put it into the glass of water? The girl was looking at me critically; it was an awful moment. Dead silence all round the room; the others were all watching me, to get tips for their own conduct when their turns came. I was desperate, and the idea came that perhaps I was expected to put the spoon in my pocket; take it away as a souvenir. Where else could I put it? I asked myself impatiently. I can't put it down, all jammy, on the clean napkin on the tray. And then—huge relief—I suddenly noticed that the little silver basket that held the spoons, had two partitions, and one was empty! I plumped for the empty half, with serene confidence, and—thank goodness!—the girl moved on to the next guest, satisfied.

When we got back to camp, at ten that evening, we found that the doctor designed for Natalintzi, Dr. Iles, had by a curious coincidence arrived from India that evening. Tents and stores did not come till July 13th. But everything was that same day unpacked, stored and repacked, and the next morning at 4.30 tents, stores, drugs and general equipment were stowed in a motor lorry from the town. Our own two cars and another, lent to us by the military authorities, carried the unit, which comprised doctor, two nurses, a cook, and an interpreter, also the sanitary inspectress, Miss B. Kerr, to inaugurate the sanitary arrangements, and Miss Benjamin to put up the tents. With habitual courtesy, Major Protitch came up at 5 a.m. to see us off and to say good-bye, as I was to be away for two days.

We arrived at Natalintzi at 10.30 a.m. after only one serious breakdown. One of our cars skidded into a ditch, but the motor lorry pulled it out. I always made a rule, on all occasions, that all carts and wagons should keep together when travelling. There were sometimes heartburnings over this, but it was, none the less, a necessary precaution.

The Prefect and the Mayor received us graciously, and lunched with us under our church trees, and by the evening all tents were pitched and stores unpacked. And already next day the success of the dispensary was assured. The good tidings that medical help was at last available had spread, and patients at once arrived. Also, that same evening, the doctor was sent for to attend a woman too ill to be moved; but for the help she then received the woman would have died.

Here, as always in Serbia, we were reminded of the dominance of war as a factor in the lives of the people. I asked one old woman who came to see the doctor, how old she was; she didn't know, but she turned to another old crony who was standing near and said: "Let's see, in which war was I born?" Her friend told her it was the 1848 Austrian war; and thus her age was focussed.

The weather was broiling hot, but many of the peasants wore thick sheepskin waistcoats lined with wool. I asked an old man how he would manage to keep warm in winter, if he were not too hot in such a waistcoat now. He replied, astonished at my question, "In winter I wear two."

I visited this dispensary again in a week's time, and found that more than three hundred people had already been treated. All was working excellently. The peasants had no idea of how to nurse themselves, or how to take sanitary precautions, and their remedies against disease were quaint. To cure a headache, they applied a salad of potatoes and onions, and to heal a wound they rubbed charcoal into it and covered it with leaves.

A woman patient arrived that day at the dispensary in a serious condition; she had been accidently shot in the neck, with bullets from a revolver fired by her neighbour's little boy. It was necessary to take her to our Kragujevatz hospital, and she was placed in the motor ambulance which was taking me back. Her nearest relatives agreed to this; but some of her friends heard that she was being taken to a hospital; that, in their eyes, meant death, so they rushed up to the cart as we were starting, and protested and shouted at us and at the poor woman; a crowd at once collected, and if we had not driven off promptly, the woman would have been snatched from us.

Another day when I went to visit the dispensary and to take stores, I found the little unit struggling gallantly with an epidemic of small-pox, which had broken out in a scattered village three or four miles from Natalintzi. They asked me to go with them to see some of the patients. Major Protitch was with me, and we all drove a little way in the car, and then walked along mud lanes and over fields of kukurus.

One of the nurses (Willis) and the cook (Chesshire) had bravely encamped in a disused school-house, finding that the journey backwards and forwards at all hours of the day and night was impracticable. They met us and took us to a cottage, in which all the members of the family were either ill, or dying, or dead, from small-pox. The walls, both outside and inside, were covered with primitive paintings of figures and of trees. The cottage contained a tiny kitchen-living room and a tinier bedroom. The windows of the bedroom were all closed, the lesson of the necessity of fresh air not yet learnt, for in the nurses' absence the windows were always shut.

In the bedroom were two beds; on one bed a girl of about twenty lay dying, and on the other was a girl of about twenty-two, also in a critical condition. Their faces were smothered in confluent small-pox, their features scarcely recognisable. Another daughter had just died, and still another, younger, was recovering. Willis and Chesshire had been making a brave fight for the life of the dying girl, and had personally fed her day and night, because the relations, in accordance with custom, had for the last few days refused to give her food, thinking that death was near. But they had yesterday, in full view of the girl, who was conscious and had watched the proceedings, prepared the funeral tray, laid with the girl's favourite food and drink.

The people were curiously ignorant about the danger of infection, and friends from their own, and from other villages, would come in and sit on the beds of the small-pox patients, and spend an hour or two, and then go home and rejoin their families. Small wonder that epidemics played havoc in the country.

With Major Protitch, we planned a scheme for disinfection of the village, but without a hospital in which to segregate patients, this was not an easy job.