Delivered for the first time at Cambridge, in the New Lecture Rooms, the Vice-Chancellor of the University in the chair.

The most suitable language for tragedy is silence. Serbia's tragedy needs no rhetoric, no language to describe it, to exalt it. For silence, and not rhetoric, makes tragedy greater. Serbia's silence to-day is as deep as her tragedy is dark. The most silent suffering is the most vocal suffering at the same time. The most silent suffering is like a screw boring into the conscience of the makers of the suffering. Such silent suffering is the severe judge of the world who makes all rich people poor, all proud humble, all pleasure bitter, all human progress abased. There is something wrong about this life. What may it be? I do not know, but suffering reminds us every day that there is something wrong with this world. Suffering from surrounding nature is not the worst,—nature can be governed by us; nor the suffering from God,—God can be touched by our prayer; but the worst of all is our suffering from ourselves. Thousands and thousands of serpents live in Serbia. Yet all the serpents throughout the Serbian history, from the time of the Druids on this island till the time of Tennyson and Kipling, effected not such a poisonous devastation of men and cattle in Serbia as lately a host of invaders did, who boastfully regarded them-selves to be at the summit of human civilisation. It is despairing to see what use of her power, her "kultur," her science and her riches, Germany of to-day is making in Serbia, among a people who for half a thousand years struggled against the Turkish tyranny with the motto For Cross and Freedom, and who looked sometimes from their dark corner towards the German Kaiser, the knight of many Holy Orders, as towards the champion and redeemer of enslaved Christianity in the Balkans. Never suffered a nation from serpents as much as the poor nation of Serbs suffers to-day from "civilised" men. Don't you think indeed that there is something wrong about this life of ours? The Bible showed in its first sheets that there is something very wrong with us. By the killing of his brother, Cain fore-shadowed all the history of mankind. Even the first man on earth was not a balanced and happy creature. All our earthly time is filled up with a passionate convulsion in a struggle for life and light. Yet our confusion and unhappiness chiefly come from ourselves, and neither from nature nor from God. When will this suffering of man from man stop? We have been accustomed to speak hopefully about the twentieth century. We supposed that that century at least would show the serpents as greater enemies of men than men themselves. We see despairingly to-day that the serpents are innocent creatures in comparison with men. The tragedy of crushed and murdered Serbia is a crying proof of how the serpents are comparatively innocent creatures. Yet Serbia is silent in her tragedy. I myself would prefer to be silent too. But I cannot, being not only an unhappy survivor of a horrible shipwreck, but above all a priest and servant of God.

If our national pride bids us Serbs be silent in this shipwreck, my Christian honour and pride bids me cry out and protest. I am a surviving protest of my murdered country. Yet I am still a transitory protest, a protest only for a moment before God the Slow and the Righteous begins to protest Himself. My protest is in words, my words are from the air. But God's protest will be, as always, from the unquenchable fire, which burns bodies and souls. I indicate only the terrible protest which will come. Why am I protesting now before you, sons and daughters of Great Britain? Because you have been the champions of the Bible in the world, i.e. the champions of justice, freedom and the brotherhood of men. Because your knights have fought for the Christian Cross and Freedom. Your island has been an Island of Salvation for all the refugees, who as champions of liberty must escape from their own countries—among others, Rousseau, Voltaire and Victor Hugo, even the sons of a very liberal nation. Your most famous generals and admirals have humiliated the greatest conqueror of the world and granted him a cottage on a small island in which to live, instead of the world Empire of which he dreamed. Your statesmen—I will mention only a few of them: Pitt, Bright, Gladstone—asserted repeatedly that the domestic and foreign policy of this country should be founded on Christian principles. Your women are famous in the world because of the fine and humane education that they give to their children in order to make every new generation a new proof to the world of how this island is obviously worthy of its great role on our planet. Your working people possess a healthy sense of both reality and idealism, and avoiding all extremes and extravagances, to which poverty necessarily leads the working class in other countries, are powerfully promoting human progress, the material as well as the moral. Your nobility, far from being corrupted and degenerated by their wealth, have filled the world with astonishment from the beginning of this war by their extraordinary patriotism and willingness to sacrifice everything, including life itself, in the struggle for the honour and the unshakable ideals of their country.

That is why I am protesting before you, valiant sons and daughters of Great Britain, the heirs of the most valuable heritage that ever a nation could call its own. Serbian life in peace time is the most eloquent accusation and the mightiest protest against the crime of two great Christian Kaisers. These two Christian Kaisers conquered Serbia by their iron and mercilessness, and bound Serbia's throat so horribly that in Serbia there is now air and light only for the conquerors and not for the conquered. Breath-less and breadless, Serbia cannot protest, but I can. Well, I propose to describe to you to-night Serbia and the Serbians in peace time, in order to show you what life your smallest allies lived before the great storm came over their country. I will begin with

THE SERBIAN VILLAGE.

Why? Because the village is the very foundation of all that we possess in material, spiritual and moral good. After the Turks conquered Serbia, five hundred years ago, the Serbian population was forced by the conquerors by degrees to abandon the towns and to retreat into the villages, and then to abandon even the villages in the plains, on the banks of the rivers, where the soil was the most fruitful, and to escape into the forests, mountains and less accessible country. The village thus became the very soil upon which has grown our democracy. That is the difference between our democracy and the west European, where the democrats movement started and developed in the towns. Driven into the forests and mountains by the common enemy, despoiled of freedom and riches the upper and lower classes, the learned and the illiterate, suffered the same abasement and injustice, did the same work, ploughed and sowed, struggled against the same evil, the Turkish yoke, and sang of the same hopes. Under such conditions was born our democratic spirit, which served wonderfully afterwards, in the time of liberation and freedom, 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 de-spoiled, 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 cold 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 generation to another. These sentences are very like the Proverbs in the Bible, very like La Rochefoucauld or extracts and quotations from famous works. The Serbian sentences are striking. I have read a good deal by the great writers of Europe, but very often a popular Serbian saying strikes me more forcibly than a famous book.

Here is just one saying:

God is on the height, Satan is in the depth, man is in the middle. If God will, He can be above, below and in the middle. If Satan will, he can be below and in the middle. If man will, he can be like God everywhere, in the middle, or above or below.

Another:

A bird envied the serpent; thou knowest earth very well. The serpent envied the bird: thou knowest heaven very well. And both envied man: thou knowest heaven and earth. Man replied: "My knowledge and my ignorance make me equally unhappy."

Another:

Either snow or ice, or steam or fluid, water is always water. Either poor or rich, or ignorant or learned, man is always man.

Another:

Only a half-good man can be disappointed in this world. But a wholly good man never is disappointed because he never expects a reward for his good actions.

The Serbian people sang also. Sitting around the fire in the long winter nights, the Serbian peasants sang their glorious past, their dark present and their hopes for the future. There is a Serbian instrument called the gusle, more interesting than the Greek lyre, because more appropriate for the epic songs. It looks also like the Indian instrument tamboura. Well, as the ancient Greek bards sang their Achilles, using the lyre, and as the ancient Indian singers sang their Krishna with the help of the tamboura, so the Serbian epic singers accompanied with the gusle their songs on their hero of old, Marko. Marko was a historic person, a king's son. He was the never-weary champion of right and justice, the protector of the poor and oppressed, a believer in the victorious good, a man who left an impression on the coming generations like a lightning flash in the dark clouds. In every village house in Serbia there is a gusle, and almost in every family a good singer with the gusle. The blind bards sang on the occasion of the festival or a meeting.

The great Pitt, when once asked from whom he learned the English history so well, replied: "From Shakespeare." To the same question we Serbs can reply: "From our national poetry." It is very rare for a people in the mass to know their past as well as the Serbs know their own. The Serbs regard their history not so much as a dry science, but rather as an art, a drama, which must be told in a solemn language. They knew their history, and therefore they sang it; they sang it, and therefore they knew it better and better.

The Serbian men sang, but not only the men, the women sang as well. When the harvest was being gathered during July and August, the women and girls sang in the fields or under the fruit trees. In our country we have the sun abundantly, and the outdoor singing responds fully to the luxuriance of light. What shall I say then about our women's singing in the autumn in the dry and soft moonlight? It is the time of spinning on the distaff. The tired men go to bed, but the women sit down in a circle in the houseyard in the open place. They chat and they sing without stopping their spinning. They sing two and two, in duet, but so that a new duet is begun when the other finishes. This duet singing is not only in one family, but in many at the same time, in different parts of the village. Moonlight—we have wonderful clear and white moonlight in Serbia—silence, singing from every side, from every house, from girls, nightingales and other birds. The whole of the village is the stage, hundreds of singers, moonlight and open starry space—I am sure you would be much more fascinated by such a Serbian rustic opera than by many modern operas on a stage in London. And now—there rushed into Serbia

THE KAISER, WHO DOES NOT SING,

and our singing stopped. Under the Turks the Serbian people sang. You can find in the British Museum ten big volumes of the Serbian national poetry which was composed during the time of the Turkish rule in Serbia. This rule was very hard and very dark indeed, but still we considered ourselves as the champions of the Cross against the Crescent, and we imagined that we should be the bulwark of Christian Europe, i.e. of Central Europe in the first place. Therefore we endured the struggle with the Turks, singing and hoping. And now—the two Christian Kaisers, with a fox from Sofia, have crushed Serbia more completely than she ever was crushed by the Turks. "Come back to your homes and your customs," so the Kaiser William invited the Serbian refugees.

"To your customs!" But, oh illustrissime Caesar, we could reply, our first and best custom is to sing. Tell us, how we could sing now? You know, oh Kaiser, because you preached the Bible also, you must know the Biblical com-plaints of the Israel of old: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" You are now playing a real Babylonian role towards us Serbs, i.e. towards a people who fought for the Cross, who sang freedom and who were crucified for justice. You are not a better man than any peasant from the Serbian villages. Do you want a proof? The Serbian peasant can sing, and you cannot. You cannot sing, not because of your diseased throat, but because of your evil conscience. You stopped the singing in a country of songs, oh ill majesty! How could we now sing our songs while our homes are transformed into empty caves? How could we sing, seeing our bread in strangers' hands and cold stones in ours? How could we sing now, when all our past protests against you and all our dead are disturbed in their graves? You covered our country with sins and crimes, and it is not our custom to sing of sins and crimes, but of virtues. When will you show us your virtues? You have shown us until now only your iron and fire, your brutality and brutality, and again brutality and brutality,—and, did I say?—iron and fire. That is the essence of your religion and science, of your soul and glory. We will despise all that you brought into our country. Let us be silent, Sire, and you may continue to show your Mephistophelean civilisation, and after you have crushed all those who are weaker and smaller than you, Sire, open your lips and preach upon their ruin to your admirers: cantate Domino! But we will not sing after our custom of old in your presence. We prefer to be silent and to wait for God's judgment.

The Hidden Moral Treasures of the Serbian people are now shining, as always, throughout all the times of darkness and suffering.

You will remember from the beginning of the war all the declarations of the Serbian government about the Serbian loyalty to the end. Some among you might have thought: such declarations are dictated by political reasons. No, such declarations have been only a poor expression of what we all in Serbia thought and felt. Loyalty to friends, devotion to our pledged word, fidelity to the signed and unsigned treaties were always considered in Serbia as sacred duties in the conscience of the people. Our morale is not something that was learned in the schools—do not forget we had no schools for centuries—but rather an inherited treasure which every man was obliged to keep in great brilliancy. It is not a morale supported by learning, sophisms and quotations, it is an elementary power which is not a possession, but which has possession of everybody. Our Prime Minister uttered the other day these words: "Better to die in beauty than to live in shame!" Fifteen hundred years ago similar words were uttered on this island of yours by a knight of Beowulf's escort: "Death is better than a life of shame." Every child in Serbia thinks the same as our Prime Minister about the value of life and death.

"Better to die than" to live so and so, or than to do this or that—hundreds of the Serbian proverbs begin with those words. In proverbs is expressed our moral wisdom, in proverbs and poetry. Yet our proverbs are poetry as well. The morale is regarded not so much as a teaching, rather as poetry, like history. History and morality are things which shall be sung, history and morality are such dignified topics that they must be expressed in a dignified, solemn language. Poetry is the very essence of things. It is the most earnest thing in the world. That is our opinion.

The Serbs read the Bible very little, although they had the Bible in their own language and used it in divine service before you used it in the church of your own. The Bible was listened to in the church, but poetry at home. As Shakespeare can be called your second Bible, so, and still more, our national poetry for us has been indeed a second Bible. Our poetry has been our history, our moral, our beauty, our hopes, our education, our encouragement—our Bible. By our poetry, as by the Bible, the morale is not only taught but inspired. What is this morale, taught by Serbian poetry and proverbs, when uttered in a dry form?

"Dear God, we thank thee for all," that is the usual beginning of every poem.

Love? Love is better than justice.

Justice? Justice is better than injustice.

Injustice? It must be punished.

Suffering? It must be relieved.

Patience? That is the great virtue of the sufferers.

Honour? Better to die than to give up honour.

Dishonour? It means as much as death.

Mercifulness? It shines like the sun over the world.

A beggar? He puts your heart to the test.

Death? God is behind death and therefore death is no evil.

Prayer? It shall be used always, but it never helps unless we do our best.

Humility? It is always rewarded by love.

Fearlessness? It is commended very strongly.

Cowardice? It is repudiated and despised to the utmost.

Obedience? Youth must be obedient and respectful towards old people.

Chastity? Better to burn down a church than to take or to give away chastity.

Protection of the weak? Marko protected weak people and animals. That is a great merit.

Chivalry? Always; towards friends and enemies.

Work? Without work prayer does not help.

Freedom? Man is man only in living in freedom and in fighting for freedom.

Wealth? It is no virtue, and if it does not support virtue, it is a vice.

God? He is the Lord of the World and thy steady companion.

Such morals have been preached, yea, sung by our ancestors, and by ourselves. Certainly we have sinned often against these morals, but in our sins and in our virtues they have been always regarded as a standard of all that is good and beautiful.

SINNING SERBIA.

Serbia sinned and repented her sins, and again sinned. Put yourselves, gentlemen, in the chair of a judge, and I will confess to you all the sins of Serbia. Serbia sinned and suffered. Her sins have been her hell, her sufferings—her purgatory. I don't pray you to forgive Serbia, but only to compare justly her sins with her sufferings. The Serbs sinned against all the ten commandments, it is true, but still regarded the ten commandments as the standard which is better than a nation's doings. Although the people said beautifully: "A grain of truth is better than a ton of lies," still the lie, like a parasite, had its nest in Serbia as elsewhere. Although the people said: "It is better to be blind with justice than to have eyes with injustice," still injustice had its seed, its growth and fruits among the same people. Although Cain's sin has been abhorred by the conscience of the Serbs, still this sin of taking the life of a brother has defiled the very soil of Serbia, which has been so much sanctified by the sufferings and unselfish sacrifices of her people. You will not find certainly in Serbia the refined vices which are practised in the shadow of great civilisations, but you will find quite enough great and small sins, which the Serbian conscience does not justify any more than yours.

THE SERBIAN AND THE BULGARIAN SPIRIT.

Besides, I will confess to you one great sin of the Serbian people. It is an exaggerated love for independence. It is a virtue as every honest love is a virtue, but it becomes a sin if exaggerated. It is a brilliant quality like the sunshine in the time of fighting against the common enemy, but it is a sin in peace time when organised efforts for the social welfare are required. This spirit of independence, the independence from enemies as well as from friends, has considerably disturbed our social life and progress-during the last century. Now, by this greatest of our sins and greatest of our virtues as well, we Serbs differed chiefly from our neighbours. The people in Great Britain have been accustomed to look towards the Balkans as towards a country with one and the same spirit. This is a great mistake. There are chiefly two spirits: the Serbian and the Bulgarian, i.e. the spirit of independence and the spirit of slavery. The Serbian spirit resisted until the end stubbornly and tenaciously against the Turks conquering the Balkans five centuries ago. The Bulgarian spirit surrendered without any resistance. "The Kral of Bulgaria did not wait to be conquered, but humbly begged for mercy"; so writes an English historian.[3] The rebellious spirit of the Serbs arose first in the Balkan darkness a hundred years ago against the tyranny and the despotic wickedness of the Turkish rulers, and liberated the Serbian fatherland. The Bulgarian spirit waited until strangers came and liberated the Bulgarian country. Those strangers have been: Russians, Serbians, Roumanians and Mr. Gladstone. The Bulgarian spirit has been since 1878 under the rule of the German kings, as slavishly subordinate as it was for five hundred years under the rule of the Turkish viziers and pashas. It was pure ignorance which made some people exclaim some months ago: "It is King Ferdinand's war against Serbia and the Allies, and not the Bulgarian people's. The Bulgars will never fight against the Russians, their liberators." Yet the fact is and will remain: the Bulgarian people have only one thought, i.e. the thought of their ruler, be it Ferdinand or somebody else, and they have only one will, i.e. the will of their ruler. They will fight against the Russians as fiercely as they fought against the Turks yesterday, and against the French and British to-day, if it is only the plan and will of their ruler.

This slavish spirit, which is a disgrace to a nation in the most tragic and decisive events of the world's history, makes the Bulgarian people in peace very happy and fit for peaceful organised work, when obedience and subordination are required. This slavish spirit is the greatest virtue and the greatest sin of the Bulgarian nation.

Yet, I am speaking of our own sins, and I confess that our greatest sin has been the too greatly developed love of personal independence. It is the truest spirit of the Serbs. From this spirit originated all our fortunes and all our misfortunes. From the point of view of this spirit consider, please, all our sins in modern times: the killing of our kings, the internal disturbances, and all the irregularity in the political and social life of our country, and you will understand us better; and if you understand us better, I am sure you will forgive us more easily.

SERBIA IN PRAYER.

Serbia has sinned, Serbia has prayed. If you put on one side of the scales Serbia's sins and on the other Serbia's sufferings and prayers, I am sure the latter will send the balance down.

Again I must come back to the Serbian village. Prayer is there considered not only as an epilogue to a sin but as a daily necessity. The first duty after one's ablution in the morning is prayer. That is a sanctified custom. Many songs on our national hero, Marko, begin as follows:

And all the songs begin, I repeat it, with the verse:

But not only the songs begin with prayer, every work and every pleasure begins with prayer as well, every day and every night, every feast, every rest and every journey. This custom has been partly broken and abandoned only in the towns under the influence of the central European materialistic civilisation. In the villages unbelief is unknown. In our green fields, under our dark-blue heaven, in our little white houses and wooden cottages, on the banks of our murmuring brooks and magnificent rivers, atheism is unknown. Every family in a house is regarded as a little religious community. The head of the family presides over this community and prays with it. When I tell you that, I tell you my personal experience. I was born in a village, in a family of forty-five members. We prayed together every Saturday, after the weekly work was over. In the evening my grandfather, the head of the family, called us to prayer. We had no chapel in the house. In bad weather we prayed in the house, in fine weather out of doors, in the yard. The starry heaven served as our temple, the moon as our guardian, the silent breath of the surrounding nature as our inspiration. My grandfather took a chalice with fire and incense, and sprinkled every one of us. Then he came forward, stood before us and bowed deeply, and his example was followed by us all. Then began a silent prayer, interrupted only here and there by a sighing or by some whispering voice. We crossed ourselves and prayed, looking to the earth and looking to the stars. The prayer ended again with deep bowing and with a loud Amen.

When I recall this prayer in my memory, I feel more piety, more humility and more comfort than I ever felt in any of the big cathedrals in either hemisphere where I have had the opportunity of praying. This prayer of the Serbian peasants, beautiful in its simplicity and touching in its sincerity, survived generation after generation, and has been victorious over all crimes that the strangers of the Asiatic or of the European faith have committed on us. Our tenacious and incessant prayer is an evident sign of our tenacious and unbroken hope. We pray because we hope; we hope still more after we have prayed.

Everything can be disturbed in Serbia except prayer. The invasion of the Kaiser's troops in Serbia disturbed and perturbed everything in Serbia, but the prayer of the Serbian people still continues. Enslaved in Serbia, dispersed as the refugees are all over the world, we pray to the God of Justice, now as always. Our prayer means our hope. The Kaiser's subjects and the Bulgarian slaves can kill everything in Serbia—and the purpose of their coming into Serbia is killing—but they never can kill our hope. Martyred Serbia, your loyal ally, oh noble sons and daughters of Great Britain, is now silent and powerless. Enemies and friends can now laugh her to scorn. She will remain silent. I am sure you will respect this silence of the Crucified. I am sure everyone of you will do his best to redeem Serbia. Well, Serbia can now give, after all, her cause to God and can wait the end hopefully. She can now say to the Kaiser, her conqueror and lord, the words of one of your great poets:

A C Swinburne (Faliero).