Читать книгу The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere - M. A. Stobart - Страница 11

The Crown Prince had kindly lent us his band, and, in addition to excellent music by them, the programme included part songs by a company of theological students, who were now working in hospitals in Kragujevatz (in lieu of military service), also songs and recitations by other people.

Our own convalescent soldiers were too shy to perform, but in their bright-coloured dressing-gowns, or with blankets pinned round them, they formed a patch of picturesqueness amongst the audience. But they were not too shy to join in the final impromptu kolo dance. As usual, at the right moment, the guslar and the kolo-starter dropped from the skies, and for a few minutes all Kragujevatz were linked arm in arm, in happy abandonment of care and sorrow, in the magic kolo circle. But the happiness was of short duration. Has there ever been a time during the last five hundred years when Serbia could rejoice with a light heart? Will the time ever come when Serbian swords can be beaten into ploughshares, and their bayonets into pruning hooks?

Even amongst our comparatively cheerful patients, during this temporary lull in the fighting, tragedies were occurring in the usual humdrum fashion. One man who was badly wounded, and unable to leave his bed, received a letter from home, telling him that his wife, two children, and a brother, had just died of typhus, and that two other children, and his mother, all members of the same zadruga (family community) were dangerously ill with the same disease.

A few hundred yards beyond our camp, four thousand newly dug graves, containing typhus victims, testified to the virulence of this one disease in this one town. With curious ingenuity, the typhus fiend stepped in to carry on the destruction of human life, during the interlude when the fighting fiend was in abeyance. Is it a wonder that the Serbian peasant forgets to see the hand of God in all his suffering? For many centuries the hand of the Turk has been too plainly the direct cause of his tragedies. There has been no desire to seek for further causes. Even those of us who have made it our business to search diligently for God, have not always found Him; but perhaps we are like the players in "hunt the thimble" game, we cannot find God, because He is in too conspicuous a place—in our own hearts.

But for centuries, the salvation of the Serbian peasant has been working itself out on larger lines than those of a narrow theology; the struggle of his nation has been for that which is the basis of Christian faith—for Freedom. For the outer frills, the rituals of that faith, the Serbian peasant has had no time. With us, in England, this situation is reversed. We have had plenty of time to attend to the frills, and have perhaps lost sight of that which is the basis of our common faith.

It is undoubtedly true that in Serbia, religion, if by religion is meant theological doctrine, and adherence to ritual, has little hold upon the people. But during centuries of oppression, religious teaching has been necessarily confined to the monks, and they, to avoid persecution, have been obliged to seclude themselves amongst the mountains. And so it has come about, as usual, that the praying men have been content with prayer, and the men of action with action. Neither of them has perceived that a combination of prayer, and action, is necessary for the fulfilment of divine destiny.