20 The Singing Serhs

The common sisterhood that unites the women young girls and boys go through the varying steps of
of the world to-day, and especially the women
of Europe, who have known what actual war conditions
are, has wiped out a few of the old prejudices. Service
is performed in behalf of the common good, to hasten
the ultimate end and, in the case of the Serbian women,
for Jugoslavia, that Serbia may prosper. For this
they have given their husbands, their brothers, and
their sons, the labor of their hands, the tears of their
eyes, and the blood of their hearts. Serbia has been
ransomed dearly.
The Serbs are devoutly religious, observing forty-day
fasts twice a year, while their church festivals are al
ways occasions of particular rejoicing and feasting and
music. Serbia is part Roman Catholic and part Greek
Catholic, dating from the great split in the Christian
church in the eleventh century, when the Church
divided this land between the jurisdictions of Rome
and Constantinople.
Mme. Grouitch has seen, as a delighted observer in
days of peace, life in the Serbian village as well as in the
progressive capital. She has seen the slow, soft Balkan
night come down from the hills and cloud the huddled
houses and crooked streets in dusk, and lamps shining
through the windows and bonfires starting in the village
square.
The night is filled with music, singing voices,
and the sound of strings in harmony. It is a night to
lure any one out of doors — a night like one of the
loveliest and the softest of our June nights. Groups of
the kolo, the native dance, that is now slow and meas
ured, now wild like the wind that comes down from the
mountains. They sing, and somewhere in the gather
ing twilight a musician plays on a wooden pipe whose
notes fall on the night like the voice of a satyr singing
"
in the woods. Better the village should perish than
the customs of the village," say the Serbs. The air is
soft and heavy with a blend of summer scents. Fireflies
dart by like stray sparks in the darkness and occa
sionally a soft-winged bat passes on his silent way.
This is Serbia at peace — Serbia with her hearts, her
homes, and her loyalty, her progress, her steadfastness,
and her integrity. She has rightly earned and dearly
bought the new day that the war has given her, the new
day that years, that centuries of suffering have at lasi
yielded.
With the assets and qualities that are hers there
need be no fear forSerbia's future. Her broad ideals
of government and fair laws are to be extended to all
Jugoslavia, and all this new land needs is a helping
hand to lift it over the first steps of readjustment; all it
asks is the encouragement and trust of the world.
All those things that make for happiness and pros
perity, for the upbuilding of a brave people. Serbia
has — a sacred family life, a broad democracy, a liberal
government, fair and adequate laws assuring protec
tion and justice to all and, greatest of all, a sublime
faith in herself, the nation, for Serbia fights "for
faith and freedom," and "surrenders only to God!"

Serhian peasant woman plowing in the ahsence of all

the men at war. She has a cow and an ox for a team