The Madison journal. (Tallulah, Madison Parish, La.) 1888-current, 1915-12-04
SERB REAL SOLDIER
He Fights Well Even When Halt
Starving.
Has Many Characteristics Of the Irish
Continuous Warfare Has Inter
fered Seriously With Ordinary
Agricultural Operations.

| LOnQ0n.-A writer In the Times
gives interesting personal impressions
of the Serb people, as seen by him in
war time. He found many Irish char
acteristics among the people and de-
clares that the Serb soldier is the
ideal fighting man.
The Serbians," he writes" are a
peasant people, strangers to luxury.
and the Serbian army is q peasant
army. At the best of times the Ser
bian peasants food is of the simplest.
| consisting of bread. some potatoes,
curded milk and rarely-very rarely,
on occasional feast days and holidays
"a little meat. Bread is the staff of
life in Serbia in q very real sense For
four years now Serbia has been al
most continuously at war; and it has
been difficult for the nomenclature
men all being in the ranks-to keep
up the ordinary agricultural opera
tions.
Serbia has become poor to q de-
gree which the most congested dis
tricts Of Ireland in years of bad crops
hardly understand; and the diet OF the
whole people, OF the masses of coun-
try folk especially. has been more
meager than ever. More than ever a
meal has meant merely a chunk of
bread, and coarse war bread, difficult
for a foreigner to eat. There are
those who believe that it has been
bread which has caused most of the
intestinal troubles from which British
doctors and nurses have suffered in
Serbia so severely this year; but the
Serbian thrives on 1t.
THE Serbian soldier, then, has be-
come Injured to life of extreme pri-
walton; and in the fighting of last win.
ter it was his toughness and ability
to stand hardship which more than
anything else gave him advantage
over the Austrians. Again and again
have heard from Serbian officers the
same story. of how their men. having
had nothing to eat for. perhaps, two
days. in country stripped of all eat
ables and mostly knee deep in mud,
pushed on. utterly careless of whether
there was any commisseriat or not,
and simply hunted the Austrians day
and night without giving them q mo-
ment's rest. Only men of iron, to
whom semistarvation had become al
most the normal condition of their
existence, could have done what the
Serbians did then.
"The Serbian's laughter-loving dis
position has remained unspoiled. The
one discovery which every Briton who
goes to Serbia soon makes for himself
is that the Serbian il absurdly like
the Irishman. The two master words
In the Serbian tongue today are
'nema,' which means No, there isn't
any, and 'dobra,' which means good.
'Nema' is the result Of the last four
years of privation. There isn't any,
1t is true of almost everything. The
visitor grows accustomed to going
down q street Of shops and asking ev-
erywhere for some simple article, and
everywhere meeting with the same
reply, 'Nema.'
AT the smallest excuse 'Dobra' fol.
lows. Everything is good You ask
the soldier, wounded or iii, awaiting
his turn to be admitted to the hospital
how he il. and before you ask you
know that the answer will be 'Dobra'
and that It will be accompanied by q
smile. You tell the unwounded man
that the Germans are coming, outnum-
bering the Serbian armies by three to
one, to wipe Serbia and the Serbians
on the map, and he laughs a carefree
laugh and his eyes twinkle as he tells
you Dobra.'
There is also q third master word
in the language. which IL 'sutra,' and
that. alas! means tomorrow that
beautiful indefinite time when every
thing is going to be done that ought
to be done today. That also Is very
Irish. But in the Serbian case 1t is
chiefly the result Of 400 years of Tur-
kish rule. four centuries during which
procrastination and indirection have
been the guiding principles of all poll
cies and all administrative acts
1T il impossible to think of the
Serbian man except as q soldier. and
that is the chief weakness of Serbia's
military position today. She has no
reserves. Her entire fighting strength,
almost her manhood strength, IL al.
ready In the ranks. Only In Nish. in
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my TRAMpS 1n000 Mll ES