The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1915-12-11
SERB REAL SOLDIER
He Fights Well Even When Hall
Starving.
Has Many Characteristics Of the Irish
Continuous Warfare Has Inter
fered Seriously With Ordinary
Agricultural Operations.

writer IN Lne llmeS
gives interesting personal Impressions
of the Serb people, as seen by him In
wal 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 a 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 a very real sense. For
four years now Serbia has been al
most continuously at war; and 1t has
been difficult for the womenfolk-the
men all being in the ranks-to keep
up the ordinary agricultural opera
tions.
Serbia has become poor to a 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 o
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 trO,hJag fran, u,hiph nriffcb
doctors and nurses have suffered il
Serbia so severely this year; but the
Serbian thrives on it.
THE Serbian soldier, then, has be
come Injured to a life of extreme pri
walton; and in the fighting of last win
ter it was his toughness and ability
to stand hardship which more thar
anything else gave him advantage
over the Austrians. Again and agair
/ have heard from Serbian officers thu
same story, of how their men, having
had nothing to eat for, perhaps, tw,
days, in a country stripped of all eat
ables and mostly knee deep in mud
pushed on, utterly careless of whethe
there a any commissariut or not
and simply hunted the Austrians da,
and night without giving them a me
ment's rest. Only men of iron, t
whom semistarvation had become al
most the normal condition of thei
existence, could have done what tn,
Serbians did then.
THE Serbian's iaughter-loving dis
position has remained unspoiled. TIL
one discovery which every Briton VIII
goes to Serbia con makes for himsel
is that the Serbian is absurdly lik
the Irishman. The two master word
in the Serbian tongue today ar
'nema,' which means No, there ism
any, and 'dobra,' which means good
'Nema' is the result of the last fou
years of privation. There isn't any
1t is true of almost everything. Tn
visitor grows accustomed to goin
down a street of shops and asking ev
erywhere for some simple article. an
everywhere meeting with the sam
reply, 'Nema.'
AT the smallest excuse 'Dobra' 70
lows. Everything is good You as
the soldier. wounded or i'll, awaitin
his turn to be admitted to the hospits
how he is. and before you ask 20
know that the answer will be 'Dobri
and that 1t will be accompanied by
smile. You tell the unwounded ma
that the Germans are coming. outnun
bering the Serbian armies by three I
one, to wipe Serbia and the Serbian
of the map, and he laughs a carefre
laugh and his eyes twinkle as he tell
you 'Dobra.
There is also a third master wor
in the language, which is 'sutra. an
that, alas! means tomorrow ths
beautiful indefinite time when ever
thing is going to be done that ougl
to be done today. That also is yer
Irish. But in the Serbian case 1t
chiefly the result of 400 years OF Tu
kish rule. -four centuries during while
procrastination and ~indirection ha,
been the guiding principles OF all poI
cies and all administrative acts.
1T is impossible to think OF Il
Serbian man except as a soldier. ar
that is the chief weakness OF Serbia
military position today. She has [
reserves. Her entire fighting strengt
almost her manhood strength, Is {
ready in the ranks. Only In Nish.