The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-08-22
.SERbIA'S LOST 2
 INDEPENDENCE

1t was thirty-eight years ago today, on August 22. 1878, that Serbia's in- dependence was formally declared in Belgrade. after, a successful. war against the hated Turks. The inde- pendence thus bained by the sword has been lost by the sword. and Ger man. Austrian. Hungarian and Bull gar now lord 1t over the stricken land Yet the Serbians. defeated and rout- ed by their powerful foes after a re- sistance that excited the admiration of the world. are far from discouraged. From monarch to peasant they are assured that the future will bring to Serbia new, independence day, and that their countrymen in Bosnia and Herzegovina, freed from the Austri- an yoke. will join them in the build ing of a new and greater nation on the ruins of the old.
 Serbia's brief career as a free and sovereign nation has been replete with tragedy. The rebellion which was inaugurated in 1901 by Kara George, and continued by Milosch Obrenovitch, reached its fruition in 1878. when Serbia, with the aid of Russia, attained to complete indepen- dence> and threw off the last vestige of Turkish authority. The reignine prince, Milan ". of the Obrenovitch rynasty, assumed the title of king. He was a worthless and absolute man. addicted to vice. and un1ustly divorced his wife Natalie. He was defeated by the Bulgarians in 1885, and four years later he was forced to abdicate.
 His son and successor, King Alex ander. was even more absolute in character than his father. His vici- ous propensities were developed when he was only a boy. and in his juvenile dissipations he was encouraged by his father and the members of the royal court. Alexander's mother, Ma talie Kechko. daughter of Russian army contractor. tilted her fiance, Col. Constantinovitch. on the eve of the date appointed for her wedding, in order to marry her cousin, Prince Milan, who was to have figured as best man at the ceremony. Natalie was a woman of great beauty and heiress to a vast fortune. When the absolute Milan discovered sthat her money was tied up in such a way that he coud not control it. he turned against his wife and ultimately di- vorced her. Before that crisis in their domestic relations had been reached. Milan had created a pub- lie scandal by his orgies with disso- 1ute women in the Palace at Belgrade. To escape such disgracefu1 scenes, Queen Natalie fled with her young son to Germany, declaring she would not return until the King had mended his ways. Milan appealed to Bismarck, and the latter ordered the German police to take the Serbian Crown Prince by force from his mother, and turn him over to the agents of Milan.
 Restored to the dissoute court at Belgrade, Alexander was at the age of sixteen a wreck in body and mind He married a woman of the streets named Draga Maschin, whoJ was twenty years his senior and placed her on the throne as his queen. His father declared at the time that not a peasant born corporal in the Serbian army would dare to hold up his head in the presence of his comrades if he made such a woman as Draga his wife.
 An imbecile with homicidal in stincts, Alexander, urged on by Draga, made wholesale arrests and executed scores of men whose only crime was love of their native land. In 1908 a