Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1918-11-02

agriculture.who was one Of the. mem-
bers4aof the reconstruction unit and
who has just returned from Serbia.
Bulgars Planned determination.
When the Austrians and Bulgarians
turned their battle1ines against Serbia,
the ~startgof the war, they intended
not only to ssubdue an Enemy nation
but to ,wipeian entire race Of people
from the facesoof the earth. Before the
Serbian soldiers rallied and. with the
aid OF Allied troops, held the line at
Monastir, the invaders had succeeded
so we'll in their campaign Of d%estruc-
ton that. (
Twenty-Five per cent Of the a.
100000 population had been
killed.
Town after town had disap-
peared, not a building remaining
to show the systematic work OF
Dillage, rapine and murder.
Young Serbian girls had been
sold to rapacious Turks or carried
off into equally shameful bond
age in Bulgaria.
Babies had been left to starve,
playing in the ruins of houses,
beside the bodies of their MUIR
dcred parents. !,
School. children had been for
hidden to converse in the Serbian
language and their surnames had
been changed to end with the
Bulgarian "OR." r.
y, Men and women were hanged
without ~proyocation whenever
the soldiers desired diversion.
Every means. of livelihood had
been taken away from those who
were not slain by the blood mad I
dened invaders.
Thirty thousand lives had been
sacrificed in the great retreat of
1918, when this huge number of
refugees died from posur and
exhaustion after reaching Corfu
in safety. ~
'They were a helpless, hopeless
people," said Professor Bull, "pur they
no longer are. The assurance that
the United States is helping them has
given them enormous courage. They
are planning to rebuild, to reconstruct,
to make Serbia a unit of power again.
Land Completely Rayaged.
"Of course they have nothing to
lieve the thoroughness with which the
and Bulgarians ravaged the
land. In the district of Monastir,
where we spent the summer, there
not a kitchen utensil .left-orA II
there was, it was because some Ser
bian woman had buried it in the
ground. The enemy had cleaned
out SO well that not a stick Of
furniture remained in the homes, not
q dish, no clothing. bedding, linen.
Here and there you found a man who
had put his carpenters tools into a
chest and dug a hole in the ground
and secreted them. but they were the
Everything was gone. 1t
is the most tdesolate. country that can
be imagined.
Girls Victims of Torture.
. You cannot meet a Serbian who
has not a. fresh tale of atrocities-of
children torn from their mothers, Of
fathers killed in wanton sport by SOL
diers, of young girls the victims Of
and torture. What the Bull
cars and the Austrians-for, the lat
ter were equally as bad-have done to
Serbia leaves sc. black a mark that it
will take centuries to wipe It out. At
Mertone, in France, we found an
orphanage with 105 children, found
by Nine. Dora Cruich. a Serbian
woman. With few exceptions no one
who the parents Of any of. the
children were. One of the little ones,
2 years old, had been found by a SOL
almost on the battlefield.
when the. Bulgars wanted a bit Of
snort they would have a hanging bee.'
They would pick out some man Of in
f1uence, trump UP a charge against
him. hold aacourtmartial, bring in a
few false witnesses to swear that he
had said this or that, and then string
him up. Sometimes there would be
a half dozen strung up at once like
this. I brought photograph Of one
OF these hanging bees home with me
and I showed it to a friend in Wash
ington. Why I know that man. he
exclaimed. looking at one of the fig
ures. I went to school with him. He
a man of 1neseducation and, of
great influence
Courage OF People Unshaken.
1T seems strange that in the face
of such terrible suffering, the people
of Serbia should still have their cour-
age mistaken. Yet when Father
JAEGER and the other members Of our
reconstruction unit arrived last
spring, we found the Serbians eager
to cooperate with us in every way.
We had a supply of farm machinery,
tools and seed and we used these sup
plies to great advantage, although we
No 6tSot uSdi ~ dCCOTTVIp'tSI1
what we hape to accomplish. With a
country so utterly barren as Serbia is
today, progress Is necessarily slow,
yet we made a start on Decentralization
work, Among other things we had
four mowers and each one cut abnu+
10000 tons Of hay. This is divided
EQUALLY between the serbians and the
French. according to agreement. and
the Serbiana. secured as their share
about $1,000 worth OF hay without
paying ANYTHING for IT: That Sof
is lust aFbeginning but .it js an
encouraging one.
I'VE loaned all the machinery and
tools to the serbiars. not giviDe any
away. While we don't exnact tn ge+
much of It back. nevertheless IT
seemed a better principle to loan
than to give. IN the latter wav
they mieht Peel that sit they lost or
damaeeda rythingthev could get more
to replace IT, Most. cf our machinerv
CAME through well. although we ware
a little 'dismayed when ~ found that
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