The Madison daily leader. [volume] (Madison, S.D.) 1890-current, 1919-08-15

1t Systematically. They
wrenched the pipes and threw cement
and bricks into the drains.
And as the plumbing Is SO Is all OF
the existence-a little out of plumb,
askew. All owe the city
there Is a general air of di~Iapidation
though the people were still dazed
and tired from the repeated wars.
What might be called Main street
sweeps up through the center of the
with q grand gesture. 1t passes
by the ministry of war, an ostentatious
orange colored building, and the
guarded palace where the last Of the
Obrenovitch, the king and queen, were
stabbed to death by their officers. 1t
Is a wide street fianked with cream
colored buildings. On n side II
passes two pretentious hotels vaguely
oriental In architecture and in color.
They never have been finished. Wal
came and put an end to building In
Belgrade. The street is well paved
and unused car tracks run down it.
IL Belgrade did not achieve a Paris
ian air, as h evidently wished to
achieve, at least ii must have given
the Illusion before the war, of a
French provincial town of magnitude.
But now the Illusion is vanished. In
these buildings, and In this street es-
pecially, the people of the Serbian
capital merely betrayed themselves
They confessed that they wished to
be of the western world. Here was
no expression of the national life. They
builded In the image of France as
much as they knew, but In transit
Germany spoiled the purity of the
French outline.
Door to the East.
However, everywhere are the old
buildings of a former generation, lit
tie one-story or story-and-a-half stuc-
coed houses with high pitched red
tile roofs. There are lows of them,
humble and appealing. One comes
upon them even In Main street. AT
present all Of the sights of the streets
contradict the Idea that the West a
always here. Here Is the door to the
East. Russia has breathed here, and
the Orient. II Is written In the peo-
pies. faces. They betray themselves
by the music they sing, the colors they
wear.
1t has been years since the street
cars have been running In Belgrade.
The only means of getting around,
and the distances are great. Is on foot
armies have destroyed the work OF
these Serbian peasant men and wom-
en-. The invaders have killed them.
trampled their crops and stolen their
animals. Yet wal Is hardly over be-
fore they are back again selling their
little diminished stores of things and
their spring vegetables, dressed in
their gorgeous clothes with their silk
handkerchiefs hanging magnificently
down their backs. War comes, and de-
struction with 1t, but still they weave
cloth. and still they embroider flowers.
In the Belgrade orphan asylum OF
the American Red Cross, children
play In the yard without attendants,
without direction. One very little boy
plays a harmonlca and the rest dance
the kola, the national dance. They
dance with grave intentness. In
tricate step after another, both boys
and girls.
These children's parents have been
killed In the war. The little one
have been under bombardment. They
have lived without food. Who knows
what terror has been theirs or what
memories? Yet there they play in the
spring sunshine, the pale green of
young leaves behind them, little chill
dren and big mes dancing the kola
together.
Men and women die but the customs
that make a country survive, the
songs Of a people do not perish, nor
do the patterns which they love. These
things live; they form a current which
carries with II the life of the people.
The Red Cross orphanage and the
children dancing the kola to music OF
their own. In the spring sunshine, Is
q symbol of the Serbia which suffers,