* * * * *

SERVIA.

"We are therefore justified in declining to accept such evidence. We are
witnessing the birththroes of a new nation, the triumph of the idea of
national unity among the disunited Southern Slavs, and it is the duty of
Britain and France, whose Fleets are now operating on the Adriatic, to
insist upon a just and permanent solution, based upon the principle of
nationality and the wishes of the Southern Slav race. Only by treating
the problem as an organic whole and avoiding patchwork we can hope to
remove one of the chief danger centres in Europe."--_Lecture at Essex
Hall, November 13, 1914, by R.W. Seton Watson_.

* * * * *

THE BATTLEFIELD.

"Then the camps of the wounded--O heavens what scene is this?--is this
indeed _humanity_--these butchers' shambles? There are several of them.
There they lie, in the largest, in an open space in the woods, from two
hundred to three hundred poor fellows--the groans and screams--the odour
of blood, mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, the
trees--that slaughter-house! Oh, well is it their mothers, their sisters
cannot see them--cannot conceive and never conceived these things.

"One man is shot by a shell, both in the arm and leg--both are
amputated--there lie the rejected members. Some have their legs blown
off--some bullets through the breast--some indescribably horrid wounds
in the face or head, all mutilated, sickening, torn, gouged out--some in
the abdomen--some mere boys--many rebels, badly hurt--they take their
regular turns with the rest, just the same as any--the surgeons use them
just the same. Such is the camp of the wounded--such a fragment, a
reflection afar off of the bloody scene--while all over the clear, large
moon comes out at times softly, quietly shining.

"Amid the woods, the scene of flitting souls--amid the crack and crash
and yelling sounds--the impalpable perfume of the woods--and yet the
pungent, stifling smoke--the radiance of the moon, looking from heaven
at intervals so placid--the sky so heavenly--the clear-obscure up there,
those buoyant upper oceans--a few large, placid stars beyond, coming
silently and languidly out, and then disappearing--the melancholy,
draperied night above, around. And never one more desperate in any age
or land--both parties now in force--masses--no fancy battle, no
semi-play, but fierce and savage demons fighting there--courage and