amounts were very small, and many women were
too proud to accept this dole from the enemy. They preferred to do any
kind of work offered by the municipality of Belgrade. Thus one saw
women in furs or smart clothes--the remnants of former days--trundling
wheelbarrows of stone for road repairs, or carrying heavy loads.
Delicately nurtured girls could be seen working at the slaughterhouse
among the entrails and offal for twelve hours on end. The wife of a
professor scrubbed office floors for many months before her husband at
the front could send her any money. Street-sweeping was a common
occupation for women of all classes.

"We rescued the gallant Serbian army," said the Italians, in the
course of a long and rhetorical placard which in 1919 they pasted up
throughout Rieka and the Adriatic lands they occupied, and which was
not more convincing than the caravan of Dalmatian mayors whom, after
the War, they very proudly exhibited in Paris, a suave official from
the Embassy acting as the showman. (The Italian authorities had taken
in hand the election of these mayors--save Signor Ziliotto of Zadar,
who was elected by his fellow-townsmen.) ... When the wretched Serbs
who found themselves staggering through central Albania--among them
large numbers of boys so young that they would not have been called up
until 1919--when they hoped to reach the Adriatic at Valona, they were
told that this route was barred to them. Having eluded the Austrians,
the Germans and the Bulgars, they were left by the Italians to die of
starvation and fatigue. It may well have seemed to them, as to Bedros
Tourian, the Armenian poet, that "All the world is but God's mockery."
When King Peter, worn out by the journey and his ailments, reached
Valona by way of Durazzo, he was ordered by the commandant of that
place to depart with his suite--which consisted of four
persons--within twenty-four hours.... In the middle of December a
French relief mission arrived on the Albanian coast, General de
Mondesir reached Scutari and a large British mission under General
Taylor landed at Durazzo. These did what was possible to save the
remnants of the Serbian army. But, after a short time, a fresh series
of obstacles arose. The King of Montenegro, very loyal to the
Austrians, facilitated their advance across his country. Thus it was
impracticable for the Serbs to concentrate and to embark from those
few wooden huts which are called, in Italian, San Giovanni di Medua.