Part 10

The Secretary of State for Religion very kindly facilitated my journey to the shrine of St. Lazar, where I saw Serbia's mediaeval prince lying headless before the altar. Strange to say, it seemed as if the body had a head. The shroud was raised to disclose his brown and wizened fingers and shrunken middle, and where the head should be were the contours of a head under a veil. At my desire the cloth was lifted, and I saw instead of a head a large jewelled mitre.

The monks showed me "bulls" and charters and proclamations and manuscripts, mostly eloquent now of the ill-faith of Serbia's neighbours. They were, however, humorous and vivacious and well-fed monks who bore no ill-will against Turk or Austrian or anyone; they were good fellows happily lodged by the Church, and without much care or sorrow of any kind; such a contrast to those outside the Church.

They gave me a room with a comfortable bed and white sheets, and they regaled Kostya Lukovic and myself and anyone else who happened to arrive, with old-fashioned generosity of wine and viands.

It was here we met the Archbishop of Minsk, once Rector of the Theological Academy at Petrograd. He had lost his diocese and lost his academy; a little old, stooping, grey-haired man, very witty, very sardonic and indulging in endless pleasantries at the expense of us all. He drank to England but not to Lloyd George. He drank to meeting me again--in Moscow. He drank to Serbia, and hoped they'd raise the standard of doctorate of divinity. He drank to France, without her ally Poland who had seized most of his diocese of Minsk and was making it Roman Catholic. He drank to Russia--and a change of heart. In fact, it is difficult to remember all the toasts he proposed. I responded in sips, he in half-glasses; the Archimandrite, who had only a second place at the table, in tumblerfuls; the deacon opposite me having a strong character, refused to go on, and it was certainly curious to see this little old archbishop taunt him and ask him if he were afraid and stir him on to drink more than was good for him. But he was a Russian first and then an archbishop, and he had lost all that he cared for. It may be asked, had he lost his faith, too? But do rectors of theological academies have faith? Seldom, surely.

"The teaching of theology has been abolished in Russia now," said he next morning, sitting out in the sun and feeding young calves with bread which he had saved from the breakfast table. "There are no young students now preparing to be priests. The next generation will be without clergy."

"But it is a people's Church," I observed. "If there are no priests, they will take the services themselves. The peasants have an extraordinary amount of church lore among themselves."

The prelate appeared to be scandalized. "That is of no use. A priest must first study and then be ordained. Without knowledge the Church would soon be lost."

"What do you think of the Patriarch of Moscow? He has come to terms with Lenin."

"He is a weak man," said the Archbishop.

I recalled an opinion of Bishop Nicholas of Serbia that Patriarch Tikhon would be next dictator of Russia.

The Archbishop of Minsk smiled gently and ironically, and then said quietly:

"Never. And he has too simple a mind to cope with the enemies of Russia."

"Do you not think Holy Russia will reassert herself? You know the famous lines of Solovyof: 'O Russia, what sort of an East will you be, the East of Xerxes or the East of Christ?'"

"It looks rather like the East of Xerxes," said the old man. "But you believe differently----"

And he smiled indulgently.

I could not say whether he spoke sincerely or out of the depths of personal and national humiliation.

I suppose it is hard for those who are not Russians to realize what has happened in Russia. Propaganda has discredited news. The western world thinks of Russia as the same country with a change of government. The colossal fact of the complete removal of the upper crust of Russia is not realized.

A third group of deracines whom I came across in Serbia was an artel of Rostof engineers. I met a family I had known in Russia. Last time I had seen them it was one evening with their children scampering round a tall Christmas tree on which all the candles were lighted. They were comfortable and capable people, and proud in their way of what they could do and of what they possessed. Now, with all the other engineers of the Vladikavsky Railway, they had fled from the "terror" and were giving their services for the reconstruction of Serbia.

Serbia did not particularly want them, and was not ready for their grand schemes.

"You can't start anything in this country," said Engineer N---- regretfully. "Every one wants to make money out of it. The administration lives on the enterprise of the people. We have presented the Government with a complete plan for the reorganization of the Serbian railroads. We have brought the treasury of the Vladikavsky Railway with us, so we have a little capital, and given the authority we could make a gigantic improvement in Jugo-Slavia. But all we have been able to do so far is to arrange a few services of motor transport to places not reached by railway."

My friends were in a poor little wooden hut on the outskirts of Belgrade, very courageous and very sad, and their children, once petted and even pettish, were now grown and serious and facing life earnestly for themselves and for their parents' sake.

A great chance for Serbia lay in the use of these Russian engineers. And the alternatives for the engineers are either to make good in Serbia or to drift back eventually to Mother Russia. I am personally inclined to think that the Serbs will let the chance slip through their fingers. Serbs and Russians, though they like one another, do not seem to be able to work together very well. The Serbs are a smaller people, more intense and less adaptable than the Russians. The difference between the two races as one sees and hears them on the streets of Belgrade is very remarkable. The soft pervasive accents of Russian speech are pregnant with a great race-consciousness and a feeling of world destiny.

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

VII. FROM BUDAPEST

The ill-health of our new Europe needs no demonstration. "She's an ailing old lady," says Engineer N. "She's a typhoid convalescent," says Dr. R. "She's deaf and dumb and paralytic and subject to fits. She has sore limbs and inflamed parts--in fact, a hopeless case," says a cheerful Hungarian. "But what does it matter whether Europe lives if her young daughter Hungary survives her?"

"That young daughter Hungary has already been in the Divorce Court," I hazarded.

"Well, Hungary is not going to alarm herself over the health of Mother Europe, anyway. Hungary has to look after herself. Mother won't look after her."

The best train for Budapest leaves Belgrade at ten o'clock at night. From the capital of Serbia to the neighbouring capital of Hungary is only two hundred miles, formerly five or six hours' journey in a fast train without hindrance or anxiety. In a state of good health, to go from one main artery of Europe to another ought to be almost as quick and as easy as thought. But now it is labour. No facilities are made by Serbia for Hungary or Hungary for Serbia. International trains with sleeping cars carefully avoid what are known as ex-enemy capitals. In this night-train from Belgrade all the arrangements are discouraging and fatiguing. First, second, and third class carriages are the same, all wood, but some are marked "1" and others "2" and others "3." There are no lights in the train, and it is very crowded. You crawl all night through the ex-Austrian territory now part of Serbia. At four in the morning you arrive at Subotitsa and wait six hours. You wait in a queue and show passports to Serbian police; you take your baggage through the Serbian douane and it is searched for articles liable to export duty. You send a "D" telegram to Budapest to reserve a room at a hotel. For this "D" telegram you pay two or three times the ordinary charge in order that it may have precedence of telegrams not marked "D." Some time after ten in the morning you get into the Serbian frontier train which takes you ten kilometres and deposits you in a Hungarian no-man's land. Hungarian gendarmes collect the passports of the passengers. You stand on a shelterless platform and wait for the Hungarian frontier train which takes you ten kilometres further and deposits you at the station of Szeged. Here you congregate like lost souls in Hades and wait and suffer. They say those suffer most who continue to have hope in that region. The hopeful clamour and push and mortify themselves, whilst highly indifferent and laconic Magyars chuckle among themselves and throw ink across an inky table asking foreigners in Hungarian their mother's maiden name and their natal town. The officials have adopted the principle of the division of labour--one makes out a form, another fills it in, a third franks it with a rubber stamp, a fourth registers details, and a fifth signs the visa. Strange to say, this seems to multiply the time by five rather than divide it by five. And most people know that the train for Budapest will leave at the scheduled hour, leaving half the passengers to wait all day at Szeged for another train. After passports, there is a violent onslaught on your baggage by the customs officials. When they are convinced that you are carrying nothing dutiable you have to get a cab and make a hundred-crown journey across Szeged to another train. You wait in a long queue for a ticket. Heaven help you if you have baggage to register or re-register. It cannot be registered through from Belgrade. As for the train, the passengers seem to be hanging from the roofs of the carriages like bats. It is like a seaside excursion express, and if you are lucky enough to get a place you find there is only half a back to your seat.