The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel 19. THE SERBS CHOOSE WAR ALREADY, BY THE MIDDLE OF MARCH, all British nationals had been first advised, then urged, and at last peremptorily ordered by the British consul to leave the country. Most of them had gone and most Americans too, feeling the Nazis creeping close upon their heels. A steady infiltration of German "businessmen" had been going on for some time. They were so sure-so cocky and so sure: "The Gestapo will soon be in charge of everything. It will be Bulgaria over again!" So they thought, and even said loudly. At this time I gave a lecture at the Anglo-American Club on "The Serbian Character as Shown in the National Epics." It was embarrassing to face an audience which probably knew more about it than I did; for they were all Serbs, the Anglo-Americans having gone. That evening I was able to give an almost exact prediction of the course events would take. The day came when Cvetkovich, the Prime Minister, and Cincar Markovich the Foreign Minister, left for Germany in a steel train. And still the people didn't believe. Up to the very last moment no Serb, not even those who knew positively that it was going to be done, could bring himself to believe it. Most of them went about in a sort of daze of disbelief, of stubborn, blind, mute inability to envisage the possibility of Serbs tamely handing over the independence for which they had paid such a frightful price. At ten-fifteen on the morning of March 25 the news was flashed: "Yugoslavia has signed the Axis pact." Immediately the streets became empty. For an hour or so Belgrade lay silent in a paralysis of horror, of shame, of slowly kindling fury. Then the storm broke. Toward evening I sent Michael, my houseman, into town. He reported that the university students were demonstrating fiercely, defying the soldiers, who with fixed bayonets broke up the meetings and processions. Dispersed in one place, they hurried round the corner and re-formed, shouting: "Down with the traitors! Better war than the pact!" In Serbia the voice of the students, expressing the real feelings of the people, had often proved ominous. It was not least the students who in 1928 had forced King Alexander to drop the humiliating Concordat which would have bound the country in spiritual vassalage to Italy. In 1903 the students had voiced the revolt of the people against King Alexander Obrenovic, who was selling them out to Austria. This revolt resulted in the death of the King and of Draga his wife and put on the throne King Peter I, the Karageorgivich grandfather of the present King Peter II. Did these determined demonstrations of the students now portend another bloodbath? That night, as related in Chapter I, I dined with the British correspondents, including Terence Atherton. I was so absent-minded that I felt I was hardly there. Next day, hating the thought of watching curiously the humiliation of a proud small race, I stayed quietly at home, trying vainly to read. I couldn't seem to sit still for five minutes. Knowing, as I described in my first chapter, of plans for revolution, my anxiety was intense. What would be the outcome ? Whichever way it went, the result was bound to be catastrophic for my friends. One by one I picked up the charming things I had gathered that spoke so eloquently of a splendid history. How absurd it seemed to try to read, no matter what, when here I had the fortune to be myself living in a greater drama, a greater tragedy than could ever be adequately written! In the afternoon four leading Montenegrin men came to see me. The drawing room was chilly, so we sat round the fire in my small library. They were so huge they seemed to fill the whole room. In spite of their modern clothes, their strongly cut faces, heavy eyebrows, and warm color gave a curious kind of authenticity to the beautiful antiques surrounding them, relics of the brave days of their own ancestors: they went well together, were somehow undeniably akin. Montenegrins age very slowly. Although they were middle-aged they showed hardly a gray hair. They had mellowed with time, but not grown weak-only stronger and more patient. They were neither Chetniks nor fliers. They had come in charming compliment to me to decide on policy affecting the future of the state of Montenegro. In these small countries, so easily shaken, so at the mercy of political storms raised by the greater Powers, it is an inspiring feeling to be vividly living history. Because they are so small you seem always to be at the beating heart of their problems. These men were facing a cataclysmic crisis in the affairs of their country. On what they decided would depend, not just their own lives-that did not worry them-but the lives and the future of all their people. I cannot tell (in fact I have been anxiously begged not to say) who these men were and what they decided that day. Only this: they came to a certain remarkable decision. Although I could not see altogether eye to eye with them, could not entirely approve, I was full of admiration for the spirit that prompted it. I mention the incident only to put it on record for the future. Balkan history will one day explain the significance of it. That night, you can imagine, I dozed fitfully, one ear open for the telephone, though I knew, and hoped, it would be cut off. Toward morning I must at last have fallen into a heavy sleep. March 27 1941 A fateful day in the history of the world. A commentator on the London radio that morning said: "The action that the Serbs have taken this day will prove to be the turning point of the war." He was a good prophet. The Serbs had risen, had overthrown their timid pro-Axis government, had put their boy-king on the throne, and defied the oppressors of mankind to do their worst. A new star had arisen on the dark night of war, the first real sign that Hitler was doomed to failure. As related in Chapter I, early on the morning of that day my friend M.P., freed from his house-arrest, came to see me. Listening to the pandemonium of rejoicing that poured out of the radio, we filled our glasses and drank a toast: "Zivio, King Peter II." "If only Alexander, his father, could see us now," said M.P. "His son on the throne, with us, his Serbs, round him, as we were round himself on the Great Retreat in the last war, defeated but unbeaten, only asking to fight again! If he can see us now he must be proud and happy." We emptied our glasses again to the memory of the dead king who had been his close friend. He, like most Serbs with their passionate loyalty, could never speak without tears of his soldier-king murdered by an organization of Croats, the Ustashi. Soon we were on our way downtown-I with my faithful camera. And what a town it was: flags everywhere, the Yugoslav flag. As yet there were few, if any, Serbian flags. The Serbs as a whole were still firmly loyal to Yugoslavia, to the South Slav union. In every square, at every main crossing, were guns, large or small, or tanks. It was curious and somehow comforting to see them commanded entirely by flying-corps officers. M.P. was, as usual, acclaimed on all sides. We stopped every two steps. We met, I think, everyone I knew, and not one but several men said to me softly: "Well, this is the end of Yugoslavia. Now it's Serbia again at last!" For already the news was spreading that Croatia was not taking part in the great defiance of Hitler. (I am reminded of what an old woman said to an acquaintance of mine in Dover when the English troops were being brought back, worn out, minus everything but their lives, from Dunkirk: "Well," said this old Englishwoman grimly, "thank God, England is on her own again!") Processions slowly pushed their way down the packed streets, carrying pictures of King Peter and hastily scrawled banners, and shouting "Bolje rat nego pact!-Bolje rat nego pact!" Every kind of organization was represented in these processions, including business houses and factories. There was no hysteria: only joy, a sort of solemn, grim joy. For every Serbian man, woman, and child knew that by repudiating the Prime Minister's signature they were declaring war on a Power that must certainly overwhelm them. Every man-more, every woman- knew that they would in all likelihood lose everything they held most dear, even life-even the lives of those they loved best. Yet the happiness, the joy, the relief of the people that they were at last "themselves again" was as genuine as it was unbelievable. How could these people welcome destruction, I asked myself, as the price of an age-old dream? I felt an enormous admiration for such clear, unmodern integrity of heart and mind: the only small nation to whom the old values were, without any sophistry, still the only possible right values. I saw one very funny thing which I think no other foreigner saw. It happens that Cvetkovich, like Laval, had a very Gypsy cast of face, giving rise to the contemptuous gibe that he wasn't a real Serb. So now the Gypsies, who inhabit a special district in Belgrade, had to have a procession too. The little, undersized people, all in their finest, brightest rags and tatters, bunched together in a gaudy crowd, trotted proudly, crying at the tops of their shrill voices: "Cvetkovich is no Gypsy-no, no, Cvetkovich is not one of us!" Thus was the signer of the disgraceful pact cast out, disowned, even by the homeless Gypsies. We arrived before the Albaniya Building, the largest and newest in Belgrade, standing, rather like the Flatiron Building, directly into the main central square. An old Montenegrin appeared on the balcony to hang out the symbolic bunting that expressed Serbia's choice in the crisis. Spreading out his arms in joy, unconsciously he made the gesture of crucifixion before the American and British flags. Other books have mentioned this episode. I was lucky enough to photograph it (though my films were later all lost in the great Belgrade bombardment). I also photographed the Nazi Information Center, already completely wrecked by the populace. When I started to do the same before the small Italian Travel Bureau, a policeman put his hand heavily on my shoulder and tried to turn me away. I slipped my Chetnik pass just a little from my breast pocket, and the hand fell away and saluted. 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