THE TRAIL OF WAR IN MACEDONIA 
By David Starr Jordan 
Notr.— The following interesting and significant statement is quoted from Dr. Jordan’s 
letter to the Editor, who had suggested at some time previous that an article on the effect 
of the war on science would be interesting to readers of the JourNAL: “....I am sorry my 
sketch does not more nearly meet your needs. However there are certainly elements of 
science in a study of the unscientific ways of the men of the Balkans....The effect of the 
war on scientific endeavor in Europe can be stated in few words. It has been to blast 
it — excepting only in the lines in which science has been prostituted to murder, and 
in the lines in which men try to save life, even if only to destroy it when saved. Half the 
young scientific men are in the ranks and many have been killed or wounded. A few scientific 
papers are printed, mostly written before the war, but science cannot thrive in an atmosphere 
of lawless hate. 
center of gravity in scientific work will have shifted to America. 
T was my fortune, not long ago, with 
three good friends ! and two soldiers, 
to follow in a King’s automobile 
along the trail of war. This was in 
Macedonia. The line of an army’s 
march is not pleasant to look upon even 
though the people along it had not much 
tolose. The pinch 
of suffering is very 
real even if, as in 
the Balkans, folks | 
have grown used to. |. 
it. There are two 
plain marks’ by 
which you 
recognize the path 
of war in a land of 
farmers. The one 
is the charred vil- 
lage, with its white- 
washed stone walls 
blackened by fire. 
The other is the 
presence here and 
there in the 
ploughed field of 
three poles fas- 
tened together at the top, and from the 
crotch a baby suspended just high enough 
to baffle inquisitive dogs or goats. 
where in the field, anywhere in the Balkan 
may 
Some- 
valleys in May, you will see one woman 
1Dr. John Mez, R. H. Markham and Emil F. 
Hollmann. 
Photo by Antonio Reinwein 
Characteristic scene on the hills above Rjeka 
near Cettinje, Montenegro 
The end of the war will come — before long, I hope and believe — but the 
Europe will be supine.” 
driving or leading a bullock or a buffalo, 
while another behind her holds the 
plough. The men are in the army — or 
else they were there. 
The memory I shall longest hold of 
Montenegro is a picture taken by my 
guide, Antonio Reinwein, of this land 
of stony graves, of 
the resolute people 
of the limestone 
crags who have 
never done homage 
to the Turks nor to 
other outside 
any 
power. 
It will be remem- 
bered that all these 
Balkan folk were 
for years under the 
dominion of the 
Turk, that 
none of them have 
been free for half 
a century. The 
Turk was most ac- 
and 
ceptable when he 
was asleep. When 
he was awake, he had his own ideas of 
“Union and Progress.’”’ Union meant 
uniformity. A nation should have one 
ruler, one flag, one religion, one language. 
Progress was his way of bringing about 
this condition. This was by massacre. 
And as the actual Turks were few in 
293 
