ON THE MONASTIR ROAD 



395 



harder than when a Serbian soldier is 

 bossing them, for it must be admitted 

 that the Serbian sympathizes with people 

 who do not like to work. 



Driving along the roads, one finds Bul- 

 garians asleep under bushes, stretched 

 face down on the sand, examining their 

 foot-gear, doing anything but work. In 

 that case one is very apt to see a com- 

 plaisant Serbian sentry sitting under a rock 

 not far away, smoking a cigarette and 

 quite at peace with the world. He would 

 cheerfully kill that one of his charges 

 who sought to escape, but he is open- 

 minded in regard to industry. 



"He just got in today," one such sentry 

 told me, nodding at a particular contented 

 Bulgarian who was actively killing time. 

 "He came in from the front, thirty-five 

 kilometers away." 



The prisoner explained that he had de- 

 serted, hidden his rifle, and started out to 

 give himself up. The whole countryside 

 is crawling with Bulgarian prisoners, so 

 that no one paid the least attention to 

 him. He walked on and walked on, ex- 

 amining gang after gang, until he found 

 one in which the dignity of labor was 

 respected. 



His only complaint was that after he 

 had properly surrendered he was obliged 

 to walk three kilometers farther, until he 

 found an officer at Vertekopp who would 

 receipt for him properly. He thought this 

 formality might have been attended to by 

 mail. 



PEASANTS ARE SOURLY PHILOSOPHIC 



Along with the prisoners one also finds 

 press gangs of the peasants of the vicin- 

 ity. They are heartily discontented, al- 

 though they are paid for their work. 

 One cannot wonder at their attitude. 

 Throughout the centuries there have been 

 wars in Macedonia, and with each war 

 the overlordship of the peasant changed. 

 But a little while ago he owned allegiance 

 to the Turk. Then the Greeks took Mace- 

 donia and began to tax him. Then the 

 Bulgars established themselves, and right 

 on the retreating heels of his new masters 

 came the Serbs, accompanied by a swarm 

 of strange men wearing many uniforms 

 ind speaking in man)' tongues. The peas- 

 ant takes refuge from his confusion in a 

 sour philosophy. 



"One year the crops fail," he says, 

 "and the next year there is war. It is all 

 one to the poor man." 



Along the Monastir road there is a con- 

 tinuous, dribbling stream of refugees — 

 not many at a time. Sometimes half a 

 dozen will trudge by in the course of a 

 day. Sometimes an entire village has 

 been evacuated farther up the line, and 

 the fifty or so who have held on to the 

 bitter end tramp stolidly and unwillingly 

 to safety. These poor folk never leave 

 their homes until they have been com- 

 pelled to. The outer world is a strange 

 and hostile place to them. Perhaps not 

 one in an hundred has ever been twenty 

 miles away from his hamlet. 



WOMEN RETURN AT NIGHT TO THEIR 

 ABANDONED HOMES 



They pile their poor effects on donkeys, 

 put the babies on top, and load the women 

 with what there is left. If there is a 

 spare donkey, the man of the house al- 

 ways rides. If there are two spare don- 

 keys, the eldest sons ride. The women 

 always walk. Only once did I see a man 

 walking while his wife rode the donkey. 

 The road buzzed with the gossip of it. 



They have suffered greatly, these poor 

 folk. Yet candor compels me to say that 

 at first sight the difference between a 

 Macedonian peasant evicted and a Mace- 

 donian peasant at home is so slight that 

 it fails to arouse much sympathy. These 

 poor folk seem to a westerner always on 

 the edge of starvation. The principal 

 item of their diet is maize, so poorly 

 ground by crude water-turned wheels 

 that their bodies are repulsively swollen 

 from the resultant indigestion. 



A man with a yoke of oxen and forty 

 sheep is rich. 



Their homes are mere inclosures of 

 stone, topped with a blackened thatch, 

 without windows and sometimes wdthout 

 other door than a blanket or a bit of 

 flapping skin. Often the fire is lighted 

 in the middle of the dirt floor and the 

 smoke seeps out through the crevices of 

 the walls and the holes in the roof. Baths 

 seem unknown and vermin are a common- 

 place of their existence. 



Yet they cling blindly to these hovels. 

 When they hide themselves from an in- 



