COMING CAPITAL OF THE BALKANS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3380, 27 June 1927, Page 2

COMING CAPITAL OF THE BALKANS.

(By H. J. Green wall.)

The best way to bring home to oneself the geographical changes the war made on the map of Europe is to travel in the Balkans. Previous to the summer oi 1914 one travelled through miles and miles of Austrian territory before on© reached the frontier of Serbia.

Belgrade, the capital, was a frontier town, and the lliver Danube the actual boundary. Now one can cross Austria in a few hours, but from the eastern frontier of Italy to the city ol Belgrade is a journey which occupies the better part of a day. Serbia or Juga-Slavia as they call it now, has grown from a pocket handkerchief to a sheet.

Most of the railways in the Balkans have a pleasant habit of making the railway stations a sort of meetingplace. A railed-off space provides room ror a restaurant, where quite good lood can be obtained, and where one can drink a mug of beer and see one’s friends. The railway station at Belgrade goes a step further, for there is a beer garden adjoining the station, and a very good orchestra. The leader of the band, who has been known by sight to me for many years, bears a most striking likeness to King Alexander; both are dark, spectacled, and very serious-looking. The station of Belgrade, so near the liiver Danube, is practically all tnat is left of the old city. The Belgrade oi to-day is being built on a -high hill, and it is going to be the future capital of the Balkans. Economically and commercially Belgrade is ousting Vienna as the key ol “Mittel-europa.” When gallant little Serbia went to war the population of Belgrade was about 28,.U00. To-day Belgrade boasts a population of nearly a quarter of a million.

The most perplexing sight in the Serbia, of to-day is the number of soldiers one sees, not only in the lands wrested from the hated Austrians, but everywhere else as well. In every railroad station one finds them, ill the streets, too, and doing guard duty. But if the surface of Serbia appears militarist, the spirit of the people seems [pacific, because no country preparing for a war could devote itself so whole-heartedly to an orgy of building as the people of Belgrade are doing. Banks, shops, hotels, cabarets are being erected as fast as possible, and this city, which only a few years ago was nothing more than an overgrown village, is now' on the high road to becoming a model capital. When I visited Belgrade just after peace there was one hotel which could call itself modern without fear of mocking laughter; now this hotel has at least three rivals. .The hotel in which 1 stayed dresses its chambermaids as if they were about to form the chorus of a London musical comedy. There is a roof garden, two American bars, and a cabaret in the basement.

The Hungarian Army of to-day numbered but 3-5,000 men, but the potential army is about a million and a half, for every boy between the ages of 12 and 18 years has to serve in a cadet corps. Hungarians have become frantic devotees of sport. There was a crowd of 22,000 people at a football match in Budapest the other day. The royal guard at the palace is the most magnificent anywhere on. the Continent of Europe. They wear scarlet tunics with white breeches, and suspended from their shqulders are flowing scarlet cloaks. The officers wear gold and silver helmets of Viking shape with a gigantic feather of the eagle, the national bird of Hungary, rising perpendicularly from the brm. Bugles blare, drums beat, there is marching and counter-marching, saluting, and all the pomp and circumstance which used to surround the royal palace when Francis Joseph reigned as Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. It should not be thought, however, that Hungary is living in the past. It has buckled to and has created a new and independent state. Hungary- for a Ipng time has been isolated, but she is now beginning to sign a series of commercial treaties which will make her a force- to lie seriously reckoned with in * Eastern Europe. Although the Hunarian can be serious and hard-working by day, when night falls he likes to sip his Turkish coffee and listen to the dreamy strains of his gipsy musicians, who play the folk songs of the Hungary which used to be —and which may be once again. Seen in their close fitting red jackets, the ziegeuner musicians are figures of romance, but seen as 1 have just seen them coming throng the vestibule of my hotel, they look like a group of stout Jewish stockbrokers about to indulge in a flutter in''“Kaffirs.” I remarked particularly one man. He was short,abalk, and very, very homely looking. He wore a morning coat and a bine waistcoat dotted with white spots.

I looked at him, because, 1 thought, here is a type one sees in every European capital—the small banker, the cosmopolitan financier who sells francs in Amsterdam and buys them again in Zurich. And then I began to read, and looked up again when the throbbing strains of the gipsy band were heard. The “banker” was playing the ’cello in the Throgmorton Five" band. And Now I shall sip my Turkish coffee and listen to the folk songs of Hungary, songs of love and songs of war, Jicder that will tell of when the Hungarians were wandering over their wide, wide plains, fighting the terrible Turks, forming a barrier between barbarism and civilisation. The music will tell of young men leaving their loved ones, and it will then rise in a chant of victory, and finally fade awav to a mere whisper as the zeigeuners relate the woes of the women who were loft behind in those red-roofed cottages with the white walls.