DIGGING TRENCHES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 111, 6 November 1908, Page 7

DIGGING TRENCHES.

ON THE SERBO-AUSTRIAN FRONTIER. MOVING TEOOPS.

THE OUTLOOK BATHER SOMBRE. By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright. /Received November 6, 8.40 a.m.) BELGRADE, sth November. Sixteen ohousand Servian troops occupy the heights round Belgrade. One-half of the Shumadia division and two additional regiments have been ordered to Belgrade. The bullion in the National Bank is gping to Rraguyevats, capital of the province of that name, 59 miles south-south-east of Belgrade. The General Army Staff is proceeding to the same place, whither also are being sent the bulk of the army stores and munitions of war. Troops on the frontier near BosniaHerzegovnia have been reinforced. Austrian troops are digging trenches along the Servian frontier. KING EDWARD'S BIRTHDAY, A DEMONSTRATIOM. ! BELGRADE, sth November. In connection with the birthday of King Edward, a great demonstration is being organised in the Servian capital. Kraguyevats (Servian spelling Kragujevac) is on the railway. The town has a population of about 13,000. " The Serb is democratic (writes Mr. Foster Fraser in his ' Pictures from the , Balkans '). Nobody, except the King, has a title. Property is equally divided between the sons. Education is free, from the elementary school up to the university. Corporal punishment is prohibited. Practically everybody belongs to the Servian National Church ; but though the priests are personally popular, tHe Serbs sere nob churchgoers except at F estival times. Thon the picnic is as much an attraction as the opportunity to worship. The Serbs are a moral people. Also, as is natural in a mountain people, they are superstitious. They hang out a bunch of garlic to keep away the devil, and if a widow desires to get married again she hangs a doll in the cottage window to give male passers-by due notice of this fact. . . Personally I keep a warm corner in my heart for the Serbs. It was Be la Jonquiere who called them a brave, poetic, careless, frivolous race. Frivolity is hardly a description to apply to the people as a whole, though it does apply to a few in the capital who ape the ways of Vienna on a miniature scale. Merry, heedless of mechanical progress — or he would find other means of thrashing corn than letting horses run through it on a patch of beaten ground, or letting oxen trail a board in which flints are inset as a means of piessing the wheat from the ear — independent, not mindful much of education, Knowing his people have a noble though tragic history, but making no attempt to assimilate the old culture, jealous of Bulgaria, afraid of Austria, the Serb is really a relic of the mediaeval age." _______