SERBIA'S MARTYRDOM.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 4768, 16 January 1918, Page 5

SERBIA'S MARTYRDOM.

In an appeal for help for the martyred Servians (published in London newspapers in September last) M. Kosta Novakovitch, secretary of the Servian Trade Unions, gives some appalling figures showing how the Servian population is being exterminated by the enemy. Thousands of men are in Austrian gaols, where many have died, and their families are perishing of hunger. The Bul> garian official journal states that the population a year ago in the part of Servia occupied by Austria was only 2,218,027, whereas normally it would have been 3,170,000. Three was thus a reduction of 28 per cent., or in the male population alone 38 per cent, at Belgrade it is fully 65 per cent. There are now in Servia 144 women to 100 men. In the territories occupied by tlie Bulgarians the reduction was 300,000, so that the total decrease is 1,352,000. Among the causes have been the massacres after the insurrection, the deportation of 30,000 persons to Asia Minor, the mortality among prisoners, estimated at 60,000, and the heavy losses of the Servian army in the retreat and afterwards. . The Swiss committee in 1916 sent £II,OOO worth of provisions and 700,000 kg of maize was brought from ltoumauia, while the United States Committee sent twenty-two waggons of provisions, clothing, and boots. Since last October the Servian Government has despatched £6OOO a month for the entire population, but what is that among 2,000,000 people P Sixty thousand families require immediate aid. They have no other means of living, and winter is ap : proaching, so that the need for assistance is imperative and , immediate."