SERBIA'S WAR RECORD.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 19 May 1915, Page 2

SERBIA'S WAR RECORD.

W liat Belgium has done and suffered is known to all the world, writes W A. Stead, in the Daily Express. What Serbia has suffered and accomplished is much less clearlv understood. Examination proves easily the great value of the- services rendered to the Allies by the Serbians. , Not only have they successfully defended their own (territory, but they have prevented the Austrian contact with Bulgaria and Turkey, evidently the pre-arranged plan; they have prevented the passage of munitions of war and troops to Turkey; and, finally, they have forced Austria to devote "a very large proportion of her forces to the task of dealing with' her small neighbor. It is no exaggeration to say that the Serbian resistance has completely wrecked the German plans for cooperation between the Austrian, German and Turkish troops. Extrorciinary figures are available to prove thfet the Austrian concentration against Serbia, absorbed a large I proportion of her best troops. In the first- invasion, between 600,000 and 700,000 men took part, including picked j army corps from Croatia, the Tyrol, j Bosnia and Hungary. In the second invasion at least 300,000 men were engaged. The first invasion cost Austria 175,000 men, and the second 125,000 men and enormous stores. Thus Serbia has already inflicted losses on the enemy equivalent to the whole strength of the Serbian army at the beginning of the war, and she still remains as strong in a military sense as she was then. Serbia has won two great pitched battles with decisive results, and twice she has hurled back the invaders; but to England, which has no direct coni tact with the war with Austria, the offset appears to be remote. It suffices, however, to grasp the fact that the defeat of Austria has weakened the German power of offensive, and , must in the future weaken her power of defence, to make us realise that, while we are.fighting Germany, the defeat of Austifa by Serbia must have an enormous influence on the end of the two empires, the Austrian and the Turkish. Probably no country was less well equipped at the beginning of the war, and it is also probable that no country is so entirely and so intensely national. In Serbia "one feels the whole atmosphere to be charged with an electric instinct making for "heroism and universal sacrifice In this country everyone kat war. There is no one who is not direetlv affected. It is a stupendous _ revelation of th© -power of a unanimous people, and an object lesson in the history of nations. It forces on one the conviction that many grewt nations, rich, arrogant and self-sufficient, have much to learn from such small Stiites formerly ignored and despised. "What the Serbian army has done has been done alone. No allied forces have come to her aid as in Belgium