To some it seemed an act of retribution for an unrighteous peace, a manifestation of stern justice, dubbed divine, although its victims were the innocent and weak. The rich escaped by fleeing to hill stations or the sea, the poor, perforce, remained and died by hundreds, their families were decimated, their fields were left untilled, a blight had fallen on this pleasant land. In her hour of trial Rumania discovered an unexpected source of strength and consolation. Calamity had called, and from her castle in the mountains an English Princess came, leaving the fragrant coolness of the woods for stifling heat and misery in myriad shape, down in the sun-scorched plain. In every cholera camp her white-clad form was seen moving from tent to tent, bringing the tonic of her beauty, restoring hope, dealing out pity with a lavish hand. To humble folk weighed down by suffering, it was as though an angel passed, and memories cluster still around those days, weaving a web of gratitude and loving kindness, a web to outward seeming, frail and unsubstantial, but unbreakable, surviving all the shocks of war, binding the people to their Queen. I returned to London through Sofia and Belgrade. After the festivities of Bucharest the aspect of both these Capitals was sad indeed. Victor and vanquished alike were reaping the aftermath of war; bedraggled soldiers thronged the streets, no longer saviours, not even heroes, merely idle citizens, useless until demobilized. From Belgrade my duties called me to Vienna. As the train crossed the railway bridge to Semlin, I saw again the guns and searchlights on the Save’s Hungarian bank. Austria-Hungary had not yet decided on her course of action, but she was ready. The Balkan Allies of 1912, like rabbits unconscious of the presence of hungry pythons, had had their frolic. Now, they had paused for breath and had time to think. No longer Allies, they were helpless. Victims, not wholly innocent, they would crouch and wait; already it seemed as if a Python-State had stirred. CHAPTER VII TWO MEN WHO DIED I. FIRST MAN. A SIMPLE SOLDIER Near Krivolak, in the Vardar Valley, a road strikes westward, joining the railway with the plains lying beyond a wall of mountains. At first, it winds in tortuous fashion, following a streamlet’s rocky bed, and, ever rising, leads to a tableland where other roads are met, and signposts point the way to Monastir. The Vardar Valley is a rift of gentle beauty in a wild, inhospitable land, the mother of many tributaries coming from east and west. It broadens on its journey to the sea, the plains adjoin and almost touch each other, like glowing pearls strung on a silver thread. One of these plains lies north of Krivolak, and here the valley of the winding stream and road sinks like a lovely child into its mother’s lap. The war had made it a Gehenna, where wagons creaked and jolted, and the once silent spaces echoed with moans of pain.