Alas, the little boys! the little boys who had never been away from their mothers--the hope of Serbia--dying by thousands along that dreary road; dying, dying on the plain of Kossovo. War, for them, a kind of holiday! They were soldiers now; they would be real men when they reached the sea! The little boys, the hope of the future! Of the thirty thousand who trod that dreary road, only a half lived to reach the sea. Not one-half of these reached the island where they were to have their training as soldiers. The soul of Serbia was in agony as a ghostlike army, pale, pinched, and starved, crept over the snowy mountains, over the soggy roads--men, women, and poor dumb animals sinking in to their death. Of those who came to the edge of the sea some could hold out no longer, but died when comfort was near. Despite the circumstances under which he came to the throne, no one believed that King Peter had planned or had anything to do with the murder of Alexander and Draga; he, the direct descendant of the honest Karageorges. Yet it could not be denied that he had profited by this murder and, consequently, even when the horror of the whole thing had faded from the minds of other Europeans, he had a certain amount of prejudice to overcome. Yet in the first ten years of his reign, Serbia had prospered. Her nearly one thousand miles of railways had brought her in closer connection with the world. Though the debt incurred for these railways and other improvements were large she had no trouble in borrowing money. Her loans were readily taken by outside capitalists. In the hundred years since she had been freed from Turkish rule, Serbia had made constant advance in culture, in all that may be called economic life. Her peasant farmers not only produced all that the Serbians themselves needed--wheat, barley, maize, fruits of various kinds, cattle, and pigs--but there was a demand for some of their staples in other countries, and more and more they required a larger market; more and more they chafed under the restrictions made by Austria. The whole country realized, as outsiders had realized, that Austria was slowly squeezing her; that Austria would be ready to devour her when the right time came. The King had a difficult task in keeping his people contented.