Serbia in Light and Darkness: With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916)Velimirović, Nikolaj
History
Serbia in Light and Darkness: With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916)
Velimirović, Nikolaj
Proverbs, Serbian; Serbia; Serbian poetry -- Translations into English
If our national pride bids us Serbs be silent in this shipwreck, my
Christian honour and pride bids me cry out and protest. I am a surviving
protest of my murdered country. Yet I am still a transitory protest, a
protest only for a moment before God the Slow and the Righteous begins
to protest Himself. My protest is in words, my words are from the air.
But God's protest will be, as always, from the unquenchable fire, which
burns bodies and souls. I indicate only the terrible protest which will
come. Why am I protesting now before you, sons and daughters of Great
Britain? Because you have been the champions of the Bible in the world,
i.e. the champions of justice, freedom and the brotherhood of men.
Because your knights have fought for the Christian Cross and Freedom.
Your island has been an Island of Salvation for all the refugees, who as
champions of liberty must escape from their own countries--among others,
Rousseau, Voltaire and Victor Hugo, even the sons of a very liberal
nation. Your most famous generals and admirals have humiliated the
greatest conqueror of the world and granted him a cottage on a small
island in which to live, instead of the world Empire of which he
dreamed. Your statesmen--I will mention only a few of them: Pitt,
Bright, Gladstone--asserted repeatedly that the domestic and foreign
policy of this country should be founded on Christian principles. Your
women are famous in the world because of the fine and humane education
that they give to their children in order to make every new generation a
new proof to the world of how this island is obviously worthy of its
great role on our planet. Your working people possess a healthy sense of
both reality and idealism, and avoiding all extremes and extravagances,
to which poverty necessarily leads the working class in other countries,
are powerfully promoting human progress, the material as well as the
moral. Your nobility, far from being corrupted and degenerated by their
wealth, have filled the world with astonishment from the beginning of
this war by their extraordinary patriotism and willingness to sacrifice
everything, including life itself, in the struggle for the honour and
the unshakable ideals of their country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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