That is why I am protesting before you, valiant sons and daughters of Great Britain, the heirs of the most valuable heritage that ever a nation could call its own. Serbian life in peace time is the most eloquent accusation and the mightiest protest against the crime of two great Christian Kaisers. These two Christian Kaisers conquered Serbia by their iron and mercilessness, and bound Serbia's throat so horribly that in Serbia there is now air and light only for the conquerors and not for the conquered. Breath-less and breadless, Serbia cannot protest, but I can. Well, I propose to describe to you to-night Serbia and the Serbians in peace time, in order to show you what life your smallest allies lived before the great storm came over their country. I will begin with: THE SERBIAN VILLAGE. Why? Because the village is the very foundation of all that we possess in material, spiritual and moral good. After the Turks conquered Serbia, five hundred years ago, the Serbian population was forced by the conquerors by degrees to abandon the towns and to retreat into the villages, and then to abandon even the villages in the plains, on the banks of the rivers, where the soil was the most fruitful, and to escape into the forests, mountains and less accessible country. The village thus became the very soil upon which has grown our democracy. That is the difference between our democracy and the west European, where the democrats movement started and developed in the towns. Driven into the forests and mountains by the common enemy, despoiled of freedom and riches the upper and lower classes, the learned and the illiterate, suffered the same abasement and injustice, did the same work, ploughed and sowed, struggled against the same evil, the Turkish yoke, and sang of the same hopes. Under such conditions was born our democratic spirit, which served wonderfully afterwards, in the time of liberation and freedom, as a base for our democratic institutions, social, political and ecclesiastical. I said that our village is the very foundation of our material wealth. We have, so to say, no industry, but every one of our peasants has his own land. The land being fertile, our country never knew what hunger was. It was a pleasure to see the peasants in the spring ploughing their own soil; in the summer looking over the-golden harvest of their own; in the autumn contemplating the stores plenteously filled; in the winter feasting and resting in their own houses. If you should ask any of the Serbian peasants: "To whom does this house belong? or this field? or this harvest?" he would unmistakably reply: "To God and to me!"--so in the mind of our peasants God is the first landlord, and the second they themselves. Even during the last three years of war in Serbia there was plenty of all the necessaries of life, especially of wheat and cattle, of fruits and hay, of vegetables and wood.