And it was the town's introduction to the Balkan question. Up to now, Serbia had scarcely been included in the field of war. There was a Western front and an Eastern for them, but that was all. Serbia's tragic fate, brought home to them as it was by Nancy Cowder's escape, set them to asking what it meant. Why should Austria set out to annihilate a people? Why, even Belgium's fate, hard as it had been, did not compare in cruelty with this. She meant to exterminate--nothing else. How could such things be? Should such things be? And if not, what should Sabinsport do about it? The War Board was terribly stirred over the matter, and Captain Billy did not hesitate to condemn the Allies bitterly for not having sent aid in time to prevent the disaster. "If we'd gone into this war when we ought to," he declared loudly, "this thing never would have happened. Our boys would have gotten around there in time." And there was a constantly increasing number of people who agreed with him. Mr. John Commons, with his usual Shavian perversity, sneered at the indignation of the body, and he spent an entire evening reviewing the history of the Balkans, pointing out with real enjoyment the inconsistencies, violated agreements, murders and cruelties with which the states charge one another. He claimed he could match every Bulgar atrocity with a Serbian, and quoted a well-known modern commission to prove his point. They were a group of lawless states, born and brought up to cut one another's throats--and that a peaceful group of American citizens should lash themselves into fighting mood because one of the cut-throats was getting the worst of it, was only another of the unspeakable absurdities of this war. And why were they so stirred up? They hadn't even remembered Serbia was in the war until this story about Nancy Cowder came out. Fool thing for any woman to do--just another example of the mania for notoriety that had seized women in these times. He supposed Sabinsport would insist on making a lion of her when she came back. He hoped she'd have sense enough to have nothing to do with the people that had ignored her so long; that she'd see their interest in Serbia was nothing in the world but vanity--their desire to flatter themselves they knew somebody who had been in the thick of things. Absurd, he called it--enough to make the gods laugh.