thrilling with love of country, and his tempestuous ballads of heroism and revenge—_these_ have fostered his sense of patriotism, his yearning for his downtrodden brothers, and his thirst for retribution. These folk-songs have been handed down from one generation to another, and to this day they have been preserved in all their pristine purity of text and melody in the souls and memories of the Serbian people. It is not necessary at a time of foreign menace to appeal to the Serb people with elaborately-worded proclamations and inflammatory speeches. The refrains of their songs suffice, and they take up arms as one man. But the cause must be in harmony with the traditions of the past. They fight like lions when they go to battle with their ancient songs upon their lips. Thus did they war with the Turks—thus they are warring now against Austria. To the Serb the love of his language is second only to his love of country. The most beautiful and melodious of all the Slav tongues,[8] rich in idiom and soft in modulation, it is specially fitted to be the medium of folk-poesy. This language, which is identical with that of the Croats (thence the name Serbo-Croat tongue), has been the sacred and abiding link between the Serbs and their still enslaved brothers in Turkey and in Austria. The Serbian peasant is in the habit of calling every one who speaks to him in a foreign language a “Schwabo”;[9] but should the stranger address him in Serbian, or, indeed, in any of the Slav tongues, he will say: “Pa ti si naš” (Thou art one of us). Undoubtedly, apart from their national music, this bond of union has been one of the strongest factors in the preparation of the future, for through it the Serb can freely communicate with his brothers beyond the frontier. Those dear familiar sounds tell him that his brothers still live and share his speech, his songs and his yearnings. This explains the unanimous enthusiasm of the _whole_ nation in the Balkan War, as well as in the present second war of liberation. They are not the soldiers of the king who have gone to war, but the soldiers of an _ideal_. The miracles of valour these men have performed are not the exploits of a war-machine, but of a great heart, in which hundreds of thousands of hearts beat as one.