FROM ATHENS

Europe, whither goest thou?--the poignant question of to-day. The pride of Christian culture, the greatest
human achievement in history, with, as we thought before 1914, the seal of immortality set upon her, is now
perhaps moving towards dissolution and death. Europe has begun a rapid decline, though no one dares to
think that she will continue in it downward until she reaches the chaos and misery and barbarity from which
she sprang. Affairs will presently take a turn for the better, Europe will recover her balance and resume the
road of progress which she left seven years ago--prompts Hope.
"Europe must die in order to be re-born as something better"; "all must be destroyed," say the theorists of
revolution. "She staggers and falls and falls and plunges," seem to say the facts with the inexorableness of
Fate.

EXTRA LEAVES

(i) On Passports and "Circulation"
Mr. H. G. Wells, in "The Salvaging of Civilization," has very pleasantly contrasted the States of America with
the States of Europe--the Disunited States. America, where you can travel by through trains without showing
passports, without customs-barriers, without change of currency and without police-inquisition; America
where there is a free interchange of peoples and opinions, Europe lying in unexampled obstruction and
stagnation; America with its cheap post and universally-used telephone service, Europe with its expensive,
ill-managed posts and local and limited and expensive and contumacious telephone. At the time of writing
you can send a letter from San Francisco to London for less than it costs to send a similar letter from one
London suburb to another. In America you have inter-state telephone service, you have the constant extension

FROM CONSTANTINOPLE (I)

It has been a bleak early spring with snow on the uplands of Thrace. For those who travel from Paris to
Constantinople on that Western moving shuttle, the Orient Express, there would be nothing to trouble the
mind unpleasantly--except in that the more comfortable we are, the more we demand and the more we
grumble. But if you travel by the ordinary unheated train, where even the first-class carriages are more or less
bereft of glass and have the windows loosely boarded up with bits of old packing-cases, you taste something of the persistent northern wind which blows down sleet and rain from the Black Sea, from Russia, as it were
Russian unhappiness it was blowing down.

FROM CONSTANTINOPLE (II)

A night's journey in a trawler brings you to the Dardanelles--the outermost vital significance of dominion at
Constantinople. By the use of mines an invincible protection is easily thrown out. By the simple closing of the
straits Russian trade is throttled, and even all the powers of imperial Russia before the great war could not
open a way. No wonder that all ambitious Russians desired Constantinople and the Straits. If it ever becomes
possible for some small power to stand in Russia's way again, there is bound to be a recrudescence of Russia's
passion to go south. At the Dardanelles, however, there remains Allied control--British men-of-war, French
black troops, Greek governors, and the rest. All boats are challenged coming in, none going out, and otherwise
there is freedom of the seas.

FROM SOFIA

The last night at Constantinople was memorable, and it is strange to contrast the brilliance, the clamour, the
poignancy, of that time with the quiet gloom and dirt of Sofia. Dinner with two young Russians at the
"Kievsky Ugolok"; vodka was taken as if it were part of a rite. We were served by a beautiful woman with
little hands. All the lights were shaded and the violins crooned.
"The best of my youth gone in senseless fighting," said Count Tolstoy. "Twenty-two to twenty-eight, think of
it; surely the best years of life, and campaigning all the while, from Insterburg to Sevastopol, and who knows
what more."
"I am going to cut it all and start afresh," said Col. S. "I don't believe in the cause. If I could get a little farm in
Canada or California!"
"Well, you are married and have children, that makes the difference. You are bound to them. But honour
binds me to Russia--whatever happens."

FROM BELGRADE (I)

A personal friendship with Bishop Nicholas of Zicca brought the gift of his rooms in the Patriarchia, opposite
the Cathedral. Nicholas, better known during the war years as Father Nicholas Velimirovic, being on a
mission to the United States, his simple white-walled rooms hung with bright-coloured ikons were free, and
could be a home for a wanderer in an over-crowded city. Kostya Lukovic, who during the war graduated at
Cambridge, treated me as if I were the England to whom he could repay the gratitude he owed for our
hospitality to him. Dr. Yannic, also known to us in England, then a priest, now temporarily secretary to the
Constituent Assembly, was also very kind. A recommendation from Balugdic, the Minister at Athens, opened
many doors and obtained a separate carriage for me at night on some wild trains. Archimandrites and Abbots
entertained me lavishly at the shrines of the Frushta Gora. It can therefore be said that the Serbs know how to
treat an Englishman well when he passes through their country. Salutations therefore, and thanks! They fought

FROM BELGRADE (II)

Up on the cliff one evening a party of Serbs were listening to a Russian soldier, one of Wrangel's army
invalided to a hospital camp near Belgrade. "Which of these rivers is the Danube?" said he.
The Serbs pointed out where the Save joined the main stream, like a thread of silver joining a silver ribbon.
"Ah," said the Russian. "And my grandfather was killed on that river, fighting to free the Slavs. Defenceless
little brothers, the Slavs! When the war began the enemy was right into your capital of Belgrade at once, but
we Russians plunged into East Prussia. Yes, I was there, brothers, and was wounded and marched back to the
Niemen with my wound open----"
He recounted where he had been in the war, and was so circumstantial that one by one the Serbs said
good-bye and wished him luck and went away. And he was left standing there alone, looking over the gloomy
Austrian plain below where night was descending fast.
"Would you like to have tea?" I asked. "My lodging is quite close." He readily agreed, and so we went across
to the "Patriarchate" and up to Bishop Nikolai's white room.