Description: The Balkans have long been known as "the cockpit of Europe." For a thousand years this strip of territory, about as large as the state of Pennsylvania, lying between the Aegean and the Black Sea has been the scene of almost uninterrupted conflict. Bulgarians, Serbians, Roumanians, Montenegrins and Albanians have alternately fought the Turk and fought each other.
Race animosities and religious prejudice have kept them at each others throats. For generations the Great Powers of Europe have been striving to bring about a lasting peace among them, fearing that an outbreak in the Balkans might inaugurate a general European war — as it did, finally.
Serbia, one of the Balkan states, has a population of about four million souls. It is a land of broad plains and fertile valleys, hemmed in and traversed by rugged mountains, an agricultural community, a land of small farms, tilled by a brave and spirited people.
In 1912 they arose as one man against Turkish tyranny and beat the Moslem back to the gates of Constantinople. In 1913, attacked by Bulgaria, they turned savagely on the foe and routed him.
In 1914 Austria, a mightier foe, a nation of forty million people, jealous of their growing power, swooped down upon them, using as a pretext the assasination of the Crown Prince, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand. Dismayed, impoverished by two wars, the Serbians nevertheless rallied gallantly to their colors and fought with desperation, only to succumb finally to overwhelming numbers. The men before us await the call to battle, ready to pour out their blood on the altar of their country.
- Excerpt from: The World War through the stereoscope a visualized, vitalized history of the greatest conflict of all the ages / / edited by Major Joseph Mills Hanson.
- Published/Created by: Meadville, Pa.; New York, N.Y.; Chicago, Ill.; London, England:
- Keystone View Company, photographed between 1914 and 1918, published 1923
- Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
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