Can the problem ever be resolved?  Can Serbia with half her manhood wiped out stand against her jealous neighbours?  The creation of a lot of small states on republican principles seems a far-fetched idea, and yet it seems the best, especially if the menace of Turkey were removed, for there is little doubt that Turkey, rearmed by the German, might make one more effort to regain her lost territory under conditions vastly different from those which ruled in the Balkan conflict.  Macedonia, Albania, and what is now Turkey in Europe, each made self-governing under the shield of the Alliance—­why not?—­and Serbia as compensation allowed to expand towards the north into territories which are wholly Serb in nationality and in feeling.

We went through the pot market, whose orange earthenware was glowing in the sun, and came upon an old house with such a wonderful ultramarine courtyard that we went in to look.  Over the door was written OLD SERB CAFE JANSIE HAN.  After sketching there we entered the inn for coffee, and sat at tables made of thick blocks of marble smoothed only at the top.  The innkeeper said it was built in the days of the Czar Duchan.  If this were true, one would say that never had the interior been whitewashed since then.  But there was an air of cosiness about it, and we visited it several times after.  Near by was a little church with a wonderful carved screen and a picture of Elijah going to heaven in a chariot drawn by a pink horse, with the charioteer bumping along on a separate cloud, which served as the box.  We watched the sun set from one of the tipsy-cake hills, sitting on a gravestone with an old Turkish shepherd, who seemed to derive great comfort from our company.

The mountains around reflected the rosy lights of the sun in great flat masses.

The muezzin sounded from the many minarets, and twilight was on us.  Uskub, romantic, dirty, unhealthy Uskub, was soon shrouded in mist; a vision of unusual beauty.

One thought of the awful winter it had passed through, when dead and dying had lain about the streets.  Typhus, relapsing fever, and typhoid had gripped the town.  Lady Paget’s staff, while grappling with the trouble, had paid a heavy toll, as their hospital lay deep on the unhealthy part of the city.  For a time the citadel was in the hands of an English unit.  Before they were there it was a Serbian hospital, and the staff threw all the dirty, stained dressings over the cliff, down which they rolled to the road.  The peasants used to collect these pestiferous morsels and made them into padded quilts.  Little wonder that illness spread!  In the summer Lady Paget’s hospital withdrew to some great barracks on the hill.  The paths were made of Turkish tombstones, which were always used in Uskub for road metal.

The hospital staff was saddened by the recent death of Mr. Chichester, who had, like ourselves, just returned from a tour in the western mountains, where he caught paratyphoid and only lived a few days.