Tiflis has been much developed under the Russian Government.  In the modern section of the city the streets are wide and paved and lighted by electricity and the stores are large and handsome while electric railways run in all directions.  In the older parts of the city, however, the houses remain as they were built centuries ago, divided out into the many quarters devoted to the residences of the many races and nationalities that compose the population of Tiflis.  Between most of them is bitter enmity and prejudice, even among those of the two great religious faiths, Christians and Mohammedans.  It is this diversity of interests, which extends throughout all the section down into Persia, which has so complicated the situation on this front.  For not only are the two military forces fighting here, but wherever governmental authority is momentarily relaxed, there these mutual animosities flare up into active expression and the most barbarous features of warfare take place, such as the massacres of the Armenians by the Mohammedans.  Neither Turkey nor Russia has been especially eager to suppress these bitter feuds, even in time of peace.  In time of war there is nothing to restrain them, and the whole region is swept by carnage infinitely more hideous than legitimate warfare.

We have now passed over the entire theatre of the battles on the Eastern frontiers of the war in Europe.  The battle grounds are familiar to us.  In the succeeding chapters we will follow the armies over this war-ridden dominion and watch the battle lines as they move through the war to its decisive conclusion.

PART IV—­THE AUSTRO-SERBIAN CAMPAIGN

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLVI

SERBIA’S SITUATION AND RESOURCES

The first great campaign on the southeastern battle grounds of the Great War began on July 27, 1914, when the Austrian troops undertook their first invasion of Serbia.  They crossed the Serbian border at Mitrovitza, about fifty miles northwest of Belgrade, driving the Serbians before them.  The first real hostilities of the war opened with the bombardment of Belgrade by the Austrians on July 29, 1914—­six days before the beginning of the campaigns on the western battle fields.

We are now familiar with the theatre of war as described in the preceding chapters, and will now follow the first Austrian armies into Serbia.

A stubborn fight excites the admiration of all observers, regardless of the moral qualities of the combatants.  So, wherever our sympathies may lie, considering the war as a whole, there can be no doubt that the defense which the Serbians made against the first efforts of the Austrians to invade their country will stand out in the early history of the war as one of the most brilliant episodes of that period of the general struggle.  Like a mighty tidal wave from the ocean