SERGT.-MAJOR FLORA SANDES.

An interesting letter, written in November last, has been received from Sergeant-major Flora Sandes, with the Serbian Army of Occupation in Hungary. The letter is as follows: “In case you know as little about the Austrian Serbs as I did, I had better explain that, besides the Bosnians, Herzogovinians, Croats, and Slovenes, who are all Serbs in various districts of Austria (twelve millions of them), there is an immense part of Hungary just across the Danube from Belgrade where the Serbs have been for 500 years under Magyar rule, always struggling to remain true Serbian. “We are now marching through this district by agreement with the Hungarians, to the wild acclamations of the populace. It’s really the most wonderful sight I’ve ever seen.

PELTED WITH FLOWERS.

“I wish I could have sent you a photo of how the regiment went through Belgrade pelted with flowers. They sent a motor-launch to take us across the Danube. When we arrived half the town was waiting on the jetty. I wondered what for, when to my astonishment and horror, on stepping ashore, I found it was for me! They had heard only an hour before that I was coming. “Then someone made me a speech, and, we drove off in a procession of carriages, nearly smothered in chrysanthemums, to the Town Hall, where I was received in state by (I gathered) the alderman of the city or some such man – and more speeches. Then they put a chair for me to stand on, and I was planted on that so that the populace would get a better view! By this time I was so thoroughly dazed that I couldn’t speak a word of Serbian, so the gentleman who had received me at the pier made a speech for me. “In all the villages we marched through in Serbia they put up triumphal arches, and the whole population fumed out to welcome us and throw flowers. It’s an awful pity there is no English journalist with this army. There’s material for top-hole newspaper articles. A French veterinary surgeon and myself are the only representatives of the Allies.

WOMEN IN MEN’S CLOTHING.

“The Londoners don’t half realise what the Serbian army did – from Kaimehchalen to Nish – 250 kilometres – in 25 days, driving the enemy out of fresh positions every day. The Scottish Women’s Transport Column – all women chauffeurs – did splendidly, and arrived (the whole lot) in Nish before a single other automobile. They say they can’t imagine how we did 50 or 60 kilometres in a day, when the best a car could sometimes do was 25 kilometres. “The Serbs would fight to the last man or woman. In one village, 300 women donned men’s clothing, and lived in the mountains harassing the Bulgars. All those villages were most frightfully punished; burnt to the ground and women and children massacred wholesale. My sergeant’s mother was hanged because she was the sister of an insurgent. In another village one of our captains went home on leave and found his mother had been nearly beaten to death, and cut with hot knives. (She died later.)”