File No. 763.72/10860
The Serbian President of the Council ( Pashitch) to President Wilson
[Received July 28, 1918.]
Just four years ago to-day Austria declared war on Serbia and a treacherous attack was made on the liberty of a small nation keeping the gates of Europe for the east. After heavy fights of a year and a half, attacked on the front by the Germans and in the back by the Bulgarians, we fell on this bulwark of the world’s civilization, and four years have passed since German and Bulgarian barbarians are persecuting our country. With the cry of distress which comes to us from our own country in which Austrians and Bulgarians trample upon the most sacred rights of humanity, killing and oppressing our nation, comes also a similar cry of distress from our wider fatherland country of the Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes inhabiting Austria-Hungary who are enduring already four [Page 823] years the most terrible physical and moral persecutions, are being hung, killed and oppressed, and who, together with the nation from Serbia, are looking up to America, that through you has so often emphasized the principles of liberation of nations from brutal conquerors and of free self-determination of all nations, and that has already sent for this purpose a million warriors to Europe with enormous quantities of material that they may realize, together with the Allied armies, the great war aims which you have proclaimed on the Fourth of July before Washington’s grave. The Serbian Nation, together with their brothers by blood and tongue, with the Serbians Croatians and Slovenes in Austria-Hungary, the people that suffer to-day from the Germans and Bulgarians, as well as those who are fighting on the different fronts against our common enemies, all of them are expecting full of hope the day when your principles will be realized and when, after all their sacrifices, they will, united and strengthened, join the society of the great civilized nations that are fighting to-day for liberty, right and civilization in order to defend in the future as well as in the past with all their might these principles on the southeast of Europe against barbarians and conquerors.