11″ (for the Ustashi and their victims or,rnmore expHcitly, for the Ustashi headsman,rnPero Brzica, and the 1,350 Serbs hernhad butchered in a single night, to set arnrecord and win a wager he had madernwith his pals). It would be interesting tornspeculate how Jews would have reactedrnhad someone suggested, say, that Auschwitzrnbe refashioned into a monumentrnto the murdered Jews and their SS executioners,rnbut such an idea is still to berntested, as the whole episode with Jasenovacrnis vet to be reported by the Westernrnmedia.rnIn their cover-up of their Worid WarrnII magnum crimen against humanity (or,rnat least, its Serb component), the Croatsrnhave taken the tack chosen only by thernTurks in their denial of the Armenianrngenocide. Three million Armenian men,rnwomen, and children were massacred byrnthe Turkish Army, Turkish authorities,rnand Kurdish irregulars in 1915, while thernWest kept silent (except for a few isolatedrn’oices, such as Theodore Roosevelt’s).rnEighty years after this extensivelv—andrnintensively—documented event, thernTurkish government, as well as Turkishrnpublic figures, men of learning, historians,rnand poets, all deny that it took placernat all. This denial has caused an endemicrnArmenian terrorism whose solernaim is to force the Turks—a nationrnwhose historic record in the countries itrnhas occupied is notorious—to admitrntheir deed. For those in the West whornlecture the Armenians, and the Serbs, onrnthe pastness of history while at the samerntime airing daily newscasts reminiscingrnabout the Battle of Britain, or the victoryrnat el-Alamein, or, still more indicatively,rncarefully refraining from even suggestingrnto Jews that their past has nornbearing on the present, the Serb and Armenianrnplight should give some food forrnthought.rnWould I—a 47-year-old with backrntrouble and a record of pulmonary TB—rnhave taken a rifle and gone, bundled uprnin a Yugoslav Army standard-issue fieldrnjacket, to defend Serb Kraina had no historyrntaken place? Would I, instead ofrncompleting my short stories and novels,rnpiled up two feet thick on my desk afterrna 20-year communist ban on my writing,rnhave taken the pen to write this account,rnabout something almost banal to myrnpeople but (intentionally, it seems) unknownrnto the “Free Worid,” had no “history”rnoccurred?rnIn Kraina, and in Bosnia, I have seenrnthe best of my nation live—and die—tornkeep vigorous the spirit of what hasrnmade Europe, and the West in general,rngreat. Gentle of bearing but ferocious inrnbattle, the Kraina soldiers who helpedrnme clean and assemble my automaticrnrifle on a position overlooking the bluernAdriatic Sea are an assurance—to mernand to the West—that in the next warrnbetween us and them who would disinheritrnus—all those racially, socially, religiously,rnethnically, and economicallyrnoverconscious masses of what is euphemisticallyrncalled the Third andrnFourth Worid—there will stand a dam, arnpale, a manned bastion whose guardrnnever sleeps nor sinks into frivolous complacency.rnSo far, Serbs have held back from becomingrnan imperial people. Like thernArmenians, their greatest shortcomingrnseems to be the misfortune to livernathwart important strategic communications,rnan involuntary obstacle to thernimperial expansion of others: Germans,rnin the case of the Serbs, and Turks, in therncase of the Armenians. But all this mayrnchange: those like the Croats and thernAlbanians who have let the genie out ofrnthe bottle may yet prod the Serbs—arnnation that, in the time of the BlackrnPrince of England, numbered, like thernEnglish, 4 million souls—to turn protectivelyrnimperialist and to claim for themselvesrnthe whole territory of the formerrnYugoslavia, without ever again sharing itrnwith anyone.rnSo far, Serbs have restrained themselvesrnfrom assimilating, annihilating, orrnbanishing others on their territory:rnGreeks, Bulgars, Magyars, Croats, Muslims,rnand Albanians have, until the timernof this writing, lived side by side withrnSerbs, never having to suffer for it. Sornfar, others have taken from the Serb nationalrnbeing to augment their numbersrnand importance (north Albanian genealogies,rnfor example, invariably mentionrntheir Rascian, Serb origin; Croatsrnhave, with Austro-I lungarian help, Croatizedrnlarge segments of Dalmatian andrnHerzegovinian Serbs; Magyars havernMagyarized Voivodina Serbs; Muslimsrnstill bear their Serb ancestors’ surnames;rnMacedonians have only decades ago, byrnTito government edict, Bulgarized theirrnSerb family names, etc.), but all thisrnmight change; never, since Ottomanrntimes, have the Serbs been so backed uprnto a wall, and they don’t like it one whit.rnIn 1922, Lloyd George suggested thatrnSerbian troops take Constantinople, as arnmove against Mustafa Atatiirk. Then,rnSerbian Prime Minister Nikola Pasic declined,rnsaying that the Serb’s 1912 victoryrnover the Turks at Kumanovo inrnMacedonia was ample revenge for thern1389 Kosovo defeat. Now, however,rnjudging by the mood of the Serb fightersrnI have seen on the various battlegroundsrnof the latest pan-Serb War for Survival,rnour enemies—and their protectors andrntutors—might come to rue the day whenrnSerb contemplativeness and leisure ofrnspirit were mistaken for weakness andrnservility.rnKraina Serbs—part of the great DinaricrnSerb population—are, accordingrnto anthropological, ethnological, and historicalrnevidence, as Welsh (Vlach) as thernmen of the hills around Cardiff. The DinaricrnAlps population has not—physically,rnmentally, or otherwise—changedrnmuch from the time of the legend ofrnthe dragon-spawned warriors of Cadmus.rnMontenegrin and LlerzegovinianrnSerbs are still the tallest and the toughestrnpeople of Europe, and among the foremostrnmilitary nations of the world.rnTheir Slavic (i.e., Serb) overcoat onlyrncomplements their great Celtic Volochrncore: the Highland Fling is a Montenegrinrndance as well, the bagpipes a DalmatianrnSerb instrument too, heroic folkrnpoetry singing of border feuds and cattlernraids their staff of life still, all in a regionrnboasting such place names as Tara (arnmountain and a river), Boan (a townrnnamed after BoAn, the Celtic goddess ofrnwaters), Bojana River (from the Boyne),rnBribir, Skradin, Krk, Kupa, and others.rnCalled the Mauro nachs by the Byzantinesrnand the Venetians, or just (contemptuously)rnVlachs by the Croats andrnthe Muslims, the Moriochs of Kraina sornmesmerized H.G. Wells that he namedrna future race of cannibalistic troglodytesrnafter them. This reputation the KrainarnSerbs certainly did not deserve: H.G.rnWells’s unwed wife Rebecca West correctlyrnsaw the historical, malignedrnUskoks as victims of the Great Powers’rnmachinations, much as today.rnA measure of the Serb spirit may l^erngathered from the fact that the BalkanrnVolochs chose to become Serb, instead ofrnCroat or Muslim. Among the Slavs—rnand their ancient Iranian aristocracy (thernoriginal Serbs of Pliny)—they saw a kindred,rnaristocratic people, interested inrnhonor much more than profit. The freernherders of the carst thus turned Serb,rnwhile the Romance population of therncoastal towns became both Croat andrnSerb: Croat for those who found conso-rnJULY 1993/43rnrnrn