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kept inquiring ‘Surely not all?’ and informing the commander that<br />

except for women and children there was no one else in the village, but<br />

all was in vain. In two hours the village was wiped out amid scenes<br />

which defy description. The salvoes felled women holding the babies<br />

in their arms, little children whom the bullets had spared cried beside<br />

their dead mothers … terrified women gave premature births. Five<br />

hundred souls were dispatched in two hours. 318<br />

Tucović also wrote that the “Serbian army was exterminating<br />

Albanians in Old Serbia and Albania, the Bulgarian Turks in Thrace,<br />

and the Greek Turks and Albanians on Devol, in the criminal belief<br />

that they were performing a ‘national’ deed, that by wiping those<br />

innocent people off the face of the earth they were ridding themselves<br />

of an enemy with whom it would be difficult to cope in the<br />

future.” 319<br />

In 1914, Serbia tried to gain access to the Adriatic by “setting out<br />

to murder an entire nation.” Serbia was checked, but the “mistrust,<br />

and even hatred, by an entire nation” remained. 320 The legacy of<br />

such actions has been difficult to overcome, particularly in relations<br />

with Kosovar Albanians, whom the Serbs made no effort to integrate<br />

into the first Yugoslavia. “Why did we not lend a helping hand<br />

in the creation of the Albanian state?” asked Serbian Socialist Kosta<br />

Novaković in 1914. “Why did we not strike up a friendship we sorely<br />

need with a country which may cause us much bother, a country<br />

which will do itself to death in the process of frustrating us? Why are<br />

our ruling circles not considering making such a friendship in the<br />

future?” 321<br />

318 Quoted in Branko Horvat Kosovsko pitanje [Kosovo Issue],Globus, Zagreb<br />

1989; Dimitrije Tucović: Srbija i Albanci (Serbia and the Albanians) .<br />

319 Ibid.<br />

320 Ibid.<br />

321 Ibid.<br />

197<br />

ChApter 3

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