ABSTRACT
The lives and careers of two men are deeply embedded in the history of Serbia at the turn of the century and during the decade preceding World War I. They were nearly the same age and collaborated closely. One was a politician, the other a soldier. Nikola Pašic, the leader of the Radical Party, guided Serbian politics in the stormy international and domestic crisis before and during the war. The politician had the better fortune. Destiny allowed Pašic to witness the victorious issue of the struggle he waged. Fortune was less inclined to the soldier. Putnik started his career with a defeat in the war of 1876 and ended it in exile, after the 1915 invasion of his country. ‘Putnik’ in Serbian means traveler. This was the name which the poor emigrant from Kosovo, Arsenije, gave to the Hungarian authorities at the end of the eighteenth century.
