Mr. Kennard to Sir Austen Chamberlain.— ﹛Received May31.)

Belgrade, May26, 1926.

Sir,

I HAVE just returned from an extensive tour in Southern Serbia (Serbian Macedonia) and I have the honour to enclose a summary of the impressions I gained there. With the completion of this visit I have been fortunate enough to have been able to see all the principal districts in the new Jugoslav Kingdom within a year of my taking up my duties at this post, as I have already been in Croatia, Slovenia, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Sumadja and the Voivodina.

• 2. Throughout my various tours I have been treated with uniform courtesy and hospitality by all the local civil, military and ecclesiastical authorities, and also by private individuals who have gone out of their way to entertain and assist me, which has been a great boon in view of the primitive accommodation and indifferent communications in most parts of the country. In private conversations and public speeches at various functions. Great Britain has always been referred to in terms of admiration and respect, and I cannot; help feeling that these visits are more appreciated than the various forms of artificial propaganda which the French and other Legations, whose staffs rarely leave Belgrade, employ.

• 3. One has the final impression, after seeing the whole country, that, with a more efficient and less corrupt Central Administration at Belgrade and a Legislature which, instead of wasting time in petty party intrigues, would devote itself to the passing of the various measures necessary for the unification and solidification of the kingdom, this country should have a remarkably prosperous future, but it would be too much to expect that the Byzantine influence of the Turkish domination should vanish in the immediate future, and it is to be feared that some grave crisis must arise before a Government which will sincerely and honestly tackle the many problems confronting it can be established here.

I have, &c.

H. W. KENNARD.