The thing began not in a camp but at a railway station. In 2024, as every source agrees, the canopy in front of the station at Novi Sad collapsed and crushed sixteen people; for nearly two years afterwards the students blocked the roads, and then, as DW reports, teachers and farmers joined them. The sources name the cause itself: anger at patronage, at corruption, at public works carelessly approved, charges the authorities denied. Vučić, having been president twice and barred from a third term, resigned that office in order to become prime minister. Beaten, as DW relates, he blamed the independent press, unnamed European nations and some hidden American power, and did not explain what any of them had done. A general who blames the winds after a defeat acquits himself; he does not rebuild his army.

Now look at the map. Belgrade stands where the Sava meets the Danube; whoever holds that city holds the road between Pannonia and Greece, between the West and the Black Sea. Serbia is not in the European Union. Vučić, DW notes, kept close ties with Russia and with Vladimir Putin throughout his rule. Ursula von der Leyen, GB News reports, congratulated the victors at once and said she stood ready to help with the laws, with press freedom, with the fight against corruption. What the victors think of East and West, no source says; and a consultant in Warsaw told Reuters that the greatest uncertainty is who will govern and how they will restore Serbia's place among the nations. A prudent commander would ask that first, before celebrating a triumph over a new ally.

I remember Syphax. When I sailed to Africa to meet him, Hasdrubal son of Gisgo put in at the same harbour on the same day, and the king received both his guests at one table. Each power was courting a king set on the border; he was gracious to both, then went over to Carthage once he had married Hasdrubal's daughter. Masinissa, by contrast, whom I had won by good faith and by benefits rather than by flattery, stood with me all the way to Zama. A kingdom on the border is bound not to the one who greets it fastest, but to the one who keeps faith.

Let them think on this in Brussels. A people that has voted its domestic patron out of office is in no mood to look for a foreign one. Whoever rushes to offer it reform of its laws, its press and its courts speaks with the voice of a guardian, not an ally; and a state that has freed itself will soon turn from a guardian. I say the same of the East: a friendship that rested on one man has fallen with that man. Serbia, if she is wise, will live under her own laws and give herself to neither suitor; and that will be not treachery but freedom.

The danger, however, lies not on the frontier but at home. The Student List, as the BBC and GB News relate, has no settled leader; its candidates are doctors, professors, actors and athletes, unpractised in affairs of state. Its programme, GB News reports, calls for removing officials who broke the law in suppressing the protests, freeing the press from the party, and barring party loyalists from public enterprises; which itself shows that the old party still holds the offices. Let the victors remember: "By concord small things grow; by discord the greatest fall apart." An alliance of students, teachers and farmers has beaten its enemy; whether those same people can govern the state is not yet known.

The remedy, then, is brief. To the victors: choose one leader, fill the offices with honest men, rebuild the canopy at Novi Sad and whatever else negligence has brought down before you argue over treaties; for whoever cannot hold his own house will be held by another's. To the powers courting Belgrade: treat this ally as an equal, not as a pupil, nor as a tributary. Whoever does so will guard the Danube frontier without a single soldier. Whoever thinks he can settle the matter with congratulations and lectures will get Syphax, not Masinissa.