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CHAPTER TEN.

MURDER WILL OUT

I ARRIVED in Cetinje with a Turkish trooper's saddle and a pair of
saddle-bags that contained some flintlock pistols and some beautiful
ostrich feathers given me by the Mutasarrif of Elbasan and not much
else but rags.

The news that I had come right through Albania excited Cetinje
vastly. Every English tourist who wanted to go to Scutari was warned
by the Montenegrins that it was death to walk outside the town; that
murders took place every day in the bazar; any absurd tale, in
fact, to blacken the Albanians. The Montenegrins were not best
pleased at my exploit, and full of curiosity.

I patched my elbows, clipped the ragged edge of my best skirt, and
was then told by Vuko Vuletitch that the Marshal of the Court was
waiting below to speak with me.

I descended and found the gentleman in full dress. It was a feast
day.

We greeted one another.

"His Royal Highness the Prince wishes to speak with you!" said he
with much flourish. "He requests you will name an hour when it is
convenient for you to come to the Palace."

It was the first time the Prince had noticed me, I was highly
amused, and replied:

"I can come now if His Royal Highness pleases!"

The Marshal of the Court eyed me doubtfully and hesitated. "I can
wash my hands," said I firmly, "and that is all; I have no clothes
but what I have on." My only other things were in the wash, and I
had repaired myself so far as circumstances allowed. The Marshal of
the Court returned with the message that His Royal Highness would
receive me at once "as a soldier."

I trotted obediently off with him. We arrived at the Palace. It was
a full-dress day, and the Montenegrins never let slip an occasion
for peacocking. The situation pleased me immensely. The Marshal
himself was in his very best white cloth coat and silken sash, gold
waistcoat, and all in keeping. Another glittering functionary
received me and between the two I proceeded upstairs. At the top of
the flight is a large full-length looking-glass, and for the first
time for four months I "saw myself as others saw me." Between the
two towering glittering beings was a small, wiry, lean object, with
flesh burnt copper-colour and garments that had never been anything
to boast of, and were now long past their prime. I could have
laughed aloud when I saw the Prince in full-dress with rows of
medals and orders across his wide chest, awaiting me. It is a
popular superstition, fostered by newspapers in the pay of modistes,
that in order to get on it is necessary to spend untold sums on
dress. But in truth if people really want to get something out of
you they do not care what you look like. Nor will any costume in the
world assist you if you have nothing to say.

The Prince conducted me to an inner room, greeted me politely,
begged me to be seated and then launched into a torrent of questions
about my previous years journey to Ipek. He seemed to think that my
life had not been worth a para, and that the Rugova route was
impossible. "Do you know, Mademoiselle, that what you did was
excessively dangerous?"

"Sire," said I, "it was your Montenegrins who made me do it." He
made no reply to this, but lamented that for him such a tour was out
of the question. And of all things he desired to see the Patriarchia
at Ipek and the Church of Dechani and the relics of the Sveti Kralj.
He had been told I had secured photographs of these places. If so,
would I give him copies?

I promised to send him prints from London. He thanked me, and there
was a pause. I wondered if this was what I had been summoned for,
and if I now ought to go. Then Nikita looked at me and suddenly
began: "I think, Mademoiselle, that you are acquainted with my
son-in-law, King Petar of Serbia."

Dear me, thought I, this is delicate ground. "I have not that
honour, Sire," I said. Now how far dare I go? I asked myself. Let us
proceed with caution. "I was in Serbia, Sire," I continued boldly,
"during the lifetime of the--er--late King Alexander." Nikita looked
at me. I looked at Nikita. Then he heaved a portentous sigh, a feat
for which his huge chest specially fitted him.

"A sad affair, was it not, Mademoiselle?" he asked. And he sighed
again.

Now or never, thought I, is the time for kite-flying. I gazed sadly
at Nikita; heaved as large a sigh as I was capable of, and said
deliberately: "Very sad, Sire--but perhaps necessary!"

The shot told. Nikita brought his hand down with a resounding smack
on his blue-knickerbockered thigh and cried aloud with the greatest
excitement: "Mon Dieu, but you are right, Mademoiselle! A thousand
times right! It was necessary, and it is you alone that understand.
Return, I beg you, to England. Explain it to your Foreign Office--to
your politicians--to your diplomatists!" His enthusiasm was
boundless and torrential. All would now be well, he assured me.
Serbia had been saved. If I would go to Belgrade all kinds of
facilities would be afforded me.

I was struck dumb by my own success. A reigning Sovereign had given
himself away with amazing completeness. I had but dangled the fly
and the salmon had gorged it. Such a big fish, too. Nikita, filled
with hopes that the result of this interview would be the resumption
<of diplomatic relations between England and Serbia, presented me
with a fine signed photograph of himself, summoned the Marshal of
the Court and instructed him to have it conveyed to the hotel. It
was not etiquette, it appeared, for me to carry such a burden
myself. The Interview was over.

It was abundantly clear that, in spite of all he had said to
journalists, the old man heartily approved of the manner of the
death of the last of the Obrenovitches, and had been "behind the
scenes" of it.

I had many subsequent interviews with Nikita, but though I strewed
many baits, never again caught him out so completely. Some people
think that Foreign Affairs can be successfully carried on by Prime
Ministers and Secretaries of State who speak nothing but English. I
submit that the above information could never have been extracted
through an interpreter. For an interpreter gives the other party
time to think.

By the end of a week I was back in London. It was not quite a year
since the death of Alexander. Nikita had shown plainly that he
regarded the event as a very important step in Serb history. And he
wanted me to go to Belgrade. But to me the situation was rather
obscure. I knew Montenegro was unpopular in Serbia. Perhaps Nikita
did not.

For purposes of their own the Montenegrins had risked my life
--according to their own statements--by sending me to Ipek. True, I
did not then set any value whatever on my life, so was not so brave
by a long way as they imagined, but all the same they had had no
right to do it. If I went to Belgrade at all, it should not be for
an unknown purpose and as emissary of Nikita.

Meanwhile, King Petar was necessarily entirely in the hands of the
Pretorian guard, which had put him on the throne and could send him
after Alexander if he did not please them. They soon occupied high
positions. Colonel Maschin, who had himself helped kill his
sister-in-law Draga, was made head of the General Staff, and Colonel
Damian Popovitch, the leader of the gang, who has since become
notorious for atrocities, even in the Balkans, was given the command
of the Belgrade-Danube Division, and King Petar obediently signed an
amended Constitution, which greatly curtailed his own power. An
attempt on the part of certain officers to resist the regicides was
crushed, and several were imprisoned. Serbia was, and remained,
under military rule, the object of which was the reconstruction of
Great Serbia. The Serbo-Bulgar question rapidly became acute. Prince
Ferdinand met King Petar informally in Nish railway station. In
October 1904, King Petar visited Sofia. The visit was a failure.
Prince Ferdinand was in favour of an autonomous Macedonia. The Serb
Press would not hear of such a thing. Pashitch, then Minister for
Foreign Affairs, declared that such an autonomy would injure Serbia
and be all in favour of Bulgaria. Simitch, diplomatic agent at
Sofia, insisted that under such an autonomy Bulgarian annexation was
concealed and should that take place, the Serbs would fight till
either Serbia or Bulgaria was destroyed. Both men thus admitted that
Macedonia was not Serb. But they wanted Bulgar aid to crush the
Albanian, in order that Serbia might take Albanian territory. "Heads
I win; tails you lose." Bulgaria was to gain nothing. Serbia meant
to be top dog. The Serbian Press attacked Prince Nikola so violently
that an indignation meeting was held at Cetinje and the populace
crowded outside the palace and shouted "Zhivio." The tug between
Petrovitch and Karageorgevitch had begun. The regicides had not
ended the Obrenovitches to be baulked by the Petrovitches.

A stealthy campaign against Prince Nikola now began, which emanated
from Belgrade and had, I am inclined to believe, Russian support.

A ludicrous episode was the arrival in London of Prince Albert
Ghika, a Roumanian, who announced himself to the Press as a claimant
to the Albanian throne, and was taken seriously even by some quite
respectable journals. It was indeed bad luck for him that he timed
his visit to correspond with my return from Albania, for I was able
to state that, far from being accepted by the whole nation, I had
never even heard his name mentioned. In a very amusing interview I
had with him I ascertained that he did not know a word of the
language of his adopted country. His plans were grandiose, and
included Constantinople as capital. "Pourquoi pas?" he asked. It
would prevent the Great Powers from quarrelling over it, and
therefore make for peace! His curled mustachios, his perfumes, his
incomparable aplomb, his airs of a "Serene Highness" formed a
magnificent stock-in-trade. But even the fact that he offered me a
magnificent salary to be Maid of Honour or Lady-in-Waiting (I forget
which) at the Court of Albania did not persuade me to espouse his
cause, which disappeared into thin air so soon as the newspapers had
a fresh sensation.

Nevertheless Albert Ghika hung around the back doors of the Balkans
for some time. It was only in Albania that he was unknown.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

1905

Coming events cast their shadows before.--CAMPBELL.

This holiday was eventful. On the steamer I was addressed politely
by an Albanian who had read my name on my bag. He said he had seen
me a week before in Venice, and proved it by describing my
companions. Said calmly he had purposely shipped on the same boat,
knew all about me, but preferred to be known himself as "the
Egyptian." He was a storehouse of tales of political intrigue, and
yarned till near midnight on the deck as we slid through the
phosphorescent sea. Of Ghika and his doings he was well informed.
All Ghikas, he said, suffered badly from the same incurable
complaint--a hole in the pocket--a disease, alas, common to many
other honest men! At any rate Albert Ghika's claim to the Albanian
throne had obtained him a rich bride, which was always something.
That he really expected to mount that throne was in the highest
degree improbable, for he was no fool. "How much has the lady?" I
could not enlighten him. "How the English journals accepted him
amazes me! But they gave him a reclame enorme. And he had not a sou.
Now he has some gold. But no one in Albania knows him, and he has no
party there." Followed tales of another "celebrity," Lazarevitch,
who claimed descent from Tsar Lazar of Kosovo fame and was,
according to "the Egyptian," the finest intriguer in Europe: "not a
plot has happened in which he has not had, if not his index, his
little finger. He played a large part in the Dreyfus case. And, like
Ghika, he has married a rich wife, Only once has he been taken in,
and that was by Shaban. You know Shaban? Shaban was really called
Dossi. He was employed by Cook in Egypt as a dragoman, and dismissed
from that service doubtless for good reasons. He dressed himself in
a Gheg costume, got an introduction to Lazarevitch, and said he was
an Albanian Bey who wanted to make a Serbo-Albanian alliance against
Bulgar pretensions. Lazarevitch jumped at this. The first time he
was ever taken in. He gave Shaban several hundred pounds. Shaban had
a friend who was a tailor. Faik Bey, who was in London, saw Shaban
and denounced him as an impostor. The tailor ran away to Greece with
all the money, and was at once arrested there. So Shaban got
nothing. Why did the Greeks arrest the tailor? Because of the
English gold of course. Probably he was guilty of something or other
too. But they would not have troubled about it but for the gold.
They got that." He out-Antonied Hope and made Phroso tame compared
to the real Balkans. Much more he told and much proved true. But he
was obviously a dangerous travelling companion, and when he told me
he proposed passing some days with me in the Bocche di Cattaro, I
abruptly changed my plan of staying there, hailed a Montenegrin
carriage which was waiting on the quay at Cattaro and drove straight
to Cetinje.

Later, I received from Paris a gilt-edged letter with a Royal crown
upon it from Aladri Kastrioti, the elderly and amiable gentleman who
claimed descent from Skenderbeg and toyed with the idea of ascending
the Albanian throne himself. He had, in fact, a considerable
following in the Northern mountains, for the name of Skenderbeg was
one to conjure with, and the Turkish Government prohibited the sale
of his picture post cards. He wrote that his secretary, "the
Egyptian," had reported his success in making my acquaintance and
begged that on my return I would meet him in Paris and discuss
matters of importance. This invitation I never accepted.

Cetinje I found bubbling over Albert Ghika. He had come with such
good letters of introduction that the Prince had appointed
Matanovitch as a sort of guard of honour to him. But when it became
apparent that he meant to use Montenegro as a safe spot whence to
make trouble across the border, and even began to scatter picture
post cards of the future King and Queen of Albania, he was asked to
leave the country. Matanovitch was very much chaffed about his share
in the expedition.

Orthodox Easter was due. I was told that having had an audience last
year it was correct for me to telegraph Easter greetings to Prince
Nikola, who was in his winter quarters at Rijeka. In reply came an
official intimation that I should call on him at three o'clock next
day. I was met by an officer of the Court and taken to the audience.
The old man was in the doorway when I arrived, and was very
friendly. He was, I fancy, bored to death at Rijeka, and glad of a
visitor from the great world outside. He led me into a small room
and insisted on my taking a very large chair, evidently his own
seat, while he sat down on one much too small for him, and began
very vividly to tell me of his first fight at Vuchidol in 1876 and
of the great battle of Grahovo where twelve of his relatives had
lost their heads. He was very lively, and there was something
extraordinarily old-world, even mediaeval, about him. I felt I was
in a by-gone century--at latest with Rob Roy. We must eat together
he said, and we had an odd meal of ham, hardboiled eggs, bread and
weak tea into which he hospitably insisted on putting five large
lumps of sugar with his Royal fingers. He pressed me to eat also the
wing of a fowl, but as it was but 3 p.m. this was quite impossible
for me. So after hoarse house-keeping whispers to his man, a bottle
of Marsala was produced and we drank healths. He questioned me about
my Albanian experiences and roared with laughter. He said the
Albanians would certainly put me to ransom some day, and promised
himself to contribute handsomely. He dug in the pockets of his
capacious breeches and fished out some beautifully decorated Easter
eggs a peasant had just given him, and presented one to me. Of his
people he spoke as though they were all little children. He meant
well by them. Truly. But so do many parents, who forget their
children are grown up. He meant them to go his way, not theirs. A
fatal error. He was very anxious to know how much money I had been
paid for my book, and was as inquisitive about my pecuniary
situation as the most upcountry of his subjects, and hoped the book
would bring hosts of wealthy tourists to the land. I stirred him up
by telling him that the Albanians intended some day to make a state
larger than Montenegro and take back Antivari and Podgoritza.

"Let them come!" said the old man stoutly. His eyes twinkled and he
laughed while he clasped his revolver, confessing he would not be
averse to a little war--but there was Europe to be considered.
Meanwhile I was to be sure and go to see Grahova and Vuchidol. After
a good three-quarters of an hour's talk he saw me to the door and
shouted good-bye from the doorstep.

At Nyegushi I engaged as guide one Krsto, recommended me in 1903 at
Andrijevitza by a botany professor from Prague, and while our start
was preparing went with Kapetan Gjuro Vrbitza and another officer by
a track to the mountain's edge whence we could look directly down
upon Cattaro. A gun emplacement was made there later. The two
Montenegrins amused themselves by hurling stones into Austrian
territory--feeling ran then strongly against Austria. For the first
time I heard the song:

Franz Josef da Bog ti ubio. Ti si strashno zlo uchinio!
(Franz Josef, may God strike thee dead. Thou hast wrought terrible
evil.)


Russia was still madly struggling with Japan. It was the Tsar's own
fault, said popular opinion. Prince Nikola had offered to send a
large Montenegrin army and he had declined it. Consequently only
nineteen volunteers, including two of Krsto's own relatives, had
gone to Russia's aid. Otherwise "Portartur" would never have
fallen. Krsto's cousin was engineer on one of Rozhdjestvcnski's
ships. Every one believed England had tried to Sink them by
concealing Japanese torpedo boats among the fishing fleet. They,
however, kindly absolved me from complicity in the affair, mainly
because I had been to Ipek.

France, as Russia's ally, had sprung into high favour and was
contemplating the erection of a "nouveau art" Legation. And the
new French Minister's little boy put his hands behind his back when
introduced to me, and said: "I cannot shake hands with you,
Mademoiselle, till you assure me you are not the friend of the
Yellow Monkeys." Thus are peace and goodwill taught to children in
the "civilized" lands of West Europe.

I started for Vuchidol, which the Prince had expressly desired me to
visit, by way of Grahovo. Each village knew of my ride to Ipek, and
received me with enthusiasm. Each told the same tale. The rising
planned to take place throughout the Balkans in 1904 had been
stopped by the misfortunes of the Russo-Japanese War. Montenegro was
aghast at the duration of the war, and her faith in Russia as a God
Almighty was badly shaken.

Feeling ran high against Bulgaria, for a rumour, started, it was
said, by Chedo Miyatovitch, declared that England had promised
Constantinople to Prince Ferdinand, and this would interfere with
the reconstruction of Great Serbia, which was to be made at all
costs. We little thought then the stupendous price the world would
pay for it!

There was some dread lest, Russia being now occupied in the Far
East, Austria should move. On the way we picked up an old man of the
Banyani tribe, over six feet, and hook-nosed. He pointed out
landmarks with his long chibouk, carried an old flintlock, and
seemed to live in terror of enemies. "Golden pobratim!" he said
earnestly to Krsto, "dear brother, listen! My house is but two hours
from the frontier. The Austrians can come. Thank God I have this
gun! The Tsar of Russia should send plenty of soldiers, then we
could live in safety." Nor could we reassure him. He was going to
Cetinje to beg the Gospodar to write to the Tsar for troops. "May God
slay me, dear brother, but the clanger is great." I stood him a
drink and he went tracking over the mountains Cetinje-wards with his
antique weapon.

We went on through a land the filth and poverty of which Is
unimaginable to those who have never left England. The sterile
waterless rocks make it impossible to live with any decency. The
worst English slum is luxury in comparison. Barely enough water to
drink. None to wash in. One day I had nothing but dirty melted snow
out of a hole. Vermin swarmed and no one worried about them. "If we
had only as many gold pieces as lice," said folk cheerfully, "this
would be the richest land in Europe." The population, in truth, was
probably better off in Turkish times, when it lived by sheep-stealing
and raiding caravans. Montenegro has never been self-supporting, and
since frontier raids were stopped the chief trade of the people had
been smuggling tobacco and coffee into Austria. Krsto and his
relative were keen smugglers, and knew every nook in the Bocche di
Cattaro. Now, in return for various works that she was to do, Italy
had been given the tobacco monopoly and a duty was imposed.
Montenegro was furious. The vigilance of the Austrian police had
made it hard enough to earn a living before. This made this worse.
Death to the Italians! God slay Austria! And Russia actually looking
on and doing nothing.

We arrived one evening at Crkvitza, near the Austrian frontier. A
dree hole; a han filthy beyond all words; no horse fodder, the
Kapetan absent and his secretary drunk; a lonely schoolhouse to
which some fifty children descended daily from the surrounding
mountains. To spare me the horrors of the han, the schoolmaster
kindly offered to put me up. But even his house swarmed with bugs
and ticks. I rose very early next morning, saddled and packed, and
was about to flee from the place, when the secretary came
triumphantly waving a telegram and told me I was under arrest. The
drink-fuddled creature, thinking to "cut a dash" during his chief's
absence, had wired to the police at Nikshitch, "A man dressed as a
woman has come from across the Austrian frontier." The reply said,
"Detain him till further orders." The telegraph station was eight
hours' march distant, but he had sent some one in haste on
horseback. There was a terrible row. The populace was on my side. My
British passport was, of course, useless. Krsto thought his honour
impugned, and I feared he would shoot. Might I return under armed
escort to the village of the telegraph office where they knew me?
No. All I was allowed to do was to send a man on foot with a
telegram for the Minister for Foreign Affairs and await the reply.
So I was interned for nearly twenty-four hours in the han and spent
the night in a filthy hole with a man, a boy, a woman, a quantity of
pigeons, and swarms of lice and bugs. When the reply came from
Voyvoda Gavro saying I was free to go where I pleased, the secretary
was flabbergasted. It sobered him, and he was afraid of what he had
done. I went on to Vuchidol as I had promised, though the Prince
little knew what he was letting me in for.

The affair excited Cetinje wildly. Before I left every one had been
lamenting that there was now no English Minister in Montenegro. I
had been prayed, by Dushan Gregovitch and others, to write to The
Times on the subject, to arouse Parliament, and somehow or other get
England represented in the country. Now the cry was changed: "God be
praised," cried they fervently, "there is no British Minister in
Cetinje." "Thanks be to God, there is not even a British Consul."
Voyvoda Gavro put his head out of "Foreign Affairs," which was then
a cottage in the main street, and shouted for explanations. The
dismay was comical. Early next morning an officer pursued me in the
street and said the Prince wanted to see me, at once. He was sitting
on the top of the steps as he was used to do before the palace was
altered, and he too seemed quite overwhelmed with the international
complication. Krsto had already given the police a highly coloured
account.

The secretary of Crkvitza, the Prince hastened to assure me, would
be punished. I said that if he were punished the result would be
that when a real spy arrived he would Hot be arrested. For me the
affair was a mere travel episode, not worth troubling about.

Then came the crux. The Prince was terrified lest I should write to
The Times and shatter his golden dreams of wealthy tourists. The
whole Montenegrin Government trembled before the possibility of such
a catastrophe. I promised cheerfully not to write to any paper at
all. |Nor till now have I mentioned the affairs.

So the matter was settled, to the obvious relief of poor old Nikita,
who was most grateful and seemed much surprised that I required no
vengeance.

I started again, this time for Nikshitch and the Durmitor, with the
intention of going into Turkish territory if possible.

At Rijeka I was taken to the small-arms factory on the river, the
primitive machinery being worked by water power. Here were men busy
fitting new stocks to old rifles, Russian ones. I was told that one
was being prepared for every man in Bosnia and the Herzegovina. When
all were ready they would be smuggled in. I was taken aback at this,
but found when playing the phonograph in the evening to a large
party, that the notion of a not distant war with Austria accompanied
by a great Balkan rising was generally accepted. Still more was I
surprised to hear talk against the Prince. He and his sons were
accused of taking all the best land and doing nothing with it. And
the question of the tobacco regie raged. Podgoritza I found greatly
changed. The outer world had rushed in on it. The tobacco factory
dominated the town. "God willing, we shall burn it down!" said the
populace cheerfully. True, it employed many hands, but they
complained the pay was low, though they admitted that the girls had
never earned anything before. In truth, regular work was a new thing
in Montenegro. The end of the days of indefinite coffee- and
rakia-drinking and recounting of past battles was now approaching.
The middle ages were leaping at one bound into the twentieth
century, and the Montenegrin was angry and puzzled.

The Italians had undertaken to construct a railway, quays, and
harbour works, and offered fair wages for workmen. The Montenegrins
demanded fantastic payment and imagined that by standing out they
would get it. To their astonishment the Italians imported gangs of
far better workmen and finished the work. Then the Montenegrins
cursed the Italians and hated them bitterly. Even Montenegrin
officers openly boasted that they did not know the price of the
regie tobacco as they smoked only contraband, and feeling ran so
high that the Italian Monopol buildings at Antivari were attacked
and damaged.

At Podgoritza I met again the Albanian coachman Shan, who had served
me very faithfully on my previous visits. He took me to the house of
his family. A striking contrast to the Montenegrin houses, it was
spick and span and even pretty, for the Albanian has artistic
instincts, whereas the Montenegrin has none. Left to himself, his
taste is deplorable.

Further signs of change in the land soon showed themselves. Rijeka
had already grumbled. At Danilovgiati I was at once approached by a
youth, who proudly showed me a Serbian paper containing his portrait
and verses by himself. He was lately come from Belgrade, where he
was a student, one of the many who have there been made tools of by
unscrupulous political intriguers. He indignantly inveighed against
the poverty of Montenegro and ascribed every evil to the Prince. I
suggested that the Montenegrins themselves were among the laziest on
God's earth, and could with energy do very much more with their
land. But he blamed "the Government" for everything. No learning,
no progress, he declared, was possible. You could not even import
the books you wanted. He hurled his accusations broadcast and then,
for he took his literary qualifications very seriously, sat down and
wrote a verse about me after considerable labour and much sprawling
over the table.

Danilovgrad was the home of another reformer, Dr. Marusitch, a
Montenegrin who had but recently returned from Manchuria after many
years' service as a surgeon in the Russian Army. A wild,
enthusiastic creature--good-natured, well-meaning and indiscreet. For
Montenegro he was rich. He had just married an extremely beautiful
young woman, and the hospitality of the two was unbounded. He at
once asked me to stay six months as his guest and write, with his
aid, the standard book on Montenegro. Like all who had lived in
Russia, he was a hard drinker and tipped down alcohol in alarming
quantities. He was a strange mixture of the old world and the new.
Took me to see the grave of Bajo Radovitch, who fell in
1876 after having cut off fifteen Turkish heads; admired the bloody
feat, but blamed Germany for keeping up militarism. He had no
opinion at all of the Montenegrin Government, and poured out a
torrent of plans for its reform. He was all for peace, he said, and
wanted to rearrange all the world--which badly needed it. I little
thought what would be his fate when I wished him goodbye, and
promised to look him up next year.

On the road to Nikshitch we came up with the military wagons
carrying weapons, mainly revolvers and sword bayonets up-country for
distribution. Russia had sent a revolver for each man in the
country, and great was the rejoicing. Russia, when she re-armed her
forces, usually bestowed the old weapons lavishly on Montenegro.
Artillery was soon to follow.

We left the road and struck up-country towards Durmitor, along with
a string of pack-horses laden with the Russian weapons which went
with an armed escort. By the way we passed two stones recording
recent murders, showing that blood feuds were not yet extinct.

At Zhabljak, Durmitor, I spent two amusing days seeing the
distribution of arms. Men flocked in from all parts, were delighted
with their new toys, and Russia leapt up in every one's estimation.
No ammunition was served out for, as an officer remarked, "It would
all be wasted." They conversed on blood and battle and clicked their
new revolvers. "How we should like to go over and try them on the
Turks," they said. "But we dare not cross the border because of the
Powers."

Two chetas (battalions) were armed and had left when a bugle sounded
of a sudden. "That means third cheta assemble!" shouted Krsto. All
rushed out. Sure enough a telegram had arrived saying "The Turks are
over the border! Mobilize at once!"

Every one was delighted. The men hustled into their great-coats. The
women stuffed bread and a bottle of rakia into their torbitzas. The
officers saddled their own horses, and in a very short time the
third cheta was drawn up in line on the hill-top by the church in
marching order. The commandant made a speech. They were to behave as
Montenegrin heroes. They were not to fire a shot till the word was
given, and above all they were to do nothing that would "look
crooked in the eyes of Europe." They were a wild lot, in every kind
of ragged garment. Had had a few months' drill, so marched in step
for the first twenty yards. Then they broke rank, howled a war cry
and rushed over the hill like a pack of wolves on the trail, firing
their rifles as they went. Their officer followed on horseback and
as he topped the brow, turned in his saddle and emptied his revolver
over our heads. We sat up all night, every one wild for war.
Bandages and carbolic arrived on a mule. There was in fact some
fighting on the other side of the border between Albanians and Serbs
near Bijelopolje. War, of course, did not ensue. But for some days
the frontier was all lined with troops.

Meanwhile I wanted to go on to Plevlje in Turkish territory, and had
to wait till the local governor thought safe to let me pass. While
waiting I heard here, too, more rumours about the Prince. He was
accused of having poisoned the Minister of Justice, who had died
suddenly after dining with him. The dead man's family lived here.
They said an Austrian doctor had said it was not poison. But there
was much talk about it, and folk seemed unconvinced. I never learnt
the truth of it. The route at length being open, we crossed the
swift Tara at the bottom of a deep gorge on a most primitive ferry
of seven planks lashed together in a triangle, and the Turkish
gendarmerie on the opposite bank furnished guide and horses. Krsto
had to leave his revolver behind, and having never in his life been
out without one, was as nervous as a cat and saw brigands in every
bush. At which I laughed.

Plevlje then was a strange sight. On one side were modern up-to-date
Austrian houses with a park, smart barracks and an inn. On the hills
behind it in immense letters of white stone were the initials of
Franz Josef. The opposite side of the town was occupied by the
Turkish Army, wonderfully smart, as if in competition with Austria,
and a Crescent marked the hill on that side. Between the two lay the
native town and bazar.

The local Turkish Governor was an Albanian, Suliman Pasha. He was
delighted to have an English visitor, explained to me the difficulty
of his position, with enemy lands, Austria, Montenegro and Serbia on
three sides of the Sanjak, all intriguing to obtain it, and enemy
soldiers quartered in the town. Austria he was confident was
preparing to move shortly. He believed that even then they had more
troops in the Sanjak than was allowed by treaty.

He pressed me to continue my journey to Mitrovitza and to Prizren,
where the Russians were, he said, stirring up trouble. But the
strict time limit of my holiday made this impossible. The result of
the Murzsteg arrangement was, according to him, that Austria and
Russia regarded the Peninsula as to be shortly theirs, and were
working hard to extend their spheres of influence. Each, under the
so-called reform schemes, had put their gendarmerie in the districts
they could work from best. They had put England in an unimportant
place. England ought to have insisted on being on the frontiers,
then the importation of arms could have been prevented. As it was,
Austria and Russia were both smuggling arms in by means of their
gendarmerie. Russia wanted to provoke a rising of Christians in
order to rush in "to save the Christians." Austria wanted to foment
differences between Moslem and Catholic, and, being nearest to the
spot, hoped Europe would again request her to "restore order" as
in Bosnia. "Then she will be one day's march nearer Salonika," said
the Pasha. I believe his statements were correct.

I had an introduction to one of the leading Serbs of the town, Filip
Gjurashkovitch. The Gjurashkovitch family had left Montenegro owing,
as we have seen, to a fierce quarrel with the Petrovitches. Had
fled, as usual, to Turkish territory and had, for years, held
official positions, Filip had lived in Durazzo, and was strongly in
favour of the establishment of an independent Albania, declaring
that the trouble with the Albanians was due entirely to Turkish
misrule. If given a chance of education they were among the most
intelligent of the Peninsula. He emphasized this by pointing out
that Suliman Pasha was an Albanian, and only a man of great skill
could have kept the peace for twenty years between two rival
garrisons both in the same town.

It was Whitsuntide, and several thousand pilgrims arrived at the
Troitza Monastery, just outside the town, from Montenegro, Serbia,
and even the Herzegovina, as well as from the surrounding villages.
Especially a number of schoolmasters assembled, all of whom ran
propaganda schools in the district; I thus learnt much of what was
going on. The schoolmasters were nearly all Montenegrins and
regarded the Sanjak as "their claim." They were furious with
Austria, because they had ordered a quantity of the usual propaganda
prints, grotesque portraits of Stefan Dushan, Milosh Obilitch, the
nine Yugovitches, etc., for their schools in order to preach Great
Serbia. Had had them sent by Austrian post so that they might not
fall into the hands of the Turks--and the Austrians had stopped
them. There was no Russian Consul there to see to it. Nor could
Russia be relied on entirely. Two Russian officials had been
recently to Miloshevo Monastery, near Prijepolje, and had declared
the language spoken there to be Bulgar. And it was the place where
St. Sava was buried! They were furious. Russian monks were now
firmly established at Detchani. That was all right. None of them
wanted reforms introduced into the Turkish Empire, because then
there would be no hope of tearing it to pieces. As in Macedonia I
found the approved method was to start a massacre and then cry to
Europe for help. On all sides I heard again that the great Balkan
rising had been stopped by the Russo-Japanese War. The Archimandrite
of the Monastery was bitter about Russia. "What does Russia want
with Manchuria? She has gone to take distant land that is no affair
of hers and has left her brethren in the Balkans unhelped. God's
curse is upon her." They were disgusted that Ferdinand of Bulgaria
had been guest at the German wedding. He was an arch plotter, but a
fool. "He wants to be Tsar of a wide land. But he will not succeed.
He has weakened the Serb position by his propaganda, but he will
never have Constantinople. Russia would trundle him out. She means
to have Constantinople. No one else will." King Petar was Serbia's
only hope, but the propaganda against him was active. England's
attitude about the murder was incomprehensible to them. Had
Alexander not been killed he would have allowed Austria to build and
control a railway through Serbia. The Montenegrins jeered at Serbia,
"a country that has a new ministry every few months." None of them
seemed to think it counted. And none seemed to see the point of all
working for a common cause. Whether they were pro- or anti-Petrovitch,
they took it for granted Montenegro was to be the head of Great
Serbia. For Austria they had nothing but contempt, and said
pleasantly that all Austrian officers looked as if about to bear
twins. You had only to run in a bayonet and the beer would run out.
They had, however, no right to talk of drink, for the pilgrimage was
an orgy of rakia, beer and wine.

From Plevlje I rode to Prijepolje, the furthest military outpost of
Austria. There were but one hundred Christian houses in it.
Nevertheless there was a schoolmaster industriously teaching "Great
Serbia" and "patriotism." The Turkish Government was powerless to
prevent this revolutionary work, as any interference would have
brought protests from the Powers about "persecuting Christians."

The whole of the Sanjak from Mitrovitza to the Austrian frontier was
inhabited almost entirely by Serb-speaking Slavs, the bulk of whom
were Moslem. Large numbers were descendants of those evicted from
Montenegro or Serbia in 1878, and were therefore not well disposed
to either land. Krsto was not at all pleased to find that they had
changed their habitat for the better and settled in land more
fertile than that from which they had been driven. He naively told
me he had hoped they had all starved.

Returning to Plevlje I found great excitement about me, as the
Austrian authorities had hitherto believed that Plevlje could be
reached only by Austrian post cart from the Austrian frontier,
accompanied by an armed escort. An Austrian officer and the Consul
hurried to interview me. They were polite and friendly, but
cross-examined me severely as to the purpose of my visit, and were
obviously displeased that an unarmed tourist could come straight
across country and wander round without their leave or knowledge.
The Consul was a Croat and vehemently anti-Serb. He told me that the
Montenegrins had been guilty of starting the recent fighting near
Bijelopolje, and that it had been led by a Montenegrin officer.

The Montenegrin version was that the Moslem Albanians drove some
sheep on to a Christian grazing-ground; that the Christians drove
them off again and so the fight began; that all the Christians there
wore Montenegrin caps, and so the tale of the officer was untrue.
The Moslems swore to the truth of the officer tale. Judging by the
celerity with which the Montenegrin troops were despatched to the
frontier I incline to think it was "a put up job."

News came in of the sinking of the Russian fleet by the Japanese. It
produced a deep sensation. Formerly every Serb and Montenegrin had
jeered at me because we took so long beating the Boers. Now when it
appeared that heathens, believed to be black, were at the least
inflicting heavy loss on Holy Russia, they felt as though the
universe were falling. I noted in my diary: "Out here one feels very
keenly the tituppy state of politics. Anything likely to upset the
apple-cart should be avoided."

I returned without adventure to Nikshitch, and thence to Nyegushi by
a very bad mountain track.

By now it was midsummer and blazing hot. I stayed at Krsto's hut,
and slept in a sort of outhouse called the "magazin," built to hold
contraband goods by an ancestor. By day the cloudless sky closed
down on us like a lid and shut out every breath of air. The little
cabbages wilted in yellow rows and the inhabitants of Nyegushi, like
true Montenegrins, spent the day smoking and vainly watching for the
sign of a cloud, instead of fetching water for their gardens.

At midday the limestone rocks glared and the shadows lay like ink
blots. Only at night, when a soft wind stole up from the Bocche di
Cattaro, did Nyegushi come to life. Then we gathered on a mound
behind Krsto's hut and the neighbours flocked to hear the "monogram"
as they persistently called my phonograph. So soon as its raucous
voice arose, folk who had gone to bed emerged and joined the party
just as they were. But this merely means that they were barefoot and
revolverless, for no one undresses in the Near East.

My repertoire was limited, and I played "God Save the King" till I
realized what must be the sufferings of the Royal Family. For
Montenegro was all agog about King Edward.

When King Edward was last at Marienbad he had met and spoken with
Prince Mirko and his wife Princess Natalie. Nor was it surprising,
for the Princess was rarely beautiful, her figure as perfect as her
face; and her lovely head was poised upon a flawless neck and
shoulders. She would have shone in any court in Europe, and it was a
hard fate which gave her to the second son of Montenegro. She, poor
young thing, was one of the pawns in the game which the Petrovitch
dynasty was playing for Great Serbia, and she dreamed of Queendom.

Edward VII admired her and the news flashed through Montenegro. It
was in the Glas and the Korbiro (correspondence bureau), the ne plus
ultra of fashionable intelligence. Excitement reached boiling-point
when it was reported that King Edward in person had seen "our Mirko"
and his wife off at the station and promised to call on them in
Montenegro. Montenegro felt it had not lived in vain. So the
villagers called for "God save the King" endlessly, and under the
stars at night tried quite unsuccessfully to learn it, for
Montenegrin music is not on our scale and flows weirdly in semitones
and less than semitones, and in spite of strenuous efforts our
national anthem always trailed off into a hopeless caterwaul. But we
all agreed that King Edward would be very much surprised when he
heard the song and the "monogram" among the rocks of Nyegushi.

He never heard it. For meanwhile strings were pulling and fortunes
changing. I returned to England, leaving the Montenegrins hopeful
that he would come some day, and extorting from me a promise to be
there with the "monogram".

Briefly, the history of my 1905 holiday may be summed up thus.
Russia was powerless, and the dismayed Balkan States could not move
without her. Austria had a free hand, and seemed likely to take
advantage of Russia's plight. (It should be remembered to her credit
that she did not.) There was very marked discontent in Montenegro
against the Prince, and it was quite obviously engineered from
Serbia, and perhaps from Russia too. The struggle for supremacy
between father-in-law and son-in-law, Nikola and Petar, had begun.
But Montenegro still believed itself as indubitably the head of
Great Serbia. Even the malcontents wanted only to lead Montenegro to
Prizren and glory, and were possibly unaware they were being used as
cat's paws. Hatred between Serbia and Bulgaria was growing in
intensity, and a war-spirit was very evidently stimulated by the
fresh arrival of Russian arms in Montenegro.

That the Prince himself was aware of the undercurrent of feeling
against him was shown a little later by his sudden bid for
popularity. To the surprise of all the land and of the foreign
Ministers, including Russia, he granted the Ustav (Constitution) in
November, on St. Luke's Day. Montenegro was to elect a Parliament in
which each tribe would be represented. He would teach his people
self-government before he left them. It was admirably intended.
Montenegro, astonished and excited, at once surcharged all the
postage stamps.

Prince Nikola had made a bold bid for popularity. But he did not
know the web that was already winding around him. On returning to
London I found the Serbian, Alexander Jovitchitch, who had been
informally representing Serbia since the murder of Alexander, much
excited. The British Government, for no visible reason, was coming
to the conclusion that all should be forgotten and forgiven, and
diplomatic relations resumed with Serbia. As it was inconvenient to
have no communication at all, England had adopted a sort of
"We really can't ask you to dinner but you may talk with the cook
over the area railings" attitude towards Jovitchitch and allowed him
to call at the Foreign Office. Now, having suffered long at the back
door, he was much hurt to find that on resumption of relations he
was to retire in favour of M. Militchevitch, the former Serb
Minister, the same who in 1902 had had to clear me of the charge of
being a Karageorgevitch. By way of cheering Jovitchitch I said
things Serb were indeed looking up. Relations were to be resumed
with Serbia, and King Edward had promised to visit Montenegro.
Jovitchitch, to my surprise, fired up. He told me sharply that the
King would never go to Montenegro. It could not be permitted. "But
why?" I asked, astonished. "Because Serbia is the leading state.
It would be an insult to the Serb race if King Edward went to
Cetinje before Belgrade! It has been represented to him and he has
dropped the project."

That King Edward, after all he and the British Government had said
about the murders, should now be so sensitive of Serbia's feelings
that, to please Petar Karageorgevitch, Edward VII should change his
holiday plans, was a little astonishing.

The reason has since then come to light. We were bound to France by
the Entente Cordiale, and France was bound to Russia. Petar
Karageorgevitch was Russia's choice. Russia had quite decided that
Bulgaria, by means of which she had first planned to work, would
never voluntarily be her vassal state and act as land-bridge to
Constantinople, and had therefore, in 1903, definitely preferred
Serbia. But she could not support two heads for Great Serbia. One
must go. England must not hob-nob with Montenegro. This was the
first definite outside sign that there was to be a struggle between
Serbia and Montenegro. France's military policy was tied fast to
Russia's. And in December of that year--1905--we know now that
"military conversations" were begun between France and England. They
appear to have been far reaching. If France and England were to
concoct military plans together it was clear England must recognize
Russia's Balkan agent--Serbia. The situation was the more
remarkable, for Edward VII had always been on the best terms with
Franz Josef. And it was precisely because Alexander Obrenovitch
wished to make alliance with Austria that he was slaughtered. Poor
King Edward may have thought he was peace-making, but he little knew
the Balkans.

In June 1906, England formally resumed relations with Serbia, an
event of far higher import than any one but Russia realized at the
time.

It is a date that ends a chapter of Balkan history. Till then Serbia
was a petty Balkan state whose history had been punctuated by
political murder, who had been aided from time to time by Russia,
but quite as often by Austria, and who had usually been recognized
as part of the Austrian "sphere." She now formed part of the
combine against the Central Powers, and had the support of France,
Russia and England.

Montenegro, on the other hand, "the Tsar's only friend," besung by
Tennyson, bepraised by Gladstone (mainly, it is true, because
neither of these well-meaning gentlemen had ever been there), now
fell from her high position. Montenegro had had the praise of
England's great men, and the political and financial support of
Russia. But from the day when England and France began "military
Conversations" the tables were turned. Prince Nikola might strive
for popularity with "Constitutions," but, unless a miracle
happened, the fate of the Petrovitches was sealed. They would never
ascend the throne of Great Serbia.

And the fate of Europe was sealed too.



CHAPTER TWELVE

BOSNIA AND THE HERZEGOVINA

The Lamp of the Past illumines the Present.

The summer of 1906 saw me no longer restricted to two months'
travel, but free to go where I pleased for as long as I liked. I
planned a great scheme for the study and comparison of the
traditions and customs of all the Balkan races, and in August
started for Bosnia.

In ancient days all Bosnia and the Herzegovina formed part of
Illyria, and was inhabited by the ancestors of the modern Albanian.
Thousands of prehistoric graves, similar to those found also in
Serbia and Albania, are scattered over the land. A huge cemetery
exists at Glasinatz above Serajevo. The multitude of objects found
in these graves reveal a very early Iron Age. Bosnia was one of
Europe's earliest "Sheffields." Iron tools and bronze ornaments show
that their makers were skilled workmen. The ornaments are of
particular interest, as many are very similar in design to those
still worn by Balkan peasantry, and as the bulk of Balkan
silversmiths are Albanians or Vlachs both craft and design would
appear to have been handed down from very ancient days.

The Illyrians were great warriors. "The difficulty," says J. B.
Bury, the eminent historian of the later Roman Empire, "experienced
by the Romans in subduing and incorporating the brave tribes is well
known." Briefly, Rome's first punitive expedition to Illyria was in
230 B.C., but the land was not finally annexed till 169 A.D.

The Romans colonized Illyria. Christianity reached the coast early
and slowly penetrated inland. Illyria formed part of the
Patriarchate of Rome, and Latin became the official language
throughout the Peninsula, save in the extreme south and south-east
coast-line. Up-country and in the mountains the people evidently
retained their own speech, that from which modern Albanian derives.
The people in the plains, in direct contact with the Roman settlers,
developed a sort of bastard Latin speech and doubtless intermarried
largely with the Romans. They and their language exist to-day. They
are known as the Kutzovlachs, and are thickly settled on the old
Roman routes and the hill-tops. As frequently happens in history,
but is invariably forgotten by those who go out to conquer, the
marked individuality of the vanquished speedily re-asserted itself
and gradually absorbed the victor. The Roman Empire shortly split in
twain, and the East was largely ruled by Emperors of native Balkan
blood, Diocletian, Constantine the Great, and many of lesser note.
Greatest of all was Justinian (527-565), who was of Illyrian birth
and succeeded his uncle Justin, a common soldier risen to the
purple.

"In four departments," says Bury, "Justinian has won immortal fame.
In warfare, in architecture, in law and in Church history." To him
the world owes St. Sofia. He and his uncle Justin both strove
against the schism between the Roman and Byzantine Churches, and he
was powerful enough to carry a measure which tended to unity by
modifying, the Synod of Chalcedon without breaking with Rome. And he
prided himself upon speaking Latin. Yet there are those to-day who
would hand over his Church of the Holy Wisdom to Greek propagandists.
He dealt the final blow at Paganism and denounced the Manicheans--of
whom we shall hear much later--and enacted severe laws against them.

The history of modern Bosnia begins in Justinian's reign. The Slavs
then began to threaten the Empire. Tribes began to drift across the
Danube and settle in groups already in the fifth century, but were
stopped for a while by the Huns and Ostrogoths, who swept over the
Peninsula and infested Illyria and Epirus.

"The departure of the Ostrogoths," says Bury, "was like the opening
of a sluice. The Slavs and Bulgars, whom their presence had held
back, were let loose on the Empire. . . . The havoc made by these
barbarians was so serious that Justinian made new lines of defence."
In 548 and 551 A.D. masses of Slavs ravaged the land. "The massacres
and cruelties committed by these barbarians," says Bury, "make the
readers of Procopius shudder." The readers of the Carnegie report of
1913 do likewise.

Among the fortresses built by Justinian was Singidunum, now
Belgrade, which, founded to hold back the Slav, is now his capital.
The invading Slavs were pagan, the natives largely Christian. "The
Christians," says Presbyter Diocleas, "seeing themselves in great
tribulation and persecution, began to gather on the mountains and
tried to construct castles and strongholds that they might escape
from the hands of the Slavs until God should visit and liberate
them." This is probably the origin of the Vlach settlements on
hill-tops and the Albanian mountain strongholds. "The year 581,"
says John of Ephesus, "was famous for the invasion of the accursed
Slavonians . . . who captured cities and forts, and devastated and
burnt, reducing the people to slavery, and made themselves masters
of the country and settled it by main force. Four years have elapsed
and still they live in the land . . . and ravage and burn." The
Romans and their civilization were swept coastward, and in Dalmatia
their civilization never quite died out. In later times the term
"Romanes" was used in a special sense to denote the Romans who
maintained their independence against the Slavs. Ragusa and Cattaro
are some of the towns they founded.

Of the native population many refuged in the Albanian mountains,
where they retained their language. Many doubtless remained and were
absorbed by the Slavs. Traces, however, of the Illyrian still remain
in Bosnia. Tattooing is still common there in many districts.
Tattooing is not a Slav custom, but is specially noticed by classic
authors as a characteristic of the ancient Balkan tribes. Neither
have the Bosnians, as a whole, ever been attached to the Orthodox
Church as have the remainder of the Balkan Slavs.

The early history of the Slavs in the Peninsula is obscure. They
were a tribal people, and were for some time dominated by the
Bulgars. Not till the end of the twelfth century did they unite
under their very able line of Nemanja princes and rise to be a
power. Even under the Nemanjas the local chieftains were
semi-independent, and their inability to cohere proved the undoing
of the realm.

Bosnia at an early date--it is said A.D. 940--was ruled by elective
Bans. Stefan Nemanja the First Crowned of Serbia, called himself
King of Serbia, Dalmatia and Bosnia, but the title seems to have
been but nominal. The Bans did as they pleased and intrigued
constantly with the Hungarians against the Serbs. The Bosniaks, too,
became sharply divided from the Serbs by religion. Already in
Justinian's time many of the Slavs near the Dalmatian coast had been
converted to Christianity by priests from Rome, and much of the
Herzegovina has ever since been Catholic. The mass of the Slavs,
however, were pagan till the ninth century, when they were converted
by the great mission led by Cyril and Methodius from Salonika.

Manicheism had already, in Justinian's time, taken a strong hold in
the Balkan Peninsula. It now became amalgamated with a form of
Christianity. A sect known as the Paulicians arose in Samosata in
Asia Minor, which combined Manicheism with a peculiar reverence for
the teaching of St. Paul. Fiercely persecuted by the Christians,
they revolted, joined with the Mahommedans, and wasted much of Asia
Minor. The Emperor Constantino Copronymus (A.D. 741), in order to
weaken them, transported a great number to Thrace to serve as
frontier guards. John I. Zimisces (A.D. 969) settled another large
body in the Balkan valleys. Thence their doctrines spread fast. It
would be of interest to know how much of their physical qualities
were transmitted also. The new faith was known as Bogumil (dear to
God) from its reputed Slav leader.

The rapidity with which it spread shows the very slight hold
Christianity had as yet taken. The sun and the moon, which figured
prominently in it, probably appealed to the old pre-Christian
nature-worship of the Slavs. Alexius Comnenus vainly tried to
extirpate the heresy by savage persecution. Basil, its high priest,
was burnt alive. The sect fled westward and Bosnia became its
stronghold. Religion in the Middle Ages was a far greater force than
race. Nationality was hardly developed. Bosnia, into which the
Orthodox faith seems to have penetrated but little, if at all, was
thus cut off from the Serb Empire, for the bulk of the Bosniaks were
either Bogumil or Roman Catholic.

We find a great many monuments of the Bogumils scattered through
Bosnia and the Herzegovina. Huge monolithic gravestones often
curiously carved. The sun, the moon and the cross appear as symbols,
and portraits of warriors kilted and armed with bows and arrows and
a cuirass, which give a good idea of the chieftain of the Middle
Ages. The kilt is still worn by the Albanians.

Of the Bogumil creed not much is known, and that chiefly from its
enemies. Catholic and Orthodox alike regarded the heresy with
horror. But even its enemies allowed the Bogumils to have been an
ascetic and temperate people. They abhorred the use of ikons and
images, and unless the subterranean chapel at Jaitza be one, have
left no church. Their doctrines spread into west Europe, and by the
end of the twelfth century had developed in France into the sect of
the Albigenses which was suppressed by the Roman Church with
terrible ferocity. It is of interest that the rayed sun and the moon
are still found in the armorial bearings of South of France
families.

In Bosnia Bogumilism almost superseded all other faiths. In the
twelfth century the Catholic Dalmatians and Hungarians in vain tried
to suppress it by force. In 1189 Kulin Ban, the ruler of Bosnia,
himself turned Bogumil. He recanted under pressure from Rome, but
soon relapsed again, and in spite of an Hungarian crusade which
ravaged the land, Bogumilism triumphed, the palace of the Catholic
Bishop of Kreshevo was burnt and the Catholic episcopacy banished.
The Bishop of Bosnia had to reside in Slavonia, and Bogumilism
spread into Dalmatia and Croatia.

Bosnia was thus completely divided from the Serb Kingdom of Rashia,
which had meanwhile grown up and thrown in its lot with the Orthodox
Church. The Bans, in fact, preferred the assistance of the Catholics
to the risk of conquest by the Serbs, and in 1340 we find Ban Stefan
declaring himself Catholic and agreeing to the establishment of two
Bishoprics.

Stefan Dushan, Serbia's greatest Tsar, was now at the height of his
power. He succeeded in bringing the south of Bosnia under his
control, but the then Ban Stefan Tvrtko (1353) joined with the
Venetians and Hungarians against him. Nor was Bosnia as a whole
added to Serbia. Tsar Dushan died in 1356 and Tvrtko at once
reclaimed his lands, but held them only as a vassal state to
Hungary.

The Serb peoples, divided into many small rival principalities,
fought each other continuously, though the enemy which was to
overwhelm them all was already advancing upon them. The Turk who, be
it remembered, had entered Europe at the invitation of the Greeks,
to aid them against the attack of Tsar Dushan, had firmly
established themselves in the peninsula. Nevertheless the rival
native princelings intrigued one against the other, and some even
enlisted the help of the Turk instead of banding together against
him. The Balkans were an easy prey for any strong foe.

Even after the Turks had beaten the Serbs severely, Stefan Tvrtko,
King of Bosnia, seems only to have regarded this as an advantage to
himself. He continued extending his realm; had himself crowned "King
of Bosnia, Serbia and the coastland" in 1375, and was then the most
powerful of the Balkan rulers. As an ally of King Lazar, who ruled
over a much reduced Serbia, he, too, sent an army to Kosovo when,
far too late, the Balkan people at last united against the Turk. But
they lost the day. Union Was impossible to them, and a large part of
the Serb Army deserted to the enemy.

Even then the Balkan princelings failed to recognize their danger.
Tvrtko, still bent on extending his realm, Instead of opposing the
Turks, who did not follow up their victory, gave all his energies to
waging war against the Croats and Dalmatians, who at that time were
under the King of Hungary. Tvrtko died in 1391, bequeathing a big
Bosnia to his heir. But all mediaeval Balkan States were big only
during the lifetime of their creator. Tvrtko's brother soon lost the
newly acquired Croatian and Dalmatian districts, and Bosnia was
further weakened by the breaking off of what is now known as the
Herzegovina. It had for long had its own chiefs. One stronger than
usual now arose, Sandalj Ranitch. The Turk was almost at the gate,
but Sandalj's only object was to make himself a state independent of
Bosnia. Kosovo had indeed taught the South Slavs nothing.

The advancing Turk began raiding Bosnia and employed Serbian troops.
The Ragusa archives record: "In January 1398, the son of Bajazet,
with a great number of Turks and Slavs, entered Bosnia." Stefan
Ostoja was now King of Bosnia, but he too seems to have been more
intent upon annexing Ragusa than in organizing defence against the
Turk. Nor can we stop to unravel the complicated series of quarrels
of one Slav prince with another, of their intrigues with Venice,
with Hungary, with Ragusa, each playing for his own hand, though the
Turks were now established as near as Uskub, and in 1415 invaded
Bosnia for the third time. Sigismund, King of Hungary, alone of the
neighbouring princes, realized the gravity of the situation and sent
an army against the Turks, only to find that the Herzegovina sided
with the Turks against him. As a result, we learn from the Ragusa
archives, "the whole of Bosnia is laid waste and the barons are
preparing to exterminate each other."

Venice meanwhile crept down the coast and occupied much of Dalmatia,
while the South Slavs fought each other.

Nationality is the craze of to-day. Religion, in the Middle Ages,
played a similar part. Catholic, Orthodox, and Bogumil, hated each
other more than they hated the less known Turk. Each was willing to
use him against the other.

People of the same race and language then fought each other because
they differed about religion. To-day, even holding the same
religious views, they fight in the sacred name of nationality. But
then, as now, there were a few people who recognized the folly of
the fashionable differences. At the Council of Basel in 1431 an
effort was made to induce the Balkan chiefs, Catholic, Orthodox and
even Bogumil, to send delegates to Basel with a view to ending
religious strife and opposing a united front to the Turk.

It was vain. The King of Bosnia, and Stefan, Despot of Serbia,
declared war on each other and fought for several years. And
Sandalj, Lord of the Herzegovina, sided with the Serbs and bought of
the Sultan the right to take Bosnia. They failed to do so, but their
efforts certainly helped the final destruction of Slav independence.

Sandalj's successor, Stefan Kosatch, assumed the title Duke of Sava
(whence "Herzegovina" the Duchy), became Bogumil and consequently
fought both the Orthodox of Serbia and the Catholics of Ragusa. And
ever the Turk advanced slowly and always found a Slav chief ready to
side with him against a neighbour. At Fotcha, in the Herzegovina, I
bought a bracelet of a silversmith, who related that his ancestor
was the man who had guided the Turks into the district.

Constantinople fell in 1453, and left the Sultan free to complete
the conquest of the Balkans. The Hungarians, led by the great
Hunyadi, opposed him. But the Orthodox Serbs, led by their Despot
George Brankovitch, whose ancestor had deserted to the Turks at
Kosovo, hated Catholicism more than Islam, and sided with the Turk
against Hunyadi.

The end soon came. The last King of Bosnia, Stefan Tomashovitch, a
Catholic, asked help of the Pope, and endeavoured to raise troops
among the Catholics of Dalmatia and Croatia. This enraged his
Bogumil subjects, who preferred the Turks. The Sultan's army met
little resistance; Stefan was taken prisoner and beheaded by the
Turks in 1463, and soon all Bosnia was included in the Turkish
Empire. As in other Balkan lands, the rights of the Christians were
recognized. The Franciscans were appointed as their spiritual head,
and several Franciscan monasteries date from these early days.

The Bogumils in large numbers adopted Islam, with which, in its
abhorrence of ikons and images, and in its Monotheism, they were in
greater sympathy than with either of the Christian Churches, both of
which had persecuted them. But Bogumilism lasted into the nineteenth
century, possibly into the twentieth, for a case was reported to me
in 1911.

Those Christians who objected to Turkish rule fled south into
Montenegro, especially from the Herzegovina, which was finally
overthrown by the Turks in 1484.

Nor did the enmity between the Bosniaks and the Serbs cease now that
they were under a common foe. Throughout the histories of Serbia and
Montenegro we find that the Moslems of Bosnia and the Herzegovina
were their bitterest enemies and that the armies, sent against them
by the Sultans were very largely recruited from these districts. The
sense of nationality did not begin to develop until very much later.

Under the Turk the feudal system of the pre-Turk days continued. We
get a clear idea of the pre-Turk social conditions from the laws of
Tsar Stefan Dushan, which show the strongly marked class difference
of noble and serf. The noble was almost tax-free, but had to supply
troops. The serf was tied to the land, and could only leave it with
his lord's permission. Different punishments were inflicted upon
nobles and serfs, the nobles' being naturally the lighter. So
independent was the noble that he could build his own church or
monastery in his land and chose its bishop. The serfs were judged by
the noble upon whose land they were. They paid taxes; had to give
him two days' work a week, and three if he had vineyards; cut hay
and corn for him, and so forth. In pre-Turk days the rule of the
chieftain seems to have been severe. Under the Turk the system
continued, and the "Turk" of many a ballad who oppresses his
Christian peasant was in fact the Slav feudal nobleman who, having
turned Moslem carried on the ancestral tradition, and to the tyranny
of the feudal noble added religious intolerance.

There was little organized government under the Turks. The
traditional ballads give us vivid pictures of the heyduks, or
brigands. Highway robbery up till, and well into, the nineteenth
century was both a lucrative business and a sport which well suited
the lazy but adventurous spirit of the people. It perpetuated in
fact the everlasting raids of one noble against another in pre-Turk
days. To this day a Montenegrin "junak" delights in pillaging a
village. But continuous work is abhorrent to him.

Armed Turkish patrols guarded the main trade routes between Ragusa,
Constantinople and Vienna. They cleared the route from time to time,
and then woe to the captured heyduk, whether Moslem or Christian.
Heavy the ransom to buy his freedom. But brigandage was rampant
before the Turk came, and, as we have seen, the history of the
Peninsula was one of incessant bloodshed and disorder. The Turk, in
fact, showed more toleration for his Balkan subjects than they did
for each other. Each aimed at the extermination of the other.
Probably, had not the Turk overwhelmed them all, one or other would
have ultimately predominated, and absorbed or exterminated the rest.
Under the Turk all survived. He slapped them each impartially and
allowed no one to exterminate the other. Nor was their hatred of the
Turk ever great enough to cause them to combine against him till
1912, and then they were at each other's throats again so soon as he
was removed.

Though, as we have seen, Montenegro was recruited by refugees from
Bosnia, the converse also holds good. Many a Serb and Montenegrin
flying from blood-vengeance, many a Slav criminal flying from
Austrian justice, refuged in Turkish territory and turned Moslem.
Nor when, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Serbs
struck for independence did Bosnia join them. The Slav Vezir and the
Pashas of Bosnia led great armies against them. By then the whole
situation had changed, however. The ebb-tide of the Turk had begun.
Austria and Russia in the eighteenth century had already decided
upon the partition of his lands. Russia thought and cared only for
Constantinople and the way there. Bosnia was recognized as Austria's
sphere. The long wars and the liberation of the Serbs had effects in
Bosnia and the Herzegovina. Revolts, largely agrarian, of the
Christians began to take place. The big landowners, though Slavs,
were Moslems. Their peasants were largely Christian. In 1849 a great
rising was followed by the flight of thousands of Christian peasants
into Austria, who in time of stress has often been the South Slav's
only friend. The Herzegovinians, encouraged and incited by the
Montenegrins on their borders, rose frequently, and it was their
great rising of 1875 which started the Russo-Turkish War of 1877.

Before declaring war, however, Russia came to an agreement with
Austria about Bosnia. It was understood that Austria should receive
Bosnia on condition that she took no part in the war. Russia did not
include this in the Treaty of San Stefano, but the scheme received
the strongest support at the Congress of Berlin. The aim of both
England and Germany was to hold back the ever forward-pressing Slav
forces. Great Britain pledged herself to Austria previous to the
Congress. "Le Gouvernement de Sa Majeste Britannique s'engage a
soutenir tout proposition concernant la Bosnie que le Gouvernement
Austro-Hongroise (sic) jugera a propos de faire au Congres."

Austria was offered Bosnia without reservation, and could then and
there have annexed it. It was only doubt on Austria's part which led
her to choose "administration" in place of annexation. The decision
of the Congress at once caused trouble. The mass of the Bosnian
Moslems violently opposed separation from Turkey, and the
Herzegovinians, who had risen with a view to union with Montenegro,
were equally opposed to Austria. The Austrian Army in 1878 met with
great resistance, and only after heavy losses and four months'
fighting finally subdued the land. The Herzegovinians declared to me
that they only laid down their arms at the request of the Prince of
Montenegro, under the understanding that Austrian administration was
to be but temporary, but under the terms of the Treaty no
time-limit was mentioned.

That the arrangement was intended by the Powers to be permanent
appears from the text now (1919) published from the Vienna archives
under date June 18, 1881, whereby the Courts of Russia, Germany and
Austria-Hungary agree that "Austria shall annex these two provinces
at the moment she judges opportune." This agreement was renewed in
1884. That the Powers considered the provinces as definitely annexed
is shown by the fact that when in 1881 Austria introduced military
conscription and recruited regiments for her own army no objection
was made, nor did any Power intervene when Austria put down by force
the resultant insurrection. On the contrary they most sternly
ordered the Prince of Montenegro to prevent his men from rushing to
the aid of the insurgents. Nor did Europe make any protest when the
capitulations were abolished by Austria, though the land was
nominally still a Turkish province. And Austrian coinage soon
entirely replaced Turkish money.

Up till this time it is important to note that Russia, was taking no
steps with regard to claiming Bosnia for her Pan-Slav schemes. Her
immediate aim was Constantinople, and she had planned to obtain it
by means of a large Bulgaria, which should be a vassal state. But
Bulgaria soon struck for complete independence and showed that she
would never be Russia's puppet, and elected Prince Ferdinand in
defiance of the Tsar with the express intention of breaking away
from Russian influence.

Russia therefore finally turned towards the Great Serbian Idea,
which otherwise she would probably not have taken up till the
annexation of Constantinople had been accomplished.

Till now, Russia had recognized the Montenegrin dynasty as the
leader of Great Serbism. She now turned towards Serbia. It was in a
far better geographical position and could supply a much larger
army, and Montenegro could still be used as a tool.

The result of this was that when in 1897 the Emperor Franz Josef and
Goluchowski went to Petersburg and asked for a confirmation of the
agreement of 1881, "that the territorial advantages recognized to
Austria-Hungary by the Berlin Treaty are and remain acquired by
Austria-Hungary and therefore the possession of Bosnia-Herzegovina
and the Sanjak of Novibazar cannot form matters of discussion; the
Austro-Hungarian Government reserving to itself the right of
substituting for the actual title of occupation and garrisoning,
that of annexation."

Russia had now other plans and replied "the annexation of the two
provinces would give rise to more extensive questions which would
necessitate a special examination in time and place."

And in the summer of that very year the Tsar received Petar
Karageorgevitch, the exiled claimant to the Serbian throne, and
started upon her Great Serbian intrigue.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BOSNIA IN 1906. THE PLOT THICKENS.

In the summer of 1906, when I visited Bosnia, the plot was already
far advanced. Petar Karageorgevitch was on the throne of Serbia, and
Russia, who had had a bad set-back in the Far East, was again
turning Balkanwards.

To visit Bosnia a visa was necessary, a sure sign that a land
suffers from "unrest." To obtain it I went to the Austrian Embassy.
The young gentleman who attended to passports was out, and I was
bidden sit on a bench with a number of rather poverty-stricken
Austrians. When the gentleman appeared he was vexed to find so much
work, and refused most of the applicants roughly. Their papers were
incorrect or he was dissatisfied with their reasons for wishing to
return home. One "cheeked" him considerably in German, and I
laughed. It therefore never occurred to him that I was English. I am
in fact, when travelling, rarely taken for English, which is often
convenient. He addressed me sharply in German: "You want to go to
Bosnia?"

"Yes, please." He took me for a Bosnian, and I let him do
it.

"When did you leave Bosnia?"

"In the summer of 1900."

"What have you been doing in London?"

"Writing and other things."

This alarmed him and he said sternly: "You must tell me exactly why
you left Bosnia."

"Because I am English," I said politely, "and it was time to come
home."

I pressed my passport upon him, which he had been too haughty to
look at before. Then there was hurrying and scurrying and orders and
abuse of the doorkeeper and much confusion, and I was conducted to a
drawing-room and apologized to (for having been treated as an
Austrian subject) and given the visa. I enjoyed the episode
immensely, and incidentally learnt how the official mind regarded
Bosniaks. My previous experience in Serbia caused me to go in search
of a new-laid Serbian visa also, in case I wished to cross the
frontier. Militchevitch this time was very friendly, joked about the
awful bill for cypher telegrams which I had run up for the Serbian
Government in 1902, and promised to send me some introductions to
leading Bosniaks.

At Trieste great events were in progress. The Emperor Franz Joseph
was to hold big military manoeuvres at Trebinje in the Herzegovina
and a naval review at Ragusa. The air was full of political
electricity, flags and decorations, and the coasting steamer was
full of police spies. All papers and passports were scrutinized
carefully at each landing-stage. The Kaiser had not visited Dalmatia
for very many years, and the populace was delighted. Dalmatia
complained bitterly that money was poured into Bosnia and nothing
done for her. Now things no doubt would look up.

Then we touched at Lesina and learnt that the Kaiser was unwell and
that his heir presumptive, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, would
replace him.

"I know what is the matter with him," said the captain to me: "he
has political fever. Something has happened."

The tale ran round that the Kaiser had intended after the manoeuvres
to announce the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. But that Abdul
Hamid, apt at expedients, had learnt this fact, and had sent Franz
Josef a polite message regretting that he was unable in person to
receive His Majesty on this, his first visit to a Turkish province,
but assuring him that his reception should be in every way suitable.
Se non vero, ben trovato. Possibly true, for it came out later that
Goluchowski actually broached the subject to Russia in the summer of
1906 and Russia raised objections, and may very probably have
informed Abdul.

The news caused great disappointment. The old Kaiser was genuinely
respected and even loved. Towns that were poor had spent much to do
him honour. Perhaps this was one of the "tides in the affairs of men"
and nations, that can be taken once and once only. The change of
feeling was marked at all our stopping-places. It was very late when
we reached Ragusa, and a gauntlet of police had to be run. The town
was crammed. Next day the great grey warships lay off the coast and
the army was arriving, disembarking and marching up to Trebinje. No
stranger might go there without a special pass. I did not ask for
one, as in such cases one sees only what one is meant to see, which
is misleading. So I got up at 4 a.m. and went to look at the army.
It was put to an unusual test in Europe, as it had to rely largely
on mule transport. Having done much pack-saddle travel myself, I
noted with interest that the Bosniak regiments were the only ones
who knew how to "pack-saddle." With most of the others the saddles
rolled under at once, or halfway up the road, which is worse. The
army marched off early. I then made the acquaintance of a pretty
girl, who was engaged to one of the officers, and from her later
heard all that happened. This I supplemented by sitting in the cafe
when the officers came back and hearing their curses. The men were
dead-beat. The water supply had broken down, so had the food. The
burning limestone karst had been too much for the men from the
plains, and they broke down badly. Only the Croats and Bosniaks had
stood the test. The manoeuvres were a failure.

The arrival of the Archduke and suite was very quiet. Ragusa was
decorated entirely with Slav colours. Only on the Government offices
did the yellow and black of Austria appear. At three in the
afternoon the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to drive through the
town, whose broad main street is a fine background for a procession.
It was crammed with a gay throng, and the national dress of Ragusa
can be very gay indeed. All were talking and laughing.

Then came the solemn strains of "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser," the
finest of all national anthems, and a sudden hush fell on the crowd.
A silence absolute and unbroken that continued till the unhappy man,
who sat motionless and erect, his face as blanched as a corpse,
drove out of the further gate of the town. Then the crowd burst into
one huge laugh. So complete was the demonstration that it was
certainly pre-arranged.

"Write to the papers! write to the papers!" cried several who knew
me, in high glee. Then Prince Danilo passed, and the crowd cried
"Zhivio!"

I met The Times correspondent and said: "Well, that was a display.
You have something to write about now!" But he replied that as we
were on friendly terms with Austria he should certainly not report
it. Nor did the papers to which I wrote think fit to publish this
highly significant affair. Thus is the trend of Foreign Affairs
hidden from the public.

Editors might as well often do without their correspondents, for
they tell them beforehand what to emphasize, or cut the important
news out of their telegrams.

The Archduke arrived with a portmanteau full of medals, and took
them all away with him again. His only enthusiastic reception was
from the deputation of Albanian Bishops and other ecclesiasts who
came from Scutari to greet him. He was a brave man, for after the
demonstration he went into the town on foot almost unescorted, and
during the drive, though he must have expected a bomb every moment,
he showed no loss of self-control save the blanching of his face.
From Ragusa I went to Serajevo. I took the phonograph to collect
songs, and wished specially to collect tattoo patterns and see the
Bogumil and all other local historical remains, but was badly
hampered, nor is it my purpose here to describe things anthropological.
Had I been left to my own devices I should doubtless have made
larger collections and seen less of the political situation. But the
Austrian police, like the Serbian in 1902, insisted on rubbing my
nose in it.

Travel in the interior was forbidden without a special pass. The
British Consul was absent, and had referred me to his Italian
colleague who muddled the business badly, whether because he was
stupid or for reasons of his own, I did not find out. A little of
both, I think. I was asked to call at a certain hour on the Governor
of Serajevo. He was a Croat, spoke German to me and told me it was
the wrong time of year to travel in Bosnia. Much surprised, I said I
had wintered in Macedonia and could stand anything. He then spoke
Serb, and I foolishly replied in the same tongue. I told him all I
wanted was the permit, and that I could shift for myself. He
objected that the food was bad; native houses dirty; winter near
--such a journey as I proposed among the people in short impossible.
I replied I was used to bugs, lice and fleas, could sleep on the
ground and eat anything. All I wanted was a pony and a respectable
guide. He stated that unfortunately there were no guides in Bosnia,
so I said if I could have a pony I would find the way myself by map.
Remembering my trump card at the Serb Legation, I asked if the
country were in too dangerous a state. He hastened to say it was
not. At last, countered at every point, he offered to lend me his
man-servant for a fortnight; could not spare him longer. I should
then have seen enough and could return to England. I said I could
not so inconvenience him; that I could not get any work done in the
time and that I thought of staying months not weeks. He said he
would think it over and I was to call again. Next time he was all
smiles and had a map ready. "Here," he said, "is your route. Here is
a letter"--he pointed to a large pile--"for the Bezirksvorsteher of
every place. You will present it on your arrival and do nothing till
the authorities have arranged for you. The tour will take three
weeks, and then you will go back to England." It was a great
disappointment to me. You cannot get a native to tell you folk-tales
while you draw the interior of his hut, if a policeman is sitting
waiting till it is done. Nor can you live with a family and see its
habits. Just as I had plodded round Serbia in spite of the police,
so I would not be put off Bosnia, but to this day I regret the great
amount of most interesting material that was there at my hand and
which I could not gather. Bosnia was a mine of old-world lore and
belief. As in Serbia, however, it was obvious that there was
something the authorities wanted to conceal. And as "DORA" had not
yet been born in England the affair seemed to me unutterably silly
and tiresome. The first part of the journey I was, for all practical
purposes, under arrest. Met on arrival everywhere by a most polite
young official, who told me his whole time was at my disposal. "This
is a mosque," he said, "this is a Turkish coffee-house. We will have
a cup of coffee. This is the Catholic Church, or Orthodox, as the
case might be." We inspected the school, and took a walk in the
environs. "Now you have seen all. I will go with you to the post
office and get a place for you on the diligence to-morrow. It starts
at eight." The evening was spent in the hotel where all the Beamters
had their meals. I tried to get information about local customs.
Sometimes my hosts supplied them. More often the topic bored them.
We talked of Vienna and London. After a good deal of this I
reflected I was losing time and money. Every one was politeness and
kindness itself. But I missed the long evenings in Albanian or
Montenegrin huts round the fire; the talk and the doings. The
Austrian official who sighed only for the Opera or the Ringstrasse
and thought himself an exile wearied me. But as I was not allowed to
study the native I had to study him. I startled some of them one
night when they asked me as usual, how I liked Bosnia, by telling
them that so far I had seen none of it, nothing but the Austrian
occupation. This sort of thing went on a bit longer. Then on the
Herzegovinian frontier I accidentally picked up an official to whom
I had no letter of introduction. A cheery, enterprising individual
who said he did not know to which of the many races of the Empire he
belonged--and did not care. Was a geologist and a bit of an
antiquarian. Took me up an 8,000 foot mountain and incidentally
almost killed me. For on the desolate summit we surprised a chamois
at close quarters, which snuffed us, gathered its feet and jumped
over what looked like a precipice, though it had footholds for
chamois. My new friend insisted on following it, as the shortest way
down. When we were on a slippery grass slope so steep I could see
the bottom of the valley a thousand feet below between my own boots,
and the native servant lad refused to further risk his life, I too
struck, and the chase was given up. When we arrived at a gendarmerie
outpost on the night of the second day, and I was nearly dead-beat
after seventeen hours' continuous struggle over many rocks and other
obstacles, he confessed he had had no idea of the way. The stolid
gendarmerie captain was appalled. "But if the Fraulein had died?" he
asked. "Ah, but I knew she was English!" cried the other, "they can
do these things. She will be all right to-morrow." He was delighted
with the exploit, and suggested all kinds of places I should go to.
I told him about my route and my previous experiences. He roared
with laughter. Said it was silly nonsense. Some of the Serajevo
people were too stupid for words. "Have you a passport? And it is in
order. Very well. You are a British subject. They dare not stop you.
Why should they? They ought to be glad to get tourists, and they
won't if they go on like this. Burn all those letters and go where
you please."

He made me a list of places where I should find Bogumil monuments,
tattooed people, Roman remains and so forth. Told me that in his
opinion Austria was wasting time and money in the provinces. The
changes were too quick for the people; they preferred the old
Turkish tracks and pack beasts to carts and the new roads, and that
they suspected everything new. He himself got on with the people
excellently, took me into several houses where they had portraits of
Prince Nikola of Montenegro, and chaffed them about wanting to join
that land. "They are all of them plotting across the border," he
said, laughing. "They would far rather pig along like the
Montenegrins. I've tried hard to persuade them to use iron ploughs.
Our government supplies them at less than cost price. But they
won't. They say, 'No, it is a Schwab thing.' We have spent no end of
money trying to improve the live stock: bulls, stallions, rams,
boars of the finest breeds. We sent a splendid boar last year to a
village in charge of a man who was supposed to be reliable. And when
Christmas came he killed it, roasted it and asked all the village to
a feast. It was worth a lot of money. He only said that there was so
much meat on it, it seemed a pity to let it live! It will take them
several generations to get new ideas. Why worry. All this talk of
going to Salonika is folly. This place is too much for us." His own
job were beautiful irrigation works which kept a whole district
fertile through the heats of summer. "But," he laughed, "the people
are not a bit pleased. They say that in the old days it rained when
it was God's will. They have quite forgotten they lost most of their
crops every year from the drought. This is a Schwab thing, so they
think it bad." On parting with him I took his advice and went where
I liked. I was "shadowed" a good deal and my correspondence was
generally ten days late, but otherwise was not interfered with.
Living in native houses and going as guest to festivities, weddings,
etc., as I had done in other Balkan lands was, however, impossible.
It would have got my hosts into trouble. As it was, the wife of an
official was very angry when I said I could get a meal in any
village. For she declared she and her husband had even been refused
coffee, the people all vowing they had none.

The reason for all the fuss was that the authorities were trying to
hide the fact that the country was going through a very bad crisis,
which was further exacerbated by the rumoured annexation; the open
talk of an advance towards Salonika; and the renewed political
activity of Russia and Serbia, which had now got England installed
again at Belgrade.

Speaking Serb, I found without difficulty that there was a very
strong Serb propaganda being worked from Belgrade among the
Orthodox, who at that time formed nearly two-fifths of the native
population. Next in number were the Moslems and after them the
Catholics, lastly several thousand Spanish Jews. Orthodox, Moslem
and Catholic native populations were entirely Slavonic. There was an
acute division between the Orthodox and the other two parties.

The Catholics and even some of the Moslems called themselves Croat,
and hated the term Serb. I had heard a report that in Croatia a
reconciliation between Serb and Croat had taken place. None was to
be seen in Bosnia. Only in the Herzegovina did the Catholic natives
wish union with Montenegro.

The bulk of the Moslems looked longingly towards Turkey. The
Orthodox, on the other hand, were violently pro-Serb, and feelings
between Austria and Serbia had risen to fever heat.

Towards the end of 1905, Pashitch, then Prime Minister of Serbia,
though already working hard against Bulgaria in Macedonia, signed a
secret commercial convention with that country providing for the
free interchange of goods with the exception of certain specified
objects, and binding the two to a monetary convention and
assimilation of weights and measures. As both countries produced
much the same articles the arrangement did not appear to be likely
to stimulate trade and as the racial hatred and rivalry of the two
over the unsettled Macedonian scheme was extreme, the permanence of
the arrangement was in any case doubtful.

Serbia was in dire need of a loan, and was on the point of
concluding one for 70,000,000 francs. Part of this was to be
supplied by the Vienna Bank, and both Serbia and Bulgaria were
negotiating new commercial treaties with Austria. Serbia thought
best therefore to keep the transaction with Bulgaria quiet. But just
as business was almost concluded with Austria, a Bulgarian newspaper
blurted out the Bulgar-Serb convention. The Austria-Hungarian
Government demanded at once to see the document, and all business
came to a standstill. Nor was this surprising, for Petar I, Pashitch
and the regicide group were notoriously Russia's proteges, and any
secret arrangement on their part was likely to be directed against
Austria.

Austria closed her frontier to Serbian live stock.

Serbia was on the bubble. England had stipulated that the regicides
were to be retired from power, as a condition of resuming diplomatic
relations. (A stipulation that showed either that the Foreign Office
little knew the Balkans, or that it knew very well that the treaty
was a farce and did not care.) The regicide gang was infuriated and
plotted the assassination of their opponents who wished by legal
means to settle the question. But, as was delicately expressed by
The Times correspondent, "it is stated that the police authorities
refused to afford facilities for the execution of the plot, which
consequently failed." Pity indeed that the police of Serbia did not
remain "conscientious objectors" to plots of assassination. And
about the same time when Vladan Georgevitch was sentenced to six
months' imprisonment for "revealing state secrets," in The End of a
Dynasty, the author in court denounced King Petar as the humble
instrument of Russian policy.

Austria insisted on modifications to the Serbo-Bulgar convention;
Turkey too demanded an alteration.

But by the time I arrived in Bosnia this affair was thrown quite
into the shade by a new step on Serbia's part. She decided to
purchase the artillery for her reconstructed army from the Creusot
works in France. This so infuriated Austria that she declared a
complete boycott of all Serbian goods. Serbia retorted and the
frontiers were absolutely closed; so tightly indeed that along the
Serbian frontier I found the officials complained of a meat
shortage, and a great trade in smuggled fowls was run at night.

Feeling ran very high. Bosnia being under military occupation
naturally bristled with officers and men. The officers talked very
freely. Not once did I ever hear the Serbo-Bulgar convention
mentioned. It was always the guns. They said it was not a question
of trade in armaments. That did not matter. It was the question of
policy. Serbia showed plainly now to all the world that she was
ranged on the side of Russia and France against the Central Powers.
"She has joined the Franco-Russian combine against us." They were
quite right too, though being then unaccustomed to war, I thought
their suspicions unreasonable. And neither I nor they knew that this
step had followed immediately on the commencement of "military
conversations" between France and England. But that this arming of
Serbia was directly connected with the ringing-in policy of France
and Russia is now obvious. Poor Edward VII may have thought he was
peace-making, when he let Petar Karageorgevitch's gory past be
forgotten and forgiven, and agreed to give up his visit to
Montenegro so as not to wound that monarch's sensitive feelings--but
he little knew the Balkans.

Scarcely one of the Austrian military or civil authorities I spoke
with had ever visited Serbia or Montenegro. They all regarded the
two as semi-savage lands used as tools against them by Russia. When
I arrived at Vishegrad, close on the Serb frontier, feeling was
running high. Serbia showed no sign of giving way as had been
expected. I told the officials their boycott was bound to fail, as
you cannot starve out a people whose main assets are maize and pigs.
"You will see I am right. They will simply go on eating pigs till
you are tired." The Bezirksvorsteher was annoyed at this, but
interested. I said "Get me a horse and a guide, and I will go into
Serbia and see." He retorted It was impossible as the frontier was
closed, but he hired me the horse and a very black gypsy, a wild
enough creature, and I went.

Was halted at the border blockhouse, which the black gypsy thought
unpassable, but the Serbs were rather pleased to be inspected,
telephoned through to Uzhitza, and I rode on. An amusing sidelight
was the surprise of the gypsy at finding the same language both
sides of the border. "But they talk Bosniak!" he cried.

An aged peasant on horseback joined me and asked so many questions
about London that I thought he knew something about it till he asked
"Is it a free country?"

He was puzzled when I said, "Yes."

"But it is under Austria," he protested.

"No, no," said I, "it is a free country."

"Thank God," said the old boy, "and I believed it was under Austria.
Bogati--so many people are under Austria. But London is not."

In Serbia I found I had guessed right. "In spite of the horrible
curse, nobody seemed a penny the worse." Uzhitza was in high spirits
and reminisced my visit of 1902. They referred with triumph to the
murder of Alexander. Since that, everything had been going
splendidly. The army was everything and all possible money was to be
spent on it. If Alexander had lived he would have made an alliance
with Austria and have stinted the army. The army and Great Serbia
was the cry. They were all for Russia. As for the wretched Draga,
the ladies told me that she had received them at some function or
another with powder all over her face. Imagine having to kiss the
hand of such a fallen woman! (Fashions have changed now, or England
would be a female slaughterhouse.) All the officers killed in her
defence were stated to have been her paramours. Nothing was too bad
for her. King Petar was described as one who would never interfere
with the army. There was much enthusiasm over the resumed relations
with England. It was obvious that no one believed that the regicides
would really go; their departure was a mere matter of form. As for
the boycott, they laughed and told funny tales. A bride had ordered
her whole trousseau at Vienna. The wedding was fixed. But the
frontier was closed. Her girl friends gallantly went to Vienna in
their oldest garments; changed and came back, rather stout but
triumphant, clothed in the whole trousseau. As for export, by the
aid of France and England they would export to Egypt and Marseilles
via Salonika. The French artillery would come in by the same route.
French artillery they intended to have.

I was much interested, but as I had brought no baggage could not go
further into Serbia. The Mayor gave me a mounted gendarme as escort
to the frontier.

This impressed the Vishegrad authorities much, as did the fact that
I had got across the frontier at all. The Bezirksvorsteher asked at
once what I had learnt in Serbia, and if the frontier would soon be
open.

"I do not know," said I.

"What do you think?" said he.

"I think not."

"Our Minister at Belgrade is of the same opinion," he replied. In
truth the officers who had protested that Serbia had now openly
joined the Russo-French combine were right. And what is more,
through our Entente with France, we too now, consciously or not,
were tools used by Russia for the making of Great Serbia and
furthering Pan-Slav ambition. Serbia began to feel it safe to pull
long noses at Austria. That the Austrians on the other hand regarded
their occupation of Bosnia as permanent was clear. No nation merely
on a temporary job of "putting things straight" would have expended
the vast sums and effort needed to bring a half-wild Turkish
province in twenty-eight years up to a high state of material
well-being. The mountain roads are second to none in Europe. Mines,
agriculture and every possible industry were being developed
regardless of expense, by up-to-date methods.

"The officials," I noted in my diary, "give one the impression of
being overworked." Everything was centralized and had to go through
the Konak. They wrestled with a mass of detail and mostly felt like
exiles in a wild land. The large majority were Slavs--either Poles,
Croats or Bosniaks, and these got on much better with the populace
than the Magyars or Germans, of whom I met a few. The mistake of the
Government was in trying to go too fast. A leap in twenty-eight
years from the twelfth century or thereabouts to the twentieth was
too much. The peasant intensely conservative by nature resented
every change. "Better that a village should fall than a custom" is a
South Slav proverb which I have heard quoted with approval. An
astonishing amount of work had been done and admirably done. Future
generations will profit by it. But the peasant who had had all his
ideas and habits upheaved had had time to forget the oppression of
the Turk, but remembered, with kindness, his slop-dawdle tolerance,
This happens, I believe, in every land "freed" from the Turk. The
people vaguely expect an earthly paradise where every one will do as
he pleases, and find to their dismay that you can no longer evade
the sheep-tax by tipping the hodja to let you put your flock on
"vakuf" land. The Christian loses his privilege and has to serve in
the army which he hates. He cannot run to a foreign consul for
support against his Moslem neighbour, nor earn good pay by acting as
spy for one Power or another. He complained bitterly that the
Turkish Government never made roads or mended bridges, When he
finds, however, that the new foreign government expects him to
contribute to their making by giving labour, or paying tax, he is
furious. "Liberty" for most Balkan Christians means liberty to
massacre Moslems and take their property. The Bosnian Orthodox
peasant found precisely the same law applied to him and the Moslems.
The strict impartiality observed by the Austrian Government towards
all three sects caused the wrath of all. "What," said a Catholic
fiercely, "can you think of our Government when I tell you that a
priest baptized and converted three Moslem lads, and the Government
actually made him send them back to their parents and censured him
because they were not of age? Not of age, if you please, and so
their souls are not to be saved!"

The Moslem was equally furious with the equality treatment, for he
was no longer top-dog.

The most remarkable work of the Austrian Government gave perhaps the
most offence. It was the medical. The Bosniak, in appearance, is
often a giant. But his appearance is deceptive. Stripped of his
numerous waistcoats his chest measurement, as the military doctors
informed me, is so poor that a larger percentage of Bosniaks were
rejected from the army than in most of the other recruiting
districts of Austria-Hungary. As in all South Slav lands,
tuberculosis raged. "Thirty per cent, affected, without counting an
apex" as a Bosnian doctor told me. And scattered over the country,
but especially virulent on the eastern districts along the Serbian
frontier, was syphilis. In some parts this was so rampant that the
Government posted on the village walls and in the schools, notices
warning persons never to drink from a glass after some one else, or
wipe with the same towel, and other advice. All of which went
against the custom of the people. Against tuberculosis the schools
waged an anti-spitting war. A child who spat on the floor had to
clean it up, which was considered a great indignity and gave great
offence. Compulsory cleaning of streets to a population who regarded
the street as the proper receptacle for all garbage was a further
source of trouble. That the medical work produced a great
improvement, that malaria, by drainage, petroleum on the ponds, and
quininizing of the Population was stamped out in some districts and
got in hand in others counted for nothing. They "were not our
custom," they were "Schwab."

The forests also were a source of friction. In old days the peasant
cut what he pleased, where he pleased. His goats browsed the
saplings and they grew up crooked. But they made firewood and it did
not matter. No replanting ever took place. When all the wood was cut
on a hillside the winter rains washed away the whole of the soil and
left bare rock. A pity--but the will of God, sighed the peasant, and
he went on to fell the next wood.

Forestry laws infuriated him, and his disregard of them infuriated
the forestry officer. A goat-tax (slight for the poor owner of a
couple of goats) was instituted, rising according to number, to a
sum which made the keeping of a large herd impossible. An official,
to whom I remarked on what seemed to me the paucity of flocks, said,
"We do not let them keep goats and they won't keep sheep. For my own
part I should relax the goat laws for a while at least; they cause
such resentment. But the central authorities will not do it. We have
to rely largely on the sale of timber to run the country. It is one
of the most valuable assets."

All officials agreed in finding the people very difficult to move;
very childlike in their ideas and very slow to adopt new ones. A few
hated and loathed them.

It was, however, not the officials but the private residents who
were on bad terms with the native population, families who had come
for business purposes from civilized and comfortable Austrian towns,
and who would not take the trouble to learn Slav except just enough
for their marketing. I had never before been in a land under foreign
occupation, and commented on this attitude to some officers. They
jeered at me and said, "You have evidently never been to Egypt. Wait
till you have seen your own people there."

I was annoyed at the time. But when some years later I went to Egypt
I found the English attitude to the native worse and repented of my
comments about Bosnia. One race in truth cannot see with the eyes of
another.

The Austrian official really tried to adapt the law to native ideas,
and when unable to unravel complicated questions of native usage,
even summoned the ancient council of "the good men" to decide
according to local custom. A good deal of blood-vengeance still
went on, but with the knife; firearms were strictly forbidden, and
very few licences for them issued. This was a source of great
discontent, for the carrying of arms to the South Slav peasant means
manhood. The Christian's idea of liberty is to carry arms. And the
fact that the Moslem also was debarred from so doing in no way
consoled him. In one respect the lack of firearms was a real
hardship, for Bosnia swarmed with wild pig which devastated the
crops. When the corn was standing, peasants sat up all night
drumming on petroleum tins around the fields to drive off beasts.
There were enough wolves also to harry the flocks. An Austrian
official killed ten in one night with strychnine during my visit.
But the natives complained bitterly that the Government did not
permit them to shoot wild beasts and did not keep them down itself.

There was, I was told, very little stealing but, in the forest
districts where the woodcutters all carried long handled hatchets, a
blow with which was invariably fatal, there was a good deal of
slaughter, as in a quarrel a man struck with whatever was handy.
Only if the attack proved to be cold-blooded and pre-arranged was
capital punishment inflicted. Otherwise imprisonment up to twelve
years according to the circumstances.

Wages were low. The peasant was very poor. Very high wages were
obtainable in America, and thousands emigrated thither. They
ascribed this to Austrian rule, but the same thing was happening in
Montenegro, where the Government was vainly trying to stop
emigration by refusing passports. It was simply an economic question
of supply and demand. Labour was wanted in America at any price. The
emigration had the same effect in Bosnia as in Montenegro. A large
surplus of women remained behind, and the birth-rate of illegitimate
children rose high and, as is perhaps inevitable with a military
occupation, prostitution was common. This, though, was not the only
cause of immorality in both Montenegro and Bosnia. In old days all
the women of the family were the property of the men of the family,
who had the right to shoot at sight any man tampering with a wife or
daughter of a family group. A blood vengeance so started might mean
twenty lives. The risks were not to be lightly taken. The
emancipation of women and the restriction of firearms produced new
complications.

The Austrians were rather pleased to see emigrants leaving the land,
and said they hoped they would never come back, so that they could
be replaced by a better population. They were anxious to consolidate
their position in Bosnia as fast as possible, so as to be ready for
a forward move. "Nach Salonik" was a favourite topic of
conversation. A friendly chemist at Fotcha even invited me to have
tea with him under the Austrian flag at Salonika, that day three
years, that is October 1909, by which time he fully expected to be
established there. He considered the Government had been shamefully
slow. They ought already to be well on the way there. I travelled by
train from Ragusa to Mostar with a General and his daughter. She,
who had just arrived, looked with wonder at the bare grey rocks we
passed and asked, "Why ever did we take all these stones, father?"

"Part of the price we paid Europe for Salonika, my dear!" he
replied.

I wintered at Serajevo, and by taking my phonograph to the Moslem
coffee-houses gained some popularity, for there was but one other
such instrument in Serajevo, and you had to pay to hear it. The
Moslems, I soon learnt, wanted only the Padishah and hoped for the
return of the Turk. Several had lived long years in Egypt. But when
I told them I meant to go there they very earnestly begged me not
to. All the English were very soon to be driven out or done away
with, and the company unanimously agreed that it would be a very
great pity that I, who had been so kind as to play the "monogram" to
them for nothing, should be killed out there. I asked them to tell
me truthfully what it was that the English did that was so bad. They
replied very reasonably: "Everything. Nothing you do is as we do.
You make yourselves fine houses and streets in Cairo. Why do you not
make them in your own land and leave our land to us? We hate your
things. The land is now not our land. It is all Alia Franga." You
do not like our ways. We do not like yours. Go and leave our land to
us."

We should say just the same thing, only less politely, were we
"occupied" by the Japanese. They were kind enough to say that the
English were not so bad as the Schwabs, but I fear this was only out
of gratitude for phonograph favours.

In a private room upstairs they sang me a special ballad of the
Greco-Turkish War of 1897, which began by describing how Prince
George of Greece and the British Consul and some other European
officials drank beer together and when they had drunk too much,
planned a treacherous attack upon the Turks. It was a long song and
took four hours to sing--with refreshments in the middle. I did not
stay to the end. Every one, of course, believed in the guilt of the
British Consul.

At Serajevo I got, too, into a very Nationalist Orthodox set through
the Nationalist school kept by Miss Irby. The pro-Serb party was all
Orthodox, wildly anti-Turk and furiously anti-Catholic. All that was
Latinski was abhorrent, and every vice and crime was imputed to the
Catholic clergy. They were represented as fiends in human shape, who
stole people's children and baptized them into the Roman Church. I
had found similar fanaticism among the Montenegrin peasants, but did
not expect it among the educated Bosnian officials and their wives.

They made no secret of being in communication with Serbia, told of
their expedients to smuggle in papers and dodge the police
authorities. And when the windows were carefully shut used to sing
"Onamo, onamo," and other forbidden Nationalist songs. In one
respect I found the Orthodox exactly like the Moslems. They wanted
to be top-dog and suppress the others. A pretty school mistress
complained to me bitterly of the authorities who had put her to
teach in a purely Catholic district, "where I can do no propaganda
at all." She wanted a Parliament for Bosnia, and assured me that as
the Orthodox party Was the largest they would then be able to shout
the others down, from the gallery, and was naively surprised When I
told her that this was forbidden in England, which she had thought
was a free country. She had been taken once to the Budapest
Parliament for the express purpose of screeching all the time
certain members spoke. The debate ended in a free fight, and she had
been hoarse for days.

This idea of freedom is, of course, not unknown in England. It is
the only one existing across the Adriatic. An ardent Great Serbian
once explained: "When Great Serbia is made we mean to have religious
equality everywhere. For instance, in Ragusa there are two
monasteries, both Catholic. This is unjust. When it is ours, one
will be Orthodox and one Catholic."

"Which do you mean to rob then, the Franciscans or the Dominicans?"
he was asked. "Rob!" he said, much hurt. "We are going to make
religious equality. One must be Orthodox and one Catholic." And this
he continued to repeat, though it was urged that in this case one or
the other order must be deprived of its monastery, and that,
moreover, the vast majority of Ragusa is Catholic.

But Liberty is a glorious thing, and I found the Orthodox heartily
approved of Alexander's murder as one step towards it.

By now I had learned that even officials in Austrian employ were
working against the Austrian Government. A friend of mine, who was
also much interested in things South Slavonic, wrote at this time
and suggested I should join the Slovenski Jug Society then recently
formed. But as it was made clear to me that these so-called
patriotic associations were plotting against the Austrian Government
I decided that I, as a British subject, should steer clear of them,
more especially as one could not tell to what lengths they would go.
I had been on the brink of the plot for the destruction of Alexander
Obrenovitch, a sufficiently alarming precedent, so I declined to
become a member of the Slovenski Jug, preferring a front seat at the
drama to being possibly dragged onto the stage.

As one of my objects in this journey was to see Christmas customs in
a peasant house I determined to leave for Montenegro, where I could
do so easily, and left the tense political atmosphere of Bosnia with
some relief.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1907

Blindly and bloodily we drift.--MASEFIELD.

The thirteen days' difference between the Old and New Style enabled
me to spend Christmas 1906 at Serajevo, and celebrate it a second
time in old Serb fashion in Krsto's hut at Nyegushi in January 1907.
Montenegro lay deep under snow, all mountain tracks buried. Life in
the villages was rough and severe. We celebrated Christmas, the New
Year, the Blessing of the Waters, and St. Sava. But by leaving
Bosnia I had not found peace. The undercurrent of discontent with
the government was more marked than last year. Even in Nyegushi, the
birthplace of the Prince, there were growlings. What was done with
all the money? The most hateful and wearisome work in all the world
was guarding flocks on the mountain. Therefore a herdsman should be
paid more than a chinovnik (official). Nevertheless every youth
aspired to be a chinovnik, because then you could retire early with
a pension. Many men had lately returned from America with pockets
full of cash. They preached that the duty of a government was to
make "jobs." They used the English word, and their audience had not
the least idea what "jobs" meant, except that it was a highly
desirable something which brought in money. America was a republic,
and in America there were "jobs." Therefore, if you had a republic
you would have "jobs." The new Parliament roused no enthusiasm. The
Prince could veto its decisions, and its members had but childish
notions. The old idea of local soviets was not extinct, nor their
rivalry with the tribe next door. Many a member consequently thought
it his duty to his constituents to veto a road for another district,
until his own had been supplied, without seeing that at this rate
nothing could be done. Dr. Marusitch was clamouring to remove the
capital to Danilovgrad, and make other sweeping changes.
Tomanovitch, the Prime Minister, and his son, aide-de-camp to the
Prince, were hated and reported to have sinister influence. Those
still faithful to the Gospodar blamed him for giving up his official
power. Cetinje, however, was excited over a new subject. A manager
from Earl's Court had come to invite Montenegro to take part in a
Balkan States Exhibition. Highly flattered, Montenegro had signed
the agreement without the ghost of idea what to do or how to do it.
The show was to open in May. Montenegro, of course, could not
possibly be ready by then, so I was asked by the committee to write
a letter informing the management that the exhibition must be
postponed till July, or whenever Montenegro was ready. I explained
that this was no use in England. Montenegro must be ready--or drop
out. They argued: "But when the London people hear there is going to
be an exhibition they will change their season to suit it." I
retorted: "Whenever I want you to do something you say: 'Nije nash
obitchaj!'" (It is not our custom). "Now we say this to you." And I
hustled them. Petar Plamenatz was the Secretary for Home Affairs. He
was to give me facts--imports, exports, education, post, telegraph,
etc.--for an article on Montenegro for the catalogue. Every morning
he said: "To-morrow without fail I will give you all the figures."
And every evening: "Mon Dieu, it is impossible. I am tired!" He had
two hours free at midday and all his evenings. At the last minute,
when told the thing must go to press, he said: "But why all this
anxiety about facts, Mademoiselle? Write what you please. I am sure
it will be charming!" I wrote an essay, which necessarily contained
no point of commercial importance, and insisted that he must hear it
before it was sent as an official Montenegrin production. "But I
have a headache," said Petar. "What does that matter?" said I, and I
made him hear it. He said it was admirable, and added no single
fact. And he was one of the Intelligentzia upon whom the fate of
Europe later depended.

At this time I was daily teaching English to one of the
schoolmasters, an interesting task, as it showed me the total lack
of discipline there is in the education of the average Near Eastern.
He had a good deal of brain power and a certain amount of
information, but was totally unable to make himself do anything he
disliked, even when he knew it to be necessary. Would not begin with
simple things because he was not a child. And when he could not
understand difficult ones, flung the papers on the floor and stamped
on them, vowing he would never do English again. I smiled and said:
"Very well. Don't. It does not matter to me. Goodbye." To which he
would exclaim: "Good God, what fish blood. But with your sangfroid
you are a born Professor. I lose my temper with my class twenty
times a day." He had the impossible Near Eastern ideas of Liberty.
Briefly: "Do as you please, and damn the rest!" Was an ardent "Great
Serbian," but was not a Montenegrin, and when "freedom" was attained
hoped to force Montenegro into the correct path. His idea of
education was primitive. He despised every form of game, exercise,
and gymnastics as waste of time, and had never done any himself.
"That is why you are so absurdly neurotic and you have never learnt
to keep your temper." I chaffed him. He retorted: "Fishblood,
fishblood." An interesting specimen of the Intelligentzia.

Meanwhile Prince Nikola became anxious about Earl's Court. He sent
for me, took a gold medal from his breeches pocket, and gave it to
me with the request that I would go to England, see the managers of
the exhibition, and keep an eye on the exhibition when opened. A
staff of Montenegrins was to come over and manage the section.
Meanwhile, in order that it should become widely known, he thought
it would be a good thing if I told all my friends there was going to
be an exhibition, and ask them to tell theirs. Thus the news might
be spread through London.

That exhibition would take a volume in itself. Briefly, Bulgaria,
Serbia, and Montenegro were represented. Montenegro, with
characteristic laisser faire, never appointed a commissary at all,
and the work all fell on me. Fortunately, in fact, for I was the
buffer state between Serbia and Bulgaria, who were at daggers-drawn.
At the necessary meetings the Serb Commissioner talked German and
Serb into one of my ears, while the Bulgar shouted French and Bulgar
into the other, and the English manager at intervals begged me to
"tell him what was the matter." Even when invited out for a day in
the country the Serb and Bulgar peasants refused to dance together.
John Bull did his best to work up an anti-Serb demonstration more
than once. But though we balanced on the edge of hostilities, the
Balkan War did not break out at Earl's Court.

I have often thought since it was a pity the Foreign Office did not
study our methods.

The five Montenegrins who came "to help" were far too proud to do
any work at all, or associate with any of the others. They looked on
the Bulgars as foreigners, and despised the Serbs.

Montenegro's attitude was shown by Petar Plamenatz, who arrived for
a week's visit as special Commissioner for Montenegro just in time
for the opening ceremony, when I had done the whole preliminary work
of arranging the show.

Lord Fitzmaurice invited all the Balkan representatives to lunch. I
translated the invitation to Petar. "I shall not go," said he. "I
have a headache."

"That makes nothing," said I, "you are here to represent Montenegro.
This invitation is an honour, and I accept it for you." Petar was
surprised. He had naively imagined that as Commissioner for
Montenegro it was he who conferred the honour upon Lord Fitzmaurice.
He went, however. I asked how the party had gone off.

"It was really extraordinary," said Petar. "Do you know that of all
the Balkan representatives, I was the only one who knew how to
conduct myself in a comme il faut manner!" The next invitation, a
dinner, he flatly refused to accept. I was still more resolved that
if I had to "run" the exhibition for Montenegro, Petar should
continue to behave comme il faut. He dodged and excused vainly. I
wrung the truth from him. He had no clean shirt. It is the only time
I ever bought an evening shirt for a gentleman.

Petar left after the most strenuous week of his life. Nothing,
however, would induce his five compatriots to do anything at all,
and just as they thought they had demonstrated that as the finest
representatives of the South Slav stock, their mission in life was
to exist and look beautiful, to their intense surprise the
management sent them home.

Meanwhile, our inability to obtain any reply to business questions
from Montenegro was explained by the sudden news of the discovery of
a plot to assassinate Prince Nikola, and, it was said, his family,
too. Our five Montenegrins received letters from home full of the
wildest details, which they all believed, showing that the country
was in a whirl, and that the Exhibition must be steered! without any
further aid from the homeland. Numbers! of arrests had been made.
Russia was said to be implicated in the plot, for the girls of the
Russian Institute had trampled on the Prince's portrait at the
bidding of Sofia Petrovna, its head!

After this the whole work of the Montenegrin section was wasted. Not
one of the trade openings we found--some very good--were taken up,
and no letters were replied to.

Montenegro, though she did not realize it, had in truth reached the
turning-point of her history. She was no longer the recognized
leader of the Great Serbian movement. During the years when Serbia
was "in Coventry" Montenegro had done nothing to strengthen her
position, save some futile posing to journalists as "the one good
boy." Now Serbia, with Russia behind her, was to the fore.
Montenegro's tide was about to ebb. I wrote strongly to the
Montenegrin Government that it was most necessary to appoint a
representative in London. I would not myself go on doing the work of
a consul Without authority or pay. Preferably they should send a
Montenegrin. If not, I suggested two Englishmen willing to do the
work, one of whom they appointed next year.

It was a step in advance, but it was too late. Serbia, completely
whitewashed, re-established a Legation and a commercial agency, and
began an energetic propaganda.

Meanwhile an event of world-wide importance Took place. On August
31, 1907, the Anglo-Russian agreement was signed. The Anglo-Russian
difficulties of the Middle East were arranged, and Russia was free
to turn all her attention towards Constantinople.

She was lavishly supplied with French gold, and could count on
French military support. France was already arming and aiding her
Balkan ally, Serbia. And Russia, without doubt, was aware of the
"military conversations" of France and England. Possibly the
agreement with Russia was one outcome of them. It is noteworthy that
though England had "agreed" with Russia, so little did she realize
the possibilities of the Near East, that we were the only Great
Power which had no permanent representative in Montenegro, and no
representative at all on the East of the Balkan peninsula, save Mr.
Summa, our Albanian Vice-consul at Scutari.

Austria retorted to the steps being taken by the Russo-French group
by obtaining from the Sultan permission to build a railway from
Uvatz, on the Bosnian frontier, to Mitrovitza, which would link up
Serajevo with Salonika.

The Balkan railway question had been rankling for years. The Slav
wanted an east-and-west line to connect with the Adriatic. The
Teuton a north-south one to reach the Aegean. Neither would allow
the other's plan to mature. I used to get much amusement in mixed
company by proposing various railway lines and hearing the violent
denunciations or applause that followed, according to the political
aims of those present.

The Turks have been freely blamed for neither constructing railways
nor allowing others to do so. But to be fair, one is bound to admit
that they knew very well such lines would be used for strategical
purposes, and they lived in terror of the Slav Adriatic line. Before
judging Abdul Hamid harshly, let us consider at what period we
should have allowed Russia to build and control a line across India
"to advance trade."

The year 1908 opened with the railway question. Russia and Serbia
furious about the Uvatz-Mitrovitza scheme. The Morning Post, it is
of interest to note, was markedly pro-Austrian.

I remembered four points: (1) The Austrians' boast that they would
be in Salonika by 1909; (2) The Pasha of Plevlje's statement that
Austria had more troops in the Sanjak than she was entitled to; (3)
The oft-repeated statement of Serb and Montenegrin that the Austrian
gendarmerie officers superintending "reforms" in Macedonia smuggled
in arms; (4) That Serbs and Montenegrins were also arming and
carrying on a sharp Great Serbian propaganda in Bosnia, the
Herzegovina, and the Sanjak.

In the great race Austria now seemed a neck ahead, riding Uvatz to
Salonika.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

1911 AND THE INSURRECTION OF THE CATHOLICS

I arrived in Cetinje on May 5th, and found Italy had built a
Legation bigger than that of Austria. France had erected a gay villa
in the main street. Great Britain still only parlour-boarded at the
hotel for a few months in the year. The elephantine Vladni Dom
(Government House) dominated the town, and two ridiculous new houses
in the "new art" style had been built in the main street out of
the "pickings" so folk said, of the British loan, the whole of which
had been spent on useless ostentation. I had hoped that it would
have been used for irrigating, or otherwise developing the land, and
promptly sold out my few shares in disgust--and at par. I wonder how
many other people got out as cheaply?

Vuko Vuletitich was swollen with pride over his daughter, who, as
Madame Rizoff, held a great position as wife of the Bulgarian
Minister in Rome and was known as "la bella Montenegrina." Through
Rizoff I was told Montenegro hoped to attain to much.

I had been so disgusted over the bomb affair in 1908 that I had
fully intended not to visit Montenegro again. I was sick of the web
of intrigue which entangled the land. But now it seemed that only
from Montenegro could I watch the case for Albania.

I was summoned to the palace, and received by the whole royal
family, who were very gay, and did not conceal the fact that they
expected and wanted war, and bade me go to Podgoritza, where the
Queen's cousin, General Yamko Vukotitch, was in command of affairs.

The details of the insurrection I have told in my book, The Struggle
for Scutari. Here I will narrate only those political facts which
fear of injuring my informants compelled me then to withhold.

Briefly: the insurrection was planned by King Nikola as part of his
effort to obtain a kingdom. Taking advantage of the unrest caused by
Young Turk rule, he used as his lever old Sokol Batzi, a worthy man
of the Gruda tribe, who had fought against the Turks in 1877, and
therefore taken Montenegrin nationality. Nikola rewarded him
suitably, and Sokol, in return, served him with dog-like fidelity.
To Sokol, much respected by the tribesmen, Nikola entrusted the task
of inducing the Albanian Catholics to migrate in numbers into
Montenegro, promising them that if they would revolt against the
Turks their wives and children should have shelter and protection
till their land was freed from the Turks, and that they should
receive sufficient arms and ammunition. Nikola himself promised
independence to the tribesmen. Sokol was a simple-minded old fellow.
Bitterly did he and his family repent later of the way they had let
themselves be made cat's paws of. A considerable sum of money was
collected in Montenegro to finance the revolution. An Austrian Slav
doctor was engaged, and a rough hospital prepared, and a store of
maize purchased. These preparations went on through the winter.
Montenegro's protests, to Europe, of her innocence were lies which
were black even for diplomacy, As for the interview which Prince
Danilo gave to the Morning Post, it was a shameless tissue of
falsehoods. He declared that Montenegro had supplied no arms or
ammunition to the insurgents, when at that very time his cousin,
Yanko Vukotitch, was distributing weapons and directing the military
operations under my eyes.

Even worse was his statement: "It grieves my heart to see these
brave mountaineers die for the liberty of having their own schools
for their children." When not one single Albanian school was
permitted in Montenegro; forcible Slavizing was going on in the
Kuchi and Triepshl tribes, and the Catholic Albanians of Podgoritza
were not allowed to make a floor to their church and had to kneel on
the bare gravel.

At Podgoritza I soon saw that the Montenegrins wanted war. King
Nikola hoped thus to mend his damaged prestige. Mobilization began.
On July 11th Yanko told me all was ready, and he could take Scutari
in ten days. He offered to take me there on a gun carriage. The
artillery tracks to the mountains were completed, and the big guns
were going up. Ox-carts creaked past at night, taking up the
ammunition. The Turks, it was said with glee, dared not withdraw
troops from the Bulgar frontier, and were hampered with revolts
elsewhere. Soon, however, large Turkish forces arrived. It was clear
the untrained Maltsors could not stand against the overpowering
numbers. Too late they saw they had been tricked by the
Montenegrins, and cried to the Powers. At their request I helped
draw up a letter to Sir Edward Grey, explaining their situation and
their wishes, and we sent it. King Nikola, who was posing to the
Powers as the victim of the Albanian insurrection, was very angry
when he heard of this, and suspected me of instigating it. But I did
not. The Maltsors, too, were tricked by General Garibaldi, who had
promised to aid them and did not do so. They had expected the South
of Albania to rise also. Had it done so, I believe the Powers would
have been obliged to recognize the Albanian question, and much
future war might have been spared. But, unfortunately, the South
believed in Ismail Kemal, and he worked on which ever side paid him.
He was then in league with a Corfiote Greek, one Androutzos, who
boasted to me in a letter that he and Ismail had advised the South
against rising, and had "saved Albania." A few risings took place,
but not enough to make a mark in Europe.

Meanwhile Montenegro still expected war, and to every protest I made
that Montenegro could not fight the Turks single-handed I was always
told that Bulgarian help was certain. The army was anxious to begin,
for it was mobilized, and the revolt had cost more than had been
expected. But for the fund I raised the wretched refugees would have
suffered yet more bitterly. Montenegro cared nothing for them. All
she wanted was territory. Great Serbia was discussed with singular
cold-bloodedness, one of the schoolmasters saying at the
dinner-table that it would never be "made till the Petrovitches and
the Karageorgevitches are sent after the Obrenovitches." And King
Nikola's tactics were severely criticised. Either make war or
demobilize--the country could not stand the strain. I was warned not
to trust Stanko Markovitch, the Governor of Podgoritza, a sinister
figure enough, who had been raised suddenly to this height from
being master in a primary school, for "services rendered." "The
King's poisoner," said folk. "Beware!"

Foreign correspondents swarmed, and Russian officers came and
reconnoitred the frontier. The Turks occupied all the strategical
posts. Russia was not ready for war, and would not have it. Suddenly
the Maltsors were told Montenegro could do no more for them, and
they were to make peace, and go back to their burnt and pillaged
homes. Never has a people been more shamelessly betrayed. King
Nikola had used the poor creatures as a cat's paw, had failed, and
now brutally cast them out, and pretended to the Powers that
Montenegro was innocent. By brutal threats the Maltsors were induced
to accept the Turkish terms. But they stipulated I was to return
with them and stay the winter. This I undertook to do, and before
leaving was told by some one who had just had audience with the King
that owing to pressure from the Powers he had been forced to
postpone war till next year, but that Montenegrin troops would
occupy the strategical points so soon as the Turkish troops
withdrew, and I was to be ready. The Montenegrin army was, in fact,
never quite demobilized, and the King badgered the Powers
continually to order the withdrawal of the Turkish troops "which
threatened his frontier." Great Britain realized that Montenegro was
a spot which needed watching, and sent Count de Salis there as
Minister. High time, too.

I went to Scutari worn out with toil, responsibility, and the heat
which stood at 104 in the shade. France was now represented by a
Levantine Pole. Krajewsky, bitterly anti-Austrian, and very active.

English sympathy for the Maltsors had been aroused, and Mr. Nevinson
came out to report on the state of things and help me to organize
relief work. In order to close the Turkish frontier the Montenegrins
declared cholera in Scutari, though we saw no signs of it, and
quarantine was declared. We were cut off from news, and when
distributing quinine in the fever districts round Alessio learnt
suddenly that Italy had declared war, and was bombarding Tripoli. It
was a bolt from the blue. Italy had no casus belli, but as we have
seen, Izvolsky had arranged the affair two years before and no Power
protested, save that Austria forbade Italy to land in Albania.
Krajewsky became violently pro-Turk. Scutari rightly judged the war
as the first step towards the break-up of Turkey. The Turks behaved
with admirable tolerance. None of the Italians of the town were
Interfered with, and though war broke out on September 30th the
Italian Minister did not leave till October 23rd. Mr. Nevinson
returned to London, and I was left to carry on relief work.

All I could do to prevent the tribesmen being again cheated by
Montenegro I did. Petar Plamenatz, now consul, tried hard to buy
their help in the coming war by promising arms and liberty.
Montenegro intended no annexation, he said. "Nikita himself had
promised," said the tribesmen. But I now would not believe King
Nikola, even if he swore on the body of St. Peter Cetinski. His
actions were suspicious.

For the first time for many years he visited his Austrian rentiers,
and was warned by the Entente Ministers. "England," said Plamenatz,
"was firm; France mild, and Russia very disagreeable."

Montenegro was evidently in touch with Bulgaria. Plamenatz told me
that the bomb thrown into a mosque at Istib to excite reprisals or
force the Turks to declare War, had been expressly prepared in
Sofia, and anxiously awaited results.

Serbia and Montenegro were now on the worst terms. On December 24th,
the season of peace and goodwill, Plamenatz, in a rage, showed me a
telegram just received by the Orthodox priest of Scutari. The
Patriarchia had been persuaded to appoint one Dochitch, a
Montenegrin of Moracha, to the Bishopric of Prizren, in place of
Nicephor, dismissed for drunkenness and other inappropriate conduct.
Montenegro triumphed, and looked on Prizren as hers. The Serbs were
furious; the priests of Kosovo refused to recognize him, and had
telegraphed to the two priests of Scutari and Vraka to do so, too.
They, being Montenegrin, were all for Dochitch, and their tiny
flocks supported them.

Any Serbo-Montenegrin agreement seemed, then, quite impossible, and
Petar fulminated against Serb infamy.




CHAPTER NINETEEN

1912. THE FIRST DROPS OF THE THUNDERSTORM

1912 dawned ominously. Montenegro worked ceaselessly to rouse the
Maltsors, promising them that they should receive sufficient arms
and, this time, gain freedom. Meanwhile the Turks carried out their
agreement to feed the late insurgents very well. But Petar Plamenatz
never ceased quibbling over the French translation of the terms, and
inciting the tribesmen to quite impossible demands. Repeated
messages brought me varying dates for the commencement of
hostilities. Montenegro meant war. But Montenegro could not wage it
alone. Which Power was shoving her? I was fairly certain that
Bulgaria and Montenegro had some sort of an engagement, and learnt
later I was right.

Baron de Kruyff, Dutch correspondent and head of the Foreign
Journalists Society which visited Podgoritza in 1911, told me that
when he left Montenegro in June (1911) King Nikola, on hearing he
was going to Sofia, asked him to convey a letter thither, addressed
to a private individual, and to open it on crossing the frontier. On
doing so he found it contained another addressed to King Ferdinand,
with instructions to deliver it into the King's hands. He had an
audience, and did so. The letter contained the first proposals for a
Bulgar-Montenegrin agreement, by means of which each monarch should
aid the other to achieve his ambitions, and Nikola hoped to reign at
Prizren. King Ferdinand favoured de Kruyff with a long audience, and
asked him to convey the reply. De Kruyff objected that his sudden
return to Cetinje without obvious reason would excite suspicion. It
was therefore arranged that he should meet Popovitch as Montenegrin
envoy in Trieste. Which he did. I wonder if Russia knew this? I
fancy not.

Russia was now working for a Balkan Alliance, which, though
primarily directed against Austria, had for its ultimate goal the
acquisition of Constantinople. Nicholas II of Russia, like Nikola I
of Montenegro, was obsessed with a city. Russia was recuperating
rapidly. She was financed by France, and sure of military aid. She
had entangled England. The secular enmity of the Balkan peoples was
the one weak spot in her plan. To amend this she transferred
Hartwig, Russian Minister in Teheran, to Belgrade.

He had successfully worked the ruin of Persia. He was now to compass
that of Turkey. Hartwig was a man to stick at nothing. Dr. Dillon
tells us that his methods were so abominable that even the Russian
Foreign Office protested. "People asked how he dared oppose the
Foreign Office on which he depended. The answer was that he was
encouraged, and put up to it by the Tsar. When at last M. Izvolsky
extracted permission to recall the rebellious minister, Nicholas II
decorated him, and told him that his was the only policy Russia
could pursue with dignity and profit. . . . Thereupon he entrusted
Hartwig with the most important post in the Balkans."

De Schelking, secretary to the Russian Legation in Berlin, gives a
picture of Hartwig's immense influence: "Shortly after his arrival
in Belgrade, Hartwig created a most exceptional position for
himself. The King, Prince Alexander, Pashitch, none of these made
any decisions without consulting him first. . . . Every morning his
study was besieged by Serbian statesmen who came to ask advice" (The
Game of Diplomacy). It is amusing to compare de Schelking's account
with an order from Pashitch, November 14, 1912: "Take notice: Our
Ministers in Foreign lands are to be informed that Hartwig has not
visited the King, and that he comes to the Foreign Office less than
any of the other Ministers." According to de Schelking he had no
need to visit anybody. But I fancy Kings Ferdinand and Nikola made
their plans without consulting him. Nor can they be blamed for so
doing.

The alleged object of Hartwig's Balkan alliance was to protect the
Balkan peoples from further annexation. It was, however, difficult
to unite Bulgaria and Serbia, and would have been harder yet had
King Ferdinand known that Russia had already told Serbia that she
had no use for a Big Bulgaria. Perhaps neither the Serbo-Bulgar nor
the Bulgar-Greek alliances would have been effected, but for the
co-operation of Mr. J. B. Bourchier, whose honesty was beyond all
doubt, and who was trusted where a Balkan envoy would not have been.
He too, unfortunately, was unaware that Bulgaria's fate was already
sealed by Russia, and that England was too deeply tangled in Russian
intrigue to be able to stand for justice.

The Serbo-Bulgar alliance was signed on February 29,
1912, and was to be in force till December 1920. The two parties
were "unconditionally and without reservation to mutually aid each
other with all the forces of the State if one or more other States
should attack one of these countries" and "to support one another
with all force should any one of the Great Powers make the attempt
to forcibly acquire even temporarily any territory situate in the
Balkans, and at present under Turkish suzerainty." Russia meant none
but herself to put a finger in the Balkan pie.

Russia seems to have been doubtful about Montenegro, for the Serb
minister in Petersburg reports (February 17, 1912): "As regards the
visit of the King of Montenegro, and as regards Austro-Hungarian
relations . . . in pursuance of what was intended King Nikola was
given some energetic counsel to pursue a quiet line of conduct, and
not to let himself in for any adventures." Serbia now was on very
friendly terms with the Greeks and helping them to kill Bulgar
komitadjis in Macedonia. Montenegro, feeling secure in her
arrangements with Bulgaria, was induced to declare alliance with
Serbia. The Bulgar-Greek alliance, the hardest to make, was finally
negotiated.

These things were all secret, but the air was tense with them. We
were told we should know definitely if it were peace or war when
King Nikola returned from Petersburg in February. Prince Danilo at
the same time went to Sofia. We were told to be ready for war in
April. Gavrilovitch, who was Serb Minister at Cetinje, came to
Scutari with young M. Cambon, a significant combination, and was
visibly relieved when I told him I was doing all I could to keep
peace in the mountains Serbia, as we know now, was acting strictly
as Russia's tool, as shown by official documents, and Russia wished
to postpone the Balkan crash till she was ready. But having made the
Balkan Alliance, it took the bit in its teeth. Daily I saw
Montenegro shoving towards war, and the Turks steadily fortifying
Scutari.

On March 10th Petar Plamenatz was suddenly transferred to
Constantinople, and replaced by Jovan Jovitchevitch, who naively
said he had been instructed to ask me for maps and information.
Petar went to Constantinople, as he afterwards boasted, for the
express purpose of declaring war. "Ma guerre a moi!" he called it.
"Car c'est moi qui l'a fait."

At the last moment, when war was seething, Hadji Avdil, Minister of
the Interior, started with a Reform Commission through Turkey. But
he only precipitated the end. A narrow-minded man, filled with
inordinate conceit of his own importance, he passed with difficulty
through Kosovo vilayet and arrived in Scutari on March 10th. Instead
of pacifying the excited Maltsors, he refused to meet them on any
terms which they considered safe. And he left matters far worse than
he found them. That he, too, expected war was evident, for he
appointed the military commandant Hussein Riza as Vali.

The Albanians of Kosovo again rose in revolt. Ise Boletin again led
them. They triumphed everywhere, and this time entered Uskub, where
their conduct was admitted to have been exemplary by the Foreign
Consuls. The Turks, finding that the Albanians were about to march
on Monastir, called a truce, and agreed to recognize the four
vilayets of Janina, Scutari, Kosovo, and part of Monastir, as an
autonomous Albanian province. The immediate result of the Albanian
victory was the overthrow of the chauvinistic Young Turk party and
the appointment of a more moderate Cabinet. The effect of this coup
on the Balkans was electric. Each Balkan State had pegged out for
itself a slice of Albania. Delenda est Albania was the one point on
which they agreed. Heedless of Russia, they hastened to make war
before Albania should have time to consolidate.

War preparations hurried on. Montenegro worked upon the discontent
caused by Hadji Avdil. King Nikola had returned from Russia, but had
not fixed the date of war as we had expected. I thought perhaps
Italy was shoving, in order to assist her war in Tripoli, which
still dragged on. But in a few weeks' visit to Rome I had a long
talk with San Giuliano, and perceived clearly that Italy was not
urging Montenegro.

There seemed but one possible explanation, and that was that an
understanding had been come to between Greece and Bulgaria, and that
Montenegro therefore felt certain of the co-operation of the whole
of the Bulgar army. In Rome, Popovitch, the Montenegrin Minister,
had told me, when announcing that General Martinovitch had been made
War Minister: "This means war."

Returned to Scutari, I went straight to the Greek consul and in the
middle of a chat on nothing particular, asked: "A propos, Monsieur,
is it true your Government has signed a treaty of alliance with
Bulgaria against Turkey!" The poor little man almost leapt from his
chair. "Mademoiselle!" he stammered, "you are surely aware there are
things political of which one may not speak." I begged him to say no
more. More was unnecessary. War I knew was now certain. The secret
alliance had, in fact, been signed on May 16th.

Next day a frontier fight took place, provoked by Montenegro. It
lasted seven hours. Every one cried: "It is war!" The Montenegrin
Consul was greatly agitated. He knew what his country was doing, and
cried: "Mon Dieu, Mademoiselle, I hope you will not write a book for
five years! You know too much."

To avoid being besieged in Scutari I left for Podgoritza at once,
and found Podgoritza so certain of war that I was begged to stay and
see the first shot fired. Why war was then postponed I never made
out. Perhaps Montenegro had to wait for Bulgaria.

Cetinje also expected war, and asked me to collect funds for the
wounded. The King begged me to prevent the Maltsors rising yet,
which showed me he again intended to make a tool of them. Kol
Mirashi, one of the pluckiest of the Maltsor patriots, told me they
all knew this, and meant to rise at once to show Europe they were
fighting for independence, and not for Montenegro.

I said: "Why not keep quiet and develop autonomy?" He replied:
"Impossible. The Montenegrin-Austrian plan is now complete, and will
soon be in motion. We must act independently. King Nikola went to
Russia for help. They refused him. So he has joined with Austria."

The Russian visit had been a fiasco. Lazar Mioushkovitch, who, with
Dushan Gregovitch, had accompanied the King, told me: "It was
terrible." Dushan Gregovitch--good looking, and remarkable rather
for high stakes at bridge than common-sense--rashly allowed himself
to be interviewed. Montenegro's grandiose schemes for conquest
appeared next day in the papers. "The Tsar was furious. He
threatened us even with annihilation! The King told him Dushan was
known to be a liar, but it was of no use. It is finished! We have no
more to expect from Russia!"

But war preparations hurried on. And some of the Bank employees told
me that the King had raised a loan in Vienna "in order to start an
Agricultural Bank!" They smiled.

Montenegro now tried to force the Turks to declare war by provoking
two bad frontier fights near Kolashin and Andrijevitza, each time
burning several Turkish blockhouses, and going far over the
frontier. The Powers ordered the recall of the Montenegrin troops on
August 5th, or they would have occupied the whole Berani district. I
went to Andrijevitza on August 27th and stayed there a month. The
big guns had already been taken up and were on the frontier, and
ammunition was widely distributed, not only to Montenegrins, but
also to the Serbs from Turkish territory, who came over the border
at night. General Yanko Vukotitch was in command. There was a
hospital full of wounded, and Andrijevitza was furious with the
Government for having broken faith. They had been promised
assistance, and had expected this fight to be followed at once by
war. The whole district was strongly anti-Petrovitch, and in close
touch with Serbia. Veshovitch, the frontier commandant, even said--
when I suggested that a declaration of war might be followed by the
re-occupation of the Sanjak by Austria, and a possible attack on
Montenegro: "What then? Anything would be better than the Government
we have down there!" and pointed Cetinjewards. Jovan Plamenatz
assured me emphatically that Austria would not attack them. And he
counted for certain on Bulgar support. The Turks, however, displayed
great restraint, and did not declare war. Veshovitch then told me
that as neither the efforts of Bulgaria nor Montenegro could force
them to it, Montenegro herself would begin. He had bombs ready to
spring another Turkish blockhouse, and so soon as he had finished
the big bread-oven for the army would do so, and cross the border.
Sniping, as I saw myself, was already going on daily.

A strange tale has been circulated that Montenegro mobilized but
four days before war broke out. The above facts show this to be
quite a mistake. Montenegro had been preparing over a year, and
could have begun in July.

I hastened to Cetinje to tell Count de Salis what was happening. He
replied that the Powers were doing nothing useful, and he feared it
was now too late.

I went to the Russia Institut. It was October 3rd. Sofia Petrovna
was happy and excited at the prospect of war; foretold the end of
the Turk and the triumph of the Holy Orthodox Church, to which she
was heart and soul passionately attached. While we were discussing
the situation, in hurried Yougourieff, one of the Russian officers
attached to the Legation, and superintending the Military Cadet
School financed by Russia, who, though she was no longer supporting
Nikola, was actively training young Montenegrins as cannon-fodder.

He stopped short on seeing me; hesitated; said something in Russian.
Seeing I was de trop, I rose to go. Sofia Petrovna bade me stay.
"Mademoiselle," she said, "knows the whole political situation. You
can speak before her."

He asked me doubtfully: "Will you promise not to send off what I say
to a newspaper?" I promised.

He sat down and began hotly in French to Sofia: "The Montenegrins
are absolutely mad! You must use all your influence to stop them.
They must not make this war! We have already told them so most
severely. They are mad, I tell you--we cannot and must not have war
now."

Sofia disagreed vehemently. All was ready. Things could not go on
like this. "But I tell you," said Yougourieff excitedly, "absolutely
there must be no Balkan war without Russia. And we are not ready."
Sofia persisted: "My friend--we shall intervene. We said we would
not in 1877--and we did. We shall now."

He became very serious. "I tell you this is not 1877. We cannot
intervene. Unless Austria intervenes, which God forbid, we have no
excuse for war. And nothing is yet ready. We are working as fast as
possible, but there is much yet to do. These people must wait!" He
was in deadly earnest, and plainly speaking the truth.

I asked quite suddenly: "And when will you be ready, Monsieur?"

"In two years from now, Mademoiselle, we shall be absolutely ready
for our great war!"

It was October 3rd, 1912. Russia began her great war on August 1,
1914. Yougourieff was only two months out. No wonder he made me
promise not to publish his remarks.

We learn now, from a report by Gruitch, Serbian Minister in London,
September 8, 1911, to the Serbian Foreign Office, that the date was
known to others as well. Speaking of the agreement about Morocco, he
says: "The agreement has one result, that war will be postponed
three or four years. . . . Both France and her allies are of opinion
that the war--even at the expense of great sacrifice, must be
postponed to a later time, that it to say, until the year 1914-15"
(see Bogitchevitch, xi). No wonder that Gavrilovitch and young
Cambon approved of my peace policy, and that Yougourieff was
emphatic.

I went to General Yanko Vukotitch's house. Rakia was flowing. He,
madame, his secretary, and others were in high feather. Yanko
explained the plan of campaign to me. He was to lead the main
division to Prizren. The two other divisions under Brigadier
Boshkovitch and General Martinovitch, were to attack Scutari, and,
having taken it, to join the triumphant Yanko at Prizren. No mention
was made of when the other Balkan States were to come in. Bulgarian
support was certain. Madame Yanko begged me to go with her husband
and photograph his entry into Prizren.

The whole campaign, it appeared, was expected only to last a few
weeks, and only 150 beds had been made ready at the hospital. The
Montenegrins honestly believed that theirs was the finest army for
its size in Europe.

General Martinovitch told me to go off to Podgoritza if I wanted to
see the first shot fired. When I arrived there on October 6th all
was ready and waiting. Another proof that the "four days'
mobilization" tale is an error.

King Nikola had made up his outstanding quarrel with his relatives,
and the Royal Voyvodas, Marko, Sharko, Bozho, and Gjuro all arrived.
On the night of the 8th all sang: "Let me see Prizren!"

There was wild excitement. No one mentioned the Serbs. I asked,
"What is the Serb army like?" They roared with laughter. "Oni
chuvahjuf svinje Gospodjitza!" (They are swineherds, lady!) Next
morning at 8 a.m. Prince Petar fired a gun into a Turkish camp
across the frontier.

The tale of the war has already been told. Here only a few
significant facts need telling.

Montenegro expected by rushing the first into war to occupy all the
coveted districts, including Prizren, before Serbia was ready.
Bulgaria would beat back the Turks, and Ferdinand and Nikita share
the bulk of the peninsula. The Montenegrins recked nothing of the
Serbs, but they miserably miscalculated. The Serbs reached Prizren
before they did.

It is possible that Bulgaria and Montenegro, in fact, forced on the
war. Both knew they would gain nothing by waiting for Russia. And if
two of the Balkan States insisted on war the other two were bound to
come in.

Montenegro's plan failed. Her first startling successes were due to
the fact that the Maltsor risings had largely cleared the way for
her. But as the Montenegrins began at once to treat Albanian
territory as their own, and even loot Catholic Albanian houses,
tension between the Maltsors and Montenegrins arose and increased.
The Maltsors flung away the Montenegrin caps dealt out to them,
withdrew in numbers, and soon consulted me as to whether they should
attack the Montenegrins in the rear and cut them off. I begged them
not to, as I then believed in the honesty of the Powers, and thought
Albania would get justice. I regret it now.

South Albania also perceived that the self-styled "liberators" who
poured in from Greece were but brigands intent on gain and murder,
and on November 28, 1912, Ismail Kemal, who was in Constantinople
when war broke out, managed with difficulty to return to his native
town Valona, where he hoisted the National flag, proclaimed the
independence of Albania, and formed a provisional government. It was
hoped that by thus showing that Albania wanted freedom, and detached
herself completely from the Turks, she would be respected by Europe.
For the Balkan Allies had stated they were at war only with the
Turks.

Official notification of Albania's resolve was sent to the Powers,
and the Albanians hoped for sympathy, for it was they who in fact
had aimed the first blow at Young Turk tyranny. The Greeks and
Montenegrins and Serbs, far from sympathizing with Albania's wish
for freedom, were incensed by it. The Greeks blockaded Valona, and
cut the telegraph. The yacht of the Duc le Monpensier, however, ran
the blockade, and took off Ismail Kemal, Gurikuchi, and that gallant
chieftain Isa Boletin. He had fought on the side of the Serb till he
saw what Serb victory would mean. The three pleaded their cause in
the capitals of Europe. Europe meanwhile seethed with intrigue.

Russia's plans were overset by the premature outbreak of the Balkan
war. But she was bent on getting all she could out of it for her
side, and dragged France along with her. At the beginning of the
Italy-Tripoli war, Izvolsky had written: "We must even now not only
concern ourselves with the best means of preserving peace and order
in the Balkans, but also with the matter of extracting the greatest
possible advantage to ourselves from coming events."

The Powers called a Conference of Ambassadors in London to try to
arrange a Balkan settlement. The Russian Ambassador in London
reports, February 25, 1913, that England wishes peace and a
compromise. Of France he states that M. Cambon "has directed himself
in reality entirely to me. . . . When I recall his conversations and
. . . add the attitude of Poincare, the thought comes to me that of
all the Powers, France is the only one which, not to say that it
wishes war, yet would look on it with least regret. . . . The
disposition of France offers us on the one hand a guarantee, but on
the other it must not happen that the war breaks out on account of
interests more French than Russian, and in any case not under
circumstances more favourable to France than to Russia."

The Conference inevitably became a struggle by Russia to obtain all
possible lands for her proteges regardless of the wishes of the
inhabitants. Possession of land for a short time in the Middle Ages
was given as reason for handing it over now.

"We might as justly claim Calais," I said to a Podgoritza
schoolmaster, "for it was ours at the same time!"

"Why don't you," said he. "You have a navy?"

Sir Edward Grey, in the interests of justice, stood out against Slav
rapacity, but Russia insisted on having either Scutari or Djakovo
for the Slavs; though Djakovo, a town of between two and three
thousand houses, contained but one hundred Serb families. Nor was
there a single Serb village near it. All were Albanian Moslems or
Catholics, but they were offered up as a living sacrifice on the
altar of Russia's ambitions.

Montenegro meanwhile was very bitter. Yanko had failed to take
Prizren. The population railed against the Government. The King had
never recovered popularity since the bomb affair. Some of the
condemned were still in prison.

Had Prizren been taken, things would have been very different. All
Montenegro had been trained from childhood to sing: "Onward, onward,
let me see Prizren!" and though the town consisted of nearly four
thousand Albanian houses and but 950 Serb ones, Prizren had become a
sort of insanity with them. Not only Prizren was not taken by
Montenegro, but Scutari was not either. The population now turned
with savage desire on Scutari, about which previously little had
been said.

It had been believed that Constantinople would soon fall, and that
the four Crown princes would enter it in state. Though how they
could have been so simple as to think Russia would permit this, it
is hard to understand.

The cry rose: "Russia helped us in 1877, why does she not come
forward now?" Whatever the heads of the land knew, the rank and file
had confidently expected Russian intervention.

Only by dragging in Austria could Russia's hand be forced. The Serbs
endeavoured to goad Austria into action. News reached us that they
had imprisoned and maltreated Prochaska, the Austrian Consul in
Prizren, and Montenegro's delight and expectation were immense. His
nose, said the Montenegrins, should be cut off just as though he
were a Turk. Prochaska was, in fact, a brother Slav, a Czech, a
capable man, whom I had met in 1908. Austria, it was confidently
asserted at the inn dinner table, would be forced to fight--or for
ever hide disgraced. Yanko Vukotitch's secretary, who had been up at
Prizren, described to me with the greatest gusto what happened: "Oh,
if you could but have seen what the officers did to Prochasko! They
rolled him on the ground, spat in his face, tore the Austrian flag,
did all that you can imagine that is most dirty upon him! Austria
will never dare tell the world what we did to her consul. All Europe
would laugh at her, and she would have to declare war."

"But why was this done?" I asked.

"Because he asked some dirty Albanians to his consulate."

"But a consul has the right to ask whom he pleases to his consulate.
It was his duty also to protect the Catholics."

"Very well. This is to teach Austria we have no need of her consuls.
Austria is finished!" He, as all the Montenegrins, was furious at
any attempt to save the Albanians from extirpation. All those who
would not be Slavized were to be killed.

Austria would have been fully justified in making war on Serbia. And
as Russia was not ready, and the Serbs engaged with the Turks, then
was the moment to do it. But Germany was strong for peace. "Berlin
had applied itself, above all, to calm the exasperation and desire
for intervention at the Ballplatz," says Baron Beyens, Belgian
Minister in Berlin. "The Archduke Ferdinand stated at Berlin that
Austria had come to the end of the concessions it could make to its
neighbour. The Emperor and his councillors showered upon him, none
the less, counsels of moderation, which William II when conducting
his guest to the railway station summarized in these expressive
words: "Above all, no folly (pas de betises). . . . But to lead
Austria to show itself more tractable, as it is believed here the
Imperial Government has succeeded in doing, is not enough to pacify
the conflict. It yet remains to bend the obstinate resistance of
Serbia, and to effect a diminution of her demands. There was a
rumour last week in the European Chancellories that M. Sasonov had
ceased to struggle against the Court party, which wishes to drag
Russia into war, though the soil of the Empire is undermined with
revolution and military preparations are yet insufficient."

Prochaska, after some weeks of imprisonment, was released. Austria
humbled her pride and accepted an apology. Prochaska was compensated
and bound to secrecy. As my informant had foretold, Austria dared
not tell her humiliation.

In Montenegro this produced a howl of contempt. Austria was
finished; you could do what you pleased with her with impunity; the
next war would be with Austria. Montenegro, on her side, thought
well to insult her. Perhaps one more stab would make her fight, and
then hurrah for Russia and Constantinople!

From the conquered districts came piteous reports of the hideous
cruelties which Serb and Montenegrin alike were committing on the
Albanian populations. Far from concealing their deeds, the
conquerors boasted of them. A Serb officer nearly choked with
laughter over his beer, as he told how his men had bayoneted the
women and children of Ljuma. And one of the Petrovitches boasted to
me that in two years no one in the conquered lands would dare speak
"that dirty language" (Albanian). Moslem men were given the choice
of baptism or death, and shot down. The women were unveiled, and
they and the children driven to church and baptized. "In one
generation we shall thus Serbize the lot!" they said. And later
evidence proved that these reports were true. No Turk ever treated
Armenian worse than did the two Serb peoples treat the Albanians in
the name of the Holy Orthodox Church. Stanko Markovitch, Governor of
Podgoritza, forbade the giving of any food to the starving people of
the burnt villages, and told me flatly that they were doomed to
die. Podgoritza exclaimed he was a fool to tell me this: "Now she
will denounce us in England and America, too!" But they did not deny
it. News came from Djakovo that Father Palitch, a plucky Franciscan,
whom I had met there in 1908, had been bayoneted to death for
refusing to make the sign of the cross in Orthodox fashion. The
account of his death, given by Moslems and Catholics alike, was
denied by the Montenegrin Government. Austria rightly insisted on an
examination, for, as a Catholic, he was under her protection. This
was made by a commission under Mgr. Miedia, Bishop of Prizren.
Father Palitch's body was exhumed. It was proved that he was killed
by bayonets, and the tale of the Montenegrins that he had been shot
when trying to escape was devoid of foundation, there being no
gunshot wounds in the body. The case was gone into fully. Austria a
second time accepted apology and certain compensations, and failed
to respond to provocation. No Russian intervention could now be
expected. But the Slavs continued to cry: "Death to Albania," and it
was the clear duty of Austria, and should have been also of Italy,
to save it. The organ of the Serb Black Hand, Piemont, advocated the
slaughter of all the inhabitants of Scutari, to punish them for
having dared to resist. War, as is always the case, had aroused the
worst passions of this--at best--semi-civilized race. But the
Powers realized that Russia's unbridled greed on behalf of her Serb
proteges must be checked.

Scutari was a town of 35,000 Albanian inhabitants. Montenegro was
ordered by the Powers to withdraw from Scutari, and Serbia from
Scutari and Durazzo. The Powers sent a naval demonstration, and
prepared a collective Note. The Tsar ordered King Nikola to yield.
But while he spoke publicly, the representatives of France and
Russia did all they could to impede the delivery of the Note till
too late, in order to give the Montenegrins time to acquire by fraud
what they could not take by force. King Nikola and many of his
subjects went about swearing aloud that if they did not get all they
wanted they would set the whole of Europe on fire, and the combined
Serb and Montenegrin armies would take Vienna.

The plans for the taking of Scutari by fraud had probably been long
laid. In February came news that the gallant commander of Scutari,
Hussein Riza Bey, had been murdered-and his place taken by the
notorious Essad Pasha. Essad had been servant of the Old Turk, and
then member of the Committee of Union and Progress. He aimed solely
at power for himself, and now became servant of the Slav. Hussein
Riza, seeing no help could be expected from the Turks, and
determined not to yield the town to the Slavs, decided to hand it
over to the Albanians. On his mother's side he was of Albanian
blood. His plan was to communicate with all the tribesmen, and to
arrange that they should fall on the besieging army in the rear
while he and his army made a simultaneous sortie. He hoped thus to
cut up the Montenegrin army and save the town. One of the Franciscan
fathers and another man were to steal through the lines at night and
arrange that the tribesmen should attack when Hussein Riza hoisted
the Albanian flag on the citadel. That night after Hussein Riza had
supped with Essad, he was shot dead a few yards away from the house
by two men disguised as women. Osman Bali and Mehmed Kavaja, both
servants of Essad, boasted afterwards they had done the deed. The
town crier proclaimed that nothing was to be said about the murder
and Essad, who was second, now took command, and soon entered into
communication with the Montenegrins. As he knew only Turkish and
Albanian, the letters went through the hands of the dragoman of the
Italian consulate.

Italy played an oddly double game. She was bound by Treaty to assist
Austria to preserve the integrity of Albania. But she did not object
to King Nikola--father of the Queen of Italy--taking the town if he
could. Italy was striving for influence in Montenegro, out of hatred
of Austria, and failed to see that the South Slav, not the
German-Austrian, was her real danger.

While France and Russia delayed matters, Petar Plamenatz drew up
terms with Essad. Provided he evacuated the town in time for
Montenegro to occupy it before the Powers could stop it, he was to
leave with all honours, and a large supply of arms and food. He was
also to aid the Serbs to reach Durazzo later, and as a reward was to
be recognized as ruler in his own district of Tirana. A vile enough
plot.

In order to deceive Europe, the Montenegrin Government telegraphed
everywhere an account of a huge fight, in which Scutari had been
taken, and thousands of Montenegrins wounded. But it was such a lie
that they dared not give it either to The Times' correspondent or to
me.

Essad withdrew. The Montenegrins entered without firing a shot.
Thus was Scutari betrayed to her enemy. That the plot was known to
the Italian Legation is clear, for the Italian war correspondents
had the information from the Legation and hurried to the spot the
day before.

King Nikola having obtained the town, tried to effect a bargain with
Austria by offering the Lovtchen in exchange for it. But I fancy the
Powers burked this.

The war was over. All through I used to say to myself: "War is so
obscene, so degrading, so devoid of one redeeming spark, that it is
quite impossible there can ever be a war in West Europe." This was
the one thing that consoled me in the whole bestial experience. War
brings out all that is foulest in the human race, and the most
disgusting animal ferocity poses as a virtue. As for the Balkan Slav
and his vaunted Christianity, it seemed to me all civilization
should rise and restrain him from further brutality.

Of the saving of Scutari by the arrival of International forces
under Admiral Sir Cecil Burney I have told elsewhere, and of the
months of relief work in the villages burnt by Serb and Montenegrin,
who had destroyed nearly every olive and fruit tree, and devastated
the land.

But even when their army of saviours arrived the luckless Scutarenes
were ordered to make no demonstration, and had to lay aside the
flowers and flags they were joyfully preparing. In return for their
obedience, their enemies reported in the papers that the "naval
force was received without interest or enthusiasm."

The Montenegrins left, after having burnt and pillaged nearly a
third of the bazar as vengeance.

At Podgoritza, where I went to fetch my store of relief stuff, I was
set on by a number of officials at the parcel office. Furious at
losing Scutari, they swore they would retake it and take Bosnia,
too. I told them not to talk so foolishly. They cried: "We--the Serb
people--have beaten the Turk. We are now a danger to Europe. We
shall take what we please. The Serbs will go to Vienna. We shall go
to Serajevo. We have the whole of the Russian army with us. If you
do not believe it--you will see. We shall begin in Bosnia!" This
was in May 1913. Yougourieff, by the way, was delighted at the
capture of Scutari, and told me that the fait accompli could not be
upset. "Except by accomplishing another," I said. The French and
Italian legations, too, were indecently elated.

The Great Serbia party explained its plans freely. King Ferdinand
was to be assassinated, and Bulgaria be suzerain to Serbia. There
was to be war with Austria. Any one in Great Serbia's path was to be
"removed." A friend, who was doing relief work at Uskub, told me
that there the Serb officers talked incessantly of their next war
with Austria, and were savagely extirpating the Bulgarian and
Albanian populations from the newly annexed districts.

As for M. Krajewsky, the French Consul, he now "outjuggered" the
Jugoslavs. "Never," he declared, "would France allow independent
Albania to exist." The Russian Consul Miller, on the contrary, said
he had written the strongest possible report against Montenegro to
his Government, saying "that the Montenegrins by their disgraceful
conduct in war had forfeited all right to it." His report did much
to save the town.

The Dalmatian doctor, who had cured me of my long illness in 1910,
was also most emphatically anti-Serb and Montenegrin, though a Slav
himself, declaring them to be a set of savages who should not be
allowed to take Albanian lands. This was the more noteworthy, as he
had previously been by no means pro-Albanian.

On June 12th Mr. Nevinson arrived with Mr. Erickson, an American\
missionary who had done much work in Albania, and on the 15th we
started to ride through the country to learn the state of things. As
little has been written of Albania at this period I give a rsume of
my diary.

June 15th.--Rode to Alessio, past the villages burnt by the Serbs.
Found the Albanian flag flying on the bridge of Alessio, and
Albanian guards. Town dead, inn ruined. District patrolled by Ded
Soko's men. Perfect order. Heard tales of Serb brutality to
prisoners.

Tuesday, 17th.--Provisional government of Kruja welcomed us in grand
old house. The government, with old Kadi at its head, hoped
anxiously for appointment of a Prince. Full of fear of Essad. Told
sad tale of suffering. When war began they determined not to help
the Turks, and declared independence in November, hoping thus to
escape complications and take no part in the war. When the vanguard
of the Serb army arrived they believed that, as there were no Serbs
in the district, there was no danger. It is pathetic to note that
the luckless Albanians at first believed that the Serbs and
Montenegrins spoke truth when they said the war was in order to
liberate their brethren. That whole districts of solid Albanian
population would be seized, did not occur to them. They sat up all
night and made bread for the Serb army, and treated them as guests.
Later, they found their mistake. The Serbs treated them as
conquered. . . . People were arrested by the wayside and hanged
without trial. Three women were brought from villages to Kruja and
hanged there. In all fifty quite innocent people suffered. The two
Serb officers responsible for these atrocities were Dragoslav
Voinovitch (artillery) and Dragoljub Petrovitch (infantry). . . .
Left Kruja. Stopped at wattled shed for coffee. Han burnt by Serbs.
Folk gathered and told how Serbs had swooped on village, robbed and
arrested innocent people, taken them to Kruja and hanged them. All
said they had expected the Serbs to be allies and not foes.

At Tirana (18th) we visited Essad Pasha, and were struck with the
number of troops in the town. Essad explained they would leave by a
Turkish transport. He spoke with contempt of Ismail Kemal and the
provisional governmental Liter, at the house of Avdi bey, a number
of refugees from Dibra arrived and told of the sufferings in the
villages annexed by the Serbs. They asserted five hundred burnt-out
destitute persons had been prevented by the Serbs from receiving
help from the agent of the Macedonian Relief Committee. We arranged
to send maize.

At Durazzo folk were very nervous about Essad Pasha, who alone had
an armed force and was said to be in constant communication with the
Greek Bishop at Duiazzo, a notorious intriguer.

The Italian consul reported: "Perfect order prevails, but the delay
of the Powers must make for unsettlement." This, alas, was what
certain Powers intended. At the time the journey had the glory of a
plunge into a freed land rejoicing in liberty won after centuries of
anguish.

At Kavaia and Pekinj we heard of the massacre of prisoners by the
Serbs and the relief of the people that the invaders had gone, they
hoped, for ever.

At Elbasan admirable order was being kept by Akif Pasha. Here we
heard how the Serbs had imprisoned Albanian patriots. All hoped a
Prince would soon come and suppress Essad, who was feared as a
possible danger. The Americans were buying land and planning a big
college, to which the people looked forward as a means for national
regeneration. Parents were already refusing to send children to the
Greek school, in spite of the fulminations of the Greek priest.

A young man arrived from Starovo and told how he and two others had
been taken prisoners by the Serbs and offered their lives for a
heavy ransom. Only he had enough to pay. Both the others were
killed. A rumour came that the Serbs and Bulgars had begun to fight
for the possession of Monastir. It had been allotted by agreement to
Bulgaria, but the Serbs were in possession and refused to yield it.
We decided to push on to Ochrida to learn what was happening.

Arrived at Stiuga we found Serb officers in possession. We had left
free Albania and were in a conquered land under military rule. They
at once started "propaganda," and had the impudence to say that
the dialect of Struga was as pure Serb as that of Belgrade. But an
officer bent on annexation will say anything. Poor old Jovan
Golubovitch, the innkeeper at Podgoritza, was a native of Struga,
and was known always as Jovan Bulgar.

We visited the uniquely interesting fishtraps on the Drin, built
like a prehistoric lake-village. These, said our Serb escort, would
be a source of great wealth when modernized. "But," we objected,
"perhaps this will not be yours. The question has to be arbitrated."
They retorted they would accept no arbitration, and cared nothing
for agreements. What Serbia had taken, Serbia would keep. The
Bulgars should never recover one kilometre.

Friday, 27th.--At Ochrida--after ten years. Town most melancholy. A
tablet on the big plane tree commemorates the "liberation" of the
town. But there are no signs of joy. Even in 1904, after the Bulgar
revolution and under Turkish military rule, the town was not so dead
and hopeless as now under the Serb. All seems crushed beneath an
iron heel. Then the Bulgar population hoped for union with Bulgaria.
Now the Serb was dominant. The Bulgar school was closed, and
soldiers were at the door. The Bulgar churches were shut, and their
priests had disappeared. So had the bishop. Some people recognized
me. An old woman rushed up and told me things were worse than under
the Turk, but we dared make few enquiries lest our informants should
suffer. Only the great lake was the same as before in its marvellous
beauty. I felt like a ghost among the shadows of all we had striven
for ten years ago.

The bazar, once full of Moslems, was half deserted. The
intransigence of the Serb officers was here as blatant as at Struga.
They were eagerly waiting the declaration of war on Bulgaria. And
would accept no form of arbitration that did not give all to
themselves. We spoke strongly of the wickedness of fighting their
allies. They said they cared for no treaty, and meant to fight--the
sooner the better. All they had taken they would soon Serbize. They
--the military--had the power, and would do what they chose.

That the policy was a deliberate one we now know from published
documents.

On February 4, 1913, the Serb Minister at Petersburg telegraphed:
"the Minister for Foreign Affairs told me Serbia was the only state
in the Balkans in which Russia had confidence, and that Russia would
do everything for Serbia." Serbia felt quite safe in tearing up her
Bulgarian "scrap of paper." The Serb officers were, in fact, most
explicit, and told us they had all their plans laid and expected
soon to be back in Durazzo, and to keep it.

So set were they on fighting Bulgaria that had the Bulgars waited
but a few hours the Serbs would probably have saved them the trouble
of firing the first shot. The whole guilt rests with Serbia, for it
was she who broke her pledged word and threw down the glove.

Kosovo Day was a melancholy spectacle. Nothing is more dolorous than
a people forced "to rejoice" by an army of occupation. All shops are
shut, and the population summoned to church to celebrate the
"freeing" of the land. Once how pleased I should have been. Now I
have seen and know too much! The people of Ochrida had to officially
rejoice that their nationality was destroyed, though it had survived
some six centuries of the Turk.

At Pogradech we again found the Serbs. Here the whole population is
Albanian. There was no doubt of their sentiments. They asked
anxiously as to the fate of their town, and dreaded lest the Serb
occupation should be permanent. Wanted news of free Albania, and
asked when the Prince would arrive. At the han, when paying for my
horse, I asked for Turkish money as change, for we were leaving the
Serb zone. The hanjee and those in the inn burst into sudden joy:
"Ah, she too does not want anything Serb!" I was alarmed lest a
prowling Serb should overhear and make them pay dearly for
patriotism.

We arrived at Koritza on June 30th and found it
"in a state of great tension." "Persons afraid of arrest. A sort of
silent terror in the air. Great Greek propaganda going on, and Greek
troops everywhere. People called on us and said many wished to come,
but dared not. They prayed us to save Koritza. Called on the
Commandant, Colonel Condoulis, to whom Mr. Nevinson had an
introduction." I learnt what a mistake the Americans had made in
1903, when they put the mission under Austrian instead of English
protection. The Greeks now, in consequence, pretended that the
Albanian school was an Austrian school, and declared there was no
Albanian movement. The Albanian Nationalists, on the other hand,
were in bitter trouble, for, through the years of Turkish rule, they
had with danger and toil kept this school "the beacon light," open.
They now found the Greek more oppressive than the Turk. The American
missionaries had been expelled from the town at twenty-four hours'
notice. The school was closed. The Turkish troops had behaved well
in the town, and never entered a private house. The Greeks had shown
themselves as conquerors bent on pillage, and behaved with cruelty
and violence.

Colonel Condoulis did not even pretend to be out for anything but
wholesale annexation. He showed on a map frontiers which should
include even Tepeleni. I exclaimed, horrified: "But that is half
Albania!" Condoulis did not deny it. He merely said: "There is a
French proverb which says--appetite comes with eating. We have
eaten; now we must eat more and more." I replied: "Monsieur, those
that eat too much get bellyache." Which annoyed him.

I have met few things more repulsive than a military man bent on
conquest, for lust of conquest brings a man lower than the beasts.
The beasts eat for hunger. Condoulis wished to eat for sheer greed.
May the day come when such men will be looked On as mad dogs to be
destroyed painlessly before they have time to inflict misery upon
peoples.

What with the Serbs at Ochrida and tijle Greeks at Kctitza, I
began to regret that I had ever wished to send the Turk from Europe.
While he was there, there was yet hope. These "Christian"
conquerors were a hundredfold worse.

They showed their devilry by arranging a meeting that should cause
Mr. Nevinson to write to his paper that Koritza wished to be Greek.
The arrival of a well-known journalist was a chance to be exploited.

Unluckily for Condoulis, we were not in the Balkans for the first
time. The visit arranged for us at the Bishop's therefore missed
fire. We found his Grace seated at a table, at which there were some
fourteen local shopkeepers, who, when told to do so by the Bishop,
stated to us that they wanted to be Greek. It would, indeed, have
needed some courage to say in the presence of Greek officials that
they did not want to be Greek! "You see," said our guide, "the
Christians of Koritza want to be Greek!"

We were trotted off to the house of an old Moslem, who also replied
obediently. What else could the poor man do?

An unarmed population faced with a big army is helpless. Many an
English village would declare itself Choctaw if five thousand armed
men bade it do so--or be extirpated.

We lunched with Condoulis, and learnt that the Greeks were as
anxious to fight the Bulgars as were the Serbs. "Death to Bulgaria"
was their cry. Not a metre of land to be ceded to those "cochons de
Bulgares." "We went," they said, "willingly to fight the Turk. We go
with ten times more joy to fight the Bulgars; they are our worst
enemies." And they would listen to no remonstrance. So strong were
they on this that I could only think Greece and Serbia had a secret
understanding on the subject, and that Greece, like Serbia, knew
that Russia had no use for a Big Bulgaria. And so indeed it was.

The Greeks next invited us to a mass meeting, which was to be held
to ascertain the wishes of the population. We accepted, and on
returning to our quarters learnt that Greek soldiers and priests
were going from house to house ordering every one to attend the
meeting and close their shops. It was intended to make use of us,
for the women were told to come and hear what an Englishwoman had to
say to them. The Greek authorities, aware that we knew no Greek,
would have been able to interpret bogus messages from us.

We decided, therefore, to arrive so late as not to be put on the
platform and made use of, and went for a walk lest an officer be
sent to fetch us. One was--but we had already left. We arrived late
at the meeting. Surrounded by Greek military, the populace had had
to consent to the sending of a telegram to the Ambassadors'
Conference in London, stating that Koritza voted unanimously for
Greece.

So soon as it was dark, people came to visit us. Sixty Moslems
outside the town sent an emissary to know if they could speak with
us. We dared do nothing that would subject them to arrest. We had
heard too much of the fate of prisoners. We were prayed to send a
counter telegram to London, but there was no nearer telegraph
station than Berat. The wire controlled by the Greeks was, of
course, useless. The crisis was acute, and the prayers of the
Koritzans pressing. We gave up our plan of travelling further South,
and started for Berat so soon as mules and guide could be prepared.

The Greek authorities prepared a strange pantomime at Moskopol, our
first halting-place. They sent up overnight a number of people who
danced out to meet us like stage peasants, crying: "Welcome to a
Greek town!" Moskopol is, in fact, inhabited by Vlachs and
Albanians. The imported gang went everywhere with us to try to
prevent our discovering this fact. It was clear they were imported,
for they seemed to be in the town for the first time. One spoke
Albanian to a woman as we passed. I asked how he had learnt it. He
replied: "From my mother."

"Then you are half Albanian," I said.

"No," he answered, much vexed. "My mother is Greek, but there were
no Greek schools when she was young, poor woman, so she never learnt
to speak [i.e. she only knew Albanian] properly!" This is a fair
sample of Greek propaganda. We reached Berat, and were received with
great enthusiasm. The telegram was sent, and, we hope, helped to
save Koritza. At Valona, where our journey ended, we met a number of
refugees from Chameria, splendid mountain men, who had been till now
under local autonomy with their own old Albanian law. They were
threatened with Greek annexation, and prayed us piteously to save
their Fatherland.

We visited the Albanian provisional government. A small assembly in
a poor house. But it represented the hopes of a little nation. Its
members were earnest and anxious. War had broken out between
Serbo-Greek against Bulgar. They feared that Bulgaria could not
stand against the combined forces, and the victory of Greek and Serb
would spell ruin for Albania.

I returned to Scutari and resumed relief work. Things were going
badly. The Powers who wished to ruin Albania had arranged that the
international control should not have jurisdiction beyond ten
kilometres from the town, and gave no signs of appointing any form
of government for the country, nor recognizing a native one.

The two gallant tribes of Hoti and Gruda begged hard not to be
included in Montenegro.

In Montenegro I learnt there was disgust at having been dragged into
the second Balkan war Montenegro could not refuse to take part as,
then, if the Serbs won, she would lose all her war-spoils. I noted
in my diary: "The Powers are making a damned mess of everything by
their shilly-shally. . . . What rot it is for five Powers to be
spending the Lord knows what on these warships, admirals, soldiers,
etc. hanging about Scutari while the people up-country are dying of
hunger." The suffering in the burnt villages was terrible. People
were cooking grass for their starving children, and the death-rate
from diarrhoea was high. Anything the Belgians suffered in
1914 was child's play in comparison. Meanwhile Roumania entered into
the second Balkan war and stabbed Bulgaria in the back. History
records few dirtier actions, nor need we waste pity on Roumania for
the punishment which has since fallen upon her.

That the destruction of Bulgaria was early planned by Greek and Serb
seems likely, for, as early as April, the Serb Minister at Bucarest
proposed a Serbo-Roumanian alliance against Bulgaria, and the
Serbian General staff began fortifying Ovtchepolje. Bulgaria fell,
and the Treaty of Bucarest was signed on August 10, 1913. Albania
was deadly anxious. The victorious Serbs and Greeks were drunk with
blood, and thirsted for hers, too. And still the Powers made no move
to send a Prince.

At the end of August I went up to the Shala mountains, where
refugees from the Gusinje district seized by Montenegro, came in
misery; survivors of the massacres which, in the name of
Christianity, were going on. I examined witnesses. Four battalions
of Montenegrins were carrying on a reign of terror. Moslems were
given choice of baptism or death. Praying in Moslem form was
forbidden. Men were slaughtered, and their wives unveiled and
baptised, and in some cases violated as well. I was prayed to ask
the King of England, who has many Moslem subjects, to save these
hapless Moslems from extinction.

To Scutari came similar news of the hideous cruelty, by means of
which Great Serbia was being created. An Ipek man, well educated and
of high standing, told of what happened there: "Every day the telal
cried in the streets 'To-day the Government will shoot ten (or more)
men!' No one knew which men they would be, or why they were shot.
They were stood in a trench, which was to be their grave. Twelve
soldiers fired, and as the victims fell the earth was shovelled over
them, whether living or dead. Baptisms were forced by torture. Men
were plunged into the ice-cold river, and then half roasted till
they cried for mercy. And conversion to Christianity was the price."
Many, terrorized into baptism, came to me. One man with tears in his
eyes assured me he had consented only to save his wife and children,
but that he felt now that he was defiled and wished he were dead.

The International forces did nothing. They had no jurisdiction
outside Scutari.

Unfortunately, also, the British staff knew no language but English,
and the most reliable dragomans knew only French, Italian, or
German. England was thus more heavily handicapped than the
representatives of the other Powers, and the Albanians asked with
wonder: "Are there, then, no schools in England?" And, in general,
Scutari's high idea of European civilization shrivelled and shrank.

By the end of September the conduct of the Serbs in the Dibra
district was so bad that the maddened populace, profiting by a
moment when the garrison was reduced, revolted, drove out the Serbs
and retook Ochrida, where they were welcomed by both Bulgars and
Albanians. As I wrote at the time: "It is criminal of the Powers to
delay the frontier commissions. Both Serb and Montenegrin are
working to clear off the Albanians from the debatable districts so
as to show a Slav majority to the Commission." The ill-timed revolt
gave them a chance of doing this. The Serbs fell on the Gostivar
district, burning the villages with petroleum, and throwing such
people as could not escape, back into the flames with their
bayonets. An urgent appeal for bandages and medicaments came from
Elbasan, into which refugees were pouring. Our naval force was not
allowed to supply any, but I begged two cases of stores from the
Italian consulate and started across country to Elbasan to the
horror of the International control, who had the idea that
travelling in Albania was dangerous. As I soon got beyond their
zone they could not interfere. At Tirana and at Elbasan I found
thousands of destitute creatures pouring in, footsore and exhausted.
Their accounts of Serb brutality up-country was amply confirmed by a
letter of a Serb in the Radnitchke Novina (see Carnegie Report): "My
dear friend," writes a Serb soldier, "appalling things are going on.
I am terrified of them. . . . I dare not tell you morer but I may
say Ljuma (an Albanian tribe) no longer exists. There is nothing but
corpses and ashes." A Franciscan, who went there, told me of the
bodies of the poor little bayoneted babies. "There are villages of
100, 150, 200 houses where there is literally not a single man. We
collect them in parties of forty to fifty and bayonet them to the
last one," The paper says it cannot publish the details, "they are
too heart-rending."

Nothing could make the luckless refugees believe that the Powers had
really given them to the Serbs. They asked piteously when the Prince
was coming to drive the Serbs out. And still the Powers did nothing.
Some Bulgars among the refugees told that life under the Serbs was
impossible. The only time they had been free from persecution was
when the Serb army was busy fighting the Bulgar army.

It was feared the Serbs would descend on Elbasan, and I carried away
a whole mule-load of valuables to save them from being pillaged, and
rode with it across country without an escort or weapon. I learnt
from the refugees that twenty-six villages had been wholly or
partially burnt and pillaged by the Serbs. Few of the refugees had
any weapons. I reported all this in vain in Scutari. Not a Power
would move. The Serbs, grown impudent, then entered strictly
Albanian territory in defiance of the International forces, and
camped in Mirdita while the Montenegrins devastated the Gashi and
Krasnichi tribes.

At last the Commission for delimiting the northern frontier started.
The Russian, troubled doubtless by a guilty conscience, had feared
to start without a strong military escort, and lack of forage made
this impossible. Hence much delay. Our military attache from Rome
represented England, but it was reported that France and Russia were
out to grab all they could for the Serbs, regardless of the
nationality of the population, and were furious whenever he
protested, for, as England belonged to the Entente, they considered
it his duty to support them on every point, regardless of fact and
justice.

More attacks of the Serbs on the Albanians in the annexed lands
brought more misery. "October 21st.--Thousands of refugees arriving
from Djakovo and neighbourhood. Victims of Montenegro." My position
was indescribably painful, for I had no funds left, and women came
to me crying: "If you will not feed my child, throw it in the river.
I cannot see it starve."

I decided to return to England after three and a half years'
absence, to try and rouse help and action there.

And I said goodbye with sorrow to Scutari, beautiful and sorrowing,
which had been my most kind home for so long.

On arriving in London I packed up the Gold Medal given me by King
Nikola and returned it to him, stating that I had often expressed
surprise at persons who accepted decorations from Abdul Hamid, and
that now I knew that he and his subjects were even more cruel than
the Turk I would not keep his blood-stained medal any longer. I
communicated this to the English and Austrian Press. The order of
St. Sava given me by King Petar of Serbia, I decided to keep a
little longer till some peculiarly flagrant case should occur, and
this I expected soon.

So apparently did Austria, who, exasperated by the repeated outrages
of the Serbs, and aware of the activity of Hartwig at Belgrade,
realized she was marked down as Russia's next victim on the
proscribed list, and that the hour was arriving when she must kill
or be killed.

Austria's position was now perilous. Russia had come to an agreement
with Japan, and had her hands free for the Near East. Hartwig was
pre-eminent in Belgrade. Roumania had been roped in, and had dealt
the stab in the back to Bulgaria, which had assured the Serbo-Greek
victory. Bulgaria was "put in the corner." France, the financier of
the Near East, refused her a loan. Italy it is true, took Tripoli
with the consent of the Powers, and France, tied as she was to
Russia, could not object. But she viewed with great jealousy any
increase of Italian power on the Mediterranean, and began therefore
to build up Greece as a naval counterpoise.

When Bulgaria approached Paris for a loan, Greece protested: "Do
not finance our most hated rivals." France refused the loan.
Bulgaria turned to England, who looked very favourably on the plan,
recognizing Bulgaria's industry and capability. Those who are in a
position to know, state that almost the whole sum had been arranged
for when France heard of the transaction and requested that England,
as a member of the Entente, would not finance a loan that France had
thought fit to refuse. England drew back, and Bulgaria had to go to
Germany for the necessary money. Russia had no use for Bulgaria.
Therefore France had none. And England, or the section of it bitted
and bridled by The Times, went the way it was driven. Or, perhaps,
like a certain animal, was induced that way by dangled carrots. The
Times' supplements, full of praise of Tsardom, must have cost some
one a pretty penny. Meanwhile Russia was assuring the Serbs that the
Balkan war was but a first step, and that Bosnia and the Herzegovina
would soon be theirs. Ristitch, Serb Minister at Bucarest, states on
November 13, 1912: "The Ministers of France and Russia advise, as
friends of Serbia, that we should not 'go the limit' as regards the
question of an outlet on the Adriatic. ... It would be better that
Serbia . . . should strengthen herself and await with as great a
degree of preparation as possible the important events which must
soon make their appearance among the Great Powers."

December 27, 1912.--The Serb Minister in Petersburg telegraphs: "The
Minister for Foreign Affairs replied that in view of our successes
he had confidence in our strength, and believed we could give a
shock to Austria. For that reason we should feel satisfied with what
we were to receive and consider it as a temporary haltingplace.
. . . The future remained to us. . . . Bulgaria, meantime, would
bring her ethnic mission to a close." Small wonder that in May 1913
the Montenegrins boasted to me: "We, the Serb nation, are a danger
to Europe. We have all the Russian army with us, and shall take what
we choose." Small wonder, too, that Austria, realizing she must soon
fight for her very existence against a very strong combine,
approached Italy in September 1913 and asked what would be her
attitude in case of an Austrian war with Serbia. Italy, who was
already dabbling with the Entente, though nominally a member of the
Triple Alliance, replied: "Such a war would be a most dangerous
adventure." Austria knew then that Italy could not be reckoned on.

We now slide into 1914, and Yougourieff's date, for "our great war"
approaches. Russian preparations went on apace, and France, under
Russian pressure, extended her term of military service to three
years.



CHAPTER TWENTY.
1914

DURING the winter of 1913-14 I gathered funds for Albania, and the
American missionaries worked hard at feeding the refugees of
Gostivar and Dibra. General Phillips, in command at Scutari, did all
his funds would allow for the refugees there, but reported that the
Serbs' victims were dying of hunger in the Gashi mountains at the
rate of twenty a day. But the Mansion House refused to start a fund.
Mr. Willard Howard took cinema photographs of the starving people in
their burnt ruins, hoping to rouse public feeling against the Serbs
and stop their further war plans.

At the Foreign Office I begged protection for the Balkan Moslems,
who were being barbarously exterminated, and stated that until it
was seen that the Balkan conquerors were capable of just rule, the
Capitulations should remain in force. Those with whom I spoke
admitted that the consular reports from Uskub and Monastir were very
bad, but that it was not advisable to publish them. In truth, we
were hopelessly tied to Russia and could say nothing about her pet
lambs, even though the truth of the accusations had been proved up
to the hilt by the Carnegie Report. The laws signed by King Petar in
October 1913 for the purpose of crushing the annexed regions are
alone enough in their barbarity to condemn Serbia. They are
published in the Carnegie Report, which should be read by all
interested in forming a just and lasting Balkan peace.

It was also made clear by the Carnegie Commission that the
accusation that the atrocities were planned and carried out by the
Serb "Black Hand" society were true. Damian Popovitch, the leader of
the regicides, led the massacres of Kosovo. All was part of a
prearranged Great Serbian plan. "The Serbs," I overheard two
Montenegrins say in the inn at Rijeka, "are right. They put these
gentry (non-Serb population) to the sword as they go, and clean the
land." As the Black Hand was a "government within a government," and
unofficial, Belgrade could always pretend to be ignorant of its
doings. Both the Tsrna Ruka (Black Hand) and larodna Odbrana
(National Defence) societies had a free hand. The Carnegie Report
tells: "The population at Uskub called their station the Black
House, from the name of the League itself, The Black Hand. The worst
crimes were committed by this organization, known to all the world,
and under powerful protection. It was of distinct advantage to the
regular government to have under its hand an irresponsible power
like this, which soon became all powerful, and could be disowned if
necessary. . . . Our records are full of depositions which throw
light on the activities of these legalized brigands. Each town had
its captain. . . . Where complaints were made to the regular
authorities they pretended to know nothing, or, if the person were
obscure, punished him. If he were a personage, as for example the
Archbishop of Veles, the bands were sent from the town down to the
villages, only to be replaced immediately by bands from Uskub."

In February 1914 I received a letter from Monastir, from my former
dragoman of 1904. Since then he had worked for years for a
well-known Greek firm in India, and returned invalided home to
Monastir just before the first Balkan war broke out From him I had
heard of the first joy of the populace when the Turkish army fled
before the invading Serb, and then of the speedy revulsion of
feeling when they found that the Serb came not as a liberator, but
as a conqueror. In January 1914 he wrote: "Hardly a year has elapsed
since Monastir fell into Servian hands, and this very short period
has been enough to turn it into a desert city." And he detailed the
reasons.

In February, 1914, he wrote: "I write from Monastir, or I should
say Bitoli, for there is no city of the name of Monastir in the vast
Serbian Empire whose Emperor, Peter Karageorgevitch is daily wheting
(sic) his sword sharp in order to be able to inflict a death-blow on
the old Austrian Emperor. The conquest of Bosnia and Herzegovina and
the creation of a vast and powerful Serbian Empire, even mightier
than that of Dushan, is occupying the minds of all army men. . . .
Travelling from Salonika to Monastir one is struck with the fewness
of the passengers . . . where have all these people gone? The
average number does not exceed ten, against hundreds in Turkish
times. It is roughly estimated twenty thousand persons have
emigrated from Monastir. . . . Taxes are tremendous; this city must
pay a war tax of 1,000,000 francs. We see we have only exchanged a
bad rule for a worse rule. This amount will go to the War Office,
for in Serbia the army has twofold duties--to rule and to fight.
There is hardly any other country in the world where military men
have concentrated such a great power in their hands. The King and
the civil authorities, needs must comply with the wishes of the
officers. The Serbian officer has no respect for any one, and
Albanian subjects, natives of Elbasan and Koritza, are enlisted by
force in the army. And when Mr. ----- interfered on behalf of a man
from Koritza, saying that they compelled people to complain to the
foreign consuls, the recruiting officer replied: 'We shall imprison
every blessed man who steps over the threshold of a consulate. You
mean to say you will go to that big idiot the British consul. That
fool of a consul must think himself very lucky for England is a
friendly power, otherwise we would have killed him!'" He had, in
fact, reported their conduct, and they seem to have been aware of
this. The letter continues: "You cannot but pity us who are ruled by
such men. . . . The only thing they are interested in is to collect
taxes and to send gendarmes from house to house telling people that
if they do not send their children to Serbian schools they will be
punished. Of vino and beer they drink abundance. 'Bozhe, Bozhe, bez
vino ne se mozhe!' . . . Corruption in all branches of the
administration Is the essence of Serbian rule."

This picture, corroborating as it does the Carnegie Report of the
"government within a government," is the more valuable, as it is
evident that early in 1914 the writer had heard the plans for a
"death-blow to the Austrian Emperor" discussed. Possibly his death
and not that of his heir was first intended. The Serbs seem to have
been so sure of Entente support that even the adverse reports of a
consul had no terrors for them.

It was the last letter I had from the writer. He is dead, the bright
and honest boy who used to discuss endlessly to me the happy land
that Macedonia would be if once "freed from the Turk." From
Montenegro news was no better. I learnt of the boycott of the
Albanian population of Podgoritza--the people who, in fact, carried
on most of the trade of Montenegro, and heard: "As to the Moslems
there is a regular exodus of them from the 'liberated' country. Four
thousand have gone, four thousand five hundred are in process of
going, and two to three thousand more are to go as soon as
possible." The unfortunate tribes of Hoti and Gruda been handed over
to Montenegro and devastated.

It was reported that Prince Mirko was out of his mind, and Princess
Natalie had definitely left him and claimed the children
--Montenegro's only heirs.

Meanwhile the Powers could not longer delay the election of a Prince
for Albania.

The combined efforts of France and Russia had whittled down Albania
to nearly half her size, and had made a very cruel frontier, whereby
all the populations of a wide mountain tract were cut off from their
market town, Djakovo. The Dibra refugees were still camped in
Albania, and the Prince hoped for as a Messiah still did not come.
Prince Arthur of Connaught was the desire of the Albanians. "Give us
even your King's youngest son," they said, "and we shall be safe. No
one will dare attack us."

Essad now insisted on being a member of the provisional government.
All feared him. None wanted him. He started a government of his own
at Durazzo. In February the British and German Commissioners went
there. Sir Harry Lamb worked hard on Albania's behalf, and did all
he could to establish her safely. "The Albanians," he once said to
me, "are the only Balkan race which ever tells the truth." He and
the German tried to persuade Essad to resign, but he refused, and as
he had an armed force at his command, the Commission' thought it
risky to press him. He undertook to meet the Commission later at
Valona. Ismail Kemal asked the Commission to take over the
government till a Prince should arrive, and resigned. Essad then was
induced to resign by being promised he should be president of the
delegation which was to meet the newly-elected Prince, of Wied.
After months of squabbling the Powers in their united wisdom had
chosen this man. Why, it is hard to see. The feelings of the
Albanians were not considered. Even Sir Edward Grey said: "The
primary thing was to preserve agreement between the Powers
themselves." The infant state of Albania was to be flung to the
wolves to save its elders.

It was decided that Albania should be governed by a Prince elected
by the Powers; that it should enjoy perpetual neutrality under the
collective guarantee of the Powers, and that these six Powers should
be represented in Albania by an International Commission, with one
Albanian on it. Dutch officers were to train the gendarmerie. On
paper it looked well. But France raised Albania's worst enemy,
Krajevsky, from Vice-consul to International Commissioner. France
was represented thus by a Levantine Slav. Italy, too, selected a
Levantine, Aliotti, to carry out her schemes at Durazzo. Only
England and Germany were acting honestly.

Essad Pasha began to move soon. He demanded that the provisional
government should be removed to Durazzo, where it would be in his
power, and where he had two partners, the Montenegrin Gjurashkovitch
and the Greek bishop. The International Commission chose Valona as
its seat.

Meanwhile Scutari was ruled by the International force separately.
The Powers had thus given two international governments to Albania.
One with plenty of force and very limited jurisdiction, and the
other with wide jurisdiction and no force. And there was also the
little provisional Albanian government. The Prince was an officer
with a limited military mind, and without experience of the Near
East. His one qualification for the post was that he was "the nephew
of his aunt," Carmen Sylva of Roumania, and she pressed his
candidature. The true reason for his unanimous selection was
probably that the Powers who had planned Albania's destruction knew
him to be a man of little ability, and therefore the more easily to
be got rid of. France and Russia were combined to overthrow him,
even while agreeing to his election.

When Greece and Bulgaria were respectively liberated and put under a
foreign Prince, he was given in each case sufficient military force
to maintain order till a native army should be organized. In the
case of Albania it was arranged that he should be provided with no
armed force--otherwise he would be difficult to evict. The
International forces in Scutari were to squat there and look on.
Essad Pasha was the agent of the Italians, Serbs, and French, and
intrigued, so soon as the Prince was appointed, to obtain power over
him. He bargained to be one of those who went to invite the Prince
to Albania, and, accompanied by a party of Albanians, many of them
better men than himself, he went to Neu Wied. How he contrived to
worm himself into the Prince's confidence is a mystery. But he did,
and in a luckless moment for the Prince, induced him to make Durazzo
his capital. There he would be completely in the hands of Essad. He
was welcomed at Durazzo by rejoicing Albanians, who knew nothing of
the sinister plots of the Powers. But his fate was already sealed.
The tale of William of Wied is among the most sordid that the Powers
have woven.

Only an extremely able man could have forced his way through the
mesh of intrigue which surrounded him. Already, in February, he had
been warned in Austria to have no dealings with Essad. The "end soon
began."

A Prince having been appointed, the Powers notified the Greeks they
must evacuate South Albania within the limits drawn by the Frontier
Commission. Members of this Commission told of the amazing series of
tricks by which Greek agents had tried to hoodwink them. Wherever
the Greeks had a school they dragged out a cartload of little
children bidden to sing or shout in Greek. They tried to steer the
Commission away from places which knew no Greek, and in one place
actually shut up the women in a house for they could speak nothing
but Albanian. Greek soldiers, while pretending to tell people not to
make a noise, threatened them with punishment if they did not shout
for Greece. They even imported Greeks, and dumped them on the path
of the Commission. And ordered people, under threat of flogging, to
paint their houses blue and white--the Greek colours. But they
overacted the part so badly that in many cases they succeeded only
in disgusting the Commissioners. At Borova a number of school
children were sent to play in front of the house where the
Commission was, and ordered to speak Greek only. Signor Labia, the
Italian commissioner, threw out a handful of coppers. In their rush
to pick up the money the poor children forgot their orders, and
disputed aloud in their mother tongue--Albanian, to the amusement of
the Commission, which, disgusted by these tricks, drew a frontier
which gave the Albanians less than they had hoped for, but very much
more than the Greeks had intended. These hastened to make another
grab at the land, and sent Zographos, formerly Greek Minister for
Foreign Affairs, and a gang of Greek officials to South Albania to
claim it as Greek, and appoint themselves as the "Provisional
Government of Epirus." A Greek colonel was made War Minister to this
so-called government, and a Greek member of Parliament, Karapanos,
was its Minister for Foreign Affairs. An American called Duncan, who
had a Greek wife and went about dressed mainly in bath towels,
collected much money, incited the people to resist Wied, armed them,
and urged them to a fratricidal war. The Greek Government denied all
connection with this "provisional government," just as the Serb
Government has always denied responsibility for and knowledge of the
deeds of the Black Hand.

At the command of the Powers the Greek regular army was obliged to
evacuate the occupied districts. It departed from Koritza, but left
a so-called hospital of wounded "not fit to be moved," and joined it
to the Greek frontier by a telephone. Much of the army, however,
remained in out-of-the-way spots, removing and concealing their
insignia, so that the Greek Government might be able to deny that
they were soldiers.

Formally the Greeks handed over Koritza to the Dutch gendarmerie
officers under the International Control, on March 1, 1914. Had the
Powers meant honestly by Albania they would have sent a force to
clear the land of the lurking Greek bands of soldiery. But in spite
of several questions asked in the House of Commons, Cretan and Greek
komitadjis continued to land at Santa Quaranta, the Greek Government
persistently denying all knowledge. "There are none so blind as
those that won't see."

Such was the state of things when Prince zu Wied landed at Durazzo
on March 7th. Had he at once made a journey throughout his domain,
gone to Koritza via Berat and Elbasan, and claimed it as his, he
might have triumphed. But it was Essad's business, as agent of
Albania's enemies, to keep the Prince in Durazzo till the plans for
his eviction were matured.

The International Control Commissioners handed over their authority
to the Prince, and he, to the general dismay of the Albanians,
appointed Essad War Minister, thus putting the armaments into his
hands.

All this news seemed to me very bad. I was detained in London. My
book on the war, The Struggle for Scutari, was finished, but my
publisher was bent on keeping it for the autumn publishing season. I
stood out for immediate publication in May. He said: "You know
nothing about publishing." I said: "You do not know the state of the
Near East. Anything may happen by October."

I offered to risk having no payment at all for it. It came out in
May, and the thing that happened before October (Yougourieff's date)
was bigger than even the shouts of the Montenegrins in 1913 had led
me to expect.

Meanwhile the Greek "wounded" at Koritza telephoned for medical
comforts, and the Greek Bishop sprang his plot. The "medicine"
arrived in the form of armed bands and weapons. The Greek "wounded,"
the Bishop's servants, and a band of Grecophile students made an
attack within the town on the night of April 11th, and the bands of
lurking Greek soldiers attacked from without. Koritza was taken by
surprise, was not well armed, and had but fifty newly trained
gendarmes, commanded by the Dutch officers. Nevertheless the town
put up a gallant resistance. Reinforcements arrived, and the
Albanians "rushed" the house of the Bishop and carried him off a
prisoner to Elbasan, along with a number of Greek soldiers, who
readily gave their names and regiments, and told of the orders they
had received. They had long been kept in readiness on the frontier.
The Greek Government, as usual, declared the men must all be
deserters, over which it had no control, which, at best, was a poor
compliment to the Greek army, and did not explain how the
"deserters" became possessed of artillery and ammunition.

The Greeks, furious at being beaten out of Koritza, avenged
themselves on their retreat by committing outrages and burning
villages. The Albanians drove back the Greeks to Argyrokastro, and
would have chased them over the border had not the Greek General
Papoulias come to the aid of his compatriots with large
reinforcements and artillery. The Greek Government still "knew
nothing" about the actions of its officers.

It is to be hoped that a future League of Nations will be in
readiness to investigate at once similar occurrences, and that
"ignorance" on the part of a government shall not be accepted as
innocence without full inquiry. In this case the Albanians had no
tribunal before which to present their case. The invading Greeks
burnt and sacked numbers of villages, and destroyed the town of
Leskoviki, committing at the same time terrible atrocities.

The International Commissioners went to Corfu to meet the Greeks and
arrange peace. The Greeks were told to evacuate the district
delimited by the Frontier Commission, and certain privileges were
accorded to the very few Greeks it contained.

I learnt from Dr. Totirtoulis and others the following facts about
the so-called "Epirote" government of Zographos. The plan was made
in Paris, for, as Krajevsky had declaimed, France did not mean
Albania to exist. The Greeks brought some Greeks from America and
presented them to Cambon, and, it is believed, to Sir Edward Grey
also, saying that they were "Epirotes." The Greek society in Paris
was a strong one, and pushed them. Cambon, in November, advised them
to form an independent government, which was done, as we have shown.
Mr. Lamb (now Sir Harry) told me that at Corfu he told Zographos to
his face that most of his "Epirotes" were Cretans, and that the mere
fact that a Greek ex-minister of Foreign Affairs was running this
"independent government" and trying to dictate terms, was enough in
itself to "give the whole show away," but for the fact that certain
Powers were determined not to see.

The Albanians in the defence of their land had been much hampered by
shortage of ammunition, though quantities had been sent from
Durazzo. It never reached Koritza, for Essad, who was Minister of
War, diverted if for his own purposes. He was in league with the
Serbo-Greek combine, and did not mean the Albanians of the South to
win. He was hated by all the South for his conduct when commanding
gendarmerie in Janina, and also for betraying Scutari. He knew that
a victory for the South meant ruin for him.

A rumour rose soon that the ammunition had gone up to Essad's town,
Tirana, and that there was unrest at Shiak, a village on the road
leading there. Mr. Lamb and the German commissioner hastened to
Durazzo. The foul play over the munitions convinced the Nationalist
Albanians that Essad was brewing mischief. Unless he was preparing a
coup against the Prince, he could have no need of a private munition
store. Information was given to the Prince, who had him arrested by
the Dutch gendarmes and a band of Nationalists on the night of May
18th. A few shots were fired amid shouts of "Down with the
tyrant." He was arrested by the Dutch officer in command, and taken
first to the palace, and then to the Austrian battleship Szigetvar.
Essad was, as most folk knew, the agent of the combine against
Austria and Germany. Italy was ready to partition Albania between
the Greeks and Serbs, rather than let Austria gain power there. Now
she has realized that the Slav is her enemy, but then, in May 1914,
she was furious at Essad's arrest, and demanded his release. The
correct course was to try and, if guilty, execute him. But trial
would have meant conviction, and Italy would not hear of it. The
Italian and Austrian battleships cleared for action, though the
Powers had neutralized the Albanian coast. For twenty-four hours the
position was precarious, but Austria once more swallowed her pride
and yielded--this time to Italy. The Prince surrendered Essad to the
Italians on condition that he did not return to Albania. With
amazing effrontery the Italians took him to Rome and feted him in
such a way as to make it clear they were rewarding him for his
action.

Italy's conduct as a member of the Triple Alliance was in the
highest degree insulting to her allies, and can be explained only by
supposing that for the sake of the Adriatic she was ready to stab
them on the first opportunity.

It was soon plain that the report of a prepared rising was true.
Armed men were concentrating at Shiak on the road to Tirana.

The ignorant Moslem inhabitants had been told that the Prince meant
to abolish Islam and promote incestuous marriages, and bidden to
demand his immediate withdrawal. There were also the mass of
refugees from Dibra and Gostivar. They had passed the winter
wretchedly enough, and were told that if they would combine and
drive out Wied the Serbs would restore to them their lost lands. In
vain the American missionaries warned them not to believe this.
Dibra was their one hope and desire.

A party of armed men, led by one of the Dutch officers, went to
parley with the insurgents, and took a machine gun. Unluckily,
Captain Saar was ignorant of local customs. He and his party were
unduly nervous, for when an Albanian has given his "besa" (peace
oath) he keeps it. Alarmed unnecessarily, he ordered his men to fire
at a group of three armed men. One escaped, fled to Shiak, and
spread the alarm that the Prince had begun to massacre Moslems. A
number of people rushed to aid the Shiak men, and a fight took
place. How much foreign influence was behind it all it is hard to
say. That Italy was not unconcerned in it seems proved by the fact
that the Italian representative at Durazzo at once hurried to
convince the Prince that he was in imminent danger, and persuaded
him to go on board an Italian battleship. The Italians may have
believed that the plot, engineered by Essad, was sure of success.
Other members of the International Control persuaded the Prince to
return to land. But by his flight he had hopelessly compromised his
position.

That Italy was mixed in the affair appeared a little later. Red
signal lights were seen flashing to the insurgents from a house in
Durazzo by many persons, among them the British Vice-Consul.
Lieutenant Fabius, of the Dutch gendai'merie, entered the house and
caught an Italian officer, Colonel Muricchio, red-lamp-handed. Again
no trial was allowed. It was pleaded that the Capitulations had not
been abrogated! And the officer was released. We may blame Wied for
incompetency, but only a man of unusual force of character and
intimate knowledge of the land could have made headway against the
Powers combined against him.

All this I learnt from members of the International Control, from
the Dutch officers, from the Albanians, from the American
Missionaries, and from some private individuals.

That the rising was planned and the ammunition embezzled by Essad
and his gang hardly admits of doubt.

On June 8, 1914, I reached Trieste. Here our vice-consul, M.
Salvari, himself an Albanian, was very anxious about the situation.
I had intended going to Scutari, but he begged me to go to Durazzo,
where I arrived on June 11th. On board the boat I met Mr John
Corbett, who had lately been in South Albania, and said it was
nonsense of the Greeks to pretend no Greek troops had remained there
as he had seen parties of them in many places, and had seen money
being collected in Corfu to aid Zographos's enterprise. Durazzo was
crammed with people of all races. Fighting had ceased, but a large
force of armed men was some miles outside the town and negotiations
were going on. Dr. Dillon, the well-known correspondent, was there,
and his strong Russian proclivities caused much anxiety, more
especially as he and his young wife had been staying with Essad
shortly before his arrest. The Russian agents were suspected of
taking active part in the anti-Wied intrigues, and the correspondent
of the Birzhevije Viedomosti was in Durazzo and on friendly terms
with Dr. Dillon. The Russian, Olghinsky, I had met in Andrijevitza
in 1912, when the Montenegrins were making ready for the Balkan war.
He then complained to me freely of the apathy of the Russians, and
said he and his paper were doing all they could to rouse the country
to war. His paper (Birzhevije Viedomosti) had already, in March
1914, blown the war trumpet loudly:

"Until now the Russian plan of military operations had a defensive
character; to-day it is known that the Russian army will, on the
other hand, play an active part. . . . Our artillery possesses guns
which are in no respect inferior to foreign models. Our coast and
fortification guns are even superior to those of other states. Our
artillery will no longer have to complain of want of ammunition. The
teachings of the past have fallen on fruitful soil. Military
automobile service has reached a high degree of perfection . . . all
our military units have telephonic appliances."

More details are given, and the writer says: "It is important that
Russian public opinion be conscious that the country is prepared for
all possibilities." Yougourieff had given October as the date when
"we should be ready for our great war." The Birzhevije Viedomosti
said all was ready in March. To find Dr. Dillon, an avowed partisan
of Russia, in company with a correspondent of Birzhevije Viedomosti,
supporting Essad in Durazzo, was a sinister omen. He protested
Essad's innocence to me, but had no proof to offer save that Essad
was in bed when arrested, and that no documentary evidence was
found. The first proved only that the rising was not timed for that
night. The second was valueless in a land where few could write and
messages go from mouth to mouth. Subsequent events have proved that
Essad, as we suspected, was a Serb agent.

During the following days very bad news came from the South.
Eye-witnesses gave evidence of the Greeks' atrocities. It was
generally believed that as Italy was determined to keep the Greek
islands, she was conniving at the Greeks finding compensation at
Albania's expense.

At the house of Dom Nikola Kaciorri, a plucky little Catholic
priest, I found an Orthodox Albanian priest from Meljani, near
Leskoviki, who told how the Greeks had burnt his village and ordered
all those who belonged to the Orthodox Church to come along with
them, using force to make them, and falling on those who refused.
They had driven a number along before them, including his wife and
children, whom he could not rescue. He told how the Greeks had given
the inhabitants of Odrichan permission to return to it, and had then
fallen on them and slaughtered them. Mr. Lamb ascertained that this
man's wife and children were alive, but the Greeks refused to give
them up.

Almost as soon as I arrived I was invited to have an audience with
the Princess of Wied. She was very friendly, and much distressed by
the web of intrigue in which she found herself tied. I regretted
that she and the Prince had fallen into the wrong hands, and begged
her to go to Valona or Scutari, and at once start a tour through the
land. I offered to go with her, and assured her safe conduct, saying
all misunderstanding would have been avoided had she and the Prince
made such a journey on arrival. She said she had wished to, but that
Essad always advised against it. I spoke to her of the
Russo-Serbo-French-Italian combine, and said the Albanians wanted
none of it, and that she could yet have the whole country on her
side But she continually quoted the advice of. Carmen Sylva, Queen
of Roumania, till I had to say: "Yes, ma'am. But Albania is not
Roumania. Here you will do much better by appealing direct to the
people." I left promising to support her to the best of my ability.
She struck me as honest, intelligent, and very well-meaning. She
would have made a good Queen for the country had she been given a
chance, and might have done as much for it as did Carmen Sylva for
Roumania.

That same day Mr. Lamb told me that the inhabitants of three Moslem
villages, Nenati, Mercati, and Konispoli, recently burnt by the
Greeks, had sent to beg help, and asked me if I would go and
investigate.

That night, June 12th, came a fresh development. The Dutch
gendarmerie arrested Gjurashkovitch, the Montenegrin, who had still
been allowed to function as Mayor of the town, to which he had been
appointed in Turkish times. Again Albania's enemies stood up for
him. His brother was dragoman to the Russian commissioner; Russia
claimed him as under her protection, and raised the old cry of
"Capitulations." He, too, was released. The thing was becoming a
farce. The Prince was unable to try any suspect. The Italian papers
raised choruses of blame against the Dutch gendarmerie, which at
that time was very honestly trying to do its duty. The Prince, who
was like a large, good-natured St. Bernard dog, yapped and snapped
at all round, completely confused by the din, yielded each time, and
so soon alienated the sympathy of the Dutch officers, who, as more
than one of them complained to me, got into trouble on his behalf
and then received no support.

News arrived that Osman Bali, one of the two men reported to have
assassinated Hussein Riza in Scutari, had been seen among the
insurgents, and was probably this time also acting for Essad. The
Italians put in a demand that Lieutenant Fabius, who had arrested
the Italian Colonel Muricchio, should apologize. This Fabius very
properly refused to do, and many of us supported him. I had known
him during the Balkan war, and found him a very honest boy. Italy
then demanded his dismissal. But this time the Prince stood firm.

Fachinetti, the Italian correspondent, whom I had known well during
the war of 1912-13, was also in Durazzo. In the Balkan war he had
warmly taken the part of the Albanians, and had worked with me. Now
he knew I should not approve his doings, and he kept out of my way,
dodging whenever he saw me coming. Crajevsky, too, was not pleased
to see me. He was now more pro-Slav even than the Russians, and as
he had been more Turk than the Turks only two years before, he must
have known that his volte face was, to me, rather comical. And he is
the kind of man that does not like being thought funny.

Colonel Thompson, who was commanding the Dutch gendarmes, met me and
told me that he was going to =give an ultimatum to the insurgents in
the next few days, and asked me to call at eleven next morning and
talk the matter over with him. I never did. That night things seemed
shaky. I overheard Fachinetti, whose room was next mine, tell the
landlord to knock him up if anything happened. So I did very little
undressing, thinking he was probably behind some plot. I put my
boots handy, and laid down as I was, for a bit of sleep, and jumped
up to the sound of rifle fire as the landlord banged on Fachinetti's
door. Sharp firing sounded close. I dashed out so soon as I could
lace my boots, and went down to the entrance of the town where
Fabius was in great haste serving out ammunition from the depot
there. He begged me not to go out towards the scene of the fight, as
he suspected the Italians, and wanted to give an order that no
foreigner should leave the town. Up rushed the Italians, greatly
excited, and were headed back by Fabius. I told them I, too, was
forbidden to go, and we sent them back. We got the artillery
ammunition on donkeys and sent it up the hill. Dutch and Austrian
officers were to serve the guns. A wounded Albanian, crying feebly
"Rrnoft Mbreti" (Long live the King), was carried by on a stretcher,
and one of the bearers whispered to Fabius: "Thompson is hit. I fear
he is dead." To lose the commander in the first hour of the fight
was a terrible blow. Fabius begged me to tell no one. Later, Arthur
Moore, The Times correspondent, came and told how poor Thompson had
been struck down and died almost immediately in his arms in a hut by
the wayside.

Too many battle books have been written of late, so I will not
describe the fighting In the afternoon. I was under cover behind a
bank on the top of the hill with Mr. Corbett when the Prince came up
on horseback with a small suite. He dismounted and climbed the bank,
a tall, lean man, worn and anxious, with a yellow-white face as from
a touch of fever. We called to him he had better take cover as the
bullets came over pretty often. He looked dazed and stupefied. I
said: "A bullet has just cut down that plant, Sir!" pointing to one
close by. He roused himself, mounted, and rode away. Our side soon
got the upper hand, and all danger of the town being rushed seemed
over.

Meanwhile, within the town, the Italians did all they could to
create a panic. They built rubbishy barricades, and annoyed me by
making one across the street near the hotel door. I pulled it down
so as to be able to get in and out easily. The officer was very
angry. I explained that the town was not his to barricade, and if it
were it was no good to build a barricade there, as men behind it
could only fire into the house opposite. Which made him the more
angry, because it was true, and the thing a mere dummy to scare
people. So sure were the Italians that they were 'going to get the
town taken this time that the correspondents wrote gory accounts of
its capture and the slaughter of the inhabitants, and sent them to
Italy, where they were published. I do not now believe in Italian
correspondents every time.

The Russians were as bad as the Italians. They, too, hoped for the
fall of the town.

The Russian secretary was a typical ultra-neurotic Slav. Could not
exist, he told me, without operas, ballets, and "stir tout des
Emotions." Was horribly vexed that the Albanian Nationalist party
proved so strong, and that Albania had not yet been overthrown. In
order to keep himself alive meanwhile in this miserable hole he
tried to get people to play bridge with him for as high stakes as
possible. And this did not suffice him. He told me that having run
through all the sensations of life he thought of committing suicide.

"Why don't you, then, Monsieur?" I asked enthusiastically. "No one
will regret you. Suicide yourself, I beg you, quickly!" Which so
infuriated him that I dare say he is alive still. It roused him to
an attack on the English, who, he said, were ruining civilization by
the way they treated the Jews. I retorted by hoping that the
terrible accounts we had had of Jewish pogroms were exaggerated.
"Exaggerated!" cried he. "You may believe everything you have heard.
Nothing is bad enough or too bad for those brutes."

"You have no right," said I, "to speak so of any human beings."

"Human beings!" cried he. "What you English must learn is that they
are not human beings. They are bugs, and must be cr-r-rushed."

This is a mere detail. But what sort of peace can be expected when
men such as this are in the diplomatic service helping to pull the
strings?

At night the heat was terrible. The motionless air was shrill with
mosquitoes from the fever swamps. The Italian forces were camped
just under my window and he stench of unwashed men and sweaty
uniforms penetrated the miserable garret I slept in with suffocating
acridity. I lay awake for hours thinking of the fate of thousands of
human beings dependent on such men as Petar Karageorgevitch, with
his blood-stained hands; his hoary father-in-law, Nikola, weaving
spider webs; the decadent Russian, fanatical and cruel; the
Levantine Slav, agent of France; the Italians like a pack in full
cry with the victim in sight; the Greek Varatassi mainly playing
bridge, but plotting behind the scenes with the Greek bishop, and
probably with Essad too. All bent on war, and meaning to have it in
some form.

Only Mr. Lamb and the German commissioner were playing straight. On
16th H.M.S. Defence and Admiral Troubridge arrived. Fighting went
on, on and off, for the next few days. The Russian correspondent
chuckled indecently over the Albanian wounded. On the 20th a
deputation of townsfolk went to try and make terms with the
insurgents. From the messages they brought it was clear that the
luckless Albanians without the town were being used as cat's paw by
more than one Power. A truce was called, and the insurgents asked to
give up their arms and leaders. They replied they would yield their
arms, but not their leaders. Who the leaders were remained a
mystery.

While the armistice lasted at Durazzo the insurgents began to march
to other places. No other town was armed. The people in vain asked
what it was all about, and what the Powers wanted them to do. The
Russian Vice-consul at Valona sent messages about to say that the
Powers would be very angry if they fought on the side of Wied, The
Albanians did not want to fight each other. Towns at once
surrendered to the insurgents. The police changed their badges and
business went on as usual. The populace did not want civil war, and
continued to believe that the Powers would keep their promises. News
then came that the Greeks were massing on the frontier ready to
again fall on Koritza.

The insurgents now sent a message into Durazzo that they wanted to
parley with an Englishman. They believed in England. General
Phillips came from Scutari and went to meet them. He reported that
the leaders were certainly not Albanians, and that they had refused
to give their names. One was a Greek priest.

The game of the Greeks, then, was to incite the Moslems to ask for a
Moslem ruler. With this in view they blackened Wied as an
"anti-Moslem," hoping thus to split Albania and more easily destroy
it.

One of the chief spokesmen said to General Phillips: "In England
there is a Liberal Government. Many of you do not like it, but you
must accept it because it is the will of the majority. We are the
majority here, and we will have a Moslem Prince." This man the
General "believed to be a Young Turk leader disguised." He asked why
they objected to Wied, and they replied: "Because he is against our
religion!" which was entirely untrue. And they added that they could
easily take Durazzo because they knew that the international
battleships off the coast had orders not to fire. In the end General
Phillips made a strong appeal to them to cease this foolish warfare
and accept Wied as the choice of Europe.

The Albanian crowd, he reported, appeared to agree and to be anxious
to come to terms. But the five foreign leaders stuck out. And the
ignorant crowd which believed that by following these leaders they
would regain Dibra and other districts finally refused to come to
terms.

Mr. Lamb also made a vain attempt to obtain the names of these
leaders, and they obstinately refused to come into Durazzo to
discuss terms with the Commissioners and the Prince. Nor would they
permit any delegates to come. The Mirdite and Maltsor reinforcements
who arrived were all reluctant to fight. "We are not in blood with
these people," they said, "Why should we fight them?" We had a
number of the enemy wounded in our hospitals along with our own men.
They were most grateful for the care bestowed upon "them, and bore
no ill-will at all. It was sadly true that these poor people were
being killed and wounded, offered as human sacrifices at the altar
of the rival ambitions of the Entente and the Central Powers.

The Breslau, since notorious, and a Russian warship now arrived.
There were many Germans, both military and civilian, in the town,
and the Germans and English worked together in the hospital. The
surgeon, from the Russian warship, claimed the right to work in the
English hospital as a member of the Entente. But as he proposed to
give an anaesthetic to a man whose arm we had promised not to
amputate, and then to take it off, we got rid of him in spite of his
protests that a promise to "an animal like that" did not count.

I took my meals very often with the Germans, and we discussed often
the danger caused to Europe by the Anglo-Russian Alliance. I said
that though I believed Russia was heading for war I was sure we
should not support her, and we drank to a speedy Anglo-German
alliance. They were disgusted with Wied's folly, and said the Kaiser
had been reluctant to appoint him, but had been over-persuaded by
Carmen Sylva. They took me on board the Breslau, where I was
received with great cordiality, and the captain, who took me on to
the bridge, said his ship for her size was one of the fastest.

On Sunday, June 28th, I was having tea with Mr. and Mrs. Lamb, when
we saw Admiral Troubridge climbing the hill towards us. He came into
the house very hot, and said almost at once: "I have come to tell
you our wireless has picked up a bit of a message. The Archduke
Franz Ferdinand has been murdered at Serajevo. Just that!"

My first idea was: "They have done what they said they would last
year. They have begun in Bosnia."

I said to Mr. Lamb: "This means war, doesn't it?"

He replied: "Not necessarily." And seemed surprised. His manner
reassured me. But unless very strong pressure were brought to bear,
I could not see how war between the Slavs and Austria could be
avoided, for "we the Russian army with us" was part of the
programme.

No official confirmation of the news came till next day.

That the Serbo-Greek combine expected to have more than the Russian
army to support it seemed shown by a remarkable letter the insurgent
leaders wrote to Berat, advising the town to surrender, because "we
are supported by the Triple Entente." Berat, however, refused to
surrender.

The insurgents sent a message to Durazzo that they were willing to
be ruled by the International Commissioners if Wied were dismissed.

Terrible rumours came as to what was happening at Koritza. A force
of Albanians went to its defence, led by Dutch officers. Greeks were
pouring in over the border. At the same time it was said that Essad
was returning to Tirana via Serbia, and meant to proclaim himself as
Prince. No one wanted him.

On July 11th came a telegram from Berat. "With heart full of grief I
send the bad news that Koritza, after two days' fight, has fallen
into the hands of the enemy. More than fifty thousand people are
coming away. Take measures for these unfortunates. The Greek army is
spreading on all sides, killing, and burning, and turning into ashes
every Albanian place it enters."

The Albanians were aghast. The Nationalists had all trusted Wied and
the Powers. Without artillery and short of ammunition, with no
trained army and no officers save the Dutchmen, they had done their
best. The "insurrection" had been engineered by Albania's enemies
for the express purpose, among others, of giving a door by which the
Greeks could enter. Not until the Greeks began the wholesale
destruction of Moslems and their villages, accompanied by every kind
of atrocity, did the luckless Moslems of Tirana realize how they had
been tricked.

On July 13th I went at Mr. Lamb's request to Valona to examine into
the number and condition of the refugees. I have no space to
describe the horrors of the next few weeks. The Dutch officers, who
had flung away their uniforms and bolted down to Valona in civilian
dress before the Greek onrush, gave terrible accounts of the mass of
struggling refugees in their flight across the mountains; the dead
and dying children en route; the aged falling by the wayside; the
jam of desperate creatures in a pass; the hideous cruelties of the
advancing Greeks. It had been impossible, said the Dutch officers,
to hold Koritza with irregular troops against an army with
artillery. The Greeks burned as they advanced, and burnt Tepelcni
and all the villages near it.

The refugees crawled into Valona in the last stages of exhaustion,
thousands and thousands of them, and lay about under the trees in
all the surrounding country. Food and shelter there was none. The
heat was overwhelming. I look back on it as a nightmare of agony. In
a century of repentance the Greeks cannot expiate the abominable
crime of those weeks.

Mr. Lamb telegraphed to appoint me as English representative on an
international relief committee, which consisted of the Italian and
Austrian Consuls, the Russian Vice-Consul, and some of the Albanian
headmen.