Volume 1 — V

THE EUROPEAN WAR

How the Austrians waged war—The Serbian Princes—The tactics of the Montenegrin King—The Magyars and their prisoners—The Southern Slavs in Austria-Hungary—How the War raged in the winter of 1914-1915—The Treaty of London, April 1915—How Bulgaria came into the War—Attempt to buy off the Serbs—Greek transactions—Flight of the Serbs—The faithful Croats—How the Serbs came to their Patriarch's town—The shadow over Montenegro—The broken Serbs at Corfu—The Southern Slavs in the United States—Cash and the Montenegrin Royal family—-The burden of Austria's Southern Slav troops—The faithful Italians—Southern Slavs in the Austrian navy—Advance of the Allies in Macedonia—How the Magyars treated their Serbian subjects—The Southern Slavs pay part of their debt to the Habsburg Monarchy: (a) in Syrmia; (b) in Slovenia.

HOW THE AUSTRIANS WAGED WAR

"Machen Sie Ordnung!" ["Put matters in order"] was the phrase used by Austrian officers in Serbia when they wished a non-commissioned officer to see that such and such Serbian civilians should be hanged or shot. Occasionally an accident occurred, as when a priest near Višegrad came to an officer with the request that his plum trees should be spared, since he had nothing else. This officer intended to be kind and, not knowing or forgetting the sense in which those three words were being used, he said to a sergeant, "Machen Sie Ordnung!" and the next morning a prominent citizen of Split, Count Pavlović, whose post in the Austro-Hungarian army was that of a provost-marshal, saw the priest, his wife and his three little boys hanging from the plum trees. It was and is the fashion to assert that the Austrian army was incomparably less brutal than the Prussian, so that some readers will be disinclined to believe a conversation which Count Pavlović, particularly as he is a Yugoslav, once had at Donja Tusla in Bosnia with a certain Captain Waldstein, who between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. had sentenced nineteen people to be hanged. These people, by the way, were all over twenty years of age, so that each case had to be tried; persons under that age could, as we have seen, also be hanged, but not as the result of a trial. Pavlović approached the captain—his rank, to be accurate, was captain-auditor—and asked him how he had lunched after such a morning's work. "I felt," was the reply, "as if I had drunk nineteen glasses of beer." An Austrian army surgeon, Dr. Wallisch, who during the occupation travelled professionally in Serbia and wrote a good deal about it in Viennese papers and Austrian papers in Belgrade, said that "everywhere in this Balkan and patriarchal environment you see educational mansions and spacious barracks.[80] Does not this, better than anything else, show the criminal, premeditated hostility of the Serbs against our Monarchy? They have the longing to learn, which devours the ambitious, and likewise the wish to realise by force of arms this fantastic ideal of an over-excited national sentiment." Yes indeed, this was the ideal of King Peter, in accordance with the device of the poet, Aksentie Teodosijević: "Towards liberty, in the first place through learning and culture, then with arms." Very few people would be inclined to believe that the invading Austrians could be so petty as to burn all the schoolbooks they came across, and still fewer would credit the fact that Yugoslav patients with gold-filled teeth ran any special risk in Austrian army hospitals. Ivo Stanišić of the Bocche di Cattaro had fought with the Montenegrins and, in consequence of Nikita's capitulation, had fallen into the Austrians' hands. He was warned by his friends not to go into hospital, where his twelve gold teeth, which he had acquired in the United States, might prove his undoing. He did, as a matter of fact, die there, and the overdose of morphia—witnessed by the well-known architect, Matejorski of Prague—may have been accidental, and the Austrians who took his teeth out may have thought it foolish to leave so much gold in a corpse. Another Bocchesi who underwent the same treatment was one Risto Liješević. Perhaps the Austrians do not deny these incidents, and considering the trouble which they gave themselves to have a long series of open-air brutalities officially photographed and made the subject of picture postcards, one presumes that the dental operations were omitted on account of the bother of indoor photography. The postcards, of which I have a large collection, place on record the procedure used in the wholesale hanging and shooting of Bosnian and Serbian civilians, young and old, men and women. More trouble was taken over the photographs, which are sometimes minute and sometimes artistic in depicting a row of gallows on an eminence with gloomy clouds behind them, than was taken with the manufacture of these gallows, for in many cases they were no more than a seven-foot stake, to the top of which the victim's throat was firmly fastened, holding his or her feet a short distance from the ground. We have in the London Press and in the House of Lords a number of reactionary persons who do not cease regretting the disappearance of Austria-Hungary. The new States, such as Yugoslavia and Czecho-Slovakia, they argue, are very unsatisfactory, if only for the reason that they substitute a lower civilization for a higher. Austrian culture, in their opinion, is so different from that of the new States that you cannot compare them. And when they talk of the Habsburg dynasty it is after the fashion of old Francis Joseph who, in 1891, when the four hundredth anniversary of the great Czech teacher Comenius was being officially celebrated in all the schools of Prussia, commanded that nothing of the sort was to be done in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, because his attention had been drawn by Archbishop Schwarzenberg of Prague to a Latin letter in which the great man uttered some sharp words concerning the dynasty. One is prepared to overlook a great many things which happened in the stress of war, but the postcards which portray fashionably dressed women and girls strolling between the gallows as if at a garden party and merely using their parasols against the sun, do not appear to leave any attributes for a civilization lower than that which they exhibit. The Bosniaks and Serbs who were thus done away with were frequently even less to blame than those ignorant peasants who, being told by their priests that Peter was their King, shouted "Long live King Peter!" as the Austrian troops marched through their villages, and were forthwith hanged for high treason. "Whenever," says Euripides, "I see the wicked fall into adversity I declare that the gods do exist." At Trnovo twenty-eight were executed, including two women and at Palé, near Sarajevo, twenty-six, the Austrians killing all the old folk and the children who remained when the Montenegrin and Serbian armies retreated. Those who were not murdered on the spot had a period of imprisonment during which they were fed on white bread; but all that they were asked, prior to their execution, was their name, their father's name and their domicile. Thousands were interned—at Doboj between twenty and thirty died every day of illness or of famine. The fate of the abandoned children in Bosnia was such that when Dr. Bilinski, the Governor (afterwards Minister of Finance in Poland) was told of it he had the decency to weep. His informant was Madame Ćuk of Zagreb, so well known to British travellers; this lady was at the head of an organization which removed as many children as possible from Bosnia to other parts of the Dual Monarchy. The diet of grass, cow's dung and a kind of bread, chiefly composed of clay and wood-shavings and the bark of trees, gave to nearly all the children a protruding stomach; they were so weak that they would fall out of the luggage-racks of the railway carriages, and with 500-600 children in three waggons it was necessary to deposit some of them in the racks. At a place called Sunia it was the ladies' custom to have cauldrons of maize and water, as well as bacon, waiting for the travellers, but very often this food brought on a colic, so unaccustomed were the children to fats.[81] If the Austrians intended to put their Bosnian house in order by finishing off the population—"Machen Sie Ordnung"—they made considerable progress. They had hoped, before the War began, to send a punitive expedition into Serbia that would finish off that insolent, small country. Delirious was the enthusiasm of the Viennese at the declaration of War. Fate was giving them the whitest of bread before their execution.

The Austrian statesmen did not embark on the War without taking certain precautions. Count Berchtold, on July 28, submitted for the old Emperor's signature the war declaration, which explicitly stated that the Government was forced to protect its rights and interests by recourse to arms, the more so as the Serbian troops had already attacked the Imperial and Royal soldiers at Temes-Kubin on the Danube. After the Emperor had signed the declaration of war in this form, Count Berchtold struck out the reference to a fight at Temes-Kubin, and sent a letter to Francis Joseph explaining that he had taken it on himself to eliminate this sentence as the reports had not been confirmed. "It is clear," said the Arbeiter-Zeitung,[82] commenting on the Austrian Red-book which revealed this affair, "it is clear that the fight at Temes-Kubin never occurred, but was simply invented by Count Berchtold. That arch-scoundrel not only deceived the people, but also the Emperor. The destiny of the world depended upon whether an eighty-four-year-old man permitted himself to be deceived. For such a crime Berchtold must certainly be sent to prison, or, more justly, to the gallows."

If the punitive expedition into Serbia had been less disastrous, it would perhaps have been accompanied with less barbarity—though the Austrian army was handicapped, owing to the large number of aristocratic, and presumably more gentle, officers who found themselves unable to leave the War Office and similar institutions in Vienna. Yet the Austrians seem to have determined how to act before they came. A special branch of the army occupied itself with the stealing, packing and dispatching of cameras, engravings, ladies' garments, etc. etc.—numerous lists were accidentally left behind in Belgrade, and every sheet at the top left-hand corner was stamped with the words "Sammlungs-Offizier" (i.e. Collection-officer). I do not know what knowledge and what skill are necessary before this rubber stamp is conferred upon a man. Did the Imperial and Royal authorities regard him as a non-combatant? The "Sammlungs-Offizier" might resent such a classification if in private life he had been a courageous burglar. And the Imperial and Royal army, according to certain "Instructions for the conduct of troops" which were found on a wounded officer of the 9th Army Corps, had resolved—irrespective of success or failure in the War—to massacre the Serbs without compunction: "Any person encountered in the open, and especially in a forest, must be regarded as a member of a 'band' that has concealed its weapons somewhere, which weapons we have not the time to look for. These people are to be executed if they appear even slightly suspicious"; and another paragraph says that "I will not allow persons armed, but wearing no uniform, whether encountered singly or in groups, to be taken prisoners. They must be executed without exception." The Austrians knew very well that the Serbs had not received their new uniforms, and that at least one-third of their army was obliged to take the field in ordinary peasant's dress.[83] The fact that the Austrian invasion of north-western Serbia came to such an ignominious end before September is no reason why so large a number of women, children and old men were, as is very well authenticated, cut to pieces, burned alive, despoiled of their eyes, their noses, disembowelled, and so forth. One expects a certain amount of licence from the baser elements of an invading army; but in Serbia—perhaps because this was a punitive expedition—it seems to have been the Imperial and Royal officers who egged on their men.... I have tried, from the Austrian records, to ascertain whether any comparable outrages can be laid at the door of the Serbs. And there is one incident which utterly disgraces some of their Montenegrin brothers: the men of Foča in Herzegovina joined the Montenegrin army when it penetrated to the neighbourhood of Sarajevo. When it was thrown back the Foča comrades—Yugoslavs, of course, and guilty of high treason against Austria—accompanied them to Montenegro; and later on some Montenegrin officers denounced the people of Foča to the Austrians, with the result that fourteen of them were hanged.

On August 24, 1914, after twelve terrible days, the Austrians were dislodged from Šabac and flung across to the northern bank of the Save. More useful to the Serbs than their 6000 prisoners were the 50 cannons and over 30,000 rifles, for the Serbian troops had entered the War with such scanty equipment that many of the regiments with an effective strength of over 4000 men possessed only 2500 rifles. The armed soldiers went into action, while the unarmed waited in reserve, springing forward as their comrades fell, and taking up the weapons of the fallen to continue the fight. Here occurred an incident of which the hero was a boy. He had run away to the army and, to his vast delight, been made a standard-bearer. When an officer perceived that he was continuously exposing himself he told him to hide. "No one will see you," said the officer. "But," answered the boy, "the flag will see." And he was killed. Many of the dead or wounded Austrians were Southern Slavs who had not been able to surrender to their brothers; they were often found with all their cartridges intact, and with their rifles made incapable of shooting.

THE SERBIAN PRINCES

One of the first results of this victory was the invasion, by Serb and Montenegrin troops, of Bosnia. They succeeded in penetrating to within a few miles of Sarajevo, and there they were held up not only by the encircling forts but by the scarcity of their ammunition, for the Russian supplies had not yet come through. "Your Royal Highness," said a corporal one day to Prince George, the impetuous young man who had resigned his position as heir to the throne and was at this moment far more congenially occupied as the chief of an irregular band in the mountains, "we have no more ammunition," said the corporal. "Each man has a knife?" asked George. The corporal nodded. "Then let us go on." The Prince has a great wound across his breast, from one side to the other. He is very much the descendant of Kara George; he dislikes making a secret of his opinions. King Peter, who was present at the inauguration of the Belgrade synagogue, always refrained from entering the Roman Catholic Church, since it was included in the buildings of the Austrian Legation. His elder son was not averse, when relations were strained, from taking an enthusiastic part in anti-Austrian demonstrations, so that the Austrians were delighted to spread a report that this ebullient youth had killed his orderly and must be set aside from the succession. The truth was that George happened to catch this orderly reading a private letter of his; in a sudden fit of rage he struck him a blow, even as Kara George would have done—unluckily the man rolled down some steps and from the resulting injuries he died. A good many Austrian and German writers have said that George is mad; he is certainly less fitted to govern Yugoslavia than is Alexander, his brother. One remembers George, so dark and lean and hawk-eyed, traversing the broad Danube at Belgrade in a most original fashion; as the blocks of ice swept along he made his horse leap from one of them to another. And one thinks of that more patient prince, Alexander, poring for hours over papers of State, gazing up a little wearily through his glasses, wondering for month after month whether the crisis between Government and Opposition in Yugoslavia will ever be solved. George will seek relaxation in driving a motor-car as if the Serbian roads were a racing track; Alexander's relaxation is to hear a new musical play, then to go home and repeat the whole score by heart on his piano.

All through the War Alexander, the Prince Regent—for King Peter felt himself, on account of his age and his rheumatism, unequal to anything save the personal encouragement of his soldiers in the trenches[84]—throughout the War Alexander was with his army. In his eloquent proclamations one sees the student; on the battlefield he conquered his shyness. And now he is a truly democratic King, at whose table very often is some non-commissioned officer or private whose acquaintance he has made in the War. He asked the man to come and see him one day in Belgrade, so that the royal adjutants are always busy with this stream of warriors. The men are well aware that their own peasant costume, with the sandals, is admissible at Court—even at a ball you see some fine old peasant, who is perhaps a deputy (and who does not, like a certain Polish Minister of recent years, remove his white collar before entering the Chamber). You can see him in his thick brown homespun with black braiding, breeches very baggy at the seat and closely fitting round the legs; as he comes in he knocks the snow from off his sandals, and strides, perfectly at ease, across the Turkish carpets. With such a man the King loves greatly to go hunting; last winter in the Rudnik region the inhabitants were being plagued by wolves, so the King went down there with some officers and peasants. Though he is so short-sighted that he constantly wears glasses—if you met him casually you would suppose that this keen-faced young officer was probably a writer of military books—though he is short-sighted he is one of the best shots in Europe. On the Slovenian mountains he has brought down many chamois and, before he succeeded, at a summer resort in Serbia he was always first at target practice. Nor is he less skilled at cards, particularly bridge. He gathers round him the best players in the town. Such are his relaxations after the long round of audiences and hours of other work. During the day he will have very likely undertaken to pay the expenses from his own pocket of another Serbian student, at home or abroad. So many of them are his pensioners. And it may be said without flattery that in the pursuit of knowledge he affords them an example. His subjects number about 14 millions, but when in conversation I happened to allude to a remote border village, his subsequent remarks made me wonder whether he had just been reading an article about the chequered history of that little place. He is, in fact, like his late grandfather of Montenegro, the father of his people. But they have different ideas about the duties of a father; and while Nikita's laugh was pretty grim, the deep whole-hearted laugh of Alexander takes you into the sincere recesses of the man.

During the Bosnian offensive there was launched an expedition over the Save into the goodly land of Syrmia, one of those Yugoslav provinces of which the Austro-Hungarian Empire was to be stripped. This expedition had a varying success, for the assault that was attempted in the neighbourhood of Mitrovica was not skilfully conducted; and the Serbian army, for the first time in the War, was worsted. Then troops in Bosnia, just before the grand attack on Sarajevo, were thrown into confusion by an order from the Montenegrin King who, without vouching any reason, called his army back. The Serbian troops had no other course than to retreat as well; and their enemies delivered, all the rest of September and throughout October, a tremendous thrust against the army that was shielding Valjevo. The Serbs, who were lamentably short of arms, munition, clothing and every sort of hospital equipment, did not care to think of the approach of winter. They hurled themselves against the Austrian swarms—and up to this period they had lost, in dead and seriously wounded, more than 130,000 men.

THE TACTICS OF THE MONTENEGRIN KING

The co-operation between Serbs and Montenegrins for the Bosnian campaign was the occasion of some of Nikita's usual devious diplomacy. He summoned, as we have seen, a superfluous Skupština, whose resolutions would enable him to go to Francis Joseph, his secret ally, with a tale of force majeure. And he telegraphed to his grandson, the Serbian Prince-Regent: "My Montenegrins and myself are already on the frontiers, ready to die in the defence of our national independence." While his ill-equipped warriors pushed on to Budva, arrived before Kotor, seized Foča, Rogatica and other towns, pressing on until they stood before the forts of Sarajevo, the disreputable Royal Family, jealous as ever of Belgrade, were plunging deeper and always deeper into treachery. The Serbian officers, General Janković and Colonel (now General) Pešić, who, mainly at the instance of Russia, had been sent to reorganize the Montenegrin army, saw themselves hampered at every turn by the Court clique at Cetinje. Janković, finding that orders were given without his knowledge, returned to Niš; and later on, after the fall of Lovčen, Nikita tried to foist upon Pešić the odium of a surrender which his own machinations had brought about.

THE MAGYARS AND THEIR PRISONERS

As one might have expected, the withdrawal from Bosnia was followed by a repetition of the reign of terror in that beautiful land of woods and villages, where the Imperial and Royal authorities had been engaged for years in showing foreign journalists exactly what they wanted them to see. There had been some doubt as to whether Bosnia-Herzegovina came under the crown of Austria or that of Hungary. The Magyars had been gradually getting the upper hand in the administration, and now, in the autumn of 1914, it was they who undertook to deal with those subjected Bosniaks. Again we are furnished with evidence galore, not this time by picture postcards but by the cemeteries at Arad, the Hungarian (now it is a Roumanian) town on the Maroš. It was in the casemates of the Arad fortress, many of which had not been opened from the days of Maria Theresa, that thousands of poor Bosniak civilians were interned. In one of the cemeteries I counted 2103 black wooden crosses, in another between 600 and 700, in another about a thousand. These dead witnesses are more eloquent than the living. "On October 31, 1915," says an inscription on a cross in the largest cemetery, "there died, aged 95, Milija Arzić." She may have been a fearful danger to the Magyar State. Cross No. 716 says merely "Deaf and Dumb," so does No. 774. Jovan Krunić, No. 706, was 1½ year old. There are children even younger. The Magyars seem to have applied to Bosnia that label which the monkish mediæval map-makers applied to the remoter peoples: "Here dwell very evil men." If, however, the commandant, Lieut.-Colonel Hegedüs—a magyarized version of the German held, which means "hero"—and his subordinates, Sergeants Rosner and Herzfeld, would claim that they did their best, they have some excuse in the fact that although the 10,000 interned people began to arrive in July, the first two doctors—who were also captives—did not appear until January 1915. In the absence of medical advice the sergeants may have thought it was an excellent plan, in November, to drive the prisoners into the Maroš for a bath and then to walk them up and down the bank until their clothes were dry; Hegedüs may have thought it was most sanitary to have dogs to eat the corpses' entrails and sometimes the whole corpse. Dr. Stephen Pop, a Roumanian lawyer in Arad (afterwards a Minister at Bucharest), displayed his humanity by drawing up a terrible indictment of the conditions. "You should be glad," said Tisza, the reactionary Premier, to him, "very glad that you can breathe the free air of Hungary." The casemates were provided with less than three centimetres of straw, which was not removed for months. Spotted fever, pneumonia and enteritis were the chief epidemics: those who were guilty of some offence, such as receiving a newspaper, would be put among the spotted fever cases. Sometimes the dead were left for two or three days with the living. Such was the state of the bastions and their underground passages that the Magyar soldiers came as rarely as they could manage. It was, said Hegedüs, a provisional arrangement to have about a thousand people in one of these passages or lunettes, with no lavatory. But it was not only the nonagenarians—several of whom were at Arad—that found their life was a very provisional affair. You could be killed in different ways: the dying were occasionally wrapped in a sheet and rocked against a wall. When they groaned the soldiers laughed, and said that this was "Cheering King Peter." In fact the Magyars behaved with rare generosity to their prisoners, we are told in the Oxford Hungarian Review (June 1922), by Mr. Aubrey Herbert, M.P., a gentleman who persists in writing of that which he does not know. A woman called Lenka (or Helen) Mihailović, who had kept the canteen in the fortress during fifteen years, was expelled in January 1916 for having helped to clothe some naked children. People used to give Rosner, the sergeant, a tip in order to be allowed to visit the canteen. Their ordinary food was the reverse of appetizing. Constantine, the son of Ilja Jovanović, a boy who used to be employed at the fortress (and who had not been permitted by the Magyars to learn his own language), saw the children being fed, very often, on salt fish—no matter whether they were ill or not—and sometimes on the intestines of horses. The Serbian grave-diggers used to cook themselves a dish of grass, salt and water. They were too weak to work, and they had work enough: on February 1, 1915, for instance, twenty-nine people were buried. A certain captain (afterwards Major) Lachmann, an Austrian officer, arrived in Arad and heard the apprehensions that an epidemic might spread from the fortress. This had, in fact, been debated by the town council; and Lachmann was eventually responsible for a commission of inquiry. But Hegedüs, although he was degraded and condemned to prison, made a successful appeal, for his father-in-law was a field-marshal, one Pacor.

A few improvements were made in the casemates towards the end of 1917, as a Spanish commission was expected. But it never came. Some of the long galleries have, since the Armistice, been furnished with windows and electric light; but about four months after the Armistice I found them full of dead flies and heavy with an abominable stench. Amid the débris were many lamps, such as one uses in a mine. There was a proclamation, dated 1918, which tried to lure deserters back; it promised that no punishment would be inflicted on them if they should return, but that robbery or murder would meet with capital punishment, either by shooting or by strangling. The floor was littered with all kinds of paper, with scraps of furniture, a few chains and some prison books, which dated back for years. These gave details of all the punishments and were written in a very ornamental script, as though the clerks had taken a pleasure in their work. The Arad fortress had been partly used as a prison for a long time; but Misko Tatar, a Magyar, who stayed there sixteen years for having murdered his fiancée, his mother and his sister, as well as one Kocian, who remained for more than eighteen years—he had murdered the proprietor of a canteen, his wife and child in the Bocche—and Rujitatzka, a Croat, who together with another man had been accused of theft, had killed their escort and thrown his body into the Danube—none of these culprits could remember having heard of such punishments as the Bosniak civilians had to bear. The iron ring from which people used to be suspended for a couple of hours could still be seen on a large tree. If the relatives or friends could pay a fine this penalty was discontinued. Another method was to fasten a man's right wrist to his left ankle and the left wrist to the right ankle. He would then be left for a week; every night a blanket was thrown over him. But there is something very strange in the composition of the Magyars. When the revolution broke out and the prisoners, after all the years of horror, were gaining their freedom, an acquaintance of mine, a certain Gavrić, whose job for three and a half years had been the comparatively pleasant one of cleaning boots, was on the point of leaving the prison. There he was met by the director's daughter. "And you an intelligent person!" she said. "Are you not ashamed of yourself?" The Hungarian newspapers wrote that Hegedüs was dead, which may or may not have been true; and in another paper, The Hungarian Nation, printed in English, in February 1920, the Rev. Dr. Nally said: "May we not still cling to the hope that chivalrous England will give a helping hand to the nation whose weakness is that she is too chivalrous?" One Englishman—whom the reader may or may not consider worth quoting—is with the Magyars. "No country," says Lord Newton,[85] "treated their prisoners of war so well as the Hungarian, and I know it, because looking after prisoners of war was my job." "My husband," says Lady Newton,[86] "had interested himself in their cause"—of "this delightful race," she terms them in the previous sentence—"and had been able to do their country some slight service, and for this they simply could not sufficiently show their gratitude towards ourselves. From the prince to the peasant the Hungarian is a grand seigneur, with all the instincts of a great gentleman and the manners of a king." May I mention that at the same time, I believe, as Lord and Lady Newton were being entertained, a poor Slovak was being differently treated. Having left his home in Hungary to serve in the Czecho-Slovak army, and having settled in Czecho-Slovakia, after the War he got word that his mother was dying. He thereupon applied for and received a Hungarian visa, and on entering that territory he was arrested! A long time afterwards the Czecho-Slovak Legation at Buda-Pest was vainly trying to have him liberated.

THE SOUTHERN SLAVS IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

From the beginning of the War the Imperial and Royal authorities had been exasperated by the Southern Slavs within the Empire. A few extracts from the archives which, after the end of the War, were found at Zagreb, will be of interest:

(A)

[In Serbo-Croat:] Telegram from the Commander of the Balkan Army, received in Zagreb, 3/10/1914

[In German:] His Excellency the Ban Baron Skerlecz, Zgb. [Zagreb]. sss. Tuzla, 387, 146, 2/10/05.

Res. No. 817/ok. Investigation by Lieut.-Field-Marshal Szurmay has demonstrated that our soldiers have been shot at from houses in Bežanija to the west of Semlin and that enemy troops have been given shelter. In accordance with the request of Lieut.-Field-Marshal Szurmay I urgently request that all male inhabitants over fifteen years of age shall be evacuated from this place and from all others in which similar incidents have occurred, that measures be taken without delay in the interior of Croatia, and a stern examination be carried out in association with the Zagreb military command as also with the Army group command of Petrovaradin, acting in conjunction with the Government Commissary Hideghethy. Guilty persons are to be handed over to the military court for legal treatment.

Identical copies to the Ban of Croatia, Slavonia and Government Commissary Baron Tallian and, for his information, to Lieut.-Field-Marshal Szurmay as well as to the Army group command of Petrovaradin.

Potiorek, Field-Marshal.

(B)

Imperial and Royal Army—Director of Supplies and Transport.

K. No. 114. To the Royal Government Commissary Brcko, on the 12th September 1914. Vukovar.

I have the honour to inform you that during these last days the railway near Mitrovica has been damaged by the artillery of the Serbian army, which would be almost incredible without signals made by the local population, and moreover that between Ruma and Indjija—that is to say in a part occupied by our troops—the permanent way has been injured, which in all probability was done by the people of that district.

These events and anyhow the general atmosphere in Syrmia make it necessary to take the most energetic steps, as indicated in the orders of the Imperial and Royal Prime Minister No. 6538/1914 and of the No. 913 of 1914.

Imperial and Royal 5th Army—Director of Supplies and Transport.

K. No. 114.

(C)

Imperial and Royal Military Command in Zagreb.

Press Bureau, No. 2590. To the Higher Command of the Army. Higher Command of the Balkan Front. Royal Military Press Bureau. Zagreb, November 2, 1914. /Ceteris exmissis./

"Thousands of loyal officers and men have fallen victims to the treachery that has penetrated so deeply into the Fatherland and is directed against our enthusiastic, brave and heroically fighting army. It is evident from all the reports of the wounded that no one has been afraid of the enemy troops, but rather of treachery which comes upon them from the front, the left, the right, the rear, from trees and from houses." ...

"Through treachery the foe was and is still made acquainted with every movement of troops, the enemy artillery is helped in every way through signals, so that it can direct upon us a fire that falls like lightning. Light signals, smoke signals, positions of church tower clocks, herds of cows, flocks of geese, imitations of the noises of animals, yellow and black flags, etc. etc., have indicated the strength and movements of troops." ...

Scheure, Lieut.-Field-Marshal.

(D)

Imperial and Royal Military Command in Zagreb.

Press Bureau, No. 3050. The Spreading of Disquieting News among the Population.

To His Excellency the Imperial and Royal Secret Councillor Dr. Ivan Baron Skerlecz, Ban of the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia. Zagreb, November 26, 1914.

[This document, signed by Lieut.-Field-Marshal Scheure, draws attention to a secret society in Zagreb which from the beginning of the War is said to have been circulating false reports, not only with reference to "the most incredible news of our troops being defeated," but also as to the attitude of neutral States and of our own tried and excellent commanders, who are said to "have practised treachery, followed by suicide." The Ban's attention is directed to the introduction of hostile newspapers, and he is asked to have the foreign consuls in Zagreb discreetly watched. He is also told that in Zagreb the bank officials are said to have discouraged the citizens from investing in war loans.]

(E)

Imperial and Royal Military Command in Zagreb.

Press Bureau, No. 3297.

[Another note to the Ban, dated December 10, 1914, on the same subject. It is recommended that the persons chiefly responsible for these false reports be apprehended and interned, either on the charge of espionage or on account of having agitated. The Government is asked by the military command to have all such reports assembled, together with an appeal to loyal citizens, in an article which every newspaper should print twice, in successive numbers. At the same time all the newspapers should be told to print inspiring articles, and an article of this kind should be sent in for approval by the Government and the military command. The signature at the bottom of this note is undecipherable.]

(F)

Imperial and Royal Military Command in Zagreb.

Press Bureau, No. 841. Zagreb, February 1915.

[This is a long and conscientious exposé by the military commandant of Zagreb of the political situation there and in Croatia generally. He mentions that when in June 1913 several men deserted from the 4th company of the 53rd Infantry Battalion, which belonged to the 8th Mountain Brigade, it was not thought to have any special significance. "When," says the writer, "I happened to express my astonishment that Croats should desert to Serbia, I received the following answer: 'The Croats are loyal, but the Emperor does not care for us; the Magyars do not understand us and we also do not wish to become Magyars. Therefore the Croats turn to the Serbs, who at least understand their language.' At that time," he continues, "I did not understand these words, but now that I have become more acquainted with this country, I see that they reveal everything. Alas, so many Croats have adopted this popular logic and seem to incline to the Serbs."

He explains that harmonious relations did not exist between the military command and the local government, since the former acted without taking into account the political position of any individual, while the latter acted in the reverse fashion.]

HOW THE WAR RAGED IN THE WINTER OF 1914-1915

In the winter of 1914 the Serbian army had been obliged to withdraw, leaving Valjevo to the Austrians. The retrograde movement had to continue; Belgrade was abandoned at the end of November, and the people from those northern and western parts of the country could not resign themselves to waiting for the enemy, after the manner in which he had behaved. Terror-stricken fugitives began to block the roads and to impede the movements of the army. Everywhere was panic. It is remarkable that the Serbian Government at Niš chose this time (November 24) for making to the National Skupština the first Declaration[87] that they proposed to carry on the War until "we have delivered and united all our brothers who are not yet free, Serbs, Croats and Slovenes." (Later on when old King Peter after many trials managed to reach Durazzo he was given a few hours' notice in which to leave that place; he was also thrust out of Brindisi by the Italians because he declined to repudiate this Declaration.) "Machen Sie Ordnung" would soon be heard. Even the army, unaccustomed to defeat, was losing its self-possession. Putnik, the revered old strategist, declared that he could do no more. No longer in his over-heated room, struggling with asthma, could the famous marshal evolve a plan. And then it happened that General Mišić, placed in command of the first army, determined, after studying the situation, to risk everything on a last throw. Mišić was a quiet, methodical little man, whose optimism was always based on knowledge—in the intervals between Serbia's former campaigns he had won distinction as Professor of Strategy. He now caused 1400 young students, the flower of the nation, to be appointed non-commissioned officers; he likewise produced a most brilliant scheme of operations, so that the whole army was fired with enthusiasm, and so irresistibly did they attack that by December 13 not a single armed Austrian remained in the country. Ernest Haeckel, the great professor, had said at Jena that the native superiority of the German nation conferred on them the right to occupy the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia, excluding from these parts the weaker and inferior peoples who were living there. On December 15 King Peter made a triumphal entry into Belgrade—a Hungarian flag which had floated from the Palace was employed as a carpet on the steps of the cathedral when the King proceeded thither with his generals to give thanks for the miraculous success of Serbia's army. Once more the famous little town, the "white town" that is throned so splendidly above the plain where two wide rivers meet, was in possession of the Serbs. Against this rampart many human waves have broken—Attila and his Huns encamped on the plain, the Ostrogoths appeared, Justinian built the city walls, then came the Avars and Charlemagne and the Franks, the Bulgars, the Byzantines, the Magyars. The white town, Beli Grad or Beograd, which we call Belgrade—Wizzenburch was the old German name—has a glorious past and surely a magnificent future.

When the Serbs came back to Belgrade in December 1914, the total of Austrian prisoners was more numerous than the Serbian combatants. But 35,000 of these prisoners, together with 250,000 Serbs of all ages and 106 Serbian and Allied doctors, were now to succumb to the plague of typhus, which the Austrian troops had carried from Galicia. Hospitals were hurried out from France and Great Britain; heroic work was done by women and by men; doctors operated day and night—in the hospitals the patients were so closely packed that it was impossible to step between them.

"In Skoplje," says Colonel Morrison, who in civil life is senior surgeon to the Queen's Hospital, Birmingham—"in Skoplje a British unit was installed in a large factory accommodating over 1000 medical and surgical patients. Besides their inherent unsuitability the premises were detestably insanitary and the floor space overcrowded to its utmost capacity. On the ground floor I saw 250 men lying on sacks of straw packed closely together, covered only by their ragged uniform under a blanket. Gangrenous limbs and septic compound fractures were common, the stench being overpowering; yet every window was closely shut." He tells how seven out of the members of the British staff went down with typhus. At Užice he found over 700 patients crammed into rooms containing about 500 beds; many were lying on the bare floor; others were on sacks of straw; others on raised wooden platforms in series of six men side by side. Often one would see an elderly warrior, who had been wounded a week or two previously, being jolted along in an ox-cart with several civilians who were suffering from typhus—all trying to find a hospital that could take them in. And meanwhile it was necessary to reorganize the army: all the men between the ages of seventeen and fifty-five were called to the colours, including those whom the doctors had declared to be totally unfit for military service.

THE TREATY OF LONDON, APRIL 1915

On April 26, 1915, the negotiations were concluded between France, Great Britain, Russia and Italy; the Treaty of London was signed and the Italians had become our Allies. By this Treaty we and France and Russia undertook to give them, if we were victorious, a very large increase of territory—over which, by the way, we none of us had any right of disposal.

["For Serbia and for Montenegro this is a war of defence and of liberation and not of conquest," said the Yugoslav Committee in London (May 1915)—which Committee, by the way, made its first headquarters in Rome, and only transferred itself to London and Paris in view of the frankly hostile attitude of Sonnino and his colleagues. It consisted of the prominent Croats and Slovenes who had managed to escape across the Austrian frontier. "Serbia and Montenegro," said the Committee, "fight to liberate our people from a foreign yoke and to unite them in one sole, free nation.... To perpetuate the separation of these territories in leaving them under the Austro-Hungarian domination or another foreign domination, would be in flagrant violation of our ethnographic, geographic and economic unity; our people would, without any doubt, oppose to it an energetic and justified resistance."] At other times during the nineteenth century the Great Powers made amongst themselves and without consulting the Small Powers certain arrangements which affected the latter, although, as Professor Westlake observes,[88] all the States, so far as their sovereignty is concerned, stand equal before the law. But these arbitrary arrangements had always been made in the interest and for the security and well-being of the weaker State, as, for example, when the Congress of Berlin decided on the independence of Roumania and Serbia, in accordance with the will of the people. This beneficent action on the part of the Great Powers infringed none of the principles of international law, whereas the Treaty of London took away from the smaller Power nearly everything of value it possessed and stripped it of the possibility of future greatness; the spoil was presented by the Great Powers to one of themselves. We may concede, as Mr. C. A. H. Bartlett of the New York and United States Federal Bar points out in his closely reasoned monograph[89]—we may concede that belligerents can by way of anticipation allot enemy land among themselves, yet such a compact cannot properly be exercised by them so as to work injustice to another ally who was not a party to the division of territory. From the first it was well understood that the Treaty of London could only be imposed in direct defiance of the wishes of the populations most immediately concerned, so that the Italian Cabinet insisted that the whole transaction should be kept from the knowledge of the Serbian Government. As an illustration of the domineering and extortionate nature of Italy's demands (to which the Entente submitted) one may mention that part of the proposed boundary was traced over the high seas beyond the three-mile limit, which of course was a proposition entirely at variance with international law. We should not forget, says the Spectator,[90] the whole Italian record of idealism and liberal thought. And Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, an Italian exponent,[91] remarks that the terms of the Treaty of London were unknown to the people who paraded the streets of Rome impatient for their country to enter the War, and threatening with death the Minister Giolitti who had hitherto succeeded in keeping them out of it. The grandiose bargain which the Government had made was unknown to them; but surely Mr. Trevelyan is paying meagre tribute to their idealism and liberal thought when he implies they would have been elated by a knowledge of the details of the Treaty. Ought not, rather, a people imbued with the afore-mentioned virtues to have threatened with death a Minister who should attempt to carry through so scandalous an instrument? "The broad reason why the Italians joined our side," says Mr. Trevelyan, "was because they were a Western, a Latin and a Liberal civilization." Mr. Bartlett, who ponders his words with legal precision, thinks that "Italy was not inspired by any very noble principles of right and justice when the War began, nor until long after it had swept over the greater portion of Europe ... nor was she spontaneously moved by any sentiment of human justice. She was cool, calculating and business-like. She weighed carefully in the balance the advantages and disadvantages she might derive from the pending struggle; she saw on which side the profit might lie, and with that commercial prudence for which her people are renowned she set her own price on the value of her aid to the Entente." But if the long hesitation was nothing more than governmental prudence, and if the nation as a whole was out of sympathy with such ideas, how came it that, after the plunge was taken, no less than 300 deputies left their cards on Signor Giolitti? The country was, through various causes, swept into the War; and in considering whether this was in harmony with or in opposition to the desires of the majority I think one should pay at least as much attention to the deputies who acted as to the crowd who shouted.... The country was swept into the War, and a Bologna newspaper (Resto del Carlino, March 21, 1915) has published a telegram from Sonnino to the Italian Ambassadors in Paris, London and Petrograd, which announced that Italy was joining in the World War for the purpose of destroying the strategical advantage enjoyed by Austria in the Adriatic. But at the same time the Southern Slavs must be prevented from gaining a similar position, and so the coast must be neutralized from Kotor to the river Vojuša. Sonnino expressly gives Rieka to the Croats. It is not only this which lends great interest to the document, but the fact that Italy's entrance into the War was determined five weeks before the signing of the Treaty of London and two months before she actually declared war.

HOW BULGARIA CAME INTO THE WAR

In the course of the year 1915 Ferdinand of Bulgaria, with his henchman Radoslavoff, was arranging to come into the War. Public opinion in that country was smarting under the drastic Treaty of Bucharest, which had been imposed by the victors of the second Balkan War. It was Roumania which had inflicted the shrewdest wound by taking the whole of the Dobrudja as a recompense for a military promenade, during which she lost a few men who deserted, and a few officers who were shot in the back. The Dobrudja is a land whose people cause it to resemble a mosaic—Greeks, Turks, Roumanians, Tartars, Bulgars, Armenians and gipsies are to be found—but the southern parts are undoubtedly Bulgarian. After the great outcry which the Bulgars had raised over the surrender of one town, Silistra, it can be imagined that the loss of the whole land came as an unendurable sentence. Quite apart from Bulgaria's Macedonian aspirations, it was felt in Belgrade that Ferdinand, by pointing to the Dobrudja, would be able to drive his kingdom into an alliance with the Central Powers, an alliance whose aim, as far as he was concerned, was to leave him Tzar of the Balkans. The photograph which he circulated of himself, seated in a splendid chair upon a promontory by the Black Sea, wearing the appropriate archaic robes, and with a look of profound meditation on his otherwise Machiavellian features, was exactly what he thought a Balkan Tzar should be.

The Serbs were in favour of delivering an attack upon the Bulgars before they had mobilized and concentrated their troops. This would not have warded off the Teutonic invasion, but the Serbs would have been able to maintain contact with Salonica, thus facilitating the evacuation of their army. And who knows whether this diversion would not have induced the Greeks and the Roumanians to change their attitude? However, the proposal was vetoed by Serbia's great Allies, who thought that their diplomacy might work upon the Bulgars. Many worthy people said that it would be quite inconceivable for the Bulgarian army to oppose the Russian, seeing that this would be terrible ingratitude. But they forgot that if the Russians had been, not for purely altruistic motives, the kind patrons of the Bulgars, they had recently—when the Tzar Nicholas and the Tzarina came to the Constanza fêtes—made open cause with Bulgaria's opponents. They were also forgetting, rather inexcusably, that the Bulgars were averse to the idea of the Russians securing Constantinople. On the other hand, the old pro-Russian sentiments of the people still survived: the Russian Legation at Sofia received numerous applications to serve in the army; large contributions were made to the Russian Red Cross, and public prayers were offered for the success of the Russian arms. But the Muscovite Minister at Sofia was a man unfitted for the post, and Ferdinand's task was made easier. The Allied diplomats could argue, later on, that they failed by a narrow margin, since Radoslavoff only succeeded in gaining a majority by means of the help of the Turkish deputies; but if the Sobranje had been hostile to Ferdinand and Radoslavoff they would simply have dissolved it. As a pattern of morals Dr. Radoslavoff is not worth quotation—the offences for which during a previous Premiership he was convicted were rather flagrant—but his views on international politics are quite instructive. On November 14, 1912, he wrote to his friend Mavrodieff, the prefect of Sofia, a letter which was afterwards reproduced in facsimile. "It is clear," he said, "that Russian diplomacy is disloyal. It wants Constantinople.... But it is not only Russia which envies Bulgaria; the same thing is true for Austria-Hungary and Germany. The Balkan Union has surprised them, and they will seek a new basis in their future politics...." But then the second Balkan War and the Treaty of Bucharest enabled Ferdinand to commit his country to an alliance which various of his statesmen and generals vehemently deprecated. "If the Germans should win," telegraphed Tocheff, the Minister at Vienna, in August 1915, "that would be still more dangerous for Bulgaria."

Ferdinand was sure that the Austro-Germans would succeed in conquering the Serbs. On October 6, after a treacherous artillery preparation, the two armies began to cross at various points the Danube, the Save and the Drin. Their losses in the hand-to-hand engagements may have reminded them of a phrase in the official explanation that was issued, after the rout of the previous December, by the Viennese authorities: "The retirement of our forces after their victorious offensive in Serbia has given birth to divers rumours for the most part entirely without foundation.... It was inevitable that we should have important losses in men and material." So it was on this occasion—at Belgrade, for example, thousands were killed as they struggled to the shore—in a broad street leading down to the harbour a brigade of Skoplje recruits plunged through the Austrians with their knives. But in the end, on October 10—and in spite of heroic work on the part of some French and British naval detachments—Belgrade fell. On October 12 the Bulgars attacked. "The European War is drawing to its close," said Ferdinand's proclamation. "The victorious armies of the Central Powers are in Serbia and are rapidly advancing." They advanced less rapidly than they had planned, thanks to the wonderful exploits of the Serbian army, which was heavily encumbered by the growing stream of fugitives. The Austro-Germans failed to encircle the Serbian troops—slowly and keeping in touch with those who were on the Bulgarian frontier, the Serbs retired to the south and west.

ATTEMPT TO BUY OFF THE SERBS

The Government and the diplomatic corps had been for some time at Niš, the second largest town, whose Turkish character is disappearing. But the population in the direst Turkish times were less exposed to epidemics than the thousands of unwilling residents who thronged the little, painted houses and the wide, cobbled streets in 1915. It was at Niš that the negotiations were conducted with Bulgaria, and in July an aged gentleman from Budapest came with the offer of a separate peace. This gentleman, a stockbroker of Slav origin, was imbued with patriotic motives, for he was assured that Germany would win the War. It was an undertaking in those days for a man in his seventy-sixth year to travel, by way of Roumania and Bulgaria, to Niš; but as he had connections in Serbia he was resolved to see them, and he travelled at his own expense, although the German Consul-General at Buda-Pest, acting apparently for the Deutsche Bank, had spoken of 18 million crowns for distribution among the politicians at Niš and five millions for the old stockbroker himself. His suggestion was that Serbia should make certain small modifications in the Bucharest Treaty in favour of the Bulgars, that Albania should be hers up to and including Durazzo, that she should be joined to Montenegro, and that her debts to the Entente should be shouldered by Germany, which would likewise give a considerable loan, and requested merely the permission to send German troops down the Danube. "My dear boy," said a Minister, an old friend of his, "go back at once, or they'll lock you up in a mad-house." And when the poor old gentleman got back he found himself compelled to start a lawsuit against the Germans, since they were unwilling to pay his costs. The Consul-General at Pest disowned all knowledge of him, but the broker called in the police as witnesses; for they had summoned him, on more than one occasion, to explain why he was so much in the Consul's company. The German Government said also that he was a perfect stranger to them; but finally they settled with him for a sum which is believed to have been 35,000 crowns.

GREEK TRANSACTIONS

One reason why the Entente had dissuaded the Serbs from attacking Bulgaria was to prevent the casus fœderis with Greece being jeopardized. This treaty between Greece and Serbia would become operative by a Bulgarian aggression—and the fox-faced M. Gounaris when he was Prime Minister of Greece in August 1915 assured the Allied Powers that Greece would never tolerate a Bulgarian attack upon Serbia. It was largely on the strength of this assurance that, when, a little later, the attitude of Bulgaria grew menacing and the Serbian General Staff suggested marching upon Sofia and nipping the Bulgarian mobilization in the bud, the then Russian Foreign Minister, M. Sazonov, supported in this by Sir Edward Grey, warned Serbia not to take the initiative. Serbia yielded to the demands of her great Allies, only to see herself abandoned by the Greeks. King Constantine and probably the greater part of his people were anxious to remain outside the war. And to free himself from the embarrassing Treaty with Serbia he declared that it would only have applied if Serbia had been attacked by the Bulgars. [We may say that it was doubtful whether the casus fœderis arose when Serbia was attacked by Austria; but it clearly and indubitably did arise when she was attacked by Bulgaria. When Venizelos spoke of the obligations of Greece towards Serbia, a certain Mr. Paxton Hibben, an American admirer of Constantine, said in his book, Constantine I. and the Greek People (New York, 1920), that Venizelos was making an appeal to the sentimentality of his countrymen!] So Constantine proclaimed that Greece was neutral—"Our gallant Serbian allies," he declared some five years later, when he returned from exile, "Our gallant Serbian allies"; and the Athenian mob—

—the Athenian mob cheered itself hoarse. One word from Constantine and they would have wrecked the Serbian Legation and the French and the British for the terrible bad taste of not exposing their flags. But Constantine, clutching his German Field-Marshal's baton (or perhaps it was the native baton given to the royal leader who in the Balkan War wiped out some of the ignominy with which the previous Turkish War had covered him), at any rate Constantine restrained himself. Why the devil couldn't these Serbs understand that they were his gallant allies! Let them wipe out the unhappy past. Had they never heard of that magnificent French actress who, being asked about the paternity of her son, replied that she really did not know? "Alas!" she said, "I am so shortsighted." Well, it was true that in 1915 he had been neutral and unable to tolerate the presence of Serbian soldiers on his territory; if they found themselves obliged to leave their country and retreated by way of Greece he gave orders to have them disarmed. This was the attitude imposed upon a neutral. And thousands and thousands of them had unfortunately died in consequence while passing over the Albanian mountains. "Our alliance with Serbia," quoth the King while opening the Chamber in 1921—"our alliance with Serbia now drawn closer as the result of so many sacrifices and heroic struggles...." The son of the eagle, as his people call him, stopped a moment, but could hear no laughter. As for his policy in 1915, he had been perhaps a neutral lacking in benevolence. If he and his Ministers did not actually refuse to receive the non-combatant young Serbs they very certainly did not go out of their way to offer any shelter to these erstwhile little allies in distress, when the alternative to Greece was wild Albania. Twenty thousand Serbian children lost their lives upon those bleak and trackless mountains.[93] It was most unfortunate. And in the Cathedral of Athens, in the gorgeous presence of the clergy and the more responsible sections of the population, the King chuckled to himself as he was acclaimed with cries of "Christos aneste!" (Christ is risen!). After all, those 20,000 Serbian boys would not have lived for ever. These excellent Athenians were resolved that bygones should be bygones. It was perfectly true that British soldiers and French, entrapped and shot down by his command, were buried away yonder in Piræus cemetery. He felt like having a good laugh, but if you are a King you must be dignified....

FLIGHT OF THE SERBS

Niš fell on November 4, 1915, King Peter's plate, according to the subsequent avowals of one Brust, a non-commissioned officer, being distributed among the 145th Prussian Regiment, the Colonel annexing ten pieces and several privates receiving spoons and knives—and now the Serbs had to leave their country. On the other side of the Albanian mountains they might hope to find a land of exile. It is said that several of the Ministers contemplated suicide—the Minister of War had so far lost his head that, after reaching Salonica by way of Monastir, he refused to join his colleagues at Scutari—but the venerable Pašić did not lose his jovial humour. He may have laughed in order to encourage those who were despairing. On the other hand, he may have known that Serbia would rise, and rise to greater heights. He made no secret of the satisfaction which he felt when the Bulgars attacked, for this, he said, would settle once for all the Macedonian question. Whether the attitude of the Southern Slavs in Austria-Hungary appealed to him in equal measure is a little doubtful. It was hard for him, at his time of life, to envisage anything more than a Greater Serbia.

THE FAITHFUL CROATS

But the Croats, as is shown by other documents from the Zagreb archives, were faithful to their race. The extracts, by the way, reply to those foolish Italians who persisted for years in shouting that the Croats had been the fiercest foes of the Entente. That they were the foes of Italy is not surprising, for the provisions of the wretched Treaty of London, concluded behind the back of the British Parliament and without even the Cabinet being consulted, were by this time public property, and it was seen that the Italians had succeeded in persuading the Entente to promise them the reversion of a great slice of Yugoslav territory, very large portions of which were as completely Yugoslav as the island of Scedro (Torcola), whose population consists of one Slav woman called Yakaš, over eighty years of age. Save for their sentiments towards the Italians, it is clear that a large number of Croats were very warmly and very actively on the side of the Entente. I am sure that the unfortunate Italians of the Trentino who, like them, were enrolled in the Imperial and Royal army were as eager to desert, and no doubt if they had been more numerous we should have had an Italian contingent fighting with the Russians, in association with the Czecho-Slovak and the Yugoslav brigades.

(G)

Imperial and Royal Military Command in Zagreb. Sealed. Chief of Staff.

Int. Dep.Army G.H.Q. Commander on the S.E. Front. F.P.O. 11. 5 op. by H.Q.F. P.O. 305. 5 A.E.C. F.P.O. 81. Evid. O. Vienna. 1 2 3 4 5 To be dispatched in two envelopes, K.N. to be written on the one inside and N. alone without K. on the outer; seal! Zagreb, July 10, 1915.

In spite of the ten months' war with Serbia, in spite of the notable executions of native citizens for assisting the enemy at the time of his incursion into Syrmia and Bosnia, there has latterly been an alarming increase in the number of cases of grossest insult to the person of H.M. the Emperor and King; outbreaks of deeply felt, only forcibly controlled hatred against everything friendly to the dynasty and the Monarchy, curses upon the exalted wearer of the Crown, glorification of King Peter and the Serb realm, expressed by men and women alike, are of daily occurrence....

(H)

In this document we return to the subject of desertions:

Royal Hungarian 42nd Infantry of the Line. Op. No. 1312/6. To the Imperial and Royal Corps Command in Sadagora. Czernawka, August 12, 1915.

In the period from the 8/8 to the 9/8 two men of the 10th company have deserted (of whom one is probably wandering somewhere behind the front, as he is mentally deficient, having even gone away without a cap and being a Roman Catholic); likewise four men of the 12th company and all the men recently enrolled from the village of Dolnji Lapac, of the Greek Orthodox religion, have apparently deserted to the foe.

The impressions which I had of these men—impressions based on a personal intercourse of several hours while they were being marched to the recruiting depot—was unfavourable. And this I immediately made known in writing to the regimental command, with a brief note on this point on the 6/8 to the 11th Corps command. Unhappily my impressions were correct; there are scoundrels in these ranks. I have for the present instituted a most thorough and severe examination, wherein I am already myself participating; for I am inflexibly determined, at the very smallest sign of a recurrence, to apply to these traitors the military judicial procedure and, if necessary, to have the men decimated, as I was unfortunately compelled to do with the Bosnian-Herzegovinian line regiment No. 4 last winter, which method had the most excellent results. That regiment has thenceforward been blameless.... I am so very well informed as to conditions in the south that I cannot be deceived, and I know that, in spite of all—including some misguided—measures, there are still a number of traitors, some of them occupying a high social position, moving about freely in Croatia-Slavonia instead of being strangled.

So that steps may be taken against the families of guilty persons, I enclose a list of the men who have deserted from the middle of June, this year. I beg that I may be supported to the uttermost, without the slightest wavering, and in a short time—so my experience tells me—we shall be in a most satisfactory position.

Liposcak, Lieut.-Field-Marshal.[94]

Imperial and Royal Corps Command, Sadagora, 12/8, 1915. 9 p.m. No. 2446, with three enclosures.

(I)

We then get an elaborate and indignant dissertation, dated November 1915 and signed by Lieut.-Colonel Olleschick. It is a study of the way in which the secret police was hampered and its patriotic activities watered down; the Colonel also exposes the manner in which antipatriotic, or shall we say anti-Habsburg, citizens of Croatia-Slavonia are protected:

Imperial and Royal Military Command in Zagreb. Chief of the General Staff. K. No. 1681.

The Colonel expresses his unbounded approval of Maravić, the chief of this branch of the police, and of von Klobučarić, a police captain. The former, who is dead, was for many years at the head of the police at Zemlin, opposite Belgrade, and has left behind a reputation for fairness. The whereabouts of von Klobučarić are unknown, and it would be prudent if this ex-Austrian officer, ex-dentist's assistant and ex-policeman were to ensure their remaining so. The Ban is accused of having frustrated various designs of this couple. He is further accused of having placed at the head of the Koprivnica internment camp—where 6000 "politically untrustworthy" Serbs were assembled—the mayor, Kamenar, who himself had been dismissed for his political untrustworthiness; and when the military protested, they received no answer, while the mayor—so the wrathful writer hears—has been removed from his post at the internment camp and restored to his former office and dignity. The colonel asks how it is that in Croatia the crimes of "Majestätsbeleidigung" and high treason are seldom punished with more than three or four months' incarceration, while in other parts of the Empire they are visited with death or at least a sentence of several years. (The answer is that in Croatia the Government was obliged, on account of the language, to employ Croatian judges.) He mentions that Professor Arshinov, alleged to have come to Zagreb in order to carry on an anti-Habsburg and pro-Serbian propaganda, is indeed under arrest, but is being far too well treated at the hospital, where he receives his Serbian associates and even has convivial evenings with them. In fact the whole country, so the writer asserts, is saturated with Serbian sympathies and agitators. He says that in some villages every functionary, from the highest to the lowest, is a Serb; the gendarmerie, the tax-gatherers and the foresters are frequently Serbs and he regards it as noteworthy that the hotels, inns and cafés are almost exclusively in Serbian hands; "and it is only too well known,"—so he rather strangely says—"that these are the places where suspicious characters are wont to hatch their secret plans under the influence of alcohol." He complains at length of the anti-Austrian activities of the Serbo-Croatian Coalition, and this proves that the party was not, as its critics have said, too subservient to the Habsburgs.

HOW THE SERBS CAME TO THEIR PATRIARCH'S TOWN

At the end of November the Serbian army, with the Government and thousands of refugees, arrived at the ancient towns of Prizren and Peć. It was at the rambling old patriarchal town of Peć that the Serbian soldiers had to do a thing which even their marvellous optimism could not endure—most of the field guns had now to be destroyed, after a few years of crowded and victorious life. An American correspondent, Mr. Fortier Jones, tells us[95] how a gunner asked to be photographed beside his beloved weapon, and how, when he wanted to leave his address, he suddenly realized that with the loss of this gun he would be a mere homeless wanderer. It was not surprising that these steel-built stoics, than whom all French and British witnesses agree there are no better fighters in the world, should have broken down at this ordeal. As for the chauffeurs, they were busy polishing their cars and cleaning their engines—presumably through force of habit—prior to the breaking up of all these touring-cars and lorries. Some were saturated with petrol and set on fire, others were exploded with hand grenades, but the most imaginative method was to drive the car up to that place, two or three miles from Peć, where the road to Andrievica turned into a horse-trail on the side of the precipice. Here the chauffeur would jump out, after having let in the clutch and pushed down the accelerator—and the car would leap into space, three or four hundred feet over a mountain torrent. From this point the via dolorosa stretched away precariously, at first a winding path of ice and then a track across the snowdrifts of the barren uplands. The Serbian Government had offered to construct this very necessary road to Andrievica; the engineer, one Smodlaka, undertook to build it in three months, but Nikita's Minister replied that the Austrian prisoners, whom it was proposed to use, were mostly in the grip of spotted fever. This was not the case, and one of the results of there being no road was that nearly all the supplies from Russia for the Montenegrins were abandoned at Peć. Cold, starvation and exposure took a fearful toll among the straggling wanderers—between 1000 and 1500 were cut off and murdered by savage Albanians (whose considerate treatment of the Serbs is highly praised by their champion, Miss Edith Durham. Reviewing in the Daily Herald a book of Serbian tales that have precious little to do with Albania, she goes out of her way to laud, in those days of the terrible retreat, the kindliness of her protégés.) As we have mentioned, of the 36,000 boys who accompanied the army in order to escape the Austrians, only some 16,000 reached the Adriatic, where it was said that there was nothing human left of them except their eyes. They had lived on roots and bark of trees, they drank the water into which decomposed corpses had been thrown. Of the 50,000 Austrian prisoners—many of them Yugoslavs—about 44,000 died in the course of their eight weeks' retreat; none of them were heard to complain or seen committing any brutal act. Very many Englishwomen were included in this long procession; old King Peter walked a good deal of the way, the Archbishop of Belgrade brought the relics of Stephen the First-Crowned and was followed by priests with lighted tapers, and Marshal Putnik, whom exposure would have killed, was carried all the way inside a primitive sedan-chair.... "Whence do you come and what are you?" asked a Serbian woman[96] of the wounded and dying. "We are," they replied in prose that reminds one of Mestrović, "we are the smouldering torches with which our country is kept warm. In the heart of one's native land there is neither truth nor justice—we love our native land; this love is a barrier against human love; the heart of one's native land is great and selfish and it throbs—in this heart is the faith of all our hearts, we love our native land. We watch over it and we defend it and we love, though the lettering upon our tomb be enveloped in ivy. Formidable is its victory, and we will march along, not asking whether anybody will return. We love our native land and even when the blood is thickening inside our throats and we are carrying our entrails in our hands." Though they were Serbs they had forgotten how to sing; it was some time later that the words, now famous, of "Tamo daleko" burst from the inspired lips of a simple soldier and were taken up by his companions: "There, far away, far away by the Morava, there is my village, there is my love...."

"They came exhausted into Scutari, one by one or in small groups," says Monsieur Boppe, the French Minister,[97] "some of them on horseback, some on foot; here and there one saw a trace of military order, but most of them had no weapons. They looked as if they could not march another mile, these moving skeletons, so painfully they crawled along, so haggard, so emaciated, with a colour so cadaverous and eyes so dull. This mournful band of brothers struggled into Scutari for days, beneath the rain and through the mud. No bitterness came from the lips of those who had undergone every privation; as if impelled by destiny, they passed along in silence; from time to time, indeed, one heard them say 'hleba' (bread)—that was the only word they had the strength to pronounce. For several days the majority of them had had nothing to eat, and in the cantonments where they were lodged outside the town their Government could only provide a meagre ration." A hundredweight of maize cost 300 francs in gold.... But what of the women who had remained in Belgrade? Miss Annie Christić, whose unflagging work for her people is so well known in this country, has told us how the Austro-Hungarians started paying out relief money to the families of State officials. They advertised their generosity on a large scale, but the amounts were very small, and many women were too proud to accept this dole from the enemy. They preferred to do any kind of work offered by the municipality of Belgrade. Thus one saw women in furs or smart clothes—the remnants of former days—trundling wheelbarrows of stone for road repairs, or carrying heavy loads. Delicately nurtured girls could be seen working at the slaughterhouse among the entrails and offal for twelve hours on end. The wife of a professor scrubbed office floors for many months before her husband at the front could send her any money. Street-sweeping was a common occupation for women of all classes.

"We rescued the gallant Serbian army," said the Italians, in the course of a long and rhetorical placard which in 1919 they pasted up throughout Rieka and the Adriatic lands they occupied, and which was not more convincing than the caravan of Dalmatian mayors whom, after the War, they very proudly exhibited in Paris, a suave official from the Embassy acting as the showman. (The Italian authorities had taken in hand the election of these mayors—save Signor Ziliotto of Zadar, who was elected by his fellow-townsmen.) ... When the wretched Serbs who found themselves staggering through central Albania—among them large numbers of boys so young that they would not have been called up until 1919—when they hoped to reach the Adriatic at Valona, they were told that this route was barred to them. Having eluded the Austrians, the Germans and the Bulgars, they were left by the Italians to die of starvation and fatigue. It may well have seemed to them, as to Bedros Tourian, the Armenian poet, that "All the world is but God's mockery." When King Peter, worn out by the journey and his ailments, reached Valona by way of Durazzo, he was ordered by the commandant of that place to depart with his suite—which consisted of four persons—within twenty-four hours.... In the middle of December a French relief mission arrived on the Albanian coast, General de Mondésir reached Scutari and a large British mission under General Taylor landed at Durazzo. These did what was possible to save the remnants of the Serbian army. But, after a short time, a fresh series of obstacles arose. The King of Montenegro, very loyal to the Austrians, facilitated their advance across his country. Thus it was impracticable for the Serbs to concentrate and to embark from those few wooden huts which are called, in Italian, San Giovanni di Medua. Between the bare cliffs and the sea the miserable men and boys and women were compelled to plod towards the south. One hundred and fifty thousand survivors were eventually carried by the Allies to Corfu.

THE SHADOW OVER MONTENEGRO

These had been busy days for Nikita and his sons. A royal order was issued to the Montenegrin military and police authorities, commanding them to prevent the population from giving or selling any provisions to the Serbian army. "Ne bogami, svetoga mi Vassilija ne!" ["Goodness gracious, no! And by St. Basil, no!"] was the phrase which greeted the Serbs;[98] and when they remonstrated with the Montenegrins for demanding eleven Serbian dinars in silver for ten Montenegrin perpers—the exchange was at par, but the people were acting under orders—"If I had ten sons I would give them to King Peter," was the usual reply, "but money is money." Yet the Austrians were not as grateful as they might have been. Nikita was intending, after the annihilation of the Serbs, to conclude a separate peace with Austria and to rule, as an Austrian satrap, over an enlarged territory. But they ignored his aspirations; they did not take into account that he had been so kind to them at Lovčen and elsewhere. They swarmed over his country—this time he was not play-acting when he showed his indignation—and the deceived deceiver was forced to fly. On January 10, Lovčen had fallen. A characteristic telegram:

["My house is burning, I want the Kuči"] was sent by Nikita to his best fighting men, the Kuči, whom he had left in reserve at Danilovgrad. When General Gajnić received this he marched all night with his brigade and reached Cetinje in the morning. Nikita met them and announced that, after all, he did not require them. He would conquer without them. And Lovčen fell.

That Adriatic Gibraltar, which rises gaunt and sheer to some 6000 feet, was entrusted by Nikita to his youngest son, Prince Peter, a young man of marvellous vanity. He used to deny, after the surrender of Lovčen, that he had consorted at Budva with Lieut.-Colonel Hupka, the former military attaché at Cetinje, whom the Austrians brought specially from the Italian front for this purpose. The well-known patriot, Dr. Machiedo of Zadar, who happened to be confined during the summer of 1915 by the Austrians in the fortress of Goražda, which lies above Kotor, read in the telephone book certain messages from Prince Peter, asking for an interview with Hupka—these messages were carried by a patrol to the lines and thence telephoned to Goražda. When the Prince at last acknowledged that he had been meeting Hupka—which he naturally had done at his father's command—he stated that it was with the object of preventing the bombardment of open towns by Austrian aeroplanes. Between him and Hupka the arrangements were made; many of the Austrians exchanged their military boots for the Serbian national sandals, so that they could more easily scale the rocks; and Peter sent verbal orders to his two outlying brigadiers that they must not resist. General Pejanović demanded, however, that this should be put in writing, and the document is extant. Thirteen Austrians lie buried in a little graveyard on the slopes of Lovčen, mostly men who missed their footing; and this was the price that Austria paid for the tremendous mountain that she had coveted for years; she had been willing, more than once, to let the Montenegrins, in exchange for it, have Scutari. The great picture of "The Storming of Lovčen," which Gabriel Jurkić, the Sarajevo artist, was commissioned by the Austrians to paint, was never painted; and when Nikita motored out from Cetinje to meet the men who were retiring from Lovčen he had the hardihood to rebuke them as traitors. "It is not we who are traitors," shouted a colonel, "it is you and your sons!" "Oh! that I must hear such words!" groaned the King, "I want to die!" But he did not die; on the contrary, he went to Paris. His eldest son had announced, early in the campaign, that he was unwell, and he had gone to France by way of Athens. There he was very accurately told by Constantine in which month Mackensen and the Bulgars would descend upon Serbia. When the Prince arrived at Nice he mentioned this to his friend, Jovo Popović, the former Montenegrin Minister at Constantinople, and to Radović. They advised him to inform the Entente, in order to rehabilitate himself. But when he telegraphed to his father the reply was "Be quiet." Prince Danilo has never denied the allegations that while he was at Nice, Signor Carminatti, the Montenegrin Consul-General in Milan, conducted negotiations on his behalf at Lugano with a certain Herr Bernsdorf of the Deutsche Bank, with a view to a separate peace by Montenegro. The amount of the financial consideration is not known. And the business-like Prince, realizing that it would be impossible for him to return to his native land, secured himself against the future by selling, through a couple of confidential agents, his real estate to the Austrians. He likewise disposed of a good deal of forest which is alleged to have belonged not to him but to the State, and when his father heard of the resulting sum of a hundred million francs he was exceedingly annoyed that this robbery and trafficking with the enemy during the War had only replenished Danilo's and not his own exchequer. When his political opponents heard of these transactions he denied, over and over again, that they had taken place; but we have his autograph letter on the subject to Danilo. Before the King left Montenegro he found another opportunity for a grandiose attitude. He appeared at Podgorica where he made an eloquent speech, exhorting his people to march on the morrow against the hated Austrian and assuring them that their old King would fire the first shot, whereas he decamped in the night for Scutari, which is in the opposite direction. He and the Queen, Prince Peter and Miuškević, the Premier, fled the country; while Prince Mirko, the remainder of the Cabinet, the National Assembly and—above all—the army had instructions to remain behind. How much easier it would have been for his army than for the Serbs to reach Corfu. But this terrible old man delivered 50,000 of the best Yugoslav soldiers to the enemy. On January 21 he sailed away. I do not know if anybody sang the National Anthem—"Onamo! Onamo!" ["Yonder! Yonder!"]—which in his youth Nikita had himself composed. And a few years later when the gallant Montenegrins could again lift up their voices and sing "Onamo!" how many of them thought of him who was skulking and of course intriguing yonder in France.

We have alluded to the treatment which in their distress the Serbs received from their Italian Allies; but in Albania the Italian army did render a certain amount of assistance—every day at eleven o'clock the Austrian aeroplanes would reach Durazzo, and the Italian soldiers, sentries and all, would rush helter-skelter from the plentiful food to which they were just sitting down. The Serbs, many of them, after their privations, looking like grey ghosts, were always in the neighbourhood of the Italian barracks and very glad they were to see those aeroplanes which permitted them to enter in and enjoy a bounteous meal. When the senior Italian officer complained to his Serbian colleague, "Surely," said the latter, "you have a sentry at the door. He can prevent anyone from going in." At some distance inland a Serbian major, a friend of mine, was resting on the side of the road; he had eaten nothing for four days. A spick-and-span Italian lieutenant of gendarmerie paused in front of him and was clearly interested. The major wondered whether he would have some food about him. But the lieutenant did not even offer him a cigarette. "Pardon me," he said with a friendly smile, "but will you allow me to take a photograph?" Large numbers of mules were brought over by the Italians and apparently it gave them pleasure to cut their throats. The officers purchased many Serbian horses—their owners were too destitute to bargain. But in fairness it must be said that some Italian ships worked with the French and British vessels in conveying the Serbs, soldiers and civilians, from the coast of Albania.

As for the Montenegrin King, he had attempted, before his departure, to put the whole blame on the shoulders of Colonel Pešić. He sent—in order to make more certain the success of the Austrian army—a telegraphic command[99] to the Voivoda Djuro Petrović, the chief of the Herzegovinian detachment, in which he required him to destroy his cannons and machine guns and then (although the enemy was exerting no pressure upon him) to withdraw towards Nikšić. This order was issued in the name of Colonel Pešić, the signature being forged. In fact Nikita thought his Serbian Chief of Staff was quite a useful personage. But there exists a letter in which the Colonel wrote that, in order to avoid capitulation, a supreme effort would be necessary at certain positions which he indicated and anyhow the army should be withdrawn to Scutari and the defence of the town organized. Scutari, by the way, was the scene of another of Nikita's exploits: he caused the Bank of Montenegro to send money to the Austrian Consul there, the cash being delivered by Martinović, the Montenegrin Consul. It was used to incite the Albanians to take military action against the Serbs between Prizren and Djakovica. When this affair was exposed all the Montenegrins knew by what traitors they were governed. The fall of Montenegro had been brought about more swiftly by the Austrian submarines which in the Gulf of San Giovanni di Medua torpedoed practically every ship that carried food or munitions, while other boats were not molested. An investigation showed that the shipping news had been telegraphed to Prince Peter, and he in his turn handed it on to the Austrians. The Prince's egregious parent wanted to be in a position to say that, owing to the lack of food and munitions, he had been compelled to surrender. One of his final acts was to summon the Skupština, as he did not wish to be saddled with the responsibility of making peace. At a secret sitting on December 11, 1915,—when the retreating Serbs were in San Giovanni, Scutari and Podgorica,—the Government declared that they had no resources, that the Entente could not assist them and that they would wage war for so long as they had the means—in other words, that the war would cease. It was continued, however, by those Montenegrin troops between Kolašin and Bielo Polje, who—even after the fall of Lovćen on January 10, and the flowing of the Austrian army towards Scutari—were ordered to make a counter-offensive, during which they had over 1500 dead and wounded. The reason for this was that Nikita wished to prevent his army from escaping to Scutari; he was afraid lest, if they escaped with the Serbs, they would dethrone him forthwith. Afterwards he gave an explanation that he had ordered the Chief of Staff, Yanko Vukotić, to rescue the army, which order he alleged he had wirelessed from Brindisi. Vukotić, together with Prince Mirko and the Ministers who stayed behind, declared in the Pester Lloyd that Nikita was lying. They added that he could have sent no wireless from Brindisi, because there was at that time no receiving station in Montenegro, the French one at Podgorica having been destroyed at the order of the British Minister, Count de Salis, the doyen of the diplomatic corps. The King, by the way, had endeavoured for some time to rid himself of the diplomats, who were inconvenient witnesses of what was in progress. On December 31 a telegram was sent by the Ministers of France, Great Britain, Italy and Russia, in which they said that "Apparently our presence is displeasing to the King and he is trying to disengage himself from us. He has begged us on several occasions to depart and last night he insisted, with the asseveration that in forty-eight hours it would be too late. We suspect that His Majesty is playing a very ambiguous game...." And on January 9 the French Minister telegraphed, among other things, that "My Russian and English colleagues are of opinion that the King is merely performing a comedy with us and that this comedy will end in a tragedy for the belligerents." Nikita, on his arrival in France, proposed to settle down at Lyons, but the French authorities did not care for him to be so close to Switzerland, which was one of his intriguing centres. So they placed at his disposal a château near Bordeaux and it was not until he had made repeated requests that they permitted him to come to Neuilly, a suburb of Paris. He replaced Miuškević as Premier by Radović, the former victim of the Bomb Trial, hoping by this move towards the Left to silence his critics. But in August 1916 Radović presented a memorandum in favour of the formal union between Montenegro and Serbia, under King Peter's son and King Nicholas' grandson, Prince Alexander. The Montenegrin monarch was enraged at this and, after Radović had resigned, one after another all the Montenegrins of any standing withdrew from Nikita, who was openly working against the Serbs. He and the Princess Xenia conducted all the Government business, though he distributed among his tiny clique of adherents various empty titles. An aged friend of his, Eugene Popović, a native of Triest and a naturalized Italian, was made Premier, to give pleasure to Italy; a more active person was the War Minister, Hajduković, a former shipping contractor in Constantinople, where a long time ago he had been one of those young Montenegrins who, to the number of twenty, the Sultan used to educate—a process which, in the case of idle boys, was not very irksome. During the Great War Hajduković was invited by the Allies to quit Salonica, as they had certain suspicions against him. He had also, on behalf of his King, urged the Montenegrin volunteers who had managed to get to Salonica not to allow themselves to be commanded by Serbian or French officers, but to demand Montenegrin officers, of whom there was no adequate supply. These men had ultimately to be sent to Corsica and kept there till the end of the War. What Hajduković performed at Salonica, another royal agent, one Vuković, a bootmaker, attempted at Marseilles, where he continually went on board the vessels that were bringing Montenegrins and, to a smaller extent, other Yugoslavs from the United States and South America to the Salonica front. These travelled men were less easily influenced than those who obeyed Hajduković; but 300-400 did refuse to proceed. They were installed in a factory at Orange, where the Montenegrin Government fed them and paid them. Now and then they were encouraged by being told that if they had gone to the Front the Serbian officers would have flogged them.... And so the little Court at Neuilly occupied the years with many a congenial intrigue. Feelers were stretched out to this country, where an English edition of Radović's Montenegrin Bulletin, the pro-Yugoslav organ, was being published by my friend Vassilje Burić to the furious indignation of the busybodies who supported the King and of the Italian Embassy. From these two sources and from Neuilly the Foreign Office was bombarded with protests, begging it in the name of justice, etc., to put a stop to this dire scandal. One day a charming Foreign Office clerk, an acquaintance of mine, had Burić to lunch at the Royal Automobile Club; in the course of the meal he suggested that, as Burić was not looking well, they two should have a little holiday in France. Burić said he would be very glad to go with him, but he thought it would be nice to stay in England. The charming official held out for the Continent, and with such obstinacy that Burić at last put his hand upon his arm and invited him to promise that they would both of them come back to England. Thereupon the host acknowledged that a perfect flood of letters had been pouring on the Foreign Office with respect to the Montenegrin Bulletin, and they were weary of receiving them.... Sometimes the Neuilly Court was plunged in gloom, as when old Tomo Oraovac's little book appeared with seventy-five awkward questions to Nikita. For three days the King shut himself up in his room, trying to decide as to whether he should issue an answer. He decided to do nothing. Now and then a French review or newspaper referred to him. "The official courtesies extended by the French Government to Nicholas i. and his family should not deceive the public," said the eminent publicist Monsieur Gauvain in the Revue de Paris (March 1917). M. Gauvain showed that the Petrović dynasty constituted the sole obstacle to a union of Montenegro with Serbia and the rest of the Yugoslav lands. As Nikita drove past the office of the Revue de Paris he may have been thinking, rather wistfully, of that brave afternoon at Nikšić.[100] ... Sometimes the old man was worried by his sons. Peter, for example, who had been the spoilt child and who had been given posts for which he was unfitted, now discovered in himself, during the autumn of 1918, a great desire to obtain a certain Madame Violette Brunet, the legal wife of Monsieur Brunet, who was in Nikita's service. The ardent lover, regardless of the ancient Montenegrin custom which inflicted stoning on the guilty married woman, while the husband sometimes cut her nose off, wrote to his parents, asking them to arrange the matter, and when the ex-King raised objections, Peter blackmailed him by threatening to divulge to the world at large all the unsavoury details connected with Lovćen. "My dear son," wrote Nikita in November 1918,[101] "You write again asking me to send an emissary to represent myself and your mother in suing for the hand of the woman of your choice, failing this, you say you will make a scandal whereby the honour of both of us and of the whole family will suffer; to obviate this unpleasant possibility we may see our way to agree to your wish, but under the following conditions...."