Note 62 — VII

Whatever be the limitations of the Dom as a newspaper—it is almost exclusively occupied with the person and programme of Mr. Radić—yet that brings with it the virtue, most exceptional in Yugoslavia, of refusing to engage in polemics. This would otherwise take up a good deal of its space, as Radić has become such a bogey-man that nothing is too ridiculous for his opponents to believe. A Czech newspaper not long ago informed the world that this monstrous personage had told an interviewer that not only had Serbian soldiers in Macedonia been murdering 200 children but that they had roasted and consumed them. Furthermore Radić had said that the British Minister to Yugoslavia had called upon him and had asked his advice with some persistence, not even wishing to leave Radić time to reflect, as to whether the Prince-Regent should rule in Russia, while an English Prince should be invited to occupy the Yugoslav throne. The first of these remarks proved conclusively, said a number of Belgrade papers, that Radić was a knave and by the second he had demonstrated that he was an imbecile. And my friend Mr. Leiper of the Morning Post speculated as to whether he was more likely to end his days in a lunatic asylum or a prison. But Radić was caring about none of these things; his birthday happened at about this time and some 30,000 of his adherents came to do him honour at his birthplace, over 500 of them on decorated horses having met him at Sisak station the previous evening. When I asked him what he had to say about the two afore-mentioned remarks he gave me an amusing account of how the interviewer had appreciated the various samples of wine which he (Radić) had just brought down from his vineyard. The conversation lasted for about four hours, and in the course of it Radić mentioned that a certain Moslem deputy from Novi Bazar, irritated by the fact that Mr. Drašković, Minister of the Interior, found no pleasure in his continued presence on a commission of inquiry in the region of Kossovo, had been throwing out very dark hints about a child which he accused the Serbs of killing in the stormy days of 1878, and then relating to the Tsar that this dastardly deed had been committed by the Turks. This was the basis of that part of the interview. As for the other absurdity, it was mentioned that some courtiers had told the Prince-Regent that he alone could establish an orderly Government in Russia, whereupon Radić observed that England and France were not likely to allow one person to reign both there and in Yugoslavia. And when I asked why he had not published this explanation in his paper, he said that he couldn't very well charge a guest with having liked his wine too much.