Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle | Page 2

Cattaro and there every one, Baedeker included, said it was
correct to drive up to Cetinje. Then you could drive down next day and
be able to say ever afterwards, "I have travelled in Montenegro."
It was in Cetinje that it was borne in on me that I had found the "quite
new place" which I sought. Thus Fate led me to the Balkans.
Cetinje then was a mere red-roofed village conspicuous on the
mountain-ringed plain. Its cottages were but one storeyed for the most
part, and contained some three thousand inhabitants. One big building
stood up on the left of the road as the traveller entered.
"No. That is not the palace of the Prince," said the driver. "It is the
Austro-Hungarian Legation."
Austria had started the great Legation building competition which
occupied the Great Powers for the next few years. Each Power strove to
erect a mansion in proportion to the amount of "influence" it sought to
obtain in this "sphere." Russia at once followed. Then came Italy, with
France hard on her heels. England, it is interesting to note, started last;
by way of economizing bought an old house, added, tinkered and
finally at great expense rebuilt nearly the whole of it and got it quite
done just before the outbreak of the Great War, when it was beginning
to be doubtful if Montenegro would ever again require a British
Legation. But this is anticipating.
In 1900 most of the Foreign Ministers Plenipotentiary dwelt in cottages
or parlour-boarded at the Grand Hotel, the focus of civilization, where

they dined together at the Round Table of Cetinje, presided over by
Monsieur Piguet, the Swiss tutor of the young Princes; a truly tactful
man whom I have observed to calm a heated altercation between two
Great Powers by switching off the conversation from such a delicate
question as: "Which Legation has the finest flag, France or Italy?" to
something of international interest such as: "Which washer-woman in
Cetinje gets up shirt fronts best?" For Ministers Plenipotentiary, when
not artificially inflated with the importance of the land they represent,
are quite like ordinary human beings.
Their number and variety caused me to ask: "But why are so many
Powers represented in such a hole of a place?" And the Italian architect
who was designing the Russian Legation replied, more truly than he
was perhaps aware: "Because Montenegro is the matchbox upon which
the next European war will be lighted!"
Cetinje was then extraordinarily picturesque. The Prince did all he
could to emphasize nationality. National dress was worn by all. So fine
was the Court dress of Montenegro that oddly enough Prince Nikola
was about the only ruling Sovereign in Europe who really looked like
one. The inroads of Cook's tourists had stopped his former custom of
hobnobbing with visitors, and he dodged with dignity and skill the
attempts of American snapshotters to corner him and say: "How do,
Prince!"
A vivid picture remains in my mind of the Royal Family as it filed out
of church on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. The Prince,
heavy-built, imposing, gorgeous; his hair iron grey, ruddy-faced,
hook-nosed, keen-eyed. Danilo, his heir, crimped, oiled and
self-conscious, in no respect a chip of the old block, who had married
the previous year, Jutta, daughter of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg
Strelitz, who, on her reception into the Orthodox Church, took the
name of Militza. Montenegro was still excited about the wedding. She
looked dazzlingly fair among her dark "in-laws." Old Princess Milena
came, stately and handsome, her hair, still black, crowning her head
with a huge plait. Prince Mirko, the second son, was still a slim and
good looking youth. Petar, the youngest, a mere child, mounted a little

white pony and galloped past in the full dress of an officer, reining up
and saluting with a tiny sword as he passed his father. The crowd
roared applause. It was all more like a fairy tale than real life. But the
black coated Ministers Plenipotentiary were all quite real.
From Cetinje we went to Podgoritza where for the first time I saw
Albanians. Podgoritza was full of them, all in national dress, for
Montenegro had as yet done little towards suppressing this. Nor in this
first visit did I go further inland.
But I had found "the land where I could have a complete change"; had
learnt, too, of the Great Serbian Idea; had had the meaning of the
Montenegrin cap explained to me; and been told how the reconstruction
of the Great Serb Empire of the Middle Ages was what Montenegro
lived for. Also that the first step in that direction must be the taking of
the Sanjak of Novibazar, which had been formed as a barrier between
the two branches of the Serb