Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle | Page 2

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 race by the Powers at the Berlin Congress. To me it sounded then fantastic--operatic. I had yet to learn that the opera bouffe of the Balkans is written in blood and that those who are dead when the curtain falls, never come to life again.
So much for Montenegro. We returned after a run to Trebinje, Serajevo and Mostar, to the Dalmatian coast and Trieste.
First impressions are vivid. There is a certain interest in the fact that I recorded Spalato