ivilian population
had been equal to these emergencies and had each time thrust them back
to the coast. At Gaeta, between Rome and Naples, a very well-paid corps
was stationed--almost every man was either a commissioned or a
non-commissioned officer. The Italian Government was asked by Signor
Lazari, the Socialist deputy, for what purpose it allocated 300,000 lire
a month to support these peculiar troops. They were mostly
Montenegrins--relatives of Nikita, members of the five favoured
families, persons who were stranded and so forth; likewise at Gaeta were
a number of other Yugoslavs who had been liberated from their Italian
internment camps, but many of them, when they discovered what was
expected of them, revolted. Thirty or forty of them managed to escape to
France, and others to Montenegro, as for example the man who for twelve
years had been Nikita's porter. He and three others reached Cetinje one
day in August 1920 when I was there. They had with them a picture-card
of the sixty-nine officers of the Gaeta army. Every one knows every one
else in Montenegro and only two of these officers had held a previous
commission. According to Nikita's Premier, Jovan Plamenac, the Italian
Government considered this as the Montenegrin army and regarded (rather
optimistically) as a loan the money it contributed to keep it up. In
driblets the non-revolting part of this Gaeta army was taken to the
eastern shores of the Adriatic, for the purpose of making "incidents" in
Montenegro. There was a regular scale--so much in cash for the murder of
a prefect, so much for a deputy. One day the father of Andrija
Radovi['c], a man of over seventy, was cut down; they waited until
everyone had left the village to go to some fete in a neighbouring
village, and the old man defended himself to the last.

These emissaries from Gaeta, misguided Montenegrins, other Southern
Slavs and Italians, made considerable use of the mischievous speeches
that were sometimes heard in the British Parliament. They would explain
to some poor, ignorant mountain-dweller that such great people in
England were still discussing Nikita's return, and if he did return and
they had listened to the voice of Radovi['c], woe be to them. Some of
these wretched dupes would follow their seducers, who--I have no
doubt--would not only have declined his decorations if they had been
better informed, but would have placed the matter in the hands of their
solicitor, as Gabriel Rossetti