simple folk in
1919. The Moslem took to accepting Italian money and then honourably
informing the Yugoslav authorities that they had been appointed as
agents of Italy; they offered to capture the Franciscan priests with
whose help the Italians were trying to secure the Catholics; and as for
the cash, it seems mostly to have been spent in a convivial fashion by
the Moslems and the Serbs together. This friendship appears likely to
continue, for the Serbian authorities, so far from countenancing such
pranks as that of the pig's head, do not even propose to reconsecrate
their ancient church of Petka. When this building was made into a
mosque, the Moslem still permitted the Christian women to come and pray
there, while if a Christian man was sick they let him leave a jar of
water in the mosque all night, so that it might acquire certain
medicinal properties. It is the intention of the Serbs not to restore
the church to Christian worship, but to turn it into a museum.

With the frontier then being drawn along the Drin, towards the Adriatic,
the famous villages of Plav and Gusinje would definitely pass to
Yugoslavia, in accordance with the wishes of a deputation sent by them
to Belgrade in 1919. The well-meaning British champions of Gusinje, who
maintain that this village is furiously antagonistic to the Slav and is
ready to struggle to the uttermost rather than be incorporated in a Slav
kingdom, these champions do not, I think, draw a sufficient distinction
between Montenegro and Yugoslavia. Plav, with its mostly Christian
population, and Gusinje, where the Moslem preponderates, refused at the
time of the Berlin Congress to be given to Montenegro, with which they
had certain local quarrels. Nicholas reported to the Powers which had
awarded him these places that they were obdurate, for which reason he
was given in their stead a much-desired strip of coast, down to
Dulcigno, and nothing could have suited that astute monarch better.
Nikita--to call him by his familiar name--imagined that the two villages
would eventually fall to Montenegro, because of the formidable mountains
which divide them from the rest of Albania; the road from Gusinje to
Scutari is very long and very arduous. When Montenegro succeeded in
capturing Plav in 1912, a certain Muhammedan priest of that place joined
the Orthodox Church and was appointed a major in the Montenegrin army.
He acted as the president of a court-martial, and in that capacity is
reputed