ompletely. Some people
think that Foreign Affairs can be successfully carried on by Prime
Ministers and Secretaries of State who speak nothing but English. I
submit that the above information could never have been extracted
through an interpreter. For an interpreter gives the other party
time to think.

By the end of a week I was back in London. It was not quite a year
since the death of Alexander. Nikita had shown plainly that he
regarded the event as a very important step in Serb history. And he
wanted me to go to Belgrade. But to me the situation was rather
obscure. I knew Montenegro was unpopular in Serbia. Perhaps Nikita
did not.

For purposes of their own the Montenegrins had risked my life
--according to their own statements--by sending me to Ipek. True, I
did not then set any value whatever on my life, so was not so brave
by a long way as they imagined, but all the same they had had no
right to do it. If I went to Belgrade at all, it should not be for
an unknown purpose and as emissary of Nikita.

Meanwhile, King Petar was necessarily entirely in the hands of the
Pretorian guard, which had put him on the throne and could send him
after Alexander if he did not please them. They soon occupied high
positions. Colonel Maschin, who had himself helped kill his
sister-in-law Draga, was made head of the General Staff, and Colonel
Damian Popovitch, the leader of the gang, who has since become
notorious for atrocities, even in the Balkans, was given the command
of the Belgrade-Danube Division, and King Petar obediently signed an
amended Constitution, which greatly curtailed his own power. An
attempt on the part of certain officers to resist the regicides was
crushed, and several were imprisoned. Serbia was, and remained,
under military rule, the object of which was the reconstruction of
Great Serbia. The Serbo-Bulgar question rapidly became acute. Prince
Ferdinand met King Petar informally in Nish railway station. In
October 1904, King Petar visited Sofia. The visit was a failure.
Prince Ferdinand was in favour of an autonomous Macedonia. The Serb
Press would not hear of such a thing. Pashitch, then Minister for
Foreign Affairs, declared that such an autonomy would injure Serbia
and be all in favour of Bulgaria. Simitch, diplomatic agent at
Sofia, insisted that under such an autonomy Bulgarian annexation was
concealed and should that take place, the Serbs would fight till
either Serbia or Bulgaria was destroyed. Both