n in time and place."

And in the summer of that very year the Tsar received Petar
Karageorgevitch, the exiled claimant to the Serbian throne, and
started upon her Great Serbian intrigue.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BOSNIA IN 1906. THE PLOT THICKENS.

In the summer of 1906, when I visited Bosnia, the plot was already
far advanced. Petar Karageorgevitch was on the throne of Serbia, and
Russia, who had had a bad set-back in the Far East, was again
turning Balkanwards.

To visit Bosnia a visa was necessary, a sure sign that a land
suffers from "unrest." To obtain it I went to the Austrian Embassy.
The young gentleman who attended to passports was out, and I was
bidden sit on a bench with a number of rather poverty-stricken
Austrians. When the gentleman appeared he was vexed to find so much
work, and refused most of the applicants roughly. Their papers were
incorrect or he was dissatisfied with their reasons for wishing to
return home. One "cheeked" him considerably in German, and I
laughed. It therefore never occurred to him that I was English. I am
in fact, when travelling, rarely taken for English, which is often
convenient. He addressed me sharply in German: "You want to go to
Bosnia?"

"Yes, please." He took me for a Bosnian, and I let him do
it.

"When did you leave Bosnia?"

"In the summer of 1900."

"What have you been doing in London?"

"Writing and other things."

This alarmed him and he said sternly: "You must tell me exactly why
you left Bosnia."

"Because I am English," I said politely, "and it was time to come
home."

I pressed my passport upon him, which he had been too haughty to
look at before. Then there was hurrying and scurrying and orders and
abuse of the doorkeeper and much confusion, and I was conducted to a
drawing-room and apologized to (for having been treated as an
Austrian subject) and given the visa. I enjoyed the episode
immensely, and incidentally learnt how the official mind regarded
Bosniaks. My previous experience in Serbia caused me to go in search
of a new-laid Serbian visa also, in case I wished to cross the
frontier. Militchevitch this time was very friendly, joked about the
awful bill for cypher telegrams which I had run up for the Serbian
Government in 1902, and promised to send me some introductions to
leading Bosniaks.

At Trieste great events were in progress. The Emperor Franz Joseph
was to hold big military manoeuvres at Trebinje in the Herzegovina
and a naval r