and said they hoped they would never come back, so that they could
be replaced by a better population. They were anxious to consolidate
their position in Bosnia as fast as possible, so as to be ready for
a forward move. "Nach Salonik" was a favourite topic of
conversation. A friendly chemist at Fotcha even invited me to have
tea with him under the Austrian flag at Salonika, that day three
years, that is October 1909, by which time he fully expected to be
established there. He considered the Government had been shamefully
slow. They ought already to be well on the way there. I travelled by
train from Ragusa to Mostar with a General and his daughter. She,
who had just arrived, looked with wonder at the bare grey rocks we
passed and asked, "Why ever did we take all these stones, father?"

"Part of the price we paid Europe for Salonika, my dear!" he
replied.

I wintered at Serajevo, and by taking my phonograph to the Moslem
coffee-houses gained some popularity, for there was but one other
such instrument in Serajevo, and you had to pay to hear it. The
Moslems, I soon learnt, wanted only the Padishah and hoped for the
return of the Turk. Several had lived long years in Egypt. But when
I told them I meant to go there they very earnestly begged me not
to. All the English were very soon to be driven out or done away
with, and the company unanimously agreed that it would be a very
great pity that I, who had been so kind as to play the "monogram" to
them for nothing, should be killed out there. I asked them to tell
me truthfully what it was that the English did that was so bad. They
replied very reasonably: "Everything. Nothing you do is as we do.
You make yourselves fine houses and streets in Cairo. Why do you not
make them in your own land and leave our land to us? We hate your
things. The land is now not our land. It is all Alia Franga." You
do not like our ways. We do not like yours. Go and leave our land to
us."

We should say just the same thing, only less politely, were we
"occupied" by the Japanese. They were kind enough to say that the
English were not so bad as the Schwabs, but I fear this was only out
of gratitude for phonograph favours.

In a private room upstairs they sang me a special ballad of the
Greco-Turkish War of 1897, which began by describing how Prince
George of Greece and the British Consul and some other European
officials drank beer together and when they had drunk too much,
planned a treacherous