oney, and his body cut to
pieces and hidden. The Montenegrin peasants had declared that,
contrary to their advice, he had gone over the Albanian frontier,
and the remains had only been accidentally discovered. Lobatcheff
had had the details from Dr. Perisitch, the Prince's physician, who
had made the post mortem.
Next day the Austrian attache came laughing, and told how some Czech
tourists had just arrived, and at once bought and put on fezzes as a
protection against the "fanatical inhabitants," who, so they had
been told in Cetinje, had lately murdered a Czech. I gave him
Lobatcheff's report, which put a very different complexion on the
matter. When it was too late Lobatcheff came to beg me to consider
the tale of the murder as strictly confidential. The Austrians were
on no account to hear of it! Nor could I make him see that it was
only fair to warn others beside Russians and English. In fact
Lobatcheff's ideas were little less crude than those of Montenegro.
Like the Cetinje folk, he expected that the result of the
Anglo-Russian agreement would be that Russia would get all she
wanted, and was vexed that I took up the cause of the Albanians. The
more I saw of the Albanians and of the Slav intrigues for their
destruction, the more I thought Albania worthy of help. The
enterprising and industrious Albanian was worth a dozen of the
conceited idle Montenegrins. Except Prince Nikola and the hotelier
Vuke Vuletitch, it was hard to find a Montenegrin in Cetinje who
used his brains--if he had any. An educated Albanian is often a
highly cultivated man, whereas even Lobatcheff was forced to admit
that Paris and Petersburg could not make more of a Montenegrin than
a Petar Plamenatz or a Marusitch. Nor was the Austrian Consul Kral
better pleased with my Albanian travels. It was reported to him that
whereas the mountains had formerly been pro-Austrian, they had
become, since my visit, entirely pro-English. He concluded,
ridiculously enough, that I was sent by the British Government, and
made a long report to Vienna about me, as I ascertained later. I was
unaware then of the activity being shown by the Franco-Russian
combine and England, and thought his anxiety overdone. To an outside
observer, however, Anglo-Russian activity also seemed perilous.
Baron Greindl, Belgian Minister at Berlin at that very time, wrote
(July 4, Letter 49): "I asked the Secretary of State yesterday ...
if he had not yet received the English proposals
|