uld last two years for certain, and how many more I
did not know. When I told them that Russia would crumple like wet
brown paper, they said I ought to be ashamed of myself. Nor when I
added that I expected to live to see England fighting the Russians
would they believe me.

And I saw the steamer as typical of England. Masses and masses of
blind people, wilfully blind, who had never even troubled to try and
find out whither they were going, but filled with an overwhelming
conceit. Some even genuinely believed the war would be nearly over
by the time we reached Liverpool. I could not help hoping we should
meet my friend the Breslau, just to bring them up against facts. "If
these are the English" I used to say to myself, "what an hell of a
mess there will be before this is finished." And the war lasted more
than two years, and we have already fought the Russians.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE YEARS OF THE WAR

THE first thing I did in London was to send back to King Petav the
Order of St Sava he had bestowed upon me, with a letter telling him
I had heard the attack upon Austria freely discussed the previous
year, and that I considered him and his people guilty of the
greatest crime in history.

I will add here only a few notes on some of the events of the next
few years which concerned the lands we have been considering. First,
I ascertained that in Cetinje the Archduke's murder was accepted
unhesitatingly as Serb work. None even suggested that any one else
had been responsible, and it was thought rather a good way of
showing patriotism. Montenegro desiring, like many greater Powers,
to obtain territory, declared war and occupied the strip of land
between the bay of Trieste and Antivari, which the Austrians
evacuated almost at once. Prince Petar led the Montenegrin force,
and to the pain and surprise of the Great Serbian party they found
that such was the reputation of the Montenegrin army that a very
large part of the Serb population fled along with the Austrians
without waiting to be "liberated." Even the Orthodox priest of
Spizza fled, and the lot of those who remained was not too happy.
Being liberated by Montenegrins is a painful process. Montenegrin
troops also crossed the Bosnian frontier, but did not get far, and
failed to carry out their boast that they were going to Serajevo.

When the great Russian retreat was taking place Montenegro began to
waver. Without Russia it was believed that the war must collap