ood or
munitions, while other boats were not molested. An investigation
showed that the shipping news had been telegraphed to Prince Peter,
and he in his turn handed it on to the Austrians. The Prince's
egregious parent wanted to be in a position to say that, owing to the
lack of food and munitions, he had been compelled to surrender. One of
his final acts was to summon the Skup[vs]tina, as he did not wish to
be saddled with the responsibility of making peace. At a secret
sitting on December 11, 1915,--when the retreating Serbs were in San
Giovanni, Scutari and Podgorica,--the Government declared that they
had no resources, that the Entente could not assist them and that they
would wage war for so long as they had the means--in other words, that
the war would cease. It was continued, however, by those Montenegrin
troops between Kola[vs]in and Bielo Polje, who--even after the fall
of Lov['c]en on January 10, and the flowing of the Austrian army
towards Scutari--were ordered to make a counter-offensive, during
which they had over 1500 dead and wounded. The reason for this was
that Nikita wished to prevent his army from escaping to Scutari; he
was afraid lest, if they escaped with the Serbs, they would dethrone
him forthwith. Afterwards he gave an explanation that he had ordered
the Chief of Staff, Yanko Vukoti['c], to rescue the army, which order
he alleged he had wirelessed from Brindisi. Vukoti['c], together with
Prince Mirko and the Ministers who stayed behind, declared in the
_Pester Lloyd_ that Nikita was lying. They added that he could have
sent no wireless from Brindisi, because there was at that time no
receiving station in Montenegro, the French one at Podgorica having
been destroyed at the order of the British Minister, Count de Salis,
the doyen of the diplomatic corps. The King, by the way, had
endeavoured for some time to rid himself of the diplomats, who were
inconvenient witnesses of what was in progress. On December 31 a
telegram was sent by the Ministers of France, Great Britain, Italy and
Russia, in which they said that "Apparently our presence is
displeasing to the King and he is trying to disengage himself from us.
He has begged us on several occasions to depart and last night he
insisted, with the asseveration that in forty-eight hours it would be
too late. We suspect that His Majesty is playing a very ambiguous
game...." And on January 9 the French Minister telegraphed, among
other things, that "My Ru