ssian and English colleagues are of opinion
that the King is merely performing a comedy with us and that this
comedy will end in a tragedy for the belligerents." Nikita, on his
arrival in France, proposed to settle down at Lyons, but the French
authorities did not care for him to be so close to Switzerland, which
was one of his intriguing centres. So they placed at his disposal a
chateau near Bordeaux and it was not until he had made repeated
requests that they permitted him to come to Neuilly, a suburb of
Paris. He replaced Miu[vs]kevi['c] as Premier by Radovi['c], the
former victim of the Bomb Trial, hoping by this move towards the Left
to silence his critics. But in August 1916 Radovi['c] presented a
memorandum in favour of the formal union between Montenegro and
Serbia, under King Peter's son and King Nicholas' grandson, Prince
Alexander. The Montenegrin monarch was enraged at this and, after
Radovi['c] had resigned, one after another all the Montenegrins of any
standing withdrew from Nikita, who was openly working against the
Serbs. He and the Princess Xenia conducted all the Government
business, though he distributed among his tiny clique of adherents
various empty titles. An aged friend of his, Eugene Popovi['c], a
native of Triest and a naturalized Italian, was made Premier, to give
pleasure to Italy; a more active person was the War Minister,
Hajdukovi['c], a former shipping contractor in Constantinople, where a
long time ago he had been one of those young Montenegrins who, to the
number of twenty, the Sultan used to educate--a process which, in the
case of idle boys, was not very irksome. During the Great War
Hajdukovi['c] was invited by the Allies to quit Salonica, as they had
certain suspicions against him. He had also, on behalf of his King,
urged the Montenegrin volunteers who had managed to get to Salonica
not to allow themselves to be commanded by Serbian or French officers,
but to demand Montenegrin officers, of whom there was no adequate
supply. These men had ultimately to be sent to Corsica and kept there
till the end of the War. What Hajdukovi['c] performed at Salonica,
another royal agent, one Vukovi['c], a bootmaker, attempted at
Marseilles, where he continually went on board the vessels that were
bringing Montenegrins and, to a smaller extent, other Yugoslavs from
the United States and South America to the Salonica front. These
travelled men were less easily influenced than those who obeyed
Hajduk