ul condition.
All the roads are covered with starving and dying people. The troops are
eating dead horses and roots. There have been violent snow blizzards all
over the mountains. We saw some of your people, too, doctors and nurses,
they were going off to Ipek, 'dans une condition deplorable.' We came
across the mountains; one of us is lost. Awful country, nowhere to land
if anything went wrong and one of our machines has not arrived. God
knows what has happened to them. The rest of us are all coming along on
foot. We burnt fifty motor cars yesterday, monsieur, that made a blaze."

We asked them what sort of a time they had had in Serbia; but much of
their answer is unpublishable.

"Each time we ascended every Serbian regiment fired at us. Once we came
down over a battalion and the whole lot fired volleys, and when we
landed and stood in front of our machine holding up our hands," they
pantomimed, "they continued to fire at us. Then they came and took us
prisoners, and were going to shoot us, although one of us had a military
medal. A schoolmaster recognised us as French and rescued us. Our
machine was broken; but we could get no transport and had to walk thirty
kilometres back to our base without food.

"Another time we were chasing an Austrian, the Serbian batteries fired
at us, monsieur, not at the enemy. Our officers had to send from the
aerodrome to tell them to stop."

As we were going to bed the Montenegrin doctor came in.

"I am sent by the governor, monsieur," said he. "We do not consider it
safe, this boat idea. Austrian submarines are everywhere, and the
governor would feel it as a personal responsibility if you were drowned.
We will provide carriages to Alessio and thence arrange horses--only one
day and a half on to Durazzo. Thence Essad Pasha will give you his motor
boat and you can easily get to Valona."

Our men groaned at the thought of more journeying. They were all
thoroughly fed up with the road, though personally we rather liked the
idea. We had heard that Durazzo was very interesting, and would have
liked to have met Essad, though we did not know just how his politics
were trending. We decided to see the Italian consul once more.

Next day we hunted up the mayor, Mahram Beg, a Turk, for he also could
give us a "Besa" if necessary. He was at last discovered, a little
crumpled looking man in an office. We were not allowed to interview him
in private, but a Montenegrin was there and all convers