In view of the persistent pro-Nikita propaganda which subsequently reared its foolish head in Great Britain, it is as well to note what were the sentiments of the Montenegrins towards their own country and their brother Serbs, and on the other hand how they regarded Nikita. Alone among the Allies the Montenegrin soldier received no decorations either in the Balkan wars or in the Great War, and yet he had formerly been so proud of such recognition that it had often been carved upon his tombstone, and when for one decoration there were two claimants a duel was frequently arranged in order to decide which was to be the recipient. But Nikita's régime of corruption and intrigue caused these marks of distinction to be conferred more and more upon police-agents and such like, so that in the Balkan War, when the heroes could no longer be counted, when more than five standard-bearers fell one after another in carrying the same standard and when it was proposed to decorate en bloc the Kuči brigade, the soldiers refused to accept what had been so profaned.

THE RIDDLE OF SARAJEVO

On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was murdered at Sarajevo.

In the course of July 1914 the Austro-Hungarian Government (wherein far more influence was exerted by Count Tisza, the wealthy and incorruptible, the vastly ambitious Magyar Prime Minister, than by the Foreign Minister, Count Berchtold, the courteous, somewhat frivolous man of the world who was doomed to execute reluctantly the orders of Berlin and be swept away by the resulting storm, while the brave and brutal Tisza, fighting for the glory of the Habsburgs and the greater glory of the Magyars, rode upon the storm for years)—the Austro-Hungarian Government in July 1914 dispatched to Sarajevo a commissioner for the purpose of investigating whether the Serbian authorities had anything to do with the Archduke's assassination. This official, Baron von Weisner, a very distinguished Professor of Political Economy who was a German Bohemian[73] with staunch German sympathies, reported in the same month that he was convinced that no accusation whatever could be levelled against Belgrade. (As a matter of fact the Serbian police, who had information that a plot was being hatched in Bosnia, gave warning to the Austrian authorities; but no notice was taken of this, not even when a similar warning was uttered on June 21 by the Serbian Minister at Vienna, nor were any special precautions laid down for the Archduke's safety. It was all rather mysterious.) "Byzantium, the everlasting and unconquerable Byzantium," says an Austrian publicist,[74] "had won another victory.... The Habsburg Empire," says he, "only wished to defend herself against those invisible and irrepressible intrigues." And after denouncing the Serbs for throwing a spark into the powder barrel on June 28, 1914, he accounts for their conduct by writing that "it is the tradition of nomad blood to tear down ancient, noble palaces, replacing them by nomad huts." What we know is that General Potiorek, the Governor of Bosnia, who had urged Francis Ferdinand and his wife to continue their programme after the failure of the first attempt at assassination before lunch, was never invited to explain anything—unfortunately for Austria he was placed in command of the "punitive expedition" into Serbia. Other incidents on which a light may some day be thrown were the very unceremonious funeral arrangements for the murdered couple (though this may very likely have been due to the High Chamberlain's personal hatred of the Archduke), and the fact that an Imperial Commission was sent to Konopiště, the Archduke's Bohemian estate, to seize his papers. It was there that he had lately been confabulating with the German Emperor; and Count Berchtold had visited the place on the day after the Kaiser's departure to try to ascertain what had occurred.... It was also at Konopiště that Francis Ferdinand, who was threatened with hereditary madness, had shot a gamekeeper dead. Knowing that the Archduke was as good a shot as he was insignificant in horsemanship, this had excited great attention in the highest circles, coming as it did after other scenes of violence.... In contrast with all these semi-mysteries it is clear that Serbia had nothing whatever to gain by the Archduke's disappearance, and although Austria had time and again endeavoured to pick a quarrel with her she had managed to avoid a situation which, after the two recent wars, would be perilous in the extreme. The Serbian Press, which enjoyed a complete freedom, was naturally violent in tone when it observed that the Austro-Hungarian Government was doing little to control the demonstrations hostile to Serbia. Houses of prominent Serbs were looted and gutted at Sarajevo, while similar scenes took place—with the connivance of the authorities—in other large towns of the Monarchy. But the Belgrade populace, uninflamed by their Press, conducted themselves with great moderation. The stories circulated in Austria-Hungary of several Magyar journalists having been murdered were absolutely false. Just as false were the rumours of a demonstration against the Austrian Minister at the funeral of M. Hartwig, his Russian colleague, although Serbian public opinion ascribed the sudden death of this powerful friend of theirs to a cup of poisoned coffee at the Austrian Legation. Hartwig has been criticized for his encouragement of Serbia's idea of expansion and for having fostered anti-Austrian propaganda—of course it was a very wicked thing, from the Austrian point of view, to think of the day when the Serbs might be joined to their unredeemed brethren; and as for the blessed word "propaganda," which covers everything from the mildest expression of opinion to assassination, there has been no responsible Austrian so reckless as to accuse the Serbs or M. Hartwig of having had recourse to methods that approached in wrong-doing their own notorious (and unsuccessful) forgeries.

Let us address three questions to those who carried on a calumnious campaign against Serbia:

(a) Why was the Sarajevo trial conducted behind a closed door? If the crime was instigated and perpetrated by Serbia, the Habsburg Monarchy, which at the time of the trial had already declared war on Serbia, had every interest in establishing with all publicity the guilt and the complicity of Serbian circles.

(b) Why were the evidence of the witnesses and the declarations of the authors of the assassination not published? It was only in 1918 that the Austrian Government, with the help of a professor of Berlin University, published a few facts taken from the proceedings of the trial. Although in this book[75] a great deal of material importance has been omitted—for example, the declarations of the witnesses as well as the last declarations of the accused, nevertheless that which we have before us constitutes one of the most terrible accusations against the Habsburg Monarchy. The young accused persons were not afraid to state, even behind closed doors in a barrack-room, some bitter truths concerning Austria-Hungary. One can have some idea of what they would have said in a public trial from the results of the famous trials of Zagreb and of Friedjung. All the accused persons, as well as their accomplices, declared that the decision to kill the Archduke was an act of their own personal will and that nobody incited or ordered them to make the attempt, least of all any authority of the Kingdom of Serbia. The crime was the personal act of Bosnian patriots who believed that they were serving their oppressed people. "In Bosnia," said the Minister Burian—"in Bosnia, there is no policy, there is only administration."

(c) Why did the Sarajevo police and Austro-Hungarian official circles conduct themselves so strangely with respect to the bomb-thrower Čabrinović, a notorious anarchist and son of a Sarajevo police spy, who had on a former occasion been expelled by the police from Sarajevo? Later on, after the Belgrade police had been obliged, owing to the intervention of the Austrian Consulate, to allow him to stay in Belgrade, he returned to Sarajevo and was quite unmolested by the police, whose precautions a few years previously, at the time of the visit of Francis Joseph, had gone so far as to expel, as suspected persons, two members of the Bosnian Parliament.

The sole charge that could be laid, not against Serbia but against a Serbian subject, concerned the relations of the subordinate officer Tankosić with the authors of the crime. It was asserted that he knew of the plan and that he helped the assassins to procure money and weapons. The accused definitely said that he exercised no influence on their decision, which had been taken before conversation with him. But even supposing that he was an accomplice, it is evident that the whole Serbian nation and especially the Serbian Government is not identical with an officer who, on account of other troubles with the Ministry of War, had already been removed from the active service list.[76] When the Austrian ultimatum was transmitted to the Serbian Government, Tankosić was immediately arrested, so that his guilt and complicity might be enquired into and established. Serbia could not do more than that. But the whole Serbian people, in Serbia and out of Serbia, was declared guilty of the crime, and immediate steps were taken to carry out the sentence. The unprecedented atrocities committed by the Austro-Hungarian army in Serbia were to be the expiation of an imaginary crime, and such proceedings, which recall the times of Attila, are shielded by the illustrious name of the aforementioned Professor Kohler, whose reputation it was to be the most democratic of German jurists. All his previous theories on crime, causality and responsibility became void; we see him adopt the monstrous theory according to which every act of private persons is the responsibility of the whole nation.

It remained for Nikita, a man of Serbian blood, a man whose verses had been laden with love for the Serbian nation, it remained for this shameless Prince to charge his brothers with the crime. So implacable was the old man's hatred of Serbia that when President Wilson arrived in Europe he immediately wrote[77] to him, in his indifferent French, for fear, he said, lest the intrigues conducted by the Serbs or their accomplices should precede him in capturing the President's sympathies. "In spite of their perfidy," said he, "I was the first to lend them a hand by being the first to declare war against Austria, although I was certain that the provocation originated on their side by the Sarajevo murders and their Black Hand.... Horrible thought that this country refuses to realize the crime it has committed, for which it is responsible to mankind no less than William!"