Seeing that the Adriatic problem, after all these months, had not been solved but on the contrary had been allowed to spread its poison more and more, one naturally wonders what was being done in Paris. The Conference was fortunate enough to have at its disposal, after the Armistice, the famous ethnologist and archæologist Sir Arthur Evans. This gentleman, whose distinctions are too numerous to mention (Fellow of Brasenose; twice President of the British Association; Keeper during twenty-four years of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford; D.Litt.; LL.D.; F.R.S.; P.S.A., and so forth), has for many years devoted himself to the eastern Adriatic—the second edition of his Through Bosnia and the Herzegovina on Foot appeared in 1877, his Illyrian Letters in 1878, his Slavs and European Civilization in the same year. He never ceased from that time onward to study these matters. "I think," he says in a letter to me from Youlbury, near Oxford, of which he kindly permits me to make any use I like, "that in some ways I have more title to speak on the Adriatic Question than any other Englishman, as Dalmatia was my headquarters for some years. Neither did I approach the question with any anti-Italian prejudices. I was so far recognized as a competent and moderate authority that I was asked by the Royal Geographical Society to give them a paper on the subject.... Anxious, with others friendly to both sides, to secure an equitable agreement between the Italians and Yugoslavs, I took part in a series of private conferences in London which led to a preliminary Agreement forming the basis on which the Congress at Rome approached the question. There the Agreement was ratified and publicly approved by Orlando. How Sonnino proceeded to try to wreck it, you will know. Finally (just before the Armistice, as it happened) there was to have been a new Congress of Nationalities at Paris, which I was asked to attend. It was stopped by the big Allies, as matters were thought too critical, owing to the submission of Bulgaria. But I thought it would be useful if I went to Paris all the same, and I obtained from the Foreign Office, War Office, etc., a passport viséd 'British War Mission.' Shortly after I arrived in Paris the Armistice was declared. Soon afterwards, owing to the departure of Mr. Steed and Dr. Seton-Watson, there was left literally no one among our countrymen at Paris who knew the intricacies of the Adriatic Question and the relations of Italy with the Yugoslavs, and the Yugoslav-Roumanian difficulties, etc. That being the case, Lord Derby asked me to be his go-between, and I had an immense lot of work thrown on my shoulders. I had gone to the expense of taking a large salon at the Hotel Continental, where I had private Conferences—the Yugoslav and Roumanian leaders there, for instance, discussed the Banat frontier question, and the conciliatory proposals made no doubt furthered the final solution, with which they harmonized. When there was a serious danger of a clash between the Italian army and the Serbian forces at Ljubljana, knowing the imminence of the danger I made such strong representations to Lord D., which he forwarded to Balfour, that immediate pressure was exercised at Rome, and the Italians just drew back in time. I also was able to convey strong monitions to the other side. I used to let our Ambassador have a short précis almost daily of affairs connected with those regions.... With great trouble I prevailed on the Yugoslav representatives to agree to a scheme, which I drew up, for the neutralization of the East Adriatic coastal waters, and this was taken up by the Americans—Colonel House inviting me to an interview on the subject, in which he expressed his approval. A copy was also sent to the F.O., and for this and for several other bits of work useful to the F.O. I received Balfour's official thanks. I had also many friendly conversations with prominent Italians in Paris, and in every way ingeminated agreement between them and the Southern Slavs. But, meanwhile, I exposed the Nationalist Italian campaign, to which Sonnino was privy, in the Manchester Guardian. Finally I went, at the end of 1918, for a short holiday to England, Lord Derby (with whom I always had the friendliest relations) giving me a diplomatic pass. When, however, early in January 1919 I prepared to return to Paris, where I had kept on my expensive rooms, I found difficulties in my way. Italian intrigue had apparently been on foot. I was advised to write to Lord Hardinge, and I told him briefly the circumstances. This great man never answered or acknowledged my letter, and it was only by making urgent personal representations at the F.O. that I finally got the answer that they refused me a passport.... I gather that it was not only Italian intrigue but the feeling that they did not want 'damned experts.' And so they blundered on, and to this day"—the letter is dated July 17, 1920—"nothing is settled on the Adriatic but unsettlement."

THE DUPES OF NIKITA IN MONTENEGRO

Meanwhile at intervals during this year there had been troubles in Montenegro. On three occasions the Italians at Antivari had endeavoured to extend their sphere of influence, but the armed civilian population had been equal to these emergencies and had each time thrust them back to the coast. At Gaeta, between Rome and Naples, a very well-paid corps was stationed—almost every man was either a commissioned or a non-commissioned officer. The Italian Government was asked by Signor Lazari, the Socialist deputy, for what purpose it allocated 300,000 lire a month to support these peculiar troops. They were mostly Montenegrins—relatives of Nikita, members of the five favoured families, persons who were stranded and so forth; likewise at Gaeta were a number of other Yugoslavs who had been liberated from their Italian internment camps, but many of them, when they discovered what was expected of them, revolted. Thirty or forty of them managed to escape to France, and others to Montenegro, as for example the man who for twelve years had been Nikita's porter. He and three others reached Cetinje one day in August 1920 when I was there. They had with them a picture-card of the sixty-nine officers of the Gaeta army. Every one knows every one else in Montenegro and only two of these officers had held a previous commission. According to Nikita's Premier, Jovan Plamenac, the Italian Government considered this as the Montenegrin army and regarded (rather optimistically) as a loan the money it contributed to keep it up. In driblets the non-revolting part of this Gaeta army was taken to the eastern shores of the Adriatic, for the purpose of making "incidents" in Montenegro. There was a regular scale—so much in cash for the murder of a prefect, so much for a deputy. One day the father of Andrija Radović, a man of over seventy, was cut down; they waited until everyone had left the village to go to some fête in a neighbouring village, and the old man defended himself to the last.

These emissaries from Gaeta, misguided Montenegrins, other Southern Slavs and Italians, made considerable use of the mischievous speeches that were sometimes heard in the British Parliament. They would explain to some poor, ignorant mountain-dweller that such great people in England were still discussing Nikita's return, and if he did return and they had listened to the voice of Radović, woe be to them. Some of these wretched dupes would follow their seducers, who—I have no doubt—would not only have declined his decorations if they had been better informed, but would have placed the matter in the hands of their solicitor, as Gabriel Rossetti threatened to do if he were ever elected to the Royal Academy. And yet, after the character of the scoundrel King was fully exposed, his advocates, so far as I know, had not the grace to own their error. Of course there was in Montenegro a certain amount of uninstigated unrest; the wine of politics, which they were now for the first time freely quaffing, had gone to their heads—it was youth against age, the students were enthusiastic Democrats, the peasants were sturdy Radicals and they did not always restrict themselves to dialectical arguments. A certain number of people had gone to live "u shumi"—"in the woods." But the reasons that impelled them were not so much their devotion to the ex-King, as their own criminal past or their poverty. Others again had taken to this life for what may be called reasons of "honour."[42] Among the brigands was a man who was captured on the borders of Herzegovina, and before his execution—he had murdered seven people—he declared that he was a patriot and had done all this for the sake of King Nicholas, his victims being members of the domineering party. But when reminded that one of them was a baby, he hung his head and said no more.... There was discontent produced by the high cost of living—as the Italians not only held Antivari but even fired on French boats that were taking supplies up the river Bojana, it was necessary to revictual all except the new parts of Montenegro from Kotor. The lack of petrol, from which even the American Red Cross units were suffering, compelled the authorities to fall back on ox-waggons, which at any rate are not expeditious. By the way, it was the staff of another mission, calling itself the International Red Cross, which was to blame for adding to the country's troubles; after they had been installed for a month or two at Cetinje the people themselves, and not the authorities, turned them out, on the ground that they had used the Red Cross to conceal their machinations in Nikita's interest. The Yugoslav Government was held up to reprobation in the British Parliament and press for having hampered more than one British mission in the work of relieving the Montenegrins. The resources of these missions appeared to be moderate—the head of one of them had a meeting with Colonels Fairclough and Anderson of the American Red Cross and suggested that they should provide him with the wherewithal for carrying on. But even if their resources had been scantier their co-operation would have been very welcome if they had satisfied the authorities that they were as non-political as the Americans. It was curious that those who in the British press ventilated the grievances of these missions were the same people who championed Nikita.

The Italians persevered in their manœuvres—Nikola Kovačević, the police commissary of Grahovo, sent in the month of May a confidential man of his to the Italian General at Dobrota, near Kotor. This man, who speaks perfect Italian, told the General that ever since 1916 he had haunted the forests as the leader of a band. Fifty persons, he said, had attached themselves to him; and he had now come in for a supply of arms and money, also for instructions. It would be impossible, said he, to endure the Serbian troops much longer in the country.

ITALIAN ENDEAVOURS

"You must hold out for a couple of months longer," said the General. "I can give you no money at present, but I can take you on a steamer to San Giovanni, where we have a camp of the King's friends; and from there you can easily go to Italy."

"I have given my word of honour," said the man, "that I will not go without my people. So I must first of all go back to ask them."

"In a military way," said the General, "the Serbs can now do nothing. They had tremendous losses in the war; and in two months the King of Montenegro will return or else there will be an Italian occupation. Work hard, my friend. I want you, in the first place, to set houses on fire; then to shoot officers and officials who are for Yugoslavia. You should also rob the transports."