[80] But this is less rigorously upheld in the towns if it is a question of their honour or of cash. When, to give an example, Scutari was occupied by the Montenegrins at the beginning of the Great War, a Catholic Albanian merchant came to a Montenegrin lawyer and asked him to institute proceedings against another merchant who had gravely and publicly insulted him. The lawyer drew up the complaint, for which he charged the small sum of 20 perpers (= francs), but although his client was a wealthy man this fee appalled him; he resolved to take no further steps. In general, the Scutarenes prefer to suffer imprisonment rather than part with any money. And the willingness of the Albanians not to look a gift-horse in the mouth could often be observed at Podgorica between the years 1909 and 1912, when Nicholas of Montenegro would occasionally appear in the market-place with a supply of caps and other articles for the Albanians. These he would distribute, having first exclaimed: "Kačak Karadak Kralj Nikola barabar!" (that is to say, "The Albanian and the Montenegrin are equal in the eyes of King Nicholas!"). Kačak is a word meaning a brigand, an outlaw; the Montenegrins apply it to their neighbours, and these latter, throwing their new caps in the air and cheering for Nikita, did not mind what he called them.
[81] Turkey in Europe. London, 1900.
[82] Ein Vorstoss in die Nordalbanischen Alpen. Vienna, 1905.
[83] Italy in the Balkans at this Hour. Naples, 1913.
[84] L'Albanie Independente, by Dukagjin-Zadeh Basri Bey. Paris, 1920.
[85] Cf. the New Statesman, February 5, 1921.
[86] When the Serbian troops arrived at Priština in the Balkan War they discovered among the inhabitants of that place a man who had not left his house for some fourteen years. We are told (in The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, etc., vol. v. London, 1921) of my Lord Eyre of Eyrescourt in County Galway "that not one of the windows of his castle was made to open, but luckily he had no liking for fresh air." Yet probably his lordship's countenance had not the pallor of the man of Priština, because "from an early dinner to the hour of rest he never left his chair, nor did the claret ever quit the table."
[87] When this account of the incident was published in my small book, A Difficult Frontier, it caused a reviewer, one I. M., in The Near East to observe, that I "can be jubilant when a Montenegrin in Yugoslav pay insults a British officer, Captain Brodie." Since the Editor permits such hopeless nonsense to appear in his columns one may be excused, I think, for not taking The Near East very seriously. It is not worth while informing them how General Phillips of Scutari dealt with Captain Brodie.
[88] Referring in the Nation and Athenæum to Sir Charles's latest work, Hinduism and Buddhism (3 vols.), Mr. Edwyn Bevan says that "for a lonely student, who had done nothing in his life but study, the book would have been a sufficiently remarkable achievement. That a man who has been an active public servant and held high and responsible offices should have found time for the studies which this book presupposes is marvellous. It is a masterly survey.... There can be few men who have Sir Charles's gift of linguistic accomplishments, who can not only read Sanskrit and Pali, but know enough of the Dravidian languages of Southern India to check statements by reference to the original writings, and add to this a knowledge of Chinese and Tibetan."
[89] Cf. pp. 72-73, Vol. I.