I was exceedingly afraid some fool would start firing, for they were getting tired of doing nothing on the frontier in the cold. All the Corps Diplomatique, save Austria, interviewed me, anxious to hear how the Constitution was working in Albania. None of them had any belief in it. The French Minister even said it would require twenty Napoleons to solve Turkey's many problems, and the Turks had not one.
The Prince sent for me, and I saw he, too, expected war, for he questioned me about the Red Cross, and asked me whether I could get medical aid from England.
The steamer in which I left Cattaro was empty of goods because of the boycott, and of passengers because of the political situation. There was a non-commissioned Austrian officer with me in the second class. As the boat left the shore he said fervently: "Gott sei dank! Gott sei dank! I have got away. The war will begin very soon now, and every one in Cattaro will be killed, like a rat in a trap. We shall win in the end. But Cattaro will fall at once. I have been there for weeks with the guns pointed on us day and night. Gott bewahre!" He, like Baron Nopesa, believed it to be a case of "Now or never!" Austria must fight. If she waited a few years the Slav combine would be too strong.
"We have the whole of the German army with us," said the officer, "and you could do nothing to stop us."
Probably he was correct. In 1908 Russia was quite impotent, and the
Central Powers might have won.
But Germany insisted on peace.
I arrived in London, and was amazed to find for the first time people who believed in the Young Turks. They would listen to no facts, and would not believe me when I said that the Turkish Empire, as it stood, would probably barely survive one Parliament. A prophecy which was almost exactly fulfilled.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1909
An accident and a long illness forced me to spend 1909 in London. In March came a significant change in Serbia. Prince George, the Crown Prince, in a fit of uncontrolled rage, amounting to mania, kicked his valet down some stone steps and killed him. Rumours of the Prince's strange and violent conduct had long been rife. He escaped trial by renouncing all rights to succession to the throne, and his brother, Prince Alexander, became heir. Alexander was said to have the support of the regicide officers' party, the Black Hand. George, too, had his partisans, who declared that if he were as mad as his great-grandfather, old Karageorge, so much the better, he would lead Serbia to glory.