Karageorgevitch, before he was compelled to succeed to the
throne of Serbia on the assassination of King Alexander and his
adventuress-consort, Queen Draga.
From that fatal moment poor Peter was a misjudged man. The world
believed that he had had a hand in the royal tragedy, but I happen
to know that he had no desire to become King of Serbia. The skeleton
in His Majesty’s cupboard was a great and absorbing love romance, of
which I, among very few, knew the truth, and which is here related
for the first time. The lady lived in Paris, and I had often been her
guest at luncheon and dinner. At the moment of the royal tragedy she
was actually engaged to be married to the man she loved.
Suddenly, without warning, the Prince found himself called to
Belgrade to ascend a tottering throne. There was an affectionate
leave-taking, and the lady--whose name it would not be fair to
mention, for she has lately married--was inconsolable, and came to
London, where I called on her at Brown’s Hotel.
Meanwhile the monarch she loved was bearing all the vile abuse that
the Press of the world could vent upon his head. The British Press
openly declared him to be an assassin, and the British Government
withdrew its Minister from the Serbian capital. With his lips sealed,
poor King Peter was unable to utter a word in self-defence, while
time after time the lady in question, when I called and consoled her,
showed me the bitter articles that sensational journalists, ignorant
of the facts, wrote against her lover.
Those wicked articles broke the monarch’s heart, and in such
distressing circumstances he ascended the throne of Serbia, and was
later, with hollow mockery, crowned King, well knowing that the woman
he so dearly loved could never become his wife. The Serbians would
not tolerate a foreigner as queen, and in any case the marriage could
only be a morganatic one.
Such were his constant regrets, and so melancholy his frame of mind,
that he shut himself up in his Palace and saw hardly anybody except
his Ministers of State. Even this seclusion attracted the suspicions
of his traducers, who declared that the new King was a criminal, who
dared not show his face to honest folk, and some of our own most
influential but ill-informed newspapers were most bitter in their
recriminations. I tried to put them right, but they would not have it.
King Peter had been at Belgrade nearly two years before I had my
first private audience of him as King. Curiously enough, Europe
had never recognized in him the grandson of the great hero of the
Serbian people, the rough peasant Karageorge, who, in 1804, raised
the Serbians against their oppressors the Turks and defeated them.
Peter Karageorgevitch was a born soldier. His facial expression,
his stature, his grit, and his mannerisms, all reminded me of Earl
Roberts. In 1875 he fought at the head of his troop--which, by the
way, he raised himself and crippled his finances thereby--for the
emancipation of Bosnia. Surely he was a born soldier!
Serbia is a nation of poets and artists, and in its national poetry
there is a hero called Peter Mrcognitch, the Protector of the Poor.
And under that assumed name Prince Peter fought. In 1870 he fought
on the French side against the Germans, being awarded the Legion
of Honour for valour on the battlefield. And again, in 1914, he
fought against the Germans. Such was the man whom the world, in its
ignorance, denounced as a murderer!
The true history of the last weeks of Alexander’s reign, of those
black days of spies and suspicion in Belgrade, has never been told.
But I have myself been in those terrible secret oubliettes of the
old Turkish fortress, overlooking the junction of the Save with the
Danube, where those, many of them leading men of the political,
social, and literary world in Belgrade, who dared to utter a word
against Draga and her methods, were confined with but little
air or light till they died. The Royal House of Obrenovitch was
exterminated, it is true, but I affirm here and most solemnly that
King Peter had no hand in it whatsoever, and his forced parting with
Madame X was the greatest blow in all his splendid but unhappy life.
* * * * *
One dark autumn evening I left the Grand Hotel at Belgrade and drove
through the wide ornamental iron gates of the New Konak, or Palace.
Blue-coated sentries saluted; idling detectives lifted their hats;
and the lines of blue-and-gold liveried servants, drawn up in the
big entrance-hall, bent low as I alighted. It was all delightfully
impressive and amusing.
In the large inner hall was a wide horse-shoe staircase of regal
splendour and in excellent taste. All was very new, for the Palace
in which the tragedy had occurred had been pulled down, and its site
converted into a lawn.
At the head of the stairs Colonel Tcholak-Antich, the Royal Marshal,
in a bright blue uniform, and wearing many decorations, met me, and
with the usual etiquette we exchanged our names with our greetings.
“His Majesty wants you to sign his birthday-book, which he keeps for
his friends. Will you do so?” was almost his first question.
He took me into a little ante-room, and there I scribbled my name
in the space of July 2nd. And I may say that after I had done so,
no anniversary of my birthday passed till the King died without my
receiving a telegram on that day, bearing a red label, with the words
“Government Telegram; With Priority,” wishing me many happy returns.
In addition, as my intimate friends know well--for they have smoked
them--His Majesty used to send me a very welcome present of two
thousand of his own Serbian cigarettes each year, bearing his royal
cipher in gold on them.
But that apart.
I was at once conducted to the audience-chamber, the double doors
of which, to prevent eavesdroppers, were closed behind me, and by
etiquette I was left alone to await His Majesty.
The room, of fine dimensions with a gilded ceiling, seemed, under the
many electric lamps, ablaze with gold. The beautiful gilt furniture
showed well against the old rose carpet, the damask of the upholstery
matching the carpet and being brocaded with gold. Several fine modern
paintings of seascapes were on the walls, one big historical painting
by the great Botzaritch, whose talented son is a coming artist in
London to-day and quite recently drew a remarkable caricature of
myself. In the centre was a large settee and several fine gilt
chairs, set against a big gilt Renaissance table.
I had scarcely time to look across the luxurious room when the
long white double doors at the end opened and His Majesty, in the
dark-blue uniform of a Serbian general, entered.
“Well, my dear friend Le Queux, so at last you have come to see me!”
he exclaimed, taking my hand. “I have long been expecting you. Many
things have happened since we met in Paris, eh?”
He motioned me to a seat on the settee, and then, after handing me a
cigarette from the big gold box on the table, he took one, lit it,
and cast himself in a soft arm-chair opposite.
Then we began to chat.
“You are very welcome here in Serbia. But I need not tell you, my
dear friend,” he said, in his sharp military way. “I have read some
of the kind things you have written about us. Would that everyone
understood us as you do. I only wish writers would tell the truth
as you and Mr. Alfred Stead and a few others have done. But”--and
he paused, looking me straight in the face, with his dark, deep-set
eyes--“_you know the real truth_! The others, alas! don’t,” and he
sighed.
“Your Majesty has been entirely misunderstood,” I said, and then our
conversation drifted into matters of a purely private character, for,
as a matter of fact, I had seen Madame X at Cannes only three weeks
before, and she had given me a message to convey to him.
Presently I spoke of various matters regarding diplomacy--for the
truth was that the Foreign Office was anxious to know certain things,
and because I knew His Majesty, I had been asked to put certain
questions.
“Ah! you want me to talk politics,” he laughed, raising his hand
with the fine diamond on it. “No. I make a rule never to do so--even
to you, my dear friend! One of our chief faults here in Serbia is
that we talk far too much about politics. You have noticed that, I
daresay, in the cafés, in the Legations, and elsewhere, eh? All we
Serbians are the same--in Montenegro, in Bosnia, and elsewhere. It
is always so with a young nation. Our future will, I fervently hope,
be one of peace and prosperity. It will ever be my most earnest
endeavour to secure this for my people, so that Serbia may prove to
Europe that she does not merit the hard things said of her in the
past.”
His Majesty, after we had chatted about Florence, a city which he
knew quite well, told me a very interesting fact. “We have here, in
Serbia,” he said, “a most wonderful cure for rheumatism--the Ribarska
Banya. I only tell you what happened personally to me. As you know
perhaps, long ago, during the Russo-Turkish War, I contracted acute
rheumatism, and have been a martyr to it ever since. I visited every
watering-place in Europe, but none of their so-called ‘cures’ did me
any good. A year ago, with much reluctance, I went to Ribarska and
took the cure, and from that moment I have never since been troubled.
It was miraculous! With my own eyes I saw a poor woman wheeled there
entirely crippled, and twenty days later I saw her beginning to walk.
I would not have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes. You
should tell people in England,” he added.
For an hour and a half we chatted about many things--of London,
of Paris, of Rome, of Vienna--for His Majesty was essentially an
up-to-date man of the world, as well as a monarch. “We want no
external troubles,” he declared to me. “We only want to be allowed to
progress.”
But, alas! what a débâcle was to come in the days of the war.
“I have had some amusing experiences here since I have been King,”
he went on. “One that happened soon after my arrival was rather
humorous. It is my habit, as you know, to ride out into the country
early each morning for exercise, and I always prefer to be alone. At
first the police insisted that I should have an escort, but I do not
like to feel as if I were under arrest, so I refused. One beautiful
summer’s morning, about a fortnight after I came here, I rode out
along the road to Ripanje, and when passing a small village I heard
an old peasant-woman loudly lamenting the fate of her relatives and
of the whole Serbian nation in general. I drew up, and as I remained
unnoticed it suddenly occurred to me that I was unknown, for my
features had not yet appeared on the postage-stamps or on the coinage.
“‘Well,’ I asked the old woman, ‘what has happened? Tell me.’
“‘Ah! general. If you only knew how the police treat us here! It
is most scandalous! Every police-agent expects a bribe, and if you
don’t give him one, he will trump-up charges against you. Woe! that
we Serbians should ever live under such a Government. Alexander is
dead, and now there is a new King. Oh! if he only knew, I feel sure
he would inquire into it all, for they say he is, after all, a good
Serbian, even though he shuts himself up in the Konak and never sees
anybody.’
“I inquired her name, and then told her that, being a general, I
sometimes saw the new King, and when next time I did I would mention
her complaint to His Majesty.
“‘Ah! Thanks, general,’ replied the old peasant woman. ‘If you do,
then you will earn the thanks of all of us here.’
“Well, on my return here I called Monsieur Paschitch, the Prime
Minister, and ordered a full inquiry. Its result was that an
appalling state of affairs was revealed. The peasantry were being
oppressed on every hand, and I ordered that the officials responsible
should not only be degraded, but prosecuted.”
On a dozen or more occasions, at different times, I was received by
King Peter. He was always most generous to me, and gave me the run
of the whole royal domains for fishing and shooting, and he sent to
me the beautiful signed portrait of himself, which can be found as
the frontispiece of my book, _An Observer in the Near East_--a book
which, by the way, was at first published anonymously, because I was
engaged in secret-service work.
More than once he was quite frank with me concerning his troubles.
We were sitting together one afternoon when he suddenly rose, and
with clouded brow paced his long room, overlooking the Danube and the
great Hungarian plains. Then, halting before me abruptly, he asked
with a sigh:
“Don’t you think I was far happier in Paris than in my present life
in this gilded cage?”
And on another day, when he was deploring how wrongly the world had
judged him, he said:
“A man’s life is one long warfare against the malice of his
fellow-men. The wise man changes his mind, the fool never!”
His Majesty’s love romance, to which I have referred, was surely
one of the most tragic that has ever occurred to any man. Because
of the recent marriage of Madame X, and because she is still my
friend, I refrain from telling the whole story. If I did, the reader
would accuse me of putting fiction into this volume, which I have
determined not to do. Yet surely the old adage that fact is often
stranger than fiction cannot be denied.
One day, perhaps, I shall make the real romance the plot of a novel,
and then I shall not be accused of mixing fiction with fact!
Poor King Peter had many family troubles, not the least being the
erratic life of his smart and extremely good-looking son, Prince
George, whose autographed photograph, together with that of his
father, looks up at me from my table as I write.
The private life of any young Crown Prince is popularly supposed to
be rather hectic, and in Prince George’s case it certainly has been
no exception. Indeed, it is an open secret that he was the original
of the character of “Prince Danilo” in the _Merry Widow_--the lazy
lover of languorous ladies.
One incident that will perhaps be interesting as revealing the life
of a good-looking, good-for-nothing boy, who really had no vices but
just enjoyed the joy of living, I may perhaps be permitted to relate.
One day, while in Belgrade, I had been invited to luncheon by Madame
Vesnitch, wife of Dr. Milenko Vesnitch, then Minister of Justice,
and afterwards Serbian Minister in Paris. At table were the Prime
Minister, my old and valiant friend Monsieur Nicholas Paschitch,
Costa Stoyanovitch, Minister of Commerce, Mr. Alexander Tucker,
Serbian Consul-General in London, and Colonel Tcholak-Antich, the
Royal Marshal, with some ladies, the Crown Prince being the guest.
After the ladies had left the table, the patriarchal Prime Minister,
Paschitch, with his long, sweeping beard and eagle eyes, who is
to-day still known as “The Grand Old Man of the Balkans,” looked
across at the Crown Prince and asked in French, so that all of us
should hear:
“Your Highness, there are rumours of some strange doings of yours
last night. Tell us what really happened.”
“Happened?” laughed the young Prince, with a cigarette between his
fingers. “Why, nothing really happened! It never does!”
“But there was some fun at the Palace, wasn’t there?” asked Dr.
Vesnitch, our host.
“Fun? Well, not much. They laughed--that was all,” was his reply.
“Well, do tell us what actually happened,” urged the Prime Minister.
“If you want to know, I’ll tell you,” laughed Prince George, after
sipping his coffee. “Last night I dined at the Military Club, when
somebody said that a new ballet was to be produced at the Opera. We
were all bored stiff, so half a dozen of us went to the club-box
at the theatre and saw a fairly good show. The curtain fell rather
early, so I suggested that we might have a little supper. We invited
eighteen of the girls, and took them round by the back door of the
Palace. Everybody was in bed. I woke up old Rachitch, the chef, and
the old buffer soon scraped us up some supper. But things seemed
very dull and slow. It was almost like a funeral. So, knowing where
the key of the Treasury is kept, I got it and took out the royal
crown and crowned myself King of Serbia. Oh! That woke up the whole
party! The girls yelled!”
Suffice it to say that Prince George renounced all his rights to the
succession two years later, and his younger brother, Alexander, who
recently married a daughter of the Queen of Roumania, now reigns as
King.
Truly Prince George, a merry, easy-going, humorous friend to me, was
hardly fitted to rule the new nation of Jugo-Slavia.
He was fond of practical jokes, and would sit in his window in a
wing of the palace that overlooks the principal boulevard--a fine
thoroughfare lined with plane trees--and with a catapult pick out his
friends, firing at them big pellets of chalk, which, bursting when
they hit, left nasty marks on their smart uniforms.
Yet when I was with him and his father for seven months, at the
Serbian headquarters, in the war against the Turks, he showed
himself to be a most brave and competent officer, whom everyone
loved. He very nearly lost his life at the battle of Kumonovo by a
deed that was never reported, namely, the saving of the life of a
student sergeant-major on the battlefield, at the risk of his own;
a deed that, if it had been performed by any British soldier, would
certainly have won the Victoria Cross.
Of his many love-affairs, of his boyish pranks, and of the many
stormy interviews he had with his father the King, tales are often
told in Belgrade. Nicholas Paschitch and his charming Italian
wife--whose guest I have been on so many occasions--tell many amusing
stories of the Crown Prince’s follies and extravagances, and of his
hopeless disregard of all that befitted his station as the coming
ruler of Jugo-Slavia, now the most powerful state in the Balkans.
CHAPTER SIX
Some Secret History--Tossing a Coin for the Throne of
Serbia--King Peter as an Artist--The Present King and
Queen--I am a Guest of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria--His
Presents to Me--The Assassination of Bulgaria’s Prime
Minister--My Own Narrow Escape--What King Ferdinand Thinks
of England.
On one of my visits to Belgrade I was charged with a secret mission
concerning new armaments for Serbia, in view of the coming war--a
mission that had a dramatic _dénouement_.
It being known that I was on terms of friendship with King Peter,
I had been asked at Whitehall to have a private chat with him
concerning certain political matters. It was a matter of secret
diplomacy, apart from that of officialdom. Though it was no secret,
of course, from my friend Sir Beethom Whitehead, who was then British
Minister at Belgrade (and to whom I am much indebted for many social
introductions in Serbia and elsewhere), it was deemed wise to keep
the matter from the Serbian Government. Nor was it surprising,
when one reflects how we British had treated Serbia on the King’s
accession.
Well, I was at once granted private audience as usual, and during a
whole afternoon laid before His Majesty the suggestions I had been
instructed in London to make. He considered them calmly, and then
entirely agreed.
“Monsieur Paschitch must know, but nobody else--for the present,” he
said. “I will speak to him about it.”
Next day I called on the Prime Minister, the grey-bearded, serious
man who is still one of my best friends, and we arranged certain
details. Some greedy persons had to receive gratifications--for
nothing is done officially in the Balkans without bribery. And
perhaps it may here be whispered that secret commissions are not
utterly unknown in Great Britain!
We made out a list of them, and the amounts that should be
paid. Waiting at the hotel was my friend Mr. Alexander Tucker,
Consul-General for Serbia in London. He was there as my secretary,
representing a strong financial group, who were ready to arm Serbia
for the great war that we knew was coming, though the world was doped
by the politicians.
That evening I had arranged everything, even to the amount of bribery
to be paid to the underlings, who professed to be pro-British, but
whose palms were itching to be greased by anybody’s money.
In the secrecy of my bedroom at the Grand Hotel I discussed with my
friend Tucker the details of the whole affair, and at ten o’clock
that night I wrote out a cipher telegram to London, saying that all
was arranged, and that I should return with the documents signed by
the President of the Council on the following Thursday.
This message I myself took to the telegraph office, not daring to
entrust it to anybody else, and later retired to rest, very well
satisfied with the result of my delicate and rather difficult
mission. I had, I felt, scored a great success for Britain’s prestige
in the Near East--one that it was hoped would cause Bulgaria to come
into line with our policy.
Mine was, in fact, the secret hand, administering quite unknown and
unsuspected Britain’s policy in the Near East. The position in which
I found myself was really a strange one. I was not a diplomat, but
a catspaw, who allowed himself to be used for patriotic purposes in
order to further our country’s interest and well-being.
I know there are some who have averred that I have made money out of
the services I have tried to render to the British Government, but
to those I reply that I have never asked, or received, _one single
penny_ of the British taxpayers’ money; and, moreover, the cost of my
fifteen years’ travelling across Europe, Asia Minor, and Africa as a
spy and counter-spy of Britain I have defrayed out of the royalties
on my novels. And I defy anyone to prove the contrary.
Patriotism is cheap to those who are paid for their speeches, their
propaganda, or their official or parliamentary salaries, but as I
have elsewhere stated, my own unswerving patriotism ruined me and
kept me even a poor man.
To enter Court circles may be pleasant enough, for some, but when it
is effected by a man who is compelled to write for his living, and
who has no axe to grind save that of serving his King and country,
it is often both heart-breaking and ruinous. There are well-known
men I could name, among them at least two of our present Cabinet
Ministers, who can testify to the truth of my statements, and to what
I have endeavoured with all my heart to accomplish for Britain in the
Balkans.
But to return to the incident of the Serbian armaments.
I awoke next morning feeling much gratified. I had a guarded
conversation over the telephone with M. Costa Stoyanovitch, the
Minister of Commerce, to whom M. Paschitch had spoken, and afterwards
Dr. Vesnitch, the Minister of Justice, rang up and invited me to
lunch.
Again I lunched in that handsome room, where the Crown Prince had
related his irresponsible midnight revels. Madame Paschitch, M.
Andrea Nikolitch, Minister of Public Instruction, and M. Patchu,
Minister of Finance, were among the guests.
Suddenly Dr. Vesnitch was called to the telephone. When he returned
his face was pale and grave, and he asked me into the next room.
“We are betrayed!” were his first words. “The Opposition knows
everything! There has been a spy of Austria in the Grand Hotel, who
has listened to all your conversations with Consul-General Tucker!
They even know the text of the telegram you sent to London last
night!”
I stood agape. It was the first time that a foreign spy had had the
advantage of me.
“Well? What is to be done?” I asked quickly.
“Deny everything. We must. There will be questions this afternoon in
the Skupchtina, and, to save the Government, we must refute them,”
he replied. “I will warn the President of the Council. Meanwhile
it will be best, Monsieur Le Queux, if you go back to your hotel
and remain there till you hear of the results of the questions.
Monsieur Paschitch will no doubt at once inform the King. Meanwhile
the position of the Government is certainly most insecure. The
pro-Germans are ready to defeat us at any moment.”
“But how can they know the text of my cipher message?” I asked the
Minister.
He shrugged his shoulders and replied,
“I have given instructions to the Prefect of Police, and we shall
see.”
I walked back to the hotel in a veritable vortex of intrigue and
mystery. The Opposition had discovered the motive of my mission, and
also knew the actual text of the message I had sent to London!
I waited for news. That afternoon the Leader of the Opposition rose
in that semi-circular chamber, the Skupchtina, and put some very
searching questions to the Prime Minister Paschitch.