We have seen that Prince Danilo, before flinging himself against the
infidel Turk, is alleged to have transacted a little business on the
Bourse--a former Montenegrin Minister of Finance says that he may well
have netted between 25 and 30 million crowns--and his royal father,
though his methods often had a tinge of mediaevalism, was not the man
to rush, like some old knight, in succour of distress. When Serbia was
attacked in 1914 he refrained from flying to her side. Montenegro
"stood up spontaneously to defend the Serbian cause: she fought and
she fell," says Mr. Devine. There is not the least doubt but that the
vast majority of Montenegrins would have acted in this fashion. To
some degree they had deteriorated under the example of Nikita--"A fish
stinks from its head," says a Turkish proverb; but when their brother
Serbs were in deadly peril all else was forgotten. And they were
bewildered and suspicious when the Skup[vs]tina was summoned, seeing
that the Constitution laid it down that the declaring of war was a
royal prerogative. As practically every man was thirsting for
battle--after all they were Serbs and incapable of committing high
treason against their brethren--they marvelled at the King's delay.
But to the politicians his manoeuvre explained itself; they
recognized that Nikita had some secret arrangement[72] with the
Austrians and that he wanted to tell Francis Joseph that the War had
been forced upon him. From that moment he was playing a double role; a
Serbian officer was chief of the Montenegrin staff. "They have placed
my army under Serbian command," he told the Austrians. "So faithful
was I," he said to the Entente, "that I even took a Serbian
commander."
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 regime 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 Ku[vc]i brigade, the soldiers refused to accept
what had been so profaned.