"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."
Thereupon the man returned to Grahovo and soon afterwards the French
General Thaon, who happened to go there, spoke with him for two hours
and invited him to his headquarters at Kotor.
The disturbances in Montenegro did not cease; a country through which
you could formerly drive with less risk than in Paris, was now infested
by outlaws and those who pursued them. And Count de Salis, who had
served as H.B.M.'s Minister at Cetinje, was sent back to Montenegro on a
mission of inquiry. His report was not published, for the reason that he
did not beat about the bush in his references to the Italians and for
the further reason that he gave the names of those persons from whom he
culled his information. This was a fine opportunity for the foreign
busybodies who were thrusting their silly little knives into Yugoslavia.
"Count de Salis reports clearly and unmistakably," said Mr. Ronald
M'Neill in the House of Commons, "that in his judgment the wish of the
Montenegrin people is to retain their own sovereign and their own
independence." When Sir Hamar Greenwood subsequently, speaking for the
Government, threw out a hint that this was not the case, it was amusing
to see how the pro-Nikita party lost their interest in the report. A
certain Mr. Herbert Vivian sent from Italy in April 1920 a most
ferocious indictment against the Serbs in Montenegro to a London paper
called the _British Citizen_. He said that the Countess de Salis, while
at Cetinje, was in danger of her life. But the lady has been dead for
many years. I presume this is the same Mr. Vivian who in a book,
_Servia, the Poor Man's Paradise_, trembles with rage whenever a Serb
speaks admiringly of Gladstone.