Count de Salis's impartial methods did not always please the population,
which was by a large majority against the former king's return and--as
he clearly stated--heart and soul for Yugoslavia. Balkan people do not
yet, to any great extent, appreciate your desire for truth or even your
honesty if you should give a hearing to their antagonists. The Cetinje
public, therefore, organized a demonstration or two against the Count.
They would have preferred that he should reach the afore-mentioned
conclusions without such an exhaustive study of the case. He noted that
there had been certain irregularities in the Yugoslav administration,
but it was inevitable that in those unsettled times the inexperienced
officials would not prove equal to every emergency. These officials, by
the way, in 1919 were not Serbs from Serbia, but for the most part
native Montenegrins. "The country is occupied and administered by
foreigners," said[43] Mr. Ronald M'Neill, M.P. "Montenegro," said he,
"is full of Serb officials." I suppose one must receive it more with
sorrow than with anger if a man like Mr. Massingham of _The Nation_
says that the Serbs "have deposed the Montenegrin judges, schoolmasters,
doctors, chemists and local officials, and set up their own puppets."
While he might have assumed that the long years of War had left the
Serbs with a very inadequate supply of officials for the old kingdom, he
would have ascertained, if his sources had been more trustworthy, that
Gloma[vz]i['c], the very human prefect of Cetinje, is a native of
Nik[vs]i['c], that Milo[vs] Ivanovi['c], the mayor, is from the Ku[vc]i,
near Podgorica--and he was a magistrate under Nikita; that Bojovi['c],
the prefect of Podgorica, is a barrister of the Piperi, while
Radoni['c], the mayor, was an artillery officer, then a political
prisoner and then the food administrator under Nikita; that
Jaoukovi['c], the prefect of Nik[vs]i['c], was a magistrate under the
old regime--he comes, I believe, from the Mora[vc]a; Zerovi['c], the
mayor and an ex-magistrate, is a native of Nik[vs]i['c]; that the
prefect of Antivari, Dr. Goini['c], is a doctor of law whose home is
between Antivari and Virpazar; that Bo[vs]ko Bo[vs]kovi['c], the prefect
of Kola[vc]in, won great fame as an officer under Nikita, while
Mini['c], the mayor, was Nikita's chief of the Custom-house. As for the
doctors who left the country, these consisted of Matanovi['c] and
Vulanovi['c], who have gone to Novi Sad and Subotica respectively, as it
is easier to make a living in those towns than in Montenegro. There are
now three Yugoslav doctors at Cetinje (Odgerovi['c], Radovi['c]--both of
whom were doctors in the time of Nikita--and Matanovi['c], a young man);
they are all Montenegrins. So, too, with the chemists and the
schoolmasters and the post and telegraph officials--I am sure that Mr.
Massingham will excuse me if I do not mention all their names.
Since there are quite a number of Montenegrins in the Serbian
administration and army, all the officers and men, for example, of the
2nd--the so-called "iron"--Regiment being of Montenegrin origin, one
fails to see for what reason a Serb should be debarred from posts in
Montenegro. It is unfortunate when people use the word "Montenegrin"
without knowing that there is no separate Montenegrin nation, in the
sense that there is a French or Italian nation. The Montenegrins are a
small section of the Serbian nation, which sought a refuge among the
bare, precipitous mountains and, unlike the other Serbs, maintained its
independence. One should, therefore, to avoid confusion, speak of Serbs
of Serbia and Serbs of Montenegro rather than of Serbs and Montenegrins.
The purest Serbian is spoken in western Montenegro, on the borders of
Herzegovina; those districts are ethnically different from the southern
region, centring round Cetinje, which is the real old Montenegro, and
the north and north-eastern parts, called the Brda, which in speech and
customs are akin to the south. In western Montenegro, as in Herzegovina,
the people, who live among their mountains on milk and its products, are
very prolific, having families of eight or ten children. They are a very
healthy, moral race.
Another pro-Nikita, anti-Serbian writer, excusable only on account of
his insignificance, is Mr. Devine, who teaches, I am told, at a school
near Winchester and seems very unwilling to be taught. If he wishes, by
producing a book on the subject, to show other people that he knows
painfully little about Montenegro, that is his own affair. But he is
just as ignorant with regard to his hero. He says that he "is in a
position to state that there is not one single word of truth in the
insinuations and charges impugning the absolute integrity and loyalty of
King Nicholas towards his Allies." The King was, according to Mr.
Devine, a defenceless old man whom it was very bad form to attack. But
the King had been defending himself at considerable length not only in a
harangue to his adherents in a Paris suburb, but also on various
occasions in a newspaper, the _Journal Officiel_--and both the speech
and long extracts from the newspaper are quoted, with approval, in Mr.
Devine's book. This quaint person is so frantically keen to pour
whitewash over Nikita that he has no time to listen to the main
treacheries of Nikita's career. "Malicious falsehoods!" he
splutters--and they can be traced to horrible pan-Serbians. He has
reason to believe that they wish to make Serbia the Prussia of the new
Federation; well, the Croats and the Slovenes and the Bosniaks and all
the others cannot say that Mr. Devine has not warned them. My
Montenegrin friend Mr. Buri['c] stated in the columns of the _Saturday
Review_ that this odd gentleman had nourished the ambition of becoming
Montenegrin Minister to the Court of St. James, but that the plan did
not succeed. I never saw Mr. Devine's denial--perhaps it fell into the
clutches of a ruthless pan-Serbian printer. Naturally, Mr. Devine would
not care to be the diplomatic representative of a villain; therefore,
when he is brought face to face with certain definite charges he
persists in replying "not in detail, but from the broad point of view."
He is so exceedingly broad that when an accusation is levelled against
the King he sees in this an accusation against the entire country--a
country which unfortunately, as he says, "alone of all the Allies has no
diplomatic representative in this country." Mr. Devine continues
unabashed to repeat and repeat his pro-Nikita stuff in various
newspapers. "Il y debvroit avoir," says Montaigne, "quelque corection
des loix contre les escrivains ineptes et inutiles, comme il y a contre
les vagabonds et faineants...." Not long ago I happened to see that this
egregious person described himself as "Hon. Minister Plenipotentiary for
Montenegro," but another gentleman, Sir Roper Parkington, a pompous
wine-merchant, announced in the Press that he had become "Minister
(Hon.) of Montenegro." Perhaps one of them has resigned, and our poor
overworked Foreign Office will not be invited to decide between a
Minister (Hon.) and an Hon. Minister.