nion that war was inevitable, otherwise all
the plans of the Serbs for Great Serbia were ruined. Serbs and
Montenegrins must act as brothers.

Excitement in the town was further heated by the arrival of the
French Minister from Belgrade, who interviewed the newly-arrived
Prenk Bib Doda, and the wildest things were reported and believed,
even that England, Germany, and Austria had combined to crush the
Slavs. Folk discussed which Power would land there. Prizren was said
to have declared itself independent. And one of the political
prisoners of the Cetinje bomb affair, who had been condemned to
fifteen years, escaped and took refuge in Scutari. In the general
excitement I never learnt his name, and he left for Serbia.

The Austrian attache duly came to dinner, and explained that it was
absolutely necessary to annex Bosnia as the Young Turks were
preparing for the general elections. The two provinces were
nominally part of the Turkish Empire, and the Turks would claim that
they should be represented in their Parliament. Europe had never
intended the provinces to revert to Turkey; they had been entirely
Austrian for thirty years, and the change was in name only. It would
also make it possible to give the provinces a liberal and civilian
government, a thing not possible when it was a question only of a
military occupation. I countered with: "Let sleeping dogs lie."
Europe would never have taken it from Austria, and if it had been
agreed that Austria should retire from part she would have been
necessarily heavily compensated. He replied: "Ah, but you don't know
something we know, and which has expedited the affair. England is on
the point of annexing Egypt. The same problem faces you there." I
did not believe this possible, and declared that we were pledged to
the Egyptians to restore the land to them. I believed, then, we
should keep our word. He laughed, and said he had certain
information that we should annex it. Nor would he agree, when I
persisted, that Austria had made a mistake in not bringing the
question up before the signatory Powers. We discussed the
anti-Austrian propaganda, which I had found rife in Bosnian He
believed it to have been largely due to the uncertainty of the
position, and declared that, faced with the fait accompli, the Serbs
would drop the intrigues which kept up the agitation, and that a
civilian government and a constitution would speedily ameliorate
everything.

Austria was already withdraw