ry soon now,
and every one in Cattaro will be killed, like a rat in a trap. We
shall win in the end. But Cattaro will fall at once. I have been
there for weeks with the guns pointed on us day and night. Gott
bewahre!" He, like Baron Nopesa, believed it to be a case of "Now or
never!" Austria must fight. If she waited a few years the Slav
combine would be too strong.

"We have the whole of the German army with us," said the officer,
"and you could do nothing to stop us."

Probably he was correct. In 1908 Russia was quite impotent, and the
Central Powers might have won.

But Germany insisted on peace.

I arrived in London, and was amazed to find for the first time
people who believed in the Young Turks. They would listen to no
facts, and would not believe me when I said that the Turkish Empire,
as it stood, would probably barely survive one Parliament. A
prophecy which was almost exactly fulfilled.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1909

An accident and a long illness forced me to spend 1909 in London. In
March came a significant change in Serbia. Prince George, the Crown
Prince, in a fit of uncontrolled rage, amounting to mania, kicked
his valet down some stone steps and killed him. Rumours of the
Prince's strange and violent conduct had long been rife. He escaped
trial by renouncing all rights to succession to the throne, and his
brother, Prince Alexander, became heir. Alexander was said to have
the support of the regicide officers' party, the Black Hand. George,
too, had his partisans, who declared that if he were as mad as his
great-grandfather, old Karageorge, so much the better, he would lead
Serbia to glory.

In March, too, came the counter-revolution against the Young Turk
regime. I had learnt from a letter from Albania that this was about
to take place. It failed, to my regret, for I hoped that its success
would result in the landing of international forces, and that
international control might solve the Balkan problem peacefully. I
believed then that rule by the Western Powers would be better than
that of the Turks. Now that we Know that these so-called civilized
Powers will starve millions, and bomb helpless crowds, in order to
obtain land and supremacy, many of us blush for the criticisms we
once showered on the state of Macedonia.

The Young Turk won in 1909, and Abdul Hamid was called on to
abdicate. Essad Pasha (formerly Bey) the ex-gendarmerie commander at
Scutari, was now hand in glove with the Young Tu