e Kosovo men they were being forced back and back, and the
Turkish army was approaching Scutari.

Prenk Pasha, who had been made a member of the Committee of Union
and Progress, had promised the Turks safe-conduct through Mirdita.
This was in strict conformity with the policy explained to me by the
Abbot Premi Dochi in 1904, viz. that the Turk must be maintained
until Albania was sufficiently organized to stand alone, otherwise
the Slav, the more relentless foe, would fall upon her. The other
Catholic tribes were wildly dismayed, and the headmen ran from one
consulate to another begging advice. None was given them. They were
far too poorly armed to resist, and in July 1910 the Turkish army
entered Scutari and ordered the populace to give up its arms. They
did so quietly. The Christians had few to give. The Moslems feared,
by rising, to provoke an Austrian intervention.

I was too ill to be taken out to see what was going on, and, to my
great disappointment, was still unable to move when the celebration
on the occasion of Nikita's elevation to kingship took place in
August.

Montenegro had raised a loan from England the year before, and had
expended the whole of it in making electric light in Cetinje and
building a Government house of superlative ugliness, and so vast
that it seemed obviously intended to administer a much larger
territory than Montenegro.

Scutari was excited about Montenegrin doings. Foreign visitors
flocked to Cetinje to assist at the fete. Bulgaria was represented
by King Ferdinand himself, Serbia, only by the Crown Prince, and he,
said rumour, decided to come only at the last minute. Conclusions
about a Bulgar-Montenegrin combine were freely drawn. One point both
Montenegrins and Albanians agreed upon, "A king must have a kingdom.
The Powers would not otherwise have allowed him to be king. Soon
there will be war!"

While still in hospital I received an English paper, with
illustrations of the launch of a Dreadnought. The doctor, a
Dalmatian Slav, looked at them sadly. "Why do you do these things?"
he asked. "You are forcing on war. You will ruin Austria. We admire
everything English, except your Dreadnoughts. Each time you build
one, we of the Triple Alliance are forced to build one too. We
Austrians have no colonies, and never want any. We need no navy. We
are already overtaxed, and the breaking-point must come one day. You
eat us up with your terrible wealth. To my mind all Europe is mad.
W