began to wonder what overwhelming
world-politics were detaining the Serbian Minister. Persons peeped
at me cautiously through the half-open door and darted back when I
looked round. Finally, I was summoned into M. Militchevitch's
presence.

Stiffly he asked why I wanted to go to Serbia. My reply, that having
visited Montenegro I now proposed seeing other Serb lands, did not
please him at all. I made things worse by enlarging on my
Montenegrin experiences for I had no idea then of the fact that
there is nothing one Slav State hates so much as another Slav State,
and truly thought to please him.

He persisted in wanting "definite information." "What do you want to
do there?"

"Travel and sketch and photograph and collect curios."

He suggested sternly that there were other lands in Europe where all
this could be done.

His attitude was incomprehensible to me, who then knew foreign lands
only as places which received tourists with open arms and hotels
gaping for guests. He, on the other hand, found me quite as
incomprehensible for, like many another Balkan man, he could
conceive of no travel without a political object.

And I was quite unaware that the murders upon which Great Serbia was
to be built were even then being plotted.

Point-blank, I asked, "Is travelling in Serbia so very dangerous
then?"

The shot told. "Not at all!" said he hastily.

"Then why may I not go?"

After more argle-bargle he consented to give me the visa on
condition I went straight to the British Consul at Belgrade and did
nothing without his advice. He signed, remarking that he took no
responsibility. I paid and left triumphant, all unaware of the
hornet's nest I was now free to enter.

Of Serb politics I knew at that time little beyond the fact that
King Alexander was unpopular owing to an unfortunate marriage and
the still more unfortunate attempt of Queen Draga to plant a false
heir upon the country by pretending pregnancy; that his father's
career had been melodramatic and that the history of Serbia for the
whole period of her independence had been one long blood-feud
between the rival dynasties of Karageorge and Obrenovitch, neither
of which seemed popular in Montenegro. Off I went to Cetinje and
told various people my plan for seeing Serbia. Rather to my surprise
no one offered me introductions, but having been repeatedly told
that the Montenegrins were the cream of the Serb nation, and would
lead Serbia to glory I believed