his critics in the old Turkish fortress
on the small, malarial island of Grimojuri, with the water oozing into
the cells, he might plead that this was precisely the same curriculum
as fell to the lot, at San Juan de Ulloa, of those who incurred the
displeasure of Porfirio Diaz, the Mexican President--and Diaz had been
almost worshipped (till his fall) by many Europeans. When Nikita drove
one afternoon with friends of his to Nik[vs]i['c] and approvingly
looked on while they destroyed the building and the whole machinery of
Montenegro's weekly newspaper, which had departed from the paths of
adulation--well, I see that his apologist, a certain Mr. A.
Devine,[66] says that "in 1908 political passions resulted in the
extinction of the organ of the political Opposition, _Narodna Misao_
("The National Idea")."

In 1908 there fell the blow of Bosnia-Herzegovina's annexation to the
Empire, thus placing definitely under foreign sway the central portion
and ethnically among the purest of that Serbian people which was
already divided into seven different administrations or States. Russia
was still enfeebled by the Japanese War, and although she and Great
Britain protested against the annexation, Count Aerenthal was able to
gather this booty. It would, however, be an exaggeration to say that
Russia--apart from the ultra-patriotic Press--was violently excited.
As M. Nekludoff, the able diplomat, explains,[67] his country was
annoyed not so much at the Bosnian annexation as because there was for
it no _quid pro quo_, no free passage through the Dardanelles. Poor
Serbia was advised by the Great Powers to accept the _fait accompli_.
She constrained herself to do so, but both she and certain folk in
Austria were under no illusions as to the inevitable--a month after
the annexation a Viennese newspaper announced that a conflict with
Serbia and Montenegro could not be avoided. "The longer we postpone
it," said the paper, "so much the more will it cost us."

One gets very weary of hearing the phrase "Divide et impera," which
always occurs at least several times in the course of an exposition of
Austrian policy. But we are bound to say that this principle governed
her behaviour when she stage-managed in 1908 the Zagreb high-treason
trial,[68] which was to drive a wedge between Serbs and Croats, in
1909 the Friedjung case, as also the Cetinje bomb affair which was to,
and did in fact, alienate Nikita from his son-in-law, the Serbian
King.