December 28, 1918

It had been a long week of economic discussions and plans for reparations and plump indemnities that were no more substantial than fairy tales, as the Colonel sorrowfully admitted. I had plagued him so constantly that at last he consented to visit the King of Montenegro, who had now moved into town from his suburban residence and was residing so conveniently down the rue de Rivoli at the Meurice.

“Let’s take a car,” the Colonel suddenly agreed. “I am bursting with impatience.” Then a shadow of care swept over his face which, in anticipation of the long-desired but often postponed meeting, had been so sunny. “But you don’t think he will ask for a loan?”

“Not a chance,” I reply gaily. “All he asks for is a passport to return to Lovčen—for the rest he will manage himself.”

I must say that on this occasion, so important from every point of view, the King did not demonstrate the subtle qualities for which he has been long famous throughout the Near East. The moment after bidding us welcome and ordering Danilo, his heir (with a sturdy frame but a decidedly weak face), to go for coffee and sweets, he danced over to a lacquer cabinet and produced a number of ribbons and rosettes and crosses with yellow metal attachments that glittered and may have been gold.

“You are my true friends, or you would not be visiting a dethroned king. I beg of you to honor me and our friendship by wearing these tokens of my high esteem and my admiration.” With that he tried to attach what was, I believe, the highest class of the Order of Danilo the Great upon the Colonel’s coat, and upon me he thrust an order almost as high. The Colonel drew back and we both, gracefully I trust, waved away the temptation. We had by this time a regular form refusal for compromising gifts or decorations of any kind.

“We cannot accept,” said the Colonel, with a pained expression on his face which did honor to his Thespian ability, “because our government is not in a position to reciprocate with a corresponding honor.” And then the Colonel went on: “But for this barrier, the temptation to accept these signal honors from your Majesty’s hand would be irresistible, but even so, would it be wise? Would not our desire to serve you be handicapped? Would it not be said that, after having been showered with the highest honors, is it possible for these American gentlemen to maintain the judicial attitude they should when Balkan questions come before the Conference?”

King Nicholas was not slow to see the force of this remark, and soon the decorations were safely Housed again in the lacquer cabinet. After a few sips of most excellent coffee, the real business of the meeting got under way.

“My Colonel,” began the King, “it distresses me that the fate of my land and that of my line is causing you anxiety. Permit me to say it should not. Lend me but for a few weeks your commandant here as a symbol of American sympathy; secure for me the passports so long denied which will permit me to reach the frontier of my native land, which your commandant knows and also loves, and the Montenegrin problem will vanish as does the snow on Lovčen when the sirocco blows. I am an exile and a man under an unholy ban, but once I cross the border the soldiers of my son-in-law and of my grandson would flee and I—I would not deign to pursue them.” Having settled in this summary manner the diplomatic and military features of the problem, the King now took a lighter and a more personal view of the situation.

“Let your commandant go with me as your plenipotentiary and as the representative of liberty-loving America. What a time we shall have,” and the King in anticipation roared with laughter. “We shall go shooting in the mountains, in my beloved mountains; we will bring down chamois and mountain goats and bear and wolves, particularly the wolves which have become a pest to our peasants because the Swabs¹ who have overrun the low land are afraid to follow them to their lairs as we do.” Then turning to me and rather leaving the Colonel out of the shooting symposium, the King went on: “I promise you a great big bag of jarebica, the most beautiful bird that flies. It is larger than the partridge, has red legs and a red bill, and I can tell you we shall have to climb the highest peaks to get a crack at him.”

“But what about your mission of pacification?”—this from the Colonel, who, it seemed to me, was not a little nettled at being left out of the shooting party.

“That will be accomplished in a moment,” said Nicholas. “When my people hear the crack of our rifles on the mountain peaks they will rejoice, and down in the valleys there will be peace and joy-dancing…

A few minutes later a change came over the spirit of our host; the sturdy old king who had survived sixty years of constant warfare fell into a reminiscent and indeed a somewhat bitter mood.

“Our national life which we preserved from our enemies is now threatened by our friends. All the battles we fought are forgotten. It is little remembered that we served as the bulwark of Christendom against the infidel Horde for centuries, and little help came to us from the people we shielded; only Russia helped us, and she, being far away, could help but little. By persistent fighting we recovered the lands that belonged to us and we liberated our Serb brothers of the plains who had been overrun and submerged. We did not rest until we secured our seaboard towns—our windows on the world of the West, where men were happier because we had protected them— and we raised the cross once again over Antovari and Dulcigno. The world then hailed us publicly as gallant fighters for the true Faith, but they whispered that we were savages and that indeed few of us could read or write.

“And in a narrow sense that was true; I admit it. The school of the Montenegrin boy, and girl too, had been from the day the Horde arrived in Europe unrelenting mountain warfare. We had no need to write down the story of our race—that our boys and girls imbibed with their mother’s milk, and they sang it as they defended the mountain crags that were at once our home and our refuge. Yes, we did become illiterate because we had to fight day and night for our creed, our independence, our faith, our man- and our womanhood. But before the Horde came, mine had been an enlightened people loving the ways of peace. In those days Obod, today a battle-scarred village, was the Athens of Southeastern Europe and from there the records of our faith and our civilization were communicated in our tongue to the outside world still in darkness.”²

Suddenly the old King sobbed aloud. “It is forgotten now,” he said, “even by our own people, but it is God’s truth that those leaden types of Obod were melted down to make bullets with which we stopped the enemies of our creed, and the precious manuscripts which revealed the glories of our race were used as wadding for the guns that saved Christendom. Had we not made those sacrifices, there might well have been no printing in Western Europe today. It might have become there a lost art, as it has with us; and the spoken language in the West might well have become Turkish. History reveals that some nations have short memories, but today in our hour of need it seems incredible that these services should be completely forgotten.”

“That shall never be,” said the Colonel, who was deeply moved. “In some way which we do not see plainly at present Montenegro will be restored to her ancient glory.”

* * * * *

Back at the Crillon I slipped to the Colonel Tennyson’s great sonnet and he read it and read it again.

O! smallest among people, rough rock throne
Of Freedom, warriors beating back the swarm
Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years,
Great Tzernagora, never since thine own
Black ridges drew the clouds and broke the storm
Has breathed a mightier race of mountaineers.

“We must leave nothing undone to help these gallant people and their noble king. If the Powers fail us, I shall ask Texas to take Montenegro under her wing,” concluded the Colonel.