his misdeeds, political or domestic, his abdication was a great surprise. He went away suddenly to live in Paris the life he preferred, after making provision that Alexander, his son, should succeed him. Alexander was but a boy of fourteen when he came to the throne--a subnormal boy, and wilful, too. As an Autocrat he had no rival among modern Serbian rulers. No one unmade and made so many Constitutions. No Prince or King of Serbia surprised his people with so many coups d'état. But the time had passed when the misdoings of a ruler could make the people of Serbia very unhappy. Although the King never failed to show that he despised not only statesmen and scholars but even distinguished army officers, he could terrorize neither individuals nor the Nation. The three great parties, Liberal, Radical, and Progressive, were not afraid to express opinions, and many reforms were projected and carried out. Serbs as a whole were anxious to be counted among the people of the world of intelligence and culture. Alexander and Draga mortified them; but the assassination of the wretched pair lowered the Nation in the estimation of humanity. Less than a week had passed since the killing of the King and Queen, in the spring of 1903, when the Skupchtina elected Peter Karageorgevitch to the throne. This grandson of Karageorges had been an exile for forty-five of his fifty-seven years of life. Austria and Russia alone among the Great Powers were willing now to recognize him. Great Britain waited three years before sending back her Minister to Serbia. This was after the regicides had gone from the country. IV. SERBIANS So Serbia was no longer a child, and she wore a royal crown. She even had to be considered by the family of Nations when making plans. Some members of the family, indeed, would like to have made all her plans for Serbia, without intimating that in so doing they would profit themselves. Serbia realized that there were things she could not do without the consent of some, or even all of them; but she did not wonder why--for Serbia herself had grown up, and it wasn't merely a physical development. She understood a great many things that in her more primitive days she could not have comprehended.