We have seen that Prince Danilo, before flinging himself against the infidel Turk, is alleged to have transacted a little business on the Bourse--a former Montenegrin Minister of Finance says that he may well have netted between 25 and 30 million crowns--and his royal father, though his methods often had a tinge of mediævalism, was not the man to rush, like some old knight, in succour of distress. When Serbia was attacked in 1914 he refrained from flying to her side. Montenegro "stood up spontaneously to defend the Serbian cause: she fought and she fell," says Mr. Devine. There is not the least doubt but that the vast majority of Montenegrins would have acted in this fashion. To some degree they had deteriorated under the example of Nikita--"A fish stinks from its head," says a Turkish proverb; but when their brother Serbs were in deadly peril all else was forgotten. And they were bewildered and suspicious when the Skupština was summoned, seeing that the Constitution laid it down that the declaring of war was a royal prerogative. As practically every man was thirsting for battle--after all they were Serbs and incapable of committing high treason against their brethren--they marvelled at the King's delay. But to the politicians his manœuvre explained itself; they recognized that Nikita had some secret arrangement[72] with the Austrians and that he wanted to tell Francis Joseph that the War had been forced upon him. From that moment he was playing a double rôle; a Serbian officer was chief of the Montenegrin staff. "They have placed my army under Serbian command," he told the Austrians. "So faithful was I," he said to the Entente, "that I even took a Serbian commander." In view of the persistent pro-Nikita propaganda which subsequently reared its foolish head in Great Britain, it is as well to note what were the sentiments of the Montenegrins towards their own country and their brother Serbs, and on the other hand how they regarded Nikita. Alone among the Allies the Montenegrin soldier received no decorations either in the Balkan wars or in the Great War, and yet he had formerly been so proud of such recognition that it had often been carved upon his tombstone, and when for one decoration there were two claimants a duel was frequently arranged in order to decide which was to be the recipient. But Nikita's régime of corruption and intrigue caused these marks of distinction to be conferred more and more upon police-agents and such like, so that in the Balkan War, when the heroes could no longer be counted, when more than five standard-bearers fell one after another in carrying the same standard and when it was proposed to decorate _en bloc_ the Kuči brigade, the soldiers refused to accept what had been so profaned. THE RIDDLE OF SARAJEVO On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was murdered at Sarajevo.