Count de Salis's impartial methods did not always please the population,
which was by a large majority against the former king's return and--as
he clearly stated--heart and soul for Yugoslavia. Balkan people do not
yet, to any great extent, appreciate your desire for truth or even your
honesty if you should give a hearing to their antagonists. The Cetinje
public, therefore, organized a demonstration or two against the Count.
They would have preferred that he should reach the afore-mentioned
conclusions without such an exhaustive study of the case. He noted that
there had been certain irregularities in the Yugoslav administration,
but it was inevitable that in those unsettled times the inexperienced
officials would not prove equal to every emergency. These officials, by
the way, in 1919 were not Serbs from Serbia, but for the most part
native Montenegrins. "The country is occupied and administered by
foreigners," said[43] Mr. Ronald M'Neill, M.P. "Montenegro," said he,
"is full of Serb officials." I suppose one must receive it more with
sorrow than with anger if a man like Mr. Massingham of _The Nation_
says that the Serbs "have deposed the Montenegrin judges, schoolmasters,
doctors, chemists and local officials, and set up their own puppets."
While he might have assumed that the long years of War had left the
Serbs with a very inadequate supply of officials for the old kingdom, he
would have ascertained, if his sources had been more trustworthy, that
Glomažić, the very human prefect of Cetinje, is a native of
Nikšić, that Miloš Ivanović, the mayor, is from the Kuči,
near Podgorica--and he was a magistrate under Nikita; that Bojović,
the prefect of Podgorica, is a barrister of the Piperi, while
Radonić, the mayor, was an artillery officer, then a political
prisoner and then the food administrator under Nikita; that
Jaouković, the prefect of Nikšić, was a magistrate under the
old régime--he comes, I believe, from the Morača; Zerović, the
mayor and an ex-magistrate, is a native of Nikšić; that the
prefect of Antivari, Dr. Goinić, is a doctor of law whose home is
between Antivari and Virpazar; that Boško Bošković, the prefect
of Kolačin, won great fame as an officer under Nikita, while
Minić, the mayor, was Nikita's chief of the Custom-house. As for the
doctors who left the country, these consisted of Matanović and
Vulanović, who have gone to Novi Sad and Subotica respectively, as it
is easier to make a living in those towns than in Montenegro. There are
now three Yugoslav doctors at Cetinje (Odgerović, Radović--both of
whom were doctors in the time of Nikita--and Matanović, a young man);
they are all Montenegrins. So, too, with the chemists and the
schoolmasters and the post and telegraph officials--I am sure that Mr.
Massingham will excuse me if I do not mention all their names.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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