Since there are quite a number of Montenegrins in the Serbian
administration and army, all the officers and men, for example, of the
2nd--the so-called "iron"--Regiment being of Montenegrin origin, one
fails to see for what reason a Serb should be debarred from posts in
Montenegro. It is unfortunate when people use the word "Montenegrin"
without knowing that there is no separate Montenegrin nation, in the
sense that there is a French or Italian nation. The Montenegrins are a
small section of the Serbian nation, which sought a refuge among the
bare, precipitous mountains and, unlike the other Serbs, maintained its
independence. One should, therefore, to avoid confusion, speak of Serbs
of Serbia and Serbs of Montenegro rather than of Serbs and Montenegrins.
The purest Serbian is spoken in western Montenegro, on the borders of
Herzegovina; those districts are ethnically different from the southern
region, centring round Cetinje, which is the real old Montenegro, and
the north and north-eastern parts, called the Brda, which in speech and
customs are akin to the south. In western Montenegro, as in Herzegovina,
the people, who live among their mountains on milk and its products, are
very prolific, having families of eight or ten children. They are a very
healthy, moral race.
Another pro-Nikita, anti-Serbian writer, excusable only on account of
his insignificance, is Mr. Devine, who teaches, I am told, at a school
near Winchester and seems very unwilling to be taught. If he wishes, by
producing a book on the subject, to show other people that he knows
painfully little about Montenegro, that is his own affair. But he is
just as ignorant with regard to his hero. He says that he "is in a
position to state that there is not one single word of truth in the
insinuations and charges impugning the absolute integrity and loyalty of
King Nicholas towards his Allies." The King was, according to Mr.
Devine, a defenceless old man whom it was very bad form to attack. But
the King had been defending himself at considerable length not only in a
harangue to his adherents in a Paris suburb, but also on various
occasions in a newspaper, the _Journal Officiel_--and both the speech
and long extracts from the newspaper are quoted, with approval, in Mr.
Devine's book. This quaint person is so frantically keen to pour
whitewash over Nikita that he has no time to listen to the main
treacheries of Nikita's career. "Malicious falsehoods!" he
splutters--and they can be traced to horrible pan-Serbians. He has
reason to believe that they wish to make Serbia the Prussia of the new
Federation; well, the Croats and the Slovenes and the Bosniaks and all
the others cannot say that Mr. Devine has not warned them. My
Montenegrin friend Mr. Burić stated in the columns of the _Saturday
Review_ that this odd gentleman had nourished the ambition of becoming
Montenegrin Minister to the Court of St. James, but that the plan did
not succeed. I never saw Mr.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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