rather morbid Muse has suffered no injury--to his predestined
task. Those--the comparatively few that read--whose
acquaintance with this writer's work usually caused them to
regret his methods, could not help admiring his personal
activities, his genius for leadership and his vital fire during
the War. But, once this was over, he relapsed; and expressing
himself very clearly in action, so that he became known to the
many instead of the few, he lived what he previously wrote, and
now it is generally recognized that Gabriel of the
Annunciation, as he calls himself, who produced a row of
obscene and histrionic novels, is a mountebank, a self-deceiver
and a most affected bore. When he came to Rieka he thought fit
to appeal to the England of Milton. And, like him, Milton lived
as he wrote. Milton, Dante and Sophocles--to mention no others
of the supreme writers--were as serious and responsible in
their public actions as in the pursuit of their art.]
[Footnote 62: Whatever be the limitations of the _Dom_ as a
newspaper--it is almost exclusively occupied with the person
and programme of Mr. Radić--yet that brings with it the
virtue, most exceptional in Yugoslavia, of refusing to engage
in polemics. This would otherwise take up a good deal of its
space, as Radić has become such a bogey-man that nothing is
too ridiculous for his opponents to believe. A Czech newspaper
not long ago informed the world that this monstrous personage
had told an interviewer that not only had Serbian soldiers in
Macedonia been murdering 200 children but that they had roasted
and consumed them. Furthermore Radić had said that the
British Minister to Yugoslavia had called upon him and had
asked his advice with some persistence, not even wishing to
leave Radić time to reflect, as to whether the Prince-Regent
should rule in Russia, while an English Prince should be
invited to occupy the Yugoslav throne. The first of these
remarks proved conclusively, said a number of Belgrade papers,
that Radić was a knave and by the second he had demonstrated
that he was an imbecile. And my friend Mr. Leiper of the
_Morning Post_ speculated as to whether he was more likely to
end his days in a lunatic asylum or a prison. But Radić was
caring about none of these things; his birthday happened at
about this time and some 30,000 of his adherents came to do him
honour at his birthplace, over 500 of them on decorated horses
having met him at Sisak station the previous evening. When I
asked him what he had to say about the two afore-mentioned
remarks he gave me an amusing account of how the interviewer
had appreciated the various samples of wine which he (Radić)
had just brought down from his vineyard. The conversation
lasted for about four hours, and in the course of it Radić
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