hated on account of the most ruthless fashion in which, as Minister, he had executed certain of his master's critics at Kolašin. There was a time, during the first Balkan War, when he advocated union with Serbia and on April 6, 1916, he wrote in the _Bosnische Post_ of Sarajevo that Nikita, owing to his flight, "may be regarded as no longer existing." But his unpopularity remained and, with vengeance burning in his heart, he went from Podgorica to the Italians. They concocted a nice plan--he was to raise an army of his countrymen and the Italians would bring their garrison from Scutari. On January 1 Plamenac and his partisans tried to seize Virpazar, on the Lake of Scutari--the Commandant of the Italian troops at Scutari, one Molinaro, had asked the chief of the Allied troops, three days before this attempt, whether he might dispatch two companies to that place for the purpose of suppressing the disorders which had not yet come to pass. Another rising was engineered at Cetinje, where twenty or thirty of the poor peasants who had let themselves be talked over by Plamenac were killed; the rest of the misguided fellows were sent home, only their leaders being detained. Plamenac himself escaped to Albania.[26] On the side of the Montenegrin Provisional Government no regular troops were available, as the Yugoslav soldiers who had lately arrived were engaged in policing other parts of the country. Volunteers were needed and a body of young men, mostly students, enrolled themselves. They were so busy that they omitted to inform Mr. Ronald M'Neill, M.P., that they really were Montenegrin students. That indignant gentleman insists that they were Serbs, armed with French and British rifles, against which, he tells us (in the _Nineteenth Century_, January 1921) the insurgents could not do much. Eleven of these volunteers were killed and they were buried underneath the tree where Nikita used to administer his brand of justice. All kinds of incriminating documents were found upon the dead and captured rebels, as also a significant letter from the Italian Minister accredited to Nikita, which was addressed to the chancellor of the Italian Legation at Cetinje. An inter-Allied Commission, over which General Franchet d'Espérey presided, issued their report on February 8 at Podgorica. "All the troops," it said, "in Montenegro are Yugoslavs and not Serbs; there are not more than 500 of them." It further stated that the rebellion had been provoked by certain agents of the ex-King, assisted by some Italian agents. As for the ridiculous Italian charge which I quoted, accusing the French of a share in the low intrigues of Balkan politics, this participation consisted in their General at Kotor demanding of Darković, the leader of the Montenegrin deputies, that his followers and the rebels should not come to blows. The reply, which annoyed the General, was to the effect that if the rebels made an attack, then