Montenegro is dying of hunger. From the top of its barren mountains its people can see the Adriatic, and imagine the prosperous lands in the distance, Africa and Italy and their crops. Towards these bountiful harvests they stretch their appeals and their greedy hands; but famine, following war, is devastating their homes. Despite her own agony, France does not suspect into what horrors the present tragedy can plunge the peoples who are cut off from the world. In Paris and in the provinces there is food, and subsistence. Whatever the price, meat and bread can be bought at the butcher’s and baker’s. Montenegro has nothing. Walled up in a dungeon, its women and its soldiers scatter to the four winds appeals which do not feed them. From the north, Austria is waging against it that same campaign of devastation which she began against the Serbs. To the south, Albania, that courtesan of pillage; only waits the command to throw her bands into Cettinje. To the East, Serbia, hemmed in, remains alive only by a tenacity which will amaze the future. And, finally, towards the West, the sea, closed to the nations without navies, leaves deserted the harbors of Montenegro, and empties her granaries. In spite of that, she does not hesitate. At the first insults hurled against her by her Slavic cousins, each man took his cartridges, wound around his legs the puttees of war, and went to the frontiers to fight in defense of honor. If I had not forbidden myself to inscribe here events which have nothing to do with the Navy, I should tell of this drama of skirmishes, raids, night assassinations, in which a handful of mountaineers, without arsenals or foundries or commissary supplies, or routes or guns, renews every week, against the immense armies of Austria, the exploits of Leonidas against Xerxes. But this perseverance, invincible to the attacks of men, has to yield to the sufferings of the body. To conserve energy in his muscles, precision in his eyes, firmness in his will, the Montenegrin has to have food. They call for help. Since snow and mud have taken possession of their kingdom, Prince Nicholas and his ministers send out wireless messages of supplication. Smothering their invincible pride and the shame of yielding to hunger, they tell us every day the story of their distress. Just now, in some district that had been bombarded by heavy artillery, the storehouses were burned, and the meager provisions of a year destroyed. Another day, Croatians and Bosnians, pursued by the Austrian butchers, took refuge in ruined Montenegro; as gifts they brought only their hate and their hunger.