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The professor was in the adjoining inn, so we guessed it must be the best; but a young French sailor, from the wireless in Podgoritza, who came to gossip with us, said there was nothing to choose.
When not one single Albanian school was permitted in Montenegro; forcible Slavizing was going on in the Kuchi and Triepshl tribes, and the Catholic Albanians of Podgoritza were not allowed to make a floor to their church and had to kneel on the bare gravel. At Podgoritza I soon saw that the Montenegrins wanted war. King Nikola hoped thus to mend his damaged prestige. Mobilization began.
The next movement on the part of the Turks, which was expected to be one by Dervish Pasha, from the base of Podgoritza towards Cettinje, called me into the field again.
Poor old Jovan Golubovitch, the innkeeper at Podgoritza, was a native of Struga, and was known always as Jovan Bulgar. We visited the uniquely interesting fishtraps on the Drin, built like a prehistoric lake-village. These, said our Serb escort, would be a source of great wealth when modernized. "But," we objected, "perhaps this will not be yours. The question has to be arbitrated."
The Montenegrins left, after having burnt and pillaged nearly a third of the bazar as vengeance. At Podgoritza, where I went to fetch my store of relief stuff, I was set on by a number of officials at the parcel office. Furious at losing Scutari, they swore they would retake it and take Bosnia, too. I told them not to talk so foolishly. They cried: "We the Serb people have beaten the Turk.
They aimed for a place called Podgoritza, which had a partially justifiable reputation for an inn, they missed the road and spent the night in the open beside a fire, rolled in the blankets they had very fortunately bought in Cettinje. They supped on biscuits and Benham's brandy flask.
At the head of a band of 2,500 Bulgarians he crossed the frontier and burned the Turkish blockhouse at Oschumava, afterwards occupying a strategic position above the Struma River. The Montenegro army opened the war on October 9th, by attacking a strong Turkish position opposite Podgoritza, Franz Peter, the youngest son of King Nicholas, firing the first shot.
We finally decided that if he was going to have dysentery he had better have it decently and in order at Podgoritza, than stand the chance of being suddenly surprised by the Austrians and made to walk endless distances. So we heaved him on to a wooden pack, and the other chlorodyney figures of woe climbed on to the remaining queer-looking saddles. Blease tried a horse which had a thoughtful eye.
Even Montenegrin officers openly boasted that they did not know the price of the regie tobacco as they smoked only contraband, and feeling ran so high that the Italian Monopol buildings at Antivari were attacked and damaged. At Podgoritza I met again the Albanian coachman Shan, who had served me very faithfully on my previous visits. He took me to the house of his family.
The Conference inevitably became a struggle by Russia to obtain all possible lands for her proteges regardless of the wishes of the inhabitants. Possession of land for a short time in the Middle Ages was given as reason for handing it over now. "We might as justly claim Calais," I said to a Podgoritza schoolmaster, "for it was ours at the same time!" "Why don't you," said he. "You have a navy?"
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