I am not ignorant of the King's shortcomings in other respects. But in
this case I believe that he has been grossly maligned. If he did sell
out he drove an extremely poor bargain, for he is living in exile, in
extremely straitened circumstances, his only luxury a car which the
French Government loans him. It is difficult to believe that, had he
been a traitor to the Allied cause, the British, French, and Italian
governments would continue to recognize him, to pay him subventions, and
to treat him as a ruling sovereign. Certain American diplomats have told
me that they were convinced that the King had a secret understanding
with Austria, though they admitted quite frankly that their convictions
were based on suspicions which they could not prove. To offset this, a
very exalted personage, whose name for obvious reasons I cannot mention,
but whose integrity and whose sources of information are beyond
question, has given me his word that, to his personal knowledge,
Nicholas had neither a treaty nor a secret understanding with the enemy.

"The propaganda against him had been so insidious and successful,
however," my informant concluded, "that even his own soldiers were
convinced that he had sold out to Austria and when the King attempted to
rally them as they were falling back from the positions on Mount
Lovtchen they jeered in his face, shouting that he had betrayed them.
Yet I, who was on the spot and who am familiar with all the facts, give
you my personal assurance that he had not."

Nor did the King give up his sword to the Austrian commander at Grahovo,
as was reported in the European press. When, with three-quarters of his
country overrun by the Austrians, his chief of staff, Colonel Pierre
Pechitch of the Serbian Army, reported "_Henceforth all resistance and
all fighting against the enemy is impossible. There is no chance of the
situation improving_," King Nicholas, in the words of Baron Sonnino,