Americans Shake Nicholas's Throne.

New York Times 100 years ago today, January 12, 1913:
Volunteer Montenegrins from This Country Are Making the King's Position Difficult.
WAR FAILURE DISASTROUS
People Held Monarch Responsible for Collapse of Scutari Campaign — Dissatisfaction Widespread.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    LONDON, Jan. 11.— Letters received from Cettinje confirm the statement cabled to The New York Times that the "American Montenegrins," as the natives of the Black Mountain Kingdom who returned from the United States in order to fight for their country on the outbreak of the Balkan war are called, are held chiefly responsible for the difficulties which now beset King Nicholas.
    Anti-dynastic influences have, of course, been strong for years in Montenegro, but the opposition to the present ruler has been strengthened by the criticisms of the American volunteers whose experience in the United States have led them to believe that the patriarchal form of Government which has hitherto existed at Cettinje is by no means adapted to modern requirement.
    Throughout the Balkan campaign Montenegro cut a rather sorry figure. King Nicholas personally took command of the Montenegrin Army with the object of strengthening the popularity of his family with the troops, who were discontented with Prince Danilo. His reception by the peasant soldiers, whom he had hoped to lend to Scutari, was not as warm as the enthusiastic dispatches sent off at the outset of the operations indicated. His Majesty was hail-fellow-well-met with the correspondents of English and other papers, who flocked to the scene of the first fighting, the majority of whom repaid his gracious reception of them by painting his conduct of the operations in most glowing colors.
    The Montenegrin people, however, do not seem to attach as much importance to that divinity which doth hedge a King, as the foreign newspaper men who were flattered by their easy intercourse with the monarch. Montenegro's ambition was to take Scutari, and the fact that King Nicholas has been unable to dislodge the Turks in that town is held against him.
    Montenegro possesses a Constitution, but, nevertheless, remains a patriarchal State, and consequently success or failure is not unnaturally attributed by his subjects to the personal qualities of the monarch. As a Cettinje dispatch to The Times says, a paternal Government may answer excellently with a winning hand, but King Nicholas may now be learning that it is not a trump-card in a losing game.
    This discontent is aggravated by the Montenegrins who have returned as volunteers from the United States, where many thousands are said to emigrate in order to earn a living less laboriously than among their own barren mountains. These men, who have become accustomed to a democratic form of Government have pointed out to their comrades the disadvantages of patriarchal rule. Kins Nicholas is said to have been so apprehensive of the influence which the returning; emigrants might exert that certain detachments of so-called "Americans" were received most coldly. In one instance, the "Americans" were treated so badly that they only took service with the Montenegrin colors after they had applied in vain to serve as volunteers in the Servian Army.
    Having been unsuccessful in war. King Nicholas is understood to be having recourse to diplomacy. His object is to have the Scutari district allotted to Montenegro. The Montenegrins generally believe that Scutari is essential to the future economic prosperity of their country. It was for that that they went to war, and the failure of their monarch to obtain the cession of the Scutari district by diplomacy, coming after his failure to capture it in war, is bound in have an effect upon his standing with his people.
    There was much ado made over the early successes of the Montenegrin Army, but later information has shown that they were of little real value, and the eventual halt before Tarbosch attained almost a comic opera relief. , Dispatches to The New York Times have already given the details of the movement against King Nicholas, and while some of those reports may have been colored by their transmission through Vienna, letters direct from Cettinje show his Majesty's tenure of the throne is somewhat seriously jeopardized.
    There certainly exists in Montenegro a strong party whose object is to get rid of the present dynasty by pensioning off the monarch and the members of the royal family and throw in their lot with Servia.