The Hattiesburg news., 1915-02-09
TINY But STURDY
IS MONTENEGRO
HER NATIVES ARE LIBERTY Low
ING, HAVING REMAINED FREE
500 YEARS.

Washington, D. c., Feb. 4.-Monte.
negro is one of the smallest members
of the family of nations, and freedom.
has made her sturdiest stands among
its deary crags and unproductlve rock.
strewn, gravel slopes. Now. true to
traditions of centuries of incessant
warning, she has joined in the world.
war, with eagerness to expand in the
tobacco and grazing lands of Herze-
govina. A picture of the strongly in.
dustrial characteristics of this nation
nurtured and contained upon a noun
tain, whose entrance into the war
scales caused hardly tremor of the
balance, has been prepared for tn
National Geographic Society by
George Higgins Moses, United States
Minister to Greece and Montenegro
during 19o9-19l2. Surveying the his
tory of the miniature country. against
which powerful Islamic waves broke
in vain for centuries the writer says:
For 500 years they have maintain
ed freedom, which of old has sat upon
the heights and, with sufferings in
describable, with courage illimitable,
won from the great English apostle
of Balkan freedom those words of I'M
dying praise, in which he gave it as
his deliberate opinion that the ira
ditions of Montenegro exceed in glory
those of Marathon and Thermopylae
crd all the war traditions OF the
world" Everywhere within the little
kingdom, the writer says, one can see
memorials Of the grim, unbroken
struggle of Montenegros poopla
against the power Of the Turk, a strug,
sic in which the Turk. master through
the Balkans, battered against the
mountain heights to no avail.
Montenegro has little/to invite ex.
cept the majesty Of the vistas from
its higher crests, and the little band
VI CAd's WIZ Hcu HltfeI Hdu lIeeuOHl
more than luxury and ease in mind.
At the creation, SO runs a Montenegro
legend given by Mr.. Moses. an angel
was sent forth to gather the super.
tluous stones on the earths surface.
He placed these stones in bag which
burst as he was nyipg over Cernagora,
and Montenegros richest dover is still
the rocks which the angel spilled upon
it.
The approach to the kingdom,
winding way all up hill. is spoken OF
by the writer as a splendid piece OF
gaunt, gray cliffs, finally threading q
narrow, easily-defended defile and
crossing over a pass mostly swathed
in clouds. Montenegro, Mr.. Moses
continues, is webbed with fine roads
the expression of the present kings
restless spirit for improvement. The
capital itself, Cetnje, is hardly moro
than knot Of cross-streets in two
broad reads Of this system. There
are no pretentious buildings in tn
city, only two being CT more than tive
stories in height, The Russian and
the Austrian legations. The external
life of the capital is simple in the ex.
treme.
Montenegrins, according to the writ
er, are mostly of greater than average
| stature, and the men have come L
feel their principal calling to be that
of war. The women of Montenegro
are it's economic producers, and, to
quote King Nicholas, who has married
his delightful daughters to some of
Europe's leading houses, the women
are the lands most important export
The men, Mr.. Moses says, are good
| workers when plt to II and whenevpr