In the Sandjak the task of Yugoslavia will be relatively simple; the Albanians who live there are not autochthonous, but arrived at the beginning of the eighteenth century on the plateau of Pechter. These Klementi—then very numerous—cared nothing for their Serbian origin, so that the Patriarch of Peć had to protect himself against them by means of a janissary guard—which the Sultan permitted him to maintain at his own expense—whereas they were attentive to the teachings of their religion, in so far as they obeyed the Catholic missionaries who dwelt among them and requested that in their forays they should confine themselves to Muhammedan and Orthodox booty. One of the places they attacked was Plav, from which they drove the population, and themselves henceforward took to living on the fertile fields in summer, while they spent the winter in some mountain caverns. But after seven years a large proportion of this tribe went back to its ancestral stronghold in the Brdo range, from which the Turks had transplanted them to the Sandjak. This wish of theirs to goto their old home was gratified after they had beaten off the Turks triumphantly in various engagements on the way, and even pursued them to their trenches.... The Klementi who had stayed on the Pechter were further depleted a few years later, when their kinsfolk, answering the appeal of the Archbishop of Antivari,rodeup there and carried off fifty families who were on the eve of renouncing their religion. The final group which remained became Moslem, and with such ardour that when the Serbs of Kara George reached the Sandjak they found that these Klementi were completely Islamized; they resisted the Serbian army with the utmost resolution. Subsequently they attempted to convert the Serbian population round them, but with mediocre success, for the Klementi themselves were not too strong; moreover, they were isolated from the other Muhammedan Albanians.
And yet certain incidents which occurred in the Sandjak during the Great War seem to show that even there the task of dealing with the population is a troublous one. They are conservative; one sees, for example, a woman who has got up very early holding aloft a vessel against the sun. This is done with the object of preventing the cows of a certain man from giving any milk. But the man is on the alert. He shoots the vessel out of her hand and proceeds, with an easy mind, about his business. Frequently the Austrians disarmed these men, but it is their practice to have more rifles than shirts, although during the occupation a rifle cost twenty napoleons. It occurred to the Austrian Governor-General of Montenegro, Lieut. Field-Marshal von Weber, that these Albanians were children and, if treated well, would make useful volunteers. A party of them was thereupon sent to Graz, where they were told that they would be trained to fight on behalf of the Sultan. Their military education was a trifle agitated—for instance, on their second day at Graz they thrashed their officers—but when their training was considered adequate they were sent to the front, and there they immediately surrendered to the Italians. This was not the first time that a body of Albanians had gone to Austria. In 1912, for the Eucharistic Congress at Vienna, some two dozen of them, in their national costume and conducted bytheir priests, had taken part in the procession. It is said that the financier Rosenberg, of whom one has heard, bore a portion of the pretty large expenses of the deputation. His title of baron dates from this period. Austria's work among the school-children was no more successful than among the adults. Remembering that just outside Zadar lies Arbanasi, or Borgo Erizzo, a village of 2500 inhabitants, nearly all of whom are Albanians, it seemed good to the Austrian authorities to procure from that place a schoolmaster who would make suitable propaganda. There was at Arbanasi a teachers' institute, as also an Italian "Liga" school which was closed by the Austrians during the War, and when the schoolmaster arrived at Plav, where the people speak Serbian, he set about teaching the children Albanian and also making propaganda for Italy, as he was from the "Liga" school.... That fidelity of the five hundred men of Plav who clung, as we have related, to their religion, had its pendant when the Austrians were engaged in constructing a road. The custom was for a potentate of that district to procure for the Austrians a sufficient number of men, to whom three or four crowns a day would be paid. Any man who disregarded the potentate's summons was thrashed by him, and thrashed in such a way that for three days he was prostrate. The late Chief of Police at Sarajevo, Mr. Ljescovac, was (being a Bosnian subject) administering this district during the Austrian occupation. He tried frequently to get particulars from the men who had been so mercilessly flogged, with a view to opening an inquiry. Their invariable answer was: "I know nothing."
In the days of Charles, another member of the Topia family, a copyist, who was in his service, was transcribing the Chronicle of George Hamartolos, and twice, thinking of his master, he inserts: "God, help Charles Topia." As we leave the Serb and the Albanian face to face, sensitive, imaginative, tenacious people, both with very ancient claims, we must hope that a happy solution will be found. After all Serbia, being in Yugoslavia, is now a Muhammedan and a Catholic Power. She has men at her disposal, such as Major Musakadić, a Bosnian Moslem who deserted from the Austrian army to theSerbs, fought with them on several fronts and received the highest decoration for valour, the Kara George; then, after the War, he was sent by the Government to command at Brćko, a place in his native Bosnia where there is a Moslem majority. A few of the Orthodox protested energetically that they would not have a Moslem over them; they were received by the Minister of Justice in Belgrade. "Gentlemen," said he, "go back to Brćko and when anyone of you has earned the Cross of Kara George I shall be glad to see him here again." ... As in the old days, the Serbian civilization is far superior, but this is not everything; that the Albanian is ready to meet it with peace or war he shows clearly as he glides along in his white skull-cap, his close-fitting white and black costume, with his panther-like tread and with several weapons and an umbrella.
But for the various reasons to which we have alluded he is now much more inclined to live in peace with the Yugoslav. Very differently, except if they are charged with gifts, does he receive the Italians; even at the moment of accepting their gifts of military material and cash he regards them with a more or less concealed derision, for he is impressed, as we have pointed out, by nothing so much as by military prowess and the reverse, whereof the news is carried far and wide. At the end of September and beginning of October 1918 two weak Yugoslav battalions of about a thousand rifles accomplished at Tirana what the large Italian forces could not, at any rate did not, achieve. Ten thousand Austrians were in the town, and for three months the Italians had sat down outside it. Then the Serbs descended on the place from the mountains; their carts came by the ordinary road, and on arriving at the Italian lines the drivers asked for hay; but when they explained that the rest of their force was going round by the mountain trail the Italian commandant refused to give any supplies to such liars. (Later on, though, he gave them sufficient for five days.) When an Austrian officer who was stationed in a minaret saw the Serbs coming down from those terrible heights he was so astonished that he felt sure they must be robbers. And after they had captured the town and the Italians conducted themselves as if itwere they who had conquered it, the Serbs took to thrashing their allies and ejecting them from the cafés. The Italians did not protest....
10. DR. TRUMBIĆ'S PROPOSAL
To sum up this part of our long and, I fear, rather tiring dissertation on the Yugoslav-Albanian frontier that is to be: the Yugoslav delegates at the Peace Conference invariably disclaimed any desire to have Albanian lands conferred on them against the wish of the inhabitants. According to Prince Sixte of Parma, the ex-Emperor Karl was disposed to offer to the Serbs as a basis of peace a Southern Slav kingdom consisting of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina and the whole of Albania. But this last item only made it clear that in his brief tenure of the throne the Emperor had grasped something of the grand generosity of European statesmen when they deal with the possessions of other people in the Near East. The Albanians are not Southern Slavs, and it is merely the voice of the thoughtless mob in Montenegro which has been claiming Scutari for the reason that they held it in the Middle Ages—several of their rulers are buried there—and because 20,000 Montenegrins gave their lives to take it in the Balkan War. Responsible persons in Yugoslavia, such as Dr. Trumbić, the former Foreign Minister, do not believe that Scutari is a necessity for their State—whether Yugoslavia is a necessity for Scutari is another question—and they hold that it is quite possible to preserve the 1913 frontier (perhaps with a minor rectification in Klementi) and live in friendship with their neighbours. This, of course, is under the assumption that these neighbours will "play the game"—and it is just this which the Albanians will be unable to do if they are left to their own slender resources. How could one expect so poor—or shall we say so unexploited?—a country to make any social progress without the help of others? It has become the habit of many Albanians to accept financial assistance from Italy; if an independent Albania is now established these subsidies will be increased—and he who pays the piper calls the tune. If, however, an arrangement could be made for helping the Albanians—and the countryundertaking this would have to be devoid of Balkan ambitions on its own account—then the 1913 frontier would be possible. No doubt the cynics will say that the Yugoslavs are aware that this is an unlikely solution, and that failing a disinterested Power, whose supervision would cause the Albanians during the troublesome civilizing process to be moderately peaceable neighbours, failing such a Power the Yugoslavs would feel that they were justified in asking for the frontier of the Drin. But this frontier I have heard advocated less by Yugoslavs of any standing than by those Albanians who despair of the administrative capacities of their fellow-countrymen. The Yugoslavs have not the smallest wish to add to their commitments, and even if all the Albanians on the right bank of the Drin were anxious for Yugoslav overlordship—and this, naturally, is not the case—there would be serious hostility to be expected from some of those on the other bank. If no disinterested Power, such as Great Britain or Sweden, will take the matter in hand, then Dr. Trumbić has an alternative proposal, which is for a free, independent Albania (with the 1913 frontier) which would exist on the Customs and on a loan made by the Great Powers, who would put in a Controller charged with seeing that the money were spent on roads, schools, etc. A police force, and not an army, would be maintained; while, if need be, the country could be neutralized; and Dr. Trumbić, within whose lifetime bandits and heiduks were roaming through Bosnia, believes that the Albanians would gradually discard their cherished system of feuds.... This would be the happiest solution, for it would leave the Balkans to the Balkan peoples, while it would aim at the development of whatever good qualities there are in the Albanians, and it would definitely recognize a Yugoslav-Albanian frontier which is acceptable to both countries.
11. THE POSITION IN 1921: THE TIRANA GOVERNMENT AND THE MIRDITI
While Europe in the year 1921 was either exhausted or belligerent, or both, she had a vague knowledge that hostilities were being carried on between the Serbs and the Albanians. Telegrams from Rome, Tirana and elsewhereappeared in the papers, saying that the Serbs continued to advance. Occasionally a Serbian statesman would declare that his Government desired the independence of Albania. Then some Albanian delegate in Geneva would make a protest and ask the League of Nations, of which Albania was now a member, to take this matter in hand. A Serbian delegate would also address the League. Again you would hear of the Serbian army pushing forward, that a good many soldiers had fallen. And no one seemed to know why the Serbs would want to shed their blood in order to add to their miscellaneous problems this very grave one of administering such a region inhabited by such a people. Why did they not content themselves with the frontier which the Powers temporarily assigned to them in 1918 and which, from the junction of the Black and White Drin, runs south along the rocky right bank of the river and then, crossing to the other side, passes along the top of a range of mountains? What more could they wish to have, presuming that it was not their intention to annex what lay between them and the Adriatic?
Well, it appears that never once did they go beyond the aforementioned line to which they were legally entitled, except when for a short time they were in pursuit, towards Ljuria, of certain invaders. Not only were they legally entitled to take up their position on the mountains to the west of the Black Drin, but the Moslem tribes, the Malizi and the Ljuri, who dwell in that uninviting district, were most anxious that the Serbs should come and should remain. For this the tribes had two principal reasons: in the first place, they recognized that their compatriots in Djakovica and Prizren were immeasurably better off than before they came under Serbian rule; and secondly, they did not wish to be separated from these towns which are their markets. In fact, they had become so anxious to throw in their lot with the Slavs that they formed six battalions, which operated on both banks of the river, under the command of Bairam Ramadan, Mahmoud Rejeb and others. In opposition to these battalions were the troops of the so-called National Government, that of Tirana. This Government is repudiated by a great many Albanians on account of its reactionary methods, its subservienceto the Italians, and its failure to do anything for the people. The battalions, then, were engaged in 1921, not against their immediate neighbours to the west, the Catholic Mirditi, of whom we shall speak anon, but against the more distant Government of Tirana. Thus the League of Nations beheld that the administration which they were about to confirm as the legitimate Government of Albania was violently opposed by compact masses of Catholics and Moslems. Perhaps some of the members of the League began to doubt whether they should have accepted the assurance of the Anglo-Albanian Society that the Tirana Government (containing Moslem, Catholic and Orthodox members) was really a national affair; perhaps they began to suspect that the two Christian elements were only there to throw a little dust in the eyes of Europe; and perhaps Lord Robert Cecil began to feel doubtful whether, at the urgent request of his friend Mr. Aubrey Herbert, President of the Anglo-Albanian Society, he had been well advised to bring about the admission into the League of a country which had two simultaneous Governments before it had a frontier. Perhaps one was beginning to recognize that there are Albanians but no Albania.
The emissaries of Tirana might depict as of no importance the hostilities that were being waged against them by those Moslem tribes, they might tell the League of Nations that the Mirdite revolution was not worth considering. It is a fact that the Mirditi are not very numerous, but in close connection with their 18,000 people are the Shala with 500 houses and the Shoshi with 300. Tradition has it that they are descended from three brothers who set out from the arid village of Shiroka on Lake Scutari to seek their fortune. The most ancient, the most noble and important family of northern Albania is that of Gjomarkaj, whose seat is at Oroshi, the capital of the Mirditi. Despite enormous difficulties they succeeded in maintaining their own position and the prestige of the Mirditi. They refused to recognize the Turkish Government and clung so tenaciously to their own usages and laws, and were so famous for their courage that the Sultans were eager to grant them privileges and concessions. Thereafter they promised to assist theSultan against external aggression, and always did so with great success. It was due to the Mirditi that the Albanian mountaineers preserved their nationality, their religion and their customs, for they were ever the leaders of the other Albanian tribes. The most prominent of the Mirditi in our time have been Prenk Bib Doda, who, after long years of exile, was assassinated in Albania; Mark Djoni, now the President of the Mirdite Republic; and, above all, the great Abbot Monsignor Primo Doci, a man of vast culture, who returned to his own country after serving the Vatican as a diplomat in various parts of the world. It is not surprising that the educational standard of his native land filled him with the determination to build schools and that, owing to his efforts, the Roman Catholic establishment of thirty native priests and of bishops who were nearly all foreigners has developed into a body of almost three hundred native priests with no foreign bishops. A poet himself, he founded the literary society,Bashkimi l'unione, in which all capable patriots were invited to collaborate. He constructed more than twenty strongholds in and around Oroshi, and when he died in February 1917 it was largely owing to the persecution which he suffered at the hands of the Austrians. What has latterly aroused his faithful people is the persecution levelled at them by the Moslem-Italian Government of Tirana.
A certain amount of mystery envelopes the death of Bib Doda; an opinion widely held is that Italians were responsible, but Mr. H. E. Goad rebukes me in theFortnightly Reviewfor not knowing that the Italians laid aside the crude methods of political murder centuries ago. Perhaps he doesn't regard the massacre of the helpless French soldiers at Rieka in 1919 as political murder, since they were only privates; perhaps he doesn't count that famous expedition of the five lieutenants to assassinate Zanella, because it was unsuccessful; but he may be right concerning Bib Doda. That personage had been to Durazzo to confer with the Italians; he had refused to accept an Italian protectorate in Albania, and on his return he was killed in his carriage before he could reach Scutari. The chief assailant was a Catholic of Klementi, believed to be an adherent of Essad Pasha andalso an Italian "agent d'occasion." Yet as several Italian soldiers who accompanied Bib Doda were wounded it would seem that those, myself included, who believed that this affair had been arranged by the Italians were wrong.
As for Bib Doda's fortune, Mr. Goad asserts that by Albanian law he did not have to leave it to his nearest kinsman, Marko Djoni. That is, I beg to say, precisely what he had to do according to the custom of their ancient family. Mr. Goad says that the cash went to the poor; I say that a good deal of it went into the pocket of a lady who was much younger than the dead man and was on excellent terms with an Italian major. If Mr. Goad had visited Albania at that time and had been interested in other things besides what he tells us of—the moonlight of Klisura and the splendid plane trees over the Vouissa and the sunrise reflected on the gleaming mountain-wall of the Nemorica—I would not have to tell him all this about Bib Doda's money. He says that Marko Djoni is a discredited, disgruntled person who became a tool of the Serbs and fled to Serbia. But he forgets that Bib Doda was killed in March 1919, and that until May 1921 Marko Djoni remained in Albania, enjoying the friendship of Italy rather than that of Serbia. In fact it was not easy for him to abandon this friendship, owing to various deals in connection with the Mirdite forests. No doubt he resented the loss of his heritage; but why in the name of goodness should not he and his followers fight for their liberty, and why should the Serbs not help them at a time when the frontiers of Albania had not been fixed nor the Government officially recognized? The Serbs were helping him to make war, says Mr. Goad, against his legitimate rulers. Yet we must be lenient with our Mr. Goad, for he himself admits that "few can write of Balkan politics without revealing symptoms of that partisan disease." He has made up his mind that the Serbs are the villains of the piece, and there, for him, is the end of it.
A delegation from the Mirditi, consisting of the Rev. Professor Anthony Achikou and Captain Dod Lléche, came to Geneva in October 1921, and requested the League not to issue a confirmation of the Tirana Government. They showed that this Government hadno other aim than to turn Albania into a small Turkey. No doubt the Moslems, as the most numerous element, had a right to have a majority in the Cabinet, but there was no justification in their appointment of pure Turks. (The Tirana Government proposed in the autumn of 1921 that any Albanian coming from Turkey, who has held a public office there, shall be refused admittance into the Albanian Administration until two years after his return. This is a proposal but not yet, I believe, an effective law.) The Minister of Justice has been old Hodja Kadri, and the Minister of War one Salah el Din Bey, an officer of Kemal Pasha, and neither of these was acquainted with the Albanian language. When the Mirditi started to show their dislike of this Government, the War Minister commanded his troops to slay without mercy anyone who dared to raise his voice. Thus it came about that the villages of Oroshi, Laci, Gomsice and Naraci were destroyed, while those of the inhabitants who could escape fled across the frontier to Serbia. As for particular cases of iniquity we may instance that of the Moslem officer, Chakir Nizami, who, as a manifestation of his hatred for the Christians, had violated at Scutari a girl of fourteen whose name was Chakya Hil Paloks. He was sentenced by the French military authorities and was liberated by the Minister of Justice as soon as the French had quitted Scutari. On the other hand, Kol Achikou, a brother of the delegate, had killed a Moslem in self-defence and been acquitted by the French court martial; after their departure he was taken to Tirana and sentenced to death. But apart from all such misdeeds the Mirditi complained that the Tirana Government, which could not openly wage war with Serbia, had organized the "Kossovo" Committee, whose object it was to foment trouble in Serbia and to send armed bands of marauders on to Serbian territory. At the very moment when the delegation was at Geneva, one of these bands (in the night between October 12 and 13) raided the village of Mojište, near Gostivar. Furnished with Italian machine guns and bombs they came over the mountains, set fire to the village and killed many of the people as they fled. They are accustomed on such expeditions to steal the children and hold them to ransom—alucrative operation which d'Annunzio's arditi[91]may have copied from their Albanian colleagues. It would seem, then, according to the statement of the Mirditi, that in the conflict on the Black Drin, of which Europe had vaguely heard, the Tirana Government and not that of Serbia was the aggressor. Mr. Aubrey Herbert may write pathetic letters to the Press, Miss Durham may write letters of indignation, but how could their protégés of Tirana be said to be valiantly defending themselves against the wicked Serbs when the very villages which, said Mr. Herbert, were destroyed—Aras and Dardha and so forth—were situated in the district to which the Serbs were legally entitled?
The Mirditi delegates had an interview in Geneva with Lord Robert Cecil. An attempt was made by the Tirana delegates to discredit Professor Achikou, by publishing a telegram from Monsignor Sereggi, the Archbishop of Scutari (but which the Professor accused the rival delegate, the bearded, bustling Father Fan Noli, of having composed himself),[92]and in that message it was stated that Achikou was expelled from Albania. This he did not deny; he was, he said, one of 4000 who had been driven out by an arbitrary Government and he hoped that they would soon be able to return. The message called Achikou a traitor; but that is a matter of opinion. It said that he was in the service of a foreign Power; he replied that the Mirditi had never concealed their wish to live in friendship with their neighbours, and the proof that they envisaged nothing more than friendship was that they were petitioning the League to recognize the Mirdite Republic. Among the other charges against Achikou was one which said that he was sailing under false colours. This was an absurd accusation, and one which enabled the reverend Father to mention that his opponent Monsignor, who was then being called Bishop, Fan Noli, was neither a bishop nor an Albanian, but a simple priest, a Greek from Adrianople, whose real name was Theophanus.[93]This clever man,who had decided to form an Orthodox Albanian Church and had apparently become its bishop without the formality of consecration, had enjoyed some success at Geneva owing to his knowledge of languages. He circulated a telegram from Tirana which purported to be a disavowal of the Mirditi delegation by a number of Mirditi notables; but a reply was sent by Mark Djoni, the President of the Mirdite Republic, an elderly man of great sagacity and experience, for in Turkish times he had been chief magistrate of the Mirditi. He pointed out that all the notables and all the tribal chieftains had gone, like himself, into exile, and that the names were those of insignificant persons who had acted under fear of death. Djoni did not in this telegram allude to the position of those Catholic priests and others in northern Albania who support the Tirana Government and its Italian paymasters; some of them may believe that they are acting in the interest of their country—to act otherwise would be perilous, and everyone seems to know the precise number of napoleons a month—ranging from the 150 of an ecclesiastical magnate down to 7½ (the pay of a simple gendarme)—which they are alleged to receive. Do they ever think of the starving Italian peasants?
On October 7 another telegram was sent from Oroshi (the capital of the Mirditi) to the Tirana Delegation which "protested energetically against the activities of a certain Anthony Achikou." Yet, on October 9, an individual called Notz Pistuli, who had travelled specially from Scutari, presented himself at the Mirdite delegates' hotel, and in the name of the Scutari National Council asked whether a reconciliation could not be made between the Mirditi and the Tirana Government.[94]Being told that the Mirditi would have nothing to do with the Turkish Government of Tirana, he held out hopes that another Government more representative of Albania would soon be constituted. It was remarkable that Tirana should have dispatched this envoy after giving out that the Mirditi were traitors and that their delegates represented nobody.
Lord Robert Cecil did not at first seem to think that their desire for a republic independent of Tirana could begratified, but on being initiated into the facts of the case and told that definitely to reject them would look as if he were a foe to Christianity, Lord Robert said that such was far from being the case. He would do whatever he could to help them. And on the next day it was decided that, in accordance with the Mirdite request, a Commission should proceed to Albania.
The Italian delegate, Marquis Imperiali, submitted that there was no need to hurry this Commission and Monsieur Djoni explained in a telegram[95]that if the Commission went forthwith it would discover in Albania cannons, rifles and other war material from Italy, that it would find numerous Turkish officers of the Kemalist army who had been brought from Asia Minor in Italian ships, and that it would perceive that the cannons, the Turkish Government of Tirana, the rifles, the Turkish officers, certain Catholic ecclesiastics—in a word, the whole of Albania such as it is to-day is nothing else, said he, but a masked Italian instrument of war against Serbia—while all the bloody consequences of this perpetual struggle have to be endured by the border population.... One afternoon, at the beginning of November, 650 Tirana soldiers, pursued by the Mirditi, gave themselves up to the Serbian authorities on the Black Drin. They had with them a dozen officers of whom two were Italians, and these accounted for themselves by saying that they had come out to organize and to lead the Albanian army.
Now, would this be the best solution of the Albanian problem, that the Mirdite Republic and that of Tirana should both be recognized, since it is quite clear that it would be immoral—and very useless—for Europe to try to persuade the Mirditi to place themselves under the Tirana régime? But there appears to be no doubt that the Moslems of northern Albania—however much they may now sympathize with the Mirditi in their attitude towards Tirana—would just as strenuously resist their own incorporation in a Christian Republic.... Down at the bottom of their hearts all the Albanian delegates who came to Geneva must know that if anAlbanian State is larger than one tribe it will go to pieces. Whatever good qualities may be latent in the Albanian, he is as yet—with rare exceptions—in that stage of culture which has no idea of duty on the part of the State or of duty towards the State. As an example of his views on the exercise of authority we may instance the case of the 82 Albanians, led by Islam Aga Batusha (of the village of Voksha), who stopped Pouniša Račić and his companions in the summer of 1921 while they were riding one day from Djakovica to Peć. Pouniša enjoys the fullest confidence of the border tribes because he has never been known to break his word; they are very conscious that even their vaunted "besa" is not nowadays observed as it was, say fifty years ago, for the Austrian and Italian propaganda schools have had an unfortunate effect. Well, as the 82 sat round Pouniša and his friends in the courtyard of a mosque, where they spent the whole day confabulating, they said they hoped that he, a just and wise man, would help them; and their principal grievance was that the Serbian police no longer allowed them to kill each other. Why should the police interfere in their private affairs? Recently the police had arrested a man whom one of these protesters wanted to kill, and therefore he thought he would have to kill one of the police. Even those who have spent their lives in Serbia are too often at this stage of development—a few years ago, in the village of Prokuplje, an Albanian assassinated his neighbour and was sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude. The judge asked the dead man's brother if he was satisfied. "No, I am not," he answered, "because now I shall have to wait twenty years to kill him." Their ancient custom of blood-vengeance continues to flourish, though in Serbia the police and public opinion are against it; thus, at Luka, in the department of Peć, one Alil Mahmoud was murdered by a Berisha to avenge his uncle, so that now the sons of this Mahmoud propose to kill a Berisha—not the murderer, but one equal in rank to their late father, and in consequence Ahmed Beg, son of Murtezza Pasha, of Djakovica, is afraid to leave his house, which the Serbian police, at his request, is guarding.
How much the Albanian conceives that he owes a duty to the State may be instanced by the application ofa smuggler that he be granted a permit to go to Zagreb in order to dispose of 6000 oka[96]of tobacco which he had brought over the frontier. He was talking to a Serb who has the confidence of the Albanians because he does not treat them as if they were Serbs; and when this father confessor advised him to get rid of the tobacco locally (which he succeeded in doing) the Albanian objected that the excise officers gave him constant anxiety, they were thieves who insisted on payment being made to them if they came across his merchandise. And if it be said that this is too humble a case, we may mention that of Ali Riza, one of the chief officers of the Tirana army which was last year operating against the Serbs. So indifferent is he as to the uniform he bears that the year before last, in Vienna, he begged an influential Serb to recommend him for a lieutenancy in the Serbian army. (His request was not granted because it was ascertained that, besides being unable to read and write, his work as an Austrian gendarme had been more zealous than creditable.)
12. SERBIA'S GOOD INFLUENCE
What, then, is Europe to do with these wild children of hers?... The tribes, Catholic and Moslem, who dwell between the Big Drin and the frontier allotted to Serbia in 1913, asked the aforesaid Pouniša in 1919 to intervene in their quarrels; and the result was that a small number of Serbian soldiers were scattered about that country. They were placed at the disposal of the chief, whom they assisted in maintaining order. (Needless to say, they collected no taxes or recruits, and all their supplies came to them from Serbia.) The people were impressed not only by the uniform but by the men's conduct. Before going to these posts—where they were relieved every two or three months—the men were instructed with regard to Albanian customs, and no case occurred of any transgression. So rigidly did they enforce the precept that anyone who tried to violate or carry off a woman was, if he persisted, to be shot, that last year, at Tropolje in Gashi, when the girl in questionwas said to be not unwilling, they pursued the abductors, and in the subsequent battle there were fatalities on both sides. The Serbian soldiers, for whose safety the village was responsible, made themselves so popular that when the Tirana Government appointed one Niman Feriz to go to those parts as sub-prefect he was chased away by the people headed by the mayor of the Krasnichi, who is a nephew of Bairam Beg Zur, the illiterate ex-brigand and ex-Minister of War of the Tirana Government.
Let this system of small Serbian posts be extended over the whole of northern Albania, that is to say, in those districts where the natives are willing to receive them. After all, the Serbs understand these neighbours of theirs. Telephones and roads will be built and eventually the railway along the Drin. The northern Albanians will then, for the first time, be on the high-road towards peace and prosperity; and if the rest of Albania has by then attained to anything like this condition everybody would be glad to see a free and independent Albania.
Now what prospect is there of the rest of Albania taking any analogous steps? If the regions which at present submit to Tirana decline to modify their methods, it would seem that warfare between them and their kinsmen to the north and north-east must continue, and that the foundations of a united, free Albania will not yet be laid. One might presume, from their bellicose attitude, that the Tirana Government (extending to and including the town of Scutari) is all against a pacific solution; and if one argues that their attitude would be quite different without the support they receive from Italy, then the Italians would doubtless reply that they have as much right to assist the Tirana Albanians as Yugoslavia has to assist those of the north.
But this is not the case. Between Italy and the Albanians there are no such ancient political and economic ties as between the Albanians and the Serbs. The mediæval connection with Venice has left with many Albanians a dolorous memory, for apart from the fact that Venice, as in Dalmatia, was pursuing a merely selfish policy, it was directly due to her that the Turkish Sultan, in the fifteenth century, was able to establish himself in Albania. Thrice his troops had been repelled by thoseof Skanderbeg when the arrangement was made for them to enter the fortress of Rosafat in Venetian uniforms, and then four hundred years elapsed before the Sultan's standard was pulled down. In recent times the Government of Italy has been furnishing the Shqyptart with schools, and these were not its only acts of benevolence towards that wretched people. They have given schools and rifles and munitions and gold. The Albanians were willing to accept this largesse; but that it forged a link between patron and client, that it conferred on the Italians any rights to occupy the country, they denied, and enforced this denial in 1920 at the point of the bayonet. Mr. H. Goad said in theFortnightly Reviewthat this remark of mine is quite unhistorical, since Italy, says he, "was in course of withdrawal when certain Albanians, stirred up as usual by Jugo-Slavs, attacked her retreating troops." If the Albanians had only known that Italy, despite her having been, says Mr. Goad, "supremely useful to Albania," had resolved to quit, they would perhaps have let them go with dignity. But if Mr. Goad will read some of the contemporary Italian newspapers he will see that my allusion to the bayonet was much too mild. Utterly regardless of the fact that the Italian evacuation was "according to plan," the Shqyptart treated them abominably—it brought up memories of Abyssinia—or does Mr. Goad deny that even a general officer was outraged and blew out his brains? This Albanian onslaught was so far from being stirred up by the Yugoslavs that, as we have seen,[97]the Belgrade Government refused to furnish them with munitions. This is not to say that they did not approve of the Albanian push, for they maintain, in spite of Mr. Goad, the principle of "The Balkans for the Balkan Peoples." If Italy, as our strange publicist asserts, has a mandate—presumably a moral one—to defend Albania against aggression he will find, I think, that the Yugoslavs heartily agree with this thesis and that they are also quite determined to defend Albania from aggression.... When he asserts that various ties existed between Italy and the Albanians—the Albanian language, the feudal architecture, much that is characteristic in Albanian art and so forth—Iwould refer him to M. Justin Godart, with whom I am glad for once to be in agreement. "There is no traditional or actual link," says he, "between the two countries; if, on account of this geographical position, they propose to have commercial relations, then everything has yet to be established. If there is to be a friendship, we believe that Italy must do her best to wipe out many memories.... She has not profited from the large number of Albanians in her southern provinces in order to have an Albanian policy."
However, the magnanimous Italians came back, declaring that on this occasion they would not occupy the country (except the little island of Saseno); but that they really could not restrain themselves from bestowing the schools, the rifles, munitions and gold. Once more the Albanians agreed to accept them; they also accepted the Turkish officers and officials whom the Italian ships brought to them from Asia Minor, and when their Government became more and more Turkish and more intractable they found that they had excited the hostility of large numbers of their own compatriots. This developed during 1921 into violent conflicts; and the bountiful Italians provided the Tirana Government's army with expert tuition. Nevertheless, in the Albanians' opinion, there are no bonds between the two races, and if the Italians would retire from Albania, permitting the Balkans to be for the Balkan peoples, and if the fanatical Turks went back to Asia Minor, it would soon be seen that the present rage between northern and central Albania would peter out into the isolated murders which the Albanians have hitherto been unable to dispense with. Left to themselves the Albanians of Tirana would eventually ask for some such assistance from Serbia as the northern tribes have received; three months after the departure of the Italians from Scutari a plebiscite would show that this town, which has lately gone so far as to refuse—yes, even her Moslems have refused—to fill the depleted ranks of the Tirana forces, was anxious to come to a friendly settlement with her Albanian neighbours and the Yugoslavs. This would be a victory of Scutari's common sense over all those fanatics and intriguers whose activities involve her death; forshe cannot possibly thrive if she persists in cutting herself off from the hinterland and from the benefits that will accrue from the canalization of the Bojana.
However, the Italians—officially or unofficially—will not yet awhile leave Albania. And how will this retard or modify the reasonableness of those parts which acknowledge Tirana? As for the town of Scutari, it is probable that if she found herself permanently cut off by the Mirditi from direct communication with Tirana she would allow her incipient independence to come more to the surface. With Tirana less capable of enforcing her behests the Scutarenes would gradually venture to act in their own interests; they would aim at local autonomy within the sphere of Yugoslav influence and in the same sphere as their markets. It is to be hoped that Yugoslavia will be prepared for this, since she does not possess too many educated citizens who understand the Albanian mentality. A course of conduct which pays no attention to this would alienate even the Turks from Podgorica and Dulcigno, whose acquaintance with the very language of Albania is so limited. There seems, however, to be no reason why the mixed population of Albanian Moslems and Catholics, of Orthodox Serbs and of Moslems who declined to come under the all-too-patriarchal rule of Nicholas of Montenegro should not have the same happy experience as the inhabitants of Djakovica and Prizren. Later on the Scutarenes will be called upon to decide whether they prefer, like those other predominantly Albanian towns, to remain in Yugoslavia or whether they wish to throw in their lot with a free Albania, and in that case their town would become the capital of the country. Failing Scutari, the capital would most probably be Oroshi, which is now the capital of the Mirditi.
And why, we may be asked, why should not Tirana be the capital? In the central parts of Albania, in the country round Tirana, where the natives are derisively called "llape" by the warriors of the north and by the cultured Albanians of the south, we believe that the assistance of Italy will be unable to prevent a collapse. (It must also be remembered that the people of the district of Tirana are, for the most part, in opposition to the present Tirana Government. This became clearwhen the partisans of Essad Pasha's policy[98]overthrew and imprisoned the Tirana Ministers.) Economically and morally Tirana will decline, until she is compelled to seek a union with the people of northern Albania, those of the south having meanwhile gravitated towards Greece. Then the moment will arrive when the north and the south, in their task of building up a free and united Albania, will admit the centre under various conditions. These will have to be of a rather stern character, or so at any rate they will seem to the folk of Tirana: taxes will have to be paid, military service or service in thegendarmeriewill have to be rendered, and schools will have to be established for both sexes.
This, then, is the future country of Albania, which—if one is rash enough to prophesy—may exist in fifty years. But there is no risk whatever in asserting that a free, united Albania is in the immediate future quite impossible.
13. EUROPEAN MEASURES AGAINST THE YUGOSLAVS AND THEIR FRIENDS
Berati Beg, Tirana's delegate in Paris, said in an interview with a representative of the BelgradePravda, at the beginning of November 1921, that he regretted that European diplomats should interfere in the Serbo-Albanian question. "Are we not all," said he, "one large Balkan family? And if the Powers intervene they will not act in our interests, but in their own." He said that it used to be Austria which grasped at Albania, now it was Italy. So the delegate showed that he was a clear-sighted man; he also showed that in Tirana they are not unanimous in loving the Italians. But alas! the Great Powers, urged by Italy, made a most disastrous plunge; they actually, at least Great Britain, charged the Serbs, their allies, on November 7, with being guilty of overstepping the frontier, and on November 9 informed them where this frontier was. It is a pity that Mr. Lloyd George should have launched such a thunderbolt, the French Government not being consulted.[99]But the most probable explanation of this lack of courtesy towardsthe Serbs, and lack of the most elementary justice, is that the Prime Minister, with his numerous preoccupations, allowed some incapable person to act in his name.[100]The world was told, however, that Mr. Lloyd George had sent a peremptory demand for the convocation of the Council of the League of Nations so that a sanction should be applied against the Yugoslavs. Mr. Lloyd George's substitute was so little versed in the business that he did not even know that the League of Nations is not a gendarme to carry out the decisions of the Ambassadors' Conference. He should have been aware of the fact that this was a problem for the Allied States, to be settled by diplomatic or other measures, and he should also have known that the League of Nations does not—except if invited to arbitrate—concern itself with the unliquidated problems left by the War, such as the Turkish question. Perhaps that dangerous confusion in the mind of this unknown official would not have occurred if Albania had not been illogically admitted to the League of Nations. But now, in November 1921, not an instant was to be lost in settling this frontier question, which—as theTempspointed out—would have been settled months before if Italy had not prevented it. (She wished as a preliminary step to have certain claims of her own in regard to Albania conceded.) So the Council of the League was to be invited to apply Article 16, which could scarcely be invoked unless Article 15, which defines a procedure of conciliation, had been found of no avail.[101]Thus the misguided personwho spoke in the name of Mr. Lloyd George was apparently too impetuous to read the texts. And then the Serbs were told that they must withdraw practically to the frontier which Austria, their late enemy, had laid down in 1913. Well might Berati Beg deplore that Italy should take the place of Austria. But such commands achieve so little. Very soon, when the troubles in Albania continue, as they certainly will, Mr. Lloyd George will see that he was misled.... But here it should be stated that while Italy persisted throughout in demanding the 1913 frontier (with the ludicrously inconsistent proviso that she herself should have the island of Saseno, which in 1913 she had demanded for independent Albania), and France raised no finger against her, the actual improvements of the frontier adopted were entirely due to Great Britain. No one is more qualified to speak on this matter than Mr. Harold Temperley of Cambridge, who was one of our experts. In his illuminating little book,The Second Year of the League, he has pointed out that the new Albanian frontiers are an improvement on the old—than which, indeed, they cannot be worse—because they conform more to natural features, they take into account an important tribal boundary (leaving the Gora tribe in Yugoslavia), and restore to both parties freedom of communication—the road between the Serb towns of Struga and Dibra being given to the Serbs, while to Albania is given the road from Elbasan to the Serb town of Lin. The rectifications in the Kastrati and the Prizren area involve the substitution of natural boundaries for unnatural ones in order to protect the cities of Podgorica and Prizren. They confer no offensive advantage on the Serbs, nor do they enable them to menace any Albanian city.
To any impartial observer it is quite unjust that the Yugoslavs should have had to plead against the frontier of 1913. They have not the least desire to plant their flag on those undelectable mountains. If the frontier of 1913 could be held with moderate efforts against these people they would not wish to go an inch beyond it. But those who drew this frontier, namely the Austrians, were not much concerned as to whether it afforded adequate protection to the Serbs; what theyhad in view was to keep them away from the Adriatic (for which reason an arbitrary line cut through the proposed railway which was to link Peć to Podgorica and the sea) and to compel the Serbs to station in those districts a goodly portion of their army, to which end—so that the frontier should be weak—the towns of Djakovica and Prizren were separated from their hinterland. The Austrian plan likewise prevented the towns of Struga and Prizren from being joined by a road or by a railway along the Drin; to go from one to the other it became necessary to make an enormous detour. With the rectifications to which we have referred, the Ambassadors' Conference decided to insist on them returning to this miserable line, instead of permitting them to take up their position where General Franchet d'Espérey perceived in 1918 that they could be fairly comfortable. Monsieur Albert Mousset, the shrewd Balkan expert of theJournal des Débats, has remarked that on too many parts of the 1913 frontier it is as if one forced an honest man to sleep with his door open among a horde of bandits.... The Albanian Government, admitted to the League of Nations in December 1920, claimed that the international statute of 1913, creating a German prince, the Dutchgendarmerieand the International Financial Commission—which happened to be inconvenient—was no longer in force; but that the international decisions as to the frontiers of Albania—which happened to be convenient—were still valid. However, during the War the country had been plunged in anarchy, and the Great Powers decided that Albania was, in Mr. Temperley's words, atabula rasa, a piece of white paper on which they could write what they wished. In November 1921 the Ambassadors' Conference finally decided on the frontiers. The gravest violation of the ethnic principle was in the Argyrocastro area, where many thousands of Greeks and Grecophils were handed over to Albania; as for the Serbs, it was only through the efforts of some British experts that they obtained any satisfaction at all.
Why did the Ambassadors' Conference arrive at this peculiar decision? For a long time the European Press had been publishing telegrams which told how the Serbs were ruthlessly invading Albania. Had they advancedabout half the number of miles with which they were credited, they would have found themselves near to the offices of those Italian Press agencies. They were held up to vituperation for their conduct towards a feeble neighbour. The Mirditi, we were told, had to fly before them; whereas the truth was that the friendly Mirditi were driving the troops of Tirana helter-skelter towards the Black Drin, where the Serbs—not advancing an inch from the boundary which the Allies had for the time being assigned to them—received their prisoners. Again we were told that the piratical Serbs had seized the town of Alessio. It must have annoyed the Mirditi to have this exploit of theirs ascribed to other people. And if the newspapers contained too many telegrams of this kind they were strangely reticent with regard to what was taking place in the shallow Albanian harbours; but the two Italian vessels which—as I mentioned in a telegram to theObserver—were unloading, without the least concealment, munitions and rifles for the dear Albanians at San Giovanni di Medua in September 1920, were probably not the only ones with such a cargo. Europe and the Ambassadors' Conference were simply told that the truculent Serbs were destroying a poor, defenceless, pastoral nation. Therefore these Serbs must be ordered back, and whatever might be the merits of a hostile Austrian frontier as compared with a well-informed French one, at any rate the first of these was farther back, so let the Serbs be ordered thither.
It was noticeable that when, on November 17, the British Minister of Education, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher (representing Mr. Lloyd George), explained before the Council of the League of Nations why Great Britain had thought it necessary to act in this Serbo-Albanian affair, he founded his case not on Article 16 but on Article 12, which obliges two conflicting nations who are members of the League to have their case examined by the League. Evidently the suggested application of Article 16 was now acknowledged to have been a mistake. The blundering official in Whitehall should have seen the dignified sorrow with which Yugoslavia heard of her great Ally's unjustifiable procedure. So much faith have the Southern Slavs always had in the Entente's sense of justice thatfrom 1914 to 1918 they continued to give their all, without making any agreement or stipulation; more than once the Serbian Government had the offer of terms from the Central Powers, but on each occasion, as for example during the dark days at Niš in 1915, they declined to betray their Allies.
Mr. Fisher announced that the British Government's action was in no way caused by feelings of hostility against the Southern Slavs. All Englishmen, in fact, remembered the heroism and fortitude of the Serbs; they cherished for Yugoslavia the warmest sympathy. In Mr. Fisher's own case it might conceivably have been a little warmer—he was not ashamed to repeat the reasons which had induced Great Britain to summon the Council of the League. Yet he must have known the comment that he would arouse among his audience when they heard him base his arguments exclusively upon reports of the Tirana Government, while those of Belgrade were ignored; and in their place the delegate thought fit to bring up various extracts which had been collected from the Belgrade Press. If every organ of this Press were filled with a permanent sense of high responsibility, and if Mr. Fisher had made inquiries as to the existence in Belgrade of humorous and ironic writers, one is still rather at a loss to understand why these miscellaneous cuttings were placed before the League, which could scarcely be expected to treat them as evidence. The delegate added that he did not think a single nation was animated by unfriendly sentiments towards the Southern Slavs—so that Italy's unflagging efforts to strengthen the Tirana Government's army were prompted purely by the deep love which the Italians—despite their having been flung out of Valona—bear for the Shqyptart. Mr. Fisher proceeded to say that no better proof was needed of the general friendship for the Southern Slavs than the decision of the Ambassadors' Conference which, instead of allotting to Albania the frontiers of 1913, a method that would have been simpler, had resolved on several rectifications in favour of Yugoslavia, in order to prevent disturbances on Albania's northern frontier. After what Mr. Fisher had already had the heart to say we cannot really be astonished that he, or the peopleon behalf of whom he spoke, should have thought the enemy-drawn frontier of 1913 as worthy of the slightest consideration. We are all, I think, unanimous, said Mr. Fisher in effect, we are unanimous in our esteem for the Yugoslavs and could do nothing which that nation would find hard to bear. But after stating that some rectifications had been made in favour of Yugoslavia he should have referred to the village of Lin on Lake Ochrida whose transference to the Albanians will probably give rise to a great deal of trouble, since it is the most important centre for the fishing industry. A few of the best Belgrade papers, careless of the more than Governmental authority which they enjoyed in the eyes of Mr. Fisher, went so far as to allege that Lin's change of sovereignty was due to the formation on Lake Ochrida of a British fishing company.... We have said that the frontier rectifications were inadequate; but under the circumstances they were the best that could be obtained. They were most bitterly contested by the Italians, who demanded, as we have said above, that Yugoslavia should be given the 1913 frontier. France did nothing to help the Yugoslavs in this hour of need, and had it not been for the absolutely determined support of Great Britain the pernicious frontier of 1913 would have been adopted intact.
Coming to the Mirdite revolt, Mr. Fisher's description is hardly what you would call felicitous. Mark Djoni and the other members of the Mirdite Government were compelled last July to seek refuge at Prizren in Yugoslavia, and since then they have conducted their affairs from that place. These circumstances, in Mr. Fisher's opinion, go to prove the existence of a Yugoslav plot whose aim it is to separate northern Albania from the Tirana Government. Again Mr. Fisher points an accusing finger at the Yugoslav officers who, in August, were helping the Mirditi; but is it not more natural that these officers should give their services to the Christian tribes for whom, as Mr. Bošković, the chief Yugoslav delegate, said, the Southern Slavs do not conceal their sympathy[102]nor the hope that they will gain the necessaryautonomy—is not this more natural and more deserving of Mr. Fisher's approbation than the fact (of which he says no word) that the Moslem Government of Tirana has had the active assistance of Italian officers, such, for example, as Captain Guisardi, who, in the sector of Kljesh, has been in command of the artillery? A further proof that the Mirdite movement has been engineered by the Southern Slavs is, in Mr. Fisher's opinion, the damning fact that the Republic's Proclamation was composed in Yugoslavia and dated there—how brazen some people are! And the official Yugoslav Press Bureau has actually circulated the announcements of the Mirdite Republic. The question is whether the Yugoslav Government was more than benevolently neutral in thus assisting their guests at a time when these had not yet got their machinery into working order. When the Mirdite Government had made suitable arrangements it spoke to the world through its representatives at Geneva or through direct communications to the British and French Press. Surely, in considering whether the Yugoslav Government allowed themselves to exceed the limits of neutrality, one must remember that the Mirdite authorities at Prizren were out of all touch with their own army, which was engaged in a guerilla warfare. In conclusion, according to Mr. Fisher, the British Foreign Office was persuaded that the Mirdite Republic was nothing but an instrument of theYugoslavGovernment, and that desire for Albanian unity extended also to the Christians of that country. The Foreign Office had, no doubt, been told that the Tirana Government received the support, at last spring's elections, of some north Albanian deputies; and possibly they gave no credence to the rumour that these gentlemen were much indebted to Italian support. It may have been mere harmless curiosity which kept Captain Pericone, the Italian commander, during all that day at the Scutari polling-booths, but what is certain is that, owing to the influx of Italianmoney, the value of a hundred silver crowns in the morning was 92 lire, and in the afternoon had fallen to 75. It is likewise a fact that numerous Malissori, finding themselves for the first time in possession of bundles of paper and feeling far from confident that this was money, hurried off to the bazaar and spent it all. Thus were the four friends of the Moslem-Italian[103]Government elected, the four deputies who were in favour of Albanian unity under that Government; three of them are Christians (Messrs. Fichta, Andreas Miedia and Luigi Gurakuqi); one, Riza Dani, is a Moslem. How the latter travelled to Tirana I do not know, but the three Christians found that the population was so incensed against them that they could not go by the direct road; they were forced to sail down the Bojana on the Italian shipMafalda, and then along the coast. This, I presume, will be considered sufficiently strong evidence that these deputies did not represent the people, and that their independence was not exactly of the sort ascribed to Gurakuqi by a writer in theTimes;[104]one need not labour the point by mentioning what happened to Father Vincent Prênnushi whose candidature was vetoed in Rome, so that he was replaced by Father Fichta.
This being the state of things one can scarcely argue that the people of the north are in favour of a united Albania, as it seemeth good to the Ambassadors' Conference, the League of Nations, etc. "We Germans, knowing Germany and France," said Treitschke in 1871, "know what is good for the Alsatians better than these unfortunates themselves.... Against their will we wish to restore them to themselves." The north Albanian deputies may join with those of the south and call themselves the group of "sacred union"; but they themselves are well aware that it is only in thesouth-central districts that the Government has a majority. That is one of the reasons why the seat of Government is Tirana in the central part of the country, for the Cabinet lives in apprehension of the followers of the late Essad Pasha, and by residing in that country they hope to be able to keep it quiet. How long will they be able to do so? Have they statesmanship enough to turn aside the animosity of their own countrymen? Does their Premier and Foreign Minister, Mr. Pandeli Evangheli, possess intellectual resources of a higher order than those which one commonly associates with the ownership of a small wine-shop?—that was his occupation till he came, some two years ago, from Bucharest. When this gentleman had a, perhaps temporary, fall from power, theTimesof December 16, 1921, wrote of him that "there is no Albanian public man with a better record for long disinterested service in his country's cause." Alas, poor Albania! We may surmise that Mr. Evangheli and his companions do not rely very greatly on their Western European patrons who, when it comes to the pinch, will do very little for them. I should be surprised to hear that they have caused the provisions of the Ambassadors' Conference to be traced in golden letters on a wall of their council chamber. And I doubt whether they take very great stock of a resolution signed in November 1921, by some twenty Members of Parliament and a few outside persons. These expressed their approval of Mr. Lloyd George's step in convoking the League of Nations for the settlement of the Serbo-Albanian question. If this resolution served no other purpose it showed, at any rate, that the signatories are such thoroughgoing friends of the Tirana Government that they rushed enthusiastically to their assistance, though their deep knowledge of affairs—without which, of course, they would never have signed—must have caused them to regard the Prime Minister's impulsive action with something more than misgiving. It is a minor point that the signatories sought to enlist the world's sympathy on the ground that a small "neutral State" had been wantonly attacked by the Serbs, because if this accusation were true it would not be worth objecting that the Albanians were scarcely a State (though someof them were trying to make one) and that their neutrality during the War consisted in the fact that they were to be found both in the armies of the Entente and—rather more of them, I believe—in those of Austria. But the accusation is untrue; there are, undoubtedly, a number of fire-eaters in Serbia, as everywhere else, yet the Government is not so childish as to wish to squander its resources in a region where there is so little to be gained. (The Tirana correspondent ofThe Near Eastsaid on November 3, 1921, that the Serbian Government was reported to be committing unwarrantable acts, giving as an example that Commandant Martinović had had six million dinars placed at his disposal in order to recruit komitadjis and that he had himself promised 2500 dinars to each of his men if they succeeded in entering Scutari. But this gentleman, a retired officer, lives almost exclusively at Novi Sad, where his very beautiful daughter is married to M. Dunjarski, one of the wealthiest men in Yugoslavia. Yet neither his son-in-law nor the Serbian Government has ever given General Martinović the afore-mentioned sum or any sum at all for the afore-mentioned purpose. He goes at rare intervals to his old home in Montenegro, of which country he was once Prime Minister. It is natural that the numerous refugees from Albania should flock round him—in view of his own past prominence and of M. Dunjarski—begging for money and food.) The protesting British Members of Parliament registered their sorrow that the Serbs should have employed on their anti-Albanian enterprise "the strength and riches which they largely owed to the Allied and Associated Powers." I was under the impression that the Serbs had expended a far greater proportion of their strength and riches than any of the Allies,[105]that the Allies had, in 1915, left them in the lurch, and that the final success on the Macedonian front was due quite considerably to the genius ofMarshal Mišić and the valour of his veterans. As for the strength and riches which the Southern Slavs possessed in 1921, it surely would not need an expert to perceive what the Southern Slav children knew very well, namely, that they could be more profitably employed in many other directions. May better luck attend the future labours of these Members of Parliament.... A week or so before the publication of this foolish manifesto there had been issued an equally deplorable Memorandum by the Balkan Committee (of London), which, I am glad to say, caused Dr. Seton-Watson to resign from that body. This jejune and impudent Memorandum attempted to dictate the terms of the Constitution of the Triune Kingdom—an attempt very rightly reprobated byThe Near East.[106]If the Yugoslav Government were to adopt the recommendations of the Balkan Committee they would, it seems, be in a fair way to solve the Albanian question. Likewise that of Macedonia—when will the Committee cease to trouble Macedonia? Their object, in the words of Mr. Noel Buxton, is to aim at allaying the unrest in the Balkans; it would—I say it in all kindliness—be a move in that direction if the other members were to follow Dr. Seton-Watson's example.
14. THE REGION FROM WHICH THE YUGOSLAVS HAVE RETIRED
What of the population which inhabits the zone between the two frontier lines? We have alluded to them as a horde of bandits, we have also spoken of the six battalions which they placed at the disposal of the Yugoslavs. If it is true that a poet has died in the bosom of most of us, it is equally true that in most of the Albanians a brigand survives. And if not a brigand, then a mediæval person with characteristics which are more pleasant to read about than to encounter. Yet the Shqyptar, as he calls himself (which means the eagle's son) is not without his aspirations. Reference has been made to those northern tribes, such as the Merturi and the Gashi, who benefited from the small Serbian detachments which came in answer to their urgent wish. Andon the Black Drin the six battalions have shown their fidelity. There would be no need to guard oneself against such people. But unfortunately the Albanian is so constituted that if, in a hamlet of ten houses, five of them are amicably disposed towards you, there is a strong tendency among the others to be hostile. When these torch-bearers of an ancient tradition come under the rule of an organized State, then they gradually feel inclined to discard some of their customs which the State frowns upon. This can be seen in the changes among the people of Kossovo since it came into Serbian hands. Were the country between the two frontier lines to remain under the Serbs it would not be long before some of the time-honoured sensitiveness of the Albanians towards each other and towards each others' friends would vanish—though it has been found that it takes a number of years before they cease observing or from desiring to observe the very deeply-rooted custom of blood-vengeance.
A good many of the border Albanians have made it clear that they wish for some sort of association with their more cultured neighbours. But on this point they are by no means unanimous. The unregenerate part of the people will not be able to resist an occasional foray into Yugoslavia. And although the reputation which the Serbs have left behind them may induce the tribes to be, for the most part, good neighbours, yet they have not been long enough under the civilizing process, and the more advanced among them would agree with the Yugoslavs that it would have been better for that régime to have continued over them. You may object that the finest patriots of the Albanians would have preferred to remain outside Yugoslavia. But they know that there are many thousands of their contented countryfolk in the neighbouring Kossovo and, what is more, they know that the towns of Kossovo are their markets.
The Yugoslavs have bowed to the decision of their Allies. And the official champions of the too-ambitious League of Nations—overjoyed, after various failures and after the Silesian award, to have really accomplished something, and something with whose merits the public was far less familiar than with the Silesian fiasco—performed a war-dance on the Yugoslavs. If that peoplehad been as obstinate, say, as the Magyars in the case of Burgenland, no doubt it would have come to another Conference of Venice; and Yugoslavia would, like Hungary, have returned from there with something gained. But, of course, when it is an affair between Allies one scarcely likes to behave in that stubborn and unyielding manner which is apparently the right—at all events, the successful—conduct for a whilom foe. If the Yugoslavs, in simply accepting the judgment of their Allies, acted against their own ultimate advantage, they can, at any rate, believe that their complaisance, their extraordinary lack of chauvinism, will be recognized. It is true that when, on former occasions, such as during the prolonged d'Annunzio farce at Rieka, they displayed a similar and wonderful forbearance, they did not manage to free themselves from this foolish charge. There happen to be a good many people abroad who insist that the new States are, every one of them, chauvinist; they think it is the natural thing for a young country to be, and especially if part of it lies in the Balkans. But if Yugoslavia repeatedly acts in the most correct fashion the day may come when she will be able to put a lasting polish on to the reputation which her Allies have tarnished.
15. THE PROSPECT
We may look forward to seeing the majority of this frontier population resolved that the links between themselves and the Yugoslavs shall not be broken. Very little will they care for the edicts of European Ambassadors. It would not have been surprising to hear that on the withdrawal of the Yugoslavs to the prescribed frontier their resourceful friends beyond it had procured from Serbia a few volunteers to take the place of the official Serbs. And failing this, that rough-and-ready people might simply declare themselves to be in Yugoslavia. This time they will be unable to persuade the Yugoslav Government to move its excise posts more to the west. But if these tenacious men have made up their minds to join their brethren on the right bank of the Drin and enter Yugoslavia, the Ambassadors' Conference would preserve more of their dignity in accepting with a good grace that whichthey are powerless to hinder.... The minority of the border population will go raiding in Yugoslavia. If they had been consulted they would have drawn the frontier very much as it is. With large areas lying at their mercy they will keep the border villages in constant dread. And that is the other reason which should induce the Ambassadors' Conference to cancel their unwise decision.
It is better when the politicians do not come with advice to the battlefield; and in those primitive regions, where part of the people cannot, as yet, be restrained from perpetual warfare, it would have been better if the politicians had done nothing but confirm the General's frontier. Franchet d'Espérey gave it to the Serbs "for the time being," and that period should last until there is no longer any military need to hold it. "No General, however distinguished, could possibly have any authority whatever to give to any nation the territories of another, such as can only be transferred and delineated by treaties and international recognition." So says Mr. H. E. Goad, or Captain Goad as he has the right to call himself. But it is a pity that he does not appreciate the difference between that which is temporary and that which is not.