Introduction—(a) The Albanian Frontier: 1. The Actors—2. The audience rush the stage—3. Serbs, Albanians and the Mischief-makers—4. The State of Albanian culture—5. A method which might have been tried in Albania—6. The attraction of Yugoslavia—7. Religious and other matters in the border region—8. A digression on two rival Albanian authorities—9. What faces the Yugoslavs—10. Dr. Trumbic's proposal—11. The position in 1921: The Tirana Government and the Mirditi—12. Serbia's good influence—13. European measures against the Yugoslavs and their friends—14. The region from which the Yugoslavs have retired—15. The prospect—(b) The Greek frontier—(c) The Bulgarian frontier—(d) The Roumanian frontier: 1. The state of the Roumanians in eastern Serbia—2. The Banat—(e) The Hungarian frontier—(f) The Austrian frontier—(g) The Italian frontier.

INTRODUCTION

Nobody could have expected in the autumn of 1918 that the frontiers of the new State would be rapidly delimitated. Ethnological, economic, historic and strategical arguments—to mention no others—would be brought forward by either side, and the Supreme Council, which had to deliver judgment on these knotty problems, would be often more preoccupied with their own interests and their relation to each other. It would also happen that a member of the Supreme Council would be simultaneously judge and pleader. The mills of justice would therefore grind very slowly, for they would be conscious that the fruit of their efforts, evolved with much foreign material clogging the machinery and with parts of the machinery jerked out of their line of track, would be received with acute criticism. When more than two years had elapsed from the time of the Armistice a considerable part of Yugoslavia's frontiers remained undecided. We will travel along the frontier lines, starting with that between Yugoslavs and Albanians.

(a) THE ALBANIAN FRONTIER

1. THE ACTORS

Those who in old Turkish days lived in that wild border country which is dealt with on these pages would have been surprised to hear that they would be the objects of a great deal of discussion in the west of Europe. But in those days there was no Yugoslavia and no Albania and no League of Nations, and very few were the writers who took up this question. It is, undoubtedly, a question of importance, though some of these writers, remembering that the fate of the world was dependent on the fraction of an inch of Cleopatra's nose, seem almost to have imagined that it was proportionately more dependent on those several hundred kilometres of disputed frontier. It would not so much matter that they have introduced a good deal of passion into their arguments if they had not also exerted some influence on influential men—and this compels one to pay them what would otherwise be excessive attention.

Let us consider the frontier which the Ambassadors' Conference in November 1921 assigned to Yugoslavia and the Albanians. We have already mentioned some of the previous points of contact between those Balkan neighbours who for centuries have been acquiring knowledge of each other and who, therefore, as Berati Bey, the Albanian delegate in Paris, very wisely said, should have been left to manage their own frontier question. A number of Western Europeans will exclaim that this could not be accomplished without the shedding of blood; but it is rather more than probable that the interference of Western Europe—partly philanthropic and partly otherwise—will be responsible for greater loss of life. If it could not be permitted that two of the less powerful peoples should attempt to settle their own affairs, then, at any rate, the most competent of alien judges should have sat on the tribunal. A frontier in that part of Europe should primarily take the peculiarities of the people into account, and I believe that if Sir Charles Eliot and Baron Nopsca with their unrivalled knowledge of the Albanians had been consulted it is probable they would, for some years to come, have thought desirable the frontier which is preferred by General Franchet d'EspÉrey, by a majority of the local Albanians, and by those who hope for peace in the Balkans.

2. THE AUDIENCE RUSH THE STAGE

A battle which took place near Tuzi, not far from Podgorica, in December 1919, may assist the study of the difficult Albanian question. At the first attack about 150 Montenegrins, mostly young recruits, were killed or wounded; but in the counter-attack the Albanian losses were much greater, 167 of them being made prisoners. On all of these were found Italian rifles, ammunition, money and army rations. On the other hand, a few Montenegrins, with three officers, were also captured and were stripped and handed over, naked, to the Italians. But these declined to have them, saying that the conflict had been no concern of theirs, and the unfortunate men—with the exception of one who escaped—remained among the Albanians. The fact that Tuzi would be of no value to the Italians neither weakens nor strengthens the supposition that they were privy to the Albanian attack; but it may very well be that the natives had taken their Italian equipment by force of arms. It would, anyhow, seem that the Italians have little understanding of this people: during the War, when General Franchet d'EspÉrey was straightening his line, he paid some hundreds of Albanians to maintain his western flank, and they were very satisfactory. (It troubled them very little whether they were holding it against the Austrians or against other Albanians.) When Italy took over that part of the line she employed a whole Division, which—to the amusement, it is said, of Franchet d'EspÉrey—provided the local population with a great deal of booty, and in particular with mules. There was constant trouble in those regions of Albania which were occupied by the Italians,[72] and in June 1920 things had come to such a pass that the Italian garrisons, after being thrown out of the villages of Bestrovo and Selitza, were actually retiring with all the stores they could rescue to Valona. Their retreat, said Reuter, in a euphemistic message from Rome, was "attended by some loss." As Valona was their last stronghold in Albanian territory, it seemed that very few, if any, of the tribes were in favour of an Italian protectorate. And since it was calculated that during the first six months of 1920 the Italian Government was paying from 400 to 500 million lire a month for corn, and the year's deficit might be enough to lead the State to the very verge of bankruptcy, one was asking whether from an economic, apart from any other, point of view, it would not be advisable for the Italians to cut their losses in central Albania. And this they very wisely determined to do. Would that their subsequent policy in northern Albania had been as well-inspired.

It would also seem as if the affair of Tuzi shows that the Albanians have no wish for a Yugoslav protectorate, and there are a good many Serbs, such as Professor Cvijic, who view with uneasiness any extension of their sway over the Albanians. Many of the tribes are prepared, after very small provocation or none, to take up arms against anybody; and those who, in the north and north-east of the country, are in favour of a Yugoslav protectorate would undoubtedly have opposed to them a number of the natives, less because they are fired with the prospect of "Albania for the Albanians" than on account of their patriarchal views. We must, however, at the same time, acknowledge that those Albanians who are impelled by patriotic ideals, and who would like to see their countrymen within the 1913 frontiers, resolutely turn away from the various attractions which the Slavs undoubtedly exercise over many of them and combine in a brotherly fashion, under the guidance of a disinterested State, to work for an independent Albania—those idealists have every right to be heard. Their solution is, in fact, the one that would, as we have elsewhere said, be best for everyone concerned. The late Professor Burrows, who believed in the possibility of such an arrangement, thought that it would take generations for this people "to pass from blood feud and tribal jealousy to the good order of a unified State, unless they have tutorage in the art of self-government." There seem to be grave difficulties, both external and internal, in the way of setting up such a tutorage over the whole of the 1913 Albania; and if a majority of the northern and north-eastern tribes prefer to turn to Yugoslavia, rather than to join the frustrated patriots and the wilder brethren in turning away from it, they should not be sweepingly condemned as traitors to the national cause. The frame of mind which looks with deep suspicion on a road that links a tribe to its neighbour is not very promising for those who dream of an Albanian nation; it is a prevalent and fundamental frame of mind. "The Prince of Wied," we are told by his countryman, Dr. Max MÜller, "succeeded in conquering the hearts of those Albanians who supported him and of gaining the highest respect of those who were his political opponents." No doubt they were flattered when they noticed that he had so far become an Albanian as to surround his residence at Durazzo with barbed-wire entanglements.

Among the solutions of the Albanian problem was that which Dr. MÜller very seriously, not to say ponderously, put forward in 1916.[73] This gentleman, with a first-hand knowledge of the country, which he gained during the War, did not minimize the task which would face the Prince of Wied on his return. Of that wooden potentate one may say that his work in Albania did not collapse for the reason that it was never started; a few miles from Durazzo, his capital, from which, I believe, he made only that one excursion whose end was undignified, a few miles away he excited the derision of his "subjects," and a few miles farther off they had not heard of him. Dr. MÜller, after reproving us sternly for smiling at the national decoration, in several classes, with which his Highness on landing at the rickety pier was graciously pleased to gladden the meritorious natives, admits that at his second coming he will have to take various other steps. Austrians and Germans should be brought to colonize the country, and not peasants, forsooth, like those who have laboriously made good in the Banat, but merchants, manufacturers, engineers, doctors, officials and large landowners—not by any means without close inquiry, so as to admit only such as are in possession of a blameless repute and a certain amount of cash. Dr. MÜller was resolved that, so far as lay with him, none but the very best Teutons should embark upon this splendid mission. He desired that, after landing, they should first of all remain at the harbour, there to undergo a course of tuition in the customs and peculiarities of the tribe among which they proposed to settle. His compatriots would be so tactful—apparently not criticizing any of the customs—that the hearts of the Albanians would incline towards them and by their beautiful example they would make these primitive, wild hearts beat not so much for local interests but very fervently for the Albanian fatherland. One cannot help a feeling of regret that circumstances have prevented us from seeing Dr. MÜller's scheme put into action.

3. SERBS, ALBANIANS AND THE MISCHIEF-MAKERS

In 1913, after the Balkan War, the flags of the Powers were hoisted at Scutari, and a frontier dividing the Albanians from the Yugoslavs (Montenegrins and Serbs) was indicated by Austria and traced at the London Conference. This boundary was still awaiting its final demarcation by commissioners on the spot when the European War broke out. Then in the second year of the War disturbances were organized by the Austrians in Albania—their friend the miscreant ruler of Montenegro caused money to be sent for this purpose to the Austro-Hungarian Consul at Scutari—and in April and May of that year the Serbs were authorized by their Allies to protect themselves by occupying certain portions of the country. Various battles took place between those Albanians who were partisans of Austria and those who were disinclined to attack the Serbs in the rear. The Serbian Government opposed the Austrian propaganda by dispatching to that region the Montenegrin PouniŠa Racic, of whom we have much to say. He was accompanied by Smajo Ferovic, a Moslem sergeant of komitadjis. They explained to the Albanians that the Serbs had been offered a separate peace with numerous concessions, but that Mr. PaŠic had refused to treat. When the two Albanian parties discussed the situation by shooting at each other, the Austro-Hungarian officers made tracks for Kotor, and that particular intrigue came to an end.

When the War was over, the Serbs, sweeping up from Macedonia, were requested by General Franchet d'EspÉrey to undertake a task which the Italians refused, and push the demoralized Austrian troops out of Albania. Some weeks after this had been accomplished, the Italians, mindful of the Treaty of London, demanded that a large part of Albania should be given up to their administration. The Serbs agreed and withdrew; they even took away their representative from Scutari, where the Allies had again installed themselves. The Treaty of London bestowed upon the Serbs a sphere of influence in northern Albania, but—save for a few misguided politicians—they were logical enough to reject the whole of the pernicious Treaty, both the clauses which robbed them in Dalmatia and those which in Albania gave them stolen goods. Over and over again did the Yugoslav delegates declare in Paris that it was their wish to see established an independent Albania with the frontiers of 1913. These, the first frontiers which the Albanians had ever possessed, were laid down by Austria with the express purpose of thwarting the Serbs and facilitating Albanian raids. It is true that several towns with large Albanian majorities were made over to the Serbs—very much, as it turned out, to their subsequent advantage—yet, being separated from their hinterland, this was a doubtful gift. Nevertheless, if a free and united Albania could be constituted the Serbs were ready to accept this frontier, and even Monsieur Justin Godart, the strenuous French Albanophile of whom we speak elsewhere, cannot deny that this attitude of the Yugoslavs redounds very much to their honour. But before relative tranquillity reigns among the Albanians it is, as General Franchet d'EspÉrey perceived in 1918, an untenable line. He, therefore, drew a temporary frontier which permitted the Serbs to advance for some miles into Albania, so that on the river Drin or on the mountain summits they might ward off attacks. These, by the way, had their origin far more in the border population's empty stomachs than in their animus against the Slavs. And nobody with knowledge of this people could regard the 1918 frontier as unnecessary. The Albanians were themselves so much inclined to acquiesce that one must ask why, in the months which followed, there was a considerable amount of border fighting. What was it that caused the Albanians in the region of Scutari to make their violent onslaughts of December 1919 and January 1920, the renewed offensive of July 1920 at the same places—after which the Albanian Government forwarded to that of Belgrade an assurance of goodwill—and the organized thrust of August 13 against Dibra, which was preceded on August 10 by a manifesto to the chancelleries of Europe falsely accusing the Serbs of having begun these operations, and which was followed by the Tirana Government promising to try to find the guilty persons? The 19th of the same month saw the Albanians delivering a further attack in the neighbourhood of Scutari, and then the Yugoslav Government decided that their army must occupy such defensive positions as would put a stop to these everlasting incidents. But a voice was whispering to the Albanians that they must not allow themselves to be so easily coerced. "You have thrown us out of all the land behind Valona," said the voice, "and out of Valona itself. You must, therefore, be the greatest warriors in the world, and we will be charmed to provide you with rifles and machine guns and munitions and uniforms and cash. We will gladly publish to the world that your Delegation at Rome has sent us an official Note demanding that the Yugoslav troops should retire to the 1913 line, pure and simple. Of course we, like the other Allies, agreed that they should occupy the more advanced positions which General Franchet d'EspÉrey assigned to them—and to show you how truly sorry we are for having done so, we propose to send you all the help you need. In dealing with us you will find that you have to do with honourable men, whereas the Yugoslavs—what are they but Yugoslavs?"

Anyone who travelled about this time along the road from Scutari down to the port of San Giovanni di Medua would inevitably meet with processions of ancient cabs, ox-wagons and what not, laden with all kinds of military equipment. Some of these supplies had come direct from Italy, while others had been seized from the Italians near Valona. The detachment of Italian soldiers at San Giovanni, and the much larger detachment at Scutari, may have looked with mixed feelings at some of these commodities, but on the other hand they may have thought, with General Bencivenga,[74] that it was good business—"un buon affare"—in exchange for Valona to obtain a solid and secure friendship with the Albanians. Roads, as he pointed out, lead from Albania to the heart of Serbia, and for that reason a true brotherhood of arms between Italians and Albanians was, in case of hostilities, enormously to be desired. And so the Italians stationed at Scutari, under Captain Pericone of the Navy, may have felt that it was well that all those cannon captured from their countrymen were in such a good condition. They would now be turned by the Albanians against the hateful Yugoslavs. ["Italy is the one Power in Europe," says her advocate, Mr. H.E. Goad, in the Fortnightly Review (May 1922), "that is most obviously and most consistently working for peace and conciliation in every field."] ... A further supply of military material is said to have reached the Albanians from Gabriele d'Annunzio in the s.s. Knin. To the Irish, the Egyptians and the Turks the poet-filibuster had merely sent greetings. Some one may have told him that even the most lyrical greeting would not be valued by the Albanians half as much as a shipload of munitions.

For a considerable time the more intelligent Italians had noticed that these two Balkan peoples were disposed to live in amicable terms with one another. Traditions that are so powerful with an illiterate people—under five per thousand of the Albanians who have stayed in their own country can read and write—numerous traditions speak of friendship with the Serbs: Lek, the great legislator, was related to Serbian princes; Skanderbeg was an ally of the Serbs; "Most of the celebrated leaders of northern Albania and Montenegro," says Miss Durham, "seem to have been of mixed Serbian-Albanian blood"; Mustapha Vezir Bushatli strove together with Prince MiloŠ against the Turks, and the same cause united the Serbian authorities to the famous Vezir Mahmud Begovic of Pec. A primitive people like the Albanians admire the warlike attributes beyond all others, and the exploits of the Serbian army in the European War inclined the hearts of the Albanians towards their neighbours. Some of them remembered at this juncture that their great-grandfathers or grandfathers had only become Albanian after having accepted the Muhammedan religion; now the old ikons were taken from their hiding-places. And there was, in fact, between the two Balkan people a spirit of cordiality which gave terrible umbrage to the Italians. So they took the necessary steps: many of the Catholic priests had been in Austria's pay, and these now became the pensioners of Italy. Monsignor Sereggi, the Metropolitan, used to be anti-Turk but, as was evident when in 1911 he negotiated with Montenegro, he is not personally anti-Slav. Yet he must have money for his clergy, for his seminary, and so forth. His friendship would be easily, one fancies, transferred from Rome to Belgrade if the Serbs are willing to provide the cash—and nobody can blame him. Leo Freund, who had been Vienna's secret agent and a great friend of Monsignor BumÇi, the Albanian bishop, was succeeded by an Italian. But, of course, the new almoner did not confine his gifts to those of his own faith. Many of the leading Moslems were in receipt of a monthly salary, and this was not so serious a burden for the Italians as one might suppose, since Albania is a poor country, and with no Austrian competition you found quite prominent personages deigning to accept a rather miserable wage. "And do you think," I asked of Musa Yuka, the courteous mayor of Scutari, "that those mountain tribes are being paid?" "Well," he said, "I think that it is not improbable." ... At the time of the Bosnian annexation crisis the Serbs had as their Minister of Finance the sagacious PatchoÙ. The War Minister, a General, was strongly in favour of an instant declaration of war, and the Premier suggested that the matter should be discussed. He turned to the Minister of Finance and asked him whether he had sufficient money for such an undertaking. PatchoÙ shook his head. "But our men are patriots! They will go without bread, they will go without everything!" exclaimed the General. "The horses and mules are not patriots," said PatchoÙ, "and if you want them to march you'll have to feed them." The Albanians were so little inclined to go to war with Yugoslavia that the Italians had, in various ways, to feed them nearly all. And what did the Albanians think of these intrigues? At any rate, what did they say? "Italy," quoth Professor ChimigÒ,[75] a prominent Albanian who teaches at Bologna, "Italy is always respected and esteemed as a great nation.... The Albanian Government," said he, "has charged me to declare in public that Albania does not regard herself as victorious against Italy, but is convinced that the Italians, in withdrawing their troops from Valona, were obeying a sentiment of goodness and generosity." Such words would be likely to bring more plentiful supplies from Rome. And fortunately the Italians did not seem to suffer, like the Serbs, from any scruples as to the propriety of taking active steps against another "Allied and Associated Power." When Zena Beg Riza Beg of Djakovica came in the year 1919 to his brother-in-law Ahmed Beg Mati, one of the Albanian leaders, he told him that the Belgrade Government, in pursuance of their policy "The Balkans for the Balkan peoples," would be glad if the Italians could be ousted from Albania. Zena Beg returned with a request for money, guns and so forth; but they were not sent.

Ahmed Beg and Zena Beg are patriotic young Albanian noblemen of ancient family and great possessions. But Zena Beg has the advantage of living in Yugoslavia, outside the atmosphere of corruption which is darkening his native land. Ahmed Beg, who in 1920 was Minister of the Interior, Minister of War, Governor of Scutari and Director (in mufti) of the military operations against the Yugoslavs, did not accept Italian bribes, but he was surrounded by those who did, and thus the gentle and industrious young man was being led to work against his own country's interests. With him at Scutari was another of the six Ministers of the Tirana Government, in the person of the venerable Moslem priest Kadri, Minister of Justice, and one of the four Regents, Monsignor BumÇi. There was about it all an Oriental odour of the less desirable kind, which caused some observers to say that when Albania obtains her independence she will be a bad imitation of the old Turkey—a little Turkey without the external graces. When the thoughtful greybeard Kadri went limping down the main street, a protecting gendarme dawdled behind him, smoking a cigarette; but this endearing nonchalance was absent from the methods of government: any Albanian whose opinions did not coincide with those of the authorities could only express them at his peril. [Blood-vengeance is, to some extent, being deposed by party-vengeance—this having originated in the time of Wied, when the politicians were divided into Nationalists and Essadists, after which they became Italophils and Austrophils, who now have been succeeded by Italophils (who ask for an Italian mandate) and Serbophils and Grecophils (who desire that these countries should have no mandate, but should act in a friendly spirit towards an independent Albania). Meanwhile the Italophils, nearly all of them on Italy's pay-roll, were, till a few months ago, in the ascendant, and their attitude towards the other party was relentless.] One Alush Ljocha, for example, said that he thought it would be well if Yugoslavia and Albania lived on friendly terms with one another. Because of this—the Government having adopted other ideas—his house at Scutari was burned,[76] and when we were discussing the matter at the palace of the Metropolitan, Monsignor Sereggi, I found that His Grace was emphatically in accord with a fiery Franciscan poet, Father Fichta, with the more placid Monsignor BumÇi, and with two other ecclesiastics who were present. "We did well to burn his house, very well, I say!" exclaimed Father Fichta, "because Alush is only a private person and he has no business to concern himself with foreign countries." Of course, when Father Fichta made his comments on foreign countries it was not as a private person but as a responsible editor. Thus in the Posta e Shqypnis during the War he denounced Clemenceau and Lloyd George as such foes of humanity that their proper destination was a cage of wild beasts, and, after having visited France during 1919 as secretary to the sincere and credulous BumÇi, he contributed anti-French and, I believe, anti-English poems to the Epopea Shqyptare.

"I have been told," I said, "by an intelligent Albanian who was educated at Robert College at Constantinople that the greatest hope for the country lies, in his opinion, in the increase of American schools, such as that one at Elbasan and the admirable institution at Samakoff in Bulgaria, where the Americans—in order not to be accused of proselytism—teach everything except religion."

"If I had my own way," cried Fichta, "I would shut up these irreligious American schools. Religion is the base of the social life of this country."

"And you and the Muhammedans," I asked, "do you think that your co-operation has a good prospect of enduring? With a country of no more than one and a half million inhabitants it is essential that you should be united."

"God in Heaven! Who can tolerate such things?" exclaimed the Metropolitan. That very corpulent old gentleman was bouncing with rage on his sofa. "Is it not horrible," he cried in Italian, "that this man should dare to come to my house and make propaganda against us?"

"Really, sir, I am astonished," said Monsignor BumÇi, reproachfully, in French, "that you should ask such a question." [It was answered a few weeks later, when Halim Beg Derala and Zena Beg—who, being outside Albania, were free to utter non-Governmental opinions—said that they had not the slightest doubt but that the friendship between the fanatic Moslem and the fanatic Catholic would come to an end and each of them would again in the first place think of his religion, so that, as heretofore, they would regard themselves as Turkish and Latin people rather than as Albanian. This foible does not apply to the Orthodox Albanians of the South, who are more patriotic.] "I am astonished," said the Monsignor, "that you should question our friendship with the Moslem. They have been the domineering party, but all that is finished, and we are the best of friends. See, they have chosen me to be one of the Regents![77] Our Government of all the three religions is very good, and," said he, as he thumped the arm of his chair, "it insists on the Albanians obtaining justice in spite of our enemies."

It chanced that I had met Father Achikou, Doctor of Theology and Philosophy, in the Franciscan church. Because his brother had had occasion to kill an editor in self-defence, this, perhaps the most enlightened, member of the Albanian Catholic clergy, had been compelled to remain for eight months in the church and its precincts, seeing that the Government was powerless to guarantee that he would not be overtaken by that national curse, the blood-vengeance.

"Well, one cannot praise the custom of blood-vengeance," said the Monsignor.

"You spoke," I said, "of your Government insisting on justice for the Albanians."

And some time after this Professor Achikou and another prominent young priest were deported to Italy and, I believe, interned in that country.... With their fate we may compare that of Dom Ndoc Nikai, a priest whose anti-Slav paper, the Bessa Shqyptare, is alleged to exist on its Italian subsidy, and Father Paul Doday, whom Italy insisted on installing as Provincial of all the Franciscans (after vetoing at Rome the appointment of Father Vincent PrÊnnushi, whom nearly all the Franciscans in Albania had voted for). Father Doday, it is interesting to note, is of Slav nationality, for he comes from Janjevo in Kossovo, but he studied in Italy, and has abandoned the ways of his ancestors. This town of some 500 houses, inhabited by Slavs from Dalmatia and a few Saxons who are now entirely Slavicized, still retains a costume that resembles the Dalmatian, as also a rather defective Dalmatian dialect. The Austrians for thirty years endeavoured to Albanize them, but the people resisted this and boycotted the church and school. The priest Lazar, who defended their Slav national conscience, was persecuted and forced to flee to Serbia—he is now Mayor of Janjevo. It usually happened, by the way, that the priests of this Catholic town came from Dalmatia; but the Slav idea could bridge over the difference between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, so that if no Catholic priest was available his place would be taken by an Orthodox priest from a neighbouring village. Only a few of the natives are anti-nationalists, having been brought up, like Father Doday, in some Italian or Austrian seminary. There are in Albania to-day about ten such priests who come from Janjevo.... How well this Father Doday has served his masters may be seen in the case of the Franciscan priest in Shala, who, with the whole population of armed Catholics, resisted the Italian advance of 1920. Together with Lieut. Lek Marashi he organized komitadjis in Shala and elsewhere, his purpose being to liberate his country from the Italians. Since these latter could do nothing else against him they compelled the Bishop of Pulati to punish him; however, all that the Bishop did was to tell the patriot priest to go away. But Father Doday was more willing to work for the Italians; he excommunicated his fellow-countryman, on the ground that he would not come to Scutari, where his life would have been in danger.

4. THE STATE OF ALBANIAN CULTURE

But, you may say, one cannot in fairness expect the new Albanian Government to achieve in so short a time what the Serbian Government has effected among the Albanians of Kossovo, who are being persuaded to relinquish their devastating custom of blood-vengeance. Prior to March 1921, over 400 of its devotees and of brigands had given themselves up in Kossovo—turning away from the old days when, as one of them expressed it, "a shot from my rifle was heard at a distance of three hours' travel"; one of the most eminent among them disdained to surrender to a local authority and made his way to Belgrade, where he presented himself one afternoon to the astonished officials at the Ministry of the Interior. "After all," as Miss Durham has written, "the most important fact in northern Albania is blood-vengeance." What we must set out to probe is whether the Albanians, if they are left to themselves, will be able after a time to administer their country in a reasonably satisfactory manner.... Their culture is admittedly a very low one. In the realm of art a few love-songs and several proverbs were all that Consul Hahn could collect for his monumental work,[78] though his researches, which lasted for years, took him all over the country. One of these love-songs, a piece of six lines, will give some idea of their Æsthetic value; a lover, standing outside the house of his lady, invites her to come out to him immediately; he threatens that if she disobeys him he will have his hair cut in the Western style, nay more, he will have it washed and then he will return, howling like a dog. Consul Hahn's summing up of the Albanians, by the way, stated that the social life of CÆsar's Bellum Gallicum was applicable to the tribes which now inhabit southern Albania, those of the north not being equal to so high a standard. Yastrebow, the well-known Russian Consul-General, tells us of the villages of Retsch and Tschidna, where in winter men and women clothe themselves with rags, in summer with no rags—so that in the warmer months a visitor, presumably, in order not to shock the natives, would take the precaution of depositing his clothes in some convenient cavern. On the other hand, when the ladies in waiting on the Princess of Wied drove out in low-cut dresses, it being warm weather, the people of Durazzo were scandalized at what they called the terrible behaviour of their Prince's harem. These mountain people live on maize and milk and cheese—salt is unknown to them. Baron Nopsca is regarded by the few educated Albanians as the most competent foreign observer. He knew the language well and travelled everywhere. One custom he relates of the Merturi is the sprinkling of ashes on a spot where they suspect that treasure is buried; on the next morning they look to see what animal has left on the ashes the print of its feet, and this tells them what sacrifice the guardian of the treasure demands—sheep or hen or human being. Miss Durham says that human excrement and water is the sole emetic known to the Albanians; it is used in all cases of poisoning. But the Albanian's death is most frequently brought about by gun-shot. "In Toplana," as they say, "people are killed like pigs"—42 per cent. of the adults, according to Nopsca, dying a violent death. "It was her good government and her orderliness that obtained for her her admission to the League of Nations," said the Hon. Aubrey Herbert, M.P., in the Morning Post of November 29, 1921. And the enthusiastic President of the Anglo-Albanian Society is modest enough to refrain from telling us how much she was indebted to his own championship. The evil eye is feared in Albania more than syphilis or typhus. Siebertz[79] mentions a favourite remedy, which is to spit at the patient. A ceremonial spitting is also used by anyone who sees two people engaged in close conversation; very likely they are plotting against the third party, and by his timely expectoration their wicked plans will be upset.

Absurd as it may sound, there are not a few Albanian apologists who lay the entire blame upon the Turks. They assert—and it is true—that Constantinople left this distant province so completely almost to its own devices that the suzerain might just as well not have existed. A few Turkish officials lived in the towns, in the country they showed themselves when they were furtively travelling through it; and the chief officials, such as the Vali of Scutari, were wont to be Albanians. And, being left by the Turks to evolve their own salvation, they turned Albania into a region of utter darkness—at any rate, they did practically nothing to shake off the barbarism which they had inherited. They have certain alluring attributes, such as their unpolluted mediÆval ideas on the sanctity of guests and the punctilious maintenance of their honour,[80] their readiness to die for freedom as well as for a quarrel about a sheep, and their not infrequent personal magnetism. They are very abstemious, their morals are pure, they have certain mental qualities, as yet undeveloped, and they are thrifty. But "they are so devoid of both originality and unity," says Sir Charles Eliot,[81] that acutest of observers, "that it is vain to seek for anything in politics, art, religion, literature or customs to which the name Albanian can be properly applied as denoting something common to the Albanian race."

The apologists, such as Miss Durham, argue that the other Balkan peoples suffered from a good deal of internal tumult after they had set themselves up as independent countries. And it is submitted that the Albanians would gradually develop the same national spirit as their neighbours. But there are as yet, Miss Durham must acknowledge, very few signs that this will ever come to pass.

"We are Albanians," said Monsignor BumÇi, "we ask for Albania! We demand it! Surely you can see that we are all marching together, men from all parts of Albania, marching against the Yugoslavs. I say we are united."

And some miles from Scutari a part of the Albanian army was returning from a foray into Yugoslavia. When they came into the territory of a certain tribe they were compelled, by way of toll, to surrender their booty. Such incidents occurred in several places, so that obviously the conditions still prevail that were described in 1905 by Karl Steinmetz,[82] an Austrian engineer who learned the language and travelled through the country in the disguise of a Franciscan monk. "The tribes cannot conceive the idea of a higher unity," says he in one of his valuable books. [So that in attempting to build up the new State these tribal institutions should be used as much as possible. Except in the towns, which play a relatively small part in the country's life, the voting should be by tribes.] "How could a Nikaj and a Shala meet," says he, "except for mutual destruction? Will a Mirdite for a nice word give up his bandit expeditions to the plain? The local antagonisms are as yet far too great." More often than not you would find that the Albanians regard each other as at the time of the Balkan War, when, for example, a Serbian cavalry officer took the village of Puka and asked the mayor to lead him to the neighbouring village of Duci. His worship consented, but after walking on ahead for half an hour he stopped. "We are now midway between the two villages," he said, "and I can go no farther." "Unless you continue," said the captain, "I shall be obliged to have you shot." "Nukahaile [I don't care]," said the Albanian. "It is all the same to me whether I am killed by you or by the men of Duci, and I certainly shall be killed if I show myself there."

"We are all united, Catholic and Moslem. It is splendid!" said Monsignor BumÇi. "And we are not by any means fanatical—with us it is the country first and our religion afterwards."

Certainly the Shqyptar is not so good a churchman as we have sometimes been led to believe. Prenk Bib Doda is said to have cherished the precepts of the Catholic Church with such devotion that he could not bring himself to institute divorce proceedings against his childless wife. We are told that his mother was animated with similar scruples, and that, to solve this awkward question the old lady one day seized a rifle and shot her daughter-in-law dead. There is not more truth in this tale than in that of the brigands who, on a certain Friday, overpowered and slew a caravan of merchants between Dibra and Prizren. On examining their spoil they are said to have discovered a large amount of meat, but, as it was Friday, to have refrained from consuming it. Prenk Bib Doda was, as a matter of fact, impotent; and his widow, Lucia Bib Doda, survives him.... One agrees with Monsignor BumÇi that the Albanian is not altogether so blindly a supporter of his Church as we have been told, and his murderous intentions against a neighbouring tribe will be not at all diminished if they happen to profess the same religion as himself.

"Anyone can see," quoth the Monsignor, "that the Government is dear to us. Men are coming from all over the country, anxious to execute its wishes and to be enrolled against the Yugoslav."

Yes, we saw numbers of men tramping up to Scutari, from boys to septuagenarians. They were going to fight—it pleased them enormously. But if the Tirana Government had ordered them to go back and work on their fields, if it had asked them to take some precautions against the ravages of syphilis, if it had expressed the hope that they would no longer sell their women for an old Martini, or that the village prefects would pay some regard to sanitary matters—in the whole of Albania, says Siebertz, there is only one w.c.—then they would have laughed at this Government which tried to lay a hand on their ancestral liberties.

"The end of it all is," said the Monsignor, "we are Albanians. We demand the independence of our country."

"As a Latin," writes Professor Katarani,[83] "I was fire and flame for Albania.... But after a few months I was forced not only to change my views about them, but to regret all that I had written in the Mattino and the Tribuna.... They are not a people, but tribes ... they are against every principle of public officials, they live the most primitive lives. I who know Albania from end to end, who have sacrificed myself for that country, am absolutely convinced that there could be no greater misfortune than if, in its present state, it were given autonomy or independence. Otherwise I confess that an Albania free from any foreign Power would be to the interest of Italy." And he concludes by saying that the Albanians have done nothing to deserve an independent State. It is well known that in the Albanian Societies that after May 1913 were engaged at Constantinople and Sofia, at Rome and Vienna, in striving for the independence of the country it was not the Albanians themselves who had the chief word. Those who were initiated into secret Balkan policies were aware that Albania was the domain with which Article 7 of the old Triple Alliance was concerned.... The fiery Albanian patriot, Basri Bey, Prince of Dukagjin, also agrees that in the beginning an independent Albania would be productive of anarchy. "I greatly regret to acknowledge it," says he,[84] "but Albania is, so to speak, the classic type of a country which has never had a real government." Nevertheless, he is strongly in favour of independence, his reasons being because Albania is "at the same time the old mother and the youngest daughter of the Balkans." This flamboyant prince and doctor and deputy who denounces both Essad Pasha and his nephew Ahmed Beg Mati, has got his own panacea for the country, which is a Turkish army of occupation commanded by a French general. Basri Bey seems to confirm the remarks of his more enlightened co-religionists, Halim Beg Derala and Zena Beg, for whereas the Moslems can claim no more than a rather larger third of the inhabitants, he calmly assumes that the whole country is Moslem. Albania, he says, is now more than ever attached to Turkey, for the attachment is purely moral. ... The influence of this gentleman seems to be confined to Dibra, but he has a good opinion of his own importance. In 1915, in the days of the greatness of Essad Pasha, he set up a Government at Dibra with himself as Prime Minister and Essad Pasha as his Minister of the Interior! There does not seem to be much justification for Basri Bey to call himself a prince. He is a Pomak, for his ancestors were Bulgars who accepted Islam. His father was an official of the Turkish Government at Philippopolis.

Father Fichta told me that his countrymen would do very well indeed if they could import from other parts of Europe financial help, technicians and judges. Some years ago the Turks settled to send two judges to Scutari; then the Albanians would no longer be able to charge them with not administering the law, so that each man was obliged to take it into his own hands. "It is entirely your fault," said the Albanians, "that we are driven to adopt the method of blood-vengeance." So thoroughly did they adopt it that the assassinations in the region of Prizren, Djakovica and Pec amounted, according to GlÜck, to a total of about six hundred a year. The Turks therefore sent a couple of judges to Scutari, and on the day after their arrival they were murdered.

What memory have the Albanians of their own great men? One sultry afternoon, as we were driving in a mule cart from the quaint town of Alessio, the driver lashed his mule with a long stick; but after half a mile of this, the animal applied a hind-leg sharply to the driver's mouth. He roared and fell back in our arms and bled profusely and was doctored by the fierce gendarme, who put a handful of tobacco on the wound, so that the driver had to keep his mouth shut. For the remainder of the afternoon our mule went at a walking pace, and presently, to while away the time, we begged the gendarme and a merchant of Alessio, who was travelling with us, to repeat the song of some old hero, such as Skanderbeg. They stared—their mouths were also shut. And finally the gendarme said he knew a hero-song. It dealt with Zeph, a man with sheep, and Mark who stole them. "Give me back my sheep," said Zeph. "No, no!" said Mark. "Beware!" said Zeph. And one day, as he hid behind a wall, he fired at Mark and slew him. "That is the song," said the gendarme, "about the hero Zeph."

To whatever state of culture the Albanians may climb, I think it will be generally agreed that some rÉgime other than unaided independence must, in the meantime, be established there. One hears of those who argue that Albania should forthwith be for the Albanians, because they are a gifted and a very ancient people. They are not more gifted than the Basques, and their antiquity is not more wonderful. Nor do they stand on a higher level of culture with respect to their neighbours than do the Basques as compared with theirs. Not many tears are shed by the Basques or by anyone else because those interesting men are all the subjects of France or Spain.

5. A METHOD THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN TRIED IN ALBANIA

If only the Albanian question would be taken in hand by humanitarians.... Here you have one and a half million of wild children.... Build them schools and roads, police their country—they themselves agree that the savage atmosphere in the northern mountains was radically altered by the Austrians when they occupied that country during the War. One has heard of numerous philanthropic societies in Great Britain whose object has been more remote and less deserving; if some such society would turn to Albania, their educational and economic labours might, after a time, be made self-supporting by the permission to exploit—of course, with due regard to Albania's future—the forests and mines. "To be master in Albania," says M. Gabriel Hanotaux, "one would have to dislodge the inhabitants from their eyries"—(another French statesman has used a less exalted simile: "Albania," M. Briand once said, "is an international lavatory")—and it goes without saying that any corporation which undertakes to civilize the Shqyptart would need to bring in a military force, on similar lines to the Swedish gendarmerie in Persia. The Swedes, in fact, who are a military nation, might be glad to accept this mandate; the expenses could be met by an international fund. A certain number of Albanians would be admitted to the gendarmerie; and the more unruly natives would be dealt with as they were, for everybody's good, by Austria.... The Yugoslavs would then be delighted to accept the 1913 frontier, which is also what the Albanians ask for; and Yugoslavs, Italians and Greeks would all retire from Albania. There is really no need for the Italians to demand Valona or Saseno, the island which lies in front of it. The Italian naval experts know very well that the possession of Pola, Lussin and Lagosta would not be made more valuable by the addition of an Albanian base.

6. THE ATTRACTION OF YUGOSLAVIA

But as Europe has not arrived at some such solution, and since the Albanian Government has been prematurely recognized by the Powers, then while the Albanians are engaged in the stormy process of working out their own salvation, it is only fair that Yugoslavia should be given a good defensive frontier. The 1913 frontier is only possible if the Albanians are pacific, but as it has now been thought wise to set up an unaided and independent Albanian State there is nothing more certain than the turmoil of which its borders will be the scene, and this will be so whether the Italians do or do not come to the Albanians' assistance. What hope is there of even a relative tranquillity on the Albanian border when so many of the natives, preferring Yugoslav rule to that of their own countrymen, will be waging a civil war? That this preference is fairly widespread one could see in 1920 by the number of refugees on the Yugoslav side of the frontier. [Of course, a large number of Albanians also fled to Scutari and elsewhere from the districts lately occupied by the Yugoslav army. In both cases the refugees were moved sometimes by hopes for a brighter future, sometimes by fears which were caused by their clouded past. To speak first of those who fled on account of a guilty conscience, it is evident that these were more numerous among the refugees in Albania than among those in Yugoslavia, for it was the Yugoslav authorities and not the Albanian who extended their sway. Mr. Aubrey Herbert, M.P., wrote[85] "that in the North the Yugoslavs had destroyed more than 120 Albanian villages." It would have been interesting if he had given us their names, because the Yugoslavs appear to have set about it so thoroughly that one cannot find anything like that number on the Austrian maps, which are the best pre-war maps for those regions. The Anglo-Albanian Society tells the British public, in November, 1920, of the 30,000 destitute refugees in Albania, and in such a way that the cause of their exodus is ascribed, without more ado, to the terrible Yugoslav. But as the names are known of a good many Albanians who did not wait for the Yugoslav army, on account of past troubles between themselves and Yugoslavs, as also between themselves and other Albanians, it would have been as well if the Anglo-Albanian Society had reminded the public that all who fly in those parts are not angels. It would, on the other hand, be just as rash to sing the undiluted praise of those Albanians who, at odds with the Tirana Government, thought it opportune to leave their native land; but one can safely say, I think, that among these wanderers there was a larger proportion of laudable men....] Yugoslavia attracts the Albanians for more than one reason—not so much because the ancestors of many of these Muhammedan Albanians were, and not so long ago, Christians, as because inclusion in Yugoslavia would be to their economic advantage—Scutari can scarcely exist without the Yugoslav hinterland, while the people of the mountains are longing for that railway which the Yugoslavs will only build over land which is moderately immune from depredation. Other causes which have made so many of the borderland Albanians—to speak only of them—turn their eyes to Yugoslavia are the admiration which any primitive people feels for military prowess and the knowledge of what has taken place in the Prizren-Pec-Djakovica region since it came into possession of the Serbs in 1913. Let us in the first place see what sentiments are now entertained by the Albanian natives of that region towards their rulers. It goes without saying that these sentiments are perfectly well known to those Albanians who live outside the Yugoslav frontier.

Well, at Suva Rieka, near Prizren, for example, I found that all the Muhammedan inhabitants of Serbian origin are aware that they used to celebrate the Serbian national custom of "Slava," still keep up the Serbian Christmas Eve customs and often practise the old Christian nine days' wailing for the dead. Some of us may think that this new pro-Serbian tendency is rather on account of utilitarian reasons; the great thing is that it should exist. With rare exceptions, the people of Suva Rieka used to live by plunder; now they are sending their children to the Serbian school, at any rate the boys, and for the study of religion the authorities have made arrangements with a local Moslem. It is to be regretted that Miss Edith Durham, whose writings were so pleasant in the days before she became a more uncompromising pro-Albanian than most of the Albanian leaders, says that if these children go to Serbian schools it merely shows to what lengths of coercion the Serbs will resort. In 1912-1913 Serbian and Montenegrin officers seem to have told her that severe measures would be employed against any recalcitrant Albanian parent who might decline to send his son to school. Assuming that these officers were not young subalterns, that they were quite sober and that they were not rudely "pulling Miss Durham's leg," it may be urged that even if the children be driven to school at the point of the bayonet, such conduct would compare favourably with that of the Albanians towards the Serbs in Turkish times. Talking of coercion, I suppose that the progress in agricultural methods which one sees around Prizren is only further evidence of Serbian tyranny. The gendarmerie on the country roads is composed largely of Muhammedan Albanians—doubtless the Serbs have coerced them by some horrible threats. And if Miss Durham were to hear that Ramadan (nÉ Stojan) Stefanovic of the village of Musotisti had decided to return to the Orthodox faith to which his brothers George and Ilja had been more faithful than himself—such variegated families are not uncommon—I believe, though I may be doing her an injustice, that her first impulse would be to write to the papers in drastic denunciation of the Serbian authorities. They have, like most of us, sufficient to regret—for example, the person whom they sent to Pec, when they wanted the land to be distributed, was King Peter's Master of the Horse. He was thoroughly unsuitable, and caused a great deal of dissatisfaction.

There was a time at the rather gloomy town of Djakovica, when, owing to the blood-vengeance, the Merturi were unable for eight years to enter the place; now they come in, merely to gaze at the Serbian major who is in command. Halim Beg Derala, the aristocratic and wealthy ex-mayor, who as a pastime used to plan an occasional robbery in Turkish days, told me—he speaks a little French, in addition to Albanian, Turkish, Serbian and Greek—that citizens were often unable to leave their houses for two months at a time,[86] and although every house was provisioned for a siege, yet one frequently had to manage without bread. Now the candid-eyed, fair-bearded priest rides out with Ljuba Kujundjic, the erstwhile leader of komitadji, in order to negotiate with the Albanian Zeph Voglia, at that personage's own request, for his surrender to the Serb authorities. Zeph has written from a forest that he feels uneasy, because he owes sixteen blood-vengeances. He asks that his affairs may be settled by the law, and those sixteen pursuing countrymen of his have signified that this will meet their views, since in the first place the Serbs are disinterested in the matters between them, and, secondly, the Serbian penalties are not so mild as theirs, not permitting that a murder shall be expiated by the payment of a moderate sum or that a guilty party may absent himself for three years and suffer no further loss than the devastation of his house. Another sphere in which the Serbs have gained Albanian sympathies is with regard to the disputed ownership of land. Even as the Moors have been in the habit of handing down, from father to son, the key of some Sevillan house that vanished centuries ago, the Montenegrins, more fortunate, have been appearing with the ancient title-deeds of lands that now are in Albanian possession. According to Serbian law it is the oldest document which prevails. And the Albanians are generously compensated.... Those who, with the highest motives, advocate "Albania for the Albanians," may argue that the mediÆval activities of Riza Beg and Bairam Beg Zur—whose adherents started shooting at each other every evening after six o'clock in the refuse-laden streets of Djakovica—would have been concluded and would not have been continued by their sons even if the Serbs had not appeared. Let them, before proclaiming the modern reasonableness of the Albanians, recollect that in 1919 the Moslem Bosniak ex-prisoners required on the average three months in order to traverse central Albania, the country of their co-religionists. From village to village the Bosniaks made their way, earning a little and then being plundered at the next place. Eighty per cent. of this population believe, in their fanaticism, that the Sultan will again unfurl over them his flag and that the world will ultimately be converted to Muhammed. And if, entertaining such ideas, they are so rigorous towards their fellow-Moslems, what prospect is there that this 80 per cent. will assist the Orthodox and Catholic Albanians in building up a State? Their ferocity, in fact, is so profound that it thrives on a diet which is chiefly of milk.... Perhaps a day will come when the Albanian will submit to be ruled by a member of another tribe, when local politics will engage his attention less than the silver, iron, copper, arsenic and water-power of his country. Perhaps the day will come. Midway between Djakovica and the monastery of Decani there stand two large houses side by side. In 1909 a man belonging to one of them slew four men of the other house, and on account of this he fled beyond the Drin, together with thirteen other men of his family. There is no knowing how long these refugees would have stayed away if that part of the country had not come under Serbian rule, but in 1919 negotiations were set on foot which—to the satisfaction of the members of the other house—would enable the thirteen innocent refugees to return, while the criminal would be arrested.

As evidence of the cordiality now prevailing between Albanian and Serb in Yugoslavia, one may mention those cases where the Albanians in 1919 entered into a bond that for six months they would exact no blood-vengeance from their fellow-countrymen; the number of these debts which hitherto had been regarded as debts of honour was very considerable, for they were not only incurred by assassination but could also be in payment of a mere scowl or of your wife, from within the house, having heard the voice of another man raised in song. The Serbian authorities are hoping confidently that the Albanians who have thus for a season placed themselves under the law will be ready in the future to pledge themselves. They are beginning to see that in a place the size of Djakovica it should be possible to make a wheel, that one should be able to find a shop whose contents are worth more than 100 francs, that the breed of their cattle, of their sheep and goats and horses could be vastly improved, that if their land were sanely treated it could be rendered much more fertile, and that their system of fruit cultivation is absurdly primitive.... And with Djakovica and the whole region of Kossovo being treated as we have shown by the Yugoslavs I think it will be almost as great a surprise to the reader as it was to the local population when he learns that in a memorandum of April 26, 1921, the Tirana Government complained to the League of Nations that the Yugoslav civil and military officials were behaving in a very pitiless fashion towards the Albanians. Certainly they have not as yet established Albanian schools, but they propose to do so when there is accommodation and when teachers are available; and then, maybe, to the disgust of Miss Durham, Mr. Herbert, etc., the Albanians of the district will, with an eye to the future, prefer to visit the Yugoslav schools.

7. RELIGIOUS AND OTHER MATTERS IN THE BORDER REGION

Having glanced at what the Serbs have done in such a very short time—most of the years since 1913 being years of war—to win the gratitude of their Albanian fellow-subjects, we shall, in following a possible frontier between Yugoslavia and the Albanians, at any rate believe that many Albanians of those thus coming under Yugoslav rule would regard the change, as well they may, with equanimity. Suppose, then, that the frontier were to run along the watershed at the top of the mountain range to the west of Lake Ochrida. The people living to the east of this line in that district would acknowledge their Serbian origin. Thence passing to the neighbourhood of the village of Lin and from there in a northwesterly direction, so as to include in Yugoslavia the Golo Brdo, the so-called Bald Mountains, whose thirty villages are inhabited by Islamized Serbs who only speak, with very rare exceptions, the Serbian language, one may say that not only would their inclusion in Yugoslavia be beneficial to these people, but that they would accept it with alacrity. No very deep impression has been made upon them by the religion to which, not long ago, they were converted. In the Golo Brdo it was in great measure due to the Greek Church which, about the middle of the nineteenth century, left the region without a single priest, so that children of the age of eight had not been christened, and the people in disgust went over to Islam. Near Ochrida, some of them were asked whether they frequented the mosque.

"Never," they replied.

"What is your religion?"

"Well, it is very strange," they told us, "but we have none."

"What religion did you formerly have?"

"Well, we don't know."

Their priest roams the mountains with his gun, and there has been a tendency, since a man in this position received his salary from the State, for many to persuade the mufti to appoint them, irrespective of whether they could read or write. The devout Moslem is, to the exclusion of everything else, a Moslem; but in these districts, where the faith was assumed in a moment of pique or as a protection, and where the Muhammedan clergy has been so negligent, the people are gladly cultivating their Christian relatives. In the district of Suva Rieka one hears of conversions to Christianity, and the functionaries bring no pressure to bear, unlike the misguided Montenegrin officials who in 1912 rode into Pec, the old Patriarchate, and wanted in their delight to have everyone immediately to adopt the Orthodox faith. Now the authorities, with greater wisdom, do not interfere in these matters. They know that Yugoslavia will have no enemy in that house in the village of Brod, between Tetovo and Prizren, where two brothers are living together, of whom one went over to Islam. They know that the Muhammedan Krasnichi of Albania are proclaiming their kinship with the great Montenegrin clan of Vasojevic, that the Gashi are calling to the Piperi and the Berishi to the Kuci. The new cordiality will be impaired neither by the differences of religion nor by the similarity of costume. The average Albanian of Djakovica would not be any fonder of an Orthodox fellow-citizen if the latter continues to wear the Albanian dress which was generally adopted about a hundred years ago, and the Vasojevic may please themselves as to the wearing of a costume which they once found so useful in the Middle Ages. They happened to be for ten days in the Hoti country for the purpose of wiping out a blood affair, and when they were about to fall into the Hoti's hands they shouted, "What do you want with us? We are Kastrati!" The Kastrati, to whom these Albanian-clad people were led, confirmed the statement, so that the Vasojevic earned for themselves the nickname of Kastratovic.

From the Golo Brdo the best frontier would pass north-eastwards to the Black Drin and along that river until it is joined by the White Drin. This is a poor country whose inhabitants are, for the most part, Moslemized Serbs. About a hundred men are now engaged in excavating the very finely decorated Serbian church at PiŠkopalja on the Drin—much to the edification of the local Moslems. This church of their ancestors was covered in during the Middle Ages in order to conceal it from the Turks. Too often the natives' present occupation is brigandage; but from of old they have had economic relations with Prizren, to which old town of vine-arched, narrow, winding streets and picturesque bazaars these countryfolk have been accustomed to come every week. These Moslems (of whom there are some 100,000 in the department of Prizren, with 13,000 Orthodox and 3000 Catholics) used to detest the Christians on account of their religion, although half of the Moslems could speak nothing but Serbian. The Serbs, it must be admitted, were not always blameless; in the early nineties, for example, they suspended a pig's head outside the mosque. And the amenities of Prizren were complicated by the hostility between Orthodox and Catholic. This was largely due to the fact that, by the intervention of the French Consul after the Crimean War, the Catholics—descendants of Ragusan emigrants of the Middle Ages—had secured the former Orthodox church of St. Demetrius, in which church, by the way, the services had come to be held in Albanian. When the Vatican, in the second half of the nineteenth century, sent a Serbian priest, the congregation had become so thoroughly Albanized that after a year he had to leave. The propaganda of Austria, Italy and Russia did nothing towards persuading the three religions of Prizren to regard each other in a more amicable fashion; while Italy and Austria gave exclusive assistance to the Catholics, whom they found in such distress that, forty years ago, most of them went barefoot, the presence of the Russian Consul was of such importance to the Orthodox that their position at Prizren was better than in their old patriarchal town of Pec. Nowadays, with Austrian and Russian propaganda deleted, there is only that of the Italians, whose proposal to create an independent Albania (under Italian protection) was at first applauded by some simple folk in 1919. The Moslem took to accepting Italian money and then honourably informing the Yugoslav authorities that they had been appointed as agents of Italy; they offered to capture the Franciscan priests with whose help the Italians were trying to secure the Catholics; and as for the cash, it seems mostly to have been spent in a convivial fashion by the Moslems and the Serbs together. This friendship appears likely to continue, for the Serbian authorities, so far from countenancing such pranks as that of the pig's head, do not even propose to reconsecrate their ancient church of Petka. When this building was made into a mosque, the Moslem still permitted the Christian women to come and pray there, while if a Christian man was sick they let him leave a jar of water in the mosque all night, so that it might acquire certain medicinal properties. It is the intention of the Serbs not to restore the church to Christian worship, but to turn it into a museum.

With the frontier then being drawn along the Drin, towards the Adriatic, the famous villages of Plav and Gusinje would definitely pass to Yugoslavia, in accordance with the wishes of a deputation sent by them to Belgrade in 1919. The well-meaning British champions of Gusinje, who maintain that this village is furiously antagonistic to the Slav and is ready to struggle to the uttermost rather than be incorporated in a Slav kingdom, these champions do not, I think, draw a sufficient distinction between Montenegro and Yugoslavia. Plav, with its mostly Christian population, and Gusinje, where the Moslem preponderates, refused at the time of the Berlin Congress to be given to Montenegro, with which they had certain local quarrels. Nicholas reported to the Powers which had awarded him these places that they were obdurate, for which reason he was given in their stead a much-desired strip of coast, down to Dulcigno, and nothing could have suited that astute monarch better. Nikita—to call him by his familiar name—imagined that the two villages would eventually fall to Montenegro, because of the formidable mountains which divide them from the rest of Albania; the road from Gusinje to Scutari is very long and very arduous. When Montenegro succeeded in capturing Plav in 1912, a certain Muhammedan priest of that place joined the Orthodox Church and was appointed a major in the Montenegrin army. He acted as the president of a court-martial, and in that capacity is reputed to have hanged or shot, some say, as many as five hundred of his former parishioners, because they declined to be baptized. He told them that their ancestors were all Serbs, and that therefore they should follow his example. Since the Montenegrins did not restrain this over-zealous man, the villagers were naturally not in favour of that country. Montenegro had a very small number of good officials, owing to Nikita's peculiar management which, in considering his favourites, did not regard illiteracy as a bar to the highest administrative or judicial post.... The people of Plav and Gusinje have, on the other hand, no hostility against Serbia. In November 1918 a detachment of thirty Serbs was stationed at Gusinje, what time certain Italian agents put it into the shallow minds of some Albanians that Albania desired to be independent under Italian protection. Nothing happened when a Serbian force came from Mitrovica, except that these agents and a few of their tools—be it noted that perhaps half the population is ignorant of the Albanian language—withdrew to the Rugovo district, where they tried to induce the people to fly with them, so that the world would hear how iniquitously the Serbs had acted. Those of Rugovo refused to accompany them; in consequence of which there was a fight, some houses were burned, some women and cattle were seized. And afterwards the men of Rugovo repaired to Gusinje and exacted a vengeance which, the most Serbophobe person will admit, had nothing to do with the Serbs. The luckless village of Gusinje was again laid waste in 1919 by the Montenegrins, but this came to pass as the result of the Montenegrin clan of Vasojevic having their property ravaged by some Albanian marauders who were prompted by the same Great Power. The Vasojevic believed that this evil deed was done by the men of Gusinje, so that they destroyed their houses. When the facts were explained to them, the Vasojevic said that they were prepared to rebuild the village. And now Plav and Gusinje, who ask for Serbian and not Montenegrin officials, recognize that it is impossible for them to live except in union with Yugoslavia.... Miss Durham's wrath concerning an affair which happened during 1919 in this region shows to what lengths a partisan will go. She complained with great bitterness that the Serbs had actually arrested a British officer whose purpose it was to make investigations.

The Serbs are human beings and are not immune from error; and Miss Durham is so determined to expose them that if all her charges were dealt with from Belgrade it would necessitate the appointment of one or two more officials. But in this particular case she is not the sole accuser. A Captain Willett Cunnington—who, according to the President of the Anglo-Albanian Society, the Hon. Aubrey Herbert, M.P., has several years' intimate experience of Albania—said in the New Statesman that in consequence of what occurred to Captain Brodie the Serbian Government was compelled to apologize abjectly. Now I happen to be very well acquainted with the stalwart PouniŠa Racic, the Montenegrin who arrested Brodie. Albanians have told me that PouniŠa's knowledge of the north and north-west of their country is not a matter of villages but of houses. And he has always observed the customs which prevail in those houses, so that when he is known to be approaching, the people who live at a distance of many hours will come to meet him, whether for the pure delight of discharging their firearms to his greater glory or for the purpose of seeking his advice. It is not because he has studied jurisprudence in Paris that they respect him in that bitter region, but because he does not disregard the laws that govern the wild hearts on both sides of the frontier. Yet I suppose Captain Brodie had never heard of him—poor Captain Brodie! unconscious of the great good luck which had brought him into the presence of this man who could have made his journey much more pleasant for himself and vastly more profitable for his superiors.

This is what PouniŠa Racic told me:

"At the end of January and the beginning of February 1919, we were having a certain amount of trouble in the Gusinje and Plav district, where I was acting as delegate of the Belgrade Government. Travellers were being murdered, telephone wires were being cut, and so forth. In those parts, which I have known for so many years, it is a good deal easier to ascertain a criminal's name than to seize him, and I had not captured these malefactors when one day I had a message to say that a European Commission was approaching. Later on I was told that thirty-nine of its members were Albanians. I ordered my lieutenant to find out whether they were from our territory, in which case they were to be disarmed and brought to me; or from Albania, in which event they were to be received politely. A quarter of an hour after this I was told that they were all well-known brigands from our State, and there was one specially notorious person, Djer Doucha, who in 1912 was converted to Christianity and was made a gendarme at the court of King Nicholas; in 1915, after the Austrian invasion, he was reconverted to Islam and became a sergeant of gendarmerie. In that position he killed fifty or sixty Serbs and Montenegrins, to say nothing of his other acts of violence. In 1918, for instance, he murdered seven school-children whom he met on the road.

"I had some urgent business at Plav," continued Racic, "and there all these people were brought before me. In addition to the thirty-nine Albanians there were three men in British uniforms. I was acquainted with one of them, a certain Perola, a Catholic of Pec, a former Austrian agent who had committed many crimes against the Serbs and had lately escaped from the prison at Pec. One of the other two said that he was Captain Brodie, whom the London Government had sent as their delegate for Albania and Montenegro. I suppose the third man was his British orderly; I never heard him speak. But Brodie said many things. One of them (which was quite true) was that his Government had not yet recognized the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He demanded the instant release of his companions. 'Do you know who they are?' said I. 'That is no concern of yours,' said he. 'Well,' said I, 'they are criminals, and it is for the judges to say whether or not they are to be liberated.' 'I protest,' he exclaimed, 'in the name of England, against their arrest!' 'And I thank you,' said I, 'in the name of the Serbian police, for having brought them here.' 'You are a savage, a barbarous nation!' said he, 'and you don't deserve to be free and independent.' 'Sir,' said I, 'if you are an Englishman you should know that we are your allies, that you and we have shed our blood for the common cause. We love England very much, and I am very surprised to hear a British officer speak in this way.' Again he demanded to be set free, he and all his people, so that he could continue his mission; but I told him that after what I had heard from him and what I had seen of his escort, I could not permit him to go on to other villages unless he could show me an authorization from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Belgrade. 'I do not recognize the Belgrade Government,' said he. 'Whom, then,' I asked, 'do you regard as the legitimate ruler of this country?' 'King Nicholas,' said he, 'and the Government of Montenegro.' So I advised him to get a visa from King Nicholas and to come back to perform his mission, when that visa would be honoured. 'Anyhow,' said he, 'the people of these parts are against Serbia.' Thereupon I sent for the chief men and told them to say quite candidly in front of this Englishman what they wanted. There were five Moslems, including Islam and Abdi Beg Rejepagic (the leading family) and Ismael Omeragic, also two Christians, of whom I remember Stanica Turkovic. 'Long live Serbia!' they shouted. 'Death to Nicholas and the Albanians!' On hearing this Captain Brodie was discontented; he told me that I was a savage and did not know how to esteem an Englishman. 'I esteem you very much,' said I, 'and because he is wearing a British uniform I won't arrest this interpreter of yours.' (By the way, Perola was not acting as interpreter in our conversation, as the captain and I were talking French.) 'He used to be an Austrian agent,' said I. 'You are a liar!' cried Brodie; 'I know this man; he was nothing of the sort.' I remained calm, but I told him that he must not speak to me again in such a way. I asked him how long he had known Perola, who had got away from our prison a month ago. 'I have known him for a month,' said Brodie. 'And now,' said I, 'will you please show me your documents?' 'I have none,' said he, 'and I do not require any, as I am a British officer.' 'But I have read in the papers,' said I, 'that your people arrested and shot several persons who were wearing the uniform of a British officer. If you have no documents to prove that you are not a spy and that you are a British officer I shall have to arrest you.' Then he showed me one with some Italian words on it, I think a permission to go somewhere on the Piave front. 'From now,' said I, 'you are arrested; no one can come to you and you cannot leave this house. Prepare yourself to start to-morrow or the day after, if you are tired, for Pec, and perhaps Skoplje, so that you may prove your identity.' He protested, and declared that he must see the people in the neighbouring villages. 'If you are a real Englishman,' said I, 'I could not allow you to go by yourself, since there are many Moslems in these parts who have been excited against England by their hodjas, owing to your war with Turkey. They might kill you, and I would be held responsible; so that even if you had the necessary documents I could only let you go if precautions were taken to guard you. I am sorry,' said I, 'that you should have spoken as you have done against the Serbs; in fact, it seems to me that you are doing a disservice to England, and that here in this village I am serving her more truly.' 'I decline to go to Pec,' said Brodie; 'I want to go to Scutari.' 'You must go to Pec,' said I. He said that I could telephone concerning him either to the Belgrade Government or to the General at Cetinje. 'Unfortunately,' said I, 'it is these people who are with you who cut the telephone wires two days ago.' After this I appointed a guard for him. I gave him my room, with soldiers to serve him, to keep the room warm and bring him whatever food we had. [Observe that the above-mentioned Captain Willett Cunnington wrote in the New Statesman that Brodie was treated with "gross indignity."] 'Three horses were got ready,' said Racic in conclusion, 'and on these they rode to Pec, accompanied by a guard, both to prevent them from escaping and from coming to harm.'"[87]

In its old Albanian days the village of Gusinje was perhaps the most inaccessible spot in Europe—it was rarely possible for anyone to obtain permission to approach it. Even to Miss Durham, friend of the Albanians, this people sent a decided refusal. But now, under the guidance of the Yugoslav authorities, they have abandoned these boorish ways; Miss Durham could go there at any time, but maybe the village no longer attracts her.

8. A DIGRESSION ON TWO RIVAL ALBANIAN AUTHORITIES

[We have more than once alluded to the writings of Miss Durham, since very few British authors have dealt with Albania, and she has come to be regarded as a trustworthy expert. But the flagrant partiality of her latest book (Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle; London, 1920), which, moreover, is written with great bitterness, will make the public turn, I hope, to Sir Charles Eliot, who is a vastly better cicerone. The present ambassador in Japan is, of course, one of the foremost men of this generation. His Balkan studies are as supremely competent as his monumental work on British Nudibranchiate Mollusca, published by the Ray Society when Sir Charles, having resigned the Governorship of East Africa, was Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University. Equally admired are his researches into Chinese linguistics and his monograph, the first in the language, on that most obscure subject, Finnish grammar.[88] Will it be believed that in her account of the Balkan tangle Miss Durham does not quote Sir Charles Eliot, but Mr. Horatio Bottomley? It seems that Mr. Bottomley has not devoted much attention to the Balkans, since in November 1920 he poured the vials of his wrath upon the Serbs, who, according to his "latest reports from Montenegro," had destroyed no less than 4000 Montenegrin houses in the district of Dibra, a place which lies some 75 miles by road from the land of the Black Mountain and probably does not possess more than two or three Montenegrin houses; but he flings hard words against the Serbs, and that is good enough for Miss Durham. On the other hand, Sir Charles Eliot, who has travelled largely in Albania, wrote the simple facts about that people and they are obnoxious to this lady. "It is not surprising to find that there is no history of Albania, for there is no union between North and South, or between the different northern tribes and the different southern Beys," said he in 1900, and such a people does not undergo a fundamental change in twenty years. "Only two names," says Eliot, "those of Skanderbeg and Ali Pasha of Janina, emerge from the confusion of justly unrecorded tribal quarrels.... Albania presents nothing but oppositions—North against South, tribe against tribe, Bey against Bey." (According to Miss Durham they are all aflame with the desire to form a nation.) "Even family ties seem to be somewhat weak," says Sir Charles, "for since European influence has diminished the African slave-trade, Albanians have taken to selling their female children to supply the want of negroes." (The Albanians are "enterprising and industrious," says Miss Durham.) "In many ways," says Eliot, "they are in Europe what the Kurds are in Asia. Both are wild and lawless tribes who inflict much damage on decent Turks and Christians alike. Both might be easily brought to reason by the exhibition of a little firmness.... Albanian patriotism is not a home product—had they ever been ready to combine against the Turk there seems to be no reason why they should not have preserved the same kind of independence as Montenegro; but from the first some of the tribes and clans endeavoured to secure an advantage over the others by siding with the invaders—papers and books on the national movement are written at Bucharest, Brussels and various Italian towns, but they are not read at Scutari or Janina. The stock grievance of this literature is that the Turks will not allow Albanian to be taught in the schools, and endeavour to ignore the existence of the language; but though the complaint is well-founded, I doubt if the mass of the people have much feeling on the subject." ... Those who are rash enough to assert, because Miss Durham says so, that in the last two decades the Albanians have made a progress of several centuries may be recommended to the testimony of Brailsford[89] (1906), of Katarani (1913), and of the Italian Press which, after the retreat of their army to Valona, published in 1920 the most ghastly particulars of what befell the hapless officers and men who were captured by the Albanians.

Let the British public henceforth go to Sir Charles Eliot and not to this emotional lady for its picture of the unchanged Shqyptar. She reveals to us that more than one person in the Balkans said that her knowledge of those countries is enormous; she has knocked about the western Balkans and picked up a good deal of material, but her knowledge has its limitations: for example, she makes the old howler of ascribing Macedonian origin to PaŠic, though his grandfather came not from Tetovo in Macedonia but from near Teteven in what is now Bulgaria. Miss Durham plumes herself for having sent back to Belgrade the Order of St. Sava, and seeing that it is bestowed for learning she did well. But even if her acquaintance with Balkan affairs were more adequate—her diagnosis of the Macedonian racial problem is extremely rough and ready—all the writings of Miss Durham are so warped with hatred for the Slav that they must be very carefully approached. Because she thinks it will incline her readers towards the Albanians she says[90] that they were early converts to Christianity. She omits to mention that the Moslem, on arriving in the Balkans, was able to spread his religion much more easily in Albania than anywhere else; and again, in the seventeenth century, when Constantinople offered many lucrative posts to the Moslem there occurred in Albania a great wave of apostasy. Miss Durham speaks with pride of the Albanians who during the Great War fought in the French, Italian and American ranks. Would it not be more straightforward if she added that large numbers were enrolled in the Austro-Hungarian army and gendarmerie? The special task of the latter was to dislodge from their mountain fastnesses those Montenegrins who continued to carry on a desperate guerilla warfare against the invader. To pretend that the Albanian has earned the freedom of his country by his glorious exploits in the War is an absurdity. He is a mediÆval fellow, much more anxious to have a head to bash than to ascertain whom it belongs to. The Slavs have not always treated their raw neighbours with indulgence; in the Balkan War, when their army marched through Albania to the sea some very discreditable incidents occurred, whatever may have been the provocation they received from the sniping natives and however great be the excuse of their own state of nerves. Yet the first stone should be flung by that army of Western Europe which, in its passage through the territory of a treacherous and savage people, has done nothing which it would not willingly forget. And seriously to argue that the Slavs are of an almost undiluted blackness, while the Albanians are endearing creatures, is to take what anti-feminists would call a feminist view of history. Miss Durham tells us that some years ago she stood upon a height with an Albanian abbot and promised him that she would do all that lay in her power to bring a knowledge of Albania to the English. The worthy abbot may have glanced at her uneasily, but noticing her rapt expression reassured himself. And she appears to have believed that England, eagerly absorbing what she told them of this people, would in August 1914 make her policy depend on their convenience. But to Miss Durham's horror and amazement, Great Britain turned aside from this clear and honourable duty. She entered the War as an ally of the Slav, bringing "shame and disgust" upon Miss Durham. "After that," says she, "I really did not care what happened. The cup of my humiliation was full."]

9. WHAT FACES THE YUGOSLAVS

It is not as if Serbia never made mistakes in dealing with the Albanians. The Sultan used to govern them by sending in one year an army against them, and in the next year asking for no recruits or taxes. The Montenegrins, of whom the older generation was bored when it had no man to shoot at, used to be on very neighbourly terms with them. Both these systems the Albanians could understand. But they did not know why the Belgrade Government in 1878—and it was a mistaken policy—should expel a number of Albanians from the newly-won zones, thrusting them across the frontier and putting in their place a number of Serbs who were settled in Old Serbia. The twofold folly of this plan was not grasped at the moment; but for several years the Serbian frontier districts were regularly invaded and plundered. The following years of Turkish misrule, and especially the young Turkish policy of treacherous force, which resulted in Albanian risings every year, may possibly have caused many Albanians to be honestly glad when the Balkan War brought the Serbs into their country. But of these Albanians not a few would rejoice because they hoped that with the help of the Serbian army it would be possible to slay the members of some adjacent tribe against whom they happened to have a feud. Perhaps the Serbs were so eager to bathe their horses in the Adriatic that they did not notice such trifles as the destruction of a ford, this having been done to prevent a visit from undesirable neighbours. One might have imagined that Serbia, being well known as a land of small peasant proprietors—where there is even a law which forbids a peasant's house from being sold over his head; he is, under any circumstances, assured of so much as will enable him to eke out a livelihood—one would have thought that the Albanian cifcija, who is nothing more than a slave of the feudal chief, would have rejoiced at the arrival of a liberator; and indeed, while the Serbian troops were in Albania the peasant refused to give his lord the customary third or half of what the land produced, and after the departure of the Serbs he was unapproachable for tax-collectors. Who knows whether this social readjustment, so auspiciously begun, might not have made Albania wipe out her grievances against the Serbs and remember only that in the Imperial days of DuŠan, even if he was not of the most ancient Balkan race, there was prosperity and happiness where now is desolation; busy merchants in the seaport towns of Albania, which now are ruins; ships sailing in from Venice with the luxuries of all the world and taking back with them all those good things, a half of which Albania has forgotten how to make? And after that there had been times of friendship with the Serb—Dositej Obradovic, the philologist (one of those amiable persons who invented for the Albanians an alphabet), tells us, for instance, how in his travels through Albania he was assured by natives that they and the Serbs lived together as if they were members of one family, while the Kuci in eastern Montenegro had, by a gradual process of assimilation, become transformed from Catholic Albanians into Orthodox Montenegrins. It is told that in the wondrous hours when the cifcija gloried in the soil he was about to win, even the notoriously wild Klementi, filled with hunger for the land, ran down from their fastnesses. But, most unfortunately, at that moment the Great Powers decided that Albania was to be an autonomous, hereditary State. This interrupted the movement towards reconciliation with Serbia; and even now the Serbs will be told by many encouraging people that in their efforts to win the regard of Albanians they have an impossible task, that if some of them take a step towards you one day they will rush back a dozen on the day after. These people will repeat the legend that the Albanians have an invincible hatred for the Slavs; but the Albanians have not forgotten how, in the course of the Middle Ages, they were willingly open to Slav penetration—the Serbian language reached to beyond Alessio, the small Albanian dynasties intermarried with Slav ruling families, so that they preferred to speak Serbian, and down to this day two-thirds of the place-names of northern Albania are of Slav origin. One of the most important documents in this connection is a letter from the town of Dubrovnik to the Emperor Sigismund in the year 1434. They inform the Emperor that Andria Topia, lord of the Albanian coast, has secretaries who know nothing but the Serbian language and alphabet. Thus when the Emperor sends him letters in Latin he is obliged to have them translated elsewhere, and the contents of the Imperial letters are not kept secret. So the Emperor was forced to write to Topia in Serbian.... Long memories are not always inconvenient, and Albanian memories are long because, until recent years, all that they knew came from tradition—Austria and Italy had not yet become so concerned about Albanian education that (forgetting their own illiterates in Bosnia and Calabria) the two Allies waved into existence boys' and girls' schools up and down the country; so desirous were they that these founts of knowledge should be patronized that both Italians and Austrians were prepared to pay good money and eke a supply of garments and a gaily-coloured picture of King or Emperor, as the case might be; and with respect to the cash, not only was each willing to pay but to pay more than the other. Yet the Albanian is most mindful of tradition, and he is aware that his approach to the Slav in the Middle Ages was blocked by the inopportune arrival of the Turks; it is in the nature of man that the Albanian was more impressed by the brilliant young States of the early princes, with that barbarically sumptuous residence at Scutari (the Catholics of Scutari also being in the diocese of Antivari, which was under Serb domination) than, centuries later, when he found himself confronted with the pitiable population of Old Serbia.

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 Pec 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 go to 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, rode up 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 by their 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 Musakadic, a Bosnian Moslem who deserted from the Austrian army to the Serbs, 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 Brcko, 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 Brcko 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 it were 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. TRUMBIC'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. Trumbic, 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 country undertaking 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. Trumbic 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. Trumbic, 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 elsewhere appeared 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 subservience to 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 the Sultan 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 the Fortnightly Review for 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 and also 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 had no 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—a lucrative 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 be gratified, 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 an Albanian 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 Racic and his companions in the summer of 1921 while they were riding one day from Djakovica to Pec. 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 Pec, 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 of a 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 question was 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 those of 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 the Fortnightly Review that 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—I would 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; for she 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 clear when 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 the gendarmerie will 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 Belgrade Pravda, 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 towards the 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 the Temps pointed 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 person who 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 they had 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 Pec 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 the Journal 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 Dutch gendarmerie and 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, a tabula 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 advanced about 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 the Observer—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 that from 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 people on 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. BoŠkovic, the chief Yugoslav delegate, said, the Southern Slavs do not conceal their sympathy[102] nor the hope that they will gain the necessary autonomy—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 the Yugoslav Government, 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 Italian money, 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 ship Mafalda, 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 the Times;[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 the south-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, the Times of 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 some of 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 of The Near East said on November 3, 1921, that the Serbian Government was reported to be committing unwarrantable acts, giving as an example that Commandant Martinovic 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 Martinovic 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 of Marshal MiŠic 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 by The 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. And on 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 people had 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 which they 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.

Italy has been given against the Yugoslavs a purely strategic frontier, which places under her dominion over 500,000 unwilling Slovenes, whose culture is admittedly on a higher level than that of their Italian neighbours. And yet the Ambassadors' Conference (in which Italy plays a prominent part) has refused to give Yugoslavia a strategic frontier against a much more turbulent neighbour, which frontier, moreover, would include of alien subjects only a small fraction of the number which Italy has obtained. The Albanian frontier now imposed on Yugoslavia is very much like that which the treaties of 1815 gave to France, when the passage (trouÉe) of Couvin, often called erroneously the trouÉe of the Oise, at a short distance from Paris, was purposely opened. "Formerly," says Professor Jean Brunhes,[107] "the sources of the Oise belonged to France, protected, far back, by the two enclaves of Philippeville and Marienbourg, both fortified by Vauban." And M. Gabriel Hanotaux[108] remarks that this opening of the trouÉe of Couvin was the reason why in 1914 France lost the battle of Charleroi.

The Ambassadors' Conference has committed a grave injustice. "Let us hope," says M. Justin Godart,[109] a French ex-Under Secretary of Hygiene, concerning whose very misguided mission to Albania we have written elsewhere,[110] "let us hope," says he—in my opinion one of the unjustest men towards Yugoslavia and Greece—"let us hope that Yugoslavia will understand that it is unworthy of her to contest the decision of the Ambassadors' Conference." It has given to the Yugoslavs a frontier that necessitates the presence of a considerable army, and this is precisely what suits the Italians. Seeing that in Italy there are men alive who can recall their struggles against the Austrian oppressor, it is sad that their own country should now be playing this very same rÔle. The Ambassadors appear to have taken no notice of Italy's support of the Tirana Government, but to have been very drastic with respect to Yugoslavia's support of the Mirditi. They have punished the Yugoslavs by binding their hands in a district part of whose population long for the help of those hands in gaining some tranquillity, whereas the other part consists of persons against whom one must defend oneself.

The politicians have acted as if all the border folk were as peaceful as they doubtless are themselves. In consequence, there will be panic and assassination till the politicians—unable to oppose the wishes of the majority of those who dwell in the frontier zone—proclaim that until further notice General Franchet d'EspÉrey's wise and prudent dispositions shall be honoured.

That is the only method by which an Albania can be brought slowly into existence. At this moment the cartographers are printing the map of the Albanians' country in accordance with the Ambassadors' decision. They might spare themselves the trouble. The decision to recognize an Albania was as premature a project as, in Mr. Wells' opinion, is the League of Nations. A free, united Albania has been recognized, and in a little time the Ambassadors' Conference, perceiving that such a thing does not exist, will be relieved to see the North and the South taking the steps to which we have referred. It is wonderful that the Ambassadors' Conference and the League of Nations should imagine that a country, most of which is in the social state of the Gallic clans in the days of Vercingetorix, can suddenly become a modern nation by the simple contrivance of a parliament, which, as a matter of fact, has been the caricature of one. In the words of Lord Halsbury, when reversing a judgment of the Court of Appeal, I am bewildered by the absurdity of such a suggestion. Albania is in need of organizers, not of orators. A very competent French traveller,[111] one who believes that a future is reserved for this unquenchable people, warns the world against undue haste. After describing the deplorable state or the non-existence of Albanian schools, roads, ports, the monetary system and the organization of credit, he says that it is scarcely an exaggeration to assert that from the point of view of economic arrangement everything has to be created. This necessitates a Government which knows how to administer and which has funds at its command. But there is not the least likelihood of regular taxes being paid to a central Government until you have security of communication. And even then the native—except if force is used—will not pay before he sees the benefit which taxes produce. He who for the most part has never given obedience save to his village chief will require to see the local benefit. Therefore his whole outlook must be changed; slowly from being parochial it must become national.... There can be no greater folly than at this stage to aim at applying modern usages, equality of taxation, uniformity of judicial organization, and so forth. It must be a very slow advance, says M. Jaray, taking local traditions and the feudalism, both domestic and collective, into account. Even if a central Government had all the necessary qualifications, yet that would not cause the people to regard it with gratitude and loyalty. It is too remote. The clans have been accustomed to look no farther than their own chiefs. Only in serious circumstances and against an invasion have they united and chosen a common leader. To expect the Albanians rapidly to throw aside their clannishness is to prepare for oneself a disappointment. It is in the clan that they must be made fit for something more extensive. Let the country be recognized not as a nation, but as a collection of clans, and let these clans, with any outside assistance they themselves may choose, come gradually to understand the word "Albania." ... And what are the chances that this will come to pass? No country is more feudal; yet only the most thoroughgoing peasant reforms will lay a sure foundation for the State.

(b) The Greek Frontier

The frontier with Greece has undergone no alteration as a result of the War. It is inconvenient in certain details; it runs, for example, at such a very short distance to the south of the town of Ghevgeli that the prefect has little chance of frustrating those who actively object to the payment of import duties. Rather a large number of Slavs, some say 300,000, live on the Greek side of the frontier, while a far smaller number of Greeks live in Monastir. Both the Slavs and the Greeks have made sundry complaints, which are more or less justified, against the alien authority which governs them. However, during 1919 and 1920, the two Governments resolved, in the furtherance of their good understanding, to raise none of these questions, neither the claims of the derelict Slavs, who are mostly Exarchists, nor of the Monastir Greeks, who are mostly hellenized Vlachs. The two countries, while Venizelos was in power, were acting on the principles of the Serbo-Greek friendship that used to be advocated by L'HellÉnisme, the newspaper which Sir Anastasius Adossides, under Venizelos the enlightened Governor-General of Salonica, published for several years before the first Balkan War in Paris. Yugoslavia was to have every facility given her in Salonica, which course would naturally be the most beneficial to that place. And among the minor advantages of really amicable relations would be the impossibility of such a state of things as once prevailed at Doiran, where the masters of the Greek and Bulgarian schools were neither of them in a position to chastise their peccant pupils, who could always have the last word by threatening to transfer themselves to the rival establishment. It was, I believe, the custom of these young scoundrels to remain at one or other of the two schools on the understanding that the teacher gave them a retaining fee of so many chocolates.... One rather felt, during 1919 and 1920, that the Yugoslavs, in their willingness to take the hand of Greece, which had so shamefully refused to act upon its obligations in the first half of the War, were behaving as if Venizelos would henceforward be retained in power by his countrymen. Should the Serbs find themselves hampered in their use of the "Free Zone" at Salonica, a moment might arrive when they and the Bulgars would, to their mutual advantage, make an arrangement with regard to Salonica and her hinterland.

(c) The Bulgarian Frontier

There have been various modifications in the frontier line between Serbia and Bulgaria. The Bulgars acknowledge that in the case of the Struma salient, of the part near Vranja and of the villages on the bank of the Timok, it was clearly for the purpose of safeguarding the railways; and few people would be found to say that Serbia has been other than modest in her demands. Compare the Italian position on the Brenner with the Yugoslav frontier against Bulgaria and in the Baranja: against Bulgars and Magyars the Yugoslavs only secure a sound defensive frontier, whereas Italy obtains a capacity for the offensive against Austria.[112] It is rather different with regard to Tsaribrod, on the main line between NiŠ and Sofia. So good a friend of the Yugoslavs as Dr. Seton-Watson has deplored the cession of this small place, since it appears likely to imperil a future friendship between Serbia and Bulgaria. As a matter of fact the Yugoslav Peace Delegates requested, for strategic purposes, a still more southerly frontier on the Dragoman Pass, which was denied to them. But Tsaribrod, which is dominated by the heights of Dragoman, is anyhow a place of minor importance. It is much to be hoped that the inhabitants will not imitate those of the Pirot intelligentsia who in 1878 shook off the dust of their town when it became Serbian and migrated to Sofia, where they never wearied of anti-Serbian agitation. One must do one's best not to retard the arrival of that day when it will be almost a matter of indifference as to whether a village is situated in Serbia or in Bulgaria. Mr. Stanojevic, the deputy for Zajeca, which is not far from the frontier, proposed in the SkupŠtina that Tsaribrod should be left to the Bulgars in exchange for a sum of money. This suggestion was opposed by the Radicals, and the far-seeing Yugoslav statesmen who would gladly have adopted it were left hoping that the SkupŠtina would some day decide in its favour.... This moderation on the part of the Serbs has been less in evidence at Bucharest and still less at Athens. The Peace Conference which felt itself unable to deprive its Ally of southern Dobrudja, and unable to resist the persuasive eloquence of M. Venizelos, does not seem to have contributed towards a lasting Balkan peace. A reviewer in the Observer, while approving of Mr. Leland Buxton's hope of a Serb-Bulgar reconciliation, asks why this should be effected to the exclusion and obvious detriment of Greece. "Why not a Balkan Federation?" he asks. In view of the very different races which inhabit the Balkans, he might just as well ask, "Why not a European Federation?" And the statesmen of the non-Slav Balkan countries do not seem to have made serious efforts to prevent the coming of a purely Slav Federation. It remains to be seen whether, when that comes to pass, the Greek and Roumanian people will have achieved such statesmanship as to make an equally small effort to keep under their control their large Slav territories.... "We should no longer think of Thrace," said M. Venizelos in the Greek Chamber in 1913, "for it is impossible to include in the Greek State all those parts where Greeks have lived; we ought to be modest and contented with what is most righteous and attainable; we ought not to let ourselves be carried away by our imagination."

(d) The Roumanian Frontier

THE STATE OF THE ROUMANIANS IN EASTERN SERBIA

A new frontier between Yugoslavia and Roumania has been drawn by the Allied Powers in the Banat. But before we consider its merits and absurdities we must examine the Serbo-Roumanian question in the several departments of eastern Serbia. During 1919 one heard a good deal, in Bucharest and in Paris, of the pitiful Roumanians whom the Serbs had always deprived of their own national schools and churches. It was claimed, chiefly by a certain Dr. Athanasius Popovitch, that the Roumanians in Serbia were longing for the day of their redemption. On March 8, 1919, two deputations of Roumanians from the Timok and from Macedonia, who had lately arrived in Paris in order to plead before the Conference, presented themselves to the Roumanian colony at 114 Avenue des Champs-Elysees. We are told that in consequence of their moving narrative, and on account of the loud appeal made by them to all their free brothers, the Roumanian colony founded, with great enthusiasm, a national league for their delivery. The Vice-President of the league was announced to be Dr. Athanasius Popovici. In a pamphlet called Les Roumains de Serbie (Paris, 1919), Dr. Draghicesco, a Roumanian Senator, denounces the Serb authorities for having obliged Dr. Athanasius, while he was a schoolboy, to change his surname into the purely Serbian one of Popovitch. "Not being able to endure this rÉgime of violence," we are informed, "he expatriated himself and established himself in Roumania." But if Dr. Athanasius felt so strongly with regard to his name when he was a mere schoolboy, one is puzzled to understand why, being an adult and a pamphleteer in 1919, he should be hesitating between Popovitch, which is Serbian, and Popovici, which is Roumanian. The Senator does not seem to be well informed as to the early years of Dr. Athanasius, who so far from expatriating himself as an indignant schoolboy, remained in Serbia, where he went through five classes of the gymnasium in Belgrade, after which he studied theology in the same town, with a view to succeeding his father, who was a priest at DuŠanovac in eastern Serbia. Later on Athanasius performed his military service at Zajeca, where he married—so one of his sisters told me—one Mileva, the daughter of Yovan Stancevic, a merchant. After his marriage he went to Jena, in order to continue his studies, and there he became a Doctor of Letters. It may be that while he was at Jena he became conscious of the rÉgime of violence to which the Roumanians in Serbia are subjected; at any rate he decided not to return to that country, where his wife and three sisters are well satisfied to live. He launched himself into a furious anti-Serbian propaganda in favour of those who, in the words of Dr. Draghicesco, are profoundly sad and full of grief at being neither Serbian nor Roumanian, who when they meet a Roumanian brother listen to him with pleasure and, with their eyes full of tears, murmur: "How happy we should be to be with you." ... When I travelled through those parts with a view to verifying Dr. Athanasius's assertions, I was invariably told by persons of Roumanian origin that they had no complaint whatever against the Serbs, and that the last thing they desired was to be politically united to the Roumanians of the kingdom. Dr. Athanasius might reply that his wretched compatriots were impelled by fear to give such answers. But what do they fear?—one finds that among these people are deputies, priests, army officers and so forth. "To-day," says Dr. Athanasius, "all the peoples who are reduced to slavery by other people secure the right to return to their fatherland." The Roumanians of Serbia would have to be a good deal more miserable before wishing to have anything to do with Roumania. Milan Soldatovic, ex-mayor of the great mining village of Bor and himself of Roumanian origin, said that he had never heard of any one who went to work in Roumania. No doubt the present generation of Roumanian landowners deeply deplore the misdeeds of their ancestors, who drove the ancestors of these peasants away from Roumania. "The peasant hovels were merely dark burrows, called bordei, holes dug in the ground and roofed with poles covered with earth, rising scarcely above the level of the plain.... The interior was indescribable. Neither furniture nor utensils, with the exception of the boards which served as beds or seats and the pot for cooking the mamaliga"[113]—his sole food, a paste consisting of maize meal cooked in water. And one cannot be astonished if the Roumanians in Serbia are chary of believing that their native land has changed for the better. "If," said a Roumanian peasant before an Agricultural Commission in 1848, "if the boyar could have laid hands upon the sun, he would have seized it and sold God's light and warmth to the peasant for money." Even in 1919 the peasant still had much reason to be dissatisfied, for where the owner parted with his land it was usually—no doubt as a stage in the transaction—made over to the village as a whole. And if the boyar no longer has the monopoly of the sale of alcohol, if he has so far improved that Vallachia is not now losing its inhabitants as it was after the Regulations of 1831, when we read that "in vain the rivers are assiduously watched, as if in a state of siege; the emigrants cross at the places which are clear of troops. Emigration is especially rife in winter, when the frozen Danube presents an ever-open bridge," yet among the Roumanians of Serbia it has been handed down from father to son what happened in the reign of Prince MiloŠ. To take one case out of many such that are preserved in the National Archives at Belgrade, a dispatch was sent on February 11, 1831, by Vule Gligorievic, his representative in those parts, to Prince MiloŠ, who was at Kragujevac, enclosing a supplication from the priests and other inhabitants of the large Roumanian island called Veliko Ostrvo, in the middle of the Danube, praying that they might be allowed to cross to Serbia. "We are in great misery," they wrote, "and have boyars who are very bad, and we cannot bear the misery in which we find ourselves, and in the greatest grief we beg your Highness to let us come to Serbia with our wives and children." The Prince had a special sympathy for Roumania and was therefore most reluctant to intervene in her internal affairs. He adopted a very cautious attitude in this matter, but when Gligorievic sent him petition after petition he was finally so touched by the recital of their woes that he permitted them to cross the river; and one night, with the help of the Serbian authorities, the whole island crossed over, to wit 57 families, with 186 oxen, 70 horses, 694 sheep and 87 pigs. MiloŠ made them a free grant of land for the building of a village, together with a vast stretch of territory for pasture and stock-raising; at his own expense he built them a church and extended to them all the liberties and advantages enjoyed in Serbia by the Serbs themselves. As a token of their gratitude these Roumanian emigrants called their village Mihailovac, after the name of Michael, the Prince's son. This village is the birthplace of our friend Dr. Athanasius, whose sentiments appear to have placed him in a minority of one. When his pamphlet came into the hands of Jorge Kornic, the mayor of Mihailovac and a Roumanian by origin, he brought it to the prefect at Negotin saying that he wished to have nothing to do "with any devil's work."

As Dr. Athanasius and his chauvinist friends give a pretty lurid picture of the Roumanian villager who lives in Serbia, I visited a few places where the population is wholly Roumanian or Serbo-Roumanian. The 766 inhabitants of Ostralje are all of Roumanian descent, the mayor being one Velimir MiŠkovic, a sergeant of reserves who has been transferred from the army in order to carry on his municipal duties. All the inhabitants speak Serbian and Vlach. "We were always Serbs," they said. "Nobody told us that we had migrated to this place." And amongst those who assembled to talk with us at the schoolmaster's house there was only one who, in the Roumanian fashion, had drawn his socks over his white trousers. The 2221 inhabitants of the village of Grljan are about two-thirds of Roumanian and one-third of Serbian origin. Formerly they each had their own part of the village, but now they are intermingled both in the village and in the cemetery. They intermarry freely; thus Jon Jonovic, the most notable person, who used to represent this district in the SkupŠtina at Belgrade, has three Serbian daughters-in-law. He was a member of the Opposition Liberal group of Ribarac. "And did you ever request that your fellow-countrymen should have their own Roumanian schools and churches?" we asked. This is one of the chief demands of Dr. Athanasius. "I was not the only Roumanian who was a deputy," said the old man of the furrowed face. "There was Novak Dobromirovic of Zlot; there was Jorge Stankovic, for instance; but we never thought of asking for such a thing, since we had no need for it." The son of the wealthy Sima Yovanovic at Bor observed with a smile that the first business of Roumanian schools would have to be the teaching of Roumanian. "My father sent me to be educated at Vienna," he said, "and when I met some boys from Bucharest we found that our language was so different that we had to talk to one another in German. And now when a commercial traveller comes here from Roumania I have to talk German to him, as I would otherwise have to converse with my hands and feet." The French mining officials, by the way, at Bor testified that they had never heard of any tension between men of Serbian and those of Roumanian origin; the Roumanians, who prefer agricultural work, are more attracted to the mines in winter, when over 40 per cent. of the 1500 employÉs are Roumanians.

Dr. Athanasius and his friends are agitated, as one would imagine, when they discuss with you the numbers of their countrymen. In Le Temps of April 22, 1919, they declared that they could produce 500,000, for they realized that their previous claim of between 250,000 and 350,000 was not large enough to give the Roumanians in Serbia the benefit of the principle of nationality. But even this more modest figure will be found, on examination, to be exaggerated. In the four north-eastern counties of Serbia there were 159,510 Roumanians in 1895; 120,628 in 1900, and in 1910 a little over 90,000. This diminution, say the chauvinists, is due to a falsifying of statistics, for those, they say, who have attended a Serbian school are inscribed as Serbs. The truth is that everyone is entered according to his mother-tongue. And history knows countless instances of a gradual decrease in the case of people placed in foreign surroundings and exposed to foreign influences. Like the Illyrians who people Dalmatia, the Thracians of ancient Dacia and the Serbs who emigrated to Russia in the seventeenth century, the Roumanians of Serbia are undergoing this process and are inevitably becoming Serbicized. Frequently we noticed that men possessing no Serbian blood did not care to admit their Roumanian origin, which, however, is no secret to their neighbours in spite of the Serbian termination "ic" that, in the course of years, has been affixed to their names. An allusion to their origin is clearly regarded as lacking in delicacy. "Well, my ancestors were Roumanian," is often as much as they will admit. And when some enterprising agitators came over from Roumania to the department of Poarevac in 1919, the Roumanians of those parts gave up to the authorities all those who did not manage to escape. For ten years Lieut.-Colonel Gjorge Markovic commanded the 9th Regiment, which is chiefly formed of Roumanians from that region. They used to tell him that they wanted to have nothing to do with the Roumanian boyars. "Here we are boyars ourselves," they said. All of them speak Serbian, many of them write it; and on winter evenings they have for years received instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic and singing, which compares favourably with Roumania's army, in which, as I was told at Bucharest, the plan of starting any education had to be postponed in consequence of the outbreak of the Great War. Together with the unwillingness of these people to acknowledge their origin, one observes a general vagueness as to the home of their forefathers. Apparently these came over from southern Hungary, whence the name Ungureani,[114] or from Tara Rumaneasca, i.e. the Roumanian land, whence the name Tarani. Others again are descended from Roumanized Serbs who came from Kossovo and other Serb regions of the south, lived in the Banat and Transylvania among the Roumanian villages, acquired the Roumanian language and then crossed over to Serbia. These three classes have all come to Serbia in recent times. Any attempt on the part of Dr. Athanasius and his friends to drag in the Romans can be answered by the undoubted fact that the ancient Roman colonists had completely disappeared from Serbia as far back as the fifteenth century, leaving no trace at all, and there is no connection between them and the present Roumanian population of Serbia. No memories remain of the old Roman colonists, save certain place-names which, as Professor Georgevic remarks, strike one as surprising in the midst of a purely Serbian population. It is interesting to note that these ancient Roman place-names are very rare in the regions inhabited to-day by men of Roumanian origin.

It would not have been worth whole devoting so much space to the activities of Dr. Athanasius and his adherents but for the fact that European public opinion, which has concerned itself extremely little with the Roumanians of Serbia, might possibly imagine that their advocate deserves to be taken seriously.

2. THE BANAT

Anyone who looks at an ethnological map of the Banat will recognize how difficult it is to partition that province among two or three claimants. No matter by whom the map is painted, it must have the appearance of mosaic, with few solid masses of colour. This fact was quickly used by the Roumanians, who argued that as the Banat had never been divided, neither politically nor economically, it should still remain one whole—of course under the Roumanian flag. The Magyars haughtily pointed out that as the Banat had never been divided, but had for a thousand years lived under the crown of St. Stephen, it should still remain one whole—of course under the Hungarian flag. The Roumanians contended that the indivisibility of the Banat was designed by Nature, since the mountainous eastern part could not exist if separated from the fertile west. The Magyars asserted that it was altogether wrong to think of the radical remodelling and complete dismemberment of a territory which Nature had predestined to be one. The Yugoslavs agreed with both parties that it was not easy to draw a satisfactory frontier, but they asked that, as far as possible, the predominantly Roumanian parts should be joined to Roumania, the Slav populations to them and the Magyars to Hungary. As a matter of fact the Paris Conference did attempt to make an ethnical division, between these three States, of the Banat. Roumania tried to demonstrate the impossibility of this by turning off the water in the Bega Canal when the Serbs evacuated TemeŠvar and were taking their heavily-laden barges from that town. There will have to be a central, international organization to control the network of waterways. As soon as the Paris Conference had decided on this division it was told by the Magyars, the Roumanians and the Yugoslavs that all the numerous Germans of the Banat wished to belong to Hungary, to Roumania and to Yugoslavia. A great many of the Germans were indifferent, so long as they could peaceably carry on their prosperous agricultural operations. Not much political solidarity is apparent among the Germans of the Banat, and seeing that both Yugoslavia and Roumania, now the principal possessors of this land, have elsewhere within their boundaries large German populations, their respective Banat Germans will be able to ally themselves with these in the Parliaments of Belgrade and Bucharest. The Banat Germans who are discontented with the Paris decisions are firstly those, among the aristocratic and commercial classes, who were accustomed to enjoy under the Magyars a favoured position, and secondly those who, with more or less justification, say that Roumania has yet to show that she will treat her subject minorities in a truly liberal fashion. It is for this reason that the Germans of VerŠac and Bela Crkva—in which towns they are about as numerous as the total of Yugoslavs, Roumanians and Magyars—would give a majority in favour of Yugoslavia if they were asked to vote as to Yugoslav or Roumanian citizenship. Adeverul, which is one of the least chauvinist of Bucharest newspapers, claimed for Roumania at least the railway line: TemeŠvar, VerŠac, Bela Crkva, Bazias—an argument thought to be conclusive being that the two central towns are neither Roumanian nor Serbian but German. This railway line was, as a matter of fact, bestowed by the Peace Conference on Roumania, and it required some strenuous work before this decision was modified. The French were suspected in Yugoslavia of leaning unduly towards the Roumanians, through sympathy with the Latin strain in their blood; yet it was the French who were for giving to Yugoslavia not only Bazias but the villages on the Danube down to Old Moldava, seeing that in those districts the Slavs are certainly in a majority. The Roumanian case was not assisted by Professor Candrea's ethnographical map, for in the debated country around Bela Crkva that gentleman, who told me that he had omitted every place whose population was less than a hundred, has unfortunately forgotten to include Zlatica, a village of 1346 inhabitants, which was founded at the gate of a monastery six hundred and sixty years ago. The population is according to the Hungarian census of 1910, at which time all the 1346 were Serbs, with the exception of 220 Czechs and a few gipsies. Professor Candrea has forgotten Sokolavac, a nourishing place about two hundred and fifty years old with 1800 inhabitants and practically all of them Serbs, as the Transylvanian Minister of Education admitted. Palanka with 1400 inhabitants, most Serbs; Fabian with about 1000, mostly Czechs; Duplaja with 1204, all Serbs but for 10 Slovenes; Crvena Crkva with 1108 (1048 Serbs, 34 Slovaks, 17 Germans and 9 Magyars), are every one omitted. Lescovac, with 977 inhabitants, the Professor marks as Roumanian. When I was at this picturesquely situated place I was received in the mayor's office by half a dozen burly peasants in the Serbian national costume who asserted that, with the exception of the tailor (a Roumanian emigrant) and one or two other persons, the village was wholly Serb. But Lescovac was then within the Serbian sphere of occupation, and possibly if I were to go there now I would be told an appropriate story by other, or the same, peasants in Roumanian attire. One must try to find some surer indication of nationality, and Professor Candrea told me that twenty-five years ago he took down a pure Roumanian text at that place, where the Roumanian language is the most antique in the Banat. On the other hand, the village must have contained many Serbs, for when the late notary, a powerful Magyar with Roumanian sympathies, prevented the school being conducted, as it always had been, in the Serbian language, and installed a teacher—he stayed for eight years—who could only speak Magyar and Roumanian, the villagers at their own expense procured a Serbian school-mistress. She was expelled by the notary.... This illustrates the difficulties which the Peace Conference, in its desire to trace an ethnical frontier, was confronted with. And there was no map which did not make it obvious that Serbian villages would have to remain to the east and Roumanian villages to the west of any possible line. They did right, I think, to revise their decision as to the towns of VerŠac and Bela Crkva, for there the Yugoslavs and their German friends have a large and unquestioned preponderance. Bazias, with about three miles of the railway, was given to Roumania so that she should have, for the exportation of her wood and iron-ore, the only harbour in that region of the Danube which is capable of development. However, with no railway over Roumanian soil from Bazias to the mines, this port is perfectly useless, and it is to be hoped that Roumania will give it up, for compensation elsewhere, to the Yugoslavs. The latter would otherwise be compelled to build three or four miles of railway, from Bela Crkva to Palanka, which, unless a great deal of money be spent on it, will always be one of the worst ports on the river. With a little more difficulty than to Bazias the Roumanians could construct a railway to Moldava, which also is a very good port; and in return for this accommodation, whereby the wines of Bela Crkva could be shipped from Bazias, their natural port, the Yugoslavs would be ready to make over to Roumania one or two villages whose population far exceeds that of little Bazias. We may also hope that facilities will be given by the two Governments for the emigration of those who wish to cross the new frontier line. Formerly the people of the Banat had no strenuous objections to being moved, lock, stock and barrel, from one district to another and without the inducement of coming under the rule of their own race. Thus the village of Zsam, to the north of VerŠac, was, like many others, very sparsely inhabited when the Turks withdrew in 1716; some villages had only three or four occupied houses. So the Government in 1722 collected into one village the people of several others, and in this way Zsam, which had hitherto been Slav, became Roumanian, the Serbs being established in the neighbouring SrediŠte. In 1809 the Roumanians were transplanted from Zsam to Petrovasela, between VerŠac and Pancevo, where they entered the Pancevo Frontier Regiment; their place at Zsam was taken by Germans, who, being more industrious, were preferred by the landowners.

Some of the delineators of this frontier—French and British—have told me that they were guided throughout by the ethnical principle. But various unfortunate exceptions seem to have been made: for instance, at Koca it runs through a certain house in such a way that the lavatory alone is in Roumania; and in another village there lives a man who, since his stables are situated in Roumania, would have had his horses requisitioned if he had not been able to bring them into the other part of the house. Another village has its cemetery in Roumania, so that the Yugoslavs carry their dead friends over during the night. Perhaps the Entente officials, perceiving that their ambitious resolution to divide the country on ethnic principles was not feasible—there would always be alien islands to the right and to the left of any line—perhaps they in despair drew an arbitrary line upon a map and hoped the poor inhabitants would make the best of it. But this was rendered more difficult by the Yugoslav and Roumanian authorities, for the people who desire to cross the line are put to endless trouble. Apart from the expense, it usually involves a delay of three weeks before permission can be obtained, so that the frontier is rarely traversed save by smugglers and by those who, like the afore-mentioned man of Koca, have been driven into chronic lawlessness.

The first line agreed upon after the War, which temporarily bestowed the eastern county on Roumania, the western on Yugoslavia and the chief parts of the central (or TemeŠvar) county also on Yugoslavia—with French co-operation—did not find favour in Paris; whether or not this decision was influenced by the frequent journeys of the Queen of Roumania and her fascinating daughters to that town I do not know. At all events another boundary was made which included the large town of TemeŠvar and all the northern part of that county in Roumania. It is true that there are Roumanian villages in the neighbourhood of this German-Magyar-Jewish town, which is by far the largest place in the Banat. And the Roumanians, who have already annexed enormous Magyar and German populations in Transylvania, do not boggle at another 80,000 foreigners. One could, however, find very few Yugoslavs who want TemeŠvar to be restored to them; they know that they and the Roumanians, whatever (as regards themselves) may have been the case in other days, form, each of them, only about one-thirtieth of the total population. But they are sorry that the Allies asked them to share in occupying the town, because the local Serbs, who are interested in politics, were so enthusiastic, that on the arrival of the Roumanians they were forced to leave their businesses and go to live in Yugoslavia. Since neither Serbs nor Roumanians have any ethnical claim to the town one would suppose that, as the spoil had fallen to Roumania, the Entente would have endeavoured to give the Yugoslavs some compensation: what they did was to take away from them a good deal of that which they had—a considerable slice of their western county—which also was presented to the Roumanians. Again, the delineators excused themselves by invoking their ethnical motives, but as a matter of fact in that part of Torontal the people are predominantly German and they should have been allotted to Yugoslavia, not merely because the TemeŠvar Germans were given to Roumania but on account of their economic existence, which certainly in the case of the departments of NagyszentmiklÓs, PerjÁmos and Csene (to retain the Magyar spelling) is bound up with Zsombolya, their market-town, and Kikinda. According to the census that was taken in 1919, the population of these three departments now allotted to Roumania consisted of 41,109 Germans, 13,638 Yugoslavs and 19,270 Roumanians. Further, to the south-east of Torontal, in the departments of PÁrdÁny, MÓdos and BÁnlak, there is not so intimate a connection with the market-town; here the population consists of 12,209 Germans, 11,102 Yugoslavs and 8808 Roumanians. But there seems to be little reason why the whole of Torontal, following the wishes of the majority of its inhabitants, should not be given to Yugoslavia; and this would also reduce to a minimum the inconveniences produced by any frontier. For many long years there has been a county frontier between Torontal and TemeŠvar, each of which was under an official who looked direct to Buda-Pest. The adoption of this ancient county frontier as that of the two countries would put an end to the present absurd and unjust, not to say dangerous, situation. It should, therefore, be brought about as soon as possible.

A similar rectification is needed in the country to the north and north-west. The three German villages of KomloŠ, Mariafeld and St. MikloŠ have their fields near Velika Kikinda, in Yugoslavia, whereas they are themselves in Roumania. To bring home his maize from the land a farmer was obliged to pay, at the most favourable rate, up to 200 crowns a pound. Considering that this part of the country is an absolute plain with no river flowing through it, one would suppose that a rectification could easily be made. If these Germans had been consulted they would naturally have opted for Yugoslavia. The Peace Conference officials might, also have studied Velika Kikinda, a place with a very creditable past, which—as I was told by a Serb professional man of that town—will be completely ruined if she loses the custom of these German villages and has to depend upon the Serb peasants who make one embroidered suit and one pair of sandals last them for ten years.... It will be necessary for the Yugoslav authorities in the Banat not only to endeavour to raise their countrymen's standard of living but also in the southerly districts, where the standard is higher, to persuade them not to persist in limiting their families. The Serbs in the old kingdom have been one of the most prolific of European races—they would otherwise have been incapable of carrying on their twenty-six years of war during this last century—but in the south and south-east of the Banat, perhaps through mere love of comfort, perhaps through Magyar oppression, there has been a marked tendency not to increase. The Magyars and Germans have had normal families, the Roumanians have increased by assimilation (a woman marrying into a Serbian family will often cause them all to speak her easier language). The Serbs, however, will in their part of the Banat absorb the others if they show political understanding and a liberal spirit. "We will give the Germans," said Pribicevic to one of them at VerŠac—"we will give them everything up to a university."

The north-west corner of the Banat, which has a considerable Magyar population, has been ascribed to Hungary. Opposite the apex of this triangular tract of country lies Szeged, the second city of Hungary (118,328 inhabitants, of whom 113,380 are Magyars) and the chief centre of the grain trade of the rich southern plains. As was pointed out in The New Europe,[115] Szeged, which lies in flat country, would be even more defenceless than Belgrade if the lands on the other side of the river were under alien rule. If one draws a strategical frontier the nationality of the people is, of course, disregarded; it is, therefore, beside the point to mention that there seem to be far more Serbs in the angle opposite Szeged than there were Magyars in the lands opposite Belgrade. The Entente has simply made up its mind to be generous to Szeged, and let us hope that we have not left this region to Hungary on account of the activities of the extremely intelligent Baroness Gerliczy—a Roumanian lady married to a Magyar—who owns a large estate there and was much in Paris during the critical period.

The other imperfections in the Paris arrangements, whether with regard to villages or fields, are not incapable of amendment. One presumes that the Roumanians, who have no lack of other international problems, will be wise enough to discard certain dicta of their Liberal party and of Bratiano, its self-satisfied leader, to whom all subjects seem great if they have passed through his mind. One particular dictum which the Roumanians ought to cast aside is that which insists upon the indivisibility of the Banat. Another Roumanian statesman, Take Jonescu, was more sagacious when he, during the War, drew up a memorandum whose object was that Greece, Serbia, Roumania and the Czecho-Slovak Governments should work in harmony. This idea of presenting a single diplomatic front was to the liking of Mr. Balfour, who observed to M. Jonescu that it would be better for these States and better for Europe. As regards an understanding between Roumania and Serbia in the Banat: "I," said PaŠic—"I speak for Serbia. Can you speak for Roumania?"

And Jonescu unfortunately had to shake his head.

In the fatuous policy of crying for the whole Banat—they even require the little island in the Danube between Semlin and Belgrade—Bratiano is assisted by the aged Marghiloman, who is the chief of a branch of the Conservative party. But the relations between these two do not seem destined to be cordial, since Bratiano is married to Marghiloman's divorced wife.

May the Roumanian people become reconciled to Yugoslavia's righteous possession of part of the Banat. It would be a pity if these two neighbours were to live together on such terms as, in the eastern county of the Banat, Caras-Severin, do the Bufani and the other Roumanians. The Bufani came from Roumania some hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, on account of the taxes which they found intolerable; and they have not been able to arrive at amicable relations with those countrymen of theirs who are the descendants of earlier emigrants. Very seldom do the Bufani and the others intermarry. These Bufani, so say the others, are like ivy. "They called out," complain the others, "they called out: 'Little brother, be good to us!' and then they strangled us." The Bufani, who are easily recognizable by their dialect, frequent the same church and have one priest with the others, but they have a separate cemetery.

(e) The Hungarian Frontier

North of the town of Subotica the frontier between Yugoslavia and Hungary is almost a natural one, as it runs over vast hills of shifting sand which are still partly in motion. Neither on foot nor on horseback, still less with loaded carts, is it possible to travel through these hills. But to the east and to the west of them the frontier is no better than that which separates Yugoslavia from Roumania, and when it came to the delimitation the Magyars thought it would be preferable if this work were done with their assistance. Otherwise, so they urged, there would be no check upon the wicked intolerance of their neighbours. It is true that they themselves had in the past been in favour of centralization, but against this one must remember that the "subject nationalities" were inferior beings. The Yugoslavs, the Roumanians and the Slovaks could not claim a glorious descent from Attila, of whom a fresco decorates the House of Parliament at Buda-Pest, and thus the Magyars had always thought it seemly that, by various devices, a limit should be put to the number of Yugoslav, Roumanian and Slovak deputies. Count Apponyi and his colleagues told the Peace Conference very frankly at the beginning of 1920 that it really ought to take their word for it, and not persist in looking on the Yugoslavs, etc., as if they were as good as any Magyar. Surely it was obvious that Yugoslavia, Greater Roumania and Czecho-Slovakia would be "artificial and improvised creations, devoid of the traditions of political solidarity and incapable of producing any." But if the Supreme Council was resolved to allow certain Magyar territories to join themselves, if they desired, to these ephemeral States it would be necessary to ascertain by means of a plebiscite what were the real wishes of the people in these territories; and Count Apponyi was kind enough to tell the Council very definitely how this plebiscite should be conducted. The principal Allies were to arrange, in accordance with the Magyar Government, as to the districts in which a plebiscite was to be held, and the secret voting was to be controlled by neutral commissions and delegates of the interested Governments. This may sound rather rash on the part of the Magyars, since a plebiscite, no matter how it was arranged and controlled, would presumably detach a good many jewels from the crown of St. Stephen, and it was not astonishing that Count Apponyi and his friends proposed that the Magyars should be safeguarded by further Commissions which, if requisite, would override the results of the voting. These results would indeed, as between the Magyars and the Yugoslavs, have given our Allies a larger dominion than they have actually obtained. The triangle south of Szeged, to which we have alluded, would certainly, if there had been a plebiscite, have gone to Yugoslavia. In Baranja the Yugoslavs have claimed that the census of 1910, which indicated 36,000 Serbo-Croats, should have given them 70,000; but this does not take account of the large number of Šokci—Slavs whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Catholicism and who came to consider themselves as one with the Catholic Magyars. This widespread phenomenon of race being superseded by religion may be noticed, for example, at Janjevo in the district of Old Serbia; it is inhabited by the descendants of Dubrovnik colonists who, being Catholic, have come to look upon themselves as Albanians. In Hungary the dominant Magyar minority was wont to clasp the subject races to its bosom, not with bonds of love but of religion. Thus in 1914 at Marmoros-Sziget they charged 100 persons with high treason, because it was their wish to leave the Uniate Church, in communion with Rome, and return to the Orthodox faith. The same charge would have been preferred against certain Ruthenians who were just as unwilling to be members of the Uniate Church; but in the case of these humble, backward people the conversion had been effected by their priests, who would thereby procure for themselves a better situation, and the Ruthenians, who had not been told of this occurrence, were under the impression that they were still Orthodox. Professor Cvijic believes that, with the help of the Catholic religion, no less than 113,000 Serbo-Croats have in Baranja been lost by their Yugoslav brethren.... When the Yugoslavs were asked by the Supreme Council to evacuate most of Baranja they did so. A republic, under the presidency of one Dobrovic, a well-known cubist painter, a native of those parts, was formed by Yugoslavs and the Magyars whose freedom had been safeguarded under their rule. But as this republic was not assisted by the Yugoslav Government it only lasted for a week.

Farther to the west is the Prekomurdje, that interesting Slovene district which extends for about 25 miles along the Mur. The rich plain that adjoins the river is mostly in the possession of large landowners, while the hilly country to the north sustains a scattered and poor population of Calvinists. There are in the whole Prekomurdje some 120,000 Yugoslavs, who are descendants of the old Pannonian Slovenes. This healthy, honest people has indeed eighteen Catholic and eight Protestant priests, but is otherwise almost destitute of an intelligentsia. They speak nothing but Slovene, and yet the Magyars had for ten years previous to the War been so imperialist that only Magyar schools were tolerated. Thus it happened that the children, like so many others in the Magyar schools, were at a loss to understand what they were writing, and if their teacher chanced to learn the Slovene language he was there and then transferred to Transylvania or the Slovak country or some other province where he had to teach his pupils in the Magyar which they did not know. He was supposed to make the children feel the vast superiority of all things Magyar, so that they should be ashamed to walk with their own fathers in the streets and speak another tongue. We are told occasionally in the Morning Post that consideration should be shown to the Magyars since they are a proud people, but would they not merit more consideration if they were a grateful people, grateful that the rest of Europe, overlooking their Mongolian origin, has accepted them as equals? The Magyars were so thoroughly persuaded of their own pre-eminence that when the devotees of Haydn founded in his honour a society at Eisenstadt, where he had worked, it was allowed on the condition that the statutes and the name of the society and so forth should be in the Magyar language, although Haydn was a German. Evidently the poor Slovenes of the Prekomurdje would be swamped unless they showed exceptional vigour. And when they managed to survive until after the War the Americans in Paris were for handing them to Hungary on the ground that the frontier would, if it included them in Yugoslavia, be an awkward one. Such is also the opinion of Mr. A.H.E. Taylor in his The Future of the Southern Slavs; this author advocates that Yugoslavia should be bounded by the Mur, albeit in another part of the same book he says that "a small river is not usually a good frontier, except on the map"; and the Mur is so narrow that when Dr. Gaston Reverdy, of the French army, and I arrived at Ljutomir we found that a crowd of these men and boys had waded across the stream in order to lay their cause before the doctor, who represented the Entente in that region. The BolŠevik Magyars were just then threatening to set all Prekomurdje on fire, and the pleasant-looking, rather shy men who stood in rows before us begged the doctor to procure them weapons—they would be able to defend themselves. It is satisfactory to know that most of this portion of the Yugoslav lands has, after all, not been lost to the mother country.

(f) The Austrian Frontier

A considerable part of the frontier between Yugoslavia and Austria has been determined by a plebiscite which was held, under French, British and Italian control, in the autumn of 1920. The Slovenes during the previous year had pointed out that while they could no longer claim so wide a territory now that Austria had been drawn towards the Adriatic, yet the rural population of Carinthia had remained Slovene, thanks to the notable qualities of that people. The German-Austrians, on the other hand, maintained that country districts are the appanages of a town, so that the wishes of a rural population are of secondary importance. While these questions were being debated in 1919 by the two interested parties—and debated, very often, by their rifles—the Italians intervened. Sonnino's paper, the Epoca, made a great outcry over Klagenfurt (Celovec) which, if given to the Yugoslavs, would be an insurmountable barrier, it said, to the trade between Triest and Vienna, although it was clear that the railway connection through Tarvis remained in the hands of the Italians. (There is not a single Italian civilian in Tarvis—but no matter.) Meanwhile the French Press noted that the Italians—presumably not as traders but as benefactors—were seeing to it that the Austrians did not run short of arms and munitions. For many months a large area was in a condition of uncertainty and turmoil, till at last the Peace Conference ordered a plebiscite.

Two zones in Carinthia—"A" to the south-east, with its centre at Velikovec (VÖlkermarkt), and "B" to the north-west, with its centre at Klagenfurt (Celovec)—were mapped out, and it was agreed that if the voting in "A," the larger zone, were favourable to Austria, then the other zone would automatically fall to that country. For several months before the voting day this area—a region of beautiful and prosperous valleys watered by the broad Drave and surrounded by magnificent mountain ranges—for several months this area was the scene of great activity. German-Austrians and Yugoslavs no longer, as in 1919, attacked each other with the implements of war, but with pamphlet, broadsheet, with eloquence and bribery. Austrian and Yugoslav officials took up their headquarters at various places and saw to it that every voter should be posted as to the moral and material advantage he would reap by helping to make the land Austrian or Yugoslav, as the case might be. All those were entitled to vote who, being twenty years of age in January 1919, had their habitual residence in this area; or, if not born in the district, had belonged to it or had their habitual residence there from, at least, January 1, 1912. The larger zone "A" was left under Yugoslav administration, while zone "B" was under the Austrian authorities; and the Inter-Allied officials exercised a very close supervision in order, for example, to protect the partisans of either side from undue repression at the hands of their opponents. Neither the Austrians nor the Yugoslavs lost any opportunities for saying in public that the Inter-Allied Commissions were honestly making every effort to be impartial. It was, however, unfortunate that Italy should have sent as her chief representative Prince Livio Borghese, who may have been as impartial as his colleagues, but whose reputation, whether merited or otherwise, could scarcely commend itself to the Yugoslavs. They believed that his activities in Buda-Pest, under the BolŠevik rÉgime, and afterwards in Vienna, had been very hostile to themselves. Each of the three allied commissioners had a staff of some fifty or sixty officials, whose upkeep and expenses were paid by the two interested countries.

If an average person had been asked to foretell the result of the plebiscite I suppose he would have said that in zone "A" the Yugoslavs and in zone "B" the Austrians would be successful. We have seen how the Slovene renaissance of the nineteenth century was met by the central authorities in Vienna (particularly after the German victory of 1871), and how the local functionaries assisted them. They argued that Austria with her miscellaneous races could only survive if one of them was supreme. Therefore they looked askance on every one who regarded himself as a Slovene; if he rose to be an official it had to be in another part of the Monarchy, while for the maintenance of Austria (oblivious to the argument that Austria was a perfectly unnatural affair) they favoured all those who announced themselves to be on the side of the predominant race. From 1903 onwards the Slovene language was barred from the courts of Carinthia, and if a person did not understand the language of the German magistrates he had to use an interpreter. The land was invaded by the German intelligentsia: professors, masters in primary and secondary schools, doctors, lawyers and so forth, excise officials and railway officials—in 1912 Carinthia possessed about 5000 of these and only 1½ per cent. were Slovenes. Those among the Slovenes who were capable of serving in such positions were dispatched to Carniola, Dalmatia or preferably to the German-speaking lands of the Empire. A provincial agricultural authority was set up in 1910 which was recognized by the State and which enjoyed a monopoly. Its object was to aid the progress of agriculture by establishing and supporting agricultural schools, sending experts to the farmer, distributing subsidies for the purchase of machinery, artificial manure and so on. The council consisted of twenty-one members, of whom only one was a Slovene; the subsidies were given to those who were recognized as Germanophils, while requests were not permitted in the Slovene tongue. As for the electoral districts, they were so manipulated that one deputy represented 120,000 Slovenes and another represented 27,000 Germans. Constituencies in which there was a German majority were allowed to send two members, while the others only sent one. The German railway employees worked so thoroughly for pan-Germanism that various Slovenes were arrested—among them the mayor of a large village who wanted to travel from Celovec—for asking in the Slovene language for a ticket. With regard to schools, there were throughout Carinthia in 1860 some 28 Slovene and 56 Slovene-German foundations, whereas in 1914 there were 2 Slovene, 30 German and 84 mixed schools, where the two languages were supposed to co-exist; they were indeed the home of two languages, for the children were nearly all Slovene, whereas the teacher and the language he used were German. Among 230 masters only 20 could read and write Slovene. Qualified teachers who could satisfy this test were, as we have mentioned, sent to other parts of the Empire. So far did the system go that Slovene peasants upon whom the Government had forced a German education speedily forgot the two hundred words which they had learned, but as they had been taught no other script than the German they were accustomed to write the Slovene language with German Gothic characters. These peasants were fairly impervious to Germanization; their strong sense of national consciousness was supported by the books, religious and otherwise, which they received every year from some such society as that of St. Hermagoras at Celovec, which distributed half a million books a year among its 90,000 members.

But that which principally guided the peasant was the voice of his priest, and the vast majority of priests in zone "A" were Slovenes. This agricultural zone possesses no more than one or two small towns, where the priest is less regarded. The traders and artisans frequently look upon themselves as too highly cultured for the Church; they affect the "Los von Rom" and the Socialist movements. By holding these menaces over the Bishop's head a good deal of pressure could be brought to bear, and this was done by the Germans, who were of opinion that the Church unfairly encouraged the Slovenes. The Bishop of Celovec had both the zones in his diocese until some months before the plebiscite, when a temporary arrangement was made under which zone "A" was administered by a vicar. But in bygone years the Bishop, with these threats hanging over him, was wont to counsel prudence and to ask his clergy not to agitate their flock, whom they were merely telling of their rights. In zone "B," which mostly consists of the town of Celovec, the Church would naturally be more susceptible to German influence, apart from the fact that the Bishop himself is a Bavarian. For personal reasons—he is very imperfectly acquainted with the Slovene language—he wished even the clergy of zone "A" to correspond with him in German; but the priests pointed out that their faithful parishioners wanted to follow this correspondence and by far the greater number of them have no German.... In fact the Church has in each zone brought its help to the more powerful party—the Slovene peasants in zone "A" and the German or Germanophil townsfolk in zone "B"; and it appeared probable before the plebiscite that in both cases she would be on the victorious side.

In foretelling the result of the plebiscite one would not pay much attention to the census which the German-Austrian officials used to take. A person was inscribed according to the language he ordinarily employed, and this was, more often than not, considered to be German if his superior was a German. Before the census of 1910 the Grazer Tagblatt, which is the Germans' chief organ in those parts, proclaimed that the official census was a portion of the national propaganda. All the propagandist societies were entreated to do their utmost to induce the people to declare German as their usual language. Very humorous results were obtained. On December 18, 1910, the provincial council of public instruction gave out the number of German and Slovene children respectively in thirty Slovene parishes. Amongst them were the following:

And twelve days later the official census gave these results:

Far more trustworthy is the almanac issued every year by the Church, wherein a person's "usual language" is taken to be that in which he listens to the word of God. These ecclesiastical lists were published by German bishops, and according to them we find that the region we are considering held in 1910 some 40,000 Germans and 123,000 Slovenes.

We have seen that Celovec, like the smaller towns in this area, leans more to the Austrians than to the Yugoslavs. This is partly the effect of the Austrian Government's policy and partly of the various pan-German societies (e.g. the "KÄrntner Bauernbund," the "Verein der Alldeutschen," the "Deutscher Volksverein," etc. etc.), which, as was admitted, drew their funds to a considerable extent from Germany herself.

The German Republic was very lavish in assisting her smaller Austrian sister during the period before the plebiscite, pouring both goods and cash into the district; and after the opening of the demarcation line between the two zones at the beginning of August they were able to introduce their supplies quite openly into zone "A." Very few Germans of the north believe that the German-Austrian Republic will permanently remain separated from themselves.... Both Yugoslavs and Austrians circulated vast quantities of printed matter; for the Yugoslavs the most convincing argument lay in Austria's apparently hopeless economic position and the undesirability of belonging to a State which had to pay so huge a debt; the Austrian pamphlets denounced the Serbs as a military race, though even such a dealer in false evidence as the eminent Austrian historian, Dr. Friedjung, would find it difficult to sustain the thesis that the wars engaged in by the Serbs during the last hundred years were more of an offensive than of a defensive character. In several prettily prepared handbooks the voters were implored by the Austrians not to be so old-fashioned as to plump for a monarchy when they had such a chance of becoming republicans; one could almost see the writer of these scornful phrases stop to wipe his over-heated brow after having pushed back his old Imperial and Royal headgear. You might imagine that the Austrians in their deplorable economic condition would have avoided this topic; on the contrary, they proclaimed that several commodities which were lacking in Yugoslavia could be furnished by them in abundance. One of these, they said, was salt; and certainly the Yugoslavs purchased a good deal of it, but that was only when they did not know that it was German salt, which the Austrians bought in that country and on which they made an adequate profit. When the Yugoslavs wanted to get their supplies direct from Germany the Austrians introduced a transit tax of 1000 crowns—not the nearly worthless Austrian but Yugoslav crowns—per waggon. Later on when the Danube was thrown open and this tax could not be levied, salt was considerably cheaper in Yugoslavia than in Austria. So with plums—in 1919 Austria bought nearly the whole of the exports from Yugoslavia at six crowns per kilo and sold them to Germany at eleven to twelve crowns, the profit going, so the authorities said, to the poor.

As the day of the plebiscite approached, the Yugoslavs seemed to be more confident than the Austrians. The staunch peasants of zone "A" were not greatly impressed by the numerous appeals to their heart and brain which were handed to them by the Austrians in the Slovene language. And they were not much alarmed at the idea of being joined to their countrymen of the south, those unmitigated Serbs who thrived, if one was to believe the Austrian propaganda, on atrocities. But this warning was ridiculed by the Austrians themselves—on a market day at Velikovec you could see the Austrophils wearing their colours, which they would scarcely have done if they had been afraid of possible reprisals—and zone "A" was generally presumed to have a Yugoslav majority. On such a market day one saw very few Yugoslav colours in the farmers' button-holes, for it was the wish of their leaders to avoid anything which might give rise to unnecessary conflict. The day drew near and the Austrians thought that they were making insufficient progress; for one thing, they were at a disadvantage owing to the very low value of their money. They hoped that Germany would come with more zeal than ever to the rescue, and they hoped that something fatal would occur to Yugoslavia. So they asked the Inter-Allied Commissions to put it to their Governments that it would be advisable if the plebiscite were to be postponed for several months, say until May 1921. But it was reported that the French and British representatives declined to countenance the scheme. They may also have feared that if the period of canvassing were to be so long drawn out, the same passions would come to the surface as in the plebiscite in east and west Prussia, where in many places the Poles could not display their sympathies except at great personal risk. But in that particular plebiscite it must be noted that the Allies were very imprudent in confiding the maintenance of order to the rebaptized German Security Police, a body which was entirely in the hands of the reactionary clique. Yet the military precautions of zone "A" in Carinthia were not what they should have been, for when the Yugoslavs had lost the plebiscite an unrestrained horde of Austrian sympathizers, some of them from that zone and some from outside it, some of them civilians and some of them soldiers in mufti who made for certain places where supplies of weapons had been hidden, swarmed across the land and terrorized the Yugoslavs in such a fashion that a Yugoslav military force had to come in to protect them. "But how barbaric are these Yugoslavs," sneered their enemies, "for they refuse to recognize the result of the plebiscite." More than one diplomat in Belgrade was ordered to present himself at the Foreign Office and demand an answer why, etc. But the Yugoslavs had no intention of imitating d'Annunzio.

Those who were not in the zone at the time of the voting might well be astounded at the result, which was an Austrian victory by 22,025 votes against 15,278 for Yugoslavia. In view of the undoubted Yugoslav majority, it was felt that something more than active propaganda, before and during the election, had been brought to bear. For example, in the commune of GrabŠtajn (Grafenstein) the Germans are said to have inscribed on the electoral list 180 persons from Celovec and Styria who had no right to vote; they also asked that seventy strangers should be inscribed. On submitting these claims to the judgment of the district council the German leaders, even as the Yugoslavs, were required to initial each request; it is alleged that these initialled papers, which were attached to the claims, were left overnight in a room the key of which was in the keeping of the German secretary, Schwarz. He is charged with having removed the initialled papers from the Slovene claims and affixed them to the German claims. There was a large amount of more usual corruption. Thus it is known that twenty-eight Slovene servants at an important landowner's were unable to resist the material arguments and voted for the Germans. And if it is true that a number of people voted twice and even three times the Inter-Allied Commission fell short of its duties. It is said that the voting was so lax that if a stranger had been inscribed and did not turn up to vote, his legitimation was used by a native. Thus we are told of one Helena Rozenzoph, aged seventy-five, who was inscribed at GrabŠtajn. This woman had never existed; there had been a certain Barbara Rozenzoph who died in 1919, and her vote was used by Marjeta Hanzio, aged twenty-two years. The case was so flagrant that the Commission discovered it and the woman confessed to having acted on a note which she had received from the special Austrian gendarmerie force, the Heimatsdienst. The Commission seems to have been reluctant to take any steps against these frauds and it is not astonishing that the commune of GrabŠtajn registered 1290 votes for the Austrian Republic and only 380 for Yugoslavia, although in this commune of 3440 inhabitants there are no more than sixteen German families. A German majority was thus obtained in a province which Dr. Renner, the Austrian Chancellor, had acknowledged to be Slovene. It seems incredible that the Commission should have so completely broken down and the mystery may yet be cleared up, if as the Yugoslavia delegate requested, all the voting papers have been preserved.... But the Hrvat, the organ of the Narodny Club in Croatia (the decentralizing but strongly national party) blames Monsignor KoroŠec, the leader of the Slovene clericals, for the disastrous plebiscite result. He would have been better employed, it says, in organizing his people than in gadding about Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Dalmatia for the purpose of extending his party. He had boasted that the Slovenes were so well organized that they were perfectly confident as to the issue. It would seem, however, says the Hrvat, that an unexpectedly large proportion of them are partly or entirely Germanized. And this, more than the above-mentioned irregularities, may be chiefly responsible for Yugoslavia's loss. One must also remember that many a Slovene would shrink from garrison duty in Macedonia, while it would be very natural for the Carinthian farmer to look up at the mountains that separated him from Carniola and then to recollect that Celovec (Klagenfurt), the economic centre of the whole area, would be Austrian. Nevertheless if zone "A" had been smaller—and more completely Slav—it is probable that the population would have risen superior to the various doubts which assailed them. What we have said about the Slovenes who have become Germanized is borne out by the Koroski Slovenec, a newspaper which appears in Vienna and which, though since its formation has been essentially hostile to the Austrians, tells us that after the plebiscite the Slovenes have only suffered real oppression from their denationalized compatriots. Difficulties arose with regard to the closing of Slovene schools, but this was largely due to the fact that many of the Slovene schoolmasters fled to Yugoslavia.

(g) The Italian Frontier

A Yugoslav barrister from Pola had gone to a neighbouring village—this was in 1920—for the purpose of encouraging the natives, who were all Southern Slavs. He asked them, in the event of their part of Istria being allotted to the Italians, not to lose heart but to wait for the day when justice would come by her own. In the middle of his exhortations a jovial old farmer approached him and slapped him on the back. "Cheer up, young man!" he exclaimed. "What is it that you are afraid of?" ... The Slav population of Istria and Gorica-GradiŠca, even as that of Dalmatia, has endured a great many things and is prepared to endure a great many more. Kindness would have gone a long way towards disarming them. If the Italians on the eastern Adriatic had been exponents of the Mazzini spirit rather than—which too often has been the case—of the direst Nationalist, then the Yugoslavs would have accepted—mournfully, no doubt, but faute de mieux—the frontier from the river ArŠa in Istria which President Wilson suggested. This would have been a compromise frontier, by which 400,000 Slovenes and Croats would fall to Italy and a very much smaller number of Italians would fall to Yugoslavia. It would have satisfied the great sensible mass of the Italian people, but unfortunately was rejected by Baron Sonnino and his myrmidons. Far more was claimed by him, and the succeeding Italian Governments have had to struggle with the passions he so recklessly aroused. They have been unable to persuade the country that with the ArŠa frontier they would be getting by no means a bad bargain. By the Treaty of Rapallo the Italians have obtained much more: the whole of Gorica-GradiŠca, portions of Carniola, the whole of Istria and contiguity with Rieka (which is made a free town), the islands of Lussin, Cres and Unie, sovereignty over a strip of five miles which includes Zadar (and a few adjacent islands), finally the southern island of Lastovo and Pelagosa which lies in the middle of the Adriatic.

In November 1920 all the outside world was congratulating the Italians and the Yugoslavs on having, after many fruitless efforts of their statesmen, come to this agreement. The opinion was expressed that both of the contracting parties would henceforth be satisfied, since each of them was conscious that the other had accepted something less than his desires. It was noted that the Yugoslavs exhibited more generosity, as they gave up some half a million of their countrymen, while the Italians yielded in Dalmatia that to which they had no right. The Yugoslavs had, in the past two years, shown so much more forbearance than was usually expected of a vigorous young nation that the commentators for the most part fancied they would not waste any time in grieving over these inevitable sacrifices. It is freely said that if a liberal spirit is displayed by the Italians at the various points where they and Yugoslavia are in contact, both people will settle down, with no afterthoughts, to friendly and neighbourly relations. But it would be foolish to close our eyes to the fact that the position at Rieka and Zadar, not to speak of any other places, bristles with difficulties. At Rieka one hopes that the largest and wisest party, the Autonomists, will now come into their rights; no doubt a good many of those opportunist citizens who, at the time of the Italian occupation, developed into Italianissimi, after having previously been known as more or less platonic lovers of Italy, Hungary, or Croatia with ambitions chiefly centred on their native town, will presently assure you that in the Free State they are convinced Free Staters; but the local politicians have been living for so long in such a thoroughly oppressive atmosphere that most of those who have been prominent should for a season now retire. It will be difficult enough for this harassed port to settle down to business. As for the Zadar enclave, it is not easy to understand why an Italian majority in this little town should bring it under the Italian flag while the overwhelming Slav majorities of central and eastern Istria have been ignored. And with all the goodwill in the world the existence of this minute colony encircled by Yugoslav lands will scarcely make more easy the conduct of relations between Yugoslavia and Italy. It is naturally to the interest of both countries that misunderstandings and suspicions should be swept away. And from this point of view it is very doubtful whether the Italians were well advised in taking Zadar into their possession. Presumably the Government was forced to do so by the state of public feeling. They withstood this feeling with regard to the magnificent harbour of Vis, which even President Wilson suggested they should have, and contented themselves with the smaller Yugoslav island of Lastovo (Lagosta). The pity is that the Nationalists should have forced into their hands anything which may turn and sting them.

It may be thought that we are excessively pessimistic in pointing rather to the dangers which the Treaty places on the tapis than to the good sense of those who will deal with them. We do not say that the Italians would have permitted their Government to solve the Adriatic question in a safer and more philosophic manner; but we cannot look forward with that confidence we should have had if more sagacious counsels had prevailed.

An arrangement most agreeable to the bulk of the interested population would have been effected if two Free States, instead of one, had been created: the small one of Rieka, and a larger one embracing Triest and the western part of Istria. There would be in each of these two States a mixed population, who would think with a shudder of the time when the grass was growing on their quays. Italians and Slavs, prosperous as of old, would very cordially agree that the experiment of being included in Italy had been at any rate a commercial disaster. [D'Annunzio's administration was, of course, a mere camouflage. Without the support of the Italian Government, which paid his troops though calling them rebels, the poet-adventurer could scarcely have lasted for a day; and the swarm of officers, many of them worse adventurers than himself, would have deserted him. Nor would the population of Rieka have listened to his glowing periods if the Italian Government had not, under cover of the Red Cross, sent an adequate supply of food into the town.] Both Rieka and Triest were, therefore, living under practically the same conditions, separated from their natural hinterland, and knowing very well that as Italian towns their prospects were lamentable. It was significant that the Italian Government should after a time have studied the scheme of constructing a canal from Triest to the Save. Before the War one-third of the urban population (and all the surrounding country) was Yugoslav; and now, when so many Yugoslavs have departed and so many Italians have arrived, even now it is certain that in a plebiscite not 10 per cent. would vote for Italy—and this minority would be largely made up of those leccapiatini (the "plate-lickers") who were the humbler servants of Austria during the War and are now begging for Italian plates. When the offices of the Socialist newspaper Il Lavoratore—the Socialists are by far the most important party in Triest—were taken by storm and gutted, the American Consul, Mr. Joseph Haven, and the Paris correspondent of the New York Herald, Mr. Eyre, happened to be in the building. They afterwards said that the attack by those ultra-nationalist bands, the fascisti—very young men, demobilized junior officers and so forth—was entirely unprovoked. The carabinieri gazed indifferently at the scene. Such is life in Triest, where the labour movement is gaining in strength every day. Its old prosperity has departed—there is hardly any trade or water or gas, since most of the coal was consumed, by order of the Italian authorities, in making electric light for illuminations. These were intended to show the city's irrepressible enthusiasm at being incorporated in the kingdom of Italy. But the inhabitants know very well that being one of Italy's many ports is worse than being the only port of Austria; they know that the most direct railways to Austria pass through Yugoslav territory, that henceforward the Danube will be much more largely used by Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Hungary (none of whom had a seaboard) and that Rieka will now be a more formidable rival than of old.... So, too, at Pola we find that a majority of the population do not wish their town to be retained in Italy; a number of Italian workmen fled from the idle shipbuilding yards and actually came in 1919 and 1920 with the Slovene refugees, their fellow-townsmen, to Ljubljana in search of employment. There are not sufficient orders to go round among such yards in Italy where, owing to the absence of coal and iron, this particular industry labours under great disadvantages. But if Rome considers that the retention of Pola is strategically essential, then in order to meet her wishes this town might be taken out of the Triest-Istrian Free State—maybe the Italians will be able to do something that will cause the citizens to cease regretting those good days of old when, as Austria's chief naval base, she flourished on the largesse of officers and men. But what can she do, and what could anybody do? Hundreds of houses are deserted; and for the year 1920 the owners of the theatre—which did not engage expensive actors but relied mainly on cinema—were faced with a deficit of 12,000 lire.

The Triest-Istrian Free State would approximately contain, without Pola, some 300,000 inhabitants, half Italian and half Yugoslav. The formation of this State would be less advantageous to the Yugoslavs, for most of the big landowners and the shop-keepers are Italians who live on the Yugoslav peasants; but Yugoslavia, for the sake of peace, would be glad to see the State come into existence. Eastern and central Istria, forming a part of Yugoslavia and lying between the two Free States, should extend to Porto di Bado, which would cause it to possess about 3,000 Italians and 280,000 Yugoslavs. If it were to be bounded by the ArŠa it would make the Italians in the Triest-Istrian State become a minority.

With respect to the indisputable Slav districts east of the Isonzo, i.e. the territory of Gorica-GradiŠca and an appreciable part of Carniola, which have been adjudged to Italy and which long to be joined to the Yugoslav State, there are two possible solutions. (In passing we may observe that there is no country where the national frontier is more clearly indicated. The linguistic frontier is so strictly defined that the peasant on one side of it does not speak Italian and his neighbour on the other side does not understand the Slovene tongue. Nevertheless, Signor Colajanni, the venerable leader of the Italian Republicans, took up an undemocratic point of view and declined to admit the argument of the superiority of numbers, when he alluded to this frontier in a speech to the Republican Congress at Naples. Waving numbers aside, he preferred to appeal to history and culture, though he should have known that the mass of the Slovene people is much better educated than the Italian peasant.) The true ethnographical boundary would be the Isonzo—not many Yugoslavs live to the west and not many Italians to the east of that river. Only in the town of Gorica do we find Italians. In 1910 at the census the Italian municipal authorities attempted to show that their town was almost entirely Italian; at a subsequent census the Austrians found that the returns had been largely falsified, and that in reality Gorica contained 14,000 Italians and 12,000 Slovenes, while it is common knowledge that if you go 500 yards from the town you meet nothing but Slovenes. The prosperity of Gorica was mostly based on the export of fruit and vegetables from the Slovene countryside. In 1898 the Slovenes awakened, formed societies, started in business on a large scale and boycotted the Italian merchants, who found themselves obliged to learn the Slovene language. Suppose that, for the sake of meeting the wishes of the Italian Nationalists, one half of the town were given to Italy, then that portion would be faced with ruin. It would, therefore, be advisable that the whole town should remain with its hinterland, and that Italy and Yugoslavia should be divided from each other by the Isonzo. But if this solution is impossible, then a large district east of the Isonzo should be entirely and permanently neutralized, which would not endanger the security of either State. Very different in character is the line Triglav-Idria-Sneznik, which the Italians hold ostensibly as a means of defence, but which is an offensive line against Yugoslavia, and primarily against Ljubljana and Karlovac.

No doubt as the Italians in the eastern Adriatic have obtained a regular position by the Treaty of Rapallo they will henceforth do their best to win the love of their new subjects. They will disavow such officers as that one on the sandy isle of Unie who accused the Slav priest of propaganda, and in fact, as we have mentioned elsewhere, expelled him for the reason that inside his church, where they had been for many years, stood monuments of the two Slav apostles, SS. Cyril and Methodus. St. Methodus was the wise administrator of these two—but even if he takes the rulers of the eastern Adriatic under his particular protection one must be prepared for them to fail in smothering, by their enlightened rule, the discontent which in the last three years has grown among the Yugoslavs to such acute proportions. It began, as we have noted, under the Ægis of Baron Sonnino; the old neighbour, Austria-Hungary, had been Italy's hereditary foe, and the Baron's school could not bring itself to regard the new neighbours in a friendly light, although their house was so much less populated than that of their predecessors, not to mention that of the Italians themselves.

There have been times during the last three years when a war between Italy and Yugoslavia seemed scarcely avoidable—the natives of the districts most concerned were looking forward to it with eagerness. At a Yugoslav assembly held in Triest in the summer of 1919 the other delegates were electrified by two priests from Istria who declared that their people were straining at the leash, anxious for the word to snatch up their weapons. (Many of these weapons, by the way, were of Italian origin, as there had been no great difficulty in purchasing them from the more pacific or the more Socialistic Italian soldiers; the usual price was ten lire for a rifle and a hundred rounds.) If there should come about a war between Italy and Yugoslavia, then it is to be supposed that the Yugoslavs will afterwards take as their western frontier the old frontier of Austria (except for the Friuli district, south of Cormons, which they do not covet, since they look upon this ancient race as Italian.)

By signing the Treaty of Rapallo the Yugoslav Government has shown that it is ready to go to very great lengths in order to establish, as securely as may be, an era of peace. It would be just as creditable on the part of the Italians if they will consent to Istria being partitioned in the way we have suggested, for they have been wrongly taught to think themselves entitled to this country, and to believe that the inhabitants, as a whole, are glad to be Italian subjects. "You may suppose we are unpatriotic," the Austrian railway officials of Italian nationality used to say, "but as Austria gives much better pay than we should receive from Italy, we prefer that this part of the world should be Austrian."

The relations between Italy and Yugoslavia have been treated at some length, for it would require but little to bring a gathering of storm-clouds to the sky. One even hears of Roman Catholics in Istria and elsewhere abjuring their Church and—for the national cause—adopting the Serbian Orthodox faith. Twenty years ago it happened that two Istrian villages, Ricmanje and Log, went over to the Uniate and thence to the Orthodox Church. This was on account of a quarrel with the Bishop of Triest, who wanted, against the wishes of the people, to remove their priest, Dr. Pojar. But now we have priests in the provinces given to Italy who are openly calling on their flock to go over with them to their Orthodox brothers; and this is a movement which, it is thought, will merely be postponed by the introduction of the Slav liturgy. To take a single sermon out of many, we may mention one which in the summer of 1920 was preached in a church of the Vipava valley. The clergyman, after lamenting that the chief dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church are Italians, gave it as his opinion that there was nothing to choose in point of goodness between that particular Church and the Orthodox Church. "And," said an old peasant who came to Triest with the story of what had happened, "never in my life did I hear so fine a sermon and one that did me so much good."