The Birth Of Yugoslavia Volume Ii Part 15

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 t.i.tle-deeds of lands that now are in Albanian possession. According to Serbian law it is the oldest doc.u.ment which prevails. And the Albanians are generously compensated.... Those who, with the highest motives, advocate "Albania for the Albanians," may argue that the mediaeval 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 a.s.sist 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, a.r.s.enic 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.s 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 Pikopalja 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 a.s.sistance 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 Pounia Racic, the Montenegrin who arrested Brodie. Albanians have told me that Pounia'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 Pounia 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 doc.u.ments?' '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 doc.u.ments 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 ident.i.ty.' 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 doc.u.ments 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 amba.s.sador in j.a.pan 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 ma.s.s of the people have much feeling on the subject." ... Those who are rash enough to a.s.sert, 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 Paic, 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 mediaeval 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 pa.s.sage 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 rea.s.sured 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 circ.u.mstances, a.s.sured 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 Duan, 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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.similation, 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 doc.u.ments 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 t.i.tle 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' inst.i.tute, 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: "G.o.d, 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 cafes. 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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.sistance 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 a.s.signed 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, pa.s.ses 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 ent.i.tled, except when for a short time they were in pursuit, towards Ljuria, of certain invaders. Not only were they legally ent.i.tled 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 princ.i.p.al 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 ma.s.ses of Catholics and Moslems. Perhaps some of the members of the League began to doubt whether they should have accepted the a.s.surance 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.sa.s.sinated 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 ma.s.sacre 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 a.s.sailant 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 a.s.serts 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.