Sometimes the Albanians show very little regard for their Turkish officers. Once at Salonica I saw a company refuse to board a train because some contraband tobacco had been taken from them by the officials of the foreign monopoly that exists in Turkey. But the Turk is different; he is fanatically subordinate. On several occasions I have seen Turkish soldiers stand like inanimate things while their officers pulled their ears, punched their heads and kicked them.
If they thought their Padisha in earnest the Turkish private and peasant would never resist a measure of reform. But the Albanians have always resisted reforms for the reason that reforms would interfere with their privileges.
The disarming of the Albanians is indispensable to reforms in Macedonia. The establishment of law courts in Albania was one of Hilmi Pasha’s additions to the Austro-Russian scheme of reforms! If this reform is ever applied, both parties in a case will go into court with all their weapons, and the result will be—no matter which way the verdict goes—the death of the judge.
Of late years attempts have been made by educated Albanians residing in Bucharest and in Italy to create an agitation for Albanian autonomy; but these movements have had no effect as yet on the Albanians; the Turks are too clever at their control. Should a leader appear among them who threatens organisation or civilisation, an emissary of the Sultan arrives with gifts and decorations. If the chief is not venal, he is enticed or taken secretly by force to Constantinople, where he may be given authority over a district or province which will more than compensate him for his loss, but where he can work the empire no harm.
There is no free Albanian border state, as with the Greeks, the Bulgarians, and the Serbs, and the Turks are able to prevent the Albanians from becoming educated. There are Catholic schools in Northern Albania and Orthodox Greek in Southern Albania, but the Turks deny the very existence of the Albanian language. The publication of Albanian books is prevented and Albanian schools are suppressed. A few years ago some of the wealthier inhabitants of a certain town started a school to teach their children their own tongue. One evening the professor disappeared. He was stolen by Turkish soldiers, deported, and imprisoned. He was held for eight months without trial, and then as arbitrarily released. He received the usual Turkish shrug of the shoulders when he asked the reason for the outrage. This was at Cortia, where the Turk’s rule is not merely nominal.
The position of the Albanians in Turkey is unique. It is in the power of the Turks to subdue and govern them; but the Sultans have preferred to give them licence and to keep the strip of Adriatic land they occupy a lawless barrier against the West. There is no railway across Albania, there is only one place along the coast at which ships stop, and the foreigner is forbidden by both Albanian and Turk. The Turk protests that he cannot afford the European safe passport across Albania, and the Albanian has been taught to suspect every European as a spy come to reconnoitre for a foreign Power.
A few men from civilisation have been to the heart of this romantic country. In order to get there safely it is necessary to acquire the friendship and the confidence of the chief of a clan, and to get from him a promise of safe passport. Only on one occasion, it is said, did anyone trusting himself to an Albanian chief lose his life. The man, with all his escort, was killed by the members of a hostile clan, and to this day a blood feud lasts as a result.
To take the risk of entering Albania without reason seemed foolhardy, and as we never had adequate excuse, we left the Balkans without fulfilling our earnest desire to cross it. We touched the country, however, from the east and from the west, and encountered Albanians everywhere in Macedonia.
We sailed down the Adriatic from Trieste, bound for Greece, the mountains of Albania often visible, and we touched, among Italian and other ports, at Hagio Saranda. The place has as many names—Albanian, Turkish, Slav, Italian, German—as it has houses. The Austrian-Lloyd steamer dropped anchor in the bay, and several queer, unwieldy row-boats—small barges—came up alongside for a few boxes of Austrian goods. The ship lay at anchor an hour, and we went ashore. The same cringing, unarmed Christians, the same swaggering Albanians, the same suspicious officials and ragged soldiers. The Turks bowed politely as we landed, and asked questions. We were going down the shore to take a bath.
‘This is a small town, effendi; we are sorry there is no bath here.’