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 Cvijić, 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