"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 Peć 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