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 Račić and his companions in the summer of 1921 while they were riding one day from Djakovica to Peć. 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 Peć, 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."