However, the magnanimous Italians came back, declaring that on this occasion they would not occupy the country (except the little island of Saseno); but that they really could not restrain themselves from bestowing the schools, the rifles, munitions and gold. Once more the Albanians agreed to accept them; they also accepted the Turkish officers and officials whom the Italian ships brought to them from Asia Minor, and when their Government became more and more Turkish and more intractable they found that they had excited the hostility of large numbers of their own compatriots. This developed during 1921 into violent conflicts; and the bountiful Italians provided the Tirana Government's army with expert tuition. Nevertheless, in the Albanians' opinion, there are no bonds between the two races, and if the Italians would retire from Albania, permitting the Balkans to be for the Balkan peoples, and if the fanatical Turks went back to Asia Minor, it would soon be seen that the present rage between northern and central Albania would peter out into the isolated murders which the Albanians have hitherto been unable to dispense with. Left to themselves the Albanians of Tirana would eventually ask for some such assistance from Serbia as the northern tribes have received; three months after the departure of the Italians from Scutari a plebiscite would show that this town, which has lately gone so far as to refuse—yes, even her Moslems have refused—to fill the depleted ranks of the Tirana forces, was anxious to come to a friendly settlement with her Albanian neighbours and the Yugoslavs. This would be a victory of Scutari's common sense over all those fanatics and intriguers whose activities involve her death; for she cannot possibly thrive if she persists in cutting herself off from the hinterland and from the benefits that will accrue from the canalization of the Bojana.
However, the Italians—officially or unofficially—will not yet awhile leave Albania. And how will this retard or modify the reasonableness of those parts which acknowledge Tirana? As for the town of Scutari, it is probable that if she found herself permanently cut off by the Mirditi from direct communication with Tirana she would allow her incipient independence to come more to the surface. With Tirana less capable of enforcing her behests the Scutarenes would gradually venture to act in their own interests; they would aim at local autonomy within the sphere of Yugoslav influence and in the same sphere as their markets. It is to be hoped that Yugoslavia will be prepared for this, since she does not possess too many educated citizens who understand the Albanian mentality. A course of conduct which pays no attention to this would alienate even the Turks from Podgorica and Dulcigno, whose acquaintance with the very language of Albania is so limited. There seems, however, to be no reason why the mixed population of Albanian Moslems and Catholics, of Orthodox Serbs and of Moslems who declined to come under the all-too-patriarchal rule of Nicholas of Montenegro should not have the same happy experience as the inhabitants of Djakovica and Prizren. Later on the Scutarenes will be called upon to decide whether they prefer, like those other predominantly Albanian towns, to remain in Yugoslavia or whether they wish to throw in their lot with a free Albania, and in that case their town would become the capital of the country. Failing Scutari, the capital would most probably be Oroshi, which is now the capital of the Mirditi.
And why, we may be asked, why should not Tirana be the capital? In the central parts of Albania, in the country round Tirana, where the natives are derisively called "llape" by the warriors of the north and by the cultured Albanians of the south, we believe that the assistance of Italy will be unable to prevent a collapse. (It must also be remembered that the people of the district of Tirana are, for the most part, in opposition to the present Tirana Government. This became clear when the partisans of Essad Pasha's policy[98] overthrew and imprisoned the Tirana Ministers.) Economically and morally Tirana will decline, until she is compelled to seek a union with the people of northern Albania, those of the south having meanwhile gravitated towards Greece. Then the moment will arrive when the north and the south, in their task of building up a free and united Albania, will admit the centre under various conditions. These will have to be of a rather stern character, or so at any rate they will seem to the folk of Tirana: taxes will have to be paid, military service or service in the gendarmerie will have to be rendered, and schools will have to be established for both sexes.
This, then, is the future country of Albania, which—if one is rash enough to prophesy—may exist in fifty years. But there is no risk whatever in asserting that a free, united Albania is in the immediate future quite impossible.
13. EUROPEAN MEASURES AGAINST THE YUGOSLAVS AND THEIR FRIENDS
Berati Beg, Tirana's delegate in Paris, said in an interview with a representative of the Belgrade Pravda, at the beginning of November 1921, that he regretted that European diplomats should interfere in the Serbo-Albanian question. "Are we not all," said he, "one large Balkan family? And if the Powers intervene they will not act in our interests, but in their own." He said that it used to be Austria which grasped at Albania, now it was Italy. So the delegate showed that he was a clear-sighted man; he also showed that in Tirana they are not unanimous in loving the Italians. But alas! the Great Powers, urged by Italy, made a most disastrous plunge; they actually, at least Great Britain, charged the Serbs, their allies, on November 7, with being guilty of overstepping the frontier, and on November 9 informed them where this frontier was. It is a pity that Mr. Lloyd George should have launched such a thunderbolt, the French Government not being consulted.[99] But the most probable explanation of this lack of courtesy towards the Serbs, and lack of the most elementary justice, is that the Prime Minister, with his numerous preoccupations, allowed some incapable person to act in his name.[100] The world was told, however, that Mr. Lloyd George had sent a peremptory demand for the convocation of the Council of the League of Nations so that a sanction should be applied against the Yugoslavs. Mr. Lloyd George's substitute was so little versed in the business that he did not even know that the League of Nations is not a gendarme to carry out the decisions of the Ambassadors' Conference. He should have been aware of the fact that this was a problem for the Allied States, to be settled by diplomatic or other measures, and he should also have known that the League of Nations does not—except if invited to arbitrate—concern itself with the unliquidated problems left by the War, such as the Turkish question. Perhaps that dangerous confusion in the mind of this unknown official would not have occurred if Albania had not been illogically admitted to the League of Nations. But now, in November 1921, not an instant was to be lost in settling this frontier question, which—as the Temps pointed out—would have been settled months before if Italy had not prevented it. (She wished as a preliminary step to have certain claims of her own in regard to Albania conceded.) So the Council of the League was to be invited to apply Article 16, which could scarcely be invoked unless Article 15, which defines a procedure of conciliation, had been found of no avail.[101] Thus the misguided person who spoke in the name of Mr. Lloyd George was apparently too impetuous to read the texts. And then the Serbs were told that they must withdraw practically to the frontier which Austria, their late enemy, had laid down in 1913. Well might Berati Beg deplore that Italy should take the place of Austria. But such commands achieve so little. Very soon, when the troubles in Albania continue, as they certainly will, Mr. Lloyd George will see that he was misled.... But here it should be stated that while Italy persisted throughout in demanding the 1913 frontier (with the ludicrously inconsistent proviso that she herself should have the island of Saseno, which in 1913 she had demanded for independent Albania), and France raised no finger against her, the actual improvements of the frontier adopted were entirely due to Great Britain. No one is more qualified to speak on this matter than Mr. Harold Temperley of Cambridge, who was one of our experts. In his illuminating little book, The Second Year of the League, he has pointed out that the new Albanian frontiers are an improvement on the old—than which, indeed, they cannot be worse—because they conform more to natural features, they take into account an important tribal boundary (leaving the Gora tribe in Yugoslavia), and restore to both parties freedom of communication—the road between the Serb towns of Struga and Dibra being given to the Serbs, while to Albania is given the road from Elbasan to the Serb town of Lin. The rectifications in the Kastrati and the Prizren area involve the substitution of natural boundaries for unnatural ones in order to protect the cities of Podgorica and Prizren. They confer no offensive advantage on the Serbs, nor do they enable them to menace any Albanian city.
To any impartial observer it is quite unjust that the Yugoslavs should have had to plead against the frontier of 1913. They have not the least desire to plant their flag on those undelectable mountains. If the frontier of 1913 could be held with moderate efforts against these people they would not wish to go an inch beyond it. But those who drew this frontier, namely the Austrians, were not much concerned as to whether it afforded adequate protection to the Serbs; what they had in view was to keep them away from the Adriatic (for which reason an arbitrary line cut through the proposed railway which was to link Peć to Podgorica and the sea) and to compel the Serbs to station in those districts a goodly portion of their army, to which end—so that the frontier should be weak—the towns of Djakovica and Prizren were separated from their hinterland. The Austrian plan likewise prevented the towns of Struga and Prizren from being joined by a road or by a railway along the Drin; to go from one to the other it became necessary to make an enormous detour. With the rectifications to which we have referred, the Ambassadors' Conference decided to insist on them returning to this miserable line, instead of permitting them to take up their position where General Franchet d'Espérey perceived in 1918 that they could be fairly comfortable. Monsieur Albert Mousset, the shrewd Balkan expert of the Journal des Débats, has remarked that on too many parts of the 1913 frontier it is as if one forced an honest man to sleep with his door open among a horde of bandits.... The Albanian Government, admitted to the League of Nations in December 1920, claimed that the international statute of 1913, creating a German prince, the Dutch gendarmerie and the International Financial Commission—which happened to be inconvenient—was no longer in force; but that the international decisions as to the frontiers of Albania—which happened to be convenient—were still valid. However, during the War the country had been plunged in anarchy, and the Great Powers decided that Albania was, in Mr. Temperley's words, a tabula rasa, a piece of white paper on which they could write what they wished. In November 1921 the Ambassadors' Conference finally decided on the frontiers. The gravest violation of the ethnic principle was in the Argyrocastro area, where many thousands of Greeks and Grecophils were handed over to Albania; as for the Serbs, it was only through the efforts of some British experts that they obtained any satisfaction at all.
Why did the Ambassadors' Conference arrive at this peculiar decision? For a long time the European Press had been publishing telegrams which told how the Serbs were ruthlessly invading Albania. Had they advanced about half the number of miles with which they were credited, they would have found themselves near to the offices of those Italian Press agencies. They were held up to vituperation for their conduct towards a feeble neighbour. The Mirditi, we were told, had to fly before them; whereas the truth was that the friendly Mirditi were driving the troops of Tirana helter-skelter towards the Black Drin, where the Serbs—not advancing an inch from the boundary which the Allies had for the time being assigned to them—received their prisoners. Again we were told that the piratical Serbs had seized the town of Alessio. It must have annoyed the Mirditi to have this exploit of theirs ascribed to other people. And if the newspapers contained too many telegrams of this kind they were strangely reticent with regard to what was taking place in the shallow Albanian harbours; but the two Italian vessels which—as I mentioned in a telegram to the Observer—were unloading, without the least concealment, munitions and rifles for the dear Albanians at San Giovanni di Medua in September 1920, were probably not the only ones with such a cargo. Europe and the Ambassadors' Conference were simply told that the truculent Serbs were destroying a poor, defenceless, pastoral nation. Therefore these Serbs must be ordered back, and whatever might be the merits of a hostile Austrian frontier as compared with a well-informed French one, at any rate the first of these was farther back, so let the Serbs be ordered thither.
It was noticeable that when, on November 17, the British Minister of Education, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher (representing Mr. Lloyd George), explained before the Council of the League of Nations why Great Britain had thought it necessary to act in this Serbo-Albanian affair, he founded his case not on Article 16 but on Article 12, which obliges two conflicting nations who are members of the League to have their case examined by the League. Evidently the suggested application of Article 16 was now acknowledged to have been a mistake. The blundering official in Whitehall should have seen the dignified sorrow with which Yugoslavia heard of her great Ally's unjustifiable procedure. So much faith have the Southern Slavs always had in the Entente's sense of justice that from 1914 to 1918 they continued to give their all, without making any agreement or stipulation; more than once the Serbian Government had the offer of terms from the Central Powers, but on each occasion, as for example during the dark days at Niš in 1915, they declined to betray their Allies.
Mr. Fisher announced that the British Government's action was in no way caused by feelings of hostility against the Southern Slavs. All Englishmen, in fact, remembered the heroism and fortitude of the Serbs; they cherished for Yugoslavia the warmest sympathy. In Mr. Fisher's own case it might conceivably have been a little warmer—he was not ashamed to repeat the reasons which had induced Great Britain to summon the Council of the League. Yet he must have known the comment that he would arouse among his audience when they heard him base his arguments exclusively upon reports of the Tirana Government, while those of Belgrade were ignored; and in their place the delegate thought fit to bring up various extracts which had been collected from the Belgrade Press. If every organ of this Press were filled with a permanent sense of high responsibility, and if Mr. Fisher had made inquiries as to the existence in Belgrade of humorous and ironic writers, one is still rather at a loss to understand why these miscellaneous cuttings were placed before the League, which could scarcely be expected to treat them as evidence. The delegate added that he did not think a single nation was animated by unfriendly sentiments towards the Southern Slavs—so that Italy's unflagging efforts to strengthen the Tirana Government's army were prompted purely by the deep love which the Italians—despite their having been flung out of Valona—bear for the Shqyptart. Mr. Fisher proceeded to say that no better proof was needed of the general friendship for the Southern Slavs than the decision of the Ambassadors' Conference which, instead of allotting to Albania the frontiers of 1913, a method that would have been simpler, had resolved on several rectifications in favour of Yugoslavia, in order to prevent disturbances on Albania's northern frontier. After what Mr. Fisher had already had the heart to say we cannot really be astonished that he, or the people on behalf of whom he spoke, should have thought the enemy-drawn frontier of 1913 as worthy of the slightest consideration. We are all, I think, unanimous, said Mr. Fisher in effect, we are unanimous in our esteem for the Yugoslavs and could do nothing which that nation would find hard to bear. But after stating that some rectifications had been made in favour of Yugoslavia he should have referred to the village of Lin on Lake Ochrida whose transference to the Albanians will probably give rise to a great deal of trouble, since it is the most important centre for the fishing industry. A few of the best Belgrade papers, careless of the more than Governmental authority which they enjoyed in the eyes of Mr. Fisher, went so far as to allege that Lin's change of sovereignty was due to the formation on Lake Ochrida of a British fishing company.... We have said that the frontier rectifications were inadequate; but under the circumstances they were the best that could be obtained. They were most bitterly contested by the Italians, who demanded, as we have said above, that Yugoslavia should be given the 1913 frontier. France did nothing to help the Yugoslavs in this hour of need, and had it not been for the absolutely determined support of Great Britain the pernicious frontier of 1913 would have been adopted intact.