[100] "Who is this anonymous idiot?... He really ought to have known better than that," says a reviewer in The Near East. I quite agree. It is pleasant now and then to be able to agree with a paper which is so one-sided as to admit pro-Nikita and anti-Serbian diatribes by Mr. Devine, but which refuses to insert a letter on the other side. "Let us not mix ourselves up in their domestic affairs," said the Editor to me after an hour's conversation. And though it is a matter of no importance, I may mention that he employs a reviewer who, referring to the map in my book, A Difficult Frontier (Yugoslavs and Albanians)—a map which is most conspicuously printed opposite the title-page—observes that it "is hidden in one unostentatious page, which at first sight escapes the reader's attention altogether."
[101] In the Samouprava of November 12 the whole case was discussed with his usual lucidity by Dr. Lazar Marković, one of the ablest and most philosophic men in Yugoslavia. This ex-Professor of Law is now the Minister of Justice, and it is to be hoped that he will eventually succeed in the place of Pašić.
[102] Those who like to hold the Serbs up to contumely have not a very strong case when they denounce them for now being on friendly terms with the Christian Mirditi, whereas they used to be the friends of Essad Pasha; this personage was at that time the man whose national Albanian policy had the greatest chance of success. He was the one man who then appeared capable of establishing a State in which Christians and Moslems would be fairly represented. But now too many of the Moslem—and not only they—have adopted an Italophil attitude which is sadly anti-national.
[103] A later phase was for the Government to recognize that what Albania must have is the friendship of Yugoslavia, so that the eyes of the most powerful Ministers were turned from Rome to Belgrade. Thereupon the Italians, loth to lose their footing in the country, gave their patronage to the anti-Governmental parties. It was pleasant to hear in the summer of 1922 that when the boundary commissioners had left a lamentable neutral zone between the two countries the Albanian Government suggested to the very willing Government of Yugoslavia that they should co-operate in cleansing that zone of its brigand population.
[104] December 16, 1921.
[105] According to the Geographical-Statistical Atlas recently published by the German Professor Hickmann the average loss among the belligerent countries, in killed, wounded and through diminution of the birth-rate, was 6·5 per cent. At one end of the list of suffering nations is the United States with a percentage of 0·4, Great Britain with 3·7, and Belgium with 4·7. Roumania, Italy, Bulgaria and Turkey are all between 6 and 6·5 per cent. France has a percentage of 8·5, Russia has 9, Germany 9·3 and Austria 11. Above them all comes Serbia with the appalling percentage of 23.
[106] November 24, 1921.
[107] Cf. "Géographie Humaine de la France" in the Histoire de la Nation Française. Paris, 1920.
[108] Cf. L'histoire illustrée de la guerre de 1914.
[109] L'Albanie en 1921. Paris, 1922.