Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle

by M. E. Durham

During the following days very bad news came from the South. Eye-witnesses gave evidence of the Greeks' atrocities. It was generally believed that as Italy was determined to keep the Greek islands, she was conniving at the Greeks finding compensation at Albania's expense.

At the house of Dom Nikola Kaciorri, a plucky little Catholic priest, I found an Orthodox Albanian priest from Meljani, near Leskoviki, who told how the Greeks had burnt his village and ordered all those who belonged to the Orthodox Church to come along with them, using force to make them, and falling on those who refused. They had driven a number along before them, including his wife and children, whom he could not rescue. He told how the Greeks had given the inhabitants of Odrichan permission to return to it, and had then fallen on them and slaughtered them. Mr. Lamb ascertained that this man's wife and children were alive, but the Greeks refused to give them up.

Almost as soon as I arrived I was invited to have an audience with the Princess of Wied. She was very friendly, and much distressed by the web of intrigue in which she found herself tied. I regretted that she and the Prince had fallen into the wrong hands, and begged her to go to Valona or Scutari, and at once start a tour through the land. I offered to go with her, and assured her safe conduct, saying all misunderstanding would have been avoided had she and the Prince made such a journey on arrival. She said she had wished to, but that Essad always advised against it. I spoke to her of the Russo-Serbo-French-Italian combine, and said the Albanians wanted none of it, and that she could yet have the whole country on her side But she continually quoted the advice of. Carmen Sylva, Queen of Roumania, till I had to say: "Yes, ma'am. But Albania is not Roumania. Here you will do much better by appealing direct to the people." I left promising to support her to the best of my ability. She struck me as honest, intelligent, and very well-meaning. She would have made a good Queen for the country had she been given a chance, and might have done as much for it as did Carmen Sylva for Roumania.

That same day Mr. Lamb told me that the inhabitants of three Moslem villages, Nenati, Mercati, and Konispoli, recently burnt by the Greeks, had sent to beg help, and asked me if I would go and investigate.

That night, June 12th, came a fresh development. The Dutch gendarmerie arrested Gjurashkovitch, the Montenegrin, who had still been allowed to function as Mayor of the town, to which he had been appointed in Turkish times. Again Albania's enemies stood up for him. His brother was dragoman to the Russian commissioner; Russia claimed him as under her protection, and raised the old cry of "Capitulations." He, too, was released. The thing was becoming a farce. The Prince was unable to try any suspect. The Italian papers raised choruses of blame against the Dutch gendarmerie, which at that time was very honestly trying to do its duty. The Prince, who was like a large, good-natured St. Bernard dog, yapped and snapped at all round, completely confused by the din, yielded each time, and so soon alienated the sympathy of the Dutch officers, who, as more than one of them complained to me, got into trouble on his behalf and then received no support.

News arrived that Osman Bali, one of the two men reported to have assassinated Hussein Riza in Scutari, had been seen among the insurgents, and was probably this time also acting for Essad. The Italians put in a demand that Lieutenant Fabius, who had arrested the Italian Colonel Muricchio, should apologize. This Fabius very properly refused to do, and many of us supported him. I had known him during the Balkan war, and found him a very honest boy. Italy then demanded his dismissal. But this time the Prince stood firm.

Fachinetti, the Italian correspondent, whom I had known well during the war of 1912-13, was also in Durazzo. In the Balkan war he had warmly taken the part of the Albanians, and had worked with me. Now he knew I should not approve his doings, and he kept out of my way, dodging whenever he saw me coming. Crajevsky, too, was not pleased to see me. He was now more pro-Slav even than the Russians, and as he had been more Turk than the Turks only two years before, he must have known that his volte face was, to me, rather comical. And he is the kind of man that does not like being thought funny.

Colonel Thompson, who was commanding the Dutch gendarmes, met me and told me that he was going to =give an ultimatum to the insurgents in the next few days, and asked me to call at eleven next morning and talk the matter over with him. I never did. That night things seemed shaky. I overheard Fachinetti, whose room was next mine, tell the landlord to knock him up if anything happened. So I did very little undressing, thinking he was probably behind some plot. I put my boots handy, and laid down as I was, for a bit of sleep, and jumped up to the sound of rifle fire as the landlord banged on Fachinetti's door. Sharp firing sounded close. I dashed out so soon as I could lace my boots, and went down to the entrance of the town where Fabius was in great haste serving out ammunition from the depot there. He begged me not to go out towards the scene of the fight, as he suspected the Italians, and wanted to give an order that no foreigner should leave the town. Up rushed the Italians, greatly excited, and were headed back by Fabius. I told them I, too, was forbidden to go, and we sent them back. We got the artillery ammunition on donkeys and sent it up the hill. Dutch and Austrian officers were to serve the guns. A wounded Albanian, crying feebly "Rrnoft Mbreti" (Long live the King), was carried by on a stretcher, and one of the bearers whispered to Fabius: "Thompson is hit. I fear he is dead." To lose the commander in the first hour of the fight was a terrible blow. Fabius begged me to tell no one. Later, Arthur Moore, The Times correspondent, came and told how poor Thompson had been struck down and died almost immediately in his arms in a hut by the wayside.

Too many battle books have been written of late, so I will not describe the fighting In the afternoon. I was under cover behind a bank on the top of the hill with Mr. Corbett when the Prince came up on horseback with a small suite. He dismounted and climbed the bank, a tall, lean man, worn and anxious, with a yellow-white face as from a touch of fever. We called to him he had better take cover as the bullets came over pretty often. He looked dazed and stupefied. I said: "A bullet has just cut down that plant, Sir!" pointing to one close by. He roused himself, mounted, and rode away. Our side soon got the upper hand, and all danger of the town being rushed seemed over.

Meanwhile, within the town, the Italians did all they could to create a panic. They built rubbishy barricades, and annoyed me by making one across the street near the hotel door. I pulled it down so as to be able to get in and out easily. The officer was very angry. I explained that the town was not his to barricade, and if it were it was no good to build a barricade there, as men behind it could only fire into the house opposite. Which made him the more angry, because it was true, and the thing a mere dummy to scare people. So sure were the Italians that they were 'going to get the town taken this time that the correspondents wrote gory accounts of its capture and the slaughter of the inhabitants, and sent them to Italy, where they were published. I do not now believe in Italian correspondents every time.