Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle

by M. E. Durham

His position now hurt badly. The Petrovitches were the oldest Balkan dynasty, and were the lowest in rank. The Montenegrins were divided as to the desirability of the change. Prince Danilo and his set were said to favour it strongly. The thing was decided upon suddenly, and the country consented. "I expect some Power engineered it," says my diary. And soon the rumour was very certain that the step had been taken by the advice and with the agreement of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria. "Which do you love best—me or Ferdinand?" Prince Nikola had asked me suddenly, when I last visited him. "You, of course, Sire!" said I, and wondered at the time why he had Ferdinand on the brain.

That the Turkish Empire would now soon break up, was the general belief, and Kings Ferdinand and Nikola would divide the peninsula. Bulgaria would obtain her Alsace-Lorraine, Macedonia, and Nikita would reign over Great Serbia from Prizren.

Fighting continued in Kosovo vilayet. Meanwhile I was carried dangerously ill to the Austrian hospital, and lay helpless between bouts of agony and injections of morphine. The Albanians came and wept over me, and prayed for advice and help. When I was nearly screaming with pain they implored me to make an effort and write for them to the Foreign Office and the papers, for the Turkish army was approaching. I was dragged to a sitting position, managed to write two letters, and fainted with the pain. Vain agony. Nothing could break the journalistic ring which forbade any criticism of the Young Turks. A foolish policy, for it led them to believe their actions beyond criticism, and helped their undoing. The more they blundered, the more Italy, and Austria, and Russia rejoiced. They expected the Withdrawal of the international gendarmerie to send the Turks downhill with a crash. England, probably, was not guilty of withdrawing for that reason, but was much less well informed, because more sparsely represented, than the other Powers. And we were already tangled in Russia's plans, and did not know what they were.

The Turks sent over increased forces and artillery into Kosovo vilayet, and Scutari learnt with dismay that in spite of the valour of the Kosovo men they were being forced back and back, and the Turkish army was approaching Scutari.

Prenk Pasha, who had been made a member of the Committee of Union and Progress, had promised the Turks safe-conduct through Mirdita. This was in strict conformity with the policy explained to me by the Abbot Premi Dochi in 1904, viz. that the Turk must be maintained until Albania was sufficiently organized to stand alone, otherwise the Slav, the more relentless foe, would fall upon her. The other Catholic tribes were wildly dismayed, and the headmen ran from one consulate to another begging advice. None was given them. They were far too poorly armed to resist, and in July 1910 the Turkish army entered Scutari and ordered the populace to give up its arms. They did so quietly. The Christians had few to give. The Moslems feared, by rising, to provoke an Austrian intervention.

I was too ill to be taken out to see what was going on, and, to my great disappointment, was still unable to move when the celebration on the occasion of Nikita's elevation to kingship took place in August.

Montenegro had raised a loan from England the year before, and had expended the whole of it in making electric light in Cetinje and building a Government house of superlative ugliness, and so vast that it seemed obviously intended to administer a much larger territory than Montenegro.

Scutari was excited about Montenegrin doings. Foreign visitors flocked to Cetinje to assist at the fete. Bulgaria was represented by King Ferdinand himself, Serbia, only by the Crown Prince, and he, said rumour, decided to come only at the last minute. Conclusions about a Bulgar-Montenegrin combine were freely drawn. One point both Montenegrins and Albanians agreed upon, "A king must have a kingdom. The Powers would not otherwise have allowed him to be king. Soon there will be war!"

While still in hospital I received an English paper, with illustrations of the launch of a Dreadnought. The doctor, a Dalmatian Slav, looked at them sadly. "Why do you do these things?" he asked. "You are forcing on war. You will ruin Austria. We admire everything English, except your Dreadnoughts. Each time you build one, we of the Triple Alliance are forced to build one too. We Austrians have no colonies, and never want any. We need no navy. We are already overtaxed, and the breaking-point must come one day. You eat us up with your terrible wealth. To my mind all Europe is mad. We have one common danger—the peoples of Africa and Asia, who are developing rapidly. If we want to save European civilization we must federate against the common foe. If ever there is a war in Europe —and God forbid—it will be the suicide of the white races. They will fight to extermination, and the day of the coloured people will dawn. We shall deserve our fate. It will be the result of our own folly."

Where he is now I know not. His words come back to me always. After three months I emerged from the hospital, well but weak, into a dismayed and depressed Scutari. The Turks were trying to hamper nationalism by ordering Albanian to be printed in Arabic characters, and making Turkish compulsory in the schools. They had roused fierce anger, too, by publicly flogging some offenders, a punishment regarded in Albania as so shameful and humiliating that it bred sympathy for the victim and hatred for the inflicter. Has it, perhaps, the same result in India and Egypt?