Chapter 32

It is not as if Serbia never made mistakes in dealing with the Albanians. The Sultan used to govern them by sending in one year an army against them, and in the next year asking for no recruits or taxes. The Montenegrins, of whom the older generation was bored when it had no man to shoot at, used to be on very neighbourly terms with them. Both these systems the Albanians could understand. But they did not know why the Belgrade Government in 1878--and it was a mistaken policy--should expel a number of Albanians from the newly-won zones, thrusting them across the frontier and putting in their place a number of Serbs who were settled in Old Serbia. The twofold folly of this plan was not grasped at the moment; but for several years the Serbian frontier districts were regularly invaded and plundered. The following years of Turkish misrule, and especially the young Turkish policy of treacherous force, which resulted in Albanian risings every year, may possibly have caused many Albanians to be honestly glad when the Balkan War brought the Serbs into their country. But of these Albanians not a few would rejoice because they hoped that with the help of the Serbian army it would be possible to slay the members of some adjacent tribe against whom they happened to have a feud. Perhaps the Serbs were so eager to bathe their horses in the Adriatic that they did not notice such trifles as the destruction of a ford, this having been done to prevent a visit from undesirable neighbours. One might have imagined that Serbia, being well known as a land of small peasant proprietors--where there is even a law which forbids a peasant's house from being sold over his head; he is, under any circumstances, assured of so much as will enable him to eke out a livelihood--one would have thought that the Albanian _[vc]if[vc]ija_, who is nothing more than a slave of the feudal chief, would have rejoiced at the arrival of a liberator; and indeed, while the Serbian troops were in Albania the peasant refused to give his lord the customary third or half of what the land produced, and after the departure of the Serbs he was unapproachable for tax-collectors. Who knows whether this social readjustment, so auspiciously begun, might not have made Albania wipe out her grievances against the Serbs and remember only that in the Imperial days of Du[vs]an, even if he was not of the most ancient Balkan race, there was prosperity and happiness where now is desolation; busy merchants in the seaport towns of Albania, which now are ruins; ships sailing in from Venice with the luxuries of all the world and taking back with them all those good things, a half of which Albania has forgotten how to make? And after that there had been times of friendship with the Serb--Dositej Obradovi['c], the philologist (one of those amiable persons who invented for the Albanians an alphabet), tells us, for instance, how in his travels through Albania he was assured by natives that they and the Serbs lived together as if they were members of one family, while the Ku['c]i in eastern Montenegro had, by a gradual process of assimilation, become transformed from Catholic Albanians into Orthodox Montenegrins. It is told that in the wondrous hours when the _[vc]if[vc]ija_ gloried in the soil he was about to win, even the notoriously wild Klementi, filled with hunger for the land, ran down from their fastnesses. But, most unfortunately, at that moment the Great Powers decided that Albania was to be an autonomous, hereditary State. This interrupted the movement towards reconciliation with Serbia; and even now the Serbs will be told by many encouraging people that in their efforts to win the regard of Albanians they have an impossible task, that if some of them take a step towards you one day they will rush back a dozen on the day after. These people will repeat the legend that the Albanians have an invincible hatred for the Slavs; but the Albanians have not forgotten how, in the course of the Middle Ages, they were willingly open to Slav penetration--the Serbian language reached to beyond Alessio, the small Albanian dynasties intermarried with Slav ruling families, so that they preferred to speak Serbian, and down to this day two-thirds of the place-names of northern Albania are of Slav origin. One of the most important documents in this connection is a letter from the town of Dubrovnik to the Emperor Sigismund in the year 1434. They inform the Emperor that Andria Topia, lord of the Albanian coast, has secretaries who know nothing but the Serbian language and alphabet. Thus when the Emperor sends him letters in Latin he is obliged to have them translated elsewhere, and the contents of the Imperial letters are not kept secret. So the Emperor was forced to write to Topia in Serbian.... Long memories are not always inconvenient, and Albanian memories are long because, until recent years, all that they knew came from tradition--Austria and Italy had not yet become so concerned about Albanian education that (forgetting their own illiterates in Bosnia and Calabria) the two Allies waved into existence boys' and girls' schools up and down the country; so desirous were they that these founts of knowledge should be patronized that both Italians and Austrians were prepared to pay good money and eke a supply of garments and a gaily-coloured picture of King or Emperor, as the case might be; and with respect to the cash, not only was each willing to pay but to pay more than the other. Yet the Albanian is most mindful of tradition, and he is aware that his approach to the Slav in the Middle Ages was blocked by the inopportune arrival of the Turks; it is in the nature of man that the Albanian was more impressed by the brilliant young States of the early princes, with that barbarically sumptuous residence at Scutari (the Catholics of Scutari also being in the diocese of Antivari, which was under Serb domination) than, centuries later, when he found himself confronted with the pitiable population of Old Serbia.

In the Sandjak the task of Yugoslavia will be relatively simple; the Albanians who live there are not autochthonous, but arrived at the beginning of the eighteenth century on the plateau of Pechter. These Klementi--then very numerous--cared nothing for their Serbian origin, so that the Patriarch of Pe['c] had to protect himself against them by means of a janissary guard--which the Sultan permitted him to maintain at his own expense--whereas they were attentive to the teachings of their religion, in so far as they obeyed the Catholic missionaries who dwelt among them and requested that in their forays they should confine themselves to Muhammedan and Orthodox booty. One of the places they attacked was Plav, from which they drove the population, and themselves henceforward took to living on the fertile fields in summer, while they spent the winter in some mountain caverns. But after seven years a large proportion of this tribe went back to its ancestral stronghold in the Brdo range, from which the Turks had transplanted them to the Sandjak. This wish of theirs to go to their old home was gratified after they had beaten off the Turks triumphantly in various engagements on the way, and even pursued them to their trenches.... The Klementi who had stayed on the Pechter were further depleted a few years later, when their kinsfolk, answering the appeal of the Archbishop of Antivari, rode up there and carried off fifty families who were on the eve of renouncing their religion. The final group which remained became Moslem, and with such ardour that when the Serbs of Kara George reached the Sandjak they found that these Klementi were completely Islamized; they resisted the Serbian army with the utmost resolution. Subsequently they attempted to convert the Serbian population round them, but with mediocre success, for the Klementi themselves were not too strong; moreover, they were isolated from the other Muhammedan Albanians.

And yet certain incidents which occurred in the Sandjak during the Great War seem to show that even there the task of dealing with the population is a troublous one. They are conservative; one sees, for example, a woman who has got up very early holding aloft a vessel against the sun. This is done with the object of preventing the cows of a certain man from giving any milk. But the man is on the alert. He shoots the vessel out of her hand and proceeds, with an easy mind, about his business. Frequently the Austrians disarmed these men, but it is their practice to have more rifles than shirts, although during the occupation a rifle cost twenty napoleons. It occurred to the Austrian Governor-General of Montenegro, Lieut. Field-Marshal von Weber, that these Albanians were children and, if treated well, would make useful volunteers. A party of them was thereupon sent to Graz, where they were told that they would be trained to fight on behalf of the Sultan. Their military education was a trifle agitated--for instance, on their second day at Graz they thrashed their officers--but when their training was considered adequate they were sent to the front, and there they immediately surrendered to the Italians. This was not the first time that a body of Albanians had gone to Austria. In 1912, for the Eucharistic Congress at Vienna, some two dozen of them, in their national costume and conducted by their priests, had taken part in the procession. It is said that the financier Rosenberg, of whom one has heard, bore a portion of the pretty large expenses of the deputation. His title of baron dates from this period. Austria's work among the school-children was no more successful than among the adults. Remembering that just outside Zadar lies Arbanasi, or Borgo Erizzo, a village of 2500 inhabitants, nearly all of whom are Albanians, it seemed good to the Austrian authorities to procure from that place a schoolmaster who would make suitable propaganda. There was at Arbanasi a teachers' institute, as also an Italian "Liga" school which was closed by the Austrians during the War, and when the schoolmaster arrived at Plav, where the people speak Serbian, he set about teaching the children Albanian and also making propaganda for Italy, as he was from the "Liga" school.... That fidelity of the five hundred men of Plav who clung, as we have related, to their religion, had its pendant when the Austrians were engaged in constructing a road. The custom was for a potentate of that district to procure for the Austrians a sufficient number of men, to whom three or four crowns a day would be paid. Any man who disregarded the potentate's summons was thrashed by him, and thrashed in such a way that for three days he was prostrate. The late Chief of Police at Sarajevo, Mr. Ljescovac, was (being a Bosnian subject) administering this district during the Austrian occupation. He tried frequently to get particulars from the men who had been so mercilessly flogged, with a view to opening an inquiry. Their invariable answer was: "I know nothing."

In the days of Charles, another member of the Topia family, a copyist, who was in his service, was transcribing the Chronicle of George Hamartolos, and twice, thinking of his master, he inserts: "God, help Charles Topia." As we leave the Serb and the Albanian face to face, sensitive, imaginative, tenacious people, both with very ancient claims, we must hope that a happy solution will be found. After all Serbia, being in Yugoslavia, is now a Muhammedan and a Catholic Power. She has men at her disposal, such as Major Musakadi['c], a Bosnian Moslem who deserted from the Austrian army to the Serbs, fought with them on several fronts and received the highest decoration for valour, the Kara George; then, after the War, he was sent by the Government to command at Br['c]ko, a place in his native Bosnia where there is a Moslem majority. A few of the Orthodox protested energetically that they would not have a Moslem over them; they were received by the Minister of Justice in Belgrade. "Gentlemen," said he, "go back to Br['c]ko and when anyone of you has earned the Cross of Kara George I shall be glad to see him here again." ... As in the old days, the Serbian civilization is far superior, but this is not everything; that the Albanian is ready to meet it with peace or war he shows clearly as he glides along in his white skull-cap, his close-fitting white and black costume, with his panther-like tread and with several weapons and an umbrella.

But for the various reasons to which we have alluded he is now much more inclined to live in peace with the Yugoslav. Very differently, except if they are charged with gifts, does he receive the Italians; even at the moment of accepting their gifts of military material and cash he regards them with a more or less concealed derision, for he is impressed, as we have pointed out, by nothing so much as by military prowess and the reverse, whereof the news is carried far and wide. At the end of September and beginning of October 1918 two weak Yugoslav battalions of about a thousand rifles accomplished at Tirana what the large Italian forces could not, at any rate did not, achieve. Ten thousand Austrians were in the town, and for three months the Italians had sat down outside it. Then the Serbs descended on the place from the mountains; their carts came by the ordinary road, and on arriving at the Italian lines the drivers asked for hay; but when they explained that the rest of their force was going round by the mountain trail the Italian commandant refused to give any supplies to such liars. (Later on, though, he gave them sufficient for five days.) When an Austrian officer who was stationed in a minaret saw the Serbs coming down from those terrible heights he was so astonished that he felt sure they must be robbers. And after they had captured the town and the Italians conducted themselves as if it were they who had conquered it, the Serbs took to thrashing their allies and ejecting them from the cafés. The Italians did not protest....

10. DR. TRUMBI['C]'S PROPOSAL

To sum up this part of our long and, I fear, rather tiring dissertation on the Yugoslav-Albanian frontier that is to be: the Yugoslav delegates at the Peace Conference invariably disclaimed any desire to have Albanian lands conferred on them against the wish of the inhabitants. According to Prince Sixte of Parma, the ex-Emperor Karl was disposed to offer to the Serbs as a basis of peace a Southern Slav kingdom consisting of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina and the whole of Albania. But this last item only made it clear that in his brief tenure of the throne the Emperor had grasped something of the grand generosity of European statesmen when they deal with the possessions of other people in the Near East. The Albanians are not Southern Slavs, and it is merely the voice of the thoughtless mob in Montenegro which has been claiming Scutari for the reason that they held it in the Middle Ages--several of their rulers are buried there--and because 20,000 Montenegrins gave their lives to take it in the Balkan War. Responsible persons in Yugoslavia, such as Dr. Trumbi['c], the former Foreign Minister, do not believe that Scutari is a necessity for their State--whether Yugoslavia is a necessity for Scutari is another question--and they hold that it is quite possible to preserve the 1913 frontier (perhaps with a minor rectification in Klementi) and live in friendship with their neighbours. This, of course, is under the assumption that these neighbours will "play the game"--and it is just this which the Albanians will be unable to do if they are left to their own slender resources. How could one expect so poor--or shall we say so unexploited?--a country to make any social progress without the help of others? It has become the habit of many Albanians to accept financial assistance from Italy; if an independent Albania is now established these subsidies will be increased--and he who pays the piper calls the tune. If, however, an arrangement could be made for helping the Albanians--and the country undertaking this would have to be devoid of Balkan ambitions on its own account--then the 1913 frontier would be possible. No doubt the cynics will say that the Yugoslavs are aware that this is an unlikely solution, and that failing a disinterested Power, whose supervision would cause the Albanians during the troublesome civilizing process to be moderately peaceable neighbours, failing such a Power the Yugoslavs would feel that they were justified in asking for the frontier of the Drin. But this frontier I have heard advocated less by Yugoslavs of any standing than by those Albanians who despair of the administrative capacities of their fellow-countrymen. The Yugoslavs have not the smallest wish to add to their commitments, and even if all the Albanians on the right bank of the Drin were anxious for Yugoslav overlordship--and this, naturally, is not the case--there would be serious hostility to be expected from some of those on the other bank. If no disinterested Power, such as Great Britain or Sweden, will take the matter in hand, then Dr. Trumbi['c] has an alternative proposal, which is for a free, independent Albania (with the 1913 frontier) which would exist on the Customs and on a loan made by the Great Powers, who would put in a Controller charged with seeing that the money were spent on roads, schools, etc. A police force, and not an army, would be maintained; while, if need be, the country could be neutralized; and Dr. Trumbi['c], within whose lifetime bandits and heiduks were roaming through Bosnia, believes that the Albanians would gradually discard their cherished system of feuds.... This would be the happiest solution, for it would leave the Balkans to the Balkan peoples, while it would aim at the development of whatever good qualities there are in the Albanians, and it would definitely recognize a Yugoslav-Albanian frontier which is acceptable to both countries.

11. THE POSITION IN 1921: THE TIRANA GOVERNMENT AND THE MIRDITI

While Europe in the year 1921 was either exhausted or belligerent, or both, she had a vague knowledge that hostilities were being carried on between the Serbs and the Albanians. Telegrams from Rome, Tirana and elsewhere appeared in the papers, saying that the Serbs continued to advance. Occasionally a Serbian statesman would declare that his Government desired the independence of Albania. Then some Albanian delegate in Geneva would make a protest and ask the League of Nations, of which Albania was now a member, to take this matter in hand. A Serbian delegate would also address the League. Again you would hear of the Serbian army pushing forward, that a good many soldiers had fallen. And no one seemed to know why the Serbs would want to shed their blood in order to add to their miscellaneous problems this very grave one of administering such a region inhabited by such a people. Why did they not content themselves with the frontier which the Powers temporarily assigned to them in 1918 and which, from the junction of the Black and White Drin, runs south along the rocky right bank of the river and then, crossing to the other side, passes along the top of a range of mountains? What more could they wish to have, presuming that it was not their intention to annex what lay between them and the Adriatic?

Well, it appears that never once did they go beyond the aforementioned line to which they were legally entitled, except when for a short time they were in pursuit, towards Ljuria, of certain invaders. Not only were they legally entitled to take up their position on the mountains to the west of the Black Drin, but the Moslem tribes, the Malizi and the Ljuri, who dwell in that uninviting district, were most anxious that the Serbs should come and should remain. For this the tribes had two principal reasons: in the first place, they recognized that their compatriots in Djakovica and Prizren were immeasurably better off than before they came under Serbian rule; and secondly, they did not wish to be separated from these towns which are their markets. In fact, they had become so anxious to throw in their lot with the Slavs that they formed six battalions, which operated on both banks of the river, under the command of Bairam Ramadan, Mahmoud Rejeb and others. In opposition to these battalions were the troops of the so-called National Government, that of Tirana. This Government is repudiated by a great many Albanians on account of its reactionary methods, its subservience to the Italians, and its failure to do anything for the people. The battalions, then, were engaged in 1921, not against their immediate neighbours to the west, the Catholic Mirditi, of whom we shall speak anon, but against the more distant Government of Tirana. Thus the League of Nations beheld that the administration which they were about to confirm as the legitimate Government of Albania was violently opposed by compact masses of Catholics and Moslems. Perhaps some of the members of the League began to doubt whether they should have accepted the assurance of the Anglo-Albanian Society that the Tirana Government (containing Moslem, Catholic and Orthodox members) was really a national affair; perhaps they began to suspect that the two Christian elements were only there to throw a little dust in the eyes of Europe; and perhaps Lord Robert Cecil began to feel doubtful whether, at the urgent request of his friend Mr. Aubrey Herbert, President of the Anglo-Albanian Society, he had been well advised to bring about the admission into the League of a country which had two simultaneous Governments before it had a frontier. Perhaps one was beginning to recognize that there are Albanians but no Albania.