THE CEMETERY OF FOUR EMPIRES
We stood on the forward deck of the _Sirio_ as she slipped southward,
through the placid waters of the Adriatic, at twenty knots an hour. Less
than a league away the Balkan mountains, savage, mysterious, forbidding,
rose in a rocky rampart against the eastern sky.
"Did it ever occur to you," remarked the Italian officer who stood
beside me, a noted historian in his own land, "that four great empires
have died as a result of their lust for domination over the wretched
lands which lie beyond those mountains? Austria coveted Serbia--and the
empire of the Hapsburgs is in fragments now. Russia, seeing her
influence in the peninsula imperiled, hastened to the support of her
fellow Slavs--but Russia has gone down in red ruin, and the Romanoffs
are dead. Germany, seeking a gateway to the warm water, and a highway
to the East, seized on the excuse thus offered to launch her waiting
armies--and the empire reared by the Hohenzollerns is bankrupt and
broken. Turkey fought to retain her hold on such European territory as
still remained under the crescent banner. To-day a postmortem is about
to be held on the Turkish Empire and the House of Osman. Think of it!
Four great empires, four ancient dynasties, lie buried over there in the
Balkans. It is something more than a range of mountains at which we are
looking; it is the wall of a cemetery."
Rada di Antivari is a U-shaped bay, the color of a turquoise, from whose
shores the Montenegrin mountains rise in tiers, like the seats of an
arena. We put in there unexpectedly because a _bora_, sweeping suddenly
down from the northwest, had lashed the Adriatic into an ugly mood and
our destroyer, whose decks were almost as near the water as those of a
submarine running awash, was not a craft that one would choose for
comfort in such weather. Nor was our feeling of security increased by
the knowledge that we were skirting the edges of one of the largest
mine-fields in the Adriatic. But the _Sirio_ had scarcely poked her
sharp nose around the end of the breakwater which provides the excuse
for dignifying the exposed roadstead of Antivari (with the accent on the
second syllable, so that it rhymes with "discovery") by the name of
harbor before I saw what we had stumbled upon some form of trouble.
There were three other Italian destroyers in the harbor but, instead of
being moored snugly alongside the quay, they were strung out in a
semblance of battle formation, so that their deck-guns, from which the
canvas muzzle-covers had been removed, could sweep the rocky heights
above and around them. A string of signal-flags broke out from our
masthead and was answered in like fashion by the flag-ship of the
flotilla, after which formal exchange of greetings our wireless began to
crackle and splutter in an animated explanation of our unexpected
appearance. Our hawsers had scarcely been made fast before a launch left
the flag-ship and came plowing toward us, a knot of white-uniformed
officers in the stern. From the blue rug with the Italian arms, which,
as I could see through my glasses, was draped over the stern-sheets, I
deduced that the commander of the flotilla was paying us a visit.
"You have come at rather an unfortunate moment," he said after the
introductions were over. "Last night we were fired on by Jugoslavs on
the mountainside over there," indicating the heights across the harbor.
"In fact, the firing has just ceased. There must have been a thousand of
them or more, judging from the flashes. But I hope that madame will not
be alarmed, for she is really quite safe. They are firing at long range,
and the only danger is from a stray bullet. Still, it is most
embarrassing. On madame's account I am sorry."
His manner was that of a host apologizing to a guest because the
children of the family have measles and at the same time attempting to
convince the guest that measles are hardly ever contagious. I relieved
his quite obvious embarrassment by assuring him that Mrs. Powell much
preferred taking chances with snipers' bullets to the discomfort of a
destroyer in an ugly sea; and that, having journeyed six thousand miles
for the express purpose of seeing what was happening in the Balkans, we
would be disappointed if nothing happened at all.
When I left Paris for the Adriatic I carried with me the impression, as
the result of conversations with members of the various peace
delegations, that the people of Montenegro were almost unanimously in
favor of annexation to Serbia, thereby becoming a part of the new
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. But before I had spent
twenty-four hours in Montenegro itself I discovered that on the subject
of the political future of their little country the Montenegrins are
very far from being of the same mind. And, being a simple, primitive
folk, and strong believers in the superiority of the bullet to the
ballot, instead of sitting down and arguing the matter, they take cover
behind a convenient rock and, when their political opponents pass by,
take pot-shots at them.
My preconceived opinions about political conditions in Montenegro were
largely based on the knowledge that shortly after the signing of the
Armistice a Montenegrin National Assembly, so called, had met at
Podgoritza, and, after declaring itself in favor of the deposition of
King Nicholas and the Petrovitch dynasty, which has ruled in Montenegro
since William of Orange sat on the throne of England, voted for the
union of Montenegro with the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.
Just how representative of the real sentiments of the nation was this
assembly I do not know, but that the sentiment in favor of such a
surrender of Montenegrin independence is far from being overwhelming
would seem to be proved by the fact that the Serbs, in order to hold the
territory thus given to them, have found it necessary to install a
Serbian military governor in Cetinje, to replace by Serbs all the
Montenegrin prefects, to raise a special gendarmerie recruited from men
who are known to be friendly to Serbia and officered by Serbs, and to
occupy this sister-state, which, it is alleged, requested union with
Serbia of its own free will, with two battalions of Serbian infantry. If
Montenegrin sentiment for the union is as overwhelming as Belgrade
claims, then it seems to me that the Serbs are acting in a rather
high-handed fashion.
I talked with a good many people while I was in Montenegro, and I was
especially careful not to meet them through the medium of either Serbs
or Italians. From these conversations I learned that the Montenegrins
are divided into three factions. The first of these, and the smallest,
desires the return of the King. It represents the old conservative
element and is composed of the men who have fought under him in many
wars. The second faction, which is the noisiest and at present holds the
reins of power, advocates the annexation of Montenegro to Serbia and the
deposition of King Nicholas in favor of the Serbian Prince-Regent
Alexander. The third party, which, though it has no means of making its
desires known, is, I am inclined to believe, the largest, and which
numbers among its supporters the most level-headed and far-seeing men in
the country, while frankly distrustful of Serbian ambitions and
unwilling to submit to Serbian dictatorship, possesses sufficient vision
to recognize the political and commercial advantages which would accrue
to Montenegro were she to become an equal partner in a confederation of
those Jugoslav countries which claim the same racial origin. Most
thoughtful Montenegrins have always been in favor of a union of all the
southern Slavs, along the general lines, perhaps, of the Germanic
Confederation, but this must not be interpreted as implying that they
are in favor of a union merely of Montenegro with Serbia, which would
mean the absorption of the smaller country by the larger one. They are
determined that, if such a confederation is brought about, Serbia shall
not occupy the dictatorial position which Prussia did in Germany, and
that the Karageorgevitches shall not play a rôle analogous to that of
the Hohenzollerns. Montenegro, remember, threw off the Turkish yoke a
century and three-quarters before Serbia was able to achieve her
liberty, and the patriotic among her people feel that this hard-won,
long-held independence should not lightly be thrown away.
It is not generally known, perhaps, that, when Austria declared war on
Serbia in August, 1914, an offensive and defensive alliance already
existed between Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro. We know how highly
Greece valued her signature to that treaty. Montenegro, with an area
two-thirds that of New Jersey, and a population less than that of
Milwaukee, could easily have used her weakness as an excuse for
standing aside, like Greece. Very likely Austria would not have molested
her and the little country would have been spared the horrors of a third
war within two years. But King Nicholas's conception of what constituted
loyalty and honor was different from Constantine's. Instead of accepting
the extensive territorial compensations offered by the Austrian envoy if
Montenegro would remain neutral, King Nicholas wired to the Serbian
Premier, M. Pachitch: "_Serbia may rely on the brotherly and
unconditional support of Montenegro in this moment, on which depends the
fate of the Serbian nation, as well as on any other occasion_," and took
the field at the head of 40,000 troops--all the men able to bear arms in
the little kingdom.
It has been repeatedly asserted by his enemies that King Nicholas sold
out to the Austrians and that, therefore, he deserves neither sympathy
nor consideration. As to this I have no _direct_ knowledge. How could I?
But, after talking with nearly all of the leading actors in the
Montenegrin drama, it is my personal belief that the King, though guilty
of many indiscretions and errors of policy, did not betray his people.
I am not ignorant of the King's shortcomings in other respects. But in
this case I believe that he has been grossly maligned. If he did sell
out he drove an extremely poor bargain, for he is living in exile, in
extremely straitened circumstances, his only luxury a car which the
French Government loans him. It is difficult to believe that, had he
been a traitor to the Allied cause, the British, French, and Italian
governments would continue to recognize him, to pay him subventions, and
to treat him as a ruling sovereign. Certain American diplomats have told
me that they were convinced that the King had a secret understanding
with Austria, though they admitted quite frankly that their convictions
were based on suspicions which they could not prove. To offset this, a
very exalted personage, whose name for obvious reasons I cannot mention,
but whose integrity and whose sources of information are beyond
question, has given me his word that, to his personal knowledge,
Nicholas had neither a treaty nor a secret understanding with the enemy.
"The propaganda against him had been so insidious and successful,
however," my informant concluded, "that even his own soldiers were
convinced that he had sold out to Austria and when the King attempted to
rally them as they were falling back from the positions on Mount
Lovtchen they jeered in his face, shouting that he had betrayed them.
Yet I, who was on the spot and who am familiar with all the facts, give
you my personal assurance that he had not."
Nor did the King give up his sword to the Austrian commander at Grahovo,
as was reported in the European press. When, with three-quarters of his
country overrun by the Austrians, his chief of staff, Colonel Pierre
Pechitch of the Serbian Army, reported "_Henceforth all resistance and
all fighting against the enemy is impossible. There is no chance of the
situation improving_," King Nicholas, in the words of Baron Sonnino,
then Italian Foreign Minister, "preferred to withdraw into exile rather
than sign a separate peace."
I may be wrong in my conclusions, of course; the cabinet ministers and
the ambassadors and the generals in whose honor and truthfulness I
believe may have deliberately deceived me, but, after a most
painstaking and conscientious investigation, I am convinced that we have
been misinformed and blinded by a propaganda against King Nicholas and
his people which has rarely been equaled in audacity of untruth and
dexterity of misrepresentation. To employ the methods used by certain
Balkan politicians in their attempted elimination of Montenegro as an
independent nation even Tammany Hall would be ashamed.
When, upon the occupation of Montenegro by the Austrians, the King fled
to France and established his government at Neuilly, near Paris--just as
the fugitive Serbian Government was established at Corfu and the Belgian
at Le Havre--England, France, and Italy entered into an agreement to pay
him a subvention, for the maintenance of himself and his government,
until such time as the status of Montenegro was definitely settled by
the Peace Conference. England ceased paying her share of this subvention
early in the spring of 1919. When, a few weeks later, it was announced
that King Nicholas was preparing to go to Italy to visit his daughter,
Queen Elena, the French Minister to the court of Montenegro bluntly
informed him that the French Government regarded his proposed visit to
Italy as the first step toward his return to Montenegro, and that,
should he cross the French frontier, France would immediately break off
diplomatic relations with Montenegro and cease paying her share of the
subvention. This would seem to bear out the assertion, which I heard
everywhere in the Balkans, that France is bending every effort toward
building up a strong Jugoslavia in order to offset Italy's territorial
and commercial ambitions in the peninsula. The French indignantly
repudiate the suggestion that they are coercing the Montenegrin King.
"How absurd!" exclaimed the officials with whom I talked. "We holding
King Nicholas a prisoner? The idea is preposterous. So far as France is
concerned, he can return to Montenegro whenever he chooses."
Still, their protestations were not entirely convincing. Their attitude
reminded me of the millionaire whose daughter, it was rumored, had
eloped with the family chauffeur.
"Sure, she can marry him if she wants to," he told the reporters. "I
have no objection. She is free, white, and twenty-one. But if she does
marry him I'll stop her allowance, cut her out of my will, and never
speak to her again."
Because it has been my privilege to know many sovereigns and because I
have been honored with the confidence of several of them, I have become
to a certain extent immune from the spell which seems to be exercised
upon the commoner by personal contact with the Lord's anointed. Save
when I have had some definite mission to accomplish, I have never had
any overwhelming desire "to grasp the hand that shook the hand of John
L. Sullivan." To me it seems an impertinence to take the time of busy
men merely for the sake of being able to boast about it afterward to
your friends. But because, during my travels in Jugoslavia, I heard King
Nicholas repeatedly denounced by Serbian officials with far more
bitterness than they employed toward their late enemies and oppressors,
the Hapsburgs, I was frankly eager for an opportunity to form my own
opinions about Montenegro's aged ruler. The opportunity came when, upon
my return to Paris, I was informed that the King wished to meet me, he
being desirous, I suppose, of talking with one who had come so recently
from his own country.
At that time the King, with the Queen, Prince Peter, and his two
unmarried daughters, was occupying a modest suite in the Hotel Meurice,
in the rue de Rivoli. He received me in a large, sun-flooded room
overlooking the Tuileries Gardens. The bald, broad-shouldered, rather
bent old man in the blue serge suit, with a tin ear-trumpet in his hand,
who rose from behind a great flat-topped desk to greet me, was a
startling contrast to the tall and vigorous figure, in the picturesque
dress of a Montenegrin chieftain, whom I had seen in Cetinje before the
war. I looked at him with interest, for he has been on the throne longer
than any living sovereign, he is the father-in-law of two Kings, and is
connected by marriage with half the royal houses of Europe, and he is
the last of that long line of patriarch-rulers who, leading their armies
in person, have for more than two centuries maintained the independence
of the Black Mountain and its people.
[Illustration: HIS MAJESTY NICHOLAS I. KING OF MONTENEGRO
He has been on the throne longer than any living sovereign, he is the
father-in-law of two kings, and is connected by marriage with half the
royal houses of Europe]
King Nicholas, as is generally known, has been remarkably successful in
marrying off his daughters, two of them having married Kings, two
others grand dukes, while a fifth became the wife of a Battenberg
prince. Remembering this, I was sorely tempted to ask the King as to the
truth of a story which I had heard in Cetinje years before. An English
visitor to the Montenegrin capital had been invited to lunch at the
palace. During the meal the King asked his guest his impressions of
Montenegro.
"Its scenery is magnificent," was the answer. "Its women are as
beautiful and its men as handsome as any I have ever seen. Their
costumes are marvelously picturesque. But the country appears to have no
exports, your Majesty."
"Ah, my friend," replied the King, his eyes twinkling, "you forget my
daughters."
Another story, which illustrates the King's quick wit, was told me by
his Majesty himself. When, some years before the Great War, Emperor
Francis Joseph, on a yachting cruise down the Adriatic, dropped anchor
in the Bocche di Cattaro, the Montenegrin mountaineers celebrated the
imperial visit by lighting bonfires on their mountain peaks, a mile
above the harbor.
"I see that you dwell in the clouds," remarked Francis Joseph to
Nicholas, as they stood on the deck of the yacht after dinner watching
the pin-points of flame twinkling high above them.
"Where else can I live?" responded the Montenegrin ruler. "Austria holds
the sea; Turkey holds the land; the sky is all that is left for
Montenegro."
One of the things which the King told me during our conversation will, I
think, interest Americans. He said that when President Wilson arrived in
Paris he sent him an autograph letter, congratulating him on the great
part he had played in bringing peace to the world and requesting a
personal interview.
"But he never granted me the interview," said the King sadly. "In fact,
he never acknowledged my letter."
I attempted to bridge over the embarrassing pause by suggesting that
perhaps the letter had never been received, but he waved aside the
suggestion as unworthy of consideration. I gathered from what he said
that royal letters do not miscarry.
"I realize that I am an old man and that my country is a very small and
unimportant one," he continued, "while your President is the ruler of a
great country and a very busy man. Still, we in Montenegro had heard so
much of America's chivalrous attitude toward small, weak nations that I
was unduly disappointed, perhaps, when my letter was ignored. I felt
that my age, and the fact that I have occupied the throne of Montenegro
for sixty years, entitled me to the consideration of a reply."
But we have strayed far from the road which we were traveling. Let us
get back to the people of the mountains; I like them better than the
politicians. Antivari, which nestles in a hollow of the hills, three or
four miles inland from the port of the same name, is one of the most
fascinating little towns in all the Balkans. Its narrow, winding,
cobble-paved streets, shaded by canopies of grapevines and bordered by
rows of squat, red-tiled houses, their plastered walls tinted pale blue,
bright pink or yellow, and the amazingly picturesque costumes of its
inhabitants--slender, stately Montenegrin women in long coats of
turquoise-colored broad-cloth piped with crimson, Bosnians in skin-tight
breeches covered with arabesques of braid and jackets heavy with
embroidery, Albanians wearing the starched and pleated skirts of linen
known as _fustanellas_ and _comitadjis_ with cartridge-filled bandoliers
slung across their chests and their sashes bristling with assorted
weapons, priests of the Orthodox Church with uncut hair and beards,
wearing hats that look like inverted stovepipes, hook-nosed,
white-bearded, patriarchal-looking Turks in flowing robes and snowy
turbans, fierce-faced, keen-eyed mountain herdsmen in fur caps and coats
of sheepskin--all these combined to make me feel that I had intruded
upon the stage of a theater during a musical comedy performance, and
that I must find the exit and escape before I was discovered by the
stage-manager. If David Belasco ever visits Antivari he will probably
try to buy the place bodily and transport it to East Forty-fourth Street
and write a play around it.
There were two gentlemen in Antivari whose actions gave me unalloyed
delight. One of them, so I was told, was the head of the local
anti-Serbian faction; the other, a human arsenal with weapons sprouting
from his person like leaves from an artichoke, was the chief of a
notorious band of _comitadjis_, as the Balkan guerrillas are called.
They walked up and down the main street of Antivari, arms over each
other's shoulders, heads close together, lost in conversation, but
glancing quickly over their shoulders every now and then to see if they
were in danger of being overheard, exactly like the plotters in a
motion-picture play. From the earnestness of their conversation, the
obvious awe in which they were held by the townspeople, and the
suspicious looks cast in their direction by the Serbian gendarmes, I
gathered that in the near future things were going to happen in that
region. Approaching them, I haltingly explained, in the few words of
Serbian at my command, that I was an American and that I wished to
photograph them. Upon comprehending my request they debated the question
for some moments, then shook their heads decisively. It was evident
that, in view of what they had in mind, they considered it imprudent to
have their pictures floating around as a possible means of
identification. But while they were discussing the matter I took the
liberty, without their knowledge, of photographing them anyway. It was
as well, perhaps, that they did not see me do it, for the _comitadji_
chieftain had a long knife, two revolvers, and four hand-grenades in
his belt and a rifle slung over his shoulder.
From Antivari to Valona by sea is about as far as from New York to
Albany by the Hudson, so that, leaving the Montenegrin port in the early
morning, we had no difficulty in reaching the Albanian one before
sunset. Before the war Valona--which, by the way, appears as Avlona on
most American-made maps--was an insignificant fishing village, but upon
Italy's occupation of Albania it became a military base of great
importance. Whenever we had touched on our journey down the coast we had
been warned against going to Valona because of the danger of contracting
fever. The town stands on the edge of a marsh bordering the shore and,
as no serious attempt has been made to drain the marsh or to clean up
the town itself, about sixty per cent of the troops stationed there are
constantly suffering from a peculiarly virulent form of malaria, similar
to the Chagres fever of the Isthmus. The danger of contracting it was
apparently considered very real, for, before we had been an hour in the
quarters assigned to us, officers began to arrive with safeguards of one
sort or another. One brought screens for all the windows; another
provided mosquito-bars for the beds; a third presented us with
disinfectant cubes, which we were to burn in our rooms several times
each day; a fourth made us a gift of quinine pills, two of which we were
to take hourly; still another of our hosts appeared with a dozen bottles
of _acqua minerale_ and warned us not to drink the local water, and,
finally, to ensure us against molestation by prowling natives, a couple
of sentries were posted beneath our windows.
[Illustration: TWO CONSPIRATORS OF ANTIVARI
They stood lost in conversation, heads close together, exactly like the
plotters in a motion picture play]
"Valona isn't a particularly healthy place to live in, I gather?" I
remarked, by way of making conversation, to the officer who was our host
at dinner that evening. His face was as yellow as old parchment and he
was shaking with fever.
"Well," he reluctantly admitted, "you must be careful not to be bitten
by a mosquito or you will get malaria. And don't drink the water or you
will contract typhoid. And keep away from the native quarter, for there
is always more or less smallpox in the bazaars. And don't go wandering
around the town after nightfall, for there's always a chance of some
fanatic putting a knife between your shoulders. Otherwise, there isn't
a healthier place in the world than Valona."
Across the street from the building in which we were quartered was a
large mosque, which, judging from the scaffoldings around it, was under
repair. But though it seemed to be a large and important mosque, there
was no work going forward on it. I commented upon this one day to an
officer with whom I was walking.
"Do you see those storks up there?" he asked, pointing to a pair of
long-legged birds standing beside their nest on the dome of the mosque.
"The stork is the sacred bird of Albania and if it makes its nest on a
building which is in course of construction all work on that building
ceases as long as the stork remains. A barracks we were erecting was
held up for several months because a stork decided to make its nest in
the rafters, whereupon the native workmen threw down their tools and
quit."
"In my country it is just the opposite," I observed. "There, when the
stork comes, instead of stopping work they usually begin building a
nursery."
I had long wished to cross Albania and Macedonia, from the Adriatic to
the Ægean, by motor, but the nearer we had drawn to Albania the more
unlikely this project had seemed of realization. We were assured that
there were no roads in the interior of the country or that such roads as
existed were quite impassable for anything save ox-carts; that the
country had been devastated by the fighting armies and that it would be
impossible to get food en route; that the mountains we must cross were
frequented by bandits and _comitadjis_ and that we would be exposed to
attack and capture; that, though the Italians might see us across
Albania, the Serbian and Greek frontier guards would not permit us to
enter Macedonia, and, as a final argument against the undertaking, we
were warned that the whole country reeked with fever. But when I told
the Governor-General of Albania, General Piacentini, what I wished to do
every obstacle disappeared as though at the wave of a magician's wand.
"You will leave Valona early to-morrow morning," he said, after a short
conference with his Chief of Staff. "You will be accompanied by an
officer of my staff who was with the Serbian army on its retreat across
Albania to the sea. The country is well garrisoned and I do not
anticipate the slightest trouble, but, as a measure of precaution, a
detachment of soldiers will follow your car in a motor-truck. You will
spend the first night at Argirocastro, the second at Ljaskoviki, and the
third at Koritza, which is occupied by the French. I will wire our
diplomatic agent there to make arrangements with the Jugoslav
authorities for you to cross the Serbian border to Monastir, where we
still have a few troops engaged in salvage work. South of Monastir you
will be in Greek territory, but I will wire the officer in command of
the Italian forces at Salonika to take steps to facilitate your journey
across Macedonia to the Ægean."
This journey across one of the most savage and least-known regions in
all Europe was arranged as simply and matter-of-factly as a clerk in a
tourist bureau would plan a motor trip through the White Mountains. With
the exception of one or two alterations in the itinerary made necessary
by tire trouble, the journey was made precisely as General Piacentini
planned it and so complete were the arrangements we found that meals
and sleeping quarters had been prepared for us in tiny mountain hamlets
whose very names we had never so much as heard before.
Until its occupation by the Italians in 1917 Albania was not only the
least-known region in Europe; it was one of the least-known regions in
the world. Within sight of Italy, it was less known than many portions
of Central Asia or Equatorial Africa. And it is still a savage country;
a land but little changed since the days of Constantine and Diocletian;
a land that for more than twenty centuries has acknowledged no master
and, until the coming of the Italians, had known no law. Prior to the
Italian occupation there was no government in Albania in the sense in
which that word is generally used, there being, in fact, no civil
government now, the tribal organization which takes its place being
comparable to that which existed in Scotland under the Stuart Kings.
The term Albanian would probably pass unrecognized by the great majority
of the inhabitants, who speak of themselves as _Skipétars_ and of their
country as _Sccupnj_. They are, most ethnologists agree, probably the
most ancient race in Europe, there being every reason to believe that
they are the lineal descendants of those adventurous Aryans who, leaving
the ancestral home on the shores of the Caspian, crossed the Caucasus
and entered Europe in the earliest dawn of history. One of the tribes of
this migrating host, straying into these lonely valleys, settled there
with their flocks and herds, living the same life, speaking the same
tongue, following the same customs as their Aryan ancestors, quite
indifferent to the great changes which were taking place in the world
without their mountain wall. Certain it is that Albania was already an
ancient nation when Greek history began. Unlike the other primitive
populations of the Balkan peninsula, which became in time either
Hellenized, Latinized or Slavonicized, the Albanians have remained
almost unaffected by foreign influences. It strikes me as a strange
thing that the courage and determination with which this remarkable race
has maintained itself in its mountain stronghold all down the ages, and
the grim and unyielding front which it has shown to innumerable
invaders, have evoked so little appreciation and admiration in the
outside world. History contains no such epic as that of the Albanian
national hero, George Castriota, better known as Scanderbeg, who, with
his ill-armed mountaineers, overwhelmed twenty-three Ottoman armies, one
after another.[A]
Picture, if you please, a country remarkably similar in its physical
characteristics to the Blue Ridge Region of our own South, with the same
warm summers and the same brief, cold winters, peopled by the same
poverty-stricken, illiterate, quarrelsome, suspicious, arms-bearing,
feud-practising race of mountaineers, and you will have the best
domestic parallel of Albania that I can give you. Though during the
summer months extremely hot days are followed by bitterly cold nights,
and though fever is prevalent along the coast and in certain of the
valleys, Albania is, climatically speaking, "a white man's country." Its
mountains are believed to contain iron, coal, gold, lead, and copper,
but the internal condition of the country has made it quite impossible
to investigate its mineral resources, much less to develop them. With
the exception of Valona, which has been developed into a tolerably good
harbor, there are no ports worthy of the name, Durazzo, Santi Quaranta,
and San Giovanni de Medua being mere open roadsteads, almost unprotected
from the sea winds. There are no railroads in Albania, and the
indifference of the Turkish Government, the corruption of the local
chiefs, and the blood-feuds in which the people are almost constantly
engaged, have resulted in a total absence of good roads. This condition
has been remedied by the Italians, however, who, in order to facilitate
their military operations, constructed a system of highways very nearly
equal to those they built in the Alps. Though the greater part of the
country is a stranger to the plow, the small areas which are under
cultivation produce excellent olive oil, wine of a tolerable quality, a
strong but moderately good tobacco, and considerable grain; Albania, in
spite of its primitive agricultural methods, furnishing most of the corn
supply of the Dalmatian coast.
Albania, so far as I am aware, is the only country where you can buy a
wife on the instalment plan, just as you would buy a piano or an
encyclopedia or a phonograph. It is quite true that there are plenty of
countries where women can be purchased--in Circassia, for example, and
in China, and in the Solomon Group--but in those places the prospective
bridegroom is compelled to pay down the purchase price in cash, not
being afforded the convenience of opening an account. In Albania,
however, such things are better done, a partial payment on the purchase
price of the girl being paid to her parents when the engagement takes
place, after which she is no longer offered for sale, but is set aside,
like an article on which a deposit has been made, until the final
instalment has been paid, when she is delivered to her future husband.
Albania is likewise the only country that I know of where every one
concerned becomes indignant if a murderer is sent to prison. The
relatives of the dear departed resent it because they feel that the
judge has cheated them out of their revenge, which they would probably
obtain, were the murderer at large, by putting a knife or a pistol
bullet between his shoulders. The murderer, of course, objects to the
sentence both because he does not like imprisonment and because he
believes that he could escape from the relatives of his victim were he
given his freedom. If he or his friends have any money, however, the
affair is usually settled on a financial basis, the feud is called off,
the murderer is pardoned, and every one concerned, save only the dead
man, is as pleased and friendly as though nothing had ever happened to
interrupt their friendly relations. A quaint people, the Albanians.
In order to develop the resources of the country and to transform its
present poverty into prosperity, Italy has already inaugurated an
extensive scheme of public works, which includes the reclamation of the
marshes, the reforestation of the mountains, the reconstruction of the
highways, the improvement of the ports, and the construction of a
railway straight across Albania, from the coast at Durazzo to Monastir,
in Serbian Macedonia, where it will connect with the line from Belgrade
to Salonika. This railway will follow the route of one of the most
important arteries of the Roman Empire, the Via Egnatia, that mighty
military and commercial highway, a trans-Adriatic continuation of the
Via Appia, which, starting from Dyracchium, the modern Durazzo, crossed
the Cavaia plain to the Skumbi, climbed the slopes of the Candavian
range, and traversing Macedonia and Thrace, ended at the Bosphorus, thus
linking the capitals of the western and the eastern empires. We traveled
this age-old highway, down which the four-horse chariots of the Cæsars
had rumbled two thousand years ago, in another sort of chariot, with the
power of twenty times four horses beneath its sloping hood. This will
entitle us in future years to listen with the condescension of pioneers
to the tales of the tourists who make the same trans-Balkan journey in a
comfortable _wagon-lit_, with hot and cold running water and electric
lights and a dining-car ahead. It is a great thing to have seen a
country in the pioneer stage of its existence.
In that portion of Southern Albania known as North Epirus we motored for
an entire day through a region dotted with what had been, apparently,
fairly prosperous towns and villages but which are now heaps of
fire-blackened ruins. This wholesale devastation, I was informed to my
astonishment, was the work of the Greeks, who, at about the time the
Germans were horrifying the civilized world by their conduct in
Belgium, were doing precisely the same thing, it is said, but on a far
more extensive scale, in Albania. As a result of these atrocities,
perpetrated by a so-called Christian and professedly civilized nation, a
large number of Albanian towns and villages were destroyed by fire or
dynamite. Though I have been unable to obtain any reliable figures, the
consensus of opinion among the Albanians, the French and Italian
officials, and the American missionaries and relief workers with whom I
talked is that between 10,000 and 12,000 men, women, and children were
shot, bayoneted, or burned to death, at least double that number died
from exposure and starvation, and an enormous number--I have heard the
figure placed as high as 200,000--were rendered homeless. The stories
which I heard of the treatment to which the Albanian women were
subjected are so revolting as to be unprintable. We spent a night at
Ljaskoviki (also spelled Gliascovichi, Leskovik and Liascovik),
three-quarters of which had been destroyed. Out of a population which, I
was told, originally numbered about 8,000, only 1,200 remain.
[Illustration: THE HEAD MEN OF LJASKOVIKI, ALBANIA, WAITING TO BID MAJOR
AND MRS. POWELL FAREWELL]
Though the great majority of the victims were Mohammedans, the
outrages were not directly due to religious causes but were inspired
mainly by greed for territory. When, upon the erection of Albania into
an independent kingdom in 1913, the Greeks were ordered by the Powers to
withdraw from North Epirus, on which they had been steadily encroaching
and which they had come to look upon as inalienably their own, they are
reported to have begun a systematic series of outrages upon the civil
population of the region for which a fitting parallel can be found only
in the Turkish massacres in Armenia or the horrors of Bolshevik rule in
Russia. In their determination to secure Southern Albania for
themselves, the Greeks apparently adopted the policy followed with such
success in Armenia by the Turks, who asserted cynically that "one cannot
make a state without inhabitants."
I do not think that the Greeks attempt to deny these atrocities--the
evidence is far too conclusive for that--but even as great a Greek as M.
Venizelos justifies them on the ground that they were provoked by the
Albanians. That such things could happen without arousing horror and
condemnation throughout the civilized world is due to the fact that in
the summer of 1914 the attention of the world was focused on events in
France and Belgium. I have no quarrel with the Greeks and nothing is
further from my desire than to engage in what used to be known as
"muck-raking," but I am reporting what I saw and heard in Albania
because I believe that the American people ought to know of it. Taken in
conjunction with the behavior of the Greek troops in Smyrna in the
spring of 1918, it should better enable us to form an opinion as to the
moral fitness of the Greeks to be entrusted with mandates over backward
peoples.
Though Albania is an Italian protectorate, the Albanians, in spite of
all that Italy is doing toward the development of the country, do not
want Italian protection. This is scarcely to be wondered at, however, in
view of the attitude of another untutored people, the Egyptians, who,
though they owe their amazing prosperity solely to British rule, would
oust the British at the first opportunity which offered. Though the
Italians are distrusted because the Albanians question their
administrative ability and because they fear that they will attempt to
denationalize them, the French are regarded with a hatred which I have
seldom seen equaled. This is due, I imagine, to the belief that the
French are allied with their hereditary enemies, the Greeks and the
Serbs, and to France's iron-handed rule, which was exemplified when
General Sarrail, commanding the army of the Orient, ordered the
execution of the President of the short-lived Albanian Republic which
was established at Koritza. As a matter of fact, the Albanians, though
quite unfitted for independence, are violently opposed to being placed
under the protection of any nation, unless it be the United States or
England, in both of which they place implicit trust. I was astonished to
learn that the few Americans who have penetrated Albania since the
war--missionaries, Red Cross workers, and one or two investigators for
the Peace Conference--have encouraged the natives in the belief that the
United States would probably accept a mandate for Albania. Whether they
did this in order to make themselves popular and thereby facilitate
their missions, or because of an abysmal ignorance of American public
sentiment, I do not know, but the fact remains that they have raised
hopes in the breasts of thousands of Albanians which can never be
realized. Everything considered, I think that the Albanians might do
worse than to entrust their political future to the guidance of the
Italians, who, in addition to having brought law, order, justice, and
the beginnings of prosperity to a country which never had so much as a
bowing acquaintance with any one of them before, seem to have the best
interests of the people genuinely at heart.
Leaving Koritza, a clean, well-kept town of perhaps 10,000 people, which
was occupied when we were there by a battalion of black troops from the
French Sudan and some Moroccans, we went snorting up the Peristeri Range
by an appallingly steep and narrow road, higher, higher, always higher,
until, to paraphrase Kipling, we had
"One wheel on the Horns o' the Mornin',
An' one on the edge o' the Pit,
An' a drop into nothin' beneath us
As straight as a beggar could spit."
But at last, when I was beginning to wonder whether our wheels could
find traction if the grade grew much steeper, we topped the summit of
the pass and looked down on Macedonia. Below us the forested slopes of
the mountains ran down, like the folds of a great green rug lying
rumpled on an oaken floor, to meet the bare brown plains of that
historic land where marched and fought the hosts of Philip of Macedon,
and of Alexander, his son. There are few more splendid panoramas in the
world; there is none over which history has cast so magic a spell, for
this barren, dusty land has been the arena in which the races of eastern
Europe have battled since history began. Within its borders are
represented all the peoples who are disputing the reversion of the
Turkish possessions in Europe. Macedonia might be described, indeed, as
the very quintessence of the near eastern question.
With brakes a-squeal we slipped down the long, steep gradients to
Florina, where Greek gendarmes, in British sun-helmets and khaki,
lounged at the street-crossings and patronizingly waved us past. Thence
north by the ancient highway which leads to Monastir, the parched and
yellow fields on either side still littered with the débris of
war--broken _camions_ and wagons, shattered cannon, pyramids of
ammunition-cases, vast quantities of barbed wire--and sprinkled with
white crosses, thousands and thousands of them, marking the places where
sleep the youths from Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, Canada,
India, Australia, Africa, who fell in the Last Crusade.
Monastir is a filthy, ill-paved, characteristically Turkish town, which,
before its decimation by the war, was credited with having some 60,000
inhabitants. Of these about one-half were Turks and one-quarter Greeks,
the remaining quarter of the inhabitants being composed of Serbs, Jews,
Albanians, and Bulgars. Those of its buildings which escaped the great
conflagration which destroyed half the town were terribly shattered by
the long series of bombardments, so that to-day the place looks like San
Francisco after the earthquake and Baltimore after the fire. In the
suburbs are immense supplies of war _matériel_ of all sorts, mostly
going to waste. I saw thousands of camions, ambulances, caissons, and
wagons literally falling apart from neglect, and this in a country which
is almost destitute of transport. Though the town was packed with
Serbian troops, most of whom are sleeping and eating in the open, no
attempt was being made, so far as I could see, to repair the shell-torn
buildings, to clean the refuse-littered streets, or to afford the
inhabitants even the most nominal police protection. The crack of rifles
and revolvers is as frequent in the streets of Monastir as the bang of
bursting tires on Fifth Avenue. A Serbian sentry, on duty outside the
house in which I was sleeping, suddenly loosed off a clip of cartridges
in the street, for no reason in the world, it seemed, than because he
liked to hear the noise! Dead bodies are found nearly every morning.
Murders are so common that they do not provoke even passing comment. In
the night there comes a sharp bark of an automatic or the shattering
roar of a hand-grenade (which, since the war proved its efficacy, has
become the most recherché weapon for private use in these regions), a
clatter of feet, and a "Hello! Another killing." That is all. Life is
the cheapest thing there is in the Balkans.
The only really clean place we found in Monastir was the American Red
Cross Hospital, an extremely well-managed and efficient institution,
which was under the direction of a young American woman, Dr. Frances
Flood, who, with a single woman companion, Miss Jessup, pluckily
remained at her post throughout the greater part of the war. The
officers who during the war achieved rows of ribbons for having acted as
messenger boys between the War Department and the foreign military
missions in Washington, would feel a trifle embarrassed, I imagine, if
they knew what this little American woman did to win _her_ decorations.
It is in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty miles from Monastir
to Salonika across the Macedonian plain and the road is one of the very
worst in Europe. Deep ruts, into which the car sometimes slipped almost
to its hubs, and frequent gullies made driving, save at the most
moderate speed, impossible, while, as many of the bridges were broken,
and without signs to warn the travelers of their condition, we more than
once barely saved ourselves from plunging through the gaping openings to
disaster. The vast traffic of the fighting armies had ground the roads
into yellow dust which rose in clouds as dense as a London fog, while
the waves of heat from the sun-scorched plains beat against our faces
like the blast from an open furnace door. Despite its abominable
condition, the road was alive with traffic: droves of buffalo, black,
ungainly, broad-horned beasts, their elephant-like hides caked with
yellow mud; woolly waves of sheep and goats driven by wild mountain
herdsmen in high fur caps and gaudy sashes; caravans of camels, swinging
superciliously past on padded feet, laden with supplies for the interior
or salvaged war material for the coast; clumsy carts, painted in strange
designs and screaming colors, with great sharpened stakes which looked
as though they were intended for purposes of torture, but whose real
duty is to keep the top-heavy loads in place.
Though the slopes of the Rhodope and the Pindus are clothed with
splendid forests, it is for the most part a flat and treeless land,
dotted with clusters of filthy hovels made of sun-dried brick and with
patches of discouraged-looking vegetation. As Macedonia (its inhabitants
pronounce it as though the first syllable were _mack_) was once the
granary of the East, I had expected to see illimitable fields of waving
grain, but such fields as we did see were generally small and poor.
Guarding them against the hovering swarms of blackbirds were many
scarecrows, rigged out in the uniforms and topped by the helmets of the
men whose bones bleach amid the grain. In Switzerland they make a very
excellent red wine called _Schweizerblut_, because the grapes from which
it is made are grown on soil reddened by the blood of the Swiss who fell
on the battlefield of Morat. If blood makes fine wine, then the best
wine in all the world should come from these Macedonian plains, for they
have been soaked with blood since ever time began.
Our halfway town was Vodena, which seemed, after the heat and dust of
the journey, like an oasis in the desert. Scores of streams, issuing
from the steep slopes of the encircling hills, race through the town in
a network of little canals and fling themselves from a cliff, in a
series of superb cascades, into the wooded valley below. Philip of
Macedon was born near Vodena, and there, in accordance with his wishes,
he was buried. You can see the tomb, flanked by ever-burning candles,
though you may not enter it, should you happen to pass that way. He
chose his last resting-place well, did the great soldier, for the
overarching boughs of ancient plane-trees turn the cobbled streets of
the little town into leafy naves, the air is heavy with the scent of
orange and oleander, and the place murmurs with the pleasant sound of
plashing water.
Beyond Vodena the road improved for a time and we fled southward at
greater speed, the telegraph poles leaping at us out of the yellow
dust-haze like the pikes of giant sentinels. At Alexander's Well, an
ancient cistern built from marble blocks and filled with crystal-clear
water, we paused to refill our boiling radiator, and paused again, a few
miles farther on, at the wretched, mud-walled village which, according
to local tradition, is the birthplace of the man who made himself master
of three continents, changed the face of the world, and died at
thirty-three.
Then south again, south again, across the seemingly illimitable plains,
until, topping a range of bare brown hills, there lay spread before us
the gleaming walls and minarets of that city where Paul preached to the
Thessalonians. To the westward Olympus seemed to verify the assertions
of the ancient Greeks that its summit touched the sky. To the east,
outlined against the Ægean's blue, I could see the peninsula of
Chalkis, with its three gaunt capes, Cassandra, Longos, and Athos,
reaching toward Thrace, the Hellespont and Asia Minor, like the claw of
a vulture stretched out to snatch the quarry which the eagles killed.
[Footnote A: Portions of this sketch of the Albanians are drawn from an
article which I wrote some years ago for _The Independent_. E.A.P.]