Those who in old Turkish days lived in that wild border country which is
dealt with on these pages would have been surprised to hear that they
would be the objects of a great deal of discussion in the west of
Europe. But in those days there was no Yugoslavia and no Albania and no
League of Nations, and very few were the writers who took up this
question. It is, undoubtedly, a question of importance, though some of
these writers, remembering that the fate of the world was dependent on
the fraction of an inch of Cleopatra's nose, seem almost to have
imagined that it was proportionately more dependent on those several
hundred kilometres of disputed frontier. It would not so much matter
that they have introduced a good deal of passion into their arguments if
they had not also exerted some influence on influential men--and this
compels one to pay them what would otherwise be excessive attention.
Let us consider the frontier which the Ambassadors' Conference in
November 1921 assigned to Yugoslavia and the Albanians. We have already
mentioned some of the previous points of contact between those Balkan
neighbours who for centuries have been acquiring knowledge of each other
and who, therefore, as Berati Bey, the Albanian delegate in Paris, very
wisely said, should have been left to manage their own frontier
question. A number of Western Europeans will exclaim that this could not
be accomplished without the shedding of blood; but it is rather more
than probable that the interference of Western Europe--partly
philanthropic and partly otherwise--will be responsible for greater loss
of life. If it could not be permitted that two of the less powerful
peoples should attempt to settle their own affairs, then, at any rate,
the most competent of alien judges should have sat on the tribunal. A
frontier in that part of Europe should primarily take the peculiarities
of the people into account, and I believe that if Sir Charles Eliot and
Baron Nopsca with their unrivalled knowledge of the Albanians had been
consulted it is probable they would, for some years to come, have
thought desirable the frontier which is preferred by General Franchet
d'Esperey, by a majority of the local Albanians, and by those who hope
for peace in the Balkans.