If only the Albanian question would be taken in hand by
humanitarians.... Here you have one and a half million of wild
children.... Build them schools and roads, police their country--they
themselves agree that the savage atmosphere in the northern mountains
was radically altered by the Austrians when they occupied that country
during the War. One has heard of numerous philanthropic societies in
Great Britain whose object has been more remote and less deserving; if
some such society would turn to Albania, their educational and economic
labours might, after a time, be made self-supporting by the permission
to exploit--of course, with due regard to Albania's future--the forests
and mines. "To be master in Albania," says M. Gabriel Hanotaux, "one
would have to dislodge the inhabitants from their eyries"--(another
French statesman has used a less exalted simile: "Albania," M. Briand
once said, "is an international lavatory")--and it goes without saying
that any corporation which undertakes to civilize the Shqyptart would
need to bring in a military force, on similar lines to the Swedish
_gendarmerie_ in Persia. The Swedes, in fact, who are a military nation,
might be glad to accept this mandate; the expenses could be met by an
international fund. A certain number of Albanians would be admitted to
the _gendarmerie_; and the more unruly natives would be dealt with as
they were, for everybody's good, by Austria.... The Yugoslavs would then
be delighted to accept the 1913 frontier, which is also what the
Albanians ask for; and Yugoslavs, Italians and Greeks would all retire
from Albania. There is really no need for the Italians to demand Valona
or Saseno, the island which lies in front of it. The Italian naval
experts know very well that the possession of Pola, Lussin and Lagosta
would not be made more valuable by the addition of an Albanian base.