[We have more than once alluded to the writings of Miss Durham, since
very few British authors have dealt with Albania, and she has come to be
regarded as a trustworthy expert. But the flagrant partiality of her
latest book (_Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle_; London, 1920), which,
moreover, is written with great bitterness, will make the public turn, I
hope, to Sir Charles Eliot, who is a vastly better cicerone. The present
ambassador in Japan is, of course, one of the foremost men of this
generation. His Balkan studies are as supremely competent as his
monumental work on British Nudibranchiate Mollusca, published by the Ray
Society when Sir Charles, having resigned the Governorship of East
Africa, was Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University. Equally admired are
his researches into Chinese linguistics and his monograph, the first in
the language, on that most obscure subject, Finnish grammar.[88] Will it
be believed that in her account of the Balkan tangle Miss Durham does
not quote Sir Charles Eliot, but Mr. Horatio Bottomley? It seems that
Mr. Bottomley has not devoted much attention to the Balkans, since in
November 1920 he poured the vials of his wrath upon the Serbs, who,
according to his "latest reports from Montenegro," had destroyed no less
than 4000 Montenegrin houses in the district of Dibra, a place which
lies some 75 miles by road from the land of the Black Mountain and
probably does not possess more than two or three Montenegrin houses; but
he flings hard words against the Serbs, and that is good enough for Miss
Durham. On the other hand, Sir Charles Eliot, who has travelled largely
in Albania, wrote the simple facts about that people and they are
obnoxious to this lady. "It is not surprising to find that there is no
history of Albania, for there is no union between North and South, or
between the different northern tribes and the different southern Beys,"
said he in 1900, and such a people does not undergo a fundamental change
in twenty years. "Only two names," says Eliot, "those of Skanderbeg and
Ali Pasha of Janina, emerge from the confusion of justly unrecorded
tribal quarrels.... Albania presents nothing but oppositions--North
against South, tribe against tribe, Bey against Bey." (According to Miss
Durham they are all aflame with the desire to form a nation.) "Even
family ties seem to be somewhat weak," says Sir Charles, "for since
European influence has diminished the African slave-trade, Albanians
have taken to selling their female children to supply the want of
negroes." (The Albanians are "enterprising and industrious," says Miss
Durham.) "In many ways," says Eliot, "they are in Europe what the Kurds
are in Asia. Both are wild and lawless tribes who inflict much damage on
decent Turks and Christians alike. Both might be easily brought to
reason by the exhibition of a little firmness.... Albanian patriotism is
not a home product--had they ever been ready to combine against the Turk
there seems to be no reason why they should not have preserved the same
kind of independence as Montenegro; but from the first some of the
tribes and clans endeavoured to secure an advantage over the others by
siding with the invaders--papers and books on the national movement are
written at Bucharest, Brussels and various Italian towns, but they are
not read at Scutari or Janina. The stock grievance of this literature is
that the Turks will not allow Albanian to be taught in the schools, and
endeavour to ignore the existence of the language; but though the
complaint is well-founded, I doubt if the mass of the people have much
feeling on the subject." ... Those who are rash enough to assert,
because Miss Durham says so, that in the last two decades the Albanians
have made a progress of several centuries may be recommended to the
testimony of Brailsford[89] (1906), of Katarani (1913), and of the
Italian Press which, after the retreat of their army to Valona,
published in 1920 the most ghastly particulars of what befell the
hapless officers and men who were captured by the Albanians.
Let the British public henceforth go to Sir Charles Eliot and not to
this emotional lady for its picture of the unchanged Shqyptar. She
reveals to us that more than one person in the Balkans said that her
knowledge of those countries is enormous; she has knocked about the
western Balkans and picked up a good deal of material, but her knowledge
has its limitations: for example, she makes the old howler of ascribing
Macedonian origin to Pa[vs]i['c], though his grandfather came not from
Tetovo in Macedonia but from near Teteven in what is now Bulgaria. Miss
Durham plumes herself for having sent back to Belgrade the Order of St.
Sava, and seeing that it is bestowed for learning she did well. But even
if her acquaintance with Balkan affairs were more adequate--her
diagnosis of the Macedonian racial problem is extremely rough and
ready--all the writings of Miss Durham are so warped with hatred for the
Slav that they must be very carefully approached. Because she thinks it
will incline her readers towards the Albanians she says[90] that they
were early converts to Christianity. She omits to mention that the
Moslem, on arriving in the Balkans, was able to spread his religion much
more easily in Albania than anywhere else; and again, in the seventeenth
century, when Constantinople offered many lucrative posts to the Moslem
there occurred in Albania a great wave of apostasy. Miss Durham speaks
with pride of the Albanians who during the Great War fought in the
French, Italian and American ranks. Would it not be more straightforward
if she added that large numbers were enrolled in the Austro-Hungarian
army and _gendarmerie_? The special task of the latter was to dislodge
from their mountain fastnesses those Montenegrins who continued to carry
on a desperate guerilla warfare against the invader. To pretend that the
Albanian has earned the freedom of his country by his glorious exploits
in the War is an absurdity. He is a mediaeval fellow, much more anxious
to have a head to bash than to ascertain whom it belongs to. The Slavs
have not always treated their raw neighbours with indulgence; in the
Balkan War, when their army marched through Albania to the sea some very
discreditable incidents occurred, whatever may have been the provocation
they received from the sniping natives and however great be the excuse
of their own state of nerves. Yet the first stone should be flung by
that army of Western Europe which, in its passage through the territory
of a treacherous and savage people, has done nothing which it would not
willingly forget. And seriously to argue that the Slavs are of an almost
undiluted blackness, while the Albanians are endearing creatures, is to
take what anti-feminists would call a feminist view of history. Miss
Durham tells us that some years ago she stood upon a height with an
Albanian abbot and promised him that she would do all that lay in her
power to bring a knowledge of Albania to the English. The worthy abbot
may have glanced at her uneasily, but noticing her rapt expression
reassured himself. And she appears to have believed that England,
eagerly absorbing what she told them of this people, would in August
1914 make her policy depend on their convenience. But to Miss Durham's
horror and amazement, Great Britain turned aside from this clear and
honourable duty. She entered the War as an ally of the Slav, bringing
"shame and disgust" upon Miss Durham. "After that," says she, "I really
did not care what happened. The cup of my humiliation was full."]