Berati Beg, Tirana's delegate in Paris, said in an interview with a
representative of the Belgrade _Pravda_, at the beginning of November
1921, that he regretted that European diplomats should interfere in the
Serbo-Albanian question. "Are we not all," said he, "one large Balkan
family? And if the Powers intervene they will not act in our interests,
but in their own." He said that it used to be Austria which grasped at
Albania, now it was Italy. So the delegate showed that he was a
clear-sighted man; he also showed that in Tirana they are not unanimous
in loving the Italians. But alas! the Great Powers, urged by Italy, made
a most disastrous plunge; they actually, at least Great Britain, charged
the Serbs, their allies, on November 7, with being guilty of
overstepping the frontier, and on November 9 informed them where this
frontier was. It is a pity that Mr. Lloyd George should have launched
such a thunderbolt, the French Government not being consulted.[99] But
the most probable explanation of this lack of courtesy towards the
Serbs, and lack of the most elementary justice, is that the Prime
Minister, with his numerous preoccupations, allowed some incapable
person to act in his name.[100] The world was told, however, that Mr.
Lloyd George had sent a peremptory demand for the convocation of the
Council of the League of Nations so that a sanction should be applied
against the Yugoslavs. Mr. Lloyd George's substitute was so little
versed in the business that he did not even know that the League of
Nations is not a gendarme to carry out the decisions of the Ambassadors'
Conference. He should have been aware of the fact that this was a
problem for the Allied States, to be settled by diplomatic or other
measures, and he should also have known that the League of Nations does
not--except if invited to arbitrate--concern itself with the
unliquidated problems left by the War, such as the Turkish question.
Perhaps that dangerous confusion in the mind of this unknown official
would not have occurred if Albania had not been illogically admitted to
the League of Nations. But now, in November 1921, not an instant was to
be lost in settling this frontier question, which--as the _Temps_
pointed out--would have been settled months before if Italy had not
prevented it. (She wished as a preliminary step to have certain claims
of her own in regard to Albania conceded.) So the Council of the League
was to be invited to apply Article 16, which could scarcely be invoked
unless Article 15, which defines a procedure of conciliation, had been
found of no avail.[101] Thus the misguided person who spoke in the name
of Mr. Lloyd George was apparently too impetuous to read the texts. And
then the Serbs were told that they must withdraw practically to the
frontier which Austria, their late enemy, had laid down in 1913. Well
might Berati Beg deplore that Italy should take the place of Austria.
But such commands achieve so little. Very soon, when the troubles in
Albania continue, as they certainly will, Mr. Lloyd George will see that
he was misled.... But here it should be stated that while Italy
persisted throughout in demanding the 1913 frontier (with the
ludicrously inconsistent proviso that she herself should have the island
of Saseno, which in 1913 she had demanded for independent Albania), and
France raised no finger against her, the actual improvements of the
frontier adopted were entirely due to Great Britain. No one is more
qualified to speak on this matter than Mr. Harold Temperley of
Cambridge, who was one of our experts. In his illuminating little book,
_The Second Year of the League_, he has pointed out that the new
Albanian frontiers are an improvement on the old--than which, indeed,
they cannot be worse--because they conform more to natural features,
they take into account an important tribal boundary (leaving the Gora
tribe in Yugoslavia), and restore to both parties freedom of
communication--the road between the Serb towns of Struga and Dibra being
given to the Serbs, while to Albania is given the road from Elbasan to
the Serb town of Lin. The rectifications in the Kastrati and the Prizren
area involve the substitution of natural boundaries for unnatural ones
in order to protect the cities of Podgorica and Prizren. They confer no
offensive advantage on the Serbs, nor do they enable them to menace any
Albanian city.
To any impartial observer it is quite unjust that the Yugoslavs should
have had to plead against the frontier of 1913. They have not the least
desire to plant their flag on those undelectable mountains. If the
frontier of 1913 could be held with moderate efforts against these
people they would not wish to go an inch beyond it. But those who drew
this frontier, namely the Austrians, were not much concerned as to
whether it afforded adequate protection to the Serbs; what they had in
view was to keep them away from the Adriatic (for which reason an
arbitrary line cut through the proposed railway which was to link Pe['c]
to Podgorica and the sea) and to compel the Serbs to station in those
districts a goodly portion of their army, to which end--so that the
frontier should be weak--the towns of Djakovica and Prizren were
separated from their hinterland. The Austrian plan likewise prevented
the towns of Struga and Prizren from being joined by a road or by a
railway along the Drin; to go from one to the other it became necessary
to make an enormous detour. With the rectifications to which we have
referred, the Ambassadors' Conference decided to insist on them
returning to this miserable line, instead of permitting them to take up
their position where General Franchet d'Esperey perceived in 1918 that
they could be fairly comfortable. Monsieur Albert Mousset, the shrewd
Balkan expert of the _Journal des Debats_, has remarked that on too many
parts of the 1913 frontier it is as if one forced an honest man to sleep
with his door open among a horde of bandits.... The Albanian Government,
admitted to the League of Nations in December 1920, claimed that the
international statute of 1913, creating a German prince, the Dutch
_gendarmerie_ and the International Financial Commission--which happened
to be inconvenient--was no longer in force; but that the international
decisions as to the frontiers of Albania--which happened to be
convenient--were still valid. However, during the War the country had
been plunged in anarchy, and the Great Powers decided that Albania was,
in Mr. Temperley's words, a _tabula rasa_, a piece of white paper on
which they could write what they wished. In November 1921 the
Ambassadors' Conference finally decided on the frontiers. The gravest
violation of the ethnic principle was in the Argyrocastro area, where
many thousands of Greeks and Grecophils were handed over to Albania; as
for the Serbs, it was only through the efforts of some British experts
that they obtained any satisfaction at all.
Why did the Ambassadors' Conference arrive at this peculiar decision?
For a long time the European Press had been publishing telegrams which
told how the Serbs were ruthlessly invading Albania. Had they advanced
about half the number of miles with which they were credited, they would
have found themselves near to the offices of those Italian Press
agencies. They were held up to vituperation for their conduct towards a
feeble neighbour. The Mirditi, we were told, had to fly before them;
whereas the truth was that the friendly Mirditi were driving the troops
of Tirana helter-skelter towards the Black Drin, where the Serbs--not
advancing an inch from the boundary which the Allies had for the time
being assigned to them--received their prisoners. Again we were told
that the piratical Serbs had seized the town of Alessio. It must have
annoyed the Mirditi to have this exploit of theirs ascribed to other
people. And if the newspapers contained too many telegrams of this kind
they were strangely reticent with regard to what was taking place in the
shallow Albanian harbours; but the two Italian vessels which--as I
mentioned in a telegram to the _Observer_--were unloading, without the
least concealment, munitions and rifles for the dear Albanians at San
Giovanni di Medua in September 1920, were probably not the only ones
with such a cargo. Europe and the Ambassadors' Conference were simply
told that the truculent Serbs were destroying a poor, defenceless,
pastoral nation. Therefore these Serbs must be ordered back, and
whatever might be the merits of a hostile Austrian frontier as compared
with a well-informed French one, at any rate the first of these was
farther back, so let the Serbs be ordered thither.
It was noticeable that when, on November 17, the British Minister of
Education, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher (representing Mr. Lloyd George),
explained before the Council of the League of Nations why Great Britain
had thought it necessary to act in this Serbo-Albanian affair, he
founded his case not on Article 16 but on Article 12, which obliges two
conflicting nations who are members of the League to have their case
examined by the League. Evidently the suggested application of Article
16 was now acknowledged to have been a mistake. The blundering official
in Whitehall should have seen the dignified sorrow with which Yugoslavia
heard of her great Ally's unjustifiable procedure. So much faith have
the Southern Slavs always had in the Entente's sense of justice that
from 1914 to 1918 they continued to give their all, without making any
agreement or stipulation; more than once the Serbian Government had the
offer of terms from the Central Powers, but on each occasion, as for
example during the dark days at Ni[vs] in 1915, they declined to betray
their Allies.
Mr. Fisher announced that the British Government's action was in no way
caused by feelings of hostility against the Southern Slavs. All
Englishmen, in fact, remembered the heroism and fortitude of the Serbs;
they cherished for Yugoslavia the warmest sympathy. In Mr. Fisher's own
case it might conceivably have been a little warmer--he was not ashamed
to repeat the reasons which had induced Great Britain to summon the
Council of the League. Yet he must have known the comment that he would
arouse among his audience when they heard him base his arguments
exclusively upon reports of the Tirana Government, while those of
Belgrade were ignored; and in their place the delegate thought fit to
bring up various extracts which had been collected from the Belgrade
Press. If every organ of this Press were filled with a permanent sense
of high responsibility, and if Mr. Fisher had made inquiries as to the
existence in Belgrade of humorous and ironic writers, one is still
rather at a loss to understand why these miscellaneous cuttings were
placed before the League, which could scarcely be expected to treat them
as evidence. The delegate added that he did not think a single nation
was animated by unfriendly sentiments towards the Southern Slavs--so
that Italy's unflagging efforts to strengthen the Tirana Government's
army were prompted purely by the deep love which the Italians--despite
their having been flung out of Valona--bear for the Shqyptart. Mr.
Fisher proceeded to say that no better proof was needed of the general
friendship for the Southern Slavs than the decision of the Ambassadors'
Conference which, instead of allotting to Albania the frontiers of 1913,
a method that would have been simpler, had resolved on several
rectifications in favour of Yugoslavia, in order to prevent disturbances
on Albania's northern frontier. After what Mr. Fisher had already had
the heart to say we cannot really be astonished that he, or the people
on behalf of whom he spoke, should have thought the enemy-drawn frontier
of 1913 as worthy of the slightest consideration. We are all, I think,
unanimous, said Mr. Fisher in effect, we are unanimous in our esteem for
the Yugoslavs and could do nothing which that nation would find hard to
bear. But after stating that some rectifications had been made in favour
of Yugoslavia he should have referred to the village of Lin on Lake
Ochrida whose transference to the Albanians will probably give rise to a
great deal of trouble, since it is the most important centre for the
fishing industry. A few of the best Belgrade papers, careless of the
more than Governmental authority which they enjoyed in the eyes of Mr.
Fisher, went so far as to allege that Lin's change of sovereignty was
due to the formation on Lake Ochrida of a British fishing company.... We
have said that the frontier rectifications were inadequate; but under
the circumstances they were the best that could be obtained. They were
most bitterly contested by the Italians, who demanded, as we have said
above, that Yugoslavia should be given the 1913 frontier. France did
nothing to help the Yugoslavs in this hour of need, and had it not been
for the absolutely determined support of Great Britain the pernicious
frontier of 1913 would have been adopted intact.
Coming to the Mirdite revolt, Mr. Fisher's description is hardly what
you would call felicitous. Mark Djoni and the other members of the
Mirdite Government were compelled last July to seek refuge at Prizren in
Yugoslavia, and since then they have conducted their affairs from that
place. These circumstances, in Mr. Fisher's opinion, go to prove the
existence of a Yugoslav plot whose aim it is to separate northern
Albania from the Tirana Government. Again Mr. Fisher points an accusing
finger at the Yugoslav officers who, in August, were helping the
Mirditi; but is it not more natural that these officers should give
their services to the Christian tribes for whom, as Mr. Bo[vs]kovi['c],
the chief Yugoslav delegate, said, the Southern Slavs do not conceal
their sympathy[102] nor the hope that they will gain the necessary
autonomy--is not this more natural and more deserving of Mr. Fisher's
approbation than the fact (of which he says no word) that the Moslem
Government of Tirana has had the active assistance of Italian officers,
such, for example, as Captain Guisardi, who, in the sector of Kljesh,
has been in command of the artillery? A further proof that the Mirdite
movement has been engineered by the Southern Slavs is, in Mr. Fisher's
opinion, the damning fact that the Republic's Proclamation was composed
in Yugoslavia and dated there--how brazen some people are! And the
official Yugoslav Press Bureau has actually circulated the announcements
of the Mirdite Republic. The question is whether the Yugoslav Government
was more than benevolently neutral in thus assisting their guests at a
time when these had not yet got their machinery into working order. When
the Mirdite Government had made suitable arrangements it spoke to the
world through its representatives at Geneva or through direct
communications to the British and French Press. Surely, in considering
whether the Yugoslav Government allowed themselves to exceed the limits
of neutrality, one must remember that the Mirdite authorities at Prizren
were out of all touch with their own army, which was engaged in a
guerilla warfare. In conclusion, according to Mr. Fisher, the British
Foreign Office was persuaded that the Mirdite Republic was nothing but
an instrument of the Yugoslav Government, and that desire for Albanian
unity extended also to the Christians of that country. The Foreign
Office had, no doubt, been told that the Tirana Government received the
support, at last spring's elections, of some north Albanian deputies;
and possibly they gave no credence to the rumour that these gentlemen
were much indebted to Italian support. It may have been mere harmless
curiosity which kept Captain Pericone, the Italian commander, during all
that day at the Scutari polling-booths, but what is certain is that,
owing to the influx of Italian money, the value of a hundred silver
crowns in the morning was 92 lire, and in the afternoon had fallen to
75. It is likewise a fact that numerous Malissori, finding themselves
for the first time in possession of bundles of paper and feeling far
from confident that this was money, hurried off to the bazaar and spent
it all. Thus were the four friends of the Moslem-Italian[103] Government
elected, the four deputies who were in favour of Albanian unity under
that Government; three of them are Christians (Messrs. Fichta, Andreas
Miedia and Luigi Gurakuqi); one, Riza Dani, is a Moslem. How the latter
travelled to Tirana I do not know, but the three Christians found that
the population was so incensed against them that they could not go by
the direct road; they were forced to sail down the Bojana on the Italian
ship _Mafalda_, and then along the coast. This, I presume, will be
considered sufficiently strong evidence that these deputies did not
represent the people, and that their independence was not exactly of the
sort ascribed to Gurakuqi by a writer in the _Times_;[104] one need not
labour the point by mentioning what happened to Father Vincent Prennushi
whose candidature was vetoed in Rome, so that he was replaced by Father
Fichta.
This being the state of things one can scarcely argue that the people of
the north are in favour of a united Albania, as it seemeth good to the
Ambassadors' Conference, the League of Nations, etc. "We Germans,
knowing Germany and France," said Treitschke in 1871, "know what is good
for the Alsatians better than these unfortunates themselves.... Against
their will we wish to restore them to themselves." The north Albanian
deputies may join with those of the south and call themselves the group
of "sacred union"; but they themselves are well aware that it is only in
the south-central districts that the Government has a majority. That is
one of the reasons why the seat of Government is Tirana in the central
part of the country, for the Cabinet lives in apprehension of the
followers of the late Essad Pasha, and by residing in that country they
hope to be able to keep it quiet. How long will they be able to do so?
Have they statesmanship enough to turn aside the animosity of their own
countrymen? Does their Premier and Foreign Minister, Mr. Pandeli
Evangheli, possess intellectual resources of a higher order than those
which one commonly associates with the ownership of a small
wine-shop?--that was his occupation till he came, some two years ago,
from Bucharest. When this gentleman had a, perhaps temporary, fall from
power, the _Times_ of December 16, 1921, wrote of him that "there is no
Albanian public man with a better record for long disinterested service
in his country's cause." Alas, poor Albania! We may surmise that Mr.
Evangheli and his companions do not rely very greatly on their Western
European patrons who, when it comes to the pinch, will do very little
for them. I should be surprised to hear that they have caused the
provisions of the Ambassadors' Conference to be traced in golden letters
on a wall of their council chamber. And I doubt whether they take very
great stock of a resolution signed in November 1921, by some twenty
Members of Parliament and a few outside persons. These expressed their
approval of Mr. Lloyd George's step in convoking the League of Nations
for the settlement of the Serbo-Albanian question. If this resolution
served no other purpose it showed, at any rate, that the signatories are
such thoroughgoing friends of the Tirana Government that they rushed
enthusiastically to their assistance, though their deep knowledge of
affairs--without which, of course, they would never have signed--must
have caused them to regard the Prime Minister's impulsive action with
something more than misgiving. It is a minor point that the signatories
sought to enlist the world's sympathy on the ground that a small
"neutral State" had been wantonly attacked by the Serbs, because if this
accusation were true it would not be worth objecting that the Albanians
were scarcely a State (though some of them were trying to make one) and
that their neutrality during the War consisted in the fact that they
were to be found both in the armies of the Entente and--rather more of
them, I believe--in those of Austria. But the accusation is untrue;
there are, undoubtedly, a number of fire-eaters in Serbia, as everywhere
else, yet the Government is not so childish as to wish to squander its
resources in a region where there is so little to be gained. (The Tirana
correspondent of _The Near East_ said on November 3, 1921, that the
Serbian Government was reported to be committing unwarrantable acts,
giving as an example that Commandant Martinovi['c] had had six million
dinars placed at his disposal in order to recruit komitadjis and that he
had himself promised 2500 dinars to each of his men if they succeeded in
entering Scutari. But this gentleman, a retired officer, lives almost
exclusively at Novi Sad, where his very beautiful daughter is married to
M. Dunjarski, one of the wealthiest men in Yugoslavia. Yet neither his
son-in-law nor the Serbian Government has ever given General
Martinovi['c] the afore-mentioned sum or any sum at all for the
afore-mentioned purpose. He goes at rare intervals to his old home in
Montenegro, of which country he was once Prime Minister. It is natural
that the numerous refugees from Albania should flock round him--in view
of his own past prominence and of M. Dunjarski--begging for money and
food.) The protesting British Members of Parliament registered their
sorrow that the Serbs should have employed on their anti-Albanian
enterprise "the strength and riches which they largely owed to the
Allied and Associated Powers." I was under the impression that the Serbs
had expended a far greater proportion of their strength and riches than
any of the Allies,[105] that the Allies had, in 1915, left them in the
lurch, and that the final success on the Macedonian front was due quite
considerably to the genius of Marshal Mi[vs]i['c] and the valour of his
veterans. As for the strength and riches which the Southern Slavs
possessed in 1921, it surely would not need an expert to perceive what
the Southern Slav children knew very well, namely, that they could be
more profitably employed in many other directions. May better luck
attend the future labours of these Members of Parliament.... A week or
so before the publication of this foolish manifesto there had been
issued an equally deplorable Memorandum by the Balkan Committee (of
London), which, I am glad to say, caused Dr. Seton-Watson to resign from
that body. This jejune and impudent Memorandum attempted to dictate the
terms of the Constitution of the Triune Kingdom--an attempt very rightly
reprobated by _The Near East_.[106] If the Yugoslav Government were to
adopt the recommendations of the Balkan Committee they would, it seems,
be in a fair way to solve the Albanian question. Likewise that of
Macedonia--when will the Committee cease to trouble Macedonia? Their
object, in the words of Mr. Noel Buxton, is to aim at allaying the
unrest in the Balkans; it would--I say it in all kindliness--be a move
in that direction if the other members were to follow Dr. Seton-Watson's
example.