Part 17

Yes, we saw numbers of men tramping up to Scutari, from boys to septuagenarians. They were going to fight--it pleased them enormously. But if the Tirana Government had ordered them to go back and work on their fields, if it had asked them to take some precautions against the ravages of syphilis, if it had expressed the hope that they would no longer sell their women for an old Martini, or that the village prefects would pay some regard to sanitary matters--in the whole of Albania, says Siebertz, there is only one W.C.--then they would have laughed at this Government which tried to lay a hand on their ancestral liberties.

"The end of it all is," said the Monsignor, "we are Albanians. We demand the independence of our country."

"As a Latin," writes Professor Katarani, "I was fire and flame for Albania.... But after a few months I was forced not only to change my views about them, but to regret all that I had written in the Mattino and the Tribuna.... They are not a people, but tribes ... they are against every principle of public officials, they live the most primitive lives. I who know Albania from end to end, who have sacrificed myself for that country, am absolutely convinced that there could be no greater misfortune than if, in its present state, it were given autonomy or independence. Otherwise I confess that an Albania free from any foreign Power would be to the interest of Italy." And he concludes by saying that the Albanians have done nothing to deserve an independent State. It is well known that in the Albanian Societies that after May 1913 were engaged at Constantinople and Sofia, at Rome and Vienna, in striving for the independence of the country it was not the Albanians themselves who had the chief word. Those who were initiated into secret Balkan policies were aware that Albania was the domain with which Article 7 of the old Triple Alliance was concerned.... The fiery Albanian patriot, Basri Bey, Prince of Dukagjin, also agrees that in the beginning an independent Albania would be productive of anarchy. "I greatly regret to acknowledge it," says he, "but Albania is, so to speak, the classic type of a country which has never had a real government." Nevertheless, he is strongly in favour of independence, his reasons being because Albania is "at the same time the old mother and the youngest daughter of the Balkans." This flamboyant prince and doctor and deputy who denounces both Essad Pasha and his nephew Ahmed Beg Mati, has got his own panacea for the country, which is a Turkish army of occupation commanded by a French general. Basri Bey seems to confirm the remarks of his more enlightened co-religionists, Halim Beg Derala and Zena Beg, for whereas the Moslems can claim no more than a rather larger third of the inhabitants, he calmly assumes that the whole country is Moslem. Albania, he says, is now more than ever attached to Turkey, for the attachment is purely moral. ... The influence of this gentleman seems to be confined to Dibra, but he has a good opinion of his own importance. In 1915, in the days of the greatness of Essad Pasha, he set up a Government at Dibra with himself as Prime Minister and Essad Pasha as his Minister of the Interior! There does not seem to be much justification for Basri Bey to call himself a prince. He is a Pomak, for his ancestors were Bulgars who accepted Islam. His father was an official of the Turkish Government at Philippopolis.

Father Fichta told me that his countrymen would do very well indeed if they could import from other parts of Europe financial help, technicians and judges. Some years ago the Turks settled to send two judges to Scutari; then the Albanians would no longer be able to charge them with not administering the law, so that each man was obliged to take it into his own hands. "It is entirely your fault," said the Albanians, "that we are driven to adopt the method of blood-vengeance." So thoroughly did they adopt it that the assassinations in the region of Prizren, Djakovica and Pe['c] amounted, according to Glück, to a total of about six hundred a year. The Turks therefore sent a couple of judges to Scutari, and on the day after their arrival they were murdered.

What memory have the Albanians of their own great men? One sultry afternoon, as we were driving in a mule cart from the quaint town of Alessio, the driver lashed his mule with a long stick; but after half a mile of this, the animal applied a hind-leg sharply to the driver's mouth. He roared and fell back in our arms and bled profusely and was doctored by the fierce gendarme, who put a handful of tobacco on the wound, so that the driver had to keep his mouth shut. For the remainder of the afternoon our mule went at a walking pace, and presently, to while away the time, we begged the gendarme and a merchant of Alessio, who was travelling with us, to repeat the song of some old hero, such as Skanderbeg. They stared--their mouths were also shut. And finally the gendarme said he knew a hero-song. It dealt with Zeph, a man with sheep, and Mark who stole them. "Give me back my sheep," said Zeph. "No, no!" said Mark. "Beware!" said Zeph. And one day, as he hid behind a wall, he fired at Mark and slew him. "That is the song," said the gendarme, "about the hero Zeph."

To whatever state of culture the Albanians may climb, I think it will be generally agreed that some régime other than unaided independence must, in the meantime, be established there. One hears of those who argue that Albania should forthwith be for the Albanians, because they are a gifted and a very ancient people. They are not more gifted than the Basques, and their antiquity is not more wonderful. Nor do they stand on a higher level of culture with respect to their neighbours than do the Basques as compared with theirs. Not many tears are shed by the Basques or by anyone else because those interesting men are all the subjects of France or Spain.

5. A METHOD THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN TRIED IN ALBANIA

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.

6. THE ATTRACTION OF YUGOSLAVIA

But as Europe has not arrived at some such solution, and since the Albanian Government has been prematurely recognized by the Powers, then while the Albanians are engaged in the stormy process of working out their own salvation, it is only fair that Yugoslavia should be given a good defensive frontier. The 1913 frontier is only possible if the Albanians are pacific, but as it has now been thought wise to set up an unaided and independent Albanian State there is nothing more certain than the turmoil of which its borders will be the scene, and this will be so whether the Italians do or do not come to the Albanians' assistance. What hope is there of even a relative tranquillity on the Albanian border when so many of the natives, preferring Yugoslav rule to that of their own countrymen, will be waging a civil war? That this preference is fairly widespread one could see in 1920 by the number of refugees on the Yugoslav side of the frontier. [Of course, a large number of Albanians also fled to Scutari and elsewhere from the districts lately occupied by the Yugoslav army. In both cases the refugees were moved sometimes by hopes for a brighter future, sometimes by fears which were caused by their clouded past. To speak first of those who fled on account of a guilty conscience, it is evident that these were more numerous among the refugees in Albania than among those in Yugoslavia, for it was the Yugoslav authorities and not the Albanian who extended their sway. Mr. Aubrey Herbert, M.P., wrote "that in the North the Yugoslavs had destroyed more than 120 Albanian villages." It would have been interesting if he had given us their names, because the Yugoslavs appear to have set about it so thoroughly that one cannot find anything like that number on the Austrian maps, which are the best pre-war maps for those regions. The Anglo-Albanian Society tells the British public, in November, 1920, of the 30,000 destitute refugees in Albania, and in such a way that the cause of their exodus is ascribed, without more ado, to the terrible Yugoslav. But as the names are known of a good many Albanians who did not wait for the Yugoslav army, on account of past troubles between themselves and Yugoslavs, as also between themselves and other Albanians, it would have been as well if the Anglo-Albanian Society had reminded the public that all who fly in those parts are not angels. It would, on the other hand, be just as rash to sing the undiluted praise of those Albanians who, at odds with the Tirana Government, thought it opportune to leave their native land; but one can safely say, I think, that among these wanderers there was a larger proportion of laudable men....] Yugoslavia attracts the Albanians for more than one reason--not so much because the ancestors of many of these Muhammedan Albanians were, and not so long ago, Christians, as because inclusion in Yugoslavia would be to their economic advantage--Scutari can scarcely exist without the Yugoslav hinterland, while the people of the mountains are longing for that railway which the Yugoslavs will only build over land which is moderately immune from depredation. Other causes which have made so many of the borderland Albanians--to speak only of them--turn their eyes to Yugoslavia are the admiration which any primitive people feels for military prowess and the knowledge of what has taken place in the Prizren-Pe['c]-Djakovica region since it came into possession of the Serbs in 1913. Let us in the first place see what sentiments are now entertained by the Albanian natives of that region towards their rulers. It goes without saying that these sentiments are perfectly well known to those Albanians who live outside the Yugoslav frontier.

Well, at Suva Rieka, near Prizren, for example, I found that all the Muhammedan inhabitants of Serbian origin are aware that they used to celebrate the Serbian national custom of "Slava," still keep up the Serbian Christmas Eve customs and often practise the old Christian nine days' wailing for the dead. Some of us may think that this new pro-Serbian tendency is rather on account of utilitarian reasons; the great thing is that it should exist. With rare exceptions, the people of Suva Rieka used to live by plunder; now they are sending their children to the Serbian school, at any rate the boys, and for the study of religion the authorities have made arrangements with a local Moslem. It is to be regretted that Miss Edith Durham, whose writings were so pleasant in the days before she became a more uncompromising pro-Albanian than most of the Albanian leaders, says that if these children go to Serbian schools it merely shows to what lengths of coercion the Serbs will resort. In 1912-1913 Serbian and Montenegrin officers seem to have told her that severe measures would be employed against any recalcitrant Albanian parent who might decline to send his son to school. Assuming that these officers were not young subalterns, that they were quite sober and that they were not rudely "pulling Miss Durham's leg," it may be urged that even if the children be driven to school at the point of the bayonet, such conduct would compare favourably with that of the Albanians towards the Serbs in Turkish times. Talking of coercion, I suppose that the progress in agricultural methods which one sees around Prizren is only further evidence of Serbian tyranny. The gendarmerie on the country roads is composed largely of Muhammedan Albanians--doubtless the Serbs have coerced them by some horrible threats. And if Miss Durham were to hear that Ramadan (né Stojan) Stefanovi['c] of the village of Musotisti had decided to return to the Orthodox faith to which his brothers George and Ilja had been more faithful than himself--such variegated families are not uncommon--I believe, though I may be doing her an injustice, that her first impulse would be to write to the papers in drastic denunciation of the Serbian authorities. They have, like most of us, sufficient to regret--for example, the person whom they sent to Pe['c], when they wanted the land to be distributed, was King Peter's Master of the Horse. He was thoroughly unsuitable, and caused a great deal of dissatisfaction.

There was a time at the rather gloomy town of Djakovica, when, owing to the blood-vengeance, the Merturi were unable for eight years to enter the place; now they come in, merely to gaze at the Serbian major who is in command. Halim Beg Derala, the aristocratic and wealthy ex-mayor, who as a pastime used to plan an occasional robbery in Turkish days, told me--he speaks a little French, in addition to Albanian, Turkish, Serbian and Greek--that citizens were often unable to leave their houses for two months at a time, and although every house was provisioned for a siege, yet one frequently had to manage without bread. Now the candid-eyed, fair-bearded priest rides out with Ljuba Kujundji['c], the erstwhile leader of komitadji, in order to negotiate with the Albanian Zeph Voglia, at that personage's own request, for his surrender to the Serb authorities. Zeph has written from a forest that he feels uneasy, because he owes sixteen blood-vengeances. He asks that his affairs may be settled by the law, and those sixteen pursuing countrymen of his have signified that this will meet their views, since in the first place the Serbs are disinterested in the matters between them, and, secondly, the Serbian penalties are not so mild as theirs, not permitting that a murder shall be expiated by the payment of a moderate sum or that a guilty party may absent himself for three years and suffer no further loss than the devastation of his house. Another sphere in which the Serbs have gained Albanian sympathies is with regard to the disputed ownership of land. Even as the Moors have been in the habit of handing down, from father to son, the key of some Sevillan house that vanished centuries ago, the Montenegrins, more fortunate, have been appearing with the ancient title-deeds of lands that now are in Albanian possession. According to Serbian law it is the oldest document which prevails. And the Albanians are generously compensated.... Those who, with the highest motives, advocate "Albania for the Albanians," may argue that the mediæval activities of Riza Beg and Bairam Beg Zur--whose adherents started shooting at each other every evening after six o'clock in the refuse-laden streets of Djakovica--would have been concluded and would not have been continued by their sons even if the Serbs had not appeared. Let them, before proclaiming the modern reasonableness of the Albanians, recollect that in 1919 the Moslem Bosniak ex-prisoners required on the average three months in order to traverse central Albania, the country of their co-religionists. From village to village the Bosniaks made their way, earning a little and then being plundered at the next place. Eighty per cent. of this population believe, in their fanaticism, that the Sultan will again unfurl over them his flag and that the world will ultimately be converted to Muhammed. And if, entertaining such ideas, they are so rigorous towards their fellow-Moslems, what prospect is there that this 80 per cent. will assist the Orthodox and Catholic Albanians in building up a State? Their ferocity, in fact, is so profound that it thrives on a diet which is chiefly of milk.... Perhaps a day will come when the Albanian will submit to be ruled by a member of another tribe, when local politics will engage his attention less than the silver, iron, copper, arsenic and water-power of his country. Perhaps the day will come. Midway between Djakovica and the monastery of Deani there stand two large houses side by side. In 1909 a man belonging to one of them slew four men of the other house, and on account of this he fled beyond the Drin, together with thirteen other men of his family. There is no knowing how long these refugees would have stayed away if that part of the country had not come under Serbian rule, but in 1919 negotiations were set on foot which--to the satisfaction of the members of the other house--would enable the thirteen innocent refugees to return, while the criminal would be arrested.

As evidence of the cordiality now prevailing between Albanian and Serb in Yugoslavia, one may mention those cases where the Albanians in 1919 entered into a bond that for six months they would exact no blood-vengeance from their fellow-countrymen; the number of these debts which hitherto had been regarded as debts of honour was very considerable, for they were not only incurred by assassination but could also be in payment of a mere scowl or of your wife, from within the house, having heard the voice of another man raised in song. The Serbian authorities are hoping confidently that the Albanians who have thus for a season placed themselves under the law will be ready in the future to pledge themselves. They are beginning to see that in a place the size of Djakovica it should be possible to make a wheel, that one should be able to find a shop whose contents are worth more than 100 francs, that the breed of their cattle, of their sheep and goats and horses could be vastly improved, that if their land were sanely treated it could be rendered much more fertile, and that their system of fruit cultivation is absurdly primitive.... And with Djakovica and the whole region of Kossovo being treated as we have shown by the Yugoslavs I think it will be almost as great a surprise to the reader as it was to the local population when he learns that in a memorandum of April 26, 1921, the Tirana Government complained to the League of Nations that the Yugoslav civil and military officials were behaving in a very pitiless fashion towards the Albanians. Certainly they have not as yet established Albanian schools, but they propose to do so when there is accommodation and when teachers are available; and then, maybe, to the disgust of Miss Durham, Mr. Herbert, etc., the Albanians of the district will, with an eye to the future, prefer to visit the Yugoslav schools.

7. RELIGIOUS AND OTHER MATTERS IN THE BORDER REGION

Having glanced at what the Serbs have done in such a very short time--most of the years since 1913 being years of war--to win the gratitude of their Albanian fellow-subjects, we shall, in following a possible frontier between Yugoslavia and the Albanians, at any rate believe that many Albanians of those thus coming under Yugoslav rule would regard the change, as well they may, with equanimity. Suppose, then, that the frontier were to run along the watershed at the top of the mountain range to the west of Lake Ochrida. The people living to the east of this line in that district would acknowledge their Serbian origin. Thence passing to the neighbourhood of the village of Lin and from there in a northwesterly direction, so as to include in Yugoslavia the Golo Brdo, the so-called Bald Mountains, whose thirty villages are inhabited by Islamized Serbs who only speak, with very rare exceptions, the Serbian language, one may say that not only would their inclusion in Yugoslavia be beneficial to these people, but that they would accept it with alacrity. No very deep impression has been made upon them by the religion to which, not long ago, they were converted. In the Golo Brdo it was in great measure due to the Greek Church which, about the middle of the nineteenth century, left the region without a single priest, so that children of the age of eight had not been christened, and the people in disgust went over to Islam. Near Ochrida, some of them were asked whether they frequented the mosque.

"Never," they replied.

"What is your religion?"

"Well, it is very strange," they told us, "but we have none."

"What religion did you formerly have?"

"Well, we don't know."

Their priest roams the mountains with his gun, and there has been a tendency, since a man in this position received his salary from the State, for many to persuade the mufti to appoint them, irrespective of whether they could read or write. The devout Moslem is, to the exclusion of everything else, a Moslem; but in these districts, where the faith was assumed in a moment of pique or as a protection, and where the Muhammedan clergy has been so negligent, the people are gladly cultivating their Christian relatives. In the district of Suva Rieka one hears of conversions to Christianity, and the functionaries bring no pressure to bear, unlike the misguided Montenegrin officials who in 1912 rode into Pe['c], the old Patriarchate, and wanted in their delight to have everyone immediately to adopt the Orthodox faith. Now the authorities, with greater wisdom, do not interfere in these matters. They know that Yugoslavia will have no enemy in that house in the village of Brod, between Tetovo and Prizren, where two brothers are living together, of whom one went over to Islam. They know that the Muhammedan Krasnichi of Albania are proclaiming their kinship with the great Montenegrin clan of Vasojevi['c], that the Gashi are calling to the Piperi and the Berishi to the Kui. The new cordiality will be impaired neither by the differences of religion nor by the similarity of costume. The average Albanian of Djakovica would not be any fonder of an Orthodox fellow-citizen if the latter continues to wear the Albanian dress which was generally adopted about a hundred years ago, and the Vasojevi['c] may please themselves as to the wearing of a costume which they once found so useful in the Middle Ages. They happened to be for ten days in the Hoti country for the purpose of wiping out a blood affair, and when they were about to fall into the Hoti's hands they shouted, "What do you want with us? We are Kastrati!" The Kastrati, to whom these Albanian-clad people were led, confirmed the statement, so that the Vasojevi['c] earned for themselves the nickname of Kastratovi['c].

From the Golo Brdo the best frontier would pass north-eastwards to the Black Drin and along that river until it is joined by the White Drin. This is a poor country whose inhabitants are, for the most part, Moslemized Serbs. About a hundred men are now engaged in excavating the very finely decorated Serbian church at Pikopalja on the Drin--much to the edification of the local Moslems. This church of their ancestors was covered in during the Middle Ages in order to conceal it from the Turks. Too often the natives' present occupation is brigandage; but from of old they have had economic relations with Prizren, to which old town of vine-arched, narrow, winding streets and picturesque bazaars these countryfolk have been accustomed to come every week. These Moslems (of whom there are some 100,000 in the department of Prizren, with 13,000 Orthodox and 3000 Catholics) used to detest the Christians on account of their religion, although half of the Moslems could speak nothing but Serbian. The Serbs, it must be admitted, were not always blameless; in the early nineties, for example, they suspended a pig's head outside the mosque. And the amenities of Prizren were complicated by the hostility between Orthodox and Catholic. This was largely due to the fact that, by the intervention of the French Consul after the Crimean War, the Catholics--descendants of Ragusan emigrants of the Middle Ages--had secured the former Orthodox church of St. Demetrius, in which church, by the way, the services had come to be held in Albanian. When the Vatican, in the second half of the nineteenth century, sent a Serbian priest, the congregation had become so thoroughly Albanized that after a year he had to leave. The propaganda of Austria, Italy and Russia did nothing towards persuading the three religions of Prizren to regard each other in a more amicable fashion; while Italy and Austria gave exclusive assistance to the Catholics, whom they found in such distress that, forty years ago, most of them went barefoot, the presence of the Russian Consul was of such importance to the Orthodox that their position at Prizren was better than in their old patriarchal town of Pe['c]. Nowadays, with Austrian and Russian propaganda deleted, there is only that of the Italians, whose proposal to create an independent Albania (under Italian protection) was at first applauded by some simple folk in 1919. The Moslem took to accepting Italian money and then honourably informing the Yugoslav authorities that they had been appointed as agents of Italy; they offered to capture the Franciscan priests with whose help the Italians were trying to secure the Catholics; and as for the cash, it seems mostly to have been spent in a convivial fashion by the Moslems and the Serbs together. This friendship appears likely to continue, for the Serbian authorities, so far from countenancing such pranks as that of the pig's head, do not even propose to reconsecrate their ancient church of Petka. When this building was made into a mosque, the Moslem still permitted the Christian women to come and pray there, while if a Christian man was sick they let him leave a jar of water in the mosque all night, so that it might acquire certain medicinal properties. It is the intention of the Serbs not to restore the church to Christian worship, but to turn it into a museum.

With the frontier then being drawn along the Drin, towards the Adriatic, the famous villages of Plav and Gusinje would definitely pass to Yugoslavia, in accordance with the wishes of a deputation sent by them to Belgrade in 1919. The well-meaning British champions of Gusinje, who maintain that this village is furiously antagonistic to the Slav and is ready to struggle to the uttermost rather than be incorporated in a Slav kingdom, these champions do not, I think, draw a sufficient distinction between Montenegro and Yugoslavia. Plav, with its mostly Christian population, and Gusinje, where the Moslem preponderates, refused at the time of the Berlin Congress to be given to Montenegro, with which they had certain local quarrels. Nicholas reported to the Powers which had awarded him these places that they were obdurate, for which reason he was given in their stead a much-desired strip of coast, down to Dulcigno, and nothing could have suited that astute monarch better. Nikita--to call him by his familiar name--imagined that the two villages would eventually fall to Montenegro, because of the formidable mountains which divide them from the rest of Albania; the road from Gusinje to Scutari is very long and very arduous. When Montenegro succeeded in capturing Plav in 1912, a certain Muhammedan priest of that place joined the Orthodox Church and was appointed a major in the Montenegrin army. He acted as the president of a court-martial, and in that capacity is reputed to have hanged or shot, some say, as many as five hundred of his former parishioners, because they declined to be baptized. He told them that their ancestors were all Serbs, and that therefore they should follow his example. Since the Montenegrins did not restrain this over-zealous man, the villagers were naturally not in favour of that country. Montenegro had a very small number of good officials, owing to Nikita's peculiar management which, in considering his favourites, did not regard illiteracy as a bar to the highest administrative or judicial post.... The people of Plav and Gusinje have, on the other hand, no hostility against Serbia. In November 1918 a detachment of thirty Serbs was stationed at Gusinje, what time certain Italian agents put it into the shallow minds of some Albanians that Albania desired to be independent under Italian protection. Nothing happened when a Serbian force came from Mitrovica, except that these agents and a few of their tools--be it noted that perhaps half the population is ignorant of the Albanian language--withdrew to the Rugovo district, where they tried to induce the people to fly with them, so that the world would hear how iniquitously the Serbs had acted. Those of Rugovo refused to accompany them; in consequence of which there was a fight, some houses were burned, some women and cattle were seized. And afterwards the men of Rugovo repaired to Gusinje and exacted a vengeance which, the most Serbophobe person will admit, had nothing to do with the Serbs. The luckless village of Gusinje was again laid waste in 1919 by the Montenegrins, but this came to pass as the result of the Montenegrin clan of Vasojevi['c] having their property ravaged by some Albanian marauders who were prompted by the same Great Power. The Vasojevi['c] believed that this evil deed was done by the men of Gusinje, so that they destroyed their houses. When the facts were explained to them, the Vasojevi['c] said that they were prepared to rebuild the village. And now Plav and Gusinje, who ask for Serbian and not Montenegrin officials, recognize that it is impossible for them to live except in union with Yugoslavia.... Miss Durham's wrath concerning an affair which happened during 1919 in this region shows to what lengths a partisan will go. She complained with great bitterness that the Serbs had actually arrested a British officer whose purpose it was to make investigations.

The Serbs are human beings and are not immune from error; and Miss Durham is so determined to expose them that if all her charges were dealt with from Belgrade it would necessitate the appointment of one or two more officials. But in this particular case she is not the sole accuser. A Captain Willett Cunnington--who, according to the President of the Anglo-Albanian Society, the Hon. Aubrey Herbert, M.P., has several years' intimate experience of Albania--said in the New Statesman that in consequence of what occurred to Captain Brodie the Serbian Government was compelled to apologize abjectly. Now I happen to be very well acquainted with the stalwart Pounia Rai['c], the Montenegrin who arrested Brodie. Albanians have told me that Pounia's knowledge of the north and north-west of their country is not a matter of villages but of houses. And he has always observed the customs which prevail in those houses, so that when he is known to be approaching, the people who live at a distance of many hours will come to meet him, whether for the pure delight of discharging their firearms to his greater glory or for the purpose of seeking his advice. It is not because he has studied jurisprudence in Paris that they respect him in that bitter region, but because he does not disregard the laws that govern the wild hearts on both sides of the frontier. Yet I suppose Captain Brodie had never heard of him--poor Captain Brodie! unconscious of the great good luck which had brought him into the presence of this man who could have made his journey much more pleasant for himself and vastly more profitable for his superiors.

This is what Pounia Rai['c] told me:

"At the end of January and the beginning of February 1919, we were having a certain amount of trouble in the Gusinje and Plav district, where I was acting as delegate of the Belgrade Government. Travellers were being murdered, telephone wires were being cut, and so forth. In those parts, which I have known for so many years, it is a good deal easier to ascertain a criminal's name than to seize him, and I had not captured these malefactors when one day I had a message to say that a European Commission was approaching. Later on I was told that thirty-nine of its members were Albanians. I ordered my lieutenant to find out whether they were from our territory, in which case they were to be disarmed and brought to me; or from Albania, in which event they were to be received politely. A quarter of an hour after this I was told that they were all well-known brigands from our State, and there was one specially notorious person, Djer Doucha, who in 1912 was converted to Christianity and was made a gendarme at the court of King Nicholas; in 1915, after the Austrian invasion, he was reconverted to Islam and became a sergeant of gendarmerie. In that position he killed fifty or sixty Serbs and Montenegrins, to say nothing of his other acts of violence. In 1918, for instance, he murdered seven school-children whom he met on the road.

"I had some urgent business at Plav," continued Rai['c], "and there all these people were brought before me. In addition to the thirty-nine Albanians there were three men in British uniforms. I was acquainted with one of them, a certain Perola, a Catholic of Pe['c], a former Austrian agent who had committed many crimes against the Serbs and had lately escaped from the prison at Pe['c]. One of the other two said that he was Captain Brodie, whom the London Government had sent as their delegate for Albania and Montenegro. I suppose the third man was his British orderly; I never heard him speak. But Brodie said many things. One of them (which was quite true) was that his Government had not yet recognized the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He demanded the instant release of his companions. 'Do you know who they are?' said I. 'That is no concern of yours,' said he. 'Well,' said I, 'they are criminals, and it is for the judges to say whether or not they are to be liberated.' 'I protest,' he exclaimed, 'in the name of England, against their arrest!' 'And I thank you,' said I, 'in the name of the Serbian police, for having brought them here.' 'You are a savage, a barbarous nation!' said he, 'and you don't deserve to be free and independent.' 'Sir,' said I, 'if you are an Englishman you should know that we are your allies, that you and we have shed our blood for the common cause. We love England very much, and I am very surprised to hear a British officer speak in this way.' Again he demanded to be set free, he and all his people, so that he could continue his mission; but I told him that after what I had heard from him and what I had seen of his escort, I could not permit him to go on to other villages unless he could show me an authorization from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Belgrade. 'I do not recognize the Belgrade Government,' said he. 'Whom, then,' I asked, 'do you regard as the legitimate ruler of this country?' 'King Nicholas,' said he, 'and the Government of Montenegro.' So I advised him to get a visa from King Nicholas and to come back to perform his mission, when that visa would be honoured. 'Anyhow,' said he, 'the people of these parts are against Serbia.' Thereupon I sent for the chief men and told them to say quite candidly in front of this Englishman what they wanted. There were five Moslems, including Islam and Abdi Beg Rejepagi['c] (the leading family) and Ismael Omeragi['c], also two Christians, of whom I remember Stania Turkovi['c]. 'Long live Serbia!' they shouted. 'Death to Nicholas and the Albanians!' On hearing this Captain Brodie was discontented; he told me that I was a savage and did not know how to esteem an Englishman. 'I esteem you very much,' said I, 'and because he is wearing a British uniform I won't arrest this interpreter of yours.' (By the way, Perola was not acting as interpreter in our conversation, as the captain and I were talking French.) 'He used to be an Austrian agent,' said I. 'You are a liar!' cried Brodie; 'I know this man; he was nothing of the sort.' I remained calm, but I told him that he must not speak to me again in such a way. I asked him how long he had known Perola, who had got away from our prison a month ago. 'I have known him for a month,' said Brodie. 'And now,' said I, 'will you please show me your documents?' 'I have none,' said he, 'and I do not require any, as I am a British officer.' 'But I have read in the papers,' said I, 'that your people arrested and shot several persons who were wearing the uniform of a British officer. If you have no documents to prove that you are not a spy and that you are a British officer I shall have to arrest you.' Then he showed me one with some Italian words on it, I think a permission to go somewhere on the Piave front. 'From now,' said I, 'you are arrested; no one can come to you and you cannot leave this house. Prepare yourself to start to-morrow or the day after, if you are tired, for Pe['c], and perhaps Skoplje, so that you may prove your identity.' He protested, and declared that he must see the people in the neighbouring villages. 'If you are a real Englishman,' said I, 'I could not allow you to go by yourself, since there are many Moslems in these parts who have been excited against England by their hodjas, owing to your war with Turkey. They might kill you, and I would be held responsible; so that even if you had the necessary documents I could only let you go if precautions were taken to guard you. I am sorry,' said I, 'that you should have spoken as you have done against the Serbs; in fact, it seems to me that you are doing a disservice to England, and that here in this village I am serving her more truly.' 'I decline to go to Pe['c],' said Brodie; 'I want to go to Scutari.' 'You must go to Pe['c],' said I. He said that I could telephone concerning him either to the Belgrade Government or to the General at Cetinje. 'Unfortunately,' said I, 'it is these people who are with you who cut the telephone wires two days ago.' After this I appointed a guard for him. I gave him my room, with soldiers to serve him, to keep the room warm and bring him whatever food we had. [Observe that the above-mentioned Captain Willett Cunnington wrote in the New Statesman that Brodie was treated with "gross indignity."] 'Three horses were got ready,' said Rai['c] in conclusion, 'and on these they rode to Pe['c], accompanied by a guard, both to prevent them from escaping and from coming to harm.'"

In its old Albanian days the village of Gusinje was perhaps the most inaccessible spot in Europe--it was rarely possible for anyone to obtain permission to approach it. Even to Miss Durham, friend of the Albanians, this people sent a decided refusal. But now, under the guidance of the Yugoslav authorities, they have abandoned these boorish ways; Miss Durham could go there at any time, but maybe the village no longer attracts her.