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Albania and Greece

In the New Europe of 17 October Signor Salvemini asks us to resume a discussion 
on Albania, which was begun in our issue of 22 August. As he well remarks, the 
New Europe and the Unita are in agreement on fundamentals. We have good 
cause here in England to recognize the high ideals and the sincerity of our Italian
contemporary. It is with peculiar pleasure that we take up Signor Salvemini's 
challenge, and explain why some of us do not see eye to eye with our Italian 
friends on the question of Southern Albania.

Let us clear away, to begin with, some points of agreement. We, too, believe in
the creation of an independent Albania, and that its development should be 
unhampered by its Balkan neighbors. We realize that to ensure this it may be 
necessary that for some considerable time help and guidance should be given
from outside. The Albanians of the north and center are far behind their neighbors
in the stage of civilization that they have reached. They will inevitably come into 
collision with them if they are not restrained. It will take generations for them to 
pass from blood feud and tribal jealousy to the good order of a unified state, 
unless they have the tutorage in the art of self-government. Neither Yugoslavia 
nor Greece would be the best trustee for the young Albania. Their best men will 
be fully engaged in organizing their own extended territories. The fact that they 
adjoin the new State, and that frontier incidents will be bound to occur, would 
make it difficult for them to take a sufficiently detached point of view. Italy is 
neither too near nor too far. It should have good administrators and to spare for
the purpose. It has experience on Albanian settlements within its own boundaries,
and has a traditional sympathy for Albanian nationalism.

The only friend caveat we enter is, that if such a protectorate is to be a strength
to Italy, and not a source of trouble and friction, she must never forget that she
is acting as a trustee, and that Albania will one day come of age. The Albanians
are a restless, headstrong, and turbulent people, and these qualities, though they
will be fined down by civilization and take new shape and form, will not disappear.
Indeed, their existence at the present stage is our guarantee that Albania is worth
preserving and developing as a virile and vigorous national unit. The Albanians 
will not be kept long in leading strings, and if Italy is to find a wise analogy for 
her protectorate, she must look to our actions in the Ionian Islands rather than 
to our actions in Egypt. If Italy desires any part of Albania, such as Valona, 
permanently, for strategic reasons, it would be far sounder to say so from the 
outset than, for the sake of Valona, to maintain her protectorate over Albania 
a day longer than Albania desires it.

So far we are not far from the standpoint of Unita. Where we apparently differ
is in the limits that we set to Albania on the south, and our conception of the 
relations between Albanians and Greeks. We gather that the Unita takes much
from the same position on these questions as certain English friends of Albania, 
such as Miss Edith Durham, and Mr. Aubrey Herbert. They are possessed with
the vision of an Imperialistic Greece, seeking to extend her sway over reluctant 
Albania. We believe that this way of presenting the problem places it in a totally 
false perspective. We conceive of it in this way.

The Greek race, like the English race, is of mixed descent. From the days of the 
Roman Empire onwards there have been repeated and extensive settlements of 
northern invaders in Central Greece and the Peloponesus. Fallmerayer, the German
ethnologist, attempted, about a century ago, to use this fact to discredit the claims
of Modern Greece to be the heir of Ancient Greece. The attempt has failed. 
Hellenism has been strong enough to assimilate alien elements, and historians are
now agreed that the continuity of language, religion, customs, temperamental 
and (to a large extend) even physical characteristics, has been as marked as 
if the Aegean had seen no migration of people since the days of Alexander the
Great. The controversy, however, left behind it a certain unwillingness on the
part of the Greek world to dwell on the historical facts that gave rise to it. 
We have even heard of eminent Athenian anthropologists who have been
reluctant to compare ancient with modern sculls because of the differences
of type they might disclose!

This ostrich - like method of apologetics contributed to the obscuring of the 
Albanian question. It consisted in ignoring or denying the antecedents of anyone
who had called himself a Greek. It is as if the United States, in its suspicion 
of hyphenated Americans, disowned its gift of assimilation. But such an attitude
is remote from the frankness and, we may add the farsightedness of the Venizelist 
regime. Pre - Venizelist Greece met the Albanian claims to North Epirus by quoting
the Hellenic sentiments of Epirotes as proof that racially they could not be
Albanians. Venizelist Greece quotes them as a proof that race and language
taken by themselves are no test of political allegiance. We may adapt the 
epigram of the philosopher who, when asked whether he denied the divinity
of Christ, replied that he denied the divinity of no man. If we are asked 
whether we deny the Albanism of Koritza, we might reply that we deny 
the Albanism of no Greek.

Such a paradox is not far from the truth. It is not a matter of old Albanian 
settlements that have lost their language. There are whole districts as far
south as Boeotia and Attica, where the peasants are bi-lingual. The present 
writer has conducted excavations near Thebes with a gang of local workmen
every man of whom talked Albanian as well as Greek. The characteristic 
Greek national costume is Albanian. The uniform of the Evzones, or Highland
Regiments, is Albanian. The war of Independence was largely fought by 
Albanians. Not only is this true of the Clefts of the mountain district, but the
seamen of Hydra and Spetsae. No wonder that the Albanians of Epirus, 
proud from time immemorial of their orthodoxy religion and their Hellenic 
culture, find themselves at home in the kingdom of Greece, and they are 
welcomed there, not as aliens but as natives. We have often heard of the 
schools and fine buildings founded at Athens by North Epirotes, and that 
it was one of them, Averoff, who gave Greece Navy its most modern cruisers.
It is less widely known that the commanders of the Greek Army and Greek 
Fleet in the Balkan wars, General Danglis and Admiral Condouriotis, are
both Albanian by blood. They formed, with Venizelos, the Triumvirate 
who raised the standard of revolt at Salonica in 1916 and saved the honor
of Greece. Mr. Repoulis, Venizelos’s right hand in the present Cabinet, 
is an Albanian and speaks Albanian when in his own home.

There is no question, then, of an alien Greece seeking to conquer and annex.
The problem is whether the Albanians of North Epirus wish to throw in their 
lot with a partly Albanian and wholly sympathetic Greece or with a predominantly 
Moslem and mainly uncivilized Albania? Which do they prefer, race and language
or culture and religion?

To such a question there can be no a’ priori ready - made answer. The analogy 
of the Yugoslavs, which is fresh in our minds, would make us expect that race and
language would outweigh all else. But what of Celtic Wales? Wales prefer imposing 
Prime Ministers on its neighbors to creating a State of their own. What, too, of the 
Britons or the Gaels of Scotland? If Wales, Gaelic Scotland, and Brittany were 
faced with an independent Gaelic - speaking Ireland and asked to join it, is it 
conceivable that they would choose to leave Great Britain and France? Race, 
language, religion, culture, economics, geography, oppression, sympathy, all 
help to determine the nationality of a given group of people, but no one can tell 
which of them will be the decisive factors at any given moment except by asking 
the people themselves what their national sentiment is.

True, our friends of Unita may say, but obvious. Obvious, we should reply, 
in general, but not as applied to this particular case. The trouble is that language 
and race has been taken for North Epirus as the sole criteria. Once admit that 
they are not and we are half way to the solution of our problem.

What, then, are the national sentiments of the North Epirotes? Before the war
the population consisted of 101,000 Moslems and 122,000 Christians. Most of
the Moslems would prefer to belong to a predominantly Moslem State. They 
would acquiesce in a union with Greece, but only a few would welcome it. The 
Moslems, however, are in a minority, and would be in a still great minority if the
risings against the Turk of 1854, 1866, and 1877 had not been followed by 
persecutions which drove tens of thousands of Christian Epirotes to emigrate, 
and not a few to find an easier escape by embracing Islam.

Taking the pre - war population as we find it, the question is whether enough 
Christian Epirotes share the Moslem view to turn a minority into a majority. 
That there are Christians deeply attached to the Albanian nationalist idea we 
should be the lasts to deny. We see reason, however, to believe that they do
not form a consistent proportion of the Christian population. We believe, too, 
that they are faced, not by an inert body of opinion, which such ideas have not 
yet reached, but may soon to reach, but by an active mass of Greek sympathizers, 
who have consciously rejected the Albanian idea, and are every whit as convinced 
and enthusiastic in their national sentiments as are their opponents.

This is the conclusion we draw from the events of 1913 and 1914, which we 
followed at the time with some attention. We have no wish to press the apparent
unanimity of the country when the Greek army was in actual occupation in 1913.
Long experience of Turkish rule inspires caution, and it may be that some of the
children who waved Greek flags before Colonel Murray at Koritza had their tongues
in their cheeks. But if we cannot press acquiescence we can all the more surely argue
from revolt. There is no doubt whatever that the armed rebellion against union with 
Albania set on foot after the Greek Army had evacuated the country in the spring
of 1914 was a genuine local movement. The provisional government was backed 
so strongly by the population the Albanians of the center and north, reinforced as 
they were by the well - drilled Dutch Gendarmerie, could make no way against it,
and, after a fierce fighting, had to leave it in possession of practically all the territory 
it claimed. The support that the "Sacred Legions," as they were called, received from 
disbanded Greek regulars was negligible, and considerably less than that which came 
to their opponents from Turkish and other sources. Venizelos, so far from encouraging 
the movement, carried his respect for the decision of the Powers so far as to risk his 
popularity. Mr. Zographos was quite serious when he said to a correspondent
(Daily Chronicle, 11 March 1914) 
"the Greek Government had striven by every means to throw obstacles in the way 
of the emancipation of Epirus."

 In 1913 the Greek ecclesiastical and political authorities had not yet grasped the 
significance of the language question. Even then, when the Albanian - speaking 
Christians had a reasonable grievance, Hellenic feeling was dominant and enthusiastic.
What may we now expect when Venizelos has inaugurated a more liberal policy? 
One of his most recent acts has been to insist on the teaching of the Albanian language
in the Greek schools of Koritza. As the Greek schools contain about ten as many 
pupils as the Albanian, the concession is not a small one.

That is our reading of the facts, but our friends of the Unita will agree with us that it 
must be put to the test. What are the conditions for a decisive plebiscite? They appear 
to us to be three:

     1 - The disputed zone must vote as a separate unit

     2 - The Voting must be organized by a disinterested Power, such as Britain,
           France, or America and all the Greek and Italian troops and officials must 
           evacuate the country for the time.

     3 - The register of voters must be based on the pre - war population.

It is believed in Greece that in the Italian sphere of occupation all Greek schools have
been closed; that thousands of Epirotes are refuges in Greece and not a few prisoners 
in Italy; and that Mussulmans have been brought down from Berat and Avlona to take
their places and their lands. Can these statements be true? Our friends of the Unita will 
do a real service if they investigate them.

                                                                                    RONALD M. BURROWS

The Principal's House
King's College, 
London

Shenim: Ky material eshte marre ne:

U.S. Library of Congress

Washington DC USA
Numri serial i skedarit: 
Il 651. A5B8