"As a Latin," writes Professor Katarani,[83] "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,[84] "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.