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