Let the British public henceforth go to Sir Charles Eliot and not to
this emotional lady for its picture of the unchanged Shqyptar. She
reveals to us that more than one person in the Balkans said that her
knowledge of those countries is enormous; she has knocked about the
western Balkans and picked up a good deal of material, but her knowledge
has its limitations: for example, she makes the old howler of ascribing
Macedonian origin to Pašić, though his grandfather came not from
Tetovo in Macedonia but from near Teteven in what is now Bulgaria. Miss
Durham plumes herself for having sent back to Belgrade the Order of St.
Sava, and seeing that it is bestowed for learning she did well. But even
if her acquaintance with Balkan affairs were more adequate--her
diagnosis of the Macedonian racial problem is extremely rough and
ready--all the writings of Miss Durham are so warped with hatred for the
Slav that they must be very carefully approached. Because she thinks it
will incline her readers towards the Albanians she says[90] that they
were early converts to Christianity. She omits to mention that the
Moslem, on arriving in the Balkans, was able to spread his religion much
more easily in Albania than anywhere else; and again, in the seventeenth
century, when Constantinople offered many lucrative posts to the Moslem
there occurred in Albania a great wave of apostasy. Miss Durham speaks
with pride of the Albanians who during the Great War fought in the
French, Italian and American ranks. Would it not be more straightforward
if she added that large numbers were enrolled in the Austro-Hungarian
army and _gendarmerie_? The special task of the latter was to dislodge
from their mountain fastnesses those Montenegrins who continued to carry
on a desperate guerilla warfare against the invader. To pretend that the
Albanian has earned the freedom of his country by his glorious exploits
in the War is an absurdity. He is a mediæval fellow, much more anxious
to have a head to bash than to ascertain whom it belongs to. The Slavs
have not always treated their raw neighbours with indulgence; in the
Balkan War, when their army marched through Albania to the sea some very
discreditable incidents occurred, whatever may have been the provocation
they received from the sniping natives and however great be the excuse
of their own state of nerves. Yet the first stone should be flung by
that army of Western Europe which, in its passage through the territory
of a treacherous and savage people, has done nothing which it would not
willingly forget. And seriously to argue that the Slavs are of an almost
undiluted blackness, while the Albanians are endearing creatures, is to
take what anti-feminists would call a feminist view of history. Miss
Durham tells us that some years ago she stood upon a height with an
Albanian abbot and promised him that she would do all that lay in her
power to bring a knowledge of Albania to the English. The worthy abbot
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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