may have glanced at her uneasily, but noticing her rapt expression
reassured himself. And she appears to have believed that England,
eagerly absorbing what she told them of this people, would in August
1914 make her policy depend on their convenience. But to Miss Durham's
horror and amazement, Great Britain turned aside from this clear and
honourable duty. She entered the War as an ally of the Slav, bringing
"shame and disgust" upon Miss Durham. "After that," says she, "I really
did not care what happened. The cup of my humiliation was full."]
9. WHAT FACES THE YUGOSLAVS
It is not as if Serbia never made mistakes in dealing with the
Albanians. The Sultan used to govern them by sending in one year an army
against them, and in the next year asking for no recruits or taxes. The
Montenegrins, of whom the older generation was bored when it had no man
to shoot at, used to be on very neighbourly terms with them. Both these
systems the Albanians could understand. But they did not know why the
Belgrade Government in 1878--and it was a mistaken policy--should expel
a number of Albanians from the newly-won zones, thrusting them across
the frontier and putting in their place a number of Serbs who were
settled in Old Serbia. The twofold folly of this plan was not grasped at
the moment; but for several years the Serbian frontier districts were
regularly invaded and plundered. The following years of Turkish misrule,
and especially the young Turkish policy of treacherous force, which
resulted in Albanian risings every year, may possibly have caused many
Albanians to be honestly glad when the Balkan War brought the Serbs into
their country. But of these Albanians not a few would rejoice because
they hoped that with the help of the Serbian army it would be possible
to slay the members of some adjacent tribe against whom they happened to
have a feud. Perhaps the Serbs were so eager to bathe their horses in
the Adriatic that they did not notice such trifles as the destruction of
a ford, this having been done to prevent a visit from undesirable
neighbours. One might have imagined that Serbia, being well known as a
land of small peasant proprietors--where there is even a law which
forbids a peasant's house from being sold over his head; he is, under
any circumstances, assured of so much as will enable him to eke out a
livelihood--one would have thought that the Albanian _čifčija_,
who is nothing more than a slave of the feudal chief, would have
rejoiced at the arrival of a liberator; and indeed, while the Serbian
troops were in Albania the peasant refused to give his lord the
customary third or half of what the land produced, and after the
departure of the Serbs he was unapproachable for tax-collectors. Who
knows whether this social readjustment, so auspiciously begun, might not
have made Albania wipe out her grievances against the Serbs and remember
only that in the Imperial days of Dušan, even if he was not of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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