If no disinterested Power, such as Great Britain or Sweden, will take
the matter in hand, then Dr. Trumbić has an alternative proposal,
which is for a free, independent Albania (with the 1913 frontier) which
would exist on the Customs and on a loan made by the Great Powers, who
would put in a Controller charged with seeing that the money were spent
on roads, schools, etc. A police force, and not an army, would be
maintained; while, if need be, the country could be neutralized; and Dr.
Trumbić, within whose lifetime bandits and heiduks were roaming
through Bosnia, believes that the Albanians would gradually discard
their cherished system of feuds.... This would be the happiest solution,
for it would leave the Balkans to the Balkan peoples, while it would aim
at the development of whatever good qualities there are in the
Albanians, and it would definitely recognize a Yugoslav-Albanian
frontier which is acceptable to both countries.
11. THE POSITION IN 1921: THE TIRANA GOVERNMENT AND THE MIRDITI
While Europe in the year 1921 was either exhausted or belligerent, or
both, she had a vague knowledge that hostilities were being carried on
between the Serbs and the Albanians. Telegrams from Rome, Tirana and
elsewhere appeared in the papers, saying that the Serbs continued to
advance. Occasionally a Serbian statesman would declare that his
Government desired the independence of Albania. Then some Albanian
delegate in Geneva would make a protest and ask the League of Nations,
of which Albania was now a member, to take this matter in hand. A
Serbian delegate would also address the League. Again you would hear of
the Serbian army pushing forward, that a good many soldiers had fallen.
And no one seemed to know why the Serbs would want to shed their blood
in order to add to their miscellaneous problems this very grave one of
administering such a region inhabited by such a people. Why did they not
content themselves with the frontier which the Powers temporarily
assigned to them in 1918 and which, from the junction of the Black and
White Drin, runs south along the rocky right bank of the river and then,
crossing to the other side, passes along the top of a range of
mountains? What more could they wish to have, presuming that it was not
their intention to annex what lay between them and the Adriatic?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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