night’s crossing, so that the danger of submarine attacks was reduced approximately to one-sixth. Another advantage was that by establishing an uninterrupted line of posts right across from the Adriatic to the Ægean the passage of messengers between King Constantine’s Government and the Central Empires was practically precluded, and even after the fall of Constantine it was just as well to keep watch over the activities of Royalist sympathizers who might have continued to carry on their master’s policy. A part of the route, not far from Santi Quaranta, passed through Greek territory, and permission to use it had to be negotiated while Constantine was still on the throne. About half-way between Salonica and Santi Quaranta is Koritza, a pleasant spot and the centre of many intrigues. The town, which is situated in a fertile plain at the junction of several important roads, had been assigned to Albania by the Ambassadors’ Conference in London (1913) and the Protocol of Florence (1914), the enormous majority of the population being Albanian. But as there was an active and intelligent minority professing Greek sentiments, Greece laid claim to the town and district. In 1914, Greek bands occupied it, numbers of Greek schools were opened by the Greek authorities which had installed themselves there, and the presence of a large Albanian population was explained away by being called “Albanophone Greeks.” When the Italian troops began to advance from the coast towards the interior, General Sarrail sent a detachment of cavalry under Colonel Descoins to occupy Koritza (November 1916). There remained the problem of administering the district; it could not be given to Greece, because the Treaty of London had assigned it to Albania, but Sarrail did not wish to hand it over to the latter as there was no regularly constituted Albanian Government, and he intended to make use of the district for eventual military operations. He solved the difficulty by making of the Kaza of Koritza an autonomous “Republic.” He created a local council composed of natives, with a certain Themistocles, a noted band-leader, as President, but under French military control. The Republic had its stamps, its paper money, its budget. Later the French authorities believed that they had evidence that Themistocles was dealing with the Austrians; he was court-martialled, condemned to death and shot. It afterwards appeared that the sentence was due to a judicial error, and that the members of the court martial had been deceived by agents of the local Greek party who wished to get rid of Themistocles because he was an influential Albanian leader. The local council was then dissolved and the territory administered very efficiently by the French military authorities. The Greeks, however, continued their attempts to get Koritza assigned to them, claiming that both that town and Moschopolje had been centres of Greek culture since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.