affare_"--in exchange for Valona to obtain a solid and secure friendship
with the Albanians. Roads, as he pointed out, lead from Albania to the
heart of Serbia, and for that reason a true brotherhood of arms between
Italians and Albanians was, in case of hostilities, enormously to be
desired. And so the Italians stationed at Scutari, under Captain
Pericone of the Navy, may have felt that it was well that all those
cannon captured from their countrymen were in such a good condition.
They would now be turned by the Albanians against the hateful Yugoslavs.
["Italy is the one Power in Europe," says her advocate, Mr. H. E. Goad,
in the _Fortnightly Review_ (May 1922), "that is most obviously and most
consistently working for peace and conciliation in every field."] ... A
further supply of military material is said to have reached the
Albanians from Gabriele d'Annunzio in the S.S. _Knin_. To the Irish, the
Egyptians and the Turks the poet-filibuster had merely sent greetings.
Some one may have told him that even the most lyrical greeting would
not be valued by the Albanians half as much as a shipload of munitions.

For a considerable time the more intelligent Italians had noticed that
these two Balkan peoples were disposed to live in amicable terms with
one another. Traditions that are so powerful with an illiterate
people--under five per thousand of the Albanians who have stayed in
their own country can read and write--numerous traditions speak of
friendship with the Serbs: Lek, the great legislator, was related to
Serbian princes; Skanderbeg was an ally of the Serbs; "Most of the
celebrated leaders of northern Albania and Montenegro," says Miss
Durham, "seem to have been of mixed Serbian-Albanian blood"; Mustapha
Vezir Bushatli strove together with Prince Milo[vs] against the Turks,
and the same cause united the Serbian authorities to the famous Vezir
Mahmud Begovi['c] of Pe['c]. A primitive people like the Albanians
admire the warlike attributes beyond all others, and the exploits of the
Serbian army in the European War inclined the hearts of the Albanians
towards their neighbours. Some of them remembered at this juncture that
their great-grandfathers or grandfathers had only become Albanian after
having accepted the Muhammedan religion; now the old ikons were taken
from their hiding-places. And there was, in fact, between the two Balkan
people a spirit of cordiality which gave terrible umbrage to the
Italians. So they to