bring more plentiful supplies from Rome. And fortunately
the Italians did not seem to suffer, like the Serbs, from any scruples
as to the propriety of taking active steps against another "Allied and
Associated Power." When Zena Beg Riza Beg of Djakovica came in the year
1919 to his brother-in-law Ahmed Beg Mati, one of the Albanian leaders,
he told him that the Belgrade Government, in pursuance of their policy
"The Balkans for the Balkan peoples," would be glad if the Italians
could be ousted from Albania. Zena Beg returned with a request for
money, guns and so forth; but they were not sent.

Ahmed Beg and Zena Beg are patriotic young Albanian noblemen of ancient
family and great possessions. But Zena Beg has the advantage of living
in Yugoslavia, outside the atmosphere of corruption which is darkening
his native land. Ahmed Beg, who in 1920 was Minister of the Interior,
Minister of War, Governor of Scutari and Director (in mufti) of the
military operations against the Yugoslavs, did not accept Italian
bribes, but he was surrounded by those who did, and thus the gentle and
industrious young man was being led to work against his own country's
interests. With him at Scutari was another of the six Ministers of the
Tirana Government, in the person of the venerable Moslem priest Kadri,
Minister of Justice, and one of the four Regents, Monsignor Bumci. There
was about it all an Oriental odour of the less desirable kind, which
caused some observers to say that when Albania obtains her independence
she will be a bad imitation of the old Turkey--a little Turkey without
the external graces. When the thoughtful greybeard Kadri went limping
down the main street, a protecting gendarme dawdled behind him, smoking
a cigarette; but this endearing nonchalance was absent from the methods
of government: any Albanian whose opinions did not coincide with those
of the authorities could only express them at his peril. [Blood-vengeance
is, to some extent, being deposed by party-vengeance--this having
originated in the time of Wied, when the politicians were divided into
Nationalists and Essadists, after which they became Italophils and
Austrophils, who now have been succeeded by Italophils (who ask for an
Italian mandate) and Serbophils and Grecophils (who desire that these
countries should have no mandate, but should act in a friendly spirit
towards an independent Albania). Meanwhile the Italophils, nearly all of
them on Italy's pay-roll, wer