e, till a few months ago, in the ascendant,
and their attitude towards the other party was relentless.] One Alush
Ljocha, for example, said that he thought it would be well if Yugoslavia
and Albania lived on friendly terms with one another. Because of this--the
Government having adopted other ideas--his house at Scutari was
burned,[76] and when we were discussing the matter at the palace of the
Metropolitan, Monsignor Sereggi, I found that His Grace was emphatically in
accord with a fiery Franciscan poet, Father Fichta, with the more placid
Monsignor Bumci, and with two other ecclesiastics who were present. "We did
well to burn his house, very well, I say!" exclaimed Father Fichta,
"because Alush is only a private person and he has no business to concern
himself with foreign countries." Of course, when Father Fichta made his
comments on foreign countries it was not as a private person but as a
responsible editor. Thus in the _Posta e Shqypnis_ during the War he
denounced Clemenceau and Lloyd George as such foes of humanity that their
proper destination was a cage of wild beasts, and, after having visited
France during 1919 as secretary to the sincere and credulous Bumci, he
contributed anti-French and, I believe, anti-English poems to the _Epopea
Shqyptare_.

"I have been told," I said, "by an intelligent Albanian who was educated
at Robert College at Constantinople that the greatest hope for the
country lies, in his opinion, in the increase of American schools, such
as that one at Elbasan and the admirable institution at Samakoff in
Bulgaria, where the Americans--in order not to be accused of
proselytism--teach everything except religion."

"If I had my own way," cried Fichta, "I would shut up these irreligious
American schools. Religion is the base of the social life of this
country."

"And you and the Muhammedans," I asked, "do you think that your
co-operation has a good prospect of enduring? With a country of no more
than one and a half million inhabitants it is essential that you should
be united."

"God in Heaven! Who can tolerate such things?" exclaimed the
Metropolitan. That very corpulent old gentleman was bouncing with rage
on his sofa. "Is it not horrible," he cried in Italian, "that this man
should dare to come to my house and make propaganda against us?"

"Really, sir, I am astonished," said Monsignor Bumci, reproachfully, in
French, "that you should ask such a question." [It was answered a few
weeks