anina. The stock grievance of this literature is
that the Turks will not allow Albanian to be taught in the schools, and
endeavour to ignore the existence of the language; but though the
complaint is well-founded, I doubt if the mass of the people have much
feeling on the subject." ... Those who are rash enough to assert,
because Miss Durham says so, that in the last two decades the Albanians
have made a progress of several centuries may be recommended to the
testimony of Brailsford[89] (1906), of Katarani (1913), and of the
Italian Press which, after the retreat of their army to Valona,
published in 1920 the most ghastly particulars of what befell the
hapless officers and men who were captured by the Albanians.

Let the British public henceforth go to Sir Charles Eliot and not to
this emotional lady for its picture of the unchanged Shqyptar. She
reveals to us that more than one person in the Balkans said that her
knowledge of those countries is enormous; she has knocked about the
western Balkans and picked up a good deal of material, but her knowledge
has its limitations: for example, she makes the old howler of ascribing
Macedonian origin to Pa[vs]i['c], though his grandfather came not from
Tetovo in Macedonia but from near Teteven in what is now Bulgaria. Miss
Durham plumes herself for having sent back to Belgrade the Order of St.
Sava, and seeing that it is bestowed for learning she did well. But even
if her acquaintance with Balkan affairs were more adequate--her
diagnosis of the Macedonian racial problem is extremely rough and
ready--all the writings of Miss Durham are so warped with hatred for the
Slav that they must be very carefully approached. Because she thinks it
will incline her readers towards the Albanians she says[90] that they
were early converts to Christianity. She omits to mention that the
Moslem, on arriving in the Balkans, was able to spread his religion much
more easily in Albania than anywhere else; and again, in the seventeenth
century, when Constantinople offered many lucrative posts to the Moslem
there occurred in Albania a great wave of apostasy. Miss Durham speaks
with pride of the Albanians who during the Great War fought in the
French, Italian and American ranks. Would it not be more straightforward
if she added that large numbers were enrolled in the Austro-Hungarian
army and _gendarmerie_? The special task of the latter was to dislodge
from their mountain fastnesses those Montenegrins who