nd wide. At the end of
September and beginning of October 1918 two weak Yugoslav battalions of
about a thousand rifles accomplished at Tirana what the large Italian
forces could not, at any rate did not, achieve. Ten thousand Austrians
were in the town, and for three months the Italians had sat down outside
it. Then the Serbs descended on the place from the mountains; their
carts came by the ordinary road, and on arriving at the Italian lines
the drivers asked for hay; but when they explained that the rest of
their force was going round by the mountain trail the Italian commandant
refused to give any supplies to such liars. (Later on, though, he gave
them sufficient for five days.) When an Austrian officer who was
stationed in a minaret saw the Serbs coming down from those terrible
heights he was so astonished that he felt sure they must be robbers. And
after they had captured the town and the Italians conducted themselves
as if it were they who had conquered it, the Serbs took to thrashing
their allies and ejecting them from the cafes. The Italians did not
protest....

10. DR. TRUMBI['C]'S PROPOSAL

To sum up this part of our long and, I fear, rather tiring dissertation
on the Yugoslav-Albanian frontier that is to be: the Yugoslav delegates
at the Peace Conference invariably disclaimed any desire to have
Albanian lands conferred on them against the wish of the inhabitants.
According to Prince Sixte of Parma, the ex-Emperor Karl was disposed to
offer to the Serbs as a basis of peace a Southern Slav kingdom
consisting of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina and the whole of
Albania. But this last item only made it clear that in his brief tenure
of the throne the Emperor had grasped something of the grand generosity
of European statesmen when they deal with the possessions of other
people in the Near East. The Albanians are not Southern Slavs, and it is
merely the voice of the thoughtless mob in Montenegro which has been
claiming Scutari for the reason that they held it in the Middle
Ages--several of their rulers are buried there--and because 20,000
Montenegrins gave their lives to take it in the Balkan War. Responsible
persons in Yugoslavia, such as Dr. Trumbi['c], the former Foreign
Minister, do not believe that Scutari is a necessity for their
State--whether Yugoslavia is a necessity for Scutari is another
question--and they hold that it is quite possible to preserve the 1913
frontier (perhaps with a minor recti