promised to assist the
Sultan against external aggression, and always did so with great
success. It was due to the Mirditi that the Albanian mountaineers
preserved their nationality, their religion and their customs, for they
were ever the leaders of the other Albanian tribes. The most prominent
of the Mirditi in our time have been Prenk Bib Doda, who, after long
years of exile, was assassinated in Albania; Mark Djoni, now the
President of the Mirdite Republic; and, above all, the great Abbot
Monsignor Primo Doci, a man of vast culture, who returned to his own
country after serving the Vatican as a diplomat in various parts of the
world. It is not surprising that the educational standard of his native
land filled him with the determination to build schools and that, owing
to his efforts, the Roman Catholic establishment of thirty native
priests and of bishops who were nearly all foreigners has developed into
a body of almost three hundred native priests with no foreign bishops. A
poet himself, he founded the literary society, _Bashkimi l'unione_, in
which all capable patriots were invited to collaborate. He constructed
more than twenty strongholds in and around Oroshi, and when he died in
February 1917 it was largely owing to the persecution which he suffered
at the hands of the Austrians. What has latterly aroused his faithful
people is the persecution levelled at them by the Moslem-Italian
Government of Tirana.

A certain amount of mystery envelopes the death of Bib Doda; an opinion
widely held is that Italians were responsible, but Mr. H. E. Goad
rebukes me in the _Fortnightly Review_ for not knowing that the Italians
laid aside the crude methods of political murder centuries ago. Perhaps
he doesn't regard the massacre of the helpless French soldiers at Rieka
in 1919 as political murder, since they were only privates; perhaps he
doesn't count that famous expedition of the five lieutenants to
assassinate Zanella, because it was unsuccessful; but he may be right
concerning Bib Doda. That personage had been to Durazzo to confer with
the Italians; he had refused to accept an Italian protectorate in
Albania, and on his return he was killed in his carriage before he could
reach Scutari. The chief assailant was a Catholic of Klementi, believed
to be an adherent of Essad Pasha and also an Italian "agent
d'occasion." Yet as several Italian soldiers who accompanied Bib Doda
were wounded it would seem that those, myself includ