--to act otherwise
would be perilous, and everyone seems to know the precise number of
napoleons a month--ranging from the 150 of an ecclesiastical magnate
down to 71/2 (the pay of a simple gendarme)--which they are alleged to
receive. Do they ever think of the starving Italian peasants?

On October 7 another telegram was sent from Oroshi (the capital of the
Mirditi) to the Tirana Delegation which "protested energetically against
the activities of a certain Anthony Achikou." Yet, on October 9, an
individual called Notz Pistuli, who had travelled specially from
Scutari, presented himself at the Mirdite delegates' hotel, and in the
name of the Scutari National Council asked whether a reconciliation
could not be made between the Mirditi and the Tirana Government.[94]
Being told that the Mirditi would have nothing to do with the Turkish
Government of Tirana, he held out hopes that another Government more
representative of Albania would soon be constituted. It was remarkable
that Tirana should have dispatched this envoy after giving out that the
Mirditi were traitors and that their delegates represented nobody.

Lord Robert Cecil did not at first seem to think that their desire for a
republic independent of Tirana could be gratified, but on being
initiated into the facts of the case and told that definitely to reject
them would look as if he were a foe to Christianity, Lord Robert said
that such was far from being the case. He would do whatever he could to
help them. And on the next day it was decided that, in accordance with
the Mirdite request, a Commission should proceed to Albania.

The Italian delegate, Marquis Imperiali, submitted that there was no
need to hurry this Commission and Monsieur Djoni explained in a
telegram[95] that if the Commission went forthwith it would discover in
Albania cannons, rifles and other war material from Italy, that it would
find numerous Turkish officers of the Kemalist army who had been brought
from Asia Minor in Italian ships, and that it would perceive that the
cannons, the Turkish Government of Tirana, the rifles, the Turkish
officers, certain Catholic ecclesiastics--in a word, the whole of
Albania such as it is to-day is nothing else, said he, but a masked
Italian instrument of war against Serbia--while all the bloody
consequences of this perpetual struggle have to be endured by the border
population.... One afternoon, at the beginning of November, 650 Tirana
soldiers, pursued by th