orous memory, for apart from the fact that Venice, as in
Dalmatia, was pursuing a merely selfish policy, it was directly due to
her that the Turkish Sultan, in the fifteenth century, was able to
establish himself in Albania. Thrice his troops had been repelled by
those of Skanderbeg when the arrangement was made for them to enter the
fortress of Rosafat in Venetian uniforms, and then four hundred years
elapsed before the Sultan's standard was pulled down. In recent times
the Government of Italy has been furnishing the Shqyptart with schools,
and these were not its only acts of benevolence towards that wretched
people. They have given schools and rifles and munitions and gold. The
Albanians were willing to accept this largesse; but that it forged a
link between patron and client, that it conferred on the Italians any
rights to occupy the country, they denied, and enforced this denial in
1920 at the point of the bayonet. Mr. H. Goad said in the _Fortnightly
Review_ that this remark of mine is quite unhistorical, since Italy,
says he, "was in course of withdrawal when certain Albanians, stirred up
as usual by Jugo-Slavs, attacked her retreating troops." If the
Albanians had only known that Italy, despite her having been, says Mr.
Goad, "supremely useful to Albania," had resolved to quit, they would
perhaps have let them go with dignity. But if Mr. Goad will read some of
the contemporary Italian newspapers he will see that my allusion to the
bayonet was much too mild. Utterly regardless of the fact that the
Italian evacuation was "according to plan," the Shqyptart treated them
abominably--it brought up memories of Abyssinia--or does Mr. Goad deny
that even a general officer was outraged and blew out his brains? This
Albanian onslaught was so far from being stirred up by the Yugoslavs
that, as we have seen,[97] the Belgrade Government refused to furnish
them with munitions. This is not to say that they did not approve of the
Albanian push, for they maintain, in spite of Mr. Goad, the principle of
"The Balkans for the Balkan Peoples." If Italy, as our strange publicist
asserts, has a mandate--presumably a moral one--to defend Albania
against aggression he will find, I think, that the Yugoslavs heartily
agree with this thesis and that they are also quite determined to defend
Albania from aggression.... When he asserts that various ties existed
between Italy and the Albanians--the Albanian language, the feudal
architecture, much