of Nations does
not--except if invited to arbitrate--concern itself with the
unliquidated problems left by the War, such as the Turkish question.
Perhaps that dangerous confusion in the mind of this unknown official
would not have occurred if Albania had not been illogically admitted to
the League of Nations. But now, in November 1921, not an instant was to
be lost in settling this frontier question, which--as the _Temps_
pointed out--would have been settled months before if Italy had not
prevented it. (She wished as a preliminary step to have certain claims
of her own in regard to Albania conceded.) So the Council of the League
was to be invited to apply Article 16, which could scarcely be invoked
unless Article 15, which defines a procedure of conciliation, had been
found of no avail.[101] Thus the misguided person who spoke in the name
of Mr. Lloyd George was apparently too impetuous to read the texts. And
then the Serbs were told that they must withdraw practically to the
frontier which Austria, their late enemy, had laid down in 1913. Well
might Berati Beg deplore that Italy should take the place of Austria.
But such commands achieve so little. Very soon, when the troubles in
Albania continue, as they certainly will, Mr. Lloyd George will see that
he was misled.... But here it should be stated that while Italy
persisted throughout in demanding the 1913 frontier (with the
ludicrously inconsistent proviso that she herself should have the island
of Saseno, which in 1913 she had demanded for independent Albania), and
France raised no finger against her, the actual improvements of the
frontier adopted were entirely due to Great Britain. No one is more
qualified to speak on this matter than Mr. Harold Temperley of
Cambridge, who was one of our experts. In his illuminating little book,
_The Second Year of the League_, he has pointed out that the new
Albanian frontiers are an improvement on the old--than which, indeed,
they cannot be worse--because they conform more to natural features,
they take into account an important tribal boundary (leaving the Gora
tribe in Yugoslavia), and restore to both parties freedom of
communication--the road between the Serb towns of Struga and Dibra being
given to the Serbs, while to Albania is given the road from Elbasan to
the Serb town of Lin. The rectifications in the Kastrati and the Prizren
area involve the substitution of natural boundaries for unnatural ones
in order to protect the c