in the six battalions have shown their fidelity. There would be no
need to guard oneself against such people. But unfortunately the
Albanian is so constituted that if, in a hamlet of ten houses, five of
them are amicably disposed towards you, there is a strong tendency among
the others to be hostile. When these torch-bearers of an ancient
tradition come under the rule of an organized State, then they gradually
feel inclined to discard some of their customs which the State frowns
upon. This can be seen in the changes among the people of Kossovo since
it came into Serbian hands. Were the country between the two frontier
lines to remain under the Serbs it would not be long before some of the
time-honoured sensitiveness of the Albanians towards each other and
towards each others' friends would vanish--though it has been found that
it takes a number of years before they cease observing or from desiring
to observe the very deeply-rooted custom of blood-vengeance.

A good many of the border Albanians have made it clear that they wish
for some sort of association with their more cultured neighbours. But on
this point they are by no means unanimous. The unregenerate part of the
people will not be able to resist an occasional foray into Yugoslavia.
And although the reputation which the Serbs have left behind them may
induce the tribes to be, for the most part, good neighbours, yet they
have not been long enough under the civilizing process, and the more
advanced among them would agree with the Yugoslavs that it would have
been better for that regime to have continued over them. You may object
that the finest patriots of the Albanians would have preferred to remain
outside Yugoslavia. But they know that there are many thousands of their
contented countryfolk in the neighbouring Kossovo and, what is more,
they know that the towns of Kossovo are their markets.

The Yugoslavs have bowed to the decision of their Allies. And the
official champions of the too-ambitious League of Nations--overjoyed,
after various failures and after the Silesian award, to have really
accomplished something, and something with whose merits the public was
far less familiar than with the Silesian fiasco--performed a war-dance
on the Yugoslavs. If that people had been as obstinate, say, as the
Magyars in the case of Burgenland, no doubt it would have come to
another Conference of Venice; and Yugoslavia would, like Hungary, have
returned from there with someth