es
of the Albanian League. The British Government report of August 1880
gives a very large Albanian majority to the whole district.

"The Albanians are numerically far superior to the Serbians, who are
not numerous in Kosovopolje and the Sanjak of Novibazar. The
Albanian population in the vilayet of Kosovo has lately (1880) been
still further increased by the accession of many thousands of
refugees from districts now, in virtue of the Treaty of Berlin, in
Serbian possession and which prior to the late war were exclusively
inhabited by descendants of the twelve Greg tribes, which at a
remote period emigrated from Upper Albania."

A fundamental doctrine of the Great Serb Idea is a refusal to
recognize that history existed before the creation of the Serb
Empire, or even to admit that Balkan lands had owners before the
arrival of the Serbs. Nothing infuriates a "Great Serbian" more
than to suggest that if he insists on appealing to history another
race has a prior claim to the land, and that in any case the Great
Serbia of Stefan Dushan lasted but twenty years.

In pursuance of this theory that the greater part of the Balkan
Peninsula is the birthright of the Serbs (who only began coming into
these lands at the earliest in the fourth century A.D.) the Serbs
behaved with hideous brutality to the inhabitants of the lands they
annexed in 1878, and swarms of starving and destitute persons were
hunted out, a large proportion of whom perished of want and
exposure.

The hatred between Serb and Albanian was increased a hundredfold,
and the survivors and their descendants struggled continuously to
gain complete control over the lands still theirs and to regain, if
possible, those that they had lost. The adoption of Lord
Fitzmaurice's plan would have spared the Balkans and possibly Europe
much bloodshed and suffering.

When I arrived on the scene in the summer of 1903 the Turks had sent
a large punitive expedition to enforce the payment of cattle tax
and, at the command of Europe, to introduce a new "reform" policy
in Kosovo vilayet.

The Albanians were well aware that the so-called reforms meant
ultimately the furtherance of Russia's pan-Slav schemes; that so
long as even a handful of Serbs lived in a place Russia would claim
it as Serb and enforce the claim to the best of her power; that the
"reforms" meant, In fact, the introduction of Serb and Russian
consulates, the erection of Serb schools and churches under Russian
p