ture. Men
were plunged into the ice-cold river, and then half roasted till
they cried for mercy. And conversion to Christianity was the price."
Many, terrorized into baptism, came to me. One man with tears in his
eyes assured me he had consented only to save his wife and children,
but that he felt now that he was defiled and wished he were dead.

The International forces did nothing. They had no jurisdiction
outside Scutari.

Unfortunately, also, the British staff knew no language but English,
and the most reliable dragomans knew only French, Italian, or
German. England was thus more heavily handicapped than the
representatives of the other Powers, and the Albanians asked with
wonder: "Are there, then, no schools in England?" And, in general,
Scutari's high idea of European civilization shrivelled and shrank.

By the end of September the conduct of the Serbs in the Dibra
district was so bad that the maddened populace, profiting by a
moment when the garrison was reduced, revolted, drove out the Serbs
and retook Ochrida, where they were welcomed by both Bulgars and
Albanians. As I wrote at the time: "It is criminal of the Powers to
delay the frontier commissions. Both Serb and Montenegrin are
working to clear off the Albanians from the debatable districts so
as to show a Slav majority to the Commission." The ill-timed revolt
gave them a chance of doing this. The Serbs fell on the Gostivar
district, burning the villages with petroleum, and throwing such
people as could not escape, back into the flames with their
bayonets. An urgent appeal for bandages and medicaments came from
Elbasan, into which refugees were pouring. Our naval force was not
allowed to supply any, but I begged two cases of stores from the
Italian consulate and started across country to Elbasan to the
horror of the International control, who had the idea that
travelling in Albania was dangerous. As I soon got beyond their
zone they could not interfere. At Tirana and at Elbasan I found
thousands of destitute creatures pouring in, footsore and exhausted.
Their accounts of Serb brutality up-country was amply confirmed by a
letter of a Serb in the Radnitchke Novina (see Carnegie Report): "My
dear friend," writes a Serb soldier, "appalling things are going on.
I am terrified of them. . . . I dare not tell you morer but I may
say Ljuma (an Albanian tribe) no longer exists. There is nothing but
corpses and ashes." A Franciscan, who went there, told me of the