ate creatures in a pass; the hideous cruelties of the
advancing Greeks. It had been impossible, said the Dutch officers,
to hold Koritza with irregular troops against an army with
artillery. The Greeks burned as they advanced, and burnt Tepelcni
and all the villages near it.

The refugees crawled into Valona in the last stages of exhaustion,
thousands and thousands of them, and lay about under the trees in
all the surrounding country. Food and shelter there was none. The
heat was overwhelming. I look back on it as a nightmare of agony. In
a century of repentance the Greeks cannot expiate the abominable
crime of those weeks.

Mr. Lamb telegraphed to appoint me as English representative on an
international relief committee, which consisted of the Italian and
Austrian Consuls, the Russian Vice-Consul, and some of the Albanian
headmen.

I proposed at our first meeting that we should report to our
respective Governments that an international naval demonstration off
Athens should be at once made to stop this scandalous state of
things, and save the miserable victims of the Greeks.

The Russian was indignant; the other two consuls looked at their
boots, and said they would get into trouble if they did so; the
Albanians were delighted. The Austrian, an old friend of mine, told
me in private I was right, and only international intervention would
have any effect.

All Valona was Nationalist. Even the little children shouted:
"Rrnoft Mbreti!" (Note.--The spelling Mpret was invented by The
Times for reasons of its own.) The luckless refugees hoped that the
Prince, as a sort of supernatural power, would arrive with an army,
drive out the Greeks, and restore them to their homes. Numbers of
Bektashi dervishes were among them, reverend white-robed men, who
prayed me to send a special petition from them to King George, who
has so many Moslem subjects. Their rich monasteries especially had
been set on and pillaged by the andartis, and Greek fanaticism
would, they said, wipe out Bektashism from the land.

The place was a hell of misery. We dealt out maize flour and bread
in tiny rations. It was all we could do. There were by now at least
seventy thousand in and around Valona, 'more between Berat and
Valona, and more always crawling in.

One ray of hope came. On July 27th it was rumoured that Austria had
declared war on Serbia. A sort of gasp =of relief ran through the
starving, miserable refugees. A great Power, they hoped, was