tors for
the Peace Conference--have encouraged the natives in the belief that the
United States would probably accept a mandate for Albania. Whether they
did this in order to make themselves popular and thereby facilitate
their missions, or because of an abysmal ignorance of American public
sentiment, I do not know, but the fact remains that they have raised
hopes in the breasts of thousands of Albanians which can never be
realized. Everything considered, I think that the Albanians might do
worse than to entrust their political future to the guidance of the
Italians, who, in addition to having brought law, order, justice, and
the beginnings of prosperity to a country which never had so much as a
bowing acquaintance with any one of them before, seem to have the best
interests of the people genuinely at heart.

Leaving Koritza, a clean, well-kept town of perhaps 10,000 people, which
was occupied when we were there by a battalion of black troops from the
French Sudan and some Moroccans, we went snorting up the Peristeri Range
by an appallingly steep and narrow road, higher, higher, always higher,
until, to paraphrase Kipling, we had

"One wheel on the Horns o' the Mornin',
An' one on the edge o' the Pit,
An' a drop into nothin' beneath us
As straight as a beggar could spit."

But at last, when I was beginning to wonder whether our wheels could
find traction if the grade grew much steeper, we topped the summit of
the pass and looked down on Macedonia. Below us the forested slopes of
the mountains ran down, like the folds of a great green rug lying
rumpled on an oaken floor, to meet the bare brown plains of that
historic land where marched and fought the hosts of Philip of Macedon,
and of Alexander, his son. There are few more splendid panoramas in the
world; there is none over which history has cast so magic a spell, for
this barren, dusty land has been the arena in which the races of eastern
Europe have battled since history began. Within its borders are
represented all the peoples who are disputing the reversion of the
Turkish possessions in Europe. Macedonia might be described, indeed, as
the very quintessence of the near eastern question.

With brakes a-squeal we slipped down the long, steep gradients to
Florina, where Greek gendarmes, in British sun-helmets and khaki,
lounged at the street-crossings and patronizingly waved us past. Thence
north by the ancient highway which leads to Monastir, th