p, after serving due notice upon all the signatories to the
Treaty of London. Thanks in part to the absorption of the powers in more
momentous business, but perhaps even in a greater degree to the confidence
which the Greek premier had justly won by his previous handling of the
question, this action was accomplished without protest or opposition.
Since then Epirus has remained sheltered from the vicissitudes of civil
war within and punitive expeditions from without, to which the unhappy
remnant of Albania has been incessantly exposed; and we may prophesy that
the Epiroi, unlike their repudiated brethren of Moslem or Catholic faith,
have really seen the last of their troubles. Even Italy, from whom they
had most to fear, has obtained such a satisfactory material guarantee by
the occupation on her own part of Avlona, that she is as unlikely to
demand the evacuation of Epirus by Greece as she is to withdraw her own
force from her long coveted strategical base on the eastern shore of the
Adriatic. In Avlona and Epirus the former rivals are settling down to a
neighbourly contact, and there is no reason to doubt that the _de facto_
line of demarcation between them will develop into a permanent and
officially recognized frontier. The problem of Epirus, though not,
unfortunately, that of Albania, may be regarded as definitely closed.

The reclamation of Epirus is perhaps the most honourable achievement of
the Greek national revival, but it is by no means an isolated phenomenon.
Western Europe is apt to depreciate modern 'Hellenism', chiefly because
its ambitious denomination rather ludicrously challenges comparison with a
vanished glory, while any one who has studied its rise must perceive that
it has little more claim than western Europe itself to be the peculiar
heir of ancient Greek culture. And yet this Hellenism of recent growth has
a genuine vitality of its own. It displays a remarkable power of
assimilating alien elements and inspiring them to an active pursuit of its
ideals, and its allegiance supplants all others in the hearts of those
exposed to its charm. The Epirots are not the only Albanians who have been
Hellenized. In the heart of central Greece and Peloponnesus, on the plain
of Argos, and in the suburbs of Athens, there are still Albanian enclaves,
derived from those successive migrations between the fourteenth and the
eighteenth centuries; but they have so entirely forgotten their origin
that the villagers, when