Part 24 (2/2)
”You have no right,” said I, ”to speak so of any human beings.”
”Human beings!” cried he. ”What you English must learn is that they are not human beings. They are bugs, and must be cr-r-rushed.”
This is a mere detail. But what sort of peace can be expected when men such as this are in the diplomatic service helping to pull the strings?
At night the heat was terrible. The motionless air was shrill with mosquitoes from the fever swamps. The Italian forces were camped just under my window and he stench of unwashed men and sweaty uniforms penetrated the miserable garret I slept in with suffocating acridity. I lay awake for hours thinking of the fate of thousands of human beings dependent on such men as Petar Karageorgevitch, with his blood-stained hands; his h.o.a.ry father-in-law, Nikola, weaving spider webs; the decadent Russian, fanatical and cruel; the Levantine Slav, agent of France; the Italians like a pack in full cry with the victim in sight; the Greek Varata.s.si mainly playing bridge, but plotting behind the scenes with the Greek bishop, and probably with Essad too. All bent on war, and meaning to have it in some form.
Only Mr. Lamb and the German commissioner were playing straight. On 16th H.M.S. Defence and Admiral Troubridge arrived. Fighting went on, on and off, for the next few days. The Russian correspondent chuckled indecently over the Albanian wounded. On the 20th a deputation of townsfolk went to try and make terms with the insurgents. From the messages they brought it was clear that the luckless Albanians without the town were being used as cat's paw by more than one Power. A truce was called, and the insurgents asked to give up their arms and leaders. They replied they would yield their arms, but not their leaders. Who the leaders were remained a mystery.
While the armistice lasted at Durazzo the insurgents began to march to other places. No other town was armed. The people in vain asked what it was all about, and what the Powers wanted them to do. The Russian Vice-consul at Valona sent messages about to say that the Powers would be very angry if they fought on the side of Wied, The Albanians did not want to fight each other. Towns at once surrendered to the insurgents. The police changed their badges and business went on as usual. The populace did not want civil war, and continued to believe that the Powers would keep their promises. News then came that the Greeks were ma.s.sing on the frontier ready to again fall on Koritza.
The insurgents now sent a message into Durazzo that they wanted to parley with an Englishman. They believed in England. General Phillips came from Scutari and went to meet them. He reported that the leaders were certainly not Albanians, and that they had refused to give their names. One was a Greek priest.
The game of the Greeks, then, was to incite the Moslems to ask for a Moslem ruler. With this in view they blackened Wied as an ”anti-Moslem,” hoping thus to split Albania and more easily destroy it.
One of the chief spokesmen said to General Phillips: ”In England there is a Liberal Government. Many of you do not like it, but you must accept it because it is the will of the majority. We are the majority here, and we will have a Moslem Prince.” This man the General ”believed to be a Young Turk leader disguised.” He asked why they objected to Wied, and they replied: ”Because he is against our religion!” which was entirely untrue. And they added that they could easily take Durazzo because they knew that the international battles.h.i.+ps off the coast had orders not to fire. In the end General Phillips made a strong appeal to them to cease this foolish warfare and accept Wied as the choice of Europe.
The Albanian crowd, he reported, appeared to agree and to be anxious to come to terms. But the five foreign leaders stuck out. And the ignorant crowd which believed that by following these leaders they would regain Dibra and other districts finally refused to come to terms.
Mr. Lamb also made a vain attempt to obtain the names of these leaders, and they obstinately refused to come into Durazzo to discuss terms with the Commissioners and the Prince. Nor would they permit any delegates to come. The Mirdite and Maltsor reinforcements who arrived were all reluctant to fight. ”We are not in blood with these people,” they said, ”Why should we fight them?” We had a number of the enemy wounded in our hospitals along with our own men.
They were most grateful for the care bestowed upon ”them, and bore no ill-will at all. It was sadly true that these poor people were being killed and wounded, offered as human sacrifices at the altar of the rival ambitions of the Entente and the Central Powers.
The Breslau, since notorious, and a Russian wars.h.i.+p now arrived.
There were many Germans, both military and civilian, in the town, and the Germans and English worked together in the hospital. The surgeon, from the Russian wars.h.i.+p, claimed the right to work in the English hospital as a member of the Entente. But as he proposed to give an anaesthetic to a man whose arm we had promised not to amputate, and then to take it off, we got rid of him in spite of his protests that a promise to ”an animal like that” did not count.
I took my meals very often with the Germans, and we discussed often the danger caused to Europe by the Anglo-Russian Alliance. I said that though I believed Russia was heading for war I was sure we should not support her, and we drank to a speedy Anglo-German alliance. They were disgusted with Wied's folly, and said the Kaiser had been reluctant to appoint him, but had been over-persuaded by Carmen Sylva. They took me on board the Breslau, where I was received with great cordiality, and the captain, who took me on to the bridge, said his s.h.i.+p for her size was one of the fastest.
On Sunday, June 28th, I was having tea with Mr. and Mrs. Lamb, when we saw Admiral Troubridge climbing the hill towards us. He came into the house very hot, and said almost at once: ”I have come to tell you our wireless has picked up a bit of a message. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand has been murdered at Serajevo. Just that!”
My first idea was: ”They have done what they said they would last year. They have begun in Bosnia.”
I said to Mr. Lamb: ”This means war, doesn't it?”
He replied: ”Not necessarily.” And seemed surprised. His manner rea.s.sured me. But unless very strong pressure were brought to bear, I could not see how war between the Slavs and Austria could be avoided, for ”we the Russian army with us” was part of the programme.
No official confirmation of the news came till next day.
That the Serbo-Greek combine expected to have more than the Russian army to support it seemed shown by a remarkable letter the insurgent leaders wrote to Berat, advising the town to surrender, because ”we are supported by the Triple Entente.” Berat, however, refused to surrender.
The insurgents sent a message to Durazzo that they were willing to be ruled by the International Commissioners if Wied were dismissed.
Terrible rumours came as to what was happening at Koritza. A force of Albanians went to its defence, led by Dutch officers. Greeks were pouring in over the border. At the same time it was said that Essad was returning to Tirana via Serbia, and meant to proclaim himself as Prince. No one wanted him.
On July 11th came a telegram from Berat. ”With heart full of grief I send the bad news that Koritza, after two days' fight, has fallen into the hands of the enemy. More than fifty thousand people are coming away. Take measures for these unfortunates. The Greek army is spreading on all sides, killing, and burning, and turning into ashes every Albanian place it enters.”
The Albanians were aghast. The Nationalists had all trusted Wied and the Powers. Without artillery and short of ammunition, with no trained army and no officers save the Dutchmen, they had done their best. The ”insurrection” had been engineered by Albania's enemies for the express purpose, among others, of giving a door by which the Greeks could enter. Not until the Greeks began the wholesale destruction of Moslems and their villages, accompanied by every kind of atrocity, did the luckless Moslems of Tirana realize how they had been tricked.
On July 13th I went at Mr. Lamb's request to Valona to examine into the number and condition of the refugees. I have no s.p.a.ce to describe the horrors of the next few weeks. The Dutch officers, who had flung away their uniforms and bolted down to Valona in civilian dress before the Greek onrush, gave terrible accounts of the ma.s.s of struggling refugees in their flight across the mountains; the dead and dying children en route; the aged falling by the wayside; the jam of desperate creatures in a pa.s.s; 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.
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