Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 264, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1918 — Land of the Shkypetars [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Land of the Shkypetars

DISPATCHES 'tell that the Albanians have joined forces with the soldiers of democfc racy. From the pan-Albanian Federation of America, Vatra, which has its fifcadquarters in Boston, comes word that the 70,000 Albanians in the United States have purchased nearly $1,000,000 worth of Liberty; bonds through the organization. The news indicates that a most ancient and hardy nation at last has made the proper choice, observes the New York* Sun.' Albania stretches along the eastern coast of .the Adriatic sea, opposite Italy, having Montenegro on the north, Serbia on the east and Greece on the south. Albania has a commanding place upon the landlocked sea, and her harbor at Avlona, one of ’the finest In the world, is considered by military critics an Adriatic Gibraltar. The country is a rugged, wild, heavily wooded mountain, complex, undeveloped and unpathed. Albania became nominally a province of Turkey in 1468 .and remained such until 1913, when thd London conference granted a national independence under a prince choses' by the great powers. The Albanians bitterly' complained at that time about the borders delimited f«sjthem on the grounds that many purely Albanian districts had been given to Montenegro, Greece and Serbia. Albania was in a sulky mood at the outbreak of the great war. However, its isolation was characteristic, for Albania has stood alone throughout its history. In this time of . flaming national prides the Albanian, or Shkypetar, deserves a fleeting notice. He has fought the longest and the hardest of all historic struggles for native land and independence, but wild, inhospitable and untutored in the uses of propaganda, his heroic story has attracted rare and scant attention. Unsupported by allies, sympathy, song or story, the Shkypetars, a “little nation,” with their backs to their barren crags, war for freedom vdlceless throughout the centuries. » 2,000-Years’ Struggle. Serbia’s or Montenegro’s endurance is pale compared to that which has preserved this remnant of a race against all comers through truceless ages. For more than 2,000 years the Albanians have stood their ground, yielding their patrimony foot by foot, but guarding the fragment of their native land so well that It today remains the least known region in Europe. They are the oldest race in Europe to survive upon the land where the morning light of history found it and this stubborn tenure of their fatherland has been possible only by a longer, braver and more indomitable struggle than that waged by any other Balkan people. The taciturn and dour Shkypetar, however, has fought silently, with morose and unbroken spirit and at lone venture. All other Balkan peoples haVe continuously clamored for the sympathy of the world.

Today, however, their hills, swallowed up in the overwhelming maelstrom of world war, their land crossed by the battle lines of great powers, they are living the last chapter of their troubled history. Whatever turn the great battle in the Balkans may take, it apparently can only mean that the time has come at last for Albanian submergence. Italians, Austrians and Serbians are contending bitterly for she last strip of the Shkypetar heritage, and it seems that the measure of their exlstepeqhas been reached. They will emerge fronkthis world shock Italians, Serbians dr-Austrlans, and the ancient * Illyrian will vanish into the llmbp of forgotten things. Fought Without Complaint. “There is no suth thing as Albanian nationality!” Bismarck roughly exclaimed at the congress of Berlin. More properly speaking there was no Albanian diplomatist, no Albanian spokesman. There was just a little nation to be dealt with according to. the irrefutable wisdom of power, just the remnants of an ancient race that has been forced ever farther into a fringe of unproductive mountains, The conflict sustained for more than

2,000 years against Greek and Slav and Turk and Frank, by this unconquerable race, has awakened no echo of understanding or applause abroad In the civilized world. Montenegro’s sturdy defiance of the Turk through five centuries; the courageous resistance of the Serbians; the stolid survival of the Bulgarian under centuries of merciless domination, and the revival of the Greeks, the nation of illustrious ancestry; all these have stirred the world. The wrongs and the hopes and the virtues of all other Balkan peoples'have been told in the press everywhere. The Shkypetar has continued his history into modern times of propaganda and press agencies practically voiceless. Overshadowed and overshouted by the peoples around him, he at best received flashes of consideration as a possible booty or as a racp- of guerrillas. Lord Byron gave the Shkypetar a momentary notice, a brief literary memorial, when he said that the wild Albanian had never shown an enemy his back or broken_his faith- to a guest. The Albanian has asked nothing of Europe, and Europe has given him nothing but a sad reputation, which, judged according to the greater enlightenment of our civilization, he undoubtedly has deserved. Neglected by Missionaries. But even the mission schools have passed him Uy and so he has had little opportunity to learn the advantage of the high moral codes and humanitarism which rule the destinies of civilization. Pillaged.and warred upon through the centuries, he has become habituated, to war and pillage. /

The Albanians are the remnants of the original inhabitants of Illyria, Epirus, Macedonia and Thrace. Overwhelming waves.of Celts, Goths, Romans, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgars, Franks and Turks have flooded against them, but the. Shkypetars have always survived the shock; have survived, the burning of their villages, the wasting of their lands, the massacres of their people, and have somehow emerged unbroken, unassimilated upon the stage of the twentieth century. They have borne the assault of Slavonic storm almost since the Euro pean debut of the Slavs. Between the Slavs and the Illyrians there have been centuries of blood feud. The Slav has called the Albanian a brigand and plunderer, and the world has accepted the verdict, while the Slav and the Turk have steadily encroached upon the Shkypetars* homeland. Until the wild torrents of this world war swept over his country the Albanian had managed to maintain the freedom of his hills. ;; Single Handed for Independence, Though occasionally beaten and forced into narrower limits, he has obstinately refused submission, has opposed a rugged, uncomplaining, unconquerable spirit to all grievous misfortune ; and alone, without the sympathy of anyone, illiterate, poor in country, his few remaining rocks coveted b/ 9 every neighbor, with no ally or disinterested counsellor, at the outbreak of the world war the Shkypetar stood at the end of a splendid fight of more than 2,000 years’ duration, in which the armistices have been few and short. And their claims are the best in Europe to the lands they occupy. There can be no doubt of the legitimacy of their tenure. When the Slavs first, appeared in the Balkans in the beginning of the sixth century the Shkypetars had already enjoyed 1,100 years’ possession. True, the Albanian has not been a friend to the stranger nor has he been a seeker after the stranger’s light, but then almost the whole story of his contact with higher civilization has been in battle for his hearth and .home against aggression. Rome policed the shores of the Albanians’ country, but left the unbreakable people largely to themselves. The Slavs drove them from many of their lands, but could not crush or sutgine them. For more than 1,000 yean the Shkypetars have contested their ground foot for foot against the Slav and Turk. Montenegro struggled against the Turk a bare five centuries. v ' • \ \-- * -

View of Avlona.