THE ALBANIAN RISING.
AFTER the Counter-Revolution in Constantinople of a year ago comes the Albanian rising. It is the second great test of the statesmanship of the Young Turks. Englishmen will sincerely hope that they will pass through this new trial as triumphantly as through the first. The fighting in Albania is no doubt unnecessary in the sense that fighting in the Balkans is almost always unnecessary ; and yet it is useless to judge anything that happens in Albania by our own standard. The fact of an Albanian insurrection is not the less grave because in a more perfect Albania the leaders would have tried to do through their Deputies in Parliament what they are now trying to do by the sword. It has always been perceived that one of the greatest difficulties in the way of the Young Turks was the problem of finance. An efficient and uncorrupt Administration must be paid for; bribery and oppression flourish chiefly in underpaid Services, and now the Albanians are asked to pay. But unfortunately the Albanians, whose political horizon is bounded by their own wild mountains, regard increased taxation as simply an oppression. " We paid such-and-such taxes," they say, " under the old Sultan, and when the autocracy was done away with we were told that we should live under a more beneficent Government than before. Why, then, are we asked to pay more taxes ? It is obvious that the Young Turks, who speak so much of their enlightenment, are really oppressors in disguise. They want to collect money by means of octroi which did not exist before, and as though to prove that we are not mistaken in thinking that oppression is their object, they insult us by requiring us to use the Arabic alphabet. It is useless to argue with such people. We Albanians have generally got what we wanted by fighting, and by fighting alone. Therefore we will fight.' This, as we have said, is a grave matter for the Turkish Government. For see how mach is at stake. The Young Turks when they introduced the Constitution announced that they meant the Empire to be Ottoman rather than Turkish. In other words, it was to embrace the diverse peoples under the Sultan's rule on terms of exact equality. Even Christians were to be admitted to the Army. The Albanians are a non-Turkish people. They accepted Mohammedanism because it was forced upon them by the conqueror in the fifteenth century; but for all their national change of religion from Christianity to Islam, they have always maintained a substantial and proverbial degree of independence,—an independence which, by a curious but familiar paradox, was made pretty easy for them in the days of the autocracy. The present situation is an emphatic extension of that paradox. The establishment of a Consti- tutional and humane regime fetters them with visible bonds from which formerly they were able to keep their hands _almost entirely free. But if the Turkish Government is unable to include safely and peaceably in its polity a people like the Albanians, the whole theory of an Ottoman Empire breaks down. And that is not the only issue at stake. When- ever we think of rejuvenated Turkey we must remember that for the present it is represented by the Army, which is her pride and symbol. It was the Army, led by its noblest and most intelligent spirits, which made the Revolution. When the Revolution was accomplished, it was the Army again which, working through the organism of the Com- mittee of Union and Progress, led the newly created Con- stitution on from strength to strength, and overcame by the operations from Salonika the last convulsive effort of the autocracy to save itself a year ago. There is not a Deputy in the Turkish Parliament who does not know that if the Army were considerably weakened, or even if it lost much of its prestige, he could not be sure of sitting in his place for a week longer. Unfortunately the danger which would come from any undermining of the actual or moral strength of the Army goes much beyond anything we have already said. It is not merely that Arabs, Armenians, Bulgars, and Greeks within the Turkish Empire, encouraged by the success of the Albanians, might similarly defy the authority of the Young Turks. There is no nationality in the Balkan Peninsula having a grudge against Turkey which might not make itself troublesome if the Turkish Army were temporarily paralysed, or even if the wholesome esteem in which its fighting strength is held gave way to a, lower estimate. When Bulgaria declared her independence of Turkey, the Turkish Army was suffering from the dry-rot which was the natural consequence of the outrageous treatment the most long- suffering troops in the world had received from Abd-ul- Hamid. It was generally believed then that if Bulgaria found it necessary to fight for what she claimed she could defeat the Turkish Army. But no sooner had the Young Turks got into the saddle than they quickly introduced such alleviations and carried out in many brigades such a. re-equipment as made possible the spirited descent upon the capital of the well-armed and disciplined army which crushed the Counter-Revolution in the spring of 1909. Only a few weeks ago we wrote about the better under- standing between Russia and Austria-Hungary which depends on the admission that Turkey remains the hub of the Balkan universe, and that it is desirable that she should continue to occupy that position. But what if the hub falls asunder, not from any external blows, but from an internal flaw in its construction ?
What, then, are the Young Turks to do ? Of course the first duty of the Government, as of any Government, is to keep order, and we cannot flatter ourselves with the hope that the Turkish Army will be able to effect this without decisive fighting. As warfare is the chief political argu- ment of the Albanians, it is not likely that they will be appealed to by any other, at all events in the first stages of the dispute. The news from the theatre of war is very scanty, but it is fairly obvious from the reticence as much as from positive statements that the Turks are in a very difficult position. The whole of Northern Albania is in arms. The Tchernalova Pass, from which the Albanians had been driven out, is once again in their hands, and they also hold the Katchanik Pass, a gorge of several miles long, between high mountains, from which point they have divided the Turkish troops operating around Ferisovitch, Prishtina, and Mitrovitza from the Army of the South. Ten battalions of Reservists have been called out at Smyrna and Salonika. Southern Albania has not yet been appreciably affected, but a correspondent of the Times says that the Christian Albanians along the Greek frontier are in consternation at the decision of the Turkish Government to instal four hundred families of Bosnian Mohammedans among their villages. It is to be hoped that the necessary pressure on Albania will not bring about the adjustment of so many domestic feuds as to consolidate the Albanian people in a united movement against the Turks. But let us assume that the Turks will be successful in the broad outlines of their campaign, and that if they cannot reduce the Albanians to impotence they will prevent them from being a formidable trouble. What will be the next step ? The soldier will then have to yield place to the statesman, or at least to the soldier-statesman. The Albanians have never been truly conquered, and it would be madness for the Young Turks to try to prosecute the fighting to its logical end in a part of the world where the logical end means annihilation. The Albanians must not be hectored till they produce another All Pasha, who would perhaps be even a worse scourge than the original Lion of Yanina„ because the Young Turks, professing what they do, could. not resort to the only method which induced All to be silent,—bribery. It would be quite useless, with the slender information before us, to predict where the part of the soldier will end and that of the statesman begin ; but if the Young Turks cannot recognise their oppor- tunity and make use of it when it comes, they will have proved that the idea of an Ottoman Empire is nothing but a dream. No doubt the Albanians could pay the new taxes easily enough if only they cared to abandon their half-hearted culture of maize and olives and develop the great agricultural resources of their country. But that is not their way. We trust that the Young Turks will not persist in imposing on the Albanians any expedients which, while they provoke these untutored mountaineers to frenzy, are not essential to the preservation of the Constitution. Our only warrant for believing that the Young Turks will somehow come successfully through this new trial, as we most earnestly hope they will, is that they have survived one even greater.
Previous page
