Italy had marked out southern Albania

Italy had marked out southern Albania with its fine port of Avlona as her own sphere of influence and was determined to prevent its acquisition by Greece. The diplomacy of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente had been for several years a struggle for mastery in the Mediterranean. The increasing strength of Greece gave her unusual diplomatic importance, and both France and Germany made flattering overtures for friendship. M. Venizelos, the premier, to whose skillful diplomacy the aggrandizement of Greece had been chiefly due, leaned to France, which had supported him in securing Kavala and the region about it. But a bad impression was caused in France by the speech made by King Constantine while at Potsdam attending the German army maneuvers. In this speech he paid a glowing tribute to German military training.

The new state of Albania was in a wretched condition when peace finally settled upon the Balkans. The International Boundary Commissions appointed by the Concert to delimit its boundaries worked very deliberately in order to draw the boundary lines according to the races predominating in the frontier villages. Serbs in the northern districts and Greeks in the southern immediately began to change the racial complexion of the debatable territory by means of oppression and expulsion. When the work of the commissions approached completion the populations of the delimited territory refused to accept the solution.

Koritza and Arzyrocastro

The Epirotes about Koritza and Arzyrocastro in southern Albania revolted, with a demand for autonomous administration of their two provinces, and the new Albanian government had neither troops nor officers with which to oppose them. The Northern Boundary Commission had given to Serbia and Montenegro Albanian towns like Dibra and Djakova which are absolutely necessary to the Albanian peasants in the neighboring mountains for purchase and sale. Moreover, Serbia and Montenegro began a systematic policy of expelling Albanians from their new territories, with the result that thousands of refugees were thrown upon the Albanian government for support.

The International Commission of Control, composed of a representative of each of the six great powers and an Albanian, appointed by the powers to assist the new king, William of Wied, to organize the government, was so torn with internal jealousies as to nullify the little good that that impotent prince could accomplish. The Dutch officers selected by the powers to form a gendarmerie found it impossible to execute the orders of either prince or commission, and the Albanian chiefs refused to obey anybody* The Moslems, who formed a large majority of the inhabitants, were represented in the king’s cabinet by the most influential man in Albania, Essad Pasha.