THE NEW WITNESS    DECEMBER 23 1915

FEEDING THE SERB    by   Jan Gordon

  On the road from Scutari to San Giovanni di Medina we met the Adriatic Commission. We were bumping up and down trying to fall into the uneven trot of our half-starved ponies, they were lolling in the “fiacres"—tied together in many places with string—-which the Montenegrin Government had promised to us only three days before. We were nearing the end of our four weeks' tramp, our labours rudely ended by the inrush of the Bulgar and of the Austrian; they were at the commencement of their task. But we were both in like evil case. They did not demand of us, “Where were the Serbian troops?” or “How the Montenegrin fared?” They asked us, “Can one buy underclothing in Scutari?” and we replied with a similar question, “What is Brindisi like for shopping?” Our baggage lay behind us in Serbia, captured by the enemy; theirs "was at the bottom of the Adriatic, the small Italian trans­port having been sunk by an Austrian submarine. A brave man was that Italian captain.' He had seen capture inevitable and had -fired the benzine which his ship was carrying, so that it should not fall to the enemy. The Austrian captain became so enraged that he sent three torpedoes into the little vessel, and repeatedly fired his revolver at the crew while they were swimming in the water. Luckily, revolver shooting requires considerable practice, and nobody was hit.

This little band of Englishmen without underclothing has to answer the question “How is Serbia to be fed during tin; following winter?" and although we cannot enter into their secret counsels, we can at least examine the ground that they will have to deal with and thus understand some of the difficulties and dangers of their task.          

It is impossible for Englishmen to realise the titter barrenness of Montenegro and Albania, a barrenness to which they both owe their continued independence. The Turk had long ago swept both these states into his territories but-for the fact that no Turkish Army could live within their borders. In old Montenegro one passes mile upon mile of barren crag and stone where stunted oaks find sustenance with difficulty. Now and again one passes a house, perhaps two, eking a meagre sustenance from some pothole of earth of perhaps an acre’s surface. The land is just sufficient to support the population during a moderate season, but if the summer be ever so little below the average, famine spreads out; cramping fingers

Albania is little better, and Albania is hostile. The Catholic Albanian has little to hope from the Orthodox Serb. Austria, with its schools and. liberally dispensed money, seems to him to be his best friend, and the. Turkish Albanian will, of course, have none of the Slav. Thus the rehabilitation of what remains of the Serbian Army must come from the Allies.

Salonica is, of course, useless for this purpose. If we recaptured Monastir, at enormous expense, we should still be far from the northern army, and even if we could get into touch with them by this route, provisions for some  200,000 (Serbian estimate) cannot be passed from hand to hand. Valona is also useless, for the mountain s in Albania run from east to west, and Valona is too far south. Some of the southern Serb Army seems to have taken refuge in the mountains behind Durazzo, and through this port something may, perhaps, be accom­plished, but the means of transport are lacking.

The greater part of the Serbian forces, however, must presumably be somewhere in the few passes which lie about high Albania, and the Montenegrin frontier, They must be exposed to the most terrible conditions of cola and snow, for none of the passes lie much below 1,500 feet, and the " Borra "—a bitter wind, straight off the Siberian snows—blows frequently. Perhaps his hardi­ness is one of the Serbian's chief virtues: he will need all of it to withstand a winter under such conditions, and if to these we add hunger and insufficient boots and clothing, the outlook is terrible. The only two ports through which help can come are Antivari and San Giovanni di Medua. Both are under the guns of the Austrian fleet which can sail at any moment from Cattaro, and Antivari harbour is full of mines. From Antivari however, a railway runs some 15 miles to Vir Bazar and thence a good road inland to Podgoritza. .

San Giovanni di Medina, the harbour of Scutari, is-a large semi-circular bay ending to the south in a cape, off which lie the Austrian submarines. In the opposite curve a small sandbank, half awash, will afford protection to three or four small tramp steamers. The day before we arrived there, an Austrian submarine had ventured into the bay and had endeavoured to torpedo the two-steamers—one French, one Italian—which had braved the blockade. The torpedoes missed—one was badly aimed, but the other tipped the sandbank and dived to-the bottom. The day we escaped, on the French tramp, another Italian steamer came in, laden with a first con­signment of stores for the Serbian Army. Two or three days later several Austrian cruisers steamed into the bay and sank every boat, so the refuge behind the sand­bank must now be considerably blocked with wreckage. San Giovanni itself clings about the stony hill behind the little port, and higher still are Montenegrin batteries, but all the gunners are ill with pleurisy or bronchitis,, due to the barracks where they sleep, which are like-the forlorn ruins which open some tale of mystery and murder. We doubt if the cruisers suffered, much, but there is no doubt that large guns, well placed, would render San Giovanni very formidable, and nets could be spread about the outer bay against the submarine. It would be necessary to build quays and storehouses.

From San Giovanni a road runs first south to Alessio, and then north to Scutari. It is a good road as roads go in the Balkans, and to a limited extent one could even use motor cars upon it, but from Scutari troubles thicken.

Nothing has ever been prepared in Montenegro for doing anything upon a large scale. It is the country of the small: there are perhaps fifty houses in the whole land which aspire to a third storey. Every bale of goods through Scutari would have to pass from lorry to rowing-boat, from rowing-boat to steamer, back to rowing-boat and thence to lorry again ; and when it is a question  of feeding and clothing some 100,000 men, even by such means—welll, we are glad that the Albanian clergy cannot understand real English. And—there are no steamers. There used to be, but the last blew up a few days after we had used it—we seem to have been fatal in Montenegro. So steamers will have to be procured, and in the meanwhile the Serbian Army is living on dead horse and roots.

From Podgoritza east, a good road runs to Andrievitza but all the bridges have been washed away and the road thus rendered useless. It would seem easier to bring the troops to the provisions than the provisions to the troops, and if the daily papers are to be believed, this is happening.

One is inclined to ask, If it is so difficult for us to take provisions to the Serb, how can the Austrian and Bulgar provide for his own troops?

The Sanjah of Novi Bazar, which comprised the plain of Kosovo, was the granary of old Serbia. Immensely fertile, and with large wealthy farms, much of the land was, and is still, owned by proprietors whose Turkish sympathies are well known. These proprietors would bury their grain from the Serbian requisitions, but would sell freely to the Austro-Germans. There has always been a legend in these parts that one day the Turk would come to his own once more—a legend which has prevented the pretty Christian girls of Ipek from casting aside the protecting yashmak which Turkish customs and the fear of abduction into a harem had forced upon them.

The Bulgars and Austro-Germans have advanced into the mountains with a great fertile plain behind them; the Serbs are retreating into miles of 'barren country" ending at the sea of which the Austrian submarine is at present lord.                                            

              THE CITY OF DREADFUL HATE     (Scutari)

On a flat marsh, at the edge of a great green lake, surrounded on all sides by high and gloomy mountains, lies the City of Dreadful Hate. It has no country, for those who hold it are not its owners, and to those who are its countrymen it will not submit. The greatest city in all those regions yet has it no sovereign power, for hate constructs nothing; and so hating itself it lies supine, a prey to any who will possess it. Within its walls a great street divides hate from hate, arid at night he who does not hate must carry a lantern so that the haters-shall not kill him.

This is not romance, this is a description of Scutari in Albania.         

A truly strange city ,with its mosques on one side of the "rue Internationale" and its cathedrals on the other-Muezzin crying against Matins chimes—and its overlord the Montenegrin who will have none of either religion. Scutari casts longing desires back to the days of the International occupation when English, French, Italian, Russian, Austrian and .German officers and soldiery flaunted in its cafes and spent lavish money in its bazaar. That was in August, 1914, and in a fortnight every soldier was gone.

It is a mistaken idea amongst travellers that one can describe a town by telling the tale of its monuments-it is like describing a man by saying that he lives next door to a museum. But Scutari has no monument— the Turk builds only for to-day—save the Venetian fortress which overlooks the teeming bazaar, which is itself so much more vital than the dead walls of the citadel. Into this bazaar come every Saturday the strangely garbed mountaineers, bringing with them eggs and cheese, hides and hand-woven stuffs, which they spread upon the ground, leaving their women-folk to chaffer and bargain for the highest bidder. Scutari bazaar on market day is like a scene from the Russian ballet set in a city; the stranger holds his breath, half dazed with the magnificence and half awaiting for the orchestra to strike up, for the dancing to begin. Here are women of the Kastrati, with short, black, bell-bottomed skirts, and waist-belts, silver on leather, which weigh eight to ten pounds apiece ; here are peasants of Shkreli and of Shala, and of the Miridithes, each in their own costumes; here are peasant Catholics of the town in red and white striped Egyptian-like hoods, and great ladies with their legs cased in embroidered pipes so stiff that they cannot bend the knee, and coats such as were worn by the cavaliers of Charles the Second.

Scutari itself has a strange air of reticence. To the traveller she is like some shy, hard-faced woman with a kind heart. Every house—save the shops-—Turk or Christian, is surrounded by high walls and guarded by a great gate; within these giant portals one knows are beautiful

gardens filled with many a flowering shrub peopled by many a hospitable family, but he who knows nobody wanders in an arid waste of walls and curious windows.

Christian or Turk, there is the rub. Scutari, like Albania, is a house divided. William “the Weed” fell because he was a Christian. Essad Pascha could not gain Scutari and the North because he was a Turk, and yet Albania is a nation speaking one tongue. When the “Internationals " walked out disorder walked in, religious quarrels became constant, and it is true that anyone walking down the main street without a light to signify his peaceful intentions would be shot from the side"-streets.

Montenegro stepped in, and there ensued a curious position. The Powers suddenly became blind, and what they could not prevent they would not see. The Governor of Scutari said to me : " You see, it is curious, monsieur. Here I am the law, and to the law I am nobody. I can never apply to your consuls, for they do not know officially who I am."

Scutari itself is pro-English. The late Governor, Colonel Phillips, was an Englishman, and Admiral Burney, Miss Durham, and George Paget have graven themselves deep upon Scutarian memories. Even the village idiot carries about with him a paper written in English,which he imagines is a money- producing talis­man, though it really says :

 " If this chap worries you, kick him."

The little beggar children run by your side holding out slender brown hands and murmuring coaxingly, “Garn!” and   “Git away, you!" The " Maison Paget" is the "Tower of London " of the town, for Mr. Paget, who lived here for years in seclusion, was a fervent collector of old arms, and his house bristles with weapons of every sort, size, and description. The ex-English Consul, Mr. Suma, who was wounded in the head at the first siege belonged to the Albanian noble families, for Scutari has its nobles also.

But Albanian memories are long.

The tale seems that in International times a chief came down from the mountains. He was wild and dirty and his feet unspeakable, but he had the air of a king and he demanded to see the Governor. With the Governor: was the Mayor—also a noble-—but the chief treated him with contempt. When the Mayor had gone the Governor remonstrated with the dirty chieftain.   

“You should really treat the Mayor with more respect." he said, “for he also is a noble."

“Noble?'" saith he. “Why, Excellency, when my father looked down like an eagle from the mountains lie saw that man's father playing in the gutter."

This was literally true, for the Venetians had ennobled many of the richer families of tradesmen, though many many years ago..

What is to become of Scutari? After the last Balkan war it was taken away from Montenegro by Austrian intrigue, and many English people who did not under­stand thought that we had been very unfair upon the mountaineers. But let us consider. Scutari is more populous and more wealthy than all the Slav population of Montenegro. If Montenegro were prepared to give justice and equality to the Turk and Catholic subject;, then Scutari would take Montenegro, and not vice versa-

This war we claim to be one of justice, and is made for the protection of small nations. Can we finish it by handing over a populace to a suzerainty which they fear and detest ? The Montenegrins have said to me: “With-out Scutari, we might as well give up Cettinge. There will never be a lasting peace in the turbulent Peninsula so long as Moslem, Catholic, or Orthodox is permitted to place its rivals in political subjection.

Montenegro with Scutari would be like

a small inefficient lion-tamer in charge of a large lion :  the red-hot iron would be painfully in evidence, for Scutari would, never remain subjected. The exchange of Lofchen for Scutari is a  card which has long lodged in the sleeve of that able diplomatist, King Nicholas. Up till now he has never dared to use it, for even his own subjects would not have submitted. It is my view that he has seized the moment to invest his action with a plausibility which has deceived the whole world!

Montenegro has retired from the fight, but being a loser she has retired a gainer. She has exchanged a few miles of crag and rock for the richest town on the South Adriatic coast. Such losses render me thoughtful.