UNREST IN ALBANIA

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 54, 1 September 1914, Page 4

UNREST IN ALBANIA

AUSTRO-ITALIAN ANTAGONISM.

On the 13th of last month The Times, in an article on the " Albanian trouble, said : — v The State of Albania was born in London. Sir Edward Grey, as chairman of the meeting of Ambassadors, ' stood sixmsor to it. But the responsibility as a whole lies on all the Powers, and principally upon the two "most interested" States, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Austro-Italian antagonism lies, indeed, at the root of the difficulty in Albania. But it is by no means a new symptom, nor one that is likely quickly to disappear.. It lias long been known to European statesmen, and has been recognised, albeit negatively, by the two States themselves since 18t)7, when the Austro'-Hungariaa and Italian Foreign Ministers, Count. Goluchowski and the Marquis Visconti Venosta, drew up at Monza their first .self-denying ordinance in" favour of the eventual autonomy^ of Albania. Yet during the meeting of Ambassadors in London that accompanied the recent Balkan wars no statesman or diplomatist was farsighted or energetic enough to insist that the only .solution for the Albanian problem on a basis of autonomy would be the establishment of control by all the Powers. It was, and still is, a debatable point whether an Albanian State ought to have been created at all. But the Powers scarcely considered this question on its merits. They preferred to follow the line of least resistance, or rather to yield to the greater pressure which came, in the first instance, from Austria-Hungary. Determined to exclude Servia from the Adriatic seaboard, and supported in this policy by the short-sighted diplomacy of Italy, Austria-Hungary coerced the Powers into sanctioning the creation of an ''autonomous" Albania without suggesting or providing any adequate guarantee of the existence of the new State. The present situation is a direct consequence of these half-measures. The Powers aro now confronted withe a problem more arduous than ever. With the lipirote problem again in the foregiound, the Prince of Wied in an untenable predicament, and the central region in the hands of Mussulman in&urgents who are largely the tools of Turkish -intrigue, the alternatives present themselves ot reverting to a scheme of complete international control over a country divided into administrative sectors, or of allowing the two "most interested Powers" to take such action as they may deem necessary. The ""mobilisation of 50,000 troops in Italy is an ominous sign of the trend of .events, while scarcely less ominous are the reports, in an AustroHungarian semi-official journal that Austria-Hungary is negotiating for the purchase of a strategic position in the neighbourhood of Avlona.