THE BALKAN PUDDING

For those romantics who seek the bizarre in politics, Albania offers an illimitable source of novelties. Its tangled threads of political, religious and economic-puzzles give little prospect of solution.

Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics, and Mohammedans divide the country with their quarrels. Bands of Jugo-Slavs, Bulgarians, and Greeks war incessantly upon each other. The government finds it impossible to collect taxes from obdurate and crafty mountaineers, and at repeated intervals the government is administered from the decks of Italian cruisers, while the land heaves with rebellions. Ninety percent of the people neither read and write, nor wish to. Some of the people sigh for union with Italy, others look longing across the artificial border to Jugo-Slavia; but neither power is willing to, or would be allowed by the other, to occupy this territory. Bolshevists and "Whites" rampage about.

The present and future of Albania are, indeed, bright as an inexhaustible spring of controversy, and it is unlikely that this busy little state will allow the Balkans, to relapse from the front page. Other states may fall in line with the humdrum task of self-government and industrial development, but Albania will always stand by the ancient and honored ideal of self-determination by the sword. The new-fangled ideas of democracy and representative government may vitiate the national character of neighboring countries, but Albania is resolved to uphold to the last man the Balkan ideal of confusion, poverty, and anarchy.