Photo by Tlieron J. Damon 

 STREET SCENE IN THE TOWN OF SCUTARI, ALBANIA 



AN INDOMITABLE PERSONALITY 



Today the Albanian is the most pic- 

 turesque personaHty in Europe ; yet, in- 

 teresting- as are his traits, of more sig- 

 nificant interest is his poHtical future. 

 An Albanian national consciousness has 

 recently appeared and refuses to be 

 crushed. Under the anomalous govern- 

 ment of the Turk the various Christian 

 races of the Empire, as the Ottoman 

 Armenians, the Ottoman Bulgarians, and 

 the Ottoman Greeks, have each their na- 

 tional existence, a state within a state, 

 though subject always to the will of the 

 Turk. The Albanians, although in the 

 main they have adopted a kind of Mos- 

 lem loyalty which gives them a quasi- 

 solidarity with the Turk, are determined 

 that they also shall have a national 

 entity. 



Though they are cursed with the back- 

 wardness which has everywhere accom- 

 panied in a greater or less degree the 

 Mohammedan faith, their leaders realize 



that they are not an Oriental but an 

 Occidental race; that their Turco-Mo- 

 hammedan traits are a veneer, and that 

 with but a generation of good education 

 they will leap forward and take their 

 place among the civilized and law-abid- 

 ing races of the Balkan peninsula. 



Not incompatible with the new Alba- 

 nian nationalism — indeed, the reason for 

 it — is the fact that the Albanian is one of 

 the most intensely individualistic mem- 

 bers of the human race. Were this not 

 so he would ages ago have lost his iden- 

 tity in that of the various peoples who 

 throughout the historical era have surged 

 around the Albanian Mountains. In 

 spite of the successive onslaughts of 

 Roman, Goth, Serb, and Bulgar, and of 

 the 350 years of Turkish domination, the 

 Albanian has conserved his indomitable 

 individuality. Crispi, the Italian states- 

 man, was a thorough-going x\lbanian. 

 He was a member of the large colony of 

 Albanians in Sicily and southern Italy, 



1093 



