Bøger af Bejtullah Destani

It was by no means evident in the early years of the twentieth century that Albania in southeastern Europe would become an independent country and would join the family of European nations. After five centuries as a part of the Ottoman Empire, the country was hardly noticed by the other peoples of Europe. This was to change at the time of the Balkans Wars (1912-1913) and the London Conference, at which Albania played a central role and where its fate was decided. The present volume brings together British Foreign Office documents focusing on Albania from 1912 to 1914. Among them are the dispatches and private correspondence of the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, who chaired the London Conference and endeavoured to keep peace in Europe at an age when the Great Powers were unwaveringly gravitating towards war and conflagration.

''We ourselves, at the outset of the war, received from a responsible Serbian source this frank announcement: "We will extirpate the Albanians." Now that this system of annihilation is being persisted in without modification, despite all European protests, we deem it our duty to reveal the designs of the gentlemen of Belgrade without more ado... In this matter facts speak more loudly than any confessions could. Since Serbian troops crossed the borders last autumn and occupied districts there inhabited by Albanians, one blood-bath has followed another in sequence. In isolated cases the conqueror may have been forced in self-defence to proceed with all martial vigour against an Albanian village from which his troops were perhaps fired on from behind. But to raze hundreds of villages to the ground, to butcher tens of thousands of non-combatants, men, women, and children, these are deeds which no martial law, no precept of self-preservation enjoins..."