Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [236]
The Greek commission ignored Albania and its claims and spent most of its time trying to sort out the competing demands of Italy and Greece. Various schemes were floated; for Italy to have a mandate over the whole of Albania, or Greece one over the south. The French, mainly to block Italy’s expansion, urged that Korçë in the south must go to Greece because it controlled the only road joining the Adriatic side of Greece to Greek Macedonia. There were rumors that Greece and Italy were talking again about a separate deal; that Italy was arming friendly Albanian gangs; that the French intended to remain in occupation of Korçë unless it were given to Greece. The Americans were curiously passive, perhaps because the inner circle around Wilson was absorbed with the German treaty and the worsening relations with Italy. In desperation, Nicolson came up with an absurd scheme: for Albania to be divided up, with the north linked to Serbia, a Muslim state in the center under an Italian mandate, the south under Greek rule, and Korçë the home of a Central Albanian University under American protection. 40
The Albanians were horrified, reported Wilson, who had received a number of petitions, at the thought of an Italian mandate. Perhaps they should have their independence. “I really don’t know what they would do with it,” replied Lloyd George, “except cut each other’s throats.” Albania would be just like the Scottish highlands in the fifteenth century. “Don’t speak ill of the mountains of Scotland,” said Wilson, “it is my family’s place of origin.” And that was the end of the matter as far as the Council of Four was concerned.41
In the summer of 1919, when a new and more conciliatory government came to power in Italy, it made an agreement with Venizelos, himself under pressure to settle Greece’s disputed claims. The deal was a matter of old-style horse-trading: Italy would support Greek claims, including those to Thrace, if Greece gave up its claims to the territory Italy wanted in the southern part of Asia Minor. Italy would also hand over all of the Dodecanese islands except the most important one, Rhodes. (This was not as much of a sacrifice as it sounded, because Italy had no legal claim to them.) In the case of Albania, Italy agreed that Greece should have the south; in return, Greece would recognize Italy’s possession of the port of Vlorë and its hinterland, and an Italian mandate over what was left. As a symbol of the new spirit of compromise, a railway would be built from Vlorë to Athens.
Almost immediately, other powers raised objections. The French refused to leave Korçë until a more general settlement was achieved. The new state of Yugoslavia was agitated at the thought of so much Italian territory along its borders. And if Greece and Italy were getting pieces of Albania, then it wanted some in the north.
The final blow to the agreement came in February 1920 from an unexpected quarter. President Wilson, defeated in his struggle to get the Treaty of Versailles accepted by Congress, still clung to his principles. The United States, he said in a note to his European allies, was not prepared to do an injustice to the people of Albania. By the spring, the Albanians were in full-scale revolt against the Italian occupation. By August, Italy was prepared to sign an armistice that left it with only the island of Sazan, facing the port of Vlorë. “It is very sad,” commented an Italian newspaper, “to witness this debacle after so much noble and generous Italian blood has been given