Quoted:

“I owe a lot to Albania; I will repay this debt of my youth. At the time when I was taking my first steps as a diplomat, when my zeal was forbidden, poor Albania touched me deeply. It helped to enlighten my conscience, troubled by professional skepticism; it awakened my inner calling. I have always believed in the duty to serve justice and to fight oppression. But how do we fulfill this duty? Does the opportunity ever present itself?

Indeed, opportunities are not lacking; it is we who willingly avoid them. We like to believe that it is now much more beautiful to be devoted to one’s private life, to friends, relatives, fellow citizens, one’s country. This is not enough. Either you are devoted, or you are not. Individual, family, local, national egoism — it is always egoism that leads to sacrifice, the sacrifice of the weakest by the strongest.

In Albania, for the first time, I felt that there were not only human beings, but also peoples who could not be abandoned, – without shame, – in their weakness. I had the good fortune to be appointed, in the spring of 1879, secretary of the Commission for the determination of the borders of Upper Albania and Montenegro. I arrived in Shkodra and, from there, with my colleagues, I traveled around the country, proud to hold my first post, without having any idea, – to tell the truth, – of the real mission with which the Commission was charged.

In fact, we had come to mutilate, to truncate the Albanian territory for the benefit of Montenegro. And Albania was defenseless. This alone would have been enough to give it all its charm in the eyes of the youngest among us. And its inhabitants, moreover, were gentle, independent of what was said about them; they only wanted to work, proud and dignified.

And they endured everything without complaining, without even having a lawyer. Because Albania did not exist, and should not exist, for diplomacy. Only Turkey was in confrontation with Europe. And, when Albania brought difficulties, it was Turkey, powerless, that Europe threatened or pretended to threaten.

I remember the grotesque naval demonstration of Ulcinj – moreover inaccessible by sea, in the Adriatic – where our armored fleets came to make a theater of bombing. It really took me many years to explain these comedies.

Today, from a distance, I understand what I could barely discern in 1879 and 1880. It was the problem, — then new to me and insoluble, — whose complications would later erupt into the Balkan Wars and then the Great War: the eternal problem of the dismemberment of Turkey [note – Albania was considered part of the Ottoman Empire]. Here is how it was posed then, in Albania and Montenegro…”

Paul Henri Benjamin Balluet d’Estournelles de Constant, Baron de Constant de Rebecque (November 22, 1852 – May 15, 1924), was a French diplomat and politician, lawyer of international arbitration and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1909.

Source

Title: L’Albanie en 1921 / Justin Godart ; préface de M. d’Estournelles de Constant,… Author: Justin Godart Publisher: les Presses universitaires (Paris), 1922 Foreword: Paul-Henri-Benjamin d’Estournelles de Constant