the
Albanian race. Unity of history, of language, of religion, all that
constitutes the essence of nationality, is altogether wanting in the
Albanians. This is not the time to discuss all the obsolete and
paradoxical things which have lately been said about the Albanians by
anthropologists, ethnologists, &c. &c. We do not wish, either, to
pronounce against them the death-sentence of the celebrated geographer
Kiepert, who wrote some time ago in the _National Zeitung_ of Berlin,
"We think the total dissolution of this part of an important and very
ancient nation, which always retrogrades" to be very probable, and
useful for European interests. Doubtless, the Albanians have a right of
historical existence; but that history in which is always represented
more or less the famous scientific conception of the great naturalist of
modern times, the _struggle for existence_, is favourable only for those
who know how to work and struggle successfully in the arena of
civilization. Up to this moment, this race has been entirely unknown in
history. A learned German naturalist, Haeckel, has found in this region
of Eastern Europe the rudiments of a savage life exactly resembling as
to manners the state of pre-historic times, especially in Upper Albania,
where this race has a numerical and national preponderance. The
Albanian nationality, then, about which its _soi-disant_ representatives
have made so much noise, has no real existence, and is at this day but a
national Utopia, a _terra incognita_, existing only in the ardent
imagination of certain high functionaries of the Sublime Porte, and
certain religious fanatics of Mussulman Albania. As for the
non-Mussulmans, they still remain supporters and friends of the Hellenic
idea and of the Greeks, with whom they have always made common cause,
and have played a glorious part in our history by their courage and
patriotism. Let the Albanians show by their European culture that there
are among them the elements of a compact race which has the full
consciousness of its individuality; and, what is more important, let
them abstain from declaring to-day against Hellenism, by becoming the
instruments of treacherous movements whose sole aim is their absorption.
The object of the Hellenic idea is not the absorption of the races with
which it is called to live; it is neither fusion nor conquest, as has
been more than once proved in history. It is only in the Greeks that the
Albanians will find their n