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they have been left free to follow their own devices, have immediately, and with a spontaneous and irresistible motion, swung right over towards Greece.

It will, perhaps, help my readers to form some impression of the culture and civilization of the Christian Epirotes if I give a statistical table of their schools in the districts of Korytsa and Kolonia, the northernmost districts of Northern Epirus, and the ones most bitterly contested by the Albanian nationalities as centers of Albanian culture.

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The Albanians have in the entire province of Northern Epirus only one school in the city of Korytsa, with an attendance varying from one to two hundred scholars.

The population of 70,000 in the city and district of that name is about equally divided between Orthodox and Mohammedans. The Albanian language is spoken generally, but there is a strong Hellenic spirit, especially in the city. Bangas, one of the most munificent benefactors of the Hellenic revival, came from Korytsa; and the citizens support at ordinary times forty-four Greek schools, with about 3,500 Amadori Virgili, La Questione Rumeliota, Rome, 1908.

scholars. During the war the district has been occupied by French forces from Monastir. When Greece was in disgrace because of the performances of the traitor Constantine, our French Allies, with that naïveté which they sometimes display in their dealings with alien peoples, established a "Republic of Korytsa" under Albanian leaders antagonistic to the Greeks. The result was unfortunate. The Albanian leaders were found to be Austrian spies, and were shot.

On the principles of self-determination, Korytsa is a hard border case. With the population so evenly divided between Orthodox and Mohammedans, it would be difficult to arrive at a just decision by counting heads. If, however, we are to consider not only the number of heads but what is inside them, the case for union with Greece becomes clearer. Here, as elsewhere in Northern Epirus, the progressive and civilizing elements are those that desire a Greek future, and there can be little doubt that the town will be better off as part of an ordered and established state than as part of one that is likely for many years to be unsettled and turbulent.

There is, however, another consideration affecting Korytsa which-although we may admit that it has no relation to the principle of self-determination-is nevertheless of too much practical importance to Epirus as a whole to be entirely disregarded. The Pindus range cuts Southern (Greek) Epirus completely off from Southern (Greek) Macedonia. It is not until one has traveled as far north as Korytsa that one finds a way through by the passes of the Devoli. To include Korytsa in Albania would be to cut off Northeastern Greece from all direct communication with Northwestern Greece. A traveler from Janina to Florina,

for instance, would then have to go round by sea, unless he were prepared to ride over the passes of Metsovo, and that, surely, a route that no one would care to follow if he could go any other way. There is no road, the wolves are unfriendly, and the hotels are not good. Inhabitants of a level land like ours can hardly realize how vitally such a matter as this may affect the inhabitants of a mountainous land. For them, access to a pass may make all the difference between economic progress and decay. The consideration must be faced that to cut Greece off from the Korytsa gap is to inflict a grave material injury upon the whole of her northern territories. That should, of course, not be allowed to weigh in the balance were the national sympathies of Korytsa quite clear. But since consideration of her sympathies leaves the balance trembling, perhaps the practical consideration may not unreasonably be thrown in to tip the scale.

The Northern Epirotes, it would seem, gave a very clear Greek answer to their question in the revolution of 1914; and it is the answer that one would expect from a consideration of their interests, characteristics and traditions. An Albanian answer would do Albania no good and Greece much harm. There seems in this matter to be a fortunate agreement between concrete practical interests and abstract national ideals.

THE PROBLEM OF EASTERN GALICIA

By MIROSLAV SICHINSKY

Last November 1, the news of an outbreak of hostilities between the Poles and the Ukrainians was published in the American press. In their dispute over the territory of Eastern Galicia, which the Poles claimed on historic grounds and the Ukrainians because of the preponderance of their population in the district, the two new republics had finally come to blows. At that time the Ukrainian immigrants in America proposed a joint appeal of Poles and Ukrainians in this country to be dispatched to their fellow countrymen in Europe, urging them to settle the dispute by plebiscite. Unfortunately, the Poles-particularly Premier Paderewski, who was here then-were hostile to such action and bloodshed continued. After more than six months of fighting, during which parts of the cities of Lemberg and Przemysl have been all but demolished and hundreds of lives lost, the problem of Eastern Galicia is not nearer solution than it was in November, 1918.

Just what the province of Galicia is, historically and politically, is very briefly and clearly stated in a French conception, published in Annales des Sciences Politiques, 1903-1904:

"The Ukrainians, or Little Russians, have long occupied the Eastern part of Galicia, Volhynia, Ukraine and a part of Lithuania. Overrun at times

by several states, ravaged by the Tartars, an independent kingdom in the fourteenth century, these provinces finally succumbed to Polish rule. In 1648 the Hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks, Khmelnitsky, finally succeeded in shaking off this yoke. But the Ukrainians gained nothing but a change of masters. For in 1654, Khmelnitsky was forced to make a treaty with the Czar, which virtually established the sovereignty of Moscow in Ukraine, Podolia, and Volhynia, while the Ukrainians of Galicia were annexed to Poland. They were massed with these provinces under the rule of Maria Theresa in 1772 and later, under Joseph II of Austria.

“An Austrian province, but a Slavic country, Galicia is governed by an aristocracy of the Polish race, which is true to the memories of the great disrupted Fatherland. To a great extent, this province is inhabited by the Ukrainians or Little Russians, of different origin. from the Poles, of other traditions and of a lower social scale.

"By all possible means the Polish nobility tries hard to transform the province into a stronghold of the Yagello idea. The Poles still dream of restoring their ancient kingdom, extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea, encircling, together with the Polish provinces proper, the eastern part of Prussia and the Ukraine as well."

The district is a large one, bounded on the southwest by the Carpathian Mountains, on the northwest, by the River San, and on the east and north, by the frontier of the former Russian Empire. It includes the cities of Lemberg and Przemysl, and a region of oilfields just north of the Carpathian Mountains which is said to be the richest in all Europe, outside of Rumania.

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