Albania's New King— By One who Knows Him

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 484, 13 October 1928, Page 27

Albania's New King — By One who Knows Him

OW that Ahmed Beg Zogu finds himself proclaimed King of Albania, I wonder if he will remember a certain night

four years ago, when, as an exile in another Balkan capital, he sat with the present writer discussing his chances of fighting his way back to power in i is native land? I remember him then as an alert, good-looking young nun in the early thirties, smartly dressed in a wellcut blue serge suit, and quietly unfolding hi 3 ambitious plans for the future. Ho sketched out to me how he proposed to overthrow his rival and restore his own Government in Albania (writes "G.E.M.” in the “Daily Chronicle). He hoped, of course, to regain the premiership, and perhaps even then he saw himself as the future President of Albania; but little did either of us think at the time that not so many years later he might assume the royal purple. AN EARLY BEGINNING This romantic personality entered Albanian politics at the age when the interests of Englishmen are confined to the playing fields and the school curriculum. He came from the court of Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey to plunge into the whirl and welter of Balkan politics at the age of 16! Nineteen found him a flully-fledged colonel in the Austrian Army, and by the time he was 24 he had attained the rank of Prime Minister of the newly-liberated State of Albania. Ahmed Beg even then showed signs of being a strange mixture of primitive dictatorial ruler and modern reformer. His political methods were naturally Byzantine, yet he dreamed of an Albania blessed with the benefits of IVestern progress. When Ahmed Beg succeeded in fighting his way back to power four years ago there was no national currency, no public works, no railways, no public lighting, and even the public highways were mostly conspicuous by their absence in Albania. Imagine, therefore, Ahmed Beg Zogu, the Eastern ruler, ruling in the manner

of the Orient, yet seeing to it that I Albania, even if she could not attain j political stability, should at least have j her electric light! There is a song about Ahmed, made ] up by the warrior-minstrels over their camp, fires, which, with admirable if unconscious humour, and not a little pathos, sums the situation up in a few brave stanzas. Strum, strum on the strings of a guitar-like instrument, with the pit-pat-pat of rifle bullets as accompaniment—the glow of camp fire upon inlaid musket and elaborately hilted knife—and a ring of expectant faces! Then the song; Ahmed Ben the Beautiful! Oi O! Ahmed Beg l Ahmed, son of the mountain eagle! . . . Ahmed Beg the Beautiful! O! O! Ahmed Beg! He set three hundred men to work on the roads. Ho built a good road from Tirana to Durazzo, He makes electric light in the capital of A Ibania. O! O! Ahmed Beg’ the Beautiful , O! Ol Ahmed Beg. So this is the man who is to be king of Albania. A man of force and purpose, an Oriental potentate with dreams of Western progress, a ruler with something of the quality of American "hustle,” yet lacking in political experience in the wider sense and scarcely versed in the intricacies of finance and the practical side of public administration. Yet this is not quite the complete picture. For there is also something of the peacock in Albania’s Monarchelect, and it was this complex in his psychological make-up which led him recently to scandalise a friendly British ex-Minister, so it is said, by designing for himself and his entourage gorgeous uniforms which surpassed in magnificence anything seen on the stage of Daly’s Theatre in the hey-day of the fate George Edwardes and Viennese musical comedy. The Monarchy will enable Ahmed to indulge further his love of display and his people will doubtless like it. Yet, again, I wonder whether Ahmed Beg Zogu, in the glory of his newfound royal insignia, will remember that quiet young man in the -blue serge suit which was himself four years ago?