Note 69 — IV

"That Austria, as some have stated, should have planned the coup," says Miss Durham (in her Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle) "is very improbable." This lady tells us that the plot was a very genuine one, "as I learnt beyond all doubt from my own observations," etc. And, needless to say, she denounces the Serbs, who in her eyes are a very criminal people. It is a pity that Miss Durham did not confine herself to the excellent relief work she was doing the Balkans. Her description of the travels this involved is interesting. But even her account of relief work is biased by a prejudice in favour of the Albanians and against the Slavs, for when she has occasion to speak of the famous Miss Irby, whose thirty years of untiring benevolence were spent among the Serbs of Bosnia and not among the Albanians, it is without a word of commendation.