The war dragged on during the entire month of February without changing the relative positions of the belligerents.  In the mean time, the relations between Austria-Hungary and Russia were daily becoming more strained.  This was due to the determination of Austria-Hungary to prevent Servia from securing a seaboard upon the Adriatic.  In the slogan of the allies, “the Balkan peninsula for the Balkan peoples,” Austria-Hungary found a principle which could be utilized against their demands.  She took the stand that the Albanians are a Balkan people entirely distinct from Slavs and Greeks and particularly unfriendly to the Slavs.  It would be as suicidal to place any of the Albanians under the Slavs as to put back any of the Slavs under the Turks.  Albania must be an autonomous State; that it may live in peace, it must possess its seaboard intact.  In this position Austria-Hungary was seconded by Italy, which has interests in Albania as important as those of Austria-Hungary.  Neither State can afford to allow the other to possess the eastern shore of the Adriatic; and both are determined that it shall not fall into the possession of another possibly stronger power.

As early as December 20, 1912, the ambassadors had recommended to their governments, and the latter had accepted, the principle of Albanian autonomy, together with a provision guaranteeing to Servia commercial access to the Adriatic.  This had aroused the intense indignation of the Serbs, whose armies, contrary to the express prohibitions of Austria-Hungary, had already occupied Durazzo on the Adriatic and overrun northern Albania.  The Serbs denied the right of any State to forbid them to occupy the territory of the enemy whom they had conquered, and Servia sent a detachment of her best troops and some of her largest siege guns to help the Montenegrins take Scutari.  Moreover, numerous reports of outrages committed upon Albanians by the “Liberators” in their attempts to convert both Moslem and Catholic Albanians to the orthodox faith reached central Europe and caused great danger in Vienna.  Count Berchtold’s statement to the Delegations that Austria-Hungary would insist upon territory enough to enable independent Albania to be a stable State with Scutari as the capital, aroused in turn much excitement in Russia.  Scutari was the chief goal of Montenegrin ambition.  To possess it had been the hope of King Nicholas and his people during his long reign of half a century.  To forbid him to possess it would be to deprive him of the fruits of the really heroic sacrifices his people had made during this war.  Hence the excitement in all Slavdom.  On February 7th Francis Joseph sent Prince Hohenlohe to St. Petersburg with an autograph letter to the Czar which had the good effect of reducing the tension between the two countries.