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The ignorant Moslem inhabitants had been told that the Prince meant to abolish Islam and promote incestuous marriages, and bidden to demand his immediate withdrawal. There were also the mass of refugees from Dibra and Gostivar. They had passed the winter wretchedly enough, and were told that if they would combine and drive out Wied the Serbs would restore to them their lost lands.

This meant, first of all, that the Katshanik Pass, which in the second week of November, 1915, was still in the hands of the Serbians but was being attacked from the south by the Bulgarians, had to be first cleared of the enemy, who must then be driven out of Uskub, whence the Serbians would then be able to force their way west to Tetovo, and then south by the main highway through Gostivar and Kitchevo, to Monastir.

Both Serb and Montenegrin are working to clear off the Albanians from the debatable districts so as to show a Slav majority to the Commission." The ill-timed revolt gave them a chance of doing this. The Serbs fell on the Gostivar district, burning the villages with petroleum, and throwing such people as could not escape, back into the flames with their bayonets.

DURING the winter of 1913-14 I gathered funds for Albania, and the American missionaries worked hard at feeding the refugees of Gostivar and Dibra. General Phillips, in command at Scutari, did all his funds would allow for the refugees there, but reported that the Serbs' victims were dying of hunger in the Gashi mountains at the rate of twenty a day. But the Mansion House refused to start a fund.

On November 15, 1915, they took it again, and finally, driving the small Serbian force that had occupied it before them, they took Gostivar on the following day, the Serbians retiring to Kichivo, on the road to Monastir.