The Consolidation Of The State

Half the story of Greece is told. We have watched the nation awake and put

forth its newly-found strength in a great war of independence, and we have

followed the course of the struggle to its result--the foundation of the

kingdom of Hellas.



It is impossible to close this chapter of Greek history without a sense of

disappointment. The spirit of Greece had travailed, and only a

principality was born, which gathered within its frontiers scarcely

one-third of the race, and turned for its government to a foreign

administration which had no bond of tradition or affinity with the

population it was to rule. And yet something had been achieved. An oasis

had been wrested from the Turkish wilderness, in which Hellenism could

henceforth work out its own salvation untrammelled, and extend its borders

little by little, until it brought within them at last the whole of its

destined heritage. The fleeting glamour of dawn had passed, but it had

brought the steady light of day, in which the work begun could be carried

out soberly and indefatigably to its conclusion. The new kingdom, in fact,

if it fulfilled its mission, might become the political nucleus and the

spiritual ensample of a permanently awakened nation--an 'education of

Hellas' such as Pericles hoped to see Athens become in the greatest days

of Ancient Greece.



When, therefore, we turn to the history of the kingdom, our disappointment

is all the more intense, for in the first fifty years of its existence

there is little development to record. In 1882 King Otto's principality

presented much the same melancholy spectacle as it did in 1833, when he

landed in Nauplia Bay, except that Otto himself had left the scene. His

Bavarian staff belonged to that reactionary generation that followed the

overthrow of Napoleon in Europe, and attempted, heedless of Kapodistrias'

fiasco, to impose on Greece the bureaucracy of the ancien regime. The

Bavarians' work was entirely destructive. The local liberties which had

grown up under the Ottoman dominion and been the very life of the national

revival, were effectively repressed. Hydhriot and Spetziot, Suliot and

Mainate, forfeited their characteristic individuality, but none of the

benefits of orderly and uniform government were realized. The canker of

brigandage defied all efforts to root it out, and in spite of the loans

with which the royal government was supplied by the protecting powers, the

public finance was subject to periodical breakdowns. In 1837 King Otto,

now of age, took the government into his own hands, only to have it taken

out of them again by a revolution in 1843. Thereafter he reigned as a

constitutional monarch, but he never reconciled himself to the position,

and in 1862 a second revolution drove him into exile, a scapegoat for the

afflictions of his kingdom. Bavarian then gave place to Dane, yet the

afflictions continued. In 1882 King George had been nineteen years on the

throne[1] without any happier fortune than his predecessor's. It is true

that the frontiers of the kingdom had been somewhat extended. Great

Britain had presented the new sovereign with the Ionian Islands as an

inaugural gift, and the Berlin Conference had recently added the province

of Thessaly. Yet the major part of the Greek race still awaited liberation

from the Turkish yoke, and regarded the national kingdom, chronically

incapacitated by the twin plagues of brigandage and bankruptcy, with

increasing disillusionment. The kingdom of Hellas seemed to have failed in

its mission altogether.



[Footnote 1: King George, like King Otto, was only seventeen years old

when he received his crown.]



What was the explanation of this failure? It was that the very nature of

the mission paralysed the state from taking the steps essential to its

accomplishment. The phenomenon has been, unhappily, only too familiar in

the Nearer East, and any one who travelled in the Balkans in 1882, or even

so recently as 1912, must at once have become aware of it.



Until a nation has completely vindicated its right to exist, it is hard

for it to settle down and make its life worth living. We nations of

western Europe (before disaster fell upon us) had learnt to take our

existence for granted, and 'Politics' for us had come to mean an organized

effort to improve the internal economy of our community. But a foreigner

who picked up a Greek newspaper would have found in it none of the matter

with which he was familiar in his own, no discussion of financial policy,

economic development, or social reconstruction. The news-columns would

have been monopolized by foreign politics, and in the cafes he would have

heard the latest oscillation in the international balance of power

canvassed with the same intense and minute interest that Englishmen in a

railway-carriage would have been devoting to Old Age Pensions, National

Health Insurance, or Land Valuation. He would have been amazed by a

display of intimate knowledge such as no British quidnunc could have

mustered if he had happened to stumble across these intricacies of

international competition, and the conversation would always have

terminated in the same unanswered but inconscionable challenge to the

future: 'When will the oppressed majority of our race escape the Turkish

yoke? If the Ottoman dominion is destroyed, what redistribution of its

provinces will follow? Shall we then achieve our national unity, or will

our Balkan neighbours encroach upon the inheritance which is justly ours?'



This preoccupation with events beyond the frontiers was not caused by any

lack of vital problems within them. The army was the most conspicuous

object of public activity, but it was not an aggressive speculation, or an

investment of national profits deliberately calculated to bring in one day

a larger return. It was a necessity of life, and its efficiency was barely

maintained out of the national poverty. In fact, it was almost the only

public utility with which the nation could afford to provide itself, and

the traveller from Great Britain would have been amazed again at the

miserable state of all reproductive public works. The railways were few

and far between, their routes roundabout, and their rolling-stock scanty,

so that trains were both rare and slow. Wheel-roads were no commoner a

feature in Greece than railways are here, and such stretches as had been

constructed had often never come into use, because they had just failed to

reach their goal or were still waiting for their bridges, so that they

were simply falling into decay and converting the outlay of capital upon

them into a dead loss. The Peiraeus was the only port in the country where

steamers could come alongside a quay, and discharge their cargoes directly

on shore. Elsewhere, the vessel must anchor many cables' lengths out, and

depend on the slow and expensive services of lighters, for lack of pier

construction and dredging operations. For example, Kalamata, the economic

outlet for the richest part of Peloponnesos, and the fifth largest port in

the kingdom,[1] was and still remains a mere open roadstead, where all

ships that call are kept at a distance by the silt from a mountain

torrent, and so placed in imminent danger of being driven, by the first

storm, upon the rocks of a neighbouring peninsula.



[Footnote 1: The four chief ports being Peiraeus, Patras, Syra, and

Volos.]



These grave shortcomings were doubtless due in part to the geographical

character of the country, though it was clear, from what had actually been

accomplished, that it would have been both possible and profitable to

attempt much more, if the nation's energy could have been secured for the

work. But it is hard to tinker at details when you are kept in a perpetual

fever by a question of life and death, and the great preliminary questions

of national unity and self-government remained still unsettled.



Before these supreme problems all other interests paled, for they were no

will-o'-the-wisps of theoretical politics. It needs a long political

education to appreciate abstract ideas, and the Greeks were still in their

political infancy, but the realization of Greater Greece implied for them

the satisfaction of all their concrete needs at once.



So long as the status quo endured, they were isolated from the rest of

Europe by an unbroken band of Turkish territory, stretching from the

Aegean to the Adriatic Sea. What was the use of overcoming great

engineering difficulties to build a line of European gauge from Athens

right up to the northern frontier, if Turkey refused to sanction the

construction of the tiny section that must pass through her territory

between the Greek railhead and the actual terminus of the European system

at Salonika? Or if, even supposing she withdrew her veto, she would have

it in her power to bring pressure on Greece at any moment by threatening

to sever communications along this vital artery? So long as Turkey was

there, Greece was practically an island, and her only communication with

continental Europe lay through her ports. But what use to improve the

ports, when the recovery of Salonika, the fairest object of the national

dreams, would ultimately change the country's economic centre of gravity,

and make her maritime as well as her overland commerce flow along quite

other channels than the present?



Thus the Greek nation's present was overshadowed by its future, and its

actions paralysed by its hopes. Perhaps a nation with more power of

application and less of imagination would have schooled itself to the

thought that these sordid, obtrusive details were the key to the

splendours of the future, and would have devoted itself to the systematic

amelioration of the cramped area which it had already secured for its own.

This is what Bulgaria managed to do during her short but wonderful period

of internal growth between the Berlin Treaty of 1878 and the declaration

of war against Turkey in 1912. But Bulgaria, thanks to her geographical

situation, was from the outset freer from the tentacles of the Turkish

octopus than Greece had contrived to make herself by her fifty years'

start, while her temperamentally sober ambitions were not inflamed by such

past traditions as Greece had inherited, not altogether to her advantage.

Be that as it may, Greece, whether by fault or misfortune, had failed

during this half-century to apply herself successfully to the cure of her

defects and the exploitation of her assets, though she did not lack

leaders strong-minded enough to summon her to the dull business of the

present. Her history during the succeeding generation was a struggle

between the parties of the Present and the Future, and the unceasing

discomfiture of the former is typified in the tragedy of Trikoupis, the

greatest modern Greek statesman before the advent of Venezelos.



Trikoupis came into power in 1882, just after the acquisition of the rich

agricultural province of Thessaly under the Treaty of Berlin had given the

kingdom a fresh start. There were no such continuous areas of good arable

land within the original frontiers, and such rare patches as there were

had been desolated by those eight years of savage warfare[1] which had

been the price of liberty. The population had been swept away by wholesale

massacres of racial minorities in every district; the dearth of

industrious hands had allowed the torrents to play havoc with the

cultivation-terraces on the mountain slopes; and the spectre of malaria,

always lying in wait for its opportunity, had claimed the waterlogged

plains for its own. During the fifty years of stagnation little attempt

had been made to cope with the evil, until now it seemed almost past

remedy.



[Footnote 1: 1821-28]



If, however, the surface of the land offered little prospect of wealth for

the moment, there were considerable treasures to be found beneath it. A

metalliferous bolt runs down the whole east coast of the Greek mainland,

cropping up again in many of the Aegean islands, and some of the ores, of

which there is a great variety, are rare and valuable. The lack of transit

facilities is partly remedied by the fact that workable veins often lie

near enough to the sea for the produce to be carried straight from mine to

ship, by an endless-chain system of overhead trolleys; so that, once

capital is secured for installing the plant and opening the mine,

profitable operations can be carried on irrespective of the general

economic condition of the country. Trikoupis saw how much potential wealth

was locked up in these mineral seams. The problem was how to attract the

capital necessary to tap it. The nucleus round which have accumulated

those immense masses of mobilised capital that are the life-blood of

modern European industry and commerce, was originally derived from the

surplus profits of agriculture. But a country that finds itself reduced,

like Greece in the nineteenth century, to a state of agricultural

bankruptcy, has obviously failed to save any surplus in the process, so

that it is unable to provide from its own pocket the minimum outlay it so

urgently needs in order to open for itself some new activity. If it is to

obtain a fresh start on other lines, it must secure the co-operation of

the foreign investor, and the capitalist with a ready market for his money

will only put it into enterprises where he has some guarantee of its

safety. There was little doubt that the minerals of Greece would well

repay extraction; the uncertain element was the Greek nation itself. The

burning question of national unity might break out at any moment into a

blaze of war, and, in the probable case of disaster, involve the whole

country and all interests connected with it in economic as well as

political ruin. Western Europe would not commit itself to Greek mining

enterprise, unless it felt confident that the statesman responsible for

the government of Greece would and could restrain his country from its

instinctive impulse towards political adventure.



The great merit of Trikoupis was that he managed to inspire this

confidence. Greece owes most of the wheelroads, railways, and mines of

which she can now boast to the dozen years of his more or less consecutive

administration. But the roads are unfinished, the railway-network

incomplete, the mines exploited only to a fraction of their capacity,

because the forces against Trikoupis were in the end too strong for him.

It may be that his eye too rigidly followed the foreign investor's point

of view, and that by adopting a more conciliatory attitude towards the

national ideal, he might have strengthened his position at home without

impairing his reputation abroad; but his position was really made

impossible by a force quite beyond his control, the irresponsible and

often intolerable behaviour which Turkey, under whatever regime, has

always practised towards foreign powers, and especially towards those

Balkan states which have won their freedom in her despite, while perforce

abandoning a large proportion of their race to the protracted outrage of

Turkish misgovernment.



Several times over the Porte, by wanton insults to Greece, wrecked the

efforts of Trikoupis to establish good relations between the two

governments, and played the game of the chauvinist party led by Trikoupis'

rival, Deliyannis. Deliyannis' tenures of office were always brief, but

during them he contrived to undo most of the work accomplished by

Trikoupis in the previous intervals. A particularly tense 'incident' with

Turkey put him in power in 1893, with a strong enough backing from the

country to warrant a general mobilization. The sole result was the ruin of

Greek credit. Trikoupis was hastily recalled to office by the king, but

too late. He found himself unable to retrieve the ruin, and retired

altogether from politics in 1895, dying abroad next year in voluntary

exile and enforced disillusionment.



With the removal of Trikoupis from the helm, Greece ran straight upon the

rocks. A disastrous war with Turkey was precipitated in 1897 by events in

Krete. It brought the immediate debacle of the army and the reoccupation

of Thessaly for a year by Turkish troops, while its final penalties were

the cession of the chief strategical positions along the northern frontier

and the imposition of an international commission of control over the

Greek finances, in view of the complete national bankruptcy entailed by

the war. The fifteen years that followed 1895 were almost the blackest

period in modern Greek history; yet the time was not altogether lost, and

such events as the draining of the Kopais-basin by a British company, and

its conversion from a malarious swamp into a rich agricultural area,

marked a perceptible economic advance.



This comparative stagnation was broken at last by the Young Turk

pronunciamiento at Salonika in 1908, which produced such momentous

repercussions all through the Nearer East. The Young Turks had struck in

order to forestall the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, but the

opportunity was seized by every restive element within it to extricate

itself, if possible, from the Turkish coils. Now, just as in 1897, Greece

was directly affected by the action of the Greek population in Krete. As a

result of the revolt of 1896-7, Krete had been constituted an autonomous

state subject to Ottoman suzerainty, autonomy and suzerainty alike being

guaranteed by four great powers. Prince George of Greece, a son of the

King of the Hellenes, had been placed at the head of the autonomous

government as high commissioner; but his autocratic tendency caused great

discontent among the free-spirited Kretans, who had not rid themselves of

the Turkish regime in order to forfeit their independence again in another

fashion. Dissension culminated in 1906, when the leaders of the opposition

took to the mountains, and obtained such support and success in the

guerrilla fighting that followed, that they forced Prince George to tender

his resignation. He was succeeded as high commissioner by Zaimis, another

citizen of the Greek kingdom, who inaugurated a more constitutional

regime, and in 1908 the Kretans believed that the moment for realizing the

national ideal had come. They proclaimed their union with Greece, and

elected deputies to the Parliament at Athens. But the guarantor powers

carried out their obligations by promptly sending a combined naval

expedition, which hauled down the Greek flag at Canea, and prevented the

deputies from embarking for Peiraeus. This apparently pedantic insistence

upon the status quo was extremely exasperating to Greek nationalism. It

produced a ferment in the kingdom, which grew steadily for nine months,

and vented itself in July 1909 in the coup d'etat of the 'Military

League', a second-hand imitation of the Turkish 'Committee of Union and

Progress'. The royal family was cavalierly treated, and constitutional

government superseded by a junta of officers. But at this point the policy

of the four powers towards Krete was justified. Turkey knew well that she

had lost Krete in 1897, but she could still exploit her suzerainty to

prevent Greece from gaining new strength by the annexation of the island.

The Young Turks had seized the reins of government, not to modify the

policy of the Porte, but to intensify its chauvinism, and they accordingly

intimated that they would consider any violation of their suzerain rights

over Krete a casus belli against Greece. Greece, without army or allies,

was obviously not in a position to incur another war, and the 'Military

League' thus found that it had reached the end of its tether. There ensued

a deadlock of another eight months, only enlivened by a naval mutiny,

during which the country lay paralysed, with no programme whatsoever

before it.



Then the man demanded by the situation appeared unexpectedly from the

centre of disturbance, Krete. Venezelos started life as a successful

advocate at Canea. He entered Kretan politics in the struggle for

constitutionalism, and distinguished himself in the successful revolution

of 1906, of which he was the soul. Naturally, he became one of the leading

statesmen under Zaimis' regime, and he further distinguished himself by

resolutely opposing the 'Unionist' agitation as premature, and yet

retaining his hold over a people whose paramount political preoccupation

was their national unity. The crisis of 1908-9 brought him into close

relations with the government of the Greek kingdom; and the king, who had

gauged his calibre, now took the patriotic step of calling in the man who

had expelled his son from Krete, to put his own house in order. It speaks

much for both men that they worked together in harmony from the beginning.

Upon the royal invitation Venezelos exchanged Kretan for Greek

citizenship, and took in hand the 'Military League'. After short

negotiations, he persuaded it to dissolve in favour of a national

convention, which was able to meet in March 1910.



Thus Greece became a constitutional country once more, and Venezelos the

first premier of the new era. During five years of continuous office he

was to prove himself the good genius of his country. When he resigned his

post in April 1915, he left the work of consolidating the national state

on the verge of completion, and it will be his country's loss if he is

baulked of achievement. Results speak for themselves, and the remainder of

this pamphlet will be little more than a record of his statesmanship; but

before we pass on to review his deeds, we must say a word about the

character to which they are due. In March 1912 the time came for the first

general election since Venezelos had taken office. Two years' experience

of his administration had already won him such popularity and prestige,

that the old party groups, purely personal followings infected with all

the corruption, jingoism, and insincerity of the dark fifteen years,

leagued themselves in a desperate effort to cast him out. Corruption on a

grand scale was attempted, but Venezelos' success at the polls was

sweeping. The writer happened to be spending that month in Krete. The

Kretans had, of course, elected deputies in good time to the parliament at

Athens, and once more the foreign warships stopped them in the act of

boarding the steamer for Peiraeus, while Venezelos, who was still

responsible for the Greek Government till the new parliament met, had

declared with characteristic frankness that the attendance of the Kretan

deputies could not possibly be sanctioned, an opening of which his

opponents did not fail to take advantage. Meanwhile, every one in Krete

was awaiting news of the polling in the kingdom. They might have been

expected to feel, at any rate, lukewarmly towards a man who had actually

taken office on the programme of deferring their cherished 'union'

indefinitely; but, on the contrary, they greeted his triumph with enormous

enthusiasm. Their feeling was explained by the comment of an innkeeper.

'Venezelos!' he said: 'Why, he is a man who can say "No". He won't stand

any nonsense. If you try to get round him, he'll put you in irons.' And

clearly he had hit the mark. Venezelos would in any case have done well,

because he is a clever man with an excellent power of judgement; but

acuteness is a common Greek virtue, and if he has done brilliantly, it is

because he has the added touch of genius required to make the Greek take

'No' for an answer, a quality, very rare indeed in the nation, which

explains the dramatic contrast between his success and Trikoupis' failure.

Greece has been fortunate indeed in finding the right man at the crucial

hour.



In the winter of 1911-12 and the succeeding summer, the foreign traveller

met innumerable results of Venezelos' activity in every part of the

country, and all gave evidence of the same thing: a sane judgement and its

inflexible execution. For instance, a resident in Greece had needed an

escort of soldiers four years before, when he made an expedition into the

wild country north-west of the Gulf of Patras, on account of the number of

criminals 'wanted' by the government who were lurking in that region as

outlaws. In August 1912 an inquiry concerning this danger was met with a

smile: 'Oh, yes, it was so,' said the gendarme, 'but since then Venezelos

has come. He amnestied every one "out" for minor offences, and then caught

the "really bad ones", so there are no outlaws in Akarnania now.' And he

spoke the truth. You could wander all about the forests and mountains

without molestation.



So far Venezelos had devoted himself to internal reconstruction, after the

precedent of Trikoupis, but he was not the man to desert the national

idea. The army and navy were reorganized by French and British missions,

and when the opportunity appeared, he was ready to take full advantage of

it. In the autumn of 1912, Turkey had been for a year at war with Italy;

her finances had suffered a heavy drain, and the Italian command of the

sea not only locked up her best troops in Tripoli, but interrupted such

important lines of communication between her Asiatic and European

provinces as the direct route by sea from Smyrna to Salonika, and the

devious sea-passage thence round Greece to Scutari, which was the only

alternative for Turkish troops to running the gauntlet of the Albanian

mountaineers. Clearly the Balkan nations could find no better moment for

striking the blow to settle that implacable 'preliminary question.' of

national unity which had dogged them all since their birth. Their only

chance of success, however, was to strike in concert, for Turkey,

handicapped though she was, could still easily outmatch them singly.

Unless they could compromise between their conflicting claims, they would

have to let this common opportunity for making them good slip by

altogether.



Of the four states concerned, two, Serbia and Montenegro, were of the same

South-Slavonic nationality, and had been drawn into complete accord with

each other since the formal annexation of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary in

1908, which struck a hard blow at their common national idea, while

neither of them had any conflicting claims with Greece, since the Greek

and South-Slavonic nationalities are at no point geographically in

contact. With Bulgaria, a nation of Slavonic speech and culture, though

not wholly Slavonic in origin, Serbia had quarrelled for years over the

ultimate destiny of the Ueskueb district in north-western Macedonia, which

was still subject to Turkey; but in the summer of 1912 the two states

compromised in a secret treaty upon their respective territorial

ambitions, and agreed to refer the fate of one debatable strip to the

arbitration of Russia, after their already projected war with Turkey had

been carried through. There was a more formidable conflict of interests

between Bulgaria and Greece. These two nationalities are conterminous over

a very wide extent of territory, stretching from the Black Sea on the east

to the inland Lake of Okhrida on the west, and there is at no point a

sharp dividing line between them. The Greek element tends to predominate

towards the coast and the Bulgar towards the interior, but there are broad

zones where Greek and Bulgar villages are inextricably interspersed, while

purely Greek towns are often isolated in the midst of purely Bulgar rural

districts. Even if the racial areas could be plotted out on a large-scale

map, it was clear that no political frontier could be drawn to follow

their convolutions, and that Greece and Bulgaria could only divide the

spoils by both making up their minds to give and take. The actual lines

this necessary compromise would follow, obviously depended on the degree

of the allies' success against Turkey in the common war that was yet to be

fought, and Venezelos rose to the occasion. He had the courage to offer

Bulgaria the Greek alliance without stipulating for any definite minimum

share in the common conquests, and the tact to induce her to accept it on

the same terms. Greece and Bulgaria agreed to shelve all territorial

questions till the war had been brought to a successful close; and with

the negotiation of this understanding (another case in which Venezelos

achieved what Trikoupis had attempted only to fail) the Balkan League was

complete.



The events that followed are common knowledge. The Balkan allies opened

the campaign in October, and the Turks collapsed before an impetuous

attack. The Bulgarians crumpled up the Ottoman field armies in Thrace at

the terrific battle of Lule Burgas; the Serbians disposed of the forces in

the Macedonian interior, while the Greeks effected a junction with the

Serbians from the south, and cut their way through to Salonika. Within two

months of the declaration of war, the Turks on land had been driven out of

the open altogether behind the shelter of the Chataldja and Gallipoli

lines, and only three fortresses--Adrianople, Yannina, and Scutari--held

out further to the west. Their navy, closely blockaded by the Greek fleet

within the Dardanelles, had to look on passively at the successive

occupation of the Aegean Islands by Greek landing-parties. With the winter

came negotiations, during which an armistice reigned at Adrianople and

Scutari, while the Greeks pursued the siege of Yannina and the Dardanelles

blockade. The negotiations proved abortive, and the result of the renewed

hostilities justified the action of the Balkan plenipotentiaries in

breaking them off. By the spring of 1913 the three fortresses had fallen,

and, under the treaty finally signed at London, Turkey ceded to the Balkan

League, as a whole, all her European territories west of a line drawn from

Ainos on the Aegean to Midia on the Black Sea, including Adrianople and

the lower basin of the river Maritsa.



The time had now come for Greece and Bulgaria to settle their account, and

the unexpected extent of the common gains ought to have facilitated their

division. The territory in question included the whole north coast of the

Aegean and its immediate hinterland, and Venezelos proposed to consider it

in two sections. (1) The eastern section, conveniently known as Thrace,

consisted of the lower basin of the Maritsa. As far as Adrianople the

population was Bulgar, but south of that city it was succeeded by a Greek

element, with a considerable sprinkling of Turkish settlements, as far as

the sea. Geographically, however, the whole district is intimately

connected with Bulgaria, and the railway that follows the course of the

Maritsa down to the port of Dedeagatch offers a much-needed economic

outlet for large regions already within the Bulgarian frontier. Venezelos,

then, was prepared to resign all Greek claims to the eastern section, in

return for a corresponding concession by Bulgaria in the west. (2) The

western section, consisting of the lower basins of the Vardar and Struma,

lay in the immediate neighbourhood of the former frontier of Greece; but

the Greek population of Salonika,[1] and the coast-districts east of it,

could not be brought within the Greek frontier without including as well a

certain hinterland inhabited mainly by Bulgarians. The cession of this was

the return asked for by Venezelos, and he reduced it to a minimum by

abstaining from pressing the quite well-founded claims of Greece in the

Monastir district, which lay further inland still.



[Footnote 1: The predominant element within the walls of Salonika itself

is neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but consists of about 80,000 of those

Spanish-speaking Jews who settled in Turkey as refugees during the

sixteenth century.]



But Venezelos' conciliatory proposals met with no response from the

Bulgarian Government, which was in an 'all or nothing' mood. It swallowed

Venezelos' gift of Thrace, and then proceeded to exploit the Bulgar

hinterland of Salonika as a pretext for demanding the latter city as well.

This uncompromising attitude made agreement impossible, and it was

aggravated by the aggressive action of the Bulgarian troops in the

occupied territory, who persistently endeavoured to steal ground from the

Greek forces facing them. In May there was serious fighting to the east of

the Struma, and peace was only restored with difficulty. Bulgarian

relations with Serbia were becoming strained at the same time, though in

this case Bulgaria had more justice on her side. Serbia maintained that

the veto imposed by Austria upon her expansion to the Adriatic, in

coincidence with Bulgaria's unexpected gains on the Maritsa to which

Serbian arms had contributed, invalidated the secret treaty of the

previous summer, and she announced her intention of retaining the Monastir

district and the line of the Salonika railway as far as the future

frontier of Greece. Bulgaria, on the other hand, shut her eyes to Serbia's

necessity for an untrammelled economic outlet to one sea-board or the

other, and took her stand on her strictly legal treaty-rights. However the

balance of justice inclined, a lasting settlement could only have been

reached by mutual forbearance and goodwill; but Bulgaria put herself

hopelessly in the wrong towards both her allies by a treacherous

night-attack upon them all along the line, at the end of June 1913. This

disastrous act was the work of a single political party, which has since

been condemned by most sections of Bulgarian public opinion; but the

punishment, if not the responsibility for the crime, fell upon the whole

nation. Greece and Serbia had already been drawn into an understanding by

their common danger. They now declared war against Bulgaria in concert.

The counter-strokes of their armies met with success, and the intervention

of Rumania made Bulgaria's discomfiture certain.



The results of the one month's war were registered in the Treaty of

Bucarest. Many of its provisions were unhappily, though naturally,

inspired by the spirit of revenge; but the Greek premier, at any rate,

showed a statesmanlike self-restraint in the negotiations. Venezelos

advocated the course of taking no more after the war than had been

demanded before it. He desired to leave Bulgaria a broad zone of Aegean

littoral between the Struma and Maritsa rivers, including ports capable of

satisfying Bulgaria's pressing need for an outlet towards the south. But,

in the exasperated state of public feeling, even Venezelos' prestige

failed to carry through his policy in its full moderation. King George had

just been assassinated in his year of jubilee, in the streets of the

long-desired Salonika; and King Constantine, his son, flushed by the

victory of Kilkish and encouraged by the Machiavellian diplomacy of his

Hohenzollern brother-in-law, insisted on carrying the new Greek frontier

as far east as the river Mesta, and depriving Bulgaria of Kavala, the

natural harbour for the whole Bulgarian hinterland in the upper basins of

the Mesta and Struma.



It is true that Greece did not exact as much as she might have done.

Bulgaria was still allowed to possess herself of a coastal strip east of

the Mesta, containing the tolerable harbours of Porto Lagos and

Dedeagatch, which had been occupied during hostilities by the Greek fleet,

and thus her need for an Aegean outlet was not left unsatisfied altogether;

while Greece on her part was cleverly shielded for the future from those

drawbacks involved in immediate contact with Turkish territory, which she

had so often experienced in the past. It is also true that the Kavala

district is of great economic value in itself--it produces the better part

of the Turkish Regie tobacco crop--and that on grounds of nationality

alone Bulgaria has no claim to this prize, since the tobacco-growing

peasantry is almost exclusively Greek or Turk, while the Greek element has

been extensively reinforced during the last two years by refugees from

Anatolia and Thrace.



Nevertheless, it is already clear that Venezelos' judgement was the

better. The settlement at the close of the present war may even yet bring

Bulgaria reparation in many quarters. If the Ruman and South Slavonic

populations at present included in the complexus of Austria-Hungary are

freed from their imprisonment and united with the Serbian and Rumanian

national states, Bulgaria may conceivably recover from the latter those

Bulgarian lands which the Treaty of Bucarest made over to them in central

Macedonia and the Dobrudja, while it would be still more feasible to oust

the Turk again from Adrianople, where he slipped back in the hour of

Bulgaria's prostration and has succeeded in maintaining himself ever

since. Yet no amount of compensation in other directions and no abstract

consideration for the national principle will induce Bulgaria to renounce

her claim on Greek Kavala. Access to this district is vital to Bulgaria

from the geographical point of view, and she will not be satisfied here

with such rights as Serbia enjoys at Salonika--free use of the port and

free traffic along a railway connecting it with her own hinterland. Her

heart is set on complete territorial ownership, and she will not compose

her feud with Greece until she has had her way.



So long, therefore, as the question of Kavala remains unsettled, Greece

will not be able to put the preliminary problem of 'national

consolidation' behind her, and enter upon the long-deferred chapter of

'internal development'. To accomplish once for all this vital transition,

Venezelos is taking the helm again into his hands, and it is his evident

intention to close the Greek account with Bulgaria just as Serbia and

Rumania hope to close theirs with the same state--by a bold territorial

concession conditional upon adequate territorial compensation

elsewhere.[1]



[Footnote 1: The above paragraph betrays its own date; for, since it was

written, the intervention of Bulgaria on the side of the Central Powers

has deferred indefinitely the hope of a settlement based upon mutual

agreement.]



The possibility of such compensation is offered by certain outstanding

problems directly dependent upon the issue of the European conflict, and

we must glance briefly at these before passing on to consider the new

chapter of internal history that is opening for the Greek nation.



The problems in question are principally concerned with the ownership of

islands.



The integrity of a land-frontier is guaranteed by the whole strength of

the nation included within it, and can only be modified by a struggle for

existence with the neighbor on whom it borders; but islands by their

geographical nature constitute independent political units, easily

detached from or incorporated with larger domains, according to the

momentary fluctuation in the balance of sea-power. Thus it happened that

the arrival of the Goeben and Breslau at the Dardanelles in August

1914 led Turkey to reopen promptly certain questions concerning the

Aegean. The islands in this sea are uniformly Greek in population, but

their respective geographical positions and political fortunes

differentiate them into several groups.



1. The Cyclades in the south-west, half submerged vanguards of mountain

ranges in continental Greece, have formed part of the modern kingdom from

its birth, and their status has never since been called into question.



2. Krete, the largest of all Greek islands, has been dealt with already.

She enjoyed autonomy under Turkish suzerainty for fifteen years before the

Balkan War, and at its outbreak she once more proclaimed her union with

Greece. This time at last her action was legalized, when Turkey expressly

abandoned her suzerain rights by a clause in the Treaty of London.



3. During the war itself, the Greek navy occupied a number of islands

which had remained till then under the more direct government of Turkey,

The parties to the Treaty of London agreed to leave their destiny to the

decision of the powers, and the latter assigned them all to Greece, with

the exception of Imbros and Tenedos which command strategically the mouth

of the Dardanelles.



The islands thus secured to Greece fall in turn into several sub-groups.



Two of these are (a) Thasos, Samothraki, and Lemnos, off the European

coast, and (b) Samos and its satellite Nikaria, immediately off the west

coast of Anatolia; and these five islands seem definitely to have been

given up by Turkey for lost. The European group is well beyond the range

of her present frontiers; while Samos, though it adjoins the Turkish

mainland, does not mask the outlet from any considerable port, and had

moreover for many years possessed the same privileged autonomy as Krete,

so that the Ottoman Government did not acutely feel its final severance.



(c) A third group consists of Mitylini and Khios,[1] and concerning this

pair Greece and Turkey have so far come to no understanding. The Turks

pointed out that the littoral off which these islands lie contains not

only the most indispensable ports of Anatolia but also the largest

enclaves of Greek population on the Asiatic mainland, and they declared

that the occupation of this group by Greece menaced the sovereignty of the

Porte in its home territory. 'See', they said, 'how the two islands flank

both sides of the sea-passage to Smyrna, the terminus of all the railways

which penetrate the Anatolian interior, while Mitylini barricades Aivali

and Edremid as well. As soon as the Greek Government has converted the

harbours of these islands into naval bases, Anatolia will be subject to a

perpetual Greek blockade, and this violent intimidation of the Turkish

people will be reinforced by an insidious propaganda among the disloyal

Greek elements in our midst.' Accordingly the Turks refused to recognize

the award of the powers, and demanded the re-establishment of Ottoman

sovereignty in Mitylini and Khios, under guarantee of an autonomy after

the precedent of Krete and Samos.



[Footnote 1: Including its famous satellite Psara.]



To these arguments and demands the Greeks replied that, next to Krete;

these are the two largest, most wealthy, and most populous Greek islands

in the Aegean; that their inhabitants ardently desire union with the

national kingdom; and that the Greek Government would hesitate to use them

as a basis for economic coercion and nationalistic propaganda against

Turkey, if only because the commerce of western Anatolia is almost

exclusively in the hands of the Greek element on the Asiatic continent.

Greek interests were presumably bound up with the economic prosperity and

political consolidation of Turkey in Asia, and the Anatolian Greeks would

merely have been alienated from their compatriots by any such impolitic

machinations. 'Greek sovereignty in Mitylini and Khios', the Greeks

maintained, 'does not threaten Turkish sovereignty on the Continent. But

the restoration of Turkish suzerainty over the islands would most

seriously endanger the liberty of their inhabitants; for Turkish promises

are notoriously valueless, except when they are endorsed by the guarantee

of some physically stronger power.'



Negotiations were conducted between Greece and Turkey from these

respective points of view without leading to any result, and the two

standpoints were in fact irreconcilable, since either power required the

other to leave vital national interests at the mercy of an ancient enemy,

without undertaking to make corresponding sacrifices itself. The problem

probably would never have been solved by compromise; but meanwhile the

situation has been entirely transformed by the participation of Turkey in

the European War, and the issue between Greece and Turkey, like the issue

between Greece and Bulgaria, has been merged in the general problem of the

European settlement.



The Balkan War of 1912 doomed the Ottoman power in Europe, but left its

Asiatic future unimpaired. By making war against the Quadruple Entente,

Turkey has staked her existence on both continents, and is threatened with

political extinction if the Central Powers succumb in the struggle. In

this event Greece will no longer have to accommodate her regime in the

liberated islands to the susceptibilities of a Turkey consolidated on the

opposite mainland, but will be able to stretch out her hand over the

Anatolian coast and its hinterland, and compensate herself richly in this

quarter for the territorial sacrifices which may still be necessary to a

lasting understanding with her Bulgarian neighbour.



The shores that dominate the Dardanelles will naturally remain beyond her

grasp, but she may expect to establish herself on the western littoral

from a point as far north as Mount Ida and the plain of Edremid. The Greek

coast-town of Aivali will be hers, and the still more important focus of

Greek commerce and civilization at Smyrna; while she will push her

dominion along the railways that radiate from Smyrna towards the interior.

South-eastward, Aidin will be hers in the valley of the Mendere

(Maiandros). Due eastward she will re-baptize the glistening city of Ala

Shehr with its ancient name of Philadelphia, under which it held out

heroically for Hellenism many years after Aidin had become the capital of

a Moslem principality and the Turkish avalanche had rolled past it to the

sea. Maybe she will follow the railway still further inland, and plant her

flag on the Black Castle of Afiun, the natural railway-centre of Anatolia

high up on the innermost plateau. All this and more was once Hellenic

ground, and the Turkish incomer, for all his vitality, has never been able

here to obliterate the older culture or assimilate the earlier population.

In this western region Turkish villages are still interspersed with Greek,

and under the government of compatriots the unconquerable minority would

inevitably reassert itself by the peaceful weapons of its superior energy

and intelligence.



4. If Greece realizes these aspirations through Venezelos' statesmanship,

she will have settled in conjunction her outstanding accounts with both

Bulgaria and Turkey; but a fourth group of islands still remains for

consideration, and these, though formerly the property of Turkey, are now

in the hands of other European powers.



(a) The first of those in question are the Sporades, a chain of islands

off the Anatolian coast which continues the line of Mitylini, Khios, and

Samos towards the south-east, and includes Kos, Patmos, Astypalia,

Karpathos, Kasos, and, above all, Rhodes. The Sporades were occupied by

Italy during her war with Turkey in 1911-12, and she stipulated in the

Peace of Lausanne that she should retain them as a pledge until the last

Ottoman soldier in Tripoli had been withdrawn, after which she would make

them over again to the Porte. The continued unrest in Tripoli may or may

not have been due to Turkish intrigues, but in any case it deferred the

evacuation of the islands by Italy until the situation was transformed

here also by the successive intervention of both powers in the European

War. The consequent lapse of the Treaty of Lausanne simplifies the status

of the Sporades, but it is doubtful what effect it will have upon their

destiny. In language and political sympathy their inhabitants are as

completely Greek as all the other islanders of the Aegean, and if the

Quadruple Entente has made the principle of nationality its own, Italy is

morally bound, now that the Sporades are at her free disposal, to satisfy

their national aspirations by consenting to their union with the kingdom

of Greece. On the other hand, the prospective dissolution of the Ottoman

Empire has increased Italy's stake in this quarter. In the event of a

partition, the whole southern littoral of Anatolia will probably fall

within the Italian sphere, which will start from the Gulf of Iskanderun,

include the districts of Adana and Adalia, and march with the new

Anatolian provinces of Greece along the line of the river Mendere. This

continental domain and the adjacent islands are geographically

complementary to one another, and it is possible that Italy may for

strategical reasons insist on retaining the Sporades in perpetuity if she

realizes her ambitions on the continent. This solution would be less ideal

than the other, but Greece would be wise to reconcile herself to it, as

Italy has reconciled herself to the incorporation of Corsica in France;

for by submitting frankly to this detraction from her national unity she

would give her brethren in the Sporades the best opportunity of developing

their national individuality untrammelled under a friendly Italian

suzerainty.



(b) The advance-guard of the Greek race that inhabits the great island

of Cyprus has been subject to British government since 1878, when the

provisional occupation of the island by Great Britain under a contract

similar to that of Lausanne was negotiated in a secret agreement between

Great Britain and Turkey on the eve of the Conference at Berlin. The

condition of evacuation was in this case the withdrawal of Russia from

Kars, and here likewise it never became operative till it was abrogated by

the outbreak of war. Cyprus, like the Sporades, is now at the disposal of

its de facto possessor, and on November 5, 1914, it was annexed to the

British Empire. But whatever decision Italy may take, it is to be hoped

that our own government at any rate will not be influenced exclusively by

strategical considerations, but will proclaim an intention of allowing

Cyprus ultimately to realize its national aspirations by union with

Greece.[1]



[Footnote 1: Since the above was written, this intention, under a certain

condition, has definitely been expressed.]



The whole population of the island is Greek in language, while under an

excellent British administration its political consciousness has been

awakened, and has expressed itself in a growing desire for national unity

among the Christian majority. It is true that in Cyprus, as in Krete,

there is a considerable Greek-speaking minority of Moslems[1] who prefer

the status quo; but, since the barrier of language is absent, their

antipathy to union may not prove permanent. However important the

retention of Cyprus may be to Great Britain from the strategical point of

view, we shall find that even in the balance of material interests it is

not worth the price of alienating the sympathy of an awakened and

otherwise consolidated nation.



[Footnote 1: In Cyprus about 22 per cent.]





This rather detailed review of problems in the islands and Anatolia brings

out the fact that Greek nationalism is not an artificial conception of

theorists, but a real force which impels the most scattered and

down-trodden populations of Greek speech to travail unceasingly for

political unity within the national state. Yet by far the most striking

example of this attractive power in Hellenism is the history of it in

'Epirus'.[1]



[Footnote 1: The name coined to include the districts of Himarra,

Argyrokastro, and Koritsa.]



The Epirots are a population of Albanian race, and they still speak an

Albanian dialect in their homes; while the women and children, at any

rate, often know no other language. But somewhat over a century ago the

political organism created by the remarkable personality of Ali Pasha in

the hinterland of the Adriatic coast, and the relations of Great Britain

and France with this new principality in the course of their struggle for

the Mediterranean, began to awaken in the Epirots a desire for

civilization. Their Albanian origin opened to them no prospects, for the

race had neither a literature nor a common historical tradition; and they

accordingly turned to the Greeks, with whom they were linked in religion

by membership of the Orthodox Church, and in politics by subjection to

Ali's Government at Yannina, which had adopted Greek as its official

language.



They had appealed to the right quarter; for we have seen how Greek culture

accumulated a store of latent energy under the Turkish yoke, and was

expending it at this very period in a vigorous national revival. The

partially successful War of Liberation in the 'twenties of the nineteenth

century was only the political manifestation of the new life. It has

expressed itself more typically in a steady and universal enthusiasm for

education, which throughout the subsequent generations of political

stagnation has always opened to individual Greeks commercial and

professional careers of the greatest brilliance, and often led them to

spend the fortunes so acquired in endowing the nation with further

educational opportunities. Public spirit is a Greek virtue. There are few

villages which do not possess monuments of their successful sons, and a

school is an even commoner gift than a church; while the State has

supplemented the individual benefactor to an extent remarkable where

public resources are so slender. The school-house, in fact, is generally

the most prominent and substantial building in a Greek village, and the

advantage offered to the Epirots by a rapprochement with the Greeks is

concretely symbolized by the Greek schools established to-day in generous

numbers throughout their country.



For the Epirot boy the school is the door to the future. The language he

learns there makes him the member of a nation, and opens to him a world

wide enough to employ all the talent and energy he may possess, if he

seeks his fortune at Patras or Peiraeus, or in the great Greek commercial

communities of Alexandria and Constantinople; while, if he stays at home,

it still affords him a link with the life of civilized Europe through the

medium of the ubiquitous Greek newspaper.[1] The Epirot has thus become

Greek in soul, for he has reached the conception of a national life more

liberal than the isolated existence of his native village through the

avenue of Greek culture. 'Hellenism' and nationality have become for him

identical ideas; and when at last the hour of deliverance struck, he

welcomed the Greek armies that marched into his country from the south and

the east, after the fall of Yannina in the spring of 1913, with the same

enthusiasm with which all the enslaved populations of native Greek dialect

greeted the consummation of a century's hopes.



[Footnote 1: There is still practically no literature printed in the

Albanian language.]



The Greek troops arrived only just in time, for the 'Hellenism' of the

Epirots had been terribly proved by murderous attacks from their Moslem

neighbours on the north. The latter speak a variety of the same Albanian

tongue, but were differentiated by a creed which assimilated them to the

ruling race. They had been superior to their Christian kinsmen by the

weight of numbers and the possession of arms, which under the Ottoman

regime were the monopoly of the Moslem. At last, however, the yoke of

oppression was broken and the Greek occupation seemed a harbinger of

security for the future. Unluckily, however, Epirus was of interest to

others besides its own inhabitants. It occupies an important geographical

position facing the extreme heel of Italy, just below the narrowest point

in the neck of the Adriatic, and the Italian Government insisted that the

country should be included in the newly erected principality of Albania,

which the powers had reserved the right to delimit in concert by a

provision in the Treaty of London.



Italy gave two reasons for her demand. First, she declared it incompatible

with her own vital interests that both shores of the strait between Corfu

and the mainland should pass into the hands of the same power, because the

combination of both coasts and the channel between them offered a site for

a naval base that might dominate the mouth of the Adriatic. Secondly, she

maintained that the native Albanian speech of the Epirots proved their

Albanian nationality, and that it was unjust to the new Albanian state to

exclude from it the most prosperous and civilized branch of the Albanian

nation. Neither argument is cogent.



The first argument could easily be met by the neutralization of the Corfu

straits,[1] and it is also considerably weakened by the fact that the

position which really commands the mouth of the Adriatic from the eastern

side is not the Corfu channel beyond it but the magnificent bay of Avlona

just within its narrowest section, and this is a Moslem district to which

the Epirots have never laid claim, and which would therefore in any case

fall within the Albanian frontier. The second argument is almost

ludicrous. The destiny of Epirus is not primarily the concern of the other

Albanians, of for that matter of the Greeks, but of the Epirots

themselves, and it is hard to see how their nationality can be defined

except in terms of their own conscious and expressed desire; for a nation

is simply a group of men inspired by a common will to co-operate for

certain purposes, and cannot be brought into existence by the external

manipulation of any specific objective factors, but solely by the inward

subjective impulse of its constituents. It was a travesty of justice to

put the Orthodox Epirots at the mercy of a Moslem majority (which had been

massacring them the year before) on the ground that they happened to speak

the same language. The hardship was aggravated by the fact that all the

routes connecting Epirus with the outer world run through Yannina and

Salonika, from which the new frontier sundered her; while great natural

barriers separate her from Avlona and Durazzo, with which the same

frontier so ironically signalled her union.



[Footnote 1: Corfu itself is neutralized already by the agreement under

which Great Britain transferred the Ionian Islands to Greece in 1863.]



The award of the powers roused great indignation in Greece, but Venezelos

was strong enough to secure that it should scrupulously be respected; and

the 'correct attitude' which he inflexibly maintained has finally won its

reward. As soon as the decision of the powers was announced, the Epirots

determined to help themselves. They raised a militia, and asserted their

independence so successfully, that they compelled the Prince of Wied, the

first (and perhaps the last) ruler of the new 'Albania', to give them home

rule in matters of police and education, and to recognise Greek as the

official language for their local administration. They ensured observance

of this compact by the maintenance of their troops under arms. So matters

continued, until a rebellion among his Moslem subjects and the outbreak of

the European War in the summer of 1914 obliged the prince to depart,

leaving Albania to its natural state of anarchy. The anarchy might have

restored every canton and village to the old state of contented isolation,

had it not been for the religious hatred between the Moslems and the

Epirots, which, with the removal of all external control, began to vent

itself in an aggressive assault of the former upon the latter, and

entailed much needless misery in the autumn months.



The reoccupation of Epirus by Greek troops had now become a matter of life

and death to its inhabitants, and in October 1914 Venezelos took the

inevitable step, after serving due notice upon all the signatories to the

Treaty of London. Thanks in part to the absorption of the powers in more

momentous business, but perhaps even in a greater degree to the confidence

which the Greek premier had justly won by his previous handling of the

question, this action was accomplished without protest or opposition.

Since then Epirus has remained sheltered from the vicissitudes of civil

war within and punitive expeditions from without, to which the unhappy

remnant of Albania has been incessantly exposed; and we may prophesy that

the Epiroi, unlike their repudiated brethren of Moslem or Catholic faith,

have really seen the last of their troubles. Even Italy, from whom they

had most to fear, has obtained such a satisfactory material guarantee by

the occupation on her own part of Avlona, that she is as unlikely to

demand the evacuation of Epirus by Greece as she is to withdraw her own

force from her long coveted strategical base on the eastern shore of the

Adriatic. In Avlona and Epirus the former rivals are settling down to a

neighbourly contact, and there is no reason to doubt that the de facto

line of demarcation between them will develop into a permanent and

officially recognized frontier. The problem of Epirus, though not,

unfortunately, that of Albania, may be regarded as definitely closed.



The reclamation of Epirus is perhaps the most honourable achievement of

the Greek national revival, but it is by no means an isolated phenomenon.

Western Europe is apt to depreciate modern 'Hellenism', chiefly because

its ambitious denomination rather ludicrously challenges comparison with a

vanished glory, while any one who has studied its rise must perceive that

it has little more claim than western Europe itself to be the peculiar

heir of ancient Greek culture. And yet this Hellenism of recent growth has

a genuine vitality of its own. It displays a remarkable power of

assimilating alien elements and inspiring them to an active pursuit of its

ideals, and its allegiance supplants all others in the hearts of those

exposed to its charm. The Epirots are not the only Albanians who have been

Hellenized. In the heart of central Greece and Peloponnesus, on the plain

of Argos, and in the suburbs of Athens, there are still Albanian enclaves,

derived from those successive migrations between the fourteenth and the

eighteenth centuries; but they have so entirely forgotten their origin

that the villagers, when questioned, can only repeat: 'We can't say why we

happen to speak "Arvanitika", but we are Greeks like everybody else.' The

Vlachs again, a Romance-speaking tribe of nomadic shepherds who have

wandered as far south as Akarnania and the shores of the Korinthian Gulf,

are settling down there to the agricultural life of the Greek village, so

that Hellenism stands to them for the transition to a higher social phase.

Their still migratory brethren in the northern ranges of Pindus are

already 'Hellenes' in political sympathy,[1] and are moving under Greek

influence towards the same social evolution. In distant Cappadocia, at the

root of the Anatolian peninsula, the Orthodox Greek population, submerged

beneath the Turkish flood more than eight centuries ago, has retained

little individuality except in its religion, and nothing of its native

speech but a garbled vocabulary embedded in a Turkified syntax. Yet even

this dwindling rear-guard has been overtaken just in time by the returning

current of national life, bringing with it the Greek school, and with the

school a community of outlook with Hellenism the world over. Whatever the

fate of eastern Anatolia may be, the Greek element is now assured a

prominent part in its future.



[Footnote 1: Greece owed her naval supremacy in 1912-13 to the new cruiser

Georgios Averof, named after a Vlach millionaire who made his fortune in

the Greek colony at Alexandria and left a legacy for the ship's

construction at his death.]



These, moreover, are the peripheries of the Greek world; and at its centre

the impulse towards union in the national state readies a passionate

intensity. 'Aren't you better off as you are?' travellers used to ask in

Krete during the era of autonomy. 'If you get your "Union", you will have

to do two years' military service instead of one year's training in the

militia, and will be taxed up to half as much again.' 'We have thought of

that,' the Kretans would reply, 'but what does it matter, if we are united

with Greece?'



On this unity modern Hellenism has concentrated its efforts, and after

nearly a century of ineffective endeavour it has been brought by the

statesmanship of Venezelos within sight of its goal. Our review of

outstanding problems reveals indeed the inconclusiveness of the settlement

imposed at Bucarest; but this only witnesses to the wisdom of the Greek

nation in reaffirming its confidence in Venezelos at the present juncture,

and recalling him to power to crown the work which he has so brilliantly

carried through. Under Venezelos' guidance we cannot doubt that the

heart's desire of Hellenism will be accomplished at the impending European

settlement by the final consolidation of the Hellenic national state.[1]



[Footnote 1: This paragraph, again, has been superseded by the dramatic

turn of events; but the writer has left it unaltered, for the end is not

yet.]



Yet however attractive the sincerity of such nationalism may be, political

unity is only a negative achievement. The history of a nation must be

judged rather by the positive content of its ideals and the positive

results which it attains, and herein the Hellenic revival displays certain

grave shortcomings. The internal paralysis of social and economic life