Tsar Alexander, the vaccillator, died in November 1825, and was

succeeded by his son Nicholas I, as strong a character and as active a

will as Sultan Mahmud himself. Nicholas approached the Greek question

without any disinclination towards a Turkish war; and both Great

Britain and France found an immediate interest in removing a ground of

provocation which might lead to such a rude disturbance of the European

‘Balance of Power’. On July 6, 1827, a month after Athens surrendered,

the three powers concluded a treaty for the pacification of Greece, in

which they bound over both belligerent parties to accept an armistice

under pain of military coercion. An allied squadron appeared off

Navarino Bay to enforce this policy upon the Ottoman and Egyptian fleet

which lay united there, and the intrusion of the allied admirals into

the bay itself precipitated on October 20 a violent naval battle in

which the Moslem flotilla was destroyed. The die was cast; and in April

1828 the Russian and Ottoman Governments drifted into a formal war,

which brought Russian armies across the Danube as far as Adrianople,

and set the Ottoman Empire at bay for the defence of its capital.

Thanks to Mahmud’s reorganization, the empire did not succumb to this

assault; but it had no more strength to spare for the subjugation of

Greece. The Greeks had no longer to reckon with the sultan as a

military factor; and in August 1828 they wore relieved of Ibrahim’s

presence as well, by the disembarkation of 14,000 French troops in

Peloponnesos to superintend the withdrawal of the Egyptian forces. In

March 1829 the three powers delimited the Greek frontier. The line ran

east and west from the Gulf of Volo to the Gulf of Arta, and assigned

to the new state no more and no less territory than the districts that

had effectively asserted their independence against the sultan in 1821.

This settlement was the only one possible under the circumstances; but

it was essentially transitory, for it neglected the natural line of

nationality altogether, and left a numerical majority of the Greek

race, as well as the most important centres of its life, under the old

régime of servitude.

Even the liberated area was not at the end of its troubles. In the

spring of 1827, when they committed themselves into the hands of their

foreign patrons, the Greeks had found a new president for the republic

in John Kapodistrias, an intimate of Alexander the tsar. Kapodistrias

was a Corfiote count, with a Venetian education and a career in the

Russian diplomatic service, and no one could have been more

fantastically unsuitable for the task of reconstructing the country to

which he was called. Kapodistrias’ ideal was the _fin-de-siècle_

‘police-state’; but ‘official circles’ did not exist in Greece, and he

had no acquaintance with the peasants and sailors whom he hoped to

redeem by bureaucracy. He instituted a hierarchically centralized

administration which made the abortive constitution of Mavrokordatos

seem sober by comparison; he trampled on the liberty of the rising

press, which was the most hopeful educational influence in the country;

and he created superfluous ministerial portfolios for his untalented

brothers. In fact he reglamented Greece from his palace at Aigina like

a divinely appointed autocrat, from his arrival in January 1828 till

the summer of 1831, when he provoked the Hydhriots to open rebellion,

and commissioned the Russian squadron in attendance to quell them by a

naval action, with the result that Poros was sacked by the President’s

regular army and the national fleet was completely destroyed. After

that, he attempted to rule as a military dictator, and fell foul of the

Mavromichalis of Maina. The Mainates knew better how to deal with the

‘police-state’ than the Hydhriots; and on October 9, 1831, Kapodistrias

was assassinated in Nauplia, at the church door, by two representatives

of the Mavromichalis clan.

The country lapsed into utter anarchy. Peloponnesians and Armatoli,

Kolokotronists and Kolettists, alternately appointed and deposed

subservient national assemblies and governing commissions by naked

violence, which culminated in a gratuitous and disastrous attack upon

the French troops stationed in Peloponnesos for their common

protection. The three powers realized that it was idle to liberate

Greece from Ottoman government unless they found her another in its

place. They decided on monarchy, and offered the crown, in February

1832, to Prince Otto, a younger son of the King of Bavaria. The

negotiations dragged on many months longer than Greece could afford to

wait. But in July 1832 the sultan recognized the sovereign independence

of the kingdom of Hellas in consideration of a cash indemnity; and in

February 1833, just a year after the first overtures had been made, the

appointed king arrived at Nauplia with a decorative Bavarian staff and

a substantial loan from the allies.

3

_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 régime_. 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 régime, 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 _débâcle_ 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 régime 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

régime, 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’état_ 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’ régime, 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 Üsküb 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 Midía 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 Régie 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 Nikarià, 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 Psarà.]

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

régime 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,

Astypalià, 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 Koritsà.]

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 régime 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 Corfù 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

Corfù 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 Corfù 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: Corfù 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 “Arvanitikà”, 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 has already been noted and ascribed to the urgency of

the ‘preliminary question’; but we must now add to this the growing

embitterment which has poisoned the relations of Greece with her Balkan

neighbours during the crises through which the ‘preliminary question’

has been worked out to its solution. Now that this solution is at hand,

will Hellenism prove capable of casting out these two evils, and adapt

itself with strength renewed to the new phase of development that lies

before it?

The northern territories acquired in 1913 will give a much greater

impetus to economic progress than Thessaly gave a generation ago; for

the Macedonian littoral west as well as east of the Struma produces a

considerable proportion of the Turkish Régie tobacco, while the

pine-forests of Pindus, if judiciously exploited, will go far to remedy

the present deficiency of home-grown timber, even if they do not

provide quantities sufficient for export abroad. If we take into

account the currant-crop of the Peloponnesian plain-lands which already

almost monopolizes the world-market, the rare ores of the south-eastern

mountains and the Archipelago, and the vintages which scientific

treatment might bring into competition with the wines of the Peninsula

and France, we can see that Greece has many sources of material

prosperity within her reach, if only she applies her liberated energy

to their development. Yet these are all of them specialized products,

and Greece will never export any staple commodity to rival the grain

which Rumania sends in such quantities to central Europe already, and

which Bulgaria will begin to send within a few years’ time. Even the

consolidated Greek kingdom will be too small in area and too little

compact in geographical outline to constitute an independent economic

unit, and the ultimate economic interests of the country demand

co-operation in some organization more comprehensive than the political

molecule of the national state.

Such an association should embrace the Balkans in their widest extent—

from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and from the Carpathians to the

Aegean; for, in sharp contrast to the inextricable chaos of its

linguistic and ecclesiastical divisions, the region constitutes

economically a homogeneous and indivisible whole, in which none of the

parts can divest themselves of their mutual interdependence. Greece,

for example, has secured at last her direct link with the railway

system of the European continent, but for free transit beyond her own

frontier she still depends on Serbia’s good-will, just, as Serbia

depends on hers for an outlet to the Aegean at Salonika. The two states

have provided for their respective interests by a joint proprietorship

of the section of railway between Salonika and Belgrade; and similar

railway problems will doubtless bring Rumania to terms with Serbia for

access to the Adriatic, and both with Bulgaria for rights of way to

Constantinople and the Anatolian hinterland beyond. These common

commercial arteries of the Balkans take no account of racial or

political frontiers, but link the region as a whole with other regions

in a common economic relation.

South-eastern and central Europe are complementary economic areas in a

special degree. The industries of central Europe will draw upon the raw

products of the south-east to an increasing extent, and the south-east

will absorb in turn increasing quantities of manufactured plant from

central Europe for the development of its own natural resources. The

two areas will become parties in a vast economic nexus, and, as in all

business transactions, each will try to get the best of the continually

intensified bargaining. This is why co-operation is so essential to the

future well-being of the Balkan States. Isolated individually and

mutually competitive as they are at present, they must succumb to the

economic ascendancy of Vienna and Berlin as inevitably as unorganized,

unskilled labourers fall under the thraldom of a well-equipped

capitalist. Central Europe will have in any event an enormous initial

superiority over the Balkans in wealth, population, and business

experience; and the Balkan peoples can only hope to hold their own in

this perilous but essential intercourse with a stronger neighbour, if

they take more active and deliberate steps towards co-operation among

themselves, and find in railway conventions the basis for a Balkan

zollverein. A zollverein should be the first goal of Balkan

statesmanship in the new phase of history that is opening for Europe;

but economic relations on this scale involve the political factor, and

the Balkans will not be able to deal with their great neighbours on

equal terms till the zollverein has ripened into a federation. The

alternative is subjection, both political and economic; and neither the

exhaustion of the Central Powers in the present struggle nor the

individual consolidation of the Balkan States in the subsequent

settlement will suffice by themselves to avert it in the end.

The awakening of the nation and the consolidation of the state, which

we have traced in these pages, must accordingly lead on to the

confederation of the Balkans, if all that has been so painfully won is

not to perish again without result; and we are confronted with the

question: Will Balkan nationalism rise to the occasion and transcend

itself?

Many spectators of recent history will dismiss the suggestion as

Utopian. ‘Nationality’, they will say, ‘revealed itself first as a

constructive force, and Europe staked its future upon it; but now that

we are committed to it, it has developed a sinister destructiveness

which we cannot remedy. Nationality brought the Balkan States into

being and led them to final victory over the Turk in 1912, only to set

them tearing one another to pieces again in 1913. In the present

catastrophe the curse of the Balkans has descended upon the whole of

Europe, and laid bare unsuspected depths of chaotic hatred; yet Balkan

antagonisms still remain more ineradicable than ours. The cure for

nationality is forgetfulness, but Balkan nationalism is rooted

altogether in the past. The Balkan peoples have suffered one shattering

experience in common—the Turk, and the waters of Ottoman oppression

that have gone over their souls have not been waters of Lethe. They

have endured long centuries of spiritual exile by the passionate

remembrance of their Sion, and when they have vindicated their heritage

at last, and returned to build up the walls of their city and the

temple of their national god, they have resented each other’s

neighbourhood as the repatriated Jew resented the Samaritan. The Greek

dreams with sullen intensity of a golden age before the Bulgar was

found in the land, and the challenge implied in the revival of the

Hellenic name, so far from being a superficial vanity, is the dominant

characteristic of the nationalism which has adopted it for its title.

Modern Hellenism breathes the inconscionable spirit of the _émigré_.’

This is only too true. The faith that has carried them to national

unity will suffice neither the Greeks nor any other Balkan people for

the new era that has dawned upon them, and the future would look dark

indeed, but for a strange and incalculable leaven, which is already

potently at work in the land.

Since the opening of the present century, the chaotic, unneighbourly

races of south-eastern Europe, whom nothing had united before but the

common impress of the Turk, have begun to share another experience in

common— America. From the Slovak villages in the Carpathians to the

Greek villages in the Laconian hills they have been crossing the

Atlantic in their thousands, to become dockers and navvies, boot-blacks

and waiters, confectioners and barbers in Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha,

and all the other cities that have sprung up like magic to welcome the

immigrant to the hospitable plains of the Middle West. The intoxication

of his new environment stimulates all the latent industry and vitality

of the Balkan peasant, and he abandons himself whole-heartedly to

American life; yet he does not relinquish the national tradition in

which he grew up. In America work brings wealth, and the Greek or

Slovak soon worships his God in a finer church and reads his language

in a better-printed newspaper than he ever enjoyed in his native

village. The surplus flows home in remittances of such abundance that

they are steadily raising the cost of living in the Balkans themselves,

or, in other words, the standard of material civilization; and sooner

or later the immigrant goes the way of his money orders, for

home-sickness, if not a mobilization order, exerts its compulsion

before half a dozen years are out.

It is a strange experience to spend a night in some remote

mountain-village of Greece, and see Americanism and Hellenism face to

face. Hellenism is represented by the village schoolmaster. He wears a

black coat, talks a little French, and can probably read Homer; but his

longest journey has been to the normal school at Athens, and it has not

altered his belief that the ikon in the neighbouring monastery was made

by St. Luke and the Bulgar beyond the mountains by the Devil. On the

other side of you sits the returned emigrant, chattering irrepressibly

in his queer version of the ‘American language’, and showing you the

newspapers which are mailed to him every fortnight from the States. His

clean linen collar and his well-made American boots are conspicuous

upon him, and he will deprecate on your behalf and his own the

discomfort and squalor of his native surroundings. His home-coming has

been a disillusionment, but it is a creative phenomenon; and if any one

can set Greece upon a new path it is he. He is transforming her

material life by his American savings, for they are accumulating into a

capital widely distributed in native hands, which will dispense the

nation from pawning its richest mines and vineyards to the European

exploiter, and enable it to carry on their development on its own

account at this critical juncture when European sources of capital are

cut off for an indefinite period by the disaster of the European War.

The emigrant will give Greece all Trikoupis dreamed of, but his

greatest gift to his country will be his American point of view. In the

West he has learnt that men of every language and religion can live in

the same city and work at the same shops and sheds and mills and

switch-yards without desecrating each other’s churches or even

suppressing each other’s newspapers, not to speak of cutting each

other’s throats; and when next he meets Albanian or Bulgar on Balkan

ground, he may remember that he has once dwelt with him in fraternity

at Omaha or St. Louis or Chicago. This is the gospel of Americanism,

and unlike Hellenism, which spread downwards from the patriarch’s

residence and the merchant’s counting-house, it is being preached in

all the villages of the land by the least prejudiced and most

enterprising of their sons (for it is these who answer America’s call);

and spreading upward from the peasant towards the professor in the

university and the politician in parliament.

Will this new leaven conquer, and cast out the stale leaven of

Hellenism before it sours the loaf? Common sense is mighty, but whether

it shall prevail in Greece and the Balkans and Europe lies on the knees

of the gods.