the pacific Trikoupes soon returned with the
mission of repairing his bellicose rival's mistakes.
Fortunately, the actual fighting was confined to a
few frontier skirmishes, the new Cabinet disarmed
and the blockade was raised after lasting for nearly
a month.

Greece gained nothing by this attitude of Ajax
defying the lightning. If she lost no territory
she had to bear the loss of a forced currency for
many years, while the lesson of 1886 was lost upon
Deligiannes, who eleven years later repeated, with
far graver results, his warlike policy. For the
time, however, the long Eastern crisis ended, and
Greece enjoyed the advantage of repose from the
excitement of foreign policy.



CHAPTER VIII

ECONOMICS, CRETE AND THE GRECO-
TURKISH WAR (1886-98)

ECONOMIC questions were the chief concern
of Greece for nearly nine years after the
blockade of 1886. This was the period of
railway extension and of other public works ;
it was in 1893 that the attempt of Nero, the
prophecy of Apollonius of Tyana, and the dream
of Lucan, " to save ships from rounding long
Cape Malea," was at last accomplished by the
cutting of the Corinth Canal, Unfortunately,
the canal was not made sufficiently wide, while
the strong current rendered navigation difficult.
But it has proved a great saving of time for those
steamers which use it and much diminished the
all-sea route from Brindisi. This rapid transit
has, however, injured Corinth, which was the
natural stopping-place for those who traversed the
Isthmus. While Athens and the Piraeus are
flourishing modern towns, while Aigion and Patras
are the outlets of the currant-trade, Corinth, once
so famous for wealth and luxury, has now none
but archaeological interest.

There were, however, checks to economic progress
99



100 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

during those peaceful years, culminating in the
financial crisis of 1893 and a subsequent currant
crisis, which caused a currency crisis in the winter
of 1894-5, when the exchange went up to 187f.
The currant crisis derived its origin from the time
when the phylloxera in France had created a
great demand for these serviceable berries, which
are mentioned as having been cultivated in the
Morea in the fourteenth century, but were not
grown in quantities for the consumption of
Northern Europe until after the Turkish reconquest
of the Morea in the eighteenth. The currant has,
like the grape-vine, not been an unmixed benefit
to mankind. At first, the French demand for all
the currants that Greece could send her raised
prices and brought money into the country.
Thereupon, the peasants, thinking that the demand
would last for ever, cut down their olive-trees,
cut up their pasture-land (just as the Italians
have sacrificed the olive-trees of Bordighera and
San Remo for the culture of flowers), and planted
currant-vines wherever there was room to grow
them. But, while Greek production was thus
trebled, France recovered from the phylloxera ;
in 1891 she was able to impose a duty upon
currants ; Germany and Russia followed her ;
and the Greek producer had masses of currants
on his hands, which were a drug in the market.
The cry went up for artificial measures to redress
the wrongs inflicted upon nature by the sacrifice
of the olives, for a good currant crop had become



CRETE AND GRECO-TURKISH WAR 101

a curse. The result was the Retention Law of
1899, which allowed the retention of 20 per cent,
of the crop. As usual, this attempt at regulation
produced the opposite effect of what was intended.
Prices were again raised, with the same effect as
before, that the peasants were eager to put more
land under currant cultivation, and further over-
production ensued. The currant question led
indirectly to the fall of the Theotokes Ministry
in 1903, and a fresh solution was attempted by
the formation of an international Privileged
Company, which endeavoured to increase the
demand by popularizing the use of currants for
other purposes besides plum-puddings in the two
great Anglo-Saxon communities, which are Greece's
chief customers for this article. It also tried to
diminish the area under cultivation by compen-
sating the proprietors for uprooting their currant-
bushes.

Scarcely less difficult was the financial crisis
of 1893, which occupied the politicians to the
exclusion of most other questions. A British
expert, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Edward Law, 1 traced
its origin to " the general disorganization of the
country produced by political events in 1885-6,"
and " since that date to excessive borrowing
abroad, and equally to the laxity of an adminis-
tration which neglected the proper collection of
taxes, whilst the balance of trade was steadily

1 Diplomatic and Consular Reports on Trade and
Finance, 1169, p. 17 ; 1416, p. 4.



102 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

against the country." The Government had
temporarily to reduce by 70 per cent, the amount
paid as interest on the coupons of the Greek gold
loans ; negotiations with the representatives of
the foreign bondholders fell through, and the
apparent increase in the revenue for 1894, which was
double that for 1885, was partly fictitious, owing
to the diminution in value of the paper currency.
It is very creditable to the probity of Greek public
life that at a time when Ministries came and fell
upon questions of finance, and when statesmen
were mainly concerned with financial operations,
the breath of scandal never once touched any of
them. The pecuniary prizes of office in Greece
have always been ridiculously small, but there is
no example of any Greek Premier having used his
official opportunities to enrich himself. Trikoupes
and Deligiannes, the rival protagonists of that
day, lived and died poor ; nor has even partisan
acrimony accused their great successor of an
offence not unknown in some greater countries.
Another social and economic question first
appeared in Greek life during this period. The
depression of the currant trade and the rise in
prices led to emigration, especially to the United
States a phenomenon which had not existed
before 1891. Its chief economic effect was the
depletion of the agricultural districts ; socially
it led to the introduction of Western ideas into
remote parts of Greece. The writer has met
persons speaking English with a strong American



CRETE AND GRECO-TURKISH WAR 103

accent in a very inaccessible town of the Pelo-
ponnese, and to the energy, activity and patriotism
of some of the emigrants, who hastened from
overseas at their country's call in 1912, were
attributed some of the successes of the Greek army
in the first Balkan war. These " Americans "
have their newspapers and their organizations,
and to the already existing Hellenic colonies
abroad, some dating several centuries back, some
possessing great influence in politics as well as
commerce, there have been added in these last
thirty years those in the United States. The
official memorandum, presented by M. Venizelos
to the Peace Congress of 1919, estimated the
Greeks in North and South America as 450,000.
These economic crises were succeeded by a
fresh outbreak of the Cretan question, which
involved Greece for the first time since the struggle
for independence in war with Turkey. In 1889
there had been another Cretan insurrection, which,
beginning out of a parliamentary fight between
the two political parties, the so-called Liberals
and Conservatives, for the spoils of office, developed
into a religious and national conflict between
Christians and Moslems. When union with Greece
was again proclaimed, Trikoupes, then in power at
Athens, did all he could to damp the untimely
ardour of the Unionists, for the time was, he
thought, not yet ripe. A firman, repealing the
Pact of Halepa, reducing the numbers of the
Assembly to fifty-seven, and giving Turkish-



104 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

speaking candidates a better chance for Cretan
appointments, was subsequently modified by an
increase of the members of the Assembly to sixty-
five, of whom forty were Christians, by the sum-
moning of that body, which had not met for six
years, and by the appointment of a Christian
vdli. Both Christians and Moslems remained,
however, discontented, until the final Cretan
insurrection, which sounded the death-knell of
Turkish rule, began at Canea on May 24, 1896.
The Sultan vainly restored the Pact of Halepa
and appointed another Christian vdli ; it was now
too late for " reforms," which the Moslems opposed
and the Christians suspected.

An attack upon the Christian quarter of Canea
by the Moslems on February 4, 1897, drove the
Christian insurgents (among them the future
Premier of Greece) to occupy the " peninsula " (or
Akroteri) which separates Canea from the famous
bay of Suda. Once again union was proclaimed,
and this time official Greece did not remain in-
different to the Cretan proclamation. Deligiannes
was, as in 1885, in power, and on this occasion
without a check, for his great rival, whose influence
had always been on the side of peace, had met
with the usual fate of Greek statesmen, alike in
ancient and modern times, the ingratitude of his
countrymen, and, after being defeated in the
elections, had died in exile at Cannes the greatest
figure that modern Greece had so far produced.

Public opinion at Athens was much excited ;



CRETE AND GRECO-TURKISH WAR 105

the first revival of the Olympic Games there in
the previous year had helped to create much the
same patriotic enthusiasm as was aroused by the
Italian Jubilee Exhibition on the eve of the Libyan
war. The large Cretan colony in Greece and the
Cretan refugees, as always, were further incentives
to action, and the King's sailor son, Prince George,
started with a squadron of destroyers for "the
great Greek island," which he was destined to
govern, while Col. Vassos landed there in the name
of the King. The last Turkish governor fled
ignominiously, and the Admirals of the five
Powers, then represented off Crete, occupied
Canea, bombarding the insurgents on Akroteri,
among them M. Venizelos, who told the writer
that it was then that he found time to learn
English ! The Admirals proclaimed the autonomy
of the island, and instituted a blockade ; but by
that time the mainland also was in a blaze. The
so-called " National Society " clamoured and
agitated for war ; the King was in a difficult
position ; probably his own sound judgment was
against the venture ; but he may have hoped that
the Powers would have helped him to save his
face by intervening to prevent actual fighting ;
he would thus have been able to give way to their
pressure, while having advocated war, like Otho
in 1854. This is a not uncommon manoeuvre in
the Near East, where statesmen are sometimes
thankful to the Powers for forcing them to do what
they wanted, but had not the courage to do, from



106 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

fear of public opinion. In 1897, however, the
Powers did not prevent war ; indeed the action
of a number of British members of Parliament
stimulated the war-party at Athens, which mis-
took them for the British Government, then under
Salisbury.

The writer, who was in Greece during the war,
remembers the combination of patriotic enthusiasm
with defective organization, which accompanied
this ill-timed struggle. From the first the conflict
on land was unequal, for behind the Turks were
German instructors, while the virtues of democracy
are not conspicuous on a battlefield, where it
tends to make every soldier think himself the
equal of his officer, and of good officers the Greeks
then had few. Idealists who believed that other
Christian races of the Balkans would rise and cut
off the Turkish advance were disappointed, for
the Sultan paid blackmail to Serbia and Bulgaria
in the shape of more Macedonian bishoprics and
schools. Thus Greece and Turkey were left alone.
Happily this " Thirty Days' War " was short,
and by land, except for the sturdy resistance of
Smolenski, the hero of the struggle, who at one
moment might have made himself dictator, if he
had had political instinct, was disastrous for the
Greeks. By sea they were the superiors of the
Turks, but their fleet did little beyond a desultory
bombardment of Preveza and Santi Quaranta.
The presence of large Greek populations in the
coast-towns of Turkey rendered an attack upon



CRETE AND GRECO-TURKISH WAR 107

those vulnerable points impossible, for the chief
sufferers would have been the " unredeemed "
Greeks ; and it is probable that, just as Austria
vetoed the bombardment of certain Turkish
places by the Italian navy in the Libyan war, so
tie Powers prevented the seizure of practically
defenceless Turkish islands as a pledge by the
Greek fleet in 1897. Thus Greece fought with
one arm, the right, tied behind her back.

The retreat of the Crown Prince, Constantine
(the future " Bulgar-slayer," but not yet an
eminent general), from Larissa, the Greek defeat
on the famous battlefield of Pharsalos, where
Caesar and Pompey had contended for the mastery of
the world, and the culminating battle of Domokos,
which laid continental Greece south of Thessaly
open to the invaders, showed that further blood-
shed was useless, especially as the Sultan knew
full well that he would not be allowed to retain
his conquests. For a moment, however, the
throne was in danger, and the King might have
fallen, had it not been for the influence of the
popular democratic Athenian leader, Rhalles,
who had taken the place of Deligiannes as Premier.
The position was all the more dangerous owing
to the return from the front of the Garibaldians,
who had come to fight for Greece and who might,
it was feared, remain to sack Athens. Their
leader, General Ricciotti Garibaldi, wisely removed
them ; thanks to the tardy, but effective, inter-
vention of the Powers, the Turkish advance was



108 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

stayed by an armistice ; and Crete was evacuated.
The treaty of Constantinople on December 4
gave back Thessaly to Greece, except a few
strategic points and a single village, but Greece
had to pay a war indemnity. The opportunity
was taken at the same time to establish an Inter-
national Commission of Control over her revenues,
upon which the six Powers were each to have a
delegate. Thus the war brought a solution of the
financial crisis. In 1898 the last Turkish troops
left Thessaly, which became more Greek than
before owing to the simultaneous emigration of
nearly all the Moslem landlords. Thus, Greece
had paid comparatively lightly for her venture.
Nor was the lesson of 1897 thrown away upon the
Greeks. They learned the necessity of organiza-
tion and discipline, the hardest of all lessons for
a Southern people of strikingly individualistic
tendencies ; for what one Southerner will do
better than three Anglo-Saxons, three Southerners
will do worse than one Anglo-Saxon. The war
of 1912 completely wiped out the memories of
1897 ; the Greek army which defeated the Turks
in that year was no more the Greek army which
had retreated from Larissa than was the Serbian
army which routed the Turks at Kumanovo the
Serbian army which had lost Slivnitza. More-
over, one result of this disastrous war was the
establishment of Cretan autonomy and the all
but nominal end of Turkish rule over that sorely-
tried island.



CRETE AND GRECO-TURKISH WAR 109

The Powers had at last realized, after the
experience of two generations, that direct Ottoman
sway must cease there ; but they were unwilling
to permit union, and still clung to the idea of a
foreign governor, selected from one of the small
Christian states, Switzerland (in the person of
Numa Droz), Luxemburg (in that of a Greek-
speaking colonel), or Montenegro (in that of the
Prince's cousin and Premier). While the question
was still unsettled, the two Central Empires
retired from the Concert of Europe, leaving to
the four other Powers the task of occupying the
Cretan coast-towns, within which the Moslems
were concentrated. Thus, Canea became the
common seat of all four, while Candia was the
British, Rethymne the Russian, Sitia and Spin-
alonga the French, and Hierapetra the Italian
reserve. Outside these places a Christian Assembly,
whose President was Sphakianakes, dominated
the country. A British Admiral was destined to
cut the diplomatic knot, which seemed to have
become hopelessly entangled, by his strong
measures against the Moslems at Candia, who,
in 1898, murdered the British Vice-Consul and
fired upon the British in the harbour. The
remaining Turkish troops evacuated Crete, with
the exception of the islet in Suda bay, over which
the Turkish flag still floated. Suda had been one
of the two last places which the Turks had captured
from the Venetians ; it was the last that they
retained a mere shadow of their former power.



110 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

Thereupon, at the suggestion of the Tsar, largely
moved by personal friendship, the four Powers
offered the still vacant Cretan Governorship to
Prince George of Greece, who was to act as their
High Commissioner, while nominally remaining
the vassal of the Sultan. His appointment was
to be for three years it really lasted for nearly
eight. On December 21, 1898 a red-letter day
in Cretan history the first Greek Governor of
the island since the Roman Conquest landed in
Crete. Great was the joy of the Cretan Christians ;
it was hoped that Crete would no longer vex the
European diplomatists who sat in Rome to watch
over their latest creation. But Crete is like
Ireland : when one grievance is removed, another
arises ; and the Cretan politicians found that
autonomy was not a panacea, and that a Prince
of no political experience and autocratic tempera-
ment was scarcely likely to work well with his
local advisers, especially when one of them was a
statesman, then little known to fame, of the stamp
of M. Venizelos.

Cretan history under Prince George consists of
two parts : his first happy and tranquil five years,
and the turbulent remainder of his term. He
began with the best intentions : he meant to be
the Prince of all Cretans, Moslems and Christians
alike ; and his respective pilgrimages to the historic
monastery of Arkadion and to the principal
mosque of Canea were the outward expressions
of this excellent policy. One of the first acts of



CRETE AND GRECO-TURKISH WAR 111

his rule was the appointment of a commission
of both creeds to compile a constitution, which was
submitted to an Assembly and by it approved.
The Prince was to be assisted by five " Councillors,"
of whom one was to be a Moslem and of whom all
were appointed by himself, and he was further
entitled to nominate ten deputies to the elective
Chamber, which was to meet annually and to be
renewed biennially. Thus he had considerable
powers, which made all the more important his
personal qualifications for the difficult art of
governing Cretans. Autonomy was completed
by the adoption of a Cretan flag, the issue of
Cretan stamps and small change, and by the
creation of a Cretan police force in place of the
Montenegrins, who had latterly acted in that
capacity. This force, trained by Italian carabi-
neers, was very efficient and, after the union,
rendered service to Greece also, where one tall
Cretan policeman has been seen to keep a crowd
in order in a manner that would not disgrace
Scotland Yard.

The Powers accordingly thought that young
Crete might now walk alone ; their authorities
withdrew from their respective districts, but an
unfortunate result of the withdrawal of the British
from Candia, the chief Moslem centre, was such a
Moslem emigration to Asia Minor that the census
of 1900 revealed the fact that the Moslems formed
only one-ninth of the population, and outside
Canea, Candia and Rethymne were a negligible



112 A HISTORY OF THE GREEK PEOPLE

quantity. This emigration, partly due to the
natural reluctance of a once dominant minority
to remain under a formerly subordinate majority,
partly to artificial stimulants from Constantinople,
was both a benefit and a loss to the island.
Politically, it simplified the situation by giving to
Crete an overwhelmingly Christian and Unionist
complexion ; economically, it deprived the island
of a valuable element in its population. But
this large reduction of the Moslem population
enabled the large Christian majority to indulge,
as is the way with large majorities, in the luxury
of internal disputes. As he gained, or thought
that he had gained, more experience of local
conditions, the Prince became more autocratic ;
he quarrelled with the Assembly over the questions
of a press censorship and the control of the elections
of mayors ; he dismissed his wisest Councillor,
M. Venizelos, accused of preferring to union the
erection of Crete into a principality like Samos.
Venetian and Turkish traditions were still strong
in Crete ; accordingly, M. Venizelos and the
Opposition followed the time-honoured practice
of taking to the hills, and established a provisional
National Assembly, in 1905, at Therisso, a mountain
village, approached by a narrow defile from his
birthplace at Mournies, behind Canea. Therisso
had long been a famous stronghold, whence the
Turks had found it hard to dislodge the insurgents.
On this occasion winter alone compelled the
seceders to yield and then only to the Consuls



CRETE AND GRECO-TURKISH WAR 113

of the Powers after having passed the usual
vote of union with Greece. The incident, however,
left a rancorous feeling behind it ; for the Prince,
who in 1906 resigned the High Commissionership,
found it hard to forgive the daring Councillor
who had resisted his will. Hence were sown the
seeds of the future conflict between his elder
brother and the insurgent of Therisso, become
King Constantine's Prime Minister.

Prince George's resignation caused a further
advance towards union ; for the four protecting
Powers allowed King George to choose his son's
successor, and he chose wisely. Instead of an
inexperienced, autocratic Prince, the new High
Commissioner was the most moderate and least
talkative of Greek public men, M. Alexander
Zai'mes, the descendant of what our ancestors
would have called " an old Whig family," which
for generations had been in politics, in which
M. Zai'mes had twice attained the rank of Premier
and accomplished the task of making the best
possible terms for Greece after the disastrous war
with Turkey. Essentially a " safe man," M.
Zai'mes succeeded in ensuring quiet ; a further
step towards union was the substitution of retired
Greek officers for the Italians in the police, and the
organization by them of a native militia. Crete
ceased to make history.



CHAPTER IX
THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION (1898-1908)

AFTER the Turkish war Greece enjoyed
a period of rest, during which her politics
were mainly internal. Had this interval
been employed for the improvement of the parlia-
mentary system, the " Military League " of 1909
might have been unnecessary, and the humiliation
which the country underwent in that year from
Turkey avoided. But it was still the heyday
of personal parties, of log-rolling and the " spoils'
system," and domestic politics were a game of ins
and outs, in which from 1899 to 1905 Theotokes,
a lieutenant of Trikoupes, and the first Corfiote
who attained to the Premiership, contended for
office with old Deligiannes, till the latter, still
hale and hearty, fell by the hand of a vulgar
assassin the first instance since Capo d'Istria
of the murder of a leading Greek politician, although
in Deligiannes' case the crime was due not to
politics but to the aged Minister's severe action
against gambling-hells, which had become the
curse of Athens.

Cabinets fell during this period with frequency
and on the most frivolous pretexts. Theotokes

114



THE MACEDONIAN QUESTION 115

was on one occasion sacrificed to a violent agitation
against a vulgar translation of the Gospels. The
Greeks, fortunate in alone possessing the originals
of the Gospels in the language of their forefathers,
are naturally anxious to preserve the ipsissima verba
of the Evangelists, just as, without so cogent a
reason, most Englishmen prefer the Authorized
to the Revised Version of the Bible, even if some
Jacobean phraseology has a changed, or even
no meaning for Georgian readers. The motives
of the Greek Revisers were excellent : they wanted
the Gospels to be read in the common speech of the
unlearned people, although the difference between
New Testament Greek and the Greek of the modern
Athenian journal is not enormous. But the