Chapter VIII: Part 8

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.

RUMANIA: HER HISTORY AND POLITICS

1 _Introduction_

The problem of the origin and formation of the Rumanian nation has always provided matter for keen disputation among historians, and the theories which have been advanced are widely divergent. Some of these discussions have been undertaken solely for political reasons, and in such cases existing data prove conveniently adaptable. This elastic treatment of the historical data is facilitated by the fact that a long and important period affecting the formation and the development of the Rumanian nation (270-1220) has bequeathed practically no contemporary evidence. By linking up, however, what is known antecedent to that period with the precise data available regarding the following it, and by checking the inferred results with what little evidence exists respecting the obscure epoch of Rumanian history, it has been possible to reconstruct, almost to a certainty, the evolution of the Rumanians during the Middle Ages.

A discussion of the varying theories would be out of proportion, and out of place, in this essay. Nor is it possible to give to any extent a detailed description of the epic struggle which the Rumanians carried on for centuries against the Turks. I shall have to deal, therefore, on broad lines, with the historical facts—laying greater stress only upon the three fundamental epochs of Rumanian history: the formation of the Rumanian nation; its initial casting into a national polity (foundation of the Rumanian principalities); and its final evolution into the actual unitary State; and shall then pass on to consider the more recent internal and external development of Rumania, and her present attitude.

2 _Formation of the Rumanian Nation_

About the fifth century B.C., when the population of the Balkan-Carpathian region consisted of various tribes belonging to the Indo-European family, the northern portion of the Balkan peninsula was conquered by the Thracians and the Illyrians. The Thracians spread north and south, and a branch of their race, the Dacians, crossed the Danube. The latter established themselves on both sides of the Carpathian ranges, in the region which now comprises the provinces of Oltenia (Rumania), and Banat and Transylvania (Hungary). The Dacian Empire expanded till its boundaries touched upon those of the Roman Empire. The Roman province of Moesia (between the Danube and the Balkans) fell before its armies, and the campaign that ensued was so successful that the Dacians were able to compel Rome to an alliance.