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.THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
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THE CAULDRON
OF EUROPE
BY
HAROLD ZPENDER, M.A.
LL.D.(ATHENS), F.R.G.S.
COMMANDER OF THE GREEK ORDER
OF THE REDEEMER


LONDON
H. F. & G. WITHERBY
326 HIGH HOLBORN, W.C.
1925




Manufaetured ixs Great Britain




CONTENTS
PART I
PAGR
A PEEP BEFORE..
PART II
INTO THE CAULDRON-ACROSS MACEDONIA
I. THE LAND OF FEAR....   I7
II. To KASTORIA....         9
III. THE TURK DEPARTS...        39
IV. SAD MONASTIR.....49
V. GETTING OUT OF SERBIA...        59
VI. THOSE ANGELS!.....68
VII. LOST IN THE BALKANS...        77
PART III
WHERE THE CAULDRON BOILS-BULGARIA
AND YUGO-SLAVIA
I. SOFIA TO-DAY.....89
II. THE PLEADINGS OF DEFEAT... 100
III. BELGRADE-THE TROUBLES OF YUGO-SLAVIA.  1 2
IV. THE SERB IN VICTORY.... 124
5




6                 CONTENTS
PART IV
THE CAULDRON'S RIM-INTO GREECE
PAGN
I. GREECE DECIDES..... 135
II. MOONLIGHT...... 145
III. MISSOLONGHI..... 155
IV. SUNIUM......  69
V. THE GLORY THAT Is GREECE... I79
VI. THE KING...... I88
VII. ASIA MINOR..... 201
VIII. To DELPHI...... 213
IX. THE EYRIE OF THE GODS.... 225
X. THE TURK TALKS..... 236
XI. GREEK PERSONS AND POLITICS... 247
XII. THE RAGGED EDGE.....258


INDEX


269




PART I
A PEEP BEFORE








A PEEP BEFORE


THE Balkans remain a great open question at
the back door of Europe: a question bristling with
menace; noisy with bombs; prickly with bayonets.
Out of that cauldron came the Great War: from
the same pit may yet come another conflict.
The mood and attitude of Europe remain the
same as in I912-I9I7.  The "Powers "-" Les
Grandes Impuissances " as we used to call themhave learnt nothing: they still regard the Balkans
as a great manoeuvring ground for their craft of
diplomacy. They still tremble at the thought of
Balkan Union. They still see in such a prospect the
growth of a new " Power," a new nation. The Old
World always dreads new nations. Constantinople
still draws the longings of so many peoples!
Both West and East still yearn for the city of
the four seas-the city that has been a capital for
both East and West. So the chancelleries see,
in Balkan Union, only the rise of a new claimant
for Constantinople. They can thwart Greece:
they can keep Bulgaria quiet: and even YugoSlavia can be held in leash as long as a hostile
Slav state lies between her and the coveted goal.
Divided, the Balkan States seem powerless.
But unite all these little countries-Greece,
9.




10     THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Bulgaria, Yugo-Slavia, and perhaps Albaniaand what have you?-a new and powerful state
of over 24,000,000,1 or if you add Roumania,
4I,ooo,ooo-a new state larger than France-lying
right across the path to Constantinople and the
East.
Why, a state of that size would be really independent: it might even be happy and prosperous:
would certainly command its own policy: would
be no longer a suppliant at the door of Europe:
might indeed end in turning the tables. For if
those countries were merely to agree to a Customs
Union there would be little limit to their possibilities
of enrichment. Once they traded freely with one
another, instead of strangling one another's trade
with a dull ferocity at all the frontiers, there would
be a new era of prosperity for all of them.
That is the fearful vision which floats before
the eyes of the diplomats of Europe, still engaged
to-day in dividing the Balkan States from one
another, in stimulating their mutual hatreds, and
in lending to each the poisoned daggers of war.
What these wise men of Gotham do not perceive
is that the divisions of the Balkans are equally
as dangerous as their unity. It was out of the
divisions that the Great War came: out of the
divisions created by European policy. It was no
mere chance that the strife arose from an incident
in Bosnia-the province which, with Herzegovina,
had been stolen from the Balkans by Austria in the
1 Roughly, Yugo-Slavia, I2,000,000; New Greece, 6,000,000;
Bulgaria, 5,000,000; Albania, I,ooo,ooo; total, 24,000,000; and
Roumania, 17,000,000 -4,000,000.




A PEEP BEFORE


11


great plunder of I908. Europe acquiesced in that
plunder-and Europe reaped the Nemesis.
These recent months have witnessed an incident which ought to bring home to Europe
the peril of the ferocious hatreds that divide the
Balkans. In the summer of I924, at Geneva,
Professor Gilbert Murray and M. Politis, the
humane League representatives of England and
Greece at Geneva, were shocked by one of those
massacres which are the chronic incidents of the
Balkan frontiers. A Greek officer, capturing some
Bulgarian prisoners, shot them all in cold blood.
It was probably in revenge for the killing of a band
of Greeks by the Bulgarians a little time before.
Professor Murray had no desire except to bring
such incidents to an end. So he and M. Politis
agreed to a Protocol which set up a new machinery
for the exchange and protection of those scattered
minorities fated to death. I remember his telling
me about it at Geneva, and my own feelings of
relief at a humane achievement.
But what happened?    The agreement had
instant " reactions," as the Americans say, in the
Balkans. These two Professors had forgotten to
consult Yugo-Slavia. But Yugo-Slavia is very
much concerned over this question of " minorities."
She has a simple policy-to deny that there are
any " minorities." When I was visiting Monastir
the Prefect calmly informed me that all the people
in the town were Serbs. The Bulgarians, with
equal assurance, will tell you that the whole population of that town is Bulgarian. There is no need




12    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
for a Protocol here. The only solution of such a
difference, so stated, is, in the end, the sword.
So Yugo-Slavia was terribly troubled about
the Greco-Bulgarian Protocol at Geneva. She determined to destroy it. To effect that end the
Serbian statesmen had a sure and certain weapon.
In 1913 Greece and Serbia were joined together by
a Treaty of Alliance: and in spite of all change
that treaty survives. It is a defensive treaty.
M. Nintchitch, the Foreign Minister of YugoSlavia, told me at Belgrade that the Serbians
would, under that treaty, always come to the help
of Greece if she were attacked. Now Greece is at
present still very weak in a military sense. She
lost all her artillery in Asia Minor. She has not
been able to afford new guns. She has created a
new army: but it has no artillery. A modern
army without artillery is practically useless in
the field. So all that Yugo-Slavia had to do was
to denounce the treaty with Greece. She did so.
Instantly Greece came to heel. The Chamber at
Athens instantly threw over the Protocol; and
Geneva was defied.
So it is that the hostility of Yugo-Slavia and
Bulgaria had a very far-reaching effect. It killed
the attempt of Politis and Murray to stop the
massacring on the Bulgarian frontier. It nearly
killed the alliance between Yugo-Slavia and Greece:
that alliance which is the only bond left in the
Balkans. It might conceivably, if badly handled,
have produced a Balkan war.
The abominable crime on I6th April I925, when




A PEEP BEFORE'


13


over one hundred and seventy men, women and
children were slaughtered in the Cathedral of
Sveta Nedelia at Sofia, is all part of the same
problem. The Bolshevik attack would be powerless
without Balkan division.
I have been of late drawn to the Balkans almost
every spring by the fascination of this shifting,
many-coloured kaleidoscope of races and peoples.
I love the scenery, and the infinite variety of
peasant costume, which gives some idea of how
Europe looked in the Middle Ages. The people
have many faults; but at any rate they are genuine
in their emotions, sincere in their hatreds, entrenched in their valorous patriotisms. I remember
meeting at Belgrade, at a Foreign Office dinnerparty, a young Serbian professor who had deliberately thrown up a good post in America, with all
its comfort and assured wealth, in order to return
to the discomforts and poverties of Belgrade. I
asked him why he had done so.
"To pursue the ideal," he said. "Here life is
unsafe, but it is worth living."
This is the spirit in which the young Balkan
peoples are working, and it makes one love them
even in their blunders and misdoings.
So I give here a few notes of my many
wanderings in those regions.




6




PART II
INTO THE CAULDRON-ACROSS
MACEDONIA








I


THE LAND OF FEAR
I WAS travelling somewhere east of Venice. The
bitter cry came, now, as of old, saying: "Come
over into Macedonia and help us! " And so, after
some days in Salonica, I decided to follow the
cry, and go into the heart of that hapless land.
The country which called me was not the Macedonia of St Paul, which lies around Kavalla, but
the Macedonia of the West, which is now the centre
and whirlpool of all the troubles of the Balkans.
It is a good rule in travel to march to the sound
of the guns: to go direct to the most troubled spot
which may be perplexing the world. The Macedonia of the West is such a spot-tempest-tossed by
a dozen human hurricanes. That was why I went.
I started in the cool of the morning from
Salonica. The train ambles at a comfortable pace
across the hot, malaria-ridden plain which lies
between Salonica and the Macedonian hills. It is
the plain of the Vardar. This plain stretches some
thirty miles west of Salonica. It is very thinly
inhabited, and indeed the chief denizens of this
stretch of land seem to be storks, quails and
mighty flocks of sheep and goats, which wander
far afield led by their shepherds.
Malaria! That is the curse of all this country.
B               17




18    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
It is a scourge of humanity which has played a
desolating part in the history of man. It has
descended like a flail upon empires at the proudest
moment of their existence-spreading with uncanny speed over populous plains and wearing
away the life of multitudes with its recurrent
flame of fever.
As our train travelled across this sad plain at its
pleasant jog-trot pace we heard from the lips of
our companion, Mr H. W. Sams, one of the heroic
relief workers, the full story of this plague. He
described to us how it descended upon the Macedonian villages, and gradually drained them of
their life; how whole districts succumbed; how
his own relief workers very often went down with
the rest; and how throughout this area quinine
was a sort of elixir vita without which no life could
endure. We looked out over the vast land shimmering in the growing heat of the advancing day-a
land so beautiful and yet so empty; a land that
had been in earlier days the home of a great people,
but is now little more than the haunt of birds and
beasts. Truly malaria has played its part!
Across this great space the River Vardar travels
from north to south on its journey to the sea,
untended and uncontrolled. Sometimes the dream
would come to me that perhaps if, from afar, some
strong arms should harness and guide this great
force of nature, we might once again see on this
plain the home of a happy civilisation.
We were beginning to climb the lower hills
of the Macedonian highlands. We had reached




THE LAND OF FEAR


19


Verria: and from that point onwards the train
travels northwards across the foothills of the
range of mountains that lies to the west. It is a
bold little railway, often hewn through the rock
and sometimes bridged across the valleys. We
were moving upwards all the time, at a somewhat
steep gradient. With the windows of our carriage
thrown open, and the warm spring air flowing in,
it became a lovely journey-a journey to make one
believe in the railway as a mechanic of beauty:
for we passed by the side of orchards of young
mulberry-trees in their first sprihg dress of freshest
green: and the sweet savour of the creamyflowered acacia pleasantly scented the air, as its
branches almost brushed the roof of our carriage.
The sun shone. As we emerged from the tunnels
we looked down on rich, leafy valleys threaded
by cool, rushing streams. We stopped at little
stations: we could sit and watch all the gaiety
and exhilaration of a Greek Easter.   Motley
throngs moved about the platforms, East and
West mingling together: homely grey-clad Greek
officers; smart Serbians in gold and scarlet; redfezzed Turks; sombre bundles of humanity which
only by their eyes showed that they were women;
and, always eddying through the crowd, the little
Greek boys shouting their newspapers and Easter
eggs in sharp, strident voices. It is the note of
Greece.
The world is very mixed here. In the train there
sat with us a Russian countess who had been
driven afar by the Bolsheviks; and at one of the




20    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
stations I met a British officer who, at the unconscious risk of his life, was going to delimit
the frontier of Albania.
For there is a tang of adventure in the air of
Macedonia: life somehow or other seems more
precious, because it is more precarious.
The train made a short halt for lunch at the lovely
little mountain town of Vodena. Lunch was alertly
and rapidly served. It was a bright and vivid
scene-that little restaurant full of travellers from
all the world, meeting thus for a few moments and
then perhaps parting for ever. The air was filled
with the murmur of a hundred languages.
Surely Macedonia must have been the site of
Babel! The despair of finding one's way amid so
many languages drives the average "national"
back on to his own, and so there develops an
obstinate rivalry of tongues. Greek, Serb and
Turkish intermingle with a few snatches of German
and French; while over all there emerges that
strange polyglotic amalgam, the Macedonian
dialect. After all our arguments about religions
and races, may it not be that the difference of
tongues is now, as ever, still the chief divider of
men?
Vodena-the "Place of Many Waters," as the
Turks call it-stands on a mountain ledge, with
white cataracts streaming from it like locks of
snowy hair. The houses peep out from behind an
emerald veil of leafage. The whole place gives an
indescribable impression of freshness and sweetness. They sell at the station bunches of the green




THE LAND OF FEAR               21
grapes which ripen in Vodena all the year round.
I do not wonder that the rich folk of Salonica
crowd hither for their holidays to escape from
the great heats of the plain in July and August.
The little train steamed on up the valley, with
much puffing, past Vladova, westward through
low mountains. Then on our left there opened
up the calm, far-stretching waters of that strangest
of lakes, Ostrovo.
Ostrovo is one of the largest of those inland
waters which form the chief beauty of Macedonia
-not azure-blue like the lakes of Italy, but just
steely grey in shadow and sparkling green in sunshine-beautifully framed in the long, low curves
of the Macedonian hills.
The railway runs close to the northern shore
of Ostrovo, and from our windows we could look
deep down into the clear, emerald waters. We could
watch the fishermen at their gentle, patient task.
But, as we travelled, we began to observe something very queer about this Macedonian lake. We
noted telegraph-posts half-submerged: and below
us the roof of a house only just emerging from the
waters. Then we observed that a road running
beneath us was covered by the lake, and we saw
that the water had already almost risen to the
permanent way of the line on which we were
travelling.
Out on the lake we perceived the tower of a
lonely minaret, standing in strange isolation on
what seemed a very small island. Then, looking
from the other window, we saw that they were




22    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
building a new railway line some thirty feet above
us, along the low hills that girt the lake to the
north.
It was all very strange and mysterious-and
even stranger and more mysterious was the story
unfolded to us. The waters of Ostrovo rise some
four feet every year. This has been going on for
some twenty years. The railway has been raised
once, and it must now be raised again. One
village has lost all its pastures and most of its
houses. The minaret once stood on the top of a
peninsula: it is now on an island.   All the
villages round the lake are threatened with slow
destruction.
The Governor of Macedonia told me later on that
the proceedings of this lake formed one of the chief
anxieties of his administration. The villagers along
the shores incessantly implore his aid. The best
engineering advice has been taken; the finest skill
brought to bear. All in vain. The true explanation
seems to be that the lake waters, fed through all
the winter from the Macedonian snows, can find no
outlet. The rise goes on from year to year with a
certain awful deliberation. There is no tide. The
terrible. fact is that the waters must, it would
seem, go on rising until they break through
some barrier along the shores and pour over the
countryside as a curse instead of a blessing.
The dwellers along the shores of the lake watch
this advancing peril with true Oriental resignation.
Faced with this menace, they do very little. They
wait until the water invades their houses. They are




THE LAND OF FEAR


28


always hoping against hope that the rise will stop.
One of them suggested to me that the proceedings
of the lake would be a fit subject for the control
of the League of Nations! They wait for help.
There is something very Macedonian about all
this-both the lake itself and the lake-dwellers.
The behaviour of the lake seemed typical of the
Balkan spirit, with its leisurely lawlessness. Its
slow contrariwise nature seems to have become
here the rival of man: or perhaps man has copied
nature!
We left the lake behind us and rattled, now
along flat ground, westward into the Macedonian
hill-country. We began to discuss the Macedonian
spirit, this compound of indifference and fear.
Why does Macedonia differ so profoundly from
the rest of Europe?
Remember that she is only just emerging from
the rule of the Turk. All the country through
which we were travelling was under the Turk up
to I912-only thirteen years ago. We all know
what the rule of the Turk means for the Christians
beneath him. It is a strange, cat-like mixture of
indulgence and cruelty, singularly like the treatment meted out to animals by a certain type of
Christian. Indeed the Christians are to the Turks
just animals-" rayahs "; to be tolerated, but
never encouraged. The one thing lacking in such
a system of government has always been any
steady idea of order or law, justice or equality.
Alternately coddled and cuffed, flattered and




24     THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
fleeced, these people have lived for centuries under
a system of alternate favour and ferocity.
It was one of the most ingenious devices of
the Turks to share this method of rule with the
less scrupulous agents of the great Christian communities: to deliver over these poor sheep to be
shorn by all the rascality of Europe.
So for all these centuries-ever since the fifteenth
-Macedonia has been hag-ridden by fear: fear
of the Turk, fear of the foreigner, even fear of
one another. For fear creates fear; and fear, so
doubled, breeds desperation. Desperation breeds
banditry, ever the curse of this country. Robbed
by others, they have always robbed one another
in turn.
The Great War brought on this unhappy country
one last tempest-fierce and devastating, cruel and
remorseless-piling on past terrors the new horror
of fratricide, which has now settled like a black
cloud over the whole land.
For the quarrels that followed the Balkan wars
of I912-19I4 let loose the new curse of Cain and
Abel over this Turk-ridden land; and the victories
of the first war were followed by the despairs of
the second and third.
The disease of the settlement of I9I9 has been
that it is a settlement of force. The frontier has
been drawn up along the line of the victories, and
the outlines left by that colossal struggle have been
petrified.
Yet, though the body is subdued, the soul is
free. The Balkans long for union, and the treaties




THE LAND OF FEAR


25


have stabilised disunion. They have sown dragon's
teeth: armed men are springing up along the
furrows. Freebooters raid across these frontiers,
robbing and slaying. They are called " comitadjis."
They bring fear-more fear and always fear!
But it is not the comitadjis only that carry fear,
it is also the brigands.
The brigands are for the most part disbanded
soldiers: demobilised after twelve years of war;
unfitted for any civilian employment; trained by
the horrible customs of Balkan fighting to savagery
and violence.
We heard many stories of their deeds. A few
days before our coming, a caravan of outgoing
Turks had been stopped in a deep cutting of the
hills. They were known to be carrying money to
pay for their sea-passage to Asia Minor. Every
man was robbed of every drachma he carried. No
life was taken.
A week earlier two of the British refugee workers,
motoring through one of these valleys, found themselves looking down the barrels of peremptory
rifles. They were unarmed, so there was nothing
for it but to hand over. It was again a case of cash
on demand: " It's your money we want! " That
seems to be the slogan of the Macedonian brigand.
Trains are no more exempt than caravans. A
few days before, one of the official trains of civilised
Europe, the Orient Express, going north, had been
boarded near Larissa, at two o'clock in the morning, by a party of brigands in masks and false
beards.




26    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
The Governor of Macedonia was on the train, and
he gave me some interesting details of this extraordinary episode in modern European history.
All the passengers-most of them Englishwere awakened. The brigands worked their way
methodically through the sleeping-cars with the air
and authority of custom-house officials, who in the
Near East so often resemble these gentry in their
general tone and attitude. Every scrap of money
was taken. Two English ladies were at first left to
slumber. But the haul proved disappointing, and
the brigands, with all the politeness of a band of
Claude Duvals, regretfully retraced their steps to
the car of the English ladies, politely awakened
them, and delicately, but effectively, robbed them.
The only traveller who escaped purse-free was
an Englishman who was carrying his notes-one
hundred pounds-in his hip-pocket. He gave the
bandits a few drachmas from his side-pocket.
" Not enough! Hand over the rest! "
He moved his hand towards his hip.
At that a revolver was pressed against his
forehead: " Another move and I fire! "
" Certainly! " said the Englishman, not at all
unwilling to comply: moved his hand back; and
so escaped with his cash!
The Greek Government, disturbed by this accident to the Orient Express, gave back the lost
money to these travellers at the next station.
It cost them twenty thousand drachmas. The
robbers have not since been found.
But since then General Pangalos has been at




THE LAND OF FEAR


27


work-and many of their comrades have been shot.
That Orient Express has been well avenged. "If
Pangalos had been on the train," murmured the
Governor of Macedonia, when he told me this
story-" If Pangalos had been there, there might
have been trouble! "
I suggested that possibly Pangalos would have
been right.
"It was wiser to hand over," said the Governor.
"Otherwise there would have been violence! "
I answered that possibly violence was better
when such things were attempted.
"The attack was political," said the Governor.
"They were after the Prime Minister."
In these days of political reorganisation I am
always open to new suggestions, and this occurred
to me as indeed a bright new idea for up-to-date
electioneering! To capture a Prime Minister!
And collect campaigning funds at the same time!
" Why did they fail? "
" He left the train at the previous station," said
the Governor, almost regretfully.
So the best-laid schemes "gang aft agley ":
and even in Greece the newest electioneering ideas
do not always bear the test of action.
The Greeks were at any rate resolved that we
should not suffer. They had devised for us a
generous escort, and we found no less than twelve
gendarmes waiting to protect us on our journey
across Macedonia. But transport was wholly lacking. The Sorovitch military command, appealed
to in our extremity, supplied the gendarmes with




28    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
a formidable char-a-banc which, during the following week, played a new and refreshing part in the
transportation facilities of Macedonia. It conveyed
a considerable fraction of the travelling public from
place to place, smashed many half-broken bridges,
and ploughed up sundry brittle roads. Our own
withers were left unwrung. Except for occasional
distant glimpses, and happy meetings at mealtimes on the mountain-side, we became free men.
For us the Union Jack sufficed. As long as we
carried that little emblem, which waves over the
refugee camps, in front of our car, no hand was
raised against us. We were free from the Fear of
Macedonia.
But this was all for the morrow. At this moment
we were crawling in our little mountain train away
from the uncertain shores of that rebellious lake
of Ostrovo. The plain widened and the mountains
opened out to north and south. Scattered houses,
freshly built, began to appear. We were now above
the foothills, entering on a higher plateau, which
gradually narrowed into the long deep valley
which runs through the centre of Macedonia.
We slowed down to enter a little settlement of
detached houses, mostly newly built, and scattered,
as from a pepper-box, round the railway station.
It looked like a frontier town.
It was Sorovitch: twice burnt in the wars,
twice rebuilt; still, in spite of all misfortunes,
bright and hospitable.




II


TO KASTORIA
THE Refugee Relief workers at Sorovitch live in an
old railway postal wagon, ingeniously adapted to
the needs and necessities of their daily life. By a
system of partitions they have managed to eke out
three rooms: one for sleeping, one for dining and
one for cooking. This ramshackle contraption
serves them as a peripatetic mansion in which they
can carry on their work at any part of the line in
Macedonia and Western Thrace. Into this vagabond home they now received us with a cordial
hospitality and good-will which amply made up
for any shortcomings of comfort.
This little carriage travels many hundreds of
miles on its humane errand. There seemed,
indeed, an element of sacredness about the little
gipsy dwelling.
When we arrived now at Sorovitch, for instance,
we were greeted by a little group of townspeople
headed by the Mayor. He delivered an address of
welcome. We were then escorted in procession to
the camps of the Christian and Turkish refugees,
assembled here under the Exchange arrangements.
These two camps were pitched to the south of
Sorovitch, on patches of vacant land. For this
little town formed a sort of Exchange clearing29




30     THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
house for the valleys of Western Macedonia. It is
the most accessible railhead for all the towns and
villages of the district lying to the west; and the
refugees seemed as comfortable here as foresight
and large tents could make possible.
The Turks received us coldly, but the Christians
were touchingly grateful. They bathed us with
lavender water, decorated us with flowers, and
refreshed us with coffee and liqueurs. It was the
Baptism of Hospitality.
Thus sacramented we started at four o'clock in
the afternoon from Sorovitch. It was a glorious
spring day, and for six hours we journeyed along
the Macedonian highways on roads which are
hurrying rapidly to decay. During the Great War
this great district was well roaded, chiefly by British
engineers; but in the last five years the process
of detrition has been going on rapidly. Now the
highways are pitted with holes, like survivors
from bad attacks of smallpox. The bridges are
often broken. They constitute a recurring danger
to life, and have to be negotiated with the utmost
care. Sometimes the car has actually to leave
the road and plunge through streams. A steady
and consistent neglect is gradually restoring these
roads to a state of nature. If the process goes on
much longer, Macedonia will soon return once more
to savage, roadless simplicity.
The only consolation in this great trouble of the
Macedonian roads is that, at any rate, it compels
you to take a leisurely survey of the country.
For many hours, for instance, we threaded long




TO KASTORIA


81


valleys between the hills. We sometimes ran by
the side of little blue lakes, gazing at the Turkish
fishermen sitting on the banks patiently coaxing
the coy fish from their depths with their primitive
hand-lines. Sometimes we wound our way between
the sleeping tortoises that litter the roads in serene
indifference to human doings.
Then we began to ascend by steep zigzags up
the eastern side of the mountain range which cuts
from north to south through the centre of this land,
running from Vladova down to the River Karasa.
As we mounted, that road grew steadily worse.
We appeared likely at any moment to plunge over
precipices. Every corner of the tortuous highway
seemed a crisis. For that road possessed a.most
ingenious trick of slanting outwards. It was like
a bucking horse, determined to throw its rider.
Happily, we were driven by an indomitable
young Greek soldier, fresh from the wars in
Asia Minor, skilled in precarious driving along
even worse ways. He rode that highway like a
broncho. No versatility of surface seemed to
perplex him. He recovered on the very edge of
abysses. He saved us just when we seemed lost.
So, fearful but surviving, we climbed in safety
the steep eastern side of those mountains; descended the zigzags on the west, and smoothly
coasted down, free-engined, to another long valley
within the hills: that inner plain which is the
very core of Macedonia.
We put on speed-we tried to make up for lost
hours.




32    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Then, of course, we did a very simple, easy,
ordinary thing.
We just lost our way.
For a long space of time we wandered hither
and thither-to and fro-back and forward.
The road seemed to dwindle to nothingness. We
got mixed up with the fields.
The light dwindled. The shadows lengthened.
The great sheepdogs gathered from afar across
the fields, left their flocks and came to bay at us.
Noting our perplexities, they chased after us,
leapt up at us; wolf-like, snarled at us. The fear
of Macedonia fell on us.
Then, afar off, we saw a Macedonian shepherd,
standing solitary, sentinel-like, by the side of his
sheep. He was an old man, girt in his bare sheepskin jacket, leaning on his crook. We motioned
to him. We challenged him in Greek.
He came.   He pointed with lifted forefinger
down the only track visible.
" To Kastoria! " he said.
It was really the simplest thing in the world.
Let.me sum up our impressions of Macedonia.
There is the impression of Nature-solemn,
gloomy, tremendous. Nature seems very much
the master in Macedonia. Man seems very much
her slave. Yet there is great beauty in the Macedonian hills-beauty of form and colour, of light
and shadow: the purple of the twilight passing
into the flame of the sunset, gilding and flushing
the treeless flanks of the mountains-mountains




TO KASTORIA


388


that frame in their long rhythmic curves such
exquisite vistas of lake and valley.
Again and again one is reminded of our own
Scottish Highlands, with their mingling of redbrown hill and steely blue lake. But Scotland, in
all her valleys, wears her fairy dress of aspen and
silver birch. Macedonia is bare. The Turks left
her so.
Then there is man-man and his animals. There
is a fascination only second to Nature.
You are held all the time, for instance, by the
infinite variety and changefulness of the moving
life along the Macedonian highways-the little
caravans of heavily laden mules and donkeys; the
groups of fezzed Turks in their baggy trousers and
many-coloured waistcoats; the scarlet-petticoated
Christian women; the great rolling bundles of
black which are all that one is allowed to see of
the Moslem wives. Or you see in the fields the
Macedonian peasant-like some picture by Francois
Millet-scarcely raising his head from the soil he so
diligently tills; always leaning to press the wooden
share of the ancient plough that enslaves him; hour
by hour, from dawn to dark, following in the track
of his unwilling, slow-footed, heavily yoked oxen.
As you watch these people, their bowed backs,
their startled faces as you pass, you always keep
coming back to your first impression-fear.
Poverty can be seen in many parts of Europe
-poverty as great as in Macedonia-but nowhere
else are you so conscious of this brooding apprehensiveness. Fear broods over the whole land.
c




34     THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
We begin to mount again. This time it is a more
gradual ascent. It is a lower range of hills that we
surmount. But the road becomes worse than ever.
It is a track for wolves.
At last, turning a corner, we look down and see,
far beneath us, a really beautiful spectacle.
There lies in the valley below a great oval
lake, azure, cradled wonderfully in the hills. In
the centre stands a town that seems to be on an
island; it is really on a peninsula.
This is, perhaps, the loveliest star of the Macedonian lakes-Kastoria; and in the centre of it
is one of the most picturesque and interesting
Macedonian towns.
We descended the hill cautiously. The twilight
had begun to fall; and when it falls in this region
it falls swiftly. There is little interval between
night and day.
We crossed a bridge and began to thread the
cobbled streets of a most wayward town. The
houses seemed to have been thrown about at
random, like a child's puzzle that is upset and
scattered.
The darkness deepened. Kindly helpers took their
seats in the car, and gently added to our burden.
We plunged up and down perilous, narrow alleys.
The vivid lights of our car revealed, in little framed
pictures, strange visions of the night-little groups
of Turks preparing for Ramadan; Christians celebrating their Easter: all worshipping their gods
apart and divided, but beneath the same watching
stars.




TO KASTORIA


85


We came to a larger and more imposing mansion
than any other in Kastoria. It was the house of
our host. We knocked at the great door. There
was a great tramping of feet within, a clatter of
voices. At last the door swung open, and we were
admitted out of the black night into the welcome
shelter of a really civilised dwelling.
How shall I describe the hospitality which was
poured out upon us in this mansion?
Kastoria lies remote from the world, hidden
away in its valley; and few people in England
know of its existence. Yet it lives on England;
for its trade consists in importing from London
snippets of furs-odd rabbits and pussies-and
exporting back to happy England-ladies' fur
cloaks! The thing is so simple, the wearers so
easy to please, that one wonders why England
never thought of it herself!
Profiting by this ingenious commerce, our host
is rich; and he uses his riches well.
We found the house of a rich man, and he gave
it to us to sleep in. He enjoyed the food of a rich
man, and he shared it with us. All praise and
blessing to his name! May his shadow never grow
less!
Here in Kastoria dwelt a little party of Greeks
who gave me hope. They came to talk to us that
evening. They had gone out into the world and
gained skill and wealth. But they had come back
to their own country.
There was the dentist. He had been to Chicago.
He had brought back the latest dental skill from




36     THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
the West. He was giving it to the care of his
people. I asked him-when I saw him in his room,
equipped with all the latest devices-whether he
was going back to America.
" No,"' he said; " Greeks are wanted at home."
That is the true spirit: the only spirit that is
going to save Greece.
Reflecting on that fear-ridden country of Macedonia-its broken bridges and decaying roads;
its sad-eyed people; its untilled lands-I repeated
to myself:
"Greeks are wanted at home."
These things happened slowly. All the lamps
were lit. We were ushered into the best rooms.
Cigarettes and sweetmeats were handed round.
We smoked-and smoked-for an hour.
Then with the utmost suavity and delicacy our
host inquired:
" Is it possible that you might desire something
more? "
We had not eaten since midday. Hunger was
gnawing at my vitals. So quite frankly and plainly
I exclaimed:
" We are dying of hunger!"
The effect on those dear people was electrical.
The whole house was stirred to its foundations. My
host left the room with clouded brow. His voice
was heard from below giving swift orders. Soon
the sweet savour of sacrifice rose to our nostrils;
and I suspect that many innocent creaturesmany fowls and lambs-paid the dues of life.




TO KASTORIA


387


The table was spread in the central room of the
upper storey, a chamber somewhat like the courtyard of an old inn. We descended to wash at the
common tap, and then, at the hour of eleven, we
entered on our meal.
Homeric was its affluence. Long before the
last dish appeared we had to cry: "Hold!
Enough! "
While we banqueted, there gradually assembled
round us those friendly Greeks from the neighbouring houses-dark-haired, thin-cheeked men,
with keen, bright eyes and vigilant faces-the
editor of the local newspaper; the Mayor; the
professional men. They came through the darkness of that unlighted town to do us honour.
They talked far into the night. They told us
freely of their hopes and fears.
But there was one respect in which the Turkish
influence still showed itself potent in their manners.
Not a single woman sat at the table, or joined in
the talk. The wife of the fur merchant, a charming and gracious lady, looked in to see that all
was well with us-looked in, and then, at a nod
from her lord, disappeared. It was the same all
through Macedonia. The women cooked and served,
but never did they sit at table.
Here we were, sitting in the palace of an old
Turkish bey, from whom our fur merchant host had
bought the property. We were regaling ourselves
in the very room where the Turkish master used to
sit with his male guests while the women were shut
up in the harem. The only difference to-day in




38    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Macedonia is that the women can be seen-seen,
but not heard!
Stay, there is one exception. For the following
morning it was another story.
The children appeared, and the women along
with them. The Greeks love their children passionately; and the women are allowed to be present
on account of the children.
So I always found afterwards, staying in these
Macedonian Greek houses, that if you wished to
converse with the women you had to wait till the
children came. Then the woman was Queen.
Placid islands of peace in the midst of those
wastes of fear!
When I think of Macedonia now, my mind goes
back to those lovely homes and those gentle,
kindly people.
Fear has one rival in Macedonia: it is Hospitality.




III


THE TURK DEPARTS
ALL our good Greek friends of Kastoria rose with
the birds next morning, in spite of their late
sitting, and assembled to bid us farewell at the
door of the fur merchant's house. The good
ladies achieved a climax of high feeding in a
sumptuous breakfast; and at last, after sundry
photographings and mutual toastings, we curled
up our legs once more in our faithful " Tin Lizzie."
We resumed our journey.
It is a strange and sinister fact about the Balkans
that all human movements seem to be punctuated
with tragedy; for just as we were moving off our
good host brought the news of a poignant incident
of the previous evening which had cast gloom
on the town. The little son of one of the Greek
residents at Kastoria who had been at school in
England, and had returned for his holidays, had
perished by a sudden and fearful mishap. A
friend playing with a rifle had pointed it at the
little Anglo-Greek lad and pulled the trigger in
jest. The rifle had proved to be loaded, and the
boy was killed on the spot. A familiar piece of
tragic folly-but it seemed strangely natural that
this English scholar should by the same token
return to the Balkans and to death!
39




40     THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
We retraced our course by the road over the
hill; and then, going south-west, we travelled all
the morning down the valley of the Vistritza, to
the little town of Lepsista. The road to Lepsista
was not so bad as that terrible highway across the
mountains which brought us from Sorovitch to
Kastoria. The country 'impressed us as capable of
holding a far larger population and of producing
much richer crops. It is one of the mysteries of
Europe that there are, every here and there on this
continent, pockets of land where the arts of agriculture are still carried on in very much the same
way as in the Middle Ages. Here, for instance, in
Macedonia the ground is scratched rather than
ploughed. It is the rarest thing in the world to see
a plough with a steel share. Yet the wood share
which is so beloved makes a furrow that is very
shallow. It seems hopeless to expect rich crops
from such handiwork.
The American Near East workers, with a
courage characteristic of their race, are introducing motor-ploughs to be worked by the orphans of
whom they still remain in direct charge. It is an
inter~esting experiment. But British workers tell
me that these tractors generally become derelict
very shortly after being left to the solitary mercies
of the Near East. These people progress only by
stages; and the next stage seems to be the steel
share.
Shortly before midday we reached the shabby
township of Lepsista, and became witnesses of a
pretty little episode, vividly showing the affection




THE TURK DEPARTS


41


that springs from the soil of mutual help. For when
our friend, Mr Sams, the relief worker, stepped
down from the motor, he was instantly smothered
with embraces by the family of the Mayor, who had
rushed out of their house to greet him. The Mayor's
mother, indeed, a grizzled old lady, with tender,
delicate eyes, and a face lined with care, advanced
to our friend and saluted him with a mother's kiss.
"How are you, Mother?" he said; and it
seemed the right word.
The whole family took us into the house and
seated us in the middle of their chamber of reception. These rooms might well be studied by those
house-mothers of the West who crowd their rooms
with superfluous furniture, impeding the movements of a man's body and not rarely barking his
shins.
For in these Oriental reception-rooms there is
practically no furniture except a broad, deep divan
which runs around three sides of the room. This
divan supplies everything that we provide in ou'r
crowded assemblages of unwanted chairs and
sofas. On this divan you sit whilst conversing with
your host, always drinking the inevitable sweet
coffee and smoking the inevitable cigarette. Meanwhile a small table is brought into the centre of
the room, and on that little table the women place
all the little kickshaws-sweetmeats, cigarettes,
liqueurs-with which those dear creatures delight
to feed you.
These rooms, in fact, are models of domestic
convenience.




42    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
They are ideal guest-rooms, and might easily
provide a model for English life.
We took our midday meal beneath the shade of
an olive-tree, on the slope of a warm Macedonian
hillside, and we arrived in the cool of the afternoon
at Cozani.
Cozani is a considerable town, where Turks
and Greeks have lived peacefully side by side
for centuries. The streets were crowded with
a mingled throng of Turks and Christians, and
presented a kaleidoscope of Balkan life in all its
colour and variety.
But the Turks were under notice to quit. We
saw the motor-lorries in the street waiting to take
a convoy down to the railhead; and we noted
little groups of Moslems at street comers discussing
the tremendous fate that lay ahead of them. The
fatalism of the Oriental seemed to act as a soothing
medicine in this process of change. But I doubt
whether these people would have taken their fate
so pleasantly if they had foreseen the reception
that was awaiting them on the other side of the
AEgean!
Cozani was the seat of one of the Subcommissions which were at that moment carrying
out the arrangements for the sending forth of the
Turks from Europe. The Chairman of the Subcommission here was a Dutchman, Herr Van Oosten,
and we paid him a pleasant visit of courtesy in the
house which he occupied in the centre of the town.
He had had the good luck to commandeer the
house of a Turkish bey, and there he entertained




THE TURK DEPARTS


48


us very hospitably. It was a large, roomy house,
and he received us in the spacious central hall.
Gradually, as the minutes passed, there assembled in this hall all the chief officials of the
town, and I enjoyed the privilege of an extremely
interesting interchange of ideas with those
admirable men.
It is strange how much humanity has in common.
Conversing with these mayors of the little Greek
towns, I could not help often fancying that I was
dealing with English mayors in English towns.
They possess the same keen sense of responsibility
and anxiety for the good of their town.
I have always liked mayors. They live in their
districts. The limits of their service are brief, but
fixed. They are not shadowed with the terrible
uncertainty which disquiets the central state ruler
and unsettles his policy. They are not subject
to caprice-the vice of modern democracy. They
can give their minds to public affairs.
Here, in this little town of Cozani, I enjoyed
conversations quite as interesting as any in Greece.
I found these men fully apprised of all the twists
and turns of Greek politics.
They spoke hopefully of the future, and in the
face of all the troubles of Greece they displayed
a manly resolution which filled me with confidence
as to the future of Macedonia. I strongly hold
that the new Greek Republic could follow no wiser
policy than to develop these little municipalities,
and to lean strongly on these splendid provincials,
who display in some ways a more hopeful and




44    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
determined attitude than the men at Athens or
Salonica.
The Dutch Commissioner represented the share
of the neutral nations in the settlement of Macedonia. For under the Lausanne Treaty it is laid
down that the Central Exchange Commission and
the Sub-commissions shall consist, apart from
Greece and Turkey, of neutral representatives:
and so this work of exchange was being mainly
carried out by neutral Commissioners.
This Dutchman had an office in the town, where
he dealt daily with the individual cases of the
Turkish emigrants. Here he kept a careful record
of their histories; helped the miserable on their
way; tempered the wind to the shorn lamb;
comforted the unwilling. He was playing a part in
the remaking of Europe. He represented a nation
free from the passions of the war, and now free
to help in the restoration. This employment of
the neutral nations seems to me full of fruitful
suggestions for future healing.
With the help of such men the going of the Turks
from Macedonia is made human. But the great
fact remains that they are going. They came more
than' four centuries ago (I400-I500); they have
governed the people ever since until a little more
than ten years ago (I912).  Now they depart,
"unwept, unhonoured and unsung." They go
back to their homeland.
But they have left deep scars. These invaders
of Europe depart, but they leave deep furrows
behind them.




THE TURK DEPARTS


45


For if we are to understand Macedonia properly,
we must always remember the Turkish Conquest.
Through twenty generations all this country has
been ground and hammered under the mailed feet
of a ruthless military power.
The great Watts's famous picture of Mammon
gives some dim idea of what happened to Macedonia during that fearful period. All civil liberty
was crushed: millions of human beings were
handed over to a tyranny varying in its pressure-always capricious, sometimes atrocious.
Small wonder that the very character of these
people was crushed into dreadful and incredible
distortions!
Byron, visiting Greece in 1812, found the Greek
"a crouching slave."  He was often something
worse-a traitor to his own race, and a pander to
the vices of his conquerors.
Within a generation of Byron's visit freedom
slowly dawned over these broad lands. But it
took a long time for that " crouching slave " to
stand erect. Is it surprising? Remember that
the Turkish tyranny penetrated into every recess
of the Christian's private existence; that he was
robbed of his very children under the "blood
tribute "; that he was daily and hourly liable to
insult and outrage. Only by surrender could he
earn any freedom: only by treachery to his creed
and race.
That chapter is now closed. We saw the end of
it in the little silent clusters of Turks in the streets
of Cozani preparing to depart-in the office where




46    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
they received their journey-money from Europe:
in the motor-lorries that were taking them to the
coast.
Europe says to them: "Here is your ticket.
Bon voyage. No-not Au revoir. Adieu! "
But though the Turks go, the fruits of their work
remain. The result of that long Turkish rule is still
to be seen written broad across Macedonia.
The chief result is exhaustion-utter, profound
exhaustion-the exhaustion of the victim of the
rack, the thumbscrew and the scourge.
Never forget this when you are passing a
judgment on Greece and Macedonia.
We motored back to Sorovitch, along the best
of the Macedonian roads, and arrived at our railway carriage just as darkness was falling. I stayed
that night in another of those pleasant Greek
mansions which could give lessons in hospitality
to Belgrave Square. My host was a tailor, conducting a prosperous trade in slop goods from Leeds in
the district around. He worked in company with
a brother who lived in Salonica.
Between the two they were clothing the neighbouthood in costumes which covered the body
with sufficient elegance for Macedonia. He tended
me like a faithful hound: practically gave up his
house to me; and addressed me constantly by
the honourable, but perhaps too simple, address
of "gentleman." It was, of course, the English
equivalent for the Greek word Kyrios: often
repeated, it became a little distracting.




THE TURK DEPARTS              47
"Gentleman! Gentleman! " he would cry
outside my door. "Would you like breakfast,
gentleman? "
" Boots is ready, Gentleman!"
And as he gently shoved the womenfolk out
of the dining-room -" The women must go,
Gentleman! "
Among the Greeks who here frequented our
company was a doctor with a fascinating and
adventurous record.
He was, at the moment, a refugee in Macedonia
from Adrianople, where he had lived under the
Turkish occupation. While in Adrianople during
the Great War he had been " conscripted " as
medical officer to the Turkish army in Gallipoli.
He had become the chief of the service in the
regiment of Mustapha Kemal. He had watched
the rise of that remarkable man from the position
of a battalion commander to that of general officer.
He gave some new and surprising glimpses behind
the Turkish scenes.
The doctor assured us that there was actually
a moment when the Turks at Gallipoli had accepted defeat-just before our evacuation. None
were more surprised than they at the sudden retreat
of the English. They were exhausted. He was also
convinced-like the best English opinion-that if
we had attacked Gallipoli simultaneously by land
and sea we should have enjoyed an easy victory, instead of the humiliating reverses both
by sea and land which became, in turn, our
lot.




48    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
The doctor was amazed at the valour of Mustapha's defence. He told us that all the records
of Turkish killed and wounded passed through his
hands: that the lists were portentous, especially
of the killed. The Turks, he said, lost no less than
500,000 killed in the whole campaign of Gallipoli
-a large army.
"You lost Gallipoli," he said, "but you destroyed the Turkish army."
He explained the Turkish losses by one single
fact. They preferred rather to expend lives than
to use their ammunition.
" The Turks," he said, " would spend a thousand
Turkish lives to save one shell. You would spend
a thousand shells to save one British life! "
A true contrast between West and East!
Well, these tales of "battle and death" are
already growing dim and distant with the lapse
of time. Let us thank God that Time can so play
the healer.
Mutual discovery of valour may make the path
easier to Peace.
But our road next morning was for Yugo-Slavia.




IV


SAD MONASTIR
WE decided to go north direct from Sorovitch across
the Yugo-Slavian frontier to Monastir. It sounded
a simple proposal. But directly you mention the
word " frontier" in the Balkans you touch on adventure. A Balkan frontier is a perilously evasive
thing; all the more rigidly guarded because it is so
evasive; all the more strenuously protected by its
temporary possessor.
For a Balkan state in possession of a new
frontier is rather like a dog guarding a cherished
bone. It keeps a watchful eye on the starving
dog. You must 'ware touching the possessing dog
on account of its teeth: and you must carefully
study the sharpness of those teeth while you are
delicately approaching.
A fine controversy as to route occupied our
escort during most of the forenoon. The question
surged round the difficult and obscure problem of
bridges. A broken culvert is a small affair, but a
broken bridge raises some acute questions. Suppose, for instance, your bridge crosses a ravine:
then you find yourself a helpless suppliant of
Nature's kindness; and Nature is, for the most
part, merciless. Your motor journey comes to a
sudden halt. You find yourself eyeing a gulf

D


49




50    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
looking into a vacancy. Thus there has grown up
a prejudice against broken bridges.
Now the straight and obvious road to Monastir
was rumoured to have some such hitch in its
arrangements. So finally we decided to travel by
untidy and circuitous routes across a wild and
neglected country. It was a case of "Safety
First."
It was a romantic journey: now up steep
mountain-sides;  across  wind-swept  plains;
through ancient villages where the Turkish houses
still stand cheek by jowl with the little Christian
cottages of sunburnt brick; past minarets and
churches: the West ever mingling with the East.
For the West and East do meet, in spite of the
poet.
The people seemed to us happier, and certainly
they were more brightly dressed. Judging by his
love of bright colours, the Balkan peasant is
naturally a gay person: only sad to-day because
of his circumstances. Here, in this disputed borderland, the costumes are motley of colour and form.
The Slav love of scarlet is wedded to the Greek love
of. form, and the offspring has often astonishing
beauty. In the course of our drive we saw Greek
boys dressed in the old chiton of early days;
shepherds in undressed skins; women in the old
flowing draperies, rainbows of colour, heirlooms of
silver covering their breasts. The people seemed
proud of their clothes.
It was about midday when we reached the
bright little town of Florina, clean and prosperous




SAD MONASTIR


51


in its well-watered valley, now an important
frontier hamlet of the Greeks. Florina was well
represented in the little deputation that assembled
to meet us in the Prefecture. There was the Prefect
himself, stately, substantial, a little tongue-tied;
the local Member of Parliament, very voluble and
genial; the demarch of the town.
They bade us to a feast at the local restaurant.
While the fatted calf was dying we visited the local
refugee kitchen, where meals of soup and bread
were still being given out to those who needed
them. The refugee workers have adopted here,
as elsewhere, the system of ration cards used in
England during the war. The system is difficult to
teach, and it carries with it a trail of grievances:
but it has been found in Greece, as in England, to
be the best method of making a little food go a
long way.
The agents employed in this work at Florina
were two Russian exiles-a young man and his
wife. These Russians, forlorn fugitives from the
Bolshevists, are scattered throughout the Balkans;
and it has been the policy of the British refugee
workers to employ them at many feeding centres
-thus doubling the charity and halving the
burden. The Greeks and the Russians work well
together. They act as mutual critics. The Greek
keenness acts as a goad to the Russian lethargy:
the Russian simplicity acts as a check on the
Greek suppleness. Thus by an ingenious employment of the varied victims of the peace our British
workers attain some efficiency.




52    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
The little banquet in that restaurant at Florina
was a simple and spontaneous expression of kindly
hospitality. It was an excellent meal, rapidly
improvised and graciously arranged. The food
was good; the wine ruddy; the talk cheerful.
It was a pleasant thought of the Greeks to
invite as an additional guest a visiting Serbian
officer.
This Serbian soldier formed a vivid contrast to
the rest of the company. His radiant gaiety shone
out against the grave seriousness of the darkfeatured Greek officials. He had a merry eye.
His moustache curled jauntily at the ends: he
wore his kdpi slightly to one side. He was a real
"Musketeer." He was surrounded with an atmosphere of the freelance: a true soldier of fortune.
He was not ashamed of his craft. Like Kipling,
he evidently regarded soldiering as " the lordliest
life on earth."
We had no language in common with the Serbian.
But he conversed with us in smiles, and that
language seemed sufficient. As the wine passed
he became merrier. He grew more and more
eloquent of his admiration for the British, and
for all that concerned them. He drank the
health of Greece: we all drank it with him. He
shouted and sang. He was the first really cheerful person that we had met in the whole Balkan
peninsula.
Now happiness is a thing in itself, and follows
its own law. Mark Tapley was happy in the
swamps of Eden. It is no small achievement to be




SAD MONASTIR                53
happy in the Balkans. For that reason, I suppose,
we felt gradually attracted towards this gay
Serbian officer; and attraction leaped ahead of
prudence. We asked him to accompany us on
our ride.  He joyfully acquiesced.  He loudly
proclaimed himself as possessing the key to Serbia.
In his company-so he intimated in Serb to his
Greek hosts-these English travellers would have
no trouble. They would enjoy the freedom of
Serbia. Passports? Visas? Such kickshaws were
superfluous in his company. Of course! It was
the easiest matter in the world not only to enter
Serbia but also to leave it. Certainly! By all
means! He would come with us, and act as our
guide, philosopher and friend.
So it was arranged. We started, accompanied by
this hilarious sabreur, who was now in the highest
heaven of delight. He shouted and exclaimedalways in excellent Serb. He was not in the least
disturbed at the fact that we could not understand.
I doubt, indeed, whether he realised it. For there
was a " sacred egoism " about this fellow. Besides,
we did understand after a fashion. Through all the
hindrances of language the human mind works a
channel. Much depends upon the extent of the
need. Miracles of speech have been achieved by
starving men.
" Dobra" was the keyword to our harmony on
this day, and " dobra " it was. Now " dobra " expresses over a large part of the earth's surface a
number of vital things-contentment, satisfaction,
praise, general human happiness. So " dobra "




54    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
sufficed for every vision of mountain: "dobra"
for every village: and even more insistently
"dobra" as we neared the Serbian frontier.
" Dobra " it had to be.
But even "dobra" has its limitations; and
there were moments when the word died in our
mouths, as we were faced with broken culverts
and crumbling roads. Our little Ford car laboured
heavily in its stormy passage over dry watercourses. But at last we emerged on to the broad
straight highway that leads to Monastir.
Up that valley the Allied Forces fought their
way in the last phase of the Great War. Here,
day by day, the rallied Serbian army, fighting side
by side with British and French troops, drove the
German and the Bulgarian back from trench to
trench, until at last the first great gap was made
in the line of the Central Powers.
Little has changed since those tremendous
events of the spring of 1918. The bridges are still
broken, and the roads still shattered. A few of
the villages have been rebuilt. But, as a whole,
desolation reigns. You journey on from mile to
mile between sombre mountains. Hour by hour
the signs of devastation increase: the symptoms
of strife become more insistent.
At last we saw in the distance the small, white
blockhouses that guard the Yugo-Slavian frontier.
Our Serbian friend became more and more exalted.
His "dobras" grew more and more lively. Then,
in the distance, we saw three soldiers moving
across the fields towards us. They did not look




SAD MONASTIR


55


attractive. They were untidy, unshaven and
ungentle. But our glorious friend greeted them
as brothers, gave them his password of passage,
and relieved us from all inquisition of documents.
True to his word, he brought us triumphantly
across the border.
Then, with a wave of the hand, he left us.
He departed for ever from our company.
Of him we said sadly:
"He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest."
Alone we proceeded on our journey towards
Monastir, which now lay at a distance of some
three miles at the end of that long valley.
At this distance Monastir looks a fair city,
beautifully enfolded in a great background of
mountains. With its minarets and great buildings, it had for us the enchantment of being the
goal of our pilgrimage.
Monastir! The cherished prize of how much
combat! The fearful object of how many conflicting passions! Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks-they
have all striven for this guerdon: they have all
poured out blood and treasure to possess it. Three
wars, at least, have been fought around it since
the century dawned. Only a dozen years ago
the Turk possessed it in apparent security. Then
there blew that mighty hurricane which drove
the Moslem back to his ancient home. No sooner




56    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
had that wind subsided than there arose another
storm, even more fierce and fearful-the Second
Balkan War. Scarcely recovered, Monastir was
caught again in that last vortex of strife-the
Armageddon of Europe.
We were drawing nearer to the town, and as
we reached the outskirts we could see the Serbian
conscripts drilling and marching in the great open
spaces of the suburbs. Then as we neared the
actual buildings we realised that those structures
which looked so imposing at a distance were merely
shells of buildings. They had been gutted by fire
and explosion: no hand had yet begun to rebuild.
As we entered the town we found that everywhere
it was the same-shattered houses, broken roads,
vacant streets.
Monastir is still in ruins. At a distance the town
still appears beautiful. But it is a mirage. The face
smiles at you; but as you approach it you find it
a grinning skull.
We sought a shelter, and at last found a small
hotel, clean, neat, but almost empty of guests.
Mine host showed a pathetic desire to please,
coupled, alas! with a most sorry absence of means.
His bedrooms were clean, but when we came to the
magic hour of dinner, there was none. We had to
leave his house and search hungrily through the
town. We found a large, melancholy restaurant.
The only other guests were Serbian officers; and
amid the clank of steel we enjoyed a shabby
repast.
It was, of course, a Balkan holiday. For what




SAD MONASTIR


57


days are not holidays in the Balkans? The
peasantry had flocked into the town in all the
glory of their brilliant Balkan dresses. Rain
had fallen and the colours were a bit soiled, in
spite of the umbrellas which they so thriftily
carried.
The afflicted and desolated town seemed to give
a poor welcome to such embroideries. Perhaps she
had no heart for them. Somehow they seemed to
be mocking a dead thing-making a fete out of a
funeral.
Yet there is still some charm in the streets:
a haunting fascination in the shifting, composite
crowds. For here the Turks are not being
"exchanged." Still through the bazaars of Monastir and along the banks of her little rippling
stream the scarlet fezzes mingle with the black
caps. The kaleidoscope of costumes is set to the
music of Babel. Yet Monastir is very sad.
Peace seems her only hope; yet here there
seems to be no hope of peace.
For she is now the centre of a Serbian army
division. The streets swarm with soldiers and
officers; the officers are smart and debonair in
their brilliant uniforms, proud and dashing in their
peaked caps and their golden epaulettes. War
seems proud of her handiwork.
Yet though the sword still flashes and clashes,
the heart seems broken.
Moving through the shadows of this sad city
we heard in the twilight a long, melancholy cry
from above us. We looked up, and saw the




58    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
delicate outline of a minaret silhouetted against
the sunset sky. From the balcony of the minaret
was sounding the cry of the muezzin, calling the
faithful to their evening prayer.
Well may Monastir call to prayer! For indeed
in her present woe, ravaged and menaced as she
is, there seems nothing for her but to appeal from
man to God.




V


GETTING OUT OF SERBIA
BEING now in Monastir, the next trouble was to get
out. That was to prove a more difficult problem
than might be gathered from the cheerful attitude
of our Serbian officer friend.
We rose early next morning to breakfast at a
happy little American school-for here, as in most
Balkan towns, America provides her oasis; and then
we journeyed gaily to the railway station, intent on
catching the only train of the day-which, in the
Balkans, always starts as near as possible to the
dawn. The Governor of Macedonia was arranging
a friendly banquet to me at Salonica that evening,
and we were especially anxious to return in time
for that signal courtesy. Before leaving London
I had armed myself with a special diplomatic
" Laissez-passez " from the Yugo-Slavian Minister,
who gave us to understand that that document
would carry us through all obstacles. Serbian
scholars have told me that its beautiful Cyrillic lettering picturesquely concealed an exaggerated estimate of my character and calling. In any case, the
proud possession of this script put me off my guard.
For once, we omitted to visit the Prefecture and to
obtain that special permission of movement which
in the Balkans is the sole condition of leaving a town.
59




60    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
These things are a question of fatigue. One
cannot always be on edge. Sometimes a strange
bluntness befalls the keenest vigilance. So it was
that we rode through Monastir that morning all
unconscious of our coming doom.
We serenely placed our baggage on that only
train of the day.
Then with the pathetic assurance that still hangs
around travellers from a safer world we prepared
to mount into the carriage. But at that moment
a disastrous check occurred. There emerged from
the little building of the police a large, formidable
person, gifted with the power of masterful Teutonic
utterance. In a moment we scented an enemy.
He demanded to see our documents. We presented
them. He poured a volley of guttural scorn on to
that Serbian testimonial of which I had been so
inordinately proud. We reasoned and argued. We
pleaded and threatened. But it was all of no avail.
He continued to condemn us in those sharp, harsh
phrases in which the German language is so rich.
We felt helpless and alone.
It is amazing how we hated that man. He was
certainly not prepossessing in appearance.  His
hair was clipped short with that outstanding indifference to appearances which is probably the
chief cause of the downfall of the German race.
His manners were bad. He was sharp-tongued,
imperious and arbitrary. We nursed for a moment
the flattering romance that he was one of our old
German foes who was reaping revenge in the East
for his defeat in the West.




GETTING OUT OF SERBIA


61


If so, he won.
Not only were we stopped; but it was only by
a miracle that our luggage was thrown from the
windows of the train as it moved away.
For a few moments we stood crushed and beaten
on that platform, watching our Greek friends
travelling off southwards and leaving us all forlorn. But it was useless to stand and despair,
and it was necessary to reshape our plans.
Monastir became suddenly hateful to us. Even
at that black moment of abandonment neither
suggested that we should accept the plan of
stopping in Monastir for another day. No! Not
that! On the contrary, our only aim now was to
shake the dust off our feet against the town which
had treated us so ill.
We arrived at the Prefecture just as the Prefect
himself was entering. We sent up our cards and
begged instant admission. A grumpy soldier was
for keeping us in the ante-room. But at that point
we produced the mystic Cyrillic document; that,
at any rate, obtained us a quick audience.
The Prefect faced us with hard eyes and unshaven chin; he was wholly unmoved by our
narrative. He seemed quite pleased to think that
the head of his police had shown such vigilance.
Still, he was quite courteous and friendly. He sent
our passports to be stamped with the police permission to leave, and meanwhile regaled us with
sweet coffee and cigarettes.
Official talk in the Balkans follows certain
beaten tracks. The first aim, for instance, is to




62    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
persuade you that no other " nationals " exist except
their own; above all, in that particular place or
town. So it was that between the cigarettes this
Monastir Prefect gaily guided us to the persuasion
that all the inhabitants of Monastir were Serbs.
Even so, six years earlier, during the Bulgarian
occupation, a Bulgarian prefect, equally unshaven,
would have coaxed us towards the conviction that
there were no inhabitants of Monastir except
Bulgarians.
Ten years hence a Greek prefect, assisted by
better cigarettes, will, if there is any building
left in Monastir for the soles of our feet, assure
us with the same emphasis that Monastir possesses
no citizens except Greeks.
So the dance eddies round; and it would be gay
enough if it were not a dance of death. We were in
no mood to argue. Like Cromwell on his deathbed, it was our " design to be gone."
On the previous evening, wandering round the
town, we had noted that the Greek lettering had
been replaced with Cyrillic on the schools; and
we had learnt from sundry sources certain Balkan
ways.
But it was our absorbing desire to leave Monastir.
If I had had time and language I should have
liked to have told this Prefect the truth about this
matter of Balkan nationality-if only for his soul's
good. If he had listened, this is what he would
have heard:


Nationality in the Balkans is a chameleon, vary



GETTING OUT OF SERBIA


63


ing with the colour of the particular Government
that happens to be in possession. Sometimes it
happens with the Balkans as with the famous
but indiscreet animal of that species when he sat
on a Scotch plaid. Confused by the colours, he
made a supreme effort. Then he burst.
That is what will some day happen to Monastir
-is happening instantly. To-day it is trying to
be Yugo-Slavian; to-morrow it may have to be
Macedonian. But meanwhile with each change its
pulse beats more feebly. Its buildings crumble;
its roads decay; it crawls another league on the
dreary march towards annihilation.
Such is nationality, and such are some of its
effects in Macedonia.
At last we received our corrected passports; and
with many wreathed smiles-peace on our faces
and war in our hearts-we squirmed ourselves out
of that Prefecture.
Then at full speed, throttle open, we rushed
across the Yugo-Slavian frontier back into Greece.
" Lizzie " took us thus far; and then, like Pheidippides, she fell in her tracks. She had been sorely
tried. She needed a rest. She was to have had a
rest while we were in the train. She resented our
presence in the car.
The first breakdown occurred soon after we
had crossed the frontier. It was the first of many.
I lost my reckoning.  Puncture after puncture,
trouble after trouble of an afflicted engine. It was
the revolt of the machine. These things too have




64    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
their own wills and emotions. They have joined
in the general insurrection of the slave. They
expect consideration. " Eight hours for motors"
will some day be a live movement.
Then, in sympathy with the machine, Nature
joined in. First wind-then rain-then hail-then
all together-hail and rain and wind-in one wild
pack of pursuing wolves, chasing us down the
valley, across the mountains, over the plain, back
to Sorovitch.
At the last lap the spirit of the machine finally
gave out. One hundred yards outside the little
circle of scattered houses which calls itself Sorovitch poor little " Lizzie " stopped once and for all.
There she stood, silent, still, sullen. She could do
no more. We collected our possessions and walked
"home." The Greek army brought her in.
The little railway carriage of the refugee workers
seemed to us like a paradise. It was a true haven
of refuge: harboured there, we soon forgot all
about Salonica and its banquets-the fugitive
glories of this transitory world!
But out of evil comes good; and travel would
be intolerable but for its mishaps. During those
pauses in the Macedonian hills I had learnt much.
While my good friends were mending punctures
I had many a good yarn with the Macedonian
farmers and peasants who gathered round.
One of these simple people was standing by the
car, watching the tenth puncture and its mending,
when he gave me the surprise of my life.
Clad in his raw sheepskin, holding his long crook




GETTING OUT OF SERBIA


65


soothing his dangerous dog, he looked a veritable
barbarian. I wondered how to converse with him
-Greek? Macedonian? Serb?
Then he resolved all my doubts. Gazing pensively at the car, he said slowly-and he seemed to
be chewing:
" I guess that Tin Lizzie of yours is about played
out! "
It was terse: it was modern. It was also far
Chicago. So we began to talk.
Yes, he had been in Chicago for some years. He
had earned more than a pound a day. He had
come back to fifteen acres and a buffalo. He could
not live on it. There was land-the land of the
Turk. The Turk was going. The land was theirsit belonged to Macedonia. They had waited for it.
And now it was to be given to those people from
Asia Minor!
There was his woe: the new Macedonian woe.
I had never thought of that. It was our old friend
the Land Question: that eternal trouble, in a new
shape and dress.
After that talk I understood better the Burden
of Macedonia.
We spent that evening at Sorovitch drying
our clothes and gossiping with the relief workers,
writing up our diaries, and walking up to the
spot on the hill where my friend, Mr Sams, was
energetically building himself a house.
All round the town are deep entrenchments,
showing the intensity of the struggle which raged
E




66    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
there in I9I8. For the whole of this country was
devastated, and most of the buildings one sees
have been rebuilt or restored since the war.
That struggle has left many traces, some of them
even pleasant. The station-master, for instance,
brought out with great pride a number of postcards which he had received since the war from a
British colonel who had stayed in his house. That
kindly Englishman is still keeping in touch with
his distant Greek friends, and I reaped some of the
fruits of his humane tillage. If he sees these words,
it may hearten him to know that by these little
acts of kindness and of love he has won a strong
and devoted friend to England.
Next day we left the heart of Macedonia.
It is a strange, puzzling land: and though one
leaves, one never forgets.
What is the explanation of its " rooted trouble"?
There is, somewhere in England, a very beautiful
picture by Burne-Jones representing the awakening of the " Sleeping Beauty " and her Court after
the magic kiss of Prince Charming.
As the Court awakes, everybody, from the princess down to the scullery boy, resumes the occupation of their last waking moments. The princess
goes back to her embroidery. The cook resumes
his cooking. The scullery boy once more chases
the cat. The very dog finishes his meal. It was
just so with the Christians of Eastern Europe when
they emerged from the sleep of four centuries.




GETTING OUT OF SERBIA


67


They resumed their life of the fifteenth century
precisely where they had left it off.
It is the same with Macedonia to-day, last
emerged from Turkish rule. Unhappily, as the
great Gibbon shows us in his mighty volumes
of ironic prose, the Christians of the Near East in
the fifteenth century-at the time of the Turkish
Conquest-were engaged in an orgy of strife and
quarrel. Hatred was their occupation: mutual
homicide was their habit. Greek hated Bulgarian
as much as Bulgarian detested Greek: and right
across that great secular anger of races there
blew the hurricane strife of the Greek and Latin
churches.
After four centuries of sleep the Near Eastern
nations have awakened-and resumed the conflict.
That is all.




VI


THOSE ANGELS!
IT is a common feature of battle-fields that before
the end of the day you are almost certain to meet
a man with an umbrella. He is usually unarmed,
and has no possible excuse for being present.
He may possibly represent some society for the
protection of something or other-perhaps the
safeguarding of forlorn peace.  He is there —so
an American might put it-as an "observer." He
often gets in everybody's way. But he is recognised as a well-meaning person, and if possible
nobody kills him.
Great human disasters attract the same type.
Odds and ends of humanity gather round offering
help, sometimes obtruding it. They come from
nowhere: they are nameless. They simply represent the great pitiful humane spirit that is at work
all the time among the nations. They refuse to
be organised, and they generally stand aloof from
the societies which come with their subscription
lists and their paid officials. As the eagles gather
round the carcass, so they gather round the dying
-an aureole of angels.
We met a large number of those stray angels
in the Balkans while travelling. They are patient,
quiet people, often very troublesome to the official
68




THOSE ANGELS!


69


mind, frequently occupied in tasks that are entirely
useless, sometimes possessed with theories of
perfection that have no relation to possibilitiestroublesome but lovable; vexatious but always
to be forgiven. The great preacher Jay had a
phrase for such folk which was very current in the
West of England in my youth-" The Lord's Crabs."
I met them first at Athens-American ladies
from the Mid West; emancipated Indians from
the Far East; Englishmen who hoped to find
the Greek more patient than their fellow-English:
cranky, obstinate, difficult people, but often of
great public service. My advice was always -
" rope them in ": and roped in they mostly were.
But the lassoing of a steer is a mild task compared
with the catching of a " stray angel": and on my
first visit to Athens I found considerable confusion
going on among these wild birds. A year later
things had settled down. The wildest had flown
away. They had carried their angelic activities
to other fields. They had gone home to abuse the
Greeks in London drawing-rooms.
But the better type of stray angel was still
there-and still doing angelic work. There were,
for instance, two American ladies whom I met at
dinner in Salonica-ladies of singular charm and
refinement-who had come to Greece with the
determined conviction that the one thing wanted
for the refugees was-a school. Now we have
found, even in England, that school is not the
place for starving children: and in England,
happily, there is not yet any starvation like the




70    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
starvation of Macedonia. " Feed first and teach
afterwards," that is a sound principle. If you
reverse it, and say: " Teach first and feed afterwards "-you may next have to send for the
undertaker instead of the schoolmaster.
Still, these ladies had sacrificed everything for
this cause. They had left home and friends. They
were full of enthusiasm, and they could be roped
in. So they were: and they have now founded a
school which is one of the most attractive achievements of Salonica. The relief workers first feed the
children. But when you have fed them, you must
give them something to do: and so here the school
idea came in very handy.
These American angels are turning out childrenangels too.
Of another kind is the medical angel. His one
idea is that what the people want is medicine.
Now, they sometimes do want medicine; but very
often not. They generally want food. But there
is one medicine which is one of the foods of
Macedonia, and that is quinine. So it has been
possible to turn these medical angels to great uses,
and the more of them the better.
I remember spending an afternoon in the centre
of Salonica at a little house which is practically
an out-relief department for sick refugees. It was
inhabited by a Scottish doctor and an Australian
nurse.  They have friends in England, among
whom they run a little crusade. They receive from
their friends regular supplies of quinine and dried
milk.




THOSE ANGELS!


71


And they keep alive quite a number of sick
refugees.
But they will only do it-these angels-as long
as you leave them alone.
For angels are very independent creatures: and,
as a rule, they think very little of other angels.
Then there are the angels of One Idea. There are
the " dried milk " angels-and they find a paradise
in a country where there is little fresh milk. There
are the "new clothing" angels-and what could
you have better for a people without clothes?
When one world has been destroyed, and a new
one is beginning afresh, you have a paradise for
the angels of One Idea. It becomes an angelic
practice ground for angelic theories-theories of
health, of food, of society.
So it is in Greece now. Along with this great
immigration there have come in angels from all
over the world-angels both red and white, who
want to reform society from the top-or from the
bottom.
Poor Greece! It is in some ways the most harrowing part of all her experiences, this gathering
together of all the angels from all the nations!
America still sends out the majority of these
angels. For it is still a country which entertains
in its most ingenuous forms the belief in sudden
reformation. This angelic policy is both a marvel
and a peril. Applied to America herself, in the
form of Prohibition, it is producing results which
are perplexing and dividing the world. Applied
to foreign countries by Americans, it carries




72    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
explosive powers: and nowhere have they acted
so explosively as in the Near East.
Among the most powerful agents of explosive
change in the Near East during the last twenty
years, I would place the American Near East
worker.
The American Near East worker is an angelic
prodigy of valour and simplicity. He comes from
the States with a simple belief that by faith he can
remove the mountains of Oriental sloth and prejudice that have for so many centuries entangled
and bemused the sleeping East. He sits himself
down in the heart of a country like Asia Minor,
collects round him a body of people like the
Armenians, and forms a school and a home. He is
fed with immense resources from his own country:
for the American public will pour out money for
Near East missions in a volume and on a scale
incredible to our land. Thus armed, the American
worker gathers round him a body of helpers to
whom he supplies a degree of comfort and luxury
startling to anyone accustomed to the cloying
scarcity of the East. With this aid he preaches
to the people around him with perfect absence of
compromise a very simple faith, both in religion
and in politics. In politics it is the faith of
equality. In religion it is the religion of Christ.
Then he is surprised when there is an explosion!
He regards this result with a truly angelic
bewilderment.
Yet, when you come to think of it, there is no
great cause for wonder!




THOSE ANGELS!              73
The ideas of equality and Christianity-real
Christianity-preached in the immemorial East
-preached faithfully and simply-always must
produce an explosion.
But the real tragedy of the American worker is
that he is not supported from home. Money comes
to him in one continual torrent. But when it
comes to a matter of simple protection and defence
he cannot command the help of a single corporal's
guard. I was visited in London by an American
Near East worker who had escaped from the interior of Asia Minor. He had had to stand by
and see the massacre and enslavement of all the
orphans and refugees whom he had collected together. I asked him why he did not go to his own
people and demand their protection for his work.
He replied: "They will give me money-but not
protection! " That is the last thing America will
give.
So the Armenians have been massacred.
The American Near East worker is a pioneer too
far ahead of his people. " First the missionary and
then the gunboat! That is the order of civilisation! " once pungently remarked Lord Salisbury.
What America does is to send the missionary,
but never the gunboat after. Perhaps, after all, it
would be best in that case if the missionary would
just stop at home!
I think that the most angelic of all these angels
was discovered by us in an oasis near Salonica, at




74    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
the end of a long and weary day, amid sad and
sorry people.
It was an angelic discovery.
We had been visiting the refugee villages that
lie round the shore to the east of the town, and we
were returning to the city, when I saw, gleaming
white afar off amid a little grove of trees, a large,
white home. After a day amid sun-dried mud
bricks the spectacle was a joy.  I inquired to
whom this shining abode might belong.
"The Americans," was the reply: and the
speaker seemed to take all further knowledge for
granted. He had spoken.
" Drive me there," I said. So they drove.
For that house was as a magnet. There was a
" come hither " in its eyes. It drew the visitor
from afar. The windows, for instance, winked
and glittered in the sun.
We passed from the wild track on to the smooth,
gravelled road: we drew up at the open veranda.
It was a fine, three-storeyed, well-windowed mansion-a little piece of the American Mid West
dropped down in Macedonia. They had built for
all the world as if it was in the suburbs of, say,
Bloomington, Illinois.  We mounted the steps
and then halted. Through the door came to us
the sound of singing:
"Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away."
We stood still on the veranda: not daring to
break in on their reserve. The music, the words,
all breathed of home. We had been a long time




THOSE ANGELS!


75


away. Perhaps the sounds clutched at our heartstrings.
Then the singing stopped, and the music ceased.
The doors flew open, and there stood in the opening of the great room a smiling, warm-hearted
American woman. One of the angels!
It was the beginning of a great discovery. Here
was a little piece of America. Stray angels! There
were plenty of them here. It was almost perilous
-the fascination of this warm home atmosphere,
this large-hearted, eager-minded group of American
men and women, with their wide plans, open talks,
deep sympathies, daring, invincible hearts.
If they could mould the policy of America, these
people would save the world.
The leader and inspirer of this little group who
dwelt in this oasis of Salonica was Dr House. He
reminded me in many ways of George Macdonald
as I saw him at Bordighera in I893, surrounded by
his children. Filled with the same high faith, Dr
House leads with the same unerring sureness.
He has lived for fifty years in the Balkans. He
loves the Balkan peoples: and still believes in
them! He is brave enough to oppose them when
they are in the wrong. " Lick 'em and love 'em! "
is his motto. And the Balkans love him in return
-this angel.
Amid all the distractions of the Balkans here
he lives-this Abraham-on his oasis: a patriarch
amid his people: gathering to his fold all the




76    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
wandering workers, giving them counsel and
guidance:
"Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away."
Not a bad gift to the workers of the Near East!
He took us across to see the new building that
is rising at a corner of his oasis. It is the latest
addition to his agricultural college, which is his
particular and present contribution to the relief
of Near East perplexities. It was rising there, in
this resort, with the same severity and finish that
you see when buildings rise in New York.
" How do you pay for it? " I asked.
" Faith and Hope! " he replied.
"How? " I pressed.
Then I could see how: for this stray angel, with
the deep eyes and the long silvery beard, turned on
me reproachfully.
" Until you try," he said simply, " you have no
idea how good men are. Every day I live I am
more surprised how good men are! "
For this world is a mirror of ourselves: and to
the true angel it is all-angelic!




VII


LOST IN THE BALKANS
EARLY on a bright morning of May we stood on
the station at Salonica chatting with our friends:
preparing to depart for the heart of the Balkans in
the one and only effective train of the day. We
could now resume the luxurious ease of the Orient
Express. So we spread out our possessions in a
comfortable carriage; took a meal in the breakfast car, and settled down to the usual travel
routine of reading, writing and occasionally sleeping. We made all arrangements to arrive at Sofia
on the following morning, and we started with the
full hopefulness that the journey would be serene
and bright, the most tranquil of all our transits in
the Near East.
But alas for the " schemes of mice and men "
that " gang aft a-gley "! It was fated that this
trip should prove the most exciting, exhausting
and disturbing of all the jaunts we took in the
Balkans. Nothing happens in the Balkans except
the unexpected: there is a " ragged edge " all the
time. Civilisation goes on its course always with
a kind of hobble, and you never know when it is
going down on to its knees. It is my fancy that in
the Balkans the traveller himself becomes hobbled.
The " ragged edge " of the Balkans becomes the
77




78     THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
t ragged edge " of your own character: the
blunders of the Near East seem to infect the
visitor.
That is the only excuse that I can give for what
took place on this journey at Skopolje, in the heart
of the Perilous Peninsula.
It all happened in the very simplest manner
possible. We had been travelling all the morning
quite serenely and uneventfully up the valley of
the Vardar. The country outside was simmering
in the great heat. Since we were retracing our
steps we were already familiar with the scenery.
We lacked the excitement of novelty. The journey
seemed almost humdrum. Perhaps, indeed, unconsciously it was the very serenity of this calm
Sunday morning that put me off my guard.
We had passed through the beautiful town of
Veles, which spreads out on either side of the
Vardar to the north of a deep, jagged river-gorge
through which the railway cuts a daring pathway.
I had been idly watching the scenes of the Balkans
that flitted by the window-the little stream of
highway traffic: the men on donkey-back, the
women on foot: the shepherds with their great
following of lean, shorn, long-tailed sheep. The
valley opened out. We emerged from the mountains on to a large plain. The train stopped at
Skopolje.
Then, as often happens in one of these very long
journeys, I had a great desire for escape and
freedom. It was written on the tablets of memory
that the express stopped for an hour at Skopolje.




LOST IN THE BALKANS


79


The impression was based on the fact that it had
actually stopped that length of time on the journey
out. But before leaving the train I asked-yes, I
did ask!-our admirable attendant at what time
this particular train resumed its way. Then there
descended on us that primal curse of language
which pursues the traveller from the day he leaves
his own land up to the day and hour of his return.
It was my positive conviction that the excellent
man said " deux heure et demi" (" half-past two ").
Since then it has been painfully borne in by many
converging proofs that he must have replied
" deux heure et dix " (" ten minutes past two ").
It was a small affair of twenty minutes. But it
sufficed. It was " not so deep as a well nor so
wide as a door." But 'twas enough; it served.
I had fallen under the spell of Skopolje on the
way out. That hour of delay had sufficed to leave
a vivid impression of this town of mingled races,
with its cobbled, tangled streets, and its motley
crowds-the stream of humanity that straggles
along its foothills: the throngs of Turks and
Christians: men from the hills and men from
the plains: smart soldiers and shiftless beggars.
I remember still the cries of the water-sellers
mingling with the hoots of the motor-car. For this
town stands in the very midst of the Balkans.
From every street you see a vista of hills, now
touched with snow. The shabby roads climb from
the centre to a hill capped with an old Turkish
fortress, now used as a barracks. At the foot
of the hill is an old mosque, now deserted and




80    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
crumbling into decay. Yet it is but twelve years
since the Turks lost their power: and they are
still here, not with notice to quit, as in Greece, but
freely and comfortably squalid.
But the most conspicuous feature of Skopolje is
the Serbian army. It is a town of soldiers. Here,
as in Monastir, they flood the town, with their
fatigue parties and their marching companies, while
the gay officers, with their trailing swords and
their gold epaulettes, haunt the cafes and stroll
with an air of mastery. They are very much at
home.
It was really those Serbian officers who were to
blame for the whole episode. They are the " glass
of fashion and the mould of form," the observed
of all observers. Yes, and they know it. These
" roses of a fair state " are not unconscious of their
perfume. They seem to feel that they are the
flower of the world: that to which all Creation
moves. They flaunt a " sacred egoism." They are
clothed in a cloak of self-regard.
Somehow this self-regard fascinated me. There
was one young officer who sat in front of the cafe
sipping his vermouth and punctuating his splendid
leisure by nodding salutes to passing soldiery.
Perhaps the soldiery did not enjoy this game so
much as the officer. But the Serbian army is one
of the best disciplined in Eastern Europe, and
whatever they thought they omitted no detail of
ceremonious reply.
I watched these proceedings, and the whole
thing took my mind back to the first year of the




LOST IN THE BALKANS             81
Great War-that halcyon year of the British Staff
Officer-when, for a brief moment, the Englishman
in khaki caught this trick of the raised hand
"smartly cut away from the forehead."
Not a single soldier passing down that street
failed to salute our happy young friend, who had
obviously taken his seat in front of the cafe with a
certain deliberate joy in the receipt of attention.
Many of his brother officers passed with their wives.
They all duly saluted with the hand. He leaned
forward and nodded. It was really a pleasure to
contemplate such pure, innocent happiness.
At any rate, here was an army-an army that
functioned. Perhaps the only army that really
functions to-day, outside France. An army that
looks an army.
Fascinated by this train of thought, I sat calmly
watching all this life that passed before us, when it
occurred to me that possibly it might be as well to
bethink us of our journey. I took out my watch
and saw that it was just past two o'clock. It
seemed well to seize a quarter of an hour's advantage in our contest with the train. So it was suggested and agreed that we should go back to the
railway station at a quarter past the hour of twonow sometimes barbarously called fourteen o'clock
-and resume our seats. This seemed a wise and
prudent move, always assuming that the train
went on its journey at half-past two.
We paid our tally, and walked up towards the
station, which stood at a distance of only five
minutes' walk. We entered the station and looked
F




82     THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
around. We became conscious of an immense
vacancy. There was an utter and complete absence
of something very much desired. The rails of that
station spread out before us in gleaming emptiness.
The whole vast extent of it seemed absurdly
and ridiculously void. That station looked at us
with meaningless, idiot eyes, grinning a foolish
complacency.
The Orient Express had gone! That was the
whole and simple story. There was nothing more
to add to it: nothing to take away from it. It
faced us in the extremity of its simple horror. It
had gone, carrying with it our big luggage and our
small, our books and our papers, our sponges and
our tooth-brushes-yes, and even our passports.
We were left alone and forlorn in the midst of the
Balkans!
This little thing was so big that it brought with
it a certain coolness. There was a call for instant
action.  The very fullness of the shock rallied
shattered nerves. At first we could gain no help or
sympathy. We spoke to porters, and they remained
careless and indifferent. We talked to officials,
and they shook their heads. Once more the fog of
language descended on us. These people did not
even talk French. Serb was their language, and
my emotions were far too complex to be expressed
in any Serb that I could muster.
At that moment there loomed upon our view a
tall, substantial, genial person in a large wideawake
hat. He looked more like a Boer than a Balkan.
After several efforts in other tongues, he addressed




LOST IN THE BALKANS            88
us in German. Once more I grasped the thin
thread of common speech that links humanity.
German-forgive us!-proved our safeguard and
our anchorage. For this friend in need turned out
to be the station-master.
Holding on to the thread of language, we accompanied him to the telegraph office, drafted a
detailed telegram to the conductor of our train at
Nish, directing him to deposit all our belongings on
the railway station of that town.
Then we went back into Skopolje to recover our
self-possession.
The troubles of travel are the beginnings of adventure-and adventure is the porch of discovery.
That afternoon at Skopolje was, in some ways, the
most interesting and informing of Balkan days.
Gradually round our patch of troubles there
gathered ministering friends of all kinds: and I
began to share the feeling of Doctor House about
the goodness of humanity. First, there was the
landlord of the little inn where we secured a few
hours' rest. He had been a courier in the diplomatic service; and it was really consoling to discover that the same disaster had once happened
to him. He revelled in the sympathy of a common
blunder. He, too, had missed his train in the midst
of a wild land, and he had survived. That was the
consoling fact-he had survived!
Passports! That was the real terror. How
should we recover those lost clues to freedom?
For to be without a passport in Eastern Europe




84    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
is to find yourself a dog and an outcast. You are
practically an outlaw: the tempting prey of every
gendarme and every official, helplessly tied to the
ground you stand on. You have lost every civil
right. Your very liberty and life is at the mercy
of others. I have seen human beings thrown out of
trains for no other crime: just left by the roadside. Hence this loss of passports left us with a
kind of guilty feeling, as if we had already become
culprits-fugitives from justice.
Fortunately we had money and could purchase
food. The ex-courier gave us good meals, and did
his best to console. But it was Sunday, and he
was a busy man attending on many calls.
I was therefore glad when reinforcements began
to appear. The first were two men who strolled
into that hotel with a certain familiar air of possessing the earth. " English! " I cried: and without
a moment's hesitation walked up to them and
told them of our woes. They were engineersand kindly men at that. They had business in the
country-taking possession-and were staying at
Skopolje. That in itself was a relief, for it showed
that Skopolje was a town worthy of British
annexation. This mere fact gave us a homely
feeling.
We now felt less lost to mankind: less guiltyless abandoned.
The engineers handed us on. They could not
share Skopolje with us. But they sent us to the
British Consul.
Now these excellent men, the British consuls,




LOST IN THE BALKANS


85


are peppered about the world in various spots,
obvious and remote, with varying duties, commercial and humane. They differ infinitely in
quality-some of them being chiefly conspicuous
by their limited acquaintance with the British
tongue. But they fly the British flag over their
houses, although an economical Home Government very often contrives that they should live
in remote and hidden spots.
On this occasion it was a nice little puzzle to find
our Consulate. It lay in a tangle of houses approached by a lane deep in mud, now and again
churned into dark soup by passing vehicles. But
one grows humble in the Balkans, and expects
little from any highway. We picked a dry way
through these devious tracks, ever steering for
the Union Jack that gleamed afar. For "ever
upon the topmost roof our banner of England
flew."
We reached a little, darkened Oriental house,
and there we found a gem-Mr Monck Mason, the
British Consul of Skopolje. I mention his name
because he was indeed an angelic minister. He
was ill, but he left his bed to help us. He gave us
counsel and support, and lent us a most admirable
dragoman who did not leave us until he had
deposited us in the comfort of a clean, first-class
carriage on the train that evening at nine o'clock.
Above all, that dragoman refused a fee!
The experience of that night once and for all
blew into air the pious fraud of the " sleeping-car."
On the whole we were more comfortable in that




86    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
first-class carriage of that ordinary Balkan train
than in the gilded prison of the Orient Express.
The advantage of misfortune is that it teaches
you the beauty of simplicity. It shakes you back
into the primitive life.
Our luck turned. We arrived at Nish in the early
dawn and emerged from our train. This station,
unlike Skopolje, seemed fully furnished. We had
expected to wait many hours for an east-going
train from Nish to Sofia. But what was that
gorgeous apparition in gold and brown that held
the east-going line? Why, it was our lost friend
-the Orient Express!
We had made good time, and our friend had
made bad time: and so extremes had met and
harmony was restored. On the station we found
our kit carefully set apart-not only our "little
luggage," but also our passports.
So with raised spirits we resumed our journey
to Sofia.




PART III
WHERE THE CAULDRON BOILSBULGARIA AND YUGO-SLAVIA




a




I


SOFIA TO-DAY
TEN years ago Bulgaria glittered in shining armour
as the Prussia of the Balkans. Nations waited on
her nod, and for the first three years of the Great
War the whole policy of the Allies was arrested by
hoping for her favour. The British Foreign Office
stood fatally divided between Greece and Bulgaria,
and, in the end, lost both. It was only after the
victory that Bulgaria was discovered to have been
pledged to Germany ever since the beginning of
the war. The appearance of an open mind was
proved to have been a mirage.
How account for this strange fascination that
Bulgaria exercised over the Powers of the West?
How explain the paralysis of will which she was
able to effect? It was the legend of her military
might and the belief in her impartiality. No
one in England had mastered the close ties
which bound Ferdinand both to Vienna and to
Berlin.
But now the glamour has gone. That formidable
army of Bulgaria which swung into the Teutonic
orbit after our naval defeat in the Narrows has
faded into the mists of time. The mighty are fallen
in the midst of the battle. The splendour and pride
of her military pomp has vanished, and Sofia is now
89




90     THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
but a shabby reminder of that glorious past.
Nothing but the shadow remains.
We stayed in Sofia for four days. The day after
our arrival was St George's Day-the national day
for Bulgaria, as for England. All work ceases on
that, as on so many other holidays in the Near
East: and we were invited to attend a review of
what remained of the Bulgarian army in front of
the royal palace at Sofia. It was, in its own small
way, a very dazzling display. The Bulgarian
officers understand the art of military pomp. The
Palace Guards, with their braided scarlet uniforms
and the high cock feathers standing up from their
busbies, make brilliant and imposing figures.
They remind you all the time of The Prisoner of
Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau. You dream yourself in Ruritania: and perhaps imagine that by
some chance you may for a day usurp the throne
of a king. Pleasing illusion! We all love it.
The little group of officers who stood in the
centre of the square around the King looked serviceable soldiers. Many of them were worn with
service and be-medalled with the rewards of valour.
When the standards advanced, to be saluted by
the'King, the resounding huzzas-" Hoo-ra! "of the regiments formed in hollow squares rang
across the piazza in front of the palace, and
roused an echo of the past glories of Bulgaria.
But it was an echo only of the barracks: it
found no response in the hearts of the Bulgarian
people. For the big crowds which had assembled
to witness the celebrations remained in sullen




SOFIA TO-DAY


91


silence throughout this military performance, and
gave but a sulky response even to the cheers for
the King. It was clear that the Bulgarian civilians
were tired of the panoply of war: and I was not
surprised to hear afterwards that King Boris on
his tours through the country is greeted with
crowds clamouring for peace.
For, indeed, during the last few years Bulgaria
has had her fill of blood. Three hundred thousand
of her sons have perished on the battle-field. All
her treasure has been spilt; and to-day she emerges
a tributary State, clogged with the debts and
penalties of unsuccessful war, tied to earth by the
burdens of the past.
Yet in outward appearance she looks by no means
a shattered country. As we travelled across the
plain of Sofia we gained an impression of a smiling
countryside. The harvest seemed good; the farm
buildings were superior to those of Yugo-Slavia;
the cattle seemed better and the people themselves more industrious. Their ploughs were more
efficient, and the crops seemed more varied. It is,
indeed, a Peasant State. Eighty per cent. of the
people live on the land, and they are mostly proprietors. On the surface, therefore, it would seem
as if the Bulgarian State was broad-based on a
solid foundation of rural well-being.
But this impression is largely deceptive. We
had not been long in Sofia before I got into touch
with the Government, and began a series of talks
with those in high places which gradually unfolded
to me the terrible realities of the situation. Of




92    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
course the Bulgarians are splendid propagandists,
as I well knew from observation among my friends
in England. If the Bulgarians have a tale to tell,
there is nothing lost in the telling. At least ten
per cent. must be deducted from all their accounts
of their own troubles. Just as before the war they
exaggerated their power, so now they allow no
shadow to be lost in describing their downfall.
They draw very long faces. They wear very shabby
garments. They are very careful that you should
not detect any glimpse of prosperity behind their
rags.
They have the advantage of possessing among
their leading men several who talk English extremely well, and understand the English temperament. These prominent Bulgarians devote
themselves with some skill to impressing visitors.
That excellent and kindly man, M. Boris Kissimoff,
genial in face as in name, was in attendance at my
hotel within a few hours of my arrival. With great
skill he expounded to me the whole situation of
Bulgaria, and with the clearness of an expert
straightened out my ideas. It was a kind of
preliminary gallop, and I could perceive the skill
of an old practitioner behind his arguments and
persuasions.
But M. Kissimoff's bland geniality is only the
first stage in the process of influencing the visitor.
The next is the blunt and bluff atmosphere of
M. Minkoff, the able head of the Bulgarian Foreign
Office. This is the cold douche treatment after the
hot bath. It came to me rather abruptly. I was




SOFIA TO-DAY


93


leaving the parade ground after the review in front
of the palace when M. Minkoff greeted me.
" Come to contemplate our woes, I suppose?"
was what he said.
I demurred to that description of a visit which
was, at any rate, designed in a kindly spirit of
justice. He asked me to come and visit him at
the Foreign Office, and I went.
Then that excellent Bulgarian, whom I had
known before the war as a genial friend of England,
married to an English wife, launched on a sudden
offensive against us and our record-a rough, outspoken diatribe against the whole policy of England
and the peace. I parried his blows as well as I
could; but the attack was delivered with great
skill and suddenness. No opportunity was omitted
of emphasising the sorrows and grievances of
Bulgaria.
I had, for instance, a light occasion to apologise
for the shabbiness of my costume, which had been
reduced to one shirt and one suit by the summary
detention of all our heavy baggage at the frontier.
"It doesn't matter," was his reply. "This is a
country of one shirt "
Then he held forth to me with explosive vehemence on the strange new equalitarianism of
Bulgaria, which has brought a Minister's salary to
the same level as that of a private soldier.
This was the first of a series of talks in which
the Bulgarians set out to impress me with the full
bitterness of their tragic fate since their defeat.
First the Foreign Minister; then the Prime




94    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Minister-all converged on one effort: to send me
back to England a hot-gospeller of Bulgaria's woes.
I was fully conscious of their methods throughout these operations, and yet I found myself
gradually being affected by their point of view. I
had seen many other English friends pass through
this process, and I knew the danger and skilfulness
of Bulgarian persuasions. Yet, very subtly, I was
aware of a certain sea-change in my attitude towards them. It was not so much a shift of political
conviction as a shift of sympathy. I still continued
to recognise the Bulgarians to be what I had always
known them to be: a rigid, tenacious, obstinate
race, capable and industrious, but strangely deficient in the qualities that win or attract. I had
made this discovery from meeting sundry Bulgarian
diplomats in London hotels. I tested these points
anew with the Bulgarian Ministers, endeavouring
my utmost to keep an open mind. The result was
that I was soon strongly confirmed in that view of
the Bulgarian character.
Obstinacy-that is their dominating feature.
But then it happens that obstinacy is a British
characteristic also. That is, I think, what draws
us together.
We call it will-power. So do they. We admire
it in ourselves as a refusal to know when we are
defeated. They, too, refuse to know when they are
defeated. It is this community of characteristics
which, I think, draws Briton and Bulgarian
together, and makes the Briton so easily become
the friend of the Bulgarian.




SOFIA TO-DAY


95


The affinity of the two peoples begins, indeed,
with physical resemblance. Sitting on Sunday
afternoon among the Bulgarian crowds in the Boris
Park, listening to the band, one might easily imagine
oneself back in London. The people are strangely
British, both in their appearance and in their
demeanour.   They possess that robust, broadshouldered physique which is typical of our race.
They talk quietly: with little gesticulation. Like
all the Balkan races, they are very temperate,
and they sit for hours at their little tables over
one glass of bock. I never indeed saw one drunken
man in the whole of my Balkan tour-whether in
Greece, Serbia or Bulgaria.
So it is that a Briton feels very much at home in
Bulgaria, and soon grows to be on familiar terms
with the people. I observed the same feature with
all the English residents, both at the Legation and
among the English correspondents.   I noticed
among the English residents in Sofia a far better
understanding and sympathy for Bulgaria than I
found for Greece or Serbia among the Englishmen
resident in their capitals.
Bulgaria had been an enemy; yet they were
sorry for her. She had been a master of frightfulness in war; yet they were inclined to forgive.
Her present sorrows, not her past misdoings-such
was the theme of all the British talk. One could
not help being struck at the extraordinary capacity
of this Bulgarian people for winning over Britons.
Greece fought on our side: and yet, as a nation, we
love her less.




96    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
The result is achieved with little effort. The
Bulgarians make few concessions to our point of
view. They offer little incense to our national
pride. They make few admissions of our virtue.
Our nostrils, over-indulged elsewhere, enjoyed a
famine while in Sofia. On the contrary, the Bulgarians were very frank in their criticisms of
English policy.
" I used to believe in the justice of England,"
said M. Minkoff very bitterly to me one day; "but
I do so no longer."
" It was a pity you went into the war on the
wrong side," I said, moved to something of the
same curtness of speech by this example.
" We do not admit that it was the wrong side,"
he replied. " There is a lot to be said about that."
And he closed his lips grimly.
These were heavy, rough-and-tumble conversations, but I enjoyed them. I began to catch a
glimpse of the secret. We are both rough peoples:
we both like frankness of speech. This kind of talk
really pleases us. We love a little people that
stands up to us even when they are receiving a
thrashing.  We admire the Bulgarians because
they have courage. I believe that to be the heart
of the matter.
Sofia is a great town. The centre of it might
belong to any European capital, with its lofty
buildings and its well-paved streets. The Government quarters are ambitious and stately, although
they have fallen on evil days. But all around the
edge of the town there is a fringe of desolation



SOFIA TO-DAY              97
half-kempt, mud-foundered roads, unfinished pavements and unrepaired buildings. They have not
recovered from the war.
Sofia stands in a lovely situation-between two
ranges of mountains in the very heart of the central
Balkan range. It was, fifty years ago, a Turkish
village. It is now a considerable European city,
with broad roads and high, stately buildings. The
mosque has crumbled and the Byzantine cathedral
has taken its place-very new and very gildedadorned with the newest pictures and the newest
statuary.
The people of Sofia seem happy. They have
plenty of parks, but are always short of water. A
bath is a crisis instinctively to be avoided. There
is one good hotel in Sofia-the Hotel de Bulgarie.
But even there you have to make shift for your
meals, generally in the open air. The Balkan hotelkeeper seems to think that his duty is achieved when
he has supplied you with a bed. The provision
of food is a luxury, rare and to be commended.
The marvel of the modem moving picture show
has brought into the Balkans the films of Europe
and America. Here is a levelling force which is
now working at a great pace throughout the whole
world. We saw The Three Musketeers that evening:
and could spell out that story in two characters and
two languages-Cyrillic Serb and Latin French.
It was just such an exhibition as you might
have seen in Oxford Street or on the Boulevards.
Europe is being steam-rollered by this mighty
machine of the cinema. One idea, multitudinously
G




98     THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
repeated, can work its myriad will over the
passive peoples, from California round the world
to Vladivostok.
Like all the rest of the world, Bulgaria dances.
Strolling into a cafe we found the audience under
the spell of two itinerant musicians, a young man
with a guitar and an old man with a fiddle. They
began playing national airs, and the people in the
cafe began to dance. The infection spread. One
after another the people rose from their tables
and pirouetted the floor. Their steps became more
and more fantastic. The Bulgarians-all mendanced singly: moving up and down the room,
first circling and then going backwards, working
themselves up to a frenzy of movement. The proprietor of the cafe surpassed himself. He was an
elderly man, but he became young in the process.
He laughed and hopped. He revelled in our admiration. The musicians threw themselves into
the joy of the work. The old man played air after
air-joyful and pathetic: slow and swift-and
regained from the shattered past some of the
glories of Bulgaria. The Slav is a natural musician.
Yet their life is shadowed by contrasts. They
laugh and sing one hour; in the next they brood
over death.
Strolling about Sofia on the following day, I
wandered into a church and found myself face to
face with a corpse. It was that of an elderly
man, lying very placid and beautiful in his coffin,
surrounded with his relations and friends, who sat
or stood watching him with a strange fascination.




SOFIA TO-DAY


99


Respecting their privacy, I retired from this side
chapel, and passed into the church. Then I essayed
to leave the church through another chapel, opening out of the northern aisle, which also led to the
street. There I met another corpse-this time of
an old woman also lying peacefully in her coffin.
I felt a considerable shock at this second experience, and was immensely relieved to escape into
the light of the sun, and to watch the moving,
shifting crowd of living peasantry as they thronged
the market-place and made their purchases.
There is something uncanny about this glaring
intrusion of death, so frequent in the Near East.
Life seems to nod familiarly to death in these
crowded cities of the Balkans. You see the funerals
going down the main streets, the body propped up
in its wooden coffin. Or perhaps the lid is lightly
placed on the top, to be removed before burial.
They bury lightly. Within two years the corpse is
dug up and the bones are scattered. It is, in truth,
an actual case of " dust to dust, earth to earth."
The time is not long before the poor human body
is mingled once more with the stuff of the planet.
Perhaps that is one reason why life is held so
cheaply in the Balkans.




II


THE PLEADINGS OF DEFEAT
THE Bulgarian Foreign Office is a very modern
building, opposite the open space on which stand
the crumbling Turkish mosque and the brand-new
Byzantine cathedral. It is a heavy structure-a
sort of official beehive-with many dark passages;
and you are received by the attendants with that
curious mixture of ease and suspicion which means
that although they feel friendly towards you, they
would like to be sure that you are not going to
shoot any member of the Government. Once reassured on that point, they gave me an easy right of
entrance. In fact, there was no public department
in the whole of the Balkans where, in the end, I was
more hospitably received and graciously treated.
I ascended to the Foreign Minister up a carefully
graded human ladder. First, M. Boris Kissimoff
took me into his room and entertained me with
fascinating discourses on the past, present and
future of Bulgaria. That amiable man, on the
verge of retirement after a long life of service to
his country, was, at the time of my visit to Sofia,
the Bulgarian Minister to Moscow. But as Moscow
is essentially an undesirable place of residence for
a Bulgarian Minister, he preferred to remain in
Sofia. Being in Sofia, he was " seconded," as the
o00




THE PLEADINGS OF DEFEAT


101


Civil Service so amiably phrase it, for the care of
foreigners. He did his work well. Ancient Greece
had some such official: and I commend it to all
countries as a useful echo from the past.
Kissimoff is-Bulgaria. He can remember, as a
boy, making bullets at Tirnovo for the Bulgarian
soldiers during those Russian battles against the
Turks which ushered in the freedom of his country.
He can contrast the old order with the new: for
he has lived through all the vicissitudes and disillusionments of the two official generations (I880 -I925) which have organised the government of
Bulgaria. It is a great thing to say of him that,
in spite of all this, M. Kissimoff retains his full
faith in his own nation and its freedom. He never
doubts the wisdom and heroism of his parents,
who first helped to break the power of the Turk
in the Balkans. It is only because the dream was
so splendid that the reality seems so grey.
Then these pleasant chats would be brought to
an end with the tinkling of a bell; and the next
stage upwards was my summons to the cabinet of
M. Minkoff. There more robust conversations would
follow. But after a few minutes a more peremptory
bell would sound, and I would be introduced into
the larger chamber where sits the Foreign Minister.
This Foreign Minister, Colonel Kalfoff, is a
bright-eyed, dapper man, swift of sight and movement. Like all good revolutionaries, he meets you
face to face. He converses in French. He pours
out a rapid hurricane of words, passing swiftly from
point to point, now conversing, now orating: but




102 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
always earnest, insistent and intense.  Colonel
Kalfoff is not one of those who are at ease in Zion.
He climbed to his present height by revolutionby the rising of June I923, when the young
Bulgarian officers overthrew the power of Stambulisky. Up to that time he was aide-de-camp
to King Boris: that position gave him his present
mastery of foreign affairs. But I could see very
well that he was fully aware of the precariousness
of his hold on power. He talked freely, but at the
same time very cautiously.
Let me give an impression of what he said.
There was one theme to which he kept recurring,
and that was the importance for Bulgaria of peace.
Peace, he kept emphasising, was their only chance
of recovery. Peace at home and peace abroad.
But he claimed, with a vivid animation, that if
Bulgaria worked for peace they deserved in return
consideration and indulgence from the conquering
Powers. He said:
" We wish to cure the heart and soul of afflicted
Bulgaria, so that we may once more raise her
from the dust. We are the only conquered Power
that is meeting its peace obligations and paying
its reparations. We claim that we should be considered quite as much as either Turkey, who has
defied you, or Germany, who pays nothing. As
for the comitadjis, they threaten our existence
quite as much as that of the Serbs, and it is to
our interest quite as much as theirs to control
and restrain them. But we require help in that
task, and we trust to the friendship of England."




THE PLEADINGS OF DEFEAT 103
Such was the upshot of our interview. It was
conducted in an atmosphere of electrical energy.
The Foreign Minister had two telephones at his
elbow, and there were constant rings.
I have long ago taken the telephone to my heart
as a friend, and find its interruptions most useful
in surveying a conversation and forming my plans
for its resumption. The interval gives an opportunity of casting the mind over the replies and
framing fresh questions. As the telephone has
become inevitable, it is best to make a friend of it
rather than a foe. It is the maker of pauses. You
must become their master.
We managed to survey all the crucial Balkan
questions, and Colonel Kalfoff's answers were frank
and honest. But I received the impression of a
man swimming against a sea of troubles, encompassed with enemies on every side, desperately
battling with circumstance, urgently needing
more tranquillity for the fuller play of his mind.
That impression is not confined to Colonel Kalfoff.
One aspect of the present condition of the Balkans
is that the atmosphere throughout is too stormy to
produce true statesmanship. You cannot cultivate
seamanship in one continual tornado.
At present the men at the head of affairs strike
one as tempest-tossed. They are vigilant, nervous,
apprehensive. They seem uncertain as to their
positions, or even as to their lives. Through the
storm they get glimpses of rocks ahead. They hear
the thunder of the breakers.
" Are your lives in danger? " I asked Colonel




104 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Kalfoff at one point in this interview. For he
started at some innocent movement of mine.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
"Well," he said, "it is a revolutionary movement: and you know what that means."
I knew what it meant in Bulgaria.
I drew his mind gradually to the supreme question of Balkan Federation. He agreed with me in
all essentials. He admitted that it was desirable.
He even replenished my argument by new facts.
The Balkan States, he pointed out, are economically interdependent.  Greece needs wheat, and
Bulgaria can produce wheat. Bulgaria needs oil
and fruit. Greece can produce them. Bulgaria
needs the help of a merchant marine. Greece has
a fine marine.
He admitted all these facts. He was even
eloquent about them. But when it came to the
proposal to lift a finger for the cause of Balkan
union he hesitated and drew back. Bulgaria, he
contended, was not ripe for it. Opinion was not
sufficiently developed. Bulgaria could only meet
the other States as an equal: and she was not yet
treated as an equal.
There were many reasons given. But it all came
to the same thing. The courage was lacking. He
was not sure of his people. Behind all Balkan
statesmanship there lurks the man with a gun.
All Balkan wisdom is tempered by assassination.
I suggested a conference between the Balkan
States to discuss proposals for union-if only
economic union.  Such conferences have taken




THE PLEADINGS OF DEFEAT 105
place farther north among the States of the Petite
Entente, and have had admirable results. At
present the Balkan States are strangling one
another with tariffs. Why not have a Balkan
Conference to discuss that matter first?
Colonel Kalfoff hummed and ha-ed. They must
be sure of success. A Balkan Conference that met
and failed would divide the parties even further.
I ventured to suggest what really stood in the
way. Just hatred. That and nothing more.
The Foreign Minister quite agreed. I had put
my finger on the spot, he said. What is ruining
the Balkans is want of mutual confidence-want
of confidence and mutual trust. That is what is
at the bottom of all the trouble.
Never did Balkan statesman speak truer words.
But I remembered what the Greek Foreign Minister
told me at Athens the year before-that none of
his overtures to Bulgaria had received any reply
-and I went away very sorrowful.
The will for peace is lacking.
The good M. Kissimoff arranged for me to meet
the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Professor Tzankoff,
on the same day in the evening. I was escorted
to a far more modest building, nearer the centre of
the town, quite close to the public park. There I
was received by the Prime Minister in a far simpler
room, and with much less ceremonial. I was accompanied by Boris Kissimoff, who acted throughout as a facile interpreter between us. The Prime




106 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Minister speaks neither English nor French. He
conversed in Bulgarian.
Professor Tzankoff was chosen, like Colonel
Kalfoff, after the June revolution, from outside
the ranks of the professional politicians. He was
a professor in the Bulgarian University, and had
no part in the actual revolution. He is a man
of a type quite contrasted to that of the Foreign
Minister. He is not at all "built on wires." He
is a large, substantial man, with strong features
and big hands: high brow and a large nose. The
expression on his face is one of easy good humour
and kindliness combined with some resolution. He
was dressed in a loose-fitting suit of brown tweed,
and sat back in a large wooden armchair, occasionally fingering his beard. Unlike most of these
Bulgarian Ministers, he neither smoked nor drank
sweet coffee.
At first one had the impression of a large, contemplative man who was probably only the figurehead of a cabinet of revolutionaries. But then a
subject would arise which awoke his latent powers.
His expression would completely change, and he
would rouse himself to great vehemence and
emphasis. He would lean forward and strengthen
his words with frequent and vivid gesture. He
gradually grew completely absorbed in our talk.
I afterwards learned that a Cabinet Council which
had been summoned for that hour had been compelled to disperse after frequent attempts to attract
the attention of the Prime Minister. Then I understood the constant interruptions in our talk, which




THE PLEADINGS OF DEFEAT 107
took the form of an earnest, harassed man who
opened the door opposite to me: peeped in: and
then, with a sigh, closed it again. I apologise to
that Cabinet for having kept them from their affairs.
Professor Tzankoff opened the talk with a reflective discourse on the causes of Bolshevism, which
was, he said, at that time, distracting Bulgaria,
and which seemed to be the uppermost problem
in the minds of her statesmen. He put it down to
the fact that the young men of Bulgaria had been
released, under the terms of peace, from the discipline of military duty. He explained to me that
in Bulgaria conscription had come in after the
Turkish war as a means of shaping and disciplining
this new nation. It was popular, even passionately
loved by the people. So greatly was this training
for the army esteemed, he said, that the girls
would refuse to marry men rejected for the army.
" If the King cannot take him for two years, I
cannot take him for life! " was their cry.
Of course this conscription in Bulgaria was not
merely military. It included many forms of education. For the Bulgarians spent the barrack years
in training their men for life and industry. I took
hold of this point to suggest to the Prime Minister
that possibly Bulgaria was only emerging from one
stage in order to pass to a better. I pointed out
to him that in America, for instance, the place of
conscription has been taken by university life,
which absorbs 600,000 of the young people of that
country-almost as many as America would be
employing in any standing army.




108 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Professor Tzankoff sadly shook his head.
"America is rich," he said. "She has good
teachers and is not surrounded by hostile States.
Our case is quite different. At present our young
men question everything. They are no longer
trained to respect authority. I myself see it in the.
villages. I can always distinguish between a man
who has done military service and one who has not.
Our young men have lost the only real discipline
that they possessed."
The Balkans are a paradise of surprises. They
seem to be created in order to upset all ordinary
political forecasts. In the West of Europe we have
all agreed, in our smug way, that the conquered
nations would save both money and energy by
being deprived of military conscription. We have
hugged ourselves with the feeling that under the
veil of harsh peace terms we were really doing
these nations a kindness. But in Bulgaria the
result has turned out to be something quite
different. The little army of 20,000 which we saw
doing the goose step on the parade ground in Sofia
on St George's Day costs Bulgaria to-day more
than the whole of her conscript army of 300,000
used to cost her before the war. Having to enlist
their men for a period of twelve years, they have
-as I have already shown-to pay them wages
which are equal to the salaries of the heads of
departments. That was the point which all
Bulgarian ministers felt very acutely. They kept
returning to it in their conversations. They deluged
me with figures about it. They grew explosive




THE PLEADINGS OF DEFEAT


109


about it. They seemed to regard it as the end of all
things.
Yet I am bound to admit that the argument did
not very much impress me. I have refrained from
assisting their plea on this behalf. For it has been
borne in on me that this is a kind of Nemesis. It
seems the only possible cure for the disease of
militarism which brought on Bulgaria her disasters.
" We do not want a bigger army," said the
Prime Minister. "We want the same army, but
raised by conscription. We could then spend this
great sum of money on our teachers, who are now
starving."
The argument sounds convincing. But we have
to remember that it was precisely conscription
which ruined the soul of Bulgaria. Their very
ardour for the return of conscription becomes suspicious. Conscription is elastic, and can easily be
expanded. I have no confidence in the restrictions
of the ballot, which could soon be removed until
conscription became again universal. I think it is
asking too much that the conquering Powers, after
all the blood which Bulgaria made them shed,
should be expected to hand back this bright and
shining weapon.
The money question is rather different. Reparations is a polite modern term forwhat our forefathers
called indemnities, and the Romans called tribute.
It is a term which had to be invented by European
statesmen to save the face of President Wilson.
Reparations have played a great part. Six years
have elapsed, and Reparations have kept Europe




110 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
in a state of continuous turmoil. They have proved
twice cursed. They have cursed both those who
give and those who receive.
Now Bulgaria has little to complain of on this
precise point, because her Reparations have been
reduced from ~90,000,000 to ~22,000,000.l But
here the conquering Powers have shown considerable astuteness.  While relieving Bulgaria
of Reparations, they have crushed her with other
burdens, which serve the same purpose, such as
armies of occupation, commissions and so forth.
There, I think, relief could properly and justly
be given.
What is the alternative? It is really impossible
to suppose that these conquered nations are going
to continue as tributary states for a whole generation. No one with an eye for the future could
conceive that it will always be the fate of a White
Europe to be divided into tribute-paying and
tribute-receiving Powers. Such a state of affairs
cannot endure. Europe will need to recover her
equality: and unless that is achieved by consent,
it may yet be achieved by another outbreak of
violence.
Tzankoff was just as insistent as Kalfoff as to
the absolute necessity for peace if Bulgaria was to
recover. He scouted the very idea that Bulgaria
could be at present pursuing a policy that might
lead to war. " How should we," he asked, " after
what we have suffered? "
These statements must, of course, be taken with
Under a protocol signed on 2ISt March 1923.




THE PLEADINGS OF DEFEAT 111
a certain reserve, especially as it is quite certain
that Bulgaria and Yugo-Slavia were nearly at war
only a few months before. But I left with the solid
impression that if peace were only made profitable and pleasant for Bulgaria, she would ensue
it. She is essentially a bargaining Power, and she
requires to be convinced that peace is going to be
a better bargain than war. Then she will prefer
peace-but not till then.
We parted friends.
The message that the Bulgarian Prime Minister
asked me to convey to England was this:
" Tell her that Bulgaria is pursuing a policy of
honesty and peace: honest fulfilment of her treaty
obligations; peace within and without her borders;
no active foreign policy. Tell her that Bulgaria
hopes to obtain the good will of England by that
policy."
I promised to hand on that message, and I do
so herewith. But I observed that when Professor
Tzankoff said good-bye he very markedly added
the following phrase: —
" Let us hope that when you return to England
we shall be able to record that we have gained a
new friend."
I now understand why that Cabinet Council had
to wait!




III


BELGRADE-THE TROUBLES OF YUGO-SLAVIA
OUR departure from Sofia took place in a blaze of
glory. It was a vivid contrast to the entrance.
That was a furtive affair, more like an escape than
an arrival. But now Boris Kissimoff honoured us by
taking us in the Foreign Office motor to the railway
station. We parted amid bouquets of compliments.
The train rattled us through the night along the
Balkans, and brought us from the centre of that
great mountainous region back to Nish, then
northward, along the River Morava, to where the
city of Belgrade stands at the joining of those
mighty rivers, the Danube and the Sava.
Both in position and in size Belgrade is one
of the finest cities of Europe. It was hammered
by the war: twice occupied by the Austrians and
often shelled from the opposite bank of the river.
Streets and houses were destroyed, and for a time
the whole city fell into that state of disrepair which
marks so many war-shocked cities. But the Serbs
emerged victorious. There is in Europe at the
present moment a most glaring contrast between
the capitals of the victorious and those of the
conquered Powers. Perhaps it is something in the
human atmosphere: something in the psychology
of success.
112




THE TROUBLES OF YUGO-SLAVIA 118
Belgrade is, for instance, emphatically now a
city of victory. Thronged with great multitudes
of people full of life and stir, it bears in every
corner the marks of recovery.
The Slavs have always been bold in their architecture. They seem to love the opportunity which
stone gives them of writing their names large on
the face of this planet. Belgrade is marked by this
note of the bold and the colossal. Through its
centre there runs a broad, handsome High Street,
lined with great banks and State buildings, all
boldly housed. There is hope and confidence in
the very air. The people sit at the little tables
in front of the huge restaurants, sipping their beer
or coffee, with something of pre-war leisurely
self-indulgence, while the men and women who
stroll along the thoroughfares display a diverting
variety of costume.
There is the tall Montenegrin, with little round
black cap: the scarlet-petticoated Serbian peasant
woman: the smart and gilded officer: the Russian
refugee with his belted blouse and high black
boots, so conspicuous a figure in every capital of
the Balkans to-day. Then there is in Belgrade the
dapper, neatly dressed modem man of Western
commerce, trying to achieve some shadow of
success across the tariff wall of the Balkans.
The great difference between Belgrade and
Athens is the general absence of destitute refugees.
Here you no longer see sick and sorry families
huddled beneath the porticoes and verandas of
the big houses. The Russians may be hungry, but
H




114 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
they are too proud to show it. The old Tsarist
officers walk bravely down the streets, brighteyed, thinly clad, the Order of St George round
their necks. But they never beg, although they
look hungry enough: and there is nothing sadder
than a hungry Slav.
The Serbians help them. They vote for their
wants something like a million pounds a year.
For always in talking of these Russians the
Serbians remind you that Serbia was saved by
Russia. She owes Russia a deep debt. " That
debt we shall pay," said the Ministers to me
again and again. " Never will we fight against
Russia, and never will we interfere with her
home politics.  But we will help all desolate
and destitute Russians, whenever they come our
way." They never forget: and they bravely face
the anger of Red Russia by helping the whites.
At the time of our visit something like thirty
thousand white Russians were living on the bounty
of Yugo-Slavia.
But an acute domestic crisis absorbed the mind of
Yugo-Slavia. It varied from day to day, and it is
still not settled. The root fact of this crisis is that
'the new nations combined in the kingdom of YugoSlavia are stirring restlessly under the restraint of
this new combination. It is the same everywhere
in this new world. Recently emancipated nations
are always difficult to govern. Boris Kissimoff told
me this about Bulgaria: and it is true of YugoSlavia to-day. These people that have just escaped
from the rule of Austria find it difficult to accept




THE TROUBLES OF YUGO-SLAVIA 115
the harness of Yugo-Slavia. They are like horses
that have been turned out to grass: difficult to
recapture and restrain.
The centre of the troubles of Yugo-Slavia is
Croatia. The people of that region have always
given great trouble. They were a thorn in the side
of Austria-Hungary. Like the Irish with England,
they always managed to put their rulers in the
wrong. It is a Celtic gift, and therefore one might
imagine that the Croatians were Celts. They talk
Serb and use Latin letters. But they are Slavs.
The result for Austria was red ruin. And now to
all appearances Croatia is playing precisely the
same game with Yugo-Slavia. Such is the rhythm
of the human story-a rhythm that often becomes
a discord!
The outstanding feature of this great strife is the
month-to-month conflict between two remarkable
men, M. Raditch and M. Pasitch. Raditch is the
young firebrand of Croatia. His personal influence
over that region is unbounded, and in the old days
his political tours through Croatia were triumphal
processions. Whole villages used to turn out to see
him. But he is no longer in close touch with his
own people. Faced with the possibility of imprisonment, he took refuge abroad-first in Vienna,
then in Moscow-and now again, after a short
return to home and power, "somewhere in
Europe." Thus personally divided from his people,
he has grown wilder and wilder. His views have
taken on a Bolshevist note. He has advocated a
peasant Republic in Croatia, free from all rents




116   THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
and taxation. He has become the Wat Tyler of
the Balkans. If there were any water fountains
in the Balkan cities he would surely promise that
they should flow with wine.
As he has grown wilder the attitude of the
Government at Belgrade has grown more detached.
They refuse to have any dealings with him. They
use about him that terrible word "impossible":
a word used by politicians when they do not desire
to have the embarrassment of negotiations. Thus
ostracised, and frequently imprisoned, Raditch
grows steadily more extreme on his side.
In May I924 Raditch, though absent in person,
had succeeded in producing political chaos. It
was all due to his parliamentary policy. After
the election of March I924 he had withdrawn his
seventy Croatian Deputies from the Yugo-Slavian
Parliament and left Pasitch in a position of comparative power. But in April Raditch suddenly
ordered his men to go back to Parliament. The
result was that Pasitch immediately lost his
majority. In that situation he had asked the King
for a Dissolution.
Young Alexander, the son of Peter Karageorgebvitch, is a king of some spirit. He refused a
second Dissolution so soon after the April decision.
Pasitch formally resigned, and Alexander was
then, in May, doing his best to form a new
Ministry. He formed a new one every morning,
but it always crumbled before the evening. He
tried every possible combination-whether Catholic
or anti-Catholic, Croatian or anti-Croatian. But




THE TROUBLES OF YUGO-SLAVIA 117
they each dissolved like snow in summer. Their
weakness was that each desired to execute
vengeance on its predecessor.
Alexander refused. The habit of slaughtering
political opponents has become almost a convention of Balkan politics. But Alexander stood out
against it.
He refused to agree that the new Ministry should
either shoot or imprison those who were leaving
office. The result was that each new Ministry
became instantly  stillborn.  Deprived  of its
nourishment of blood it perished at the moment
of birth.
I happened to be lunching at the British Legation
on one of these days of political crisis. A clever
young English journalist, Mr Bryce, The Times
correspondent in Belgrade, remarked: " Oh, the
King will surely have to come back to Pasitch. He
always comes back to Pasitch." He has proved
right. But whether it be Pasitch or Raditch, the
unrest of Yugo-Slavia continues.
It seems likely to continue until there is some
compromise between the old Serbia and the new
countries that have come in since the Peace.
Pasitch stands for rigid centralisation. But Nintchitch, the very intelligent Foreign Minister of
Yugo-Slavia, agreed, in the extremely interesting
conversation which he accorded me, that there must
be a compromise. The only possible form of settlement seems to be Home Rule for Croatia. But
Croatia demands an independent Republic in the
middle of a Monarchy. The situation is not unlike




118 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
that of Ireland before the Treaty. The question
with Croatia, as it was with Ireland, is whether
Yugo-Slavia will be able to make a bargain before
it is too late.
" Maladies of infancy" is the term that M.
Nintchitch, in that conversation, applied to all
these troubles. But I reminded him that sometimes infants die of their maladies. I sincerely
hope that Yugo-Slavia will survive. " Mere crises,
like yours " was another phrase he used. But I also
reminded him that we in England, too, might some
day have one crisis too many. Over-confidence is
a common cause of political damnation.
Like Kalfoff in Sofia, so Nintchitch in Belgrade,
always agreed, but never seemed convinced.
It was difficult to discuss things freely at Belgrade in May 1924. Ministers were holding conferences from hour to hour: they had little time
to spare for vagrant Englishmen. Pasitch was, like
Brer Rabbit, lying low. He stayed in his house all
the day watching the futile efforts of the Court:
always awaiting his recall. He refused to see
anyone. His game was too deep and too astute
to permit conversing about it.
'When he was asked what he had done during
the French Revolution the Abbe Sieyes replied:
"J'ai vdcu! "-" I have lived!" Pasitch might
make something of the same boast. He has lived,
and still lives. He intends to go on living. He
has survived many storms, and he is surviving
still. That is his great achievement.
King Alexander-handsome, spirited, daring



THE TROUBLES OF YUGO-SLAVIA 119
has one great advantage over other kings in the
Balkans. He belongs to a national dynasty. It is
true that the dynasty of the Karageorgeovitches
returned over the slaughtered corpses of their
rivals, the Obrenovitches. But the murdered king
-the first Alexander-had made himself so thoroughly detested by all classes in Serbia that he and
his consort Draga were regarded as fair game. I
could not find that there was any remorse for that
crime. The real trouble in the Balkans is that it is
so difficult to get rid of a bad King without killing
him!
The result is that public opinion sanctions the
use of the knife and the bomb in cases where other
countries would give pensions.
It is a bad business, for the murder habit extends
from the bad to the good, and enfolds all Balkan
politics in its fog of death. But only a strong
federal authority with the power of punishment
and impeachment could provide a substitute.
Meanwhile, the Balkan peoples continue to act
on the principle of the English seventeenth century
-" Dead man hath no fellow! "
At present, King Alexander stands well with his
people. His position cannot be compared with
that of the Glucksburgs in Greece, who really lost
their power because of their foreign origin. At
the moment of my visit Alexander appeared to
be putting his Royal authority to a dangerous
test. But he seemed to know his business: and
he, too, has survived.
One day, when I went to pay a visit of courtesy




120 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
at the Palace, I had some experience of the
nervousness prevailing in those high altitudes.
I first approached the Palace by the front entrance. But I was instantly pounced upon by two
soldiers with loaded rifles. I showed my card and
pictured my wishes in the language of gesticulation.
They comprehended and directed me to a side
door. I went round the Palace and reached this
entrance. There I found the attendants nervous
and suspicious. But they let me write my name in
the visitors' book; and in all subsequent dealings
I found the Court easy and polite, although always
reserved and courteous. I could not blame them.
I saw the Foreign Minister next day. M. Nintchitch received me in his beautiful room at the
Foreign Office, opposite the Palace. He talked
quite freely in excellent French. He revealed himself to be a true friend of Balkan peace. " How
could we desire war?" he asked passionately:
" we, who were invaded three times, who lost the
flower of our manhood, and who had to take flight
across the mountains in the snow and the tempest,
until we reached the sea?
" I myself took that journey with the Ministers,"
he went on. "Happily we travelled swiftly. If
we had delayed we should all have perished; for
ambushes were lying in wait for us, and the party
that followed us was slaughtered to a man, in the
mistaken idea that they were the Government."
Such were the perils of the Serbian Ministers
in the agonies of that great trial, the flight of a
nation.




THE TROUBLES OF YUGO-SLAVIA 121
I listened demurely, but I was not convinced.
It never seems to me that any amount of horrors
for long affect the Balkan peoples. They have been
so long inured to war that all the circumstances
of war pass over their heads. Once recovered from
their fatigue, they are ready to start again. What
reassured me more than these vows was the new
note of tolerance and consideration that I detected
in the talk of the Yugo-Slavian Foreign Minister.
He spoke kindly even of the Bulgarians-which is
a great thing for a Serb. He admitted the belief
that the comitadji movement-Todor Alexandroff's
-was not organised by the Bulgarian Government:
a belief that has been confirmed by the course of
events since that conversation.
But in spite of that-so he argued-the Macedonians were tremendously powerful, and it was
necessary for Yugo-Slavia to defend herself. That,
he contended, was the sole meaning of the great
concentration of Serbian troops that I had observed
in Serbian Macedonia. Defence, not defiance.
From that point of view Nintchitch hotly defended the army of Yugo-Slavia —6oo,ooo on a war
footing, and about I30,000 in peace-which has
provoked so much criticism in England. " We are
the guardians of the Balkans! " he exclaimed.
" Our alliance with Greece makes us the sole defenders against the Turks. Greece is very weak,
and so is Bulgaria. We alone are strong! "
I asked him gently what they proposed to do
with their army. How, for instance, did they
interpret the obligations of their treaties with




122    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Greece on the one hand, and Italy on the other?
He replied quite clearly and positively:
" We shall go to the help of Greece if she is
attacked, whether by Turkey or by Bulgaria. But
we shall not support Greece if she attacks either of
those Powers. We hear rumours of a combination
between Turkey and Bulgaria. Against such a development we stand like adamant. To all Turkish
claims in the Balkans we say 'Never again! ' "
It was in this way that Nintchitch attempted
to justify that great army of the new Yugo-Slavia
which we had observed at every point in the
Balkans-along the railway, at Monastir, at
Skopolje, and in Belgrade itself. This army, he
contended, is a kind of " Warden of the Marches "
between Christianity and the Turk. There they
perform a duty to Europe. They have come to
terms with Italy, but they present an iron front
to the eternal threat of the Turk.
So it seems that, in the Balkans at any rate, if
you desire peace you still prepare for war.
Since I paid this visit to Belgrade much water
has flowed under the bridges. Todor Alexandroff
has been slain, in some dark and sinister quarrel
between satanic forces of rebellion and anarchy.
Raditch has come and gone. Pasitch-the man
with the long white beard who is the living soul
of Yugo-Slavia-is back in power. Yugo-Slavia
has made its alliance with Italy, has broken with
Greece, and is nibbling at the Salonica railway.




THE TROUBLES OF YUGO-SLAVIA 128
The Bulgarian Prime Minister has visited Belgrade.
The Bishop Premier, Fan Noli, has fled from
Albania.
New combinations are forming in the shifting
forces of the Perilous Peninsula. It is difficult
to assess their importance or value: or even to
tell at once whether they make for peace or for
war. Gazing across Europe, it is like watching
the swirling mists on some mountain-side, torn
and twisted by eddies of furious wind, joining and
dividing, obscuring and revealing, gathering and
scattering.  Not until eventide will you know
whether those mists will dissolve, leaving the
mountain crest clear and unsullied, or whether
they will thicken into eclipsing cloud.
So it is with the Balkans. Only time will reveal
whether these alliances and counter-alliances portend deeper and more serious divisions between
these little States-or whether they are making
towards that end which is the only true cure for
the troubles of the Balkans-Peninsula Union.




IV


THE SERB IN VICTORY
THE heavens descended on us at Belgrade, and for
three days torrential rain kept us in our wigwams.
But a few hours of sunshine enabled us one afternoon to take the steamer that plies between
Belgrade and Semlin-a little town which lies at
the junction of the Danube and the Sava opposite
to Belgrade. There we debarked and spent a few
hours wandering down the avenues and along the
streets of this little old Austrian town. Never was
there such a contrast of civilisations within such
a short distance.
Semlin is, indeed, in every way, a vivid change
from Belgrade. In crossing the Sava we seemed to
have left behind the "ragged edge." The roads of
Semlin are clean and well paved. The little houses
are neat and well kept. There is an air of finish in
the very alleys and footpaths. The small gardens
smile with their flowers and neat borders. Avenues
of trees run straight along the pavements, and
even the people look better washed and more
prosperous.
We seemed to have escaped from the region of
untrimmed fringes. No longer did one perceive
piles of paving stones along the roadways, waiting
from year to year in the hope of being used for the
I24




THE SERB IN VICTORY            125
purpose of repair; or deep shell-holes on the footpath. On returning to Belgrade I remarked upon
the contrast in conversation with some English
residents. Their only reply was: "Why, it is very
simple. Semlin was once Austrian! "
It seemed very simple to them. But it created
in my mind a deep perplexity, which became
deeper and deeper as I journeyed the following day
through those beautiful plains, dotted with the
little old Austrian villages so bright and clean, with
their neat little cottages and their tapering spires.
This land is now under the government of the Slav.
I was one of those simple souls who believed that
one of the results of the war was to transfer large
parts of Eastern Europe to the rightful ownership
of better governments. But the dreadful reality
began to dawn on me that in the process of politics
and the chances of war, confused by the crimes of
statesmen and the insanities of kings, the final
upshot had been not quite what we had expected.
There are " ragged edges " in the settlement also.
Countries accustomed to long, fixed, steady,
regular government now find themselves under
the sketchy control of impressionist rulers. Selfdetermination literally applied has produced some
strange results.
But this principle of self-determination has not
been quite literally applied. For within this great
Slav area there have been included considerable German populations. The inclusion of these peoples
has borne some strange fruit. It was expected
that the Germans would become the henchmen




126 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
of the Slavs-would cut their wood and draw
their water. But day by day the impression grows
stronger that the Slav may become the henchman
of the German, and that the Teutonic minority in
these regions-better educated and more highly
civilised-may, in the end, dominate the State.
Of course, all this may be only a passing phase.
But we saw Germans everywhere in the hotelsnot those luxurious Germans about whom people
write so angrily to the English newspapers, a very
imaginary people, who generally turn out to be
Dutchmen. The Germans whom we saw crowding
into the hotels at Belgrade were by no means
luxurious. They were hard-working, hard-living
commercial travellers; sometimes, indeed, from
Berlin or Vienna, but very often simply from the
northern part of Yugo-Slavia. Belgrade wanted
reconstruction, and they had come to reconstruct
her. I do not envy them their task. But they
seemed very determined about it, and they occupied
most of the room in the hotel.
Driven out by war, they are coming back by way
of trade. One afternoon Sir Alban Young, then our
distinguished British Minister at Belgrade, kindly
took me for a motor ride round the outskirts of the
city, to visit the point where the Germans crossed
the Sava in one of the outstanding military achievements of the Great War. On the slopes of the hill
overlooking the river their dead still lie, railed
within a cemetery very far from their homes. The
inscriptions are fading from the granite, and the
wild flowers are creeping over the stones which




THE SERB IN VICTORY


127


record the heroism of obscure German peasants
who died in vain for their country.
The captains and the kings have departed; and
there, by the shores of those great rivers, the graves
of humble followers remain to-day, a poignant
mockery of human boasting, a tragic memorial
of wasted human heroism. Standing by those
graves, we could not but take off our hats to the
brave men who, at any rate, had done no more
than their duty. But motoring back to the hotel
we found the rooms resounding with the clatter
of the German language. The returning battalions
of the commercials still clamorously asserted their
influence. Where the sword had failed, commerce
was succeeding, and while the heroes lay beneath
the grass, the merchants were trafficking in the
very fruits of their defeat.
That evening I was entertained at a very pleasant
little repast in the Palace Hotel by the officials of the
Yugo-Slavian Foreign Office. Nothing could have
been more courteous and amiable than their whole
attitude towards their English visitors: nothing
could have been more hopeful and gallant than the
mood with which they faced the problems of their
future.
Most of these young Serbians had gone through
desperate perils and fatigues during the Great War.
They had been driven from their country, and had
wandered through strange lands. Some of themwere
the sole survivors of large families. For Yugo-Slavia
lost in the war a far greater proportion of her manhood than any other nation on the side of the victors.




128 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Established once more in their capital, they
have set their faces resolutely towards the future.
What struck me most about them was their selfreliance. That is, I am certain, what underlies
their militarism-no spirit of aggression or ambition, but just a determination that they shall
never again have to endure what they endured in
those terrible years. We English perhaps fail to
remember what grim memories fill their minds.
We forget the terrible isolation of this country
since the collapse of Russia. For Russia has now
become a foe and a peril, instead of a protector;
they cannot ignore that change. Therefore it is
with wisdom that they have decided to make
terms with possible foes: that they have made
a treaty with Italy and settled the question of
Fiume: that they are ready to make a treaty with
France.
This policy of conciliation in foreign affairs is
common to all Yugo-Slavian parties, and is a conspicuous note of all their talk. They are perfectly
ready to make a similar treaty with Great Britain,
if Great Britain should show the smallest desire to
do so. But, rightly or wrongly, our British Foreign
Office has a reputation abroad of being more adept
at making enemies than at making friends.
Yugo-Slavia is friendly, I say, to all nations. But
I must make one exception. That is Bulgaria.
Two professors of the Belgrade University had
been brought to that dinner for the express purpose of persuading me that the Bulgarians, by
race and origin, lay outside the pale of humanity.




THE SERB IN VICTORY


129


Fortunately, in the middle of their arguments all
the electric lights in the hotel suddenly went out,
and in the confusion that followed we were not
able to pursue with sufficient ardour this delightful
theme. But before leaving Belgrade I was presented
with a vast library of literature on the past and
present failings of Bulgaria, just as in Sofia my
baggage had been crowded with similar literature
about the misdoings of Serbia.
I read all this literature in the Orient Express
on the way home, and became more convinced
than ever that the pen is mightier than the
sword. But there are occasions when the pen
is dipped in corrosive acid; and in those cases I
incline to the opinion that the sword is the -more
honest and honourable weapon. Yet the sword
has been pretty thoroughly tried in the relations
of these two countries. They have had no less than
twenty wars in the course of their history: and two
of those have occurred during the last ten years.
The school of thought which believes in the
curative power of violence must incur considerable
discouragement if they ever honestly contemplate
the result of these Balkan wars. For instead of
improving relations between the Balkan peoples
these wars have considerably worsened them.
Some half-a-million of Bulgarians have perished
in one decade in pursuance of the plan of " fighting
things out." According to this theory one would
conclude that the remnants of these two battered
countries would certainly make it up. Not a bit of
it! The final upshot of all these struggles has been
I




130   THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
that, after this immense holocaust of lives, the
survivors detest one another worse than ever.
The learned Serbian professors who held forth
between the light and the darkness on this theme
at the Palace Hotel were convinced that it was due
to the element of Mongol blood in the Bulgarian
nation. These Serbs would have me believe that
the Bulgarians to-day are to be wiped from off
the face of the earth because they introduced a
Mongol element into the purity of the Slav stock
when they swept south into the Balkans almost
thirteen hundred years ago.
Quite as easily could the Irish and the Welsh
maintain that the English ought to be expelled
from the British Isles because their Saxon ancestors
who landed at Ebbsfleet in the early sixth century
were heathen Germans from the south of Jutland,
and came with the flaming torch and the sharp
sword to destroy the Roman Christianity of earlier
Britain. Both cases are entirely true. But, one has
to ask-Is there to be no Statute of Limitations
to human hatreds?
Long since, both Saxon and Bulgar have become
Christianised and civilised. The Saxon heathen
has become the modern Englishman and the
Bulgarian Mongol has become the decent Bulgarian
citizen of Sofia. Neither is responsible for his
ancestors, and both are probably entirely ignorant
of what their forefathers thought or did. One
might just as well knock down the first Englishman
one met in the Strand because Hengist and Horsa
burnt the churches and destroyed the monasteries




THE SERB IN VICTORY             181
of Kent, as kill a modem Bulgarian because his
Asiatic ancestors drove the wedge of barbarism
across the Danube. History itself becomes a curse
when it is turned to such intolerable persuasions.
It would, indeed, be ridiculous to delay over
such arguments if it were not the actual fact that
they are the cause of atrocities to-day. Flogged
by the historian and the propagandist, the Balkan
struggle still goes on. The Treaty of Neuilly was
signed in I9I9. But the war has not ceased.
Armies no longer shock in battle. But bands of
robbers and murderers cross the frontiers by night
and slay and burn. They call them " comitadjis."
But I cannot see that rapine and murder become
any better because you call them by a civilian name.
On the contrary, the midnight assassinations of
these cruel guerrillas are far worse than the honest
killings of open war.
This comitadji business is the curse of the
Balkans.  It has become the sanction for the
darkest deeds.  Under its black cloak neither
woman nor child is free from midnight murder.
It has demoralised the statesmen. It is the cause
of that habit of assassination which is rotting
Balkan politics. It is the most infamous growth
of racial hatred known to our time.
At the moment when I visited Belgrade the
actual work of murder had abated. The Macedonian comitadjis had been checked: since then
Alexandroff has perished.
The Serbs had adopted the rigorous method of
packing with troops the whole of the threatened




132    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
area. They boldly armed the villagers in Serbian
Macedonia, and thus met with defiance the Bulgarian argument that it was the villagers who
sympathised with the invaders.
All these are passing phases of a deep and underlying strife. The enduring fact is this hatred
between Yugo-Slavia and Bulgaria. The weapon
of the comitadji is alternately employed by one or
the other, and is really reprobated by neither. Our
English ministers in the Balkans find in conversation that most of the Balkan statesmen have, in
their time, been comitadjists themselves. "As an
old comitadjist," said one Balkan statesman to one
of our English ministers, " I can tell you how to
stop their activities. Just cut off their supplies!"
On the principle of setting a thief to catch a
thief, this device sounds well. But it is to be
remembered that the thief is still a thief although
he may be in office, and is perfectly ready to
employ a thief to-morrow for his rival's undoing.
The only real cure for this underlying trouble,
this poison germ in the Balkan body corporate,
is to promote the opposite microbe of peace and
union which alone can drive this disease out of the
veins and tissues of the Balkan States.




PART IV
THE CAULDRON'S RIM-INTO GREECE




0




I


GREECE DECIDES
WE entered Old Greece, by a curious coincidence,
on the very day of the plebiscite in which the
whole country was to make the decision between
Monarchy and Republic.
All through the country as we travelled we saw
the peasantry flocking to the polls at the wayside
stations. The sight of this exercise of a free vote
in an emancipated land seemed in harmony with
the mission which brought us to Greece —the
commemoration of the death of Byron, the English
poet who, exactly a hundred years before, died
that Greece might be free. Those events seemed
in tune with the mood of nature, which on those
April days leapt into a sudden resurrection from
the Balkan winter. Along with the melting of the
snows on the mountains and the blossoming of the
spring flowers, Greece seemed to be travelling into
a new world, away from the darkness of the past.
As the train wound slowly southward through
the beautiful peninsula, climbing over the hills
within sight of the Pass of Thermopylae, we could
see the crowds in the villages and at the stations
gathering to discuss the great issue of the day.
We bought the newspapers: and between us we
spelt out the political manifestos with which both
I35




136 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
parties-Royalist and Republican-were trying to
lash the people into furious partisanship. Those
appeals lacked nothing in violence of language or
vehemence of feeling. But the mood of the Greek
people seemed to be strangely aloof. Wherever we
passed, perfect calm prevailed. It was as peaceful
as an election day in England-more peaceful
perhaps: because it was Sunday.
Standing in the corridor of the train we saw
afar the outline of the immortal Acropolis, and
we knew that we were approaching the City of
the Violet Crown.
We were met at the station by an old friend,
Professor Andreades, so splendid a champion of
Anglo-Hellenic friendship. He told us that all the
traffic was stopped, but that the Government had
given me a special permit for movement and had
allowed a motor-car. In that car we drove about
Athens all day: watching the voting; visiting the
polling booths, and witnessing every detail of the
great act of decision taken by the people of Greece
on that day of I3th April I924.
It must not be imagined that the Greeks themselves foresaw the great majority which gave so
much strength and power to the ultimate vote.
Professor Andreades himself was quite anxious as
to the result. He was inclined to doubt whether
there would be any overwhelming decision on
either side.  He feared a stalemate.  Rumours
along the railway had been by no means reassuring.
There were persistent rumours of possible civil
war in case of an uncertain issue on either side.




GREECE DECIDES


137


Athens was under martial law. There were
ominous forebodings as to the action of the military
in case of a narrow Royalist victory.
Yet at Athens itself we found the world at peace.
Crowds moved easefully about the streets. All the
world and his wife were out looking on. There
were no signs of coercion or compulsion. Now and
again, indeed, a motor-lorry full of young soldiers
without arms rattled down the streets. Their cry
was, "Nai! Nai!" ("Yes! Yes! ")-which had
become the battle-cry of the Republicans. But
these young soldiers exercised no pressure-except
in the form of high spirits. On visiting the polling
booths I found the people voting peacefully and
methodically. They were moving in queues. Many
of the polling booths were in churches. The clergy
looked on-but exercised no influence. I could
find no substance in the Royalist charges.
It is true that both the army and the refugees
exercised their vote, and that their vote went
mainly Republican. But the intense democracy
of Greece would not tolerate that any large class,
whether military or immigrant, should be excluded
from the franchise. They voted because they were
Greek. It was the Monarchy's own catastrophe
that they had lost the support of two such tremendous factors as the refugees and the army. The
conviction of both the army and the refugees that
the Monarchy had been their common enemy was
the real reason for its downfall.
As the day went on, itibecame clearer and clearer
that the cause of the Republic was winning. There




188 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
is a great advantage in a Sunday poll: it really
adds a certain gravity, as of religion, to a great
national decision. The people can give their whole
mind to the issue: the secular distractions of
business and sport are stilled. The people of Athens
voted freely and soberly. Very soon after the closing of the polls, while we were sitting at dinner, we
began to receive news from the newspaper offices
that the Republic was affirmed by a decisive
majority.
The H6tel Grande Bretagne, as every Near
Eastern traveller knows, stands in Athens on the
Place de la Constitution. The King's old palace
stands at the northern end, and at the southern
there lies an agreeable open space, where the
Athenians love to sit at small tables beneath the
shade of the pepper-trees. Sitting in the porch of
this pleasant hotel, you can watch the making
of Greek history. For practically all events have
their echoes in Constitution Square. You can, for
instance, almost judge the mood of the Greek
people from the attitude of the little groups of
Athenian boot-blacks who sit at the corners of the
square with their handy little boxes, and scramble
for the honour of blacking your boots: or from the
look in the faces of the Athenian citizens who stand
gossiping along the pavements, playing with the
little string of yellow beads which every good Greek
carries to soothe his passions or employ his hands.
After dinner-lasting, in Athens, almost to midnight-I walked into the square to watch events.
A white screen in front of the newspaper offices on




GREECE DECIDES


189


the south side of the square proclaimed the results
of the polling: and as each result was shown a
crash of cheers came from the crowd massed in
the roadway. The screen revealed the voice of a
nation. The utterance came with equal volume
of decision whether from the Peloponnese or from
Boeotia; from the farthest islands or Western
Thrace; from Crete or Thessaly.
There is something very mysterious about this
even uniformity of utterance, so often observable
in modern democracies. England-France-Greece
-each has this same characteristic. You watch
the tide-mark at any one spot. There are key
elections. You know that when such constituencies
have spoken the nation has decided. The same
tide will rise, with impressive uniformity, throughout a whole country-in Great Britain, even to the
farthest Hebrides: here in Greece to the remotest
island of the ZEgean. How explain this mystery of
the souls of peoples?
To-day the decision seemed final and decisive.
An earlier plebiscite had decided for Constantine.
But since then the Monarchy had been tried and
found wanting. " Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin."
The writing ran in letters of fire.
As we watched this terrific judgment spelling
itself out on the screen through the hours of this
Athenian  spring  night-dark  but warm-we
realised that we were in the presence of a great
historic act: an act that marked the close of an
epoch.
Princess Nicholas of Greece, eating the bitter




140 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
bread of exile in London, spoke some months later
to me of this day as the most disastrous in the
history of Greece. Well, we shall see. I pass no
judgment till the whole scroll is unrolled. Greece is
fickle: and the idea of Royalty is strong. But on
that day I had the feeling of a country that had
made up its mind once and for all.
Athens on such occasions forgoes the call of
slumber. She spends the nights in the streets. All
through the small hours the people moved about
the city in bands and processions. They serenaded
the British Legation-sang-these new Republicans!-the English National Anthem, with its
" God save the King "! Brass bands came marching
across the square, students with brazen clamour
giving voice to eager multitudes. Throngs shouted
" Ochi! Ochi! " and " Nai! Nai! "at one another
in passing-" No! No! " and "Yes! Yes! "
But always with the utmost good temper and free
from the smallest violence: less tumultuous than
our Armistice crowds: more political, more eager
than our crowds in our ordinary General Elections.
The night became one great march of triumph.
The Royalists were lying low: the music was all of
victory. But there was no spirit of revenge. Our
Athenian hosts said-very courteously-that it
was the presence of the English visitors that made
for order. I doubted it. Those crowds were not
thinking of any English visitors. They were
thinking of their own affairs. After all the years
of turmoil they had resolved on a decision.
They had decided to seek peace.




GREECE DECIDES


141


On the next day (Monday, I4th April) the troops
were withdrawn from the streets, and martial law
was dropped.  The Royalists had already submitted to the will of so great a majority. For the
moment the air was filled with the spirit of general
tolerance and amity. During the day the Prime
Minister issued a tranquillising proclamation.
The sunshine was glorious: brilliant and yet cool.
Bunches of lilac were being sold everywhere in the
streets. The shimmer of fresh green clothed the
parks in emerald. Never had I seen Athens look
so fair.
Yet behind this outward show of happiness
there lay a background of great suffering. On that
very afternoon Mr Henry Morgenthau, then the
American Chairman of the League of Nations
Commission, took me to see the National Theatre.
It was still packed with over a thousand refugees
from Asia Minor-a family in every box. With
strange and uncanny skill the refugees had rigged
up little homes inside the theatre boxes, arranging
their furniture and utensils with great deftness;
surrounding these strange little nests of theirs with
decent hangings: preserving in all their calamities
a wonderful gaiety and fortitude. At the same
time, one had to move carefully in so small a space.
I was about to step on a little bundle that lay in
my path when I noticed a slight movement and
withdrew my foot. It was a newly born baby.
I sauntered out to the open space of the square,
eager to watch every phase of the event. I found
myself in the middle of a huge Athenian crowd,




142 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
moving to and fro across this wide and free piazza.
All eyes were turned to the centre, and it was
clear that some important episode was passing. I
mounted on to a chair and thence on to a table:
and thus advantaged in height, I was able to
witness every detail of a remarkable spectacle.
In the very heart of this crowd the men of the
King's Bodyguard-the famous Evzones-were
standing at ease in a large circle.  They had
evidently been brought down from the King's
Palace to receive the news of their change of
service. They were beautifully dressed in their gala
costumes: gold-embroidered waistcoats; scarlet
caps with long hanging tassels of dark blue;
starched white fustanellas encircling them, and on
their feet little pointed shoes, with fluffy tufts of
wool on the tips. I could not get away from the
feeling that they were a group of good little boys
dressed in fancy ball costume, and very carefully
washed at that. They seemed to have come out of
a box of toys: in trying to phrase one's impressions one could not escape from the word " pretty."
But their mood at this moment was perilously near
to the' ugly.
For some time the soldiers-these Palace Guards
-stood there sullenly. Then a real genius of a
caterer came out from his restaurant carrying a
tray loaded with big glasses of foaming beer. The
glasses were handed round, and the guards began
to soften. Then, very deliberately, they placed
their arms on one another's shoulders and, moving
very slowly at first, they began circling round. A




GREECE DECIDES             143
leader began to skip in front of this Indian file,
absurdly waving a handkerchief. He pirouetted
with elephantine solemnity. This action had a
magical effect on the rest of the soldiers. They all
began to move with more good will. The pace grew.
The band struck up a lively tune. Now the circle
began to eddy with a bewildering rapidity. They
were performing one of the great national dances
of Greece-those dances of which the secret is mass
movement. It was a dance such as Byron had seen
when he wrote:
"You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet.
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"
Then they followed this up with more corybantics-one of which, again absurdly childish,
seemed a copy of our " Oranges and Lemons." The
leaders formed a bridge of linked hands, under
which the gallant guardsmen passed one by one,
bending their gigantic bodies beneath this human
archway, and in their turn becoming an archway themselves. It was for all the world like an
open-air children's party. Perhaps, indeed, only in
Greece, the land of eternal youth, could one witness
such a strange mingling of the child and the man.
But the Athenians were in the seventh heaven.
They applauded vehemently-perhaps with a
touch of fear: for, after all, these were soldiers,
and there was a revolution going on. But the men
were unarmed. The glasses of beer seemed to join
in the dance. " a Ira! a Ira! Dance the Carmagnole! " I found myself clapping, perched there




144    THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
on my precarious platform of chair and table.
There were constant cheering and shouting! The
men moved in ever swifter circles, their fustanellas
eddying to the breeze.
Then quite suddenly the whole fantastic display
came to an abrupt end. Some whisper of discipline
must have come down from the Palace: for the
soldiers broke off from the dance as quickly as they
had begun; formed fours, and marched smartly
off up the square. The last glimpse I had of them
was that of scarlet caps and white fustanellas
moving gaily away.
But a great event had passed before my eyes.
The soldiers had been won over: yes, even the
soldiers of the King himself.
The King was alone.




II


MOONLIGHT
HAVING settled this'great matter of the Republic,
the Athenian people were able to give themselves
up to the Byron celebrations.
We had come to Greece with the idea of a literary
commemoration. But we soon found that Greece
itself had decided on something quite different. It
took Byron not as a literary man, but as a symbol
of self-sacrifice in the cause of nationality. They
accepted him as a type of all those Englishmen
-Church, Cochrane, Codrington and Stanhopewho came to help Greece in her bitter hour. The
supreme fact about Byron to their mind is that
he laid down his life for Greece. Concentration
on this great fact saves the Greek people from the
habit of ghoulish soul-snatching which in England
so often stands for literary criticism.  Byron's
glory, therefore, becomes a robe thrown over
reluctant England-a giant's robe with which she
is ennobled in her own despite. That was the
note of the Byron celebrations, which began on
the following day and continued for a whole week.
Inspired by that idea, Greece forgot Byron and
remembered England. For Byron in Greece stands
for England: Byron in his noblest and last phase
-not the Byron of Venice or Genoa, but the


K


I45




146 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Byron of Missolonghi: the Byron who roused an
indifferent Europe: the Byron who gave his life
for his friends.
The young men at the British Legation were
hugely amused at the action of the Athenian crowd
in celebrating their decision for a Republic by
singing God Save the King. It seemed to them
vastly humorous that a crowd should first vote for
a Republic and then chant for a King. But there
is food for something deeper than laughter in that
remarkable incident. The Greeks were not so
much thinking of the English Monarchy. They
were thinking of England, " Mother of the Free."
They sang our English national anthem because it
belonged to us as a nation. They associated our
English kingship with something very different
from the atmosphere of their own monarchy. They
chanted a kingship that stands for justice and
freedom as against a kingship which in Greece
stood for arrogance and disaster.
Similarly, at the Byron film which was shown
that evening at the Odeon Cinema-in the main
street of Athens-when the screen showed an
imaginary picture of Byron offering his sword to
Greece, the whole audience rose and cheered-not
because of Byron, but because in that picture the
story symbolised England. So it was that whenever we appeared with the British flag flying in
front of our car, the Athenian crowd halted and
shouted with joy. They had a strange, haunting
idea that in adopting a Republic they were doing
something really and truly British!




MOONLIGHT


147


The first of the Byron celebrations was a very
pretty and touching little tribute to that famous
young lady, the " Maid of Athens "-Theresa
Macri, the daughter of a former British ViceConsul, with whose widow-in the absence of
hotels-Byron lodged on his first visit to Athens
(I809-I810). Byron's famous lyric is still one of the
prettiest love poems in the English language; and
the memory of the Maid is still very dear to the
Greek heart. The actual cottage in which Byron
lodged has long since disappeared, and a very
plain, urban residence-one of a long street-has
sprung up on the site. But the tradition abides:
just as the beauty of the original Maid of Athens
is carried on by her charming dark-eyed grandniece, who came to meet us and smile on us.
One cannot help regretting the destruction of
the little old Greek dwelling-house-that bit of
real Old Greece-with its courtyard and lemontrees. It is all described to us by Hobhouse and
Williams 1-the house itself: and the courtyard
on which they looked out, with the lemon-trees
from which the fruit was plucked to season the
pilaf served up to Byron, who loved the Greek
dishes.
Across the courtyard the young Englishmen
could see the three young sisters-Catinco, Theresa
and Mariana-sitting on a divan with their little
bare feet curled up under them, at work with their
1 See Travels in Albania and other Provinces of Turkey. John
Cam Hobhouse (The Right Hon. Lord Broughton, G.C.B.).
London, 1813. Travels in Italy, Greece, etc. H. W. Williams.
London, 1820.




148 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
needles-" tambouring "-or reading. On the head
of each sister was a little scarlet Albanian cap, with
a blue tassel spread out and fastened down like a
star. Beneath the cap was a handkerchief bound
round their temples. The youngest, Mariana,
wore her hair loose, falling on her shoulders. It
pleased the fancy of Byron to imagine himself in
love with Theresa, the eldest, but still only fifteen
years of age. The girls, so Williams tells us,
could talk well: and Byron had learnt a little
Greek-enough for making love.
In his letter home Byron laughed at the " old
woman's idea" that he should marry Theresa;
and it is clear that his affection for the Maid was
no deeper than any other of the multitudinous
fancies of passage that assailed " Childe Harold."
But it has pleased Greece, in her pretty, idealistic
way, to make a great romance out of this affection:
and round it there has grown up a whole fabric of
Greek literature and music.
Our spokesman, Mr Pember Reeves, speaking
from the porch of the building, after unveiling the
commemorative tablet placed there by the AngloHellenic League, prettily figured out that Theresa
was Greece: a symbol of Byron's devotion to the
whole people. The fancy pleased the Greeksthose who understood-and the gathering received
it with high humour. The crush of Athenians in
that narrow street was itself a striking evidence
of the deep emotions which here move round the
memory of Byron.
At the close of the ceremony I enjoyed an enter



MOONLIGHT                149
taining experience. The Greek Prime Minister
-then my friend M. Papanastassiou-with his
intense sense of friendliness and equality, turned
round to look for a British visitor to take into
his car. I happened to be the nearest, and in a
moment he had plucked me from my place among
the onlookers, and elevated me to his right
hand.
Thus ordered, we proceeded at a slow pace
through the central streets of Athens, amid the
frenzied acclamations of a vast moving populace.
For it was the holiday of the new Republic, and
the streets were so packed that we could move
only at a footpace.
The Athenians were aware of only one thing:
they saw their Prime Minister of the day riding
side by side with an Englishman; and their
minds leapt forward. " Long Live England! "" Z/rw, AyYXLa! "-became their watchword and
their marching cry. They surrounded the car and
swept forward with that word on their lips.
It was "one crowded hour of glorious life!"
For the moment we lived in dreamland. We
fancied our nations as friends. We imagined,
in our vision, the mighty Sea Power of the West
stretching out a hand to the little Sea Vedette of
the East. We passed from gathering to gathering.
We made orations. I forget now what we said or
what we promised. I only see visions of shouting
crowds, waving caps, keen, dark, Greek eyes, open
mouths.
We had escaped from the ordered gradation of




150 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
diplomatic life. We had forgotten the dividing
frosts of officialism.
To-day I am sitting in chilly England.
That evening we were to be entertained by the
Government on the Acropolis by the light of the
full moon.
Athens was en fte all the long day. The streets
were gay with many colours. The Union Jack and
the blue and white of the Greek flag everywhere
streamed together in affectionate intertwining.
As the evening wore on, the streets glittered with
many electrical devices. The Prime Minister gave
us a banquet at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, and
there Sir Rennell Rodd, our official delegate, voiced
our feelings in a speech of exquisite felicity.
Then, after dinner, in motor-cars, we set off in
high feather for the Acropolis, looking forward to
a quiet, poetic evening.
No one could afterwards explain how it happened; but the fact is that that visit to the
Acropolis nearly cost us our lives.
There is something very simple in the way the
Greeks manage these great public demonstrations.
Perhaps it is due to the fact that Greek governments come and go so quickly: or perhaps it is
because the Greeks by long tradition are debarred
from mistrusting crowds.
The ruling idea was a select little party in the
Parthenon under the moonlight. But the Athenians
decided otherwise.  After all, the Acropolis is
theirs. It was as if our King had decided to hold




MOONLIGHT


151


a party in Hyde Park. Would not the Londoners
decide to come too? At any rate, the Athenians
determined to appear as uninvited guests. So
when we arrived at the gates we found the Greeks
there already-in multitudes.
Now this was a little foregathering which the
Greek Government had not foreseen. They had
made no preparation for it, either in police or
soldiery. There was no adequate control for this
vast mob which now stormed at the gates of the
Acropolis. We had to fight our way through.
The situation became dangerous, especially to
the elder members of our party. I had the good
fortune to be escorted by the Greek Home Secretary, M. Aravantinos, who turned round from
time to time as we mounted the Acropolis and
addressed the crowd in philippic orations. He
appealed to their highest feelings: told them
that an English guest was among them; urged
that it was desirable not to crush him to death.
They listened, cheered; and resumed their march.
They once more affectionately closed in on us in
the darkness: with an embrace that threatened
extinction.
My veteran friend, Mr Pember Reeves, refused
to leave the storming party even under these
menacing circumstances, and he was carried
through the gates along with the others. There
he lost his breath, and nearly his life. He became
a "casualty." For several hours we lost him:
and it was not until the eve of our return that
he was discovered, "faint but pursuing," on




152 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
the slopes of the " glory that was Greece." He
should certainly now fill a niche in the Greek
Pantheon.
The summit was clear. There, within the Parthenon, we lived for several hours amid the stars,
companions of those immortal marbles.  They
shone around and above us like silver in the moonlight. Outside, in front of the western pediment,
a choir of Greek girls sang The Maid of Athens
to a harp accompaniment. In the silence of the
night the music sounded mystic and ghostly:
the voice of Greece that was, and is, and is to
be. Far below, the lights of Athens glittered in
the broad expanse of their modern array. Under
that moon, in a light which seemed to be at
once daylight and darkness, there glimmered far
beneath us, wide, dim stretches of land and sea.
Across the LEgean the hills of the Peloponnese
loomed vague and shadowy through the night.
Between us and those hills the sea gloomed, a
darkling mirror. All round us were the majestic
and stately memories of the past, wrapped in a
veil not unlike that cloak of transparency which
is called history.
On this ethereal summit, the seat of the gods,
we remained for some hours: entranced with that
wonderful spot, and the still more wonderful night.
We moved to and fro on those ancient stones,
which Pericles trod with his architects two
thousand years before; whilst the Greek Home
Secretary-one of the most ardent of the young
revolutionaries-poured out to me his dreams




MOONLIGHT                153
for the reshaping of Greece.  Listening to his
schemes and plans we walked to and fro under
the stars, and the minutes passed quickly. Then
suddenly a chill fell on us, as it does in those
Greek nights, and we desired to descend.
But if it had been difficult to ascend the
Acropolis, it was still more difficult to descend.
The young men of the British Legation who
acted as our scouts came back from time to
time to report to us that the blockade was still
"effective "- this blockade of affection; this
embarrassing siege of enthusiasm. Now that we
desired to go down, the Athenians also shared
our impulse: and they were already moving down
to the gates with the furious unanimity of a
swarm of Attic bees.
The exit from the Acropolis is practically a
funnel. It is a steep, rocky place, where the old
steps have been mostly broken away. The marble
steps of Ancient Greece survive only on one side.
It was down this narrow causeway that the great
mass of the people had to descend in the darkness.
The wonder is that no disaster occurred. The
smallest panic would have precipitated us all
against the gates, there to be kneaded into a
human pulp.
Happily, the Greek people are good-tempered
and good-natured. The Home Secretary decided
to accompany us down, and with a little escort
of soldiers we descended through the crowds. It
was as well. There were tense moments in that
memorable descent. The crowds pressed as with




154 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
a perilous affection, like the hug of a bear. But, as
it was, we emerged unscathed, and rallied below
the gates.
Then the Home Secretary, with true Hellenic
love of the sea, spirited us away in his swift car to
the shores of Phaleron. There, through the night,
till the dawn glimmered across the LEgean, we sat
and talked about the future of Hellas, dreaming
again the immortal vision of Shelley:
"Another Athens shall arise
And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime
And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give." 1
Dreams of the night as starry and beautiful as
that glimmering vision on the Acropolis!
Visions of perfection which Greece is always
pursuing, and never attaining!
Moonlight!


1 Hellas (one of the final stanzas of the Semi-chorus).




III


MISSOLONGHI
ON the following morning the University of Athens
was in high fete. The city was beflagged, and in
the Great Hall of the splendid modem building
of the revived University of Athens we were
inducted into our new positions as Doctors of an
Academy which is descended from Socrates and
Plato.  This reception was carried out with a
picturesque and stately dignity which might well
present an example to Western academies.
It is an unfortunate circumstance in our Western
life that it has become the custom to treat the conferring of degrees as an occasion for Saturnalian
comedy, giving a new excuse for the unbridled
buffoonery  of  uncontrolled  youth.  Perhaps
Oxford and Edinburgh might take a lesson from
Athens. For there the ceremony was well controlled by the elders of the University, who-today as in the Republic of Ancient Athens-assert
their claim for respect and fair treatment. Youth
was allowed its share of the proceedings: the
undergraduates of Athens, numbering some eight
thousand, sent representatives who keenly followed
the speeches and added their meed of hospitable
applause.
The flower of Modern Athens was assembled on
I55




156 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
the floor of the hall. The galleries were packed
with fair Attic ladies, distinguished to-day, as in
the time of Byron, by their beauty and charm.
The two British Government representatives-Sir
Rennell Rodd and Lord Ernie-looked very distinguished in their gold-braided blue Privy Council
uniforms: and their fellow-delegates shone sympathetically in the best gowns and hoods that
could be dug out of their bags and baggage. The
Athens University itself, enamoured of austerity,
provides no degree gown: but the resources of
Oxford and Cambridge were not to be lightly
exhausted.
There were crises in this sartorial emergency.
There was a moment when the tailors of Athens
seemed likely to be called upon to apply their
faculties to the fashioning of the scarlet hood of
an Oxford Master of Arts; but at the last moment
that sacred garment was found in a recess of
luggage. There was another tragic moment when
Lord Burnham, our chosen orator, was found to
have forgotten, in the stress of travel, both the
scarlet and the pink mantles of his two honourable
doctorates of our two ancient universities. The
offer of an aeroplane proved, on a rapid estimate of
times, too late for the need. The Legation secretaries applied their ingenious faculties, and finally,
from the secret places of the British Ministry, the
black gown of a Master of Arts was brought to add
dignity to the form of our noble spokesman.
As to the speeches and poems, all I need say is
that we had no reason on that, or any other day,




MISSOLONGHI


157


to be ashamed of our English oratory-still, in my
opinion, the best in the world.
Fully doctored and diplomaed, we were now
grouped on the steps of the beautiful classic
University building, and there we were multitudinously photographed in the most luminous
atmosphere available in Europe for that art. A
battery of cameras concentrated on our poor
persons, and the hum of the cinematographic
machine was heard in that land. The Times
had sent a special fisher of men for the occasion.
So every mood of that high morning put in its
claim to immortality.
It seems a pity, when you think of it, that this
miraculous power of staying the sun in its course,
and magically arresting for all time the scene of
a moment, was not earlier discovered!-that the
Athenians, for instance, could not have " filmed"
Pericles in the midst of his mighty Funeral
Oration, or Demosthenes when he was thundering
against Philip of Macedon!
But how often these devices come too late!
That afternoon we paid a pious visit to the little
square where stands that little gem of antiquity,
the "Monument of Lysicrates," so long falsely
known as the " Lantern of Demosthenes." There
we designed to dedicate a little pillar presented
by the city of Athens to commemorate Byron's
association with the square in which stands this
exquisite little choragic trophy, with its tripod on
top, erected to celebrate the triumph of a choir




158 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
in a singing competition of two thousand years
ago. Byron stayed for some months in I8Io, on
his return to Athens from his visit to Troy, in the
Capuchin Convent, as it was called, a structure at
that time built round this little monument. It
was a convent only in name, because it was filled
at that time with a merry assortment of jolly
people of all nationalities. The letters written
from the "Convent" by Byron during those
months show that he thoroughly enjoyed himself;
and certainly not in a conventual-or conventional
-fashion.
But merry as he was, Byron wrote and studied:
and it is the tradition that he worked in a library
built round this " Monument of Lysicrates." It
is believed that he wrote in this library The
Curse of Minerva, his famous attack on Lord
Elgin for robbing Athens of her treasures.
The "Convent" has long ago crumbled into
ruins, and the very ruins have disappeared. But it
is well that this memory should be perpetuated,
and Mr Atchley, a member of the British Legation,
who is himself a storehouse of Byron traditions,
delivered a worthy oration.  The simple little
classic column which he dedicated will now stand
for all time in this little square, telling to all future
generations the strange story of this historic
linking up of ancient music and modern poetry.
We witnessed that evening a very remarkable
display of Greek national dances, organised and
danced by the ladies of Athens, in the National
Theatre. It is significant of the place held by the




IMISSOLONGHI


159


art of the national dance in Greece that this display
was attended by the whole Greek Government,
including the President of the Republic, the
Generals and the Prime Minister.
Dancing plays a great part in our present
English life: and yet it enjoys little honour. We
are, perhaps, even a little ashamed of it. While we
dance, we blush.
What is the reason of this?
Have we even begun to understand what dancing
means, and what it may stand for in the life of a
nation? With us, dancing is simply one of our
lighter pleasures, frankly selfish, more selfish now
than ever, in the form and fashion of its indulgence. With the Greeks the dance is, and ever
has been, a collective and social joy: a display
of natural beauty; a thing of dignity and charm.
As such, the present Greek dances have been
handed down through the centuries by a people
gifted with the finest sense of form and beauty;
a supreme instinct for fitness, and a passion for
the harmonies of movement and sound.
So shaped and fashioned, the dance holds its
place to-day in every village and province of
modern Greece. It has survived all the abominations and brutalities of Turkish tyranny. What
is this art that has gained such a hold over a
nation so distinguished?
It is the art of rhythmic movement-movement
both rhythmic and collective. The movement of
many bodies in linked harmony-that is the heart
and soul of the Greek dance-as you see it still




160 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
danced to-day at Megara, with the waves of lovely
women, nobly draped, swaying in line to the swing
and lilt of the music.
On this evening at Athens the demonstration of
the Greek ladies proved a very beautiful and highly
skilled exhibition of this art of the Greek dance as
it is danced in every part of Greece. The display
of costume and dance passed rhythmically from
the islands to the mainland: from Thrace to
Macedonia: from Macedonia to Attica: from Attica
to the Peloponnese: and from the Peloponnese to
furthermost Crete.
Every dance varied, and every costume. Never
was there such an exhibition of the genius for
beauty of colour and form handed down from
the remote past and still alive with the glow and
beauty of the undying life of a nation.
All these ceremonies had their climax in a visit
planned for the day of Byron's death, i9th April,
to the little town of Missolonghi, on the Gulf of
Patras, where he died at six o'clock on that date
exactly a century before. The Greek Government,
rnow free from its internal troubles, threw itself
into this great celebration with all its strength
and resources.
On the afternoon of Friday, i8th April, at threethirty we left Athens for Missolonghi. We travelled
to Corinth in a special train, which carried with us
a distinguished company. That company included
both the Greek Government and the leaders of the
variegated Parliamentary Opposition, who had




MISSOLONGHI               161
been invited by the Prime Minister to join in this
national celebration. Among the guests also were
distinguished persons such as Mr Henry Morgenthau, the Chairman of the League of Nations
Reconstruction Committee, and Lady Cheetham,
the charming wife of the British Minister. The Royal
railway car was used by this company, and a pilot
engine ran in front of the train. Armed guards
were stationed on the engine and on the rear coach,
and every precaution was taken to prevent an
accident to so honourable a freight. No untoward
event occurred.  Our journey passed without
tragedy. Our lives were serenely safeguarded.
But serenity is scarcely the word to describe the
atmosphere which we immediately discovered on
leaving the placid streets and squares of Athens.
The capital of a country is rarely a true index of a
nation's mind: and Greece is no exception to that
rule. This was the first visit paid by the Republican
Ministers to the country districts since the holding
of the plebiscite, and we were soon to find out that
that event, received so calmly in Athens, had
produced wide reverberations-a veritable groundswell of emotion throughout Greece. The Greek
Ministers came, accompanied by official visitors
from England, on a common errand of celebration: and the Greeks were not slow to leap
forward to the possibilities of such an event.
It was a case of "roses, roses all the way."
From the moment of leaving Athens our train
passed from reception to reception, always increasing in enthusiasm, until the time of our return.
L




162 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
It was a remarkable national demonstration,
composed of mingled elements of memory and
enthusiasm, a greeting both to the past and to the
future: to the old Byron and the new Republic.
What Shelley said in his romantic way was true
that day-" We are all Greeks! "
The first part of our journey was through Attica,
from Athens to Corinth. The train took us through
Daphne, past the circle of hills which surrounds
the capital-through Eleusis and Megara-along
the beautiful coast that faces the island of Salamis
and the lovely ZEgean Sea. Then we crossed the
Isthmus of Corinth, running over the canal. We
looked down on a block at the centre, caused by a
sudden fall of earth and stone from its precipitous
sides. One small fall had blocked the whole canal.
We stopped at Corinth, where we were received by
a great multitude. We threaded our way through
the genial, friendly crowd to the seashore, where
we embarked on boats that took us to a steamer
which had been especially equipped and decorated
by the Government for our journey to Missolonghi
along the Gulf of Corinth.
It is one of the loveliest sea-journeys in Greece.
For many miles there are views of the mountains
of Parnassus and Helicon to the north, and to the
south the mountains of the Peloponnese, their outlines meeting in contours of matchless harmony.
We started in the twilight. Gradually the night
deepened, and the stars came out. A soft wind
blew from the west as we moved over the placid
waters of the gulf. It was difficult to leave that




MISSOLONGHI               163
deck and go below to the hot and stuffy cabins.
Some of the party spent the night beneath the
stars, talking of the old world and the new, and
discussing for the hundredth time the fate of
Greece. I left John Drinkwater at two o'clock discoursing to the young Greeks on the English poets
of the seventeenth century.
In the early dawn we arrived at Kryoneri, and
woke to a very different scene. The wind had
freshened in the night, and the sea was ruffled
in a way that brought grave looks to the faces
of many passengers.
It was on our schedule that we should disembark
and journey to Missolonghi by the little railway
that runs from  Kryoneri.  But there seemed
no hurry for this next move; and meanwhile we
strolled the decks and looked around. We were
anchored off a gloomy coast, and round us there
lay the Greek and British warships which had
been commissioned to attend these celebrations of
Byron's sacrifice. They looked very formidable,
these great iron monsters: but late that evening
they sparkled with light: shining through the
black night, they became joyous symbols of the
great protecting arm stretched from the West to
shield the independence of this little country.
The officers of the British ships had come ashore
and met us at the landing-place. The handsome
captain of the Calypso, in his smart naval uniform,
accompanied us on our journey throughout the day.
I do not think that the Greek Ministers were
indifferent to the honour of being escorted by so




164 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
distinguished and courteous a representative of
the British fleet.
The little train that carried us along the coast
drew at last near to the scattered town of Missolonghi, which presented something of the interest
of discovery to those who had so long studied
the sombre events of Byron's passing. Bemused
by much reading, perhaps, many of us looked for
a melancholy display of malaria-stricken huts,
scattered amid forlorn marshes: a haunt of the
frog and the wild-fowl. It was a pleasant surprise,
therefore, to find a neat, trim little city, well
drained and well swept; gaily decorated, on that
day, for our visit: with tricolour ribbons stretched
across all the main streets, and a pleasant mingling
of the Union Jack with the blue and white
streamers of Greece.
Missolonghi had risen to the occasion. It was a redletter day in her lonely life, so far removed from the
centre of things, so shadowed by bitter memories.
She received her visitors from the West with acclaim.
She orated us, lunched us and dined us.
All day long the great mass of the citizens
'thronged the streets. Visitors from the remote
countryside crowded the town, and we met there
Greek mayors who had come from cities in far-off
Corfu and Crete. It was a notable gathering of the
New Greece.
Amid such an atmosphere of enthusiasm and
acclaim did we live throughout that memorable
day, with its strange mixture of solemnity and
rejoicing, of mourning and exhilaration.




MISSOLONGHI


165


Missolonghi to-day is a very different affair from
the Missolonghi of Byron's struggle and death. We
have in Count Gamba's Memoirs a very accurate
account of the last months and days in Byron's
life. We know the way in which he existed and
died: his talks and plans; the little house in which
he lived, and where he spent his waiting hours;
the limitations of those forlorn weeks. Byron
was cut off from ordinary physical exercise by the
affliction of his birth. Riding was practically his
only way of obtaining the joy of free movement.
In order to ride at Missolonghi he had to row across
the water to reach the horses kept waiting for
him on the other side. It was in the boat on the
way back from one of those rides that he caught
the fatal chill which was the immediate cause of
his death. As if to emphasise a latent contrast,
this day of April I924 was full of glowing sunshine which made almost incredible the season of
storms and cold through which Byron lived in the
April of 1824. The contrast of weather at the two
dates seemed some physical allegory of the extraordinary change of fate which has since smiled on
this historic town.
To-day the marsh has gone: and the modern
house which stands on the site of Byron's old
dwelling is remote from the lagoons that still
stretch between Missolonghi and the sea. The
Missolonghi of to-day is haunted with the sad
memories of its past, but on this day of spring
it seemed almost gay.
Amid many picturesque ceremonies, certainly




166 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
the most memorable took place in front of the
striking and historic monument of Byron. The
monument represents Byron as a young man, in
the early prime of his unspoilt manhood: rather as
he was on his first eager visit to Greece-the visit
of "Childe Harold"-than on the passionate
pilgrimage to Missolonghi which ended with his
death.
The Greeks had staged the ceremony in front of
the statue with great skill and good taste. The
statue itself was surrounded, as with beautiful nosegays, by groups of Greek children, girls as well as
boys, all dressed in the costumes of the War of
Independence. The little girls glittered with silver
ornaments; the boys looked strangely innocent
in their fierce scarlet sashes, stiff starched fustanellas, and gleaming array of swords and pistols.
Below at the foot of the statue stood a line of
old Greeks who had fought with Turks in modern
wars.
Within this. militant background Sir Rennell
Rodd eloquently spoke on Byron, and the Prime
Minister ingeminated peace. To the right of
Byron's statue there rises a very remarkable
mound, which, in ancient fashion, was erected
by the Greeks over the bodies of those slain in the
final sortie from Missolonghi. For it was fated
that Missolonghi should perish.  A year after
Byron's death the citizens reached the end of their
resources.  The Turkish  blockade tightened.
Shame and outrage stared them in the face. There
was nothing for it but to embrace death.




MISSOLONGHI


167


So these people"Lone, lost, abandon'd in their utmost need
By Christians unto whom they gave their creed!"
-marched, open-eyed, on their doom. The whole
population-women as well as men; children as
well as women-emerged from the town and
marched towards the Turkish lines. They were
slaughtered in holocausts. As at Marathon, so on
this far bloodier plain, the bodies were collected and
burned: and over the ashes a mound was erected.
Here, on this day, every year the Greek Church
performs a service of solemn commemorationand now at this moment the old mound was
crowned with little groups of Greek children,
dressed in their national costumes. Looking at
that exquisite crowning of death with youth, I
thought of the lovely words of the child in The
Blue Bird as he looks at the white lilies rising
from the grave of one so early dead: " There is
no death!"
For out of such a death as those people died
there has arisen a life more abundant-as we saw
all around us at that moment.
It was some such message that those bright
children, in their gay costumes, seemed to bring
to modern Greece.
There was to be another oration at the Byron
house at six o'clock-the hour of his death a
hundred years before. As the distant guns of the
ships boomed, we turned to go thither.




168 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
But I had had my fill of oratory. The facts of
that sombre passing, fresh in my mind, seemed too
poignant for human speech. I thought of that
worldling caught in a tragedy too great for his
imagining, beating out his soul in that little room,
on that little pallet bed, far from home and
country, calling on his wife and child-in vain.
I pictured Byron, with all his passion for pleasure
and life, brought to the grim realities of a martyrdom that he did not love. I heard again his girdings,
his outcries against fate, his fierce railings against
the very hands who helped him.
Then the fancy struck me of a man overwhelmed
by a fate too great for his human nature: the
ironic centre of a drama too vast for his puny self:
tragically claimed by the angels at the last! A
soul saved in his own despite!
Filled with that thought, I motored away from
the sad town of Missolonghi along the causeway
that stretches for many miles through the lagoons.
There the car halted; and walking to the edge of
the sounding sea I turned to look back on the great
mountain that looms over Missolonghi, black and
sombre in the twilight. It stands there like some
omen of the fate that overshadowed also that little
town-a fate just as much too tremendous for the
wailing humanity that perished on that day of
death as Byron's was too great for him!
Perhaps, after all, that is always the greatest
tragedy of man-that his soul is greater than
himself!
Humanity falls short of its doom.




IV


SUNIUM
THE next adventure devised for us by the kindly
Athenian people was a visit to the precipitous
promontory of Sunium, which stands on the
southern sea-edge of Attica.
On that height the ancient Greeks erected a
temple to Athena, which was doubtless intended
to cheer up the seamen of the IEgean, and to act
as a guide and a landmark on that difficult sea. A
few columns, worn by wind and rain, still stand today, the last remnants of that gorgeous temple. It
is one of the most picturesque relics of Old Greece:
girt on three sides by the azure LEgean, and looking
out on islands which lie like great blue lizards
basking on the surface of the deep.
This beautiful spot was visited in December
I8IO by Byron. In a letter to Cam Hobhouse,
dated the 5th of that month, Byron gives a description of his visit, and tells his friend that he
had a very narrow escape from being captured by
pirates. Byron was in company with Graham,
Cockerell, the Italian artist Lusieri, and a Bavarian
baron-quite a good catch for an ambitious party
of buccaneers. At the moment when they were
on Cape Sunium there were twenty-five Mainote
rascals in the caves at the foot of the cliffs, along
169




170 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
with some Greek boatmen who were their prisoners.
These pirates learned from the Greeks who Byron
was, and were about to attack him: but they saw
some Albanians in the party, and having a sincere
and wholesome respect for that formidable race,
they decided to prefer the better part of valour.
Byron's party consisted of twelve, including his
attendants. Some of them had rifles, the rest had
pistols or yataghans. But, as Byron grimly remarked: "I am inclined to think we were rather
better without a battle."
The terms of Byron's diverting narrative show
that the party were at the moment inside the
Temple.' " We were," he says, "in a very advantageous position among the columns." They must
have been engaged, after the gay fashion of that
country, in firing off their rifles at any casual
attraction.  "The pirates," says Byron, "were
alarmed at some balls which whizzed over their
heads by accident: so they kept to the shore and
permitted us to depart in peace." Perhaps it was
fortunate. For Byron's party was hopelessly outnumbered. " How we should have carried on the
war is very doubtful," he writes. " I rather think
we should have been like Billy Taylor, and carried
off to sea."
It is probable that at the time of visiting the
temple Byron and his friends were serenely unconscious of the imminence of their peril.  For
the poet found time to cut his name quite deeply
on the surface of one of the columns. There it is
1 See Byron and Greece (John Murray, London, 1924. 15s. net).




SUNIUM                 171
to-day. It was the goal of our pilgrimage: the goal
on which we set out, in Government motor-cars,
on the morning of 23rd April I924.
The road was infamous. We were constantly
smothered in dust. We descended into pits, and
ascended to miniature mountains. We suffered
without pause or cessation throughout the livelong
day. There was no rest to our bodies or calm to
our souls. But we were in distinguished company.
For the Greek Prime Minister came with us, and
the road was patrolled at proper intervals by the
mounted gendarmerie of Greece. Like the famous
Irishman when the bottom fell out of the sedan
chair in which he was being carried, we had to
console ourselves by reflecting on the honourable
nature of our situation. " But for the honour and
glory of the thing " we, like him, might just as well
have walked.
It was a day of azure skies and beautiful blue
distances, and apart from such horrors the journey was delightful. The road traverses a country
of great beauty and interest, passing between the
mountain of marble, Pentelicus, on the north and
the long slopes of honey-steeped Hymettus on the
south. We passed through the village that was
the birthplace of Demosthenes, and some miles
farther on arrived at Laurium, where the Greeks
have mined for silver and lead ever since the
earliest days.
Laurium, indeed, was one of the secrets of the
wealth of Athens. For these mines were at first
nationalised and worked by slaves. They were




172 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
afterwards leased to private citizens: but the leaseholders always paid a tax to the citizens of Athens.
At a crisis of the Persian struggle Themistocles
persuaded the Athenians to hand over the proceeds of the tax for increasing the navy. Those
profits must have been very considerable; for the
mines of Laurium show still no less than two
thousand shafts and galleries, varying in depth from
sixty-five to four hundred feet. There are still the
ancient tunnels, almost untouched since they were
deserted nearly two thousand years ago. The light
and shallow workings of the Athenians were exhausted in the first century, and were finally put
out of action by the competition of the Thracian
gold mines. It is only in modern times, with
modern machinery, that the workings have been
resumed.
To-day, Laurium is a crowded, flourishing,
industrial centre. Not all is gain. Industry has
introduced into this part of Greece some of the
grey monotony of our busy North. As we passed
through Laurium, with its shafts, its miners'
cottages, its barges lying in the harbour, its coal.trucks and locomotives on the railway line, we
could have imagined ourselves passing through
some crowded district of Lancashire or Yorkshire.
We seemed back in one of our coal districts,
and all the glory and glamour of ancient Greece
seemed a vanished dream.
We passed through Laurium and came to the
pleasant heights of Sunium. There we left our
motor-car, and climbed up the slopes to the temple




SUNIUM


178


which crowns the cliff by the sea. There we joined
the rest of the party and listened for some hours
to speeches and recitations from the devoted
Athenians. Byron was the subject, and Byron
was the dream. Then we were regaled with sandwiches and glasses of beer, which would probably
have been more pleasant to the heart of Byron
than all the speeches delivered over his memory.
Several torpedo boats from the fleet had come into
the harbour below, and were prepared to take the
party back to the Piraeus. But we stuck to the
stormy motor-car and started back to Athens,
already belated by the fascinating diversions of
Sunium.
When we reached Laurium on this return
journey we found a great crowd collected in the
open space in front of the hotel. They were determined to have a meeting. Our trouble was that
the Prime Minister had delayed his coming, and
was some way behind us. There was nothing
for it but for the Englishmen to " carry on." So
we entered the hotel and were entertained with
coffee and cigarettes by the "demarch." Then
we stepped out on to the balcony.
We found ourselves looking down on a sea of
heads. What were we to do? As Ben Jonson said
of Shakespeare, we had " small Latin and less
Greek." But we had to fill the bill, and so one after
the other we stepped forward and delivered to the
crowd what little Greek we possessed. Here my
friend, Mr Pember Reeves, greatly distinguished
himself with his facile command of the beautiful




174 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
language. I limited myself with some strictness
to one masterly phrase: " Zrrwo EXXas! " (" Long
Live Greece! ")
It is extraordinary with what enthusiasm that
simple, honest sentiment was always received, and
how small seemed the desire that I should carry on
my speech into more subtle and devious regions of
thought. Perhaps if other speakers limited themselves as strictly they would win an equally rich
applause.
Well, we tore ourselves away. For the next few
hours we plunged and tumbled amid the abysses
of the Attic road, and arrived home at midnight
famished and forlorn.
During this stay at Athens I had talks with a
host of the Greek ministers and was present at
great assemblies of the Greek people. I also met
most of the leaders of the Opposition. Thus I
gradually obtained some little insight into the
general situation. Since that time three ministries
have risen and fallen. The Greeks still seem incurably addicted to change: and change means
instability. What is the meaning of it all? The
Greeks to-day exhibit almost precisely the same
defects as the Greeks of ancient times. They are
incurably factious. Is there any way out?
Take the episode of Veniselos: does it give us
any hope?
He came (in I9IO) as a conquering hero from
the island of Crete. He hushed all the discords of
Athenian public life. He brushed aside all the




SUNIUM


175


quarrelsome leaders. He ruled Greece for a time
with a large and splendid outlook, and seemed
likely to raise her to one of the leading Powers of
Europe. But as Mrs Browning, said of another
ruler-" his great deed was too great! "  There
are times when one great man will go too far ahead
of the mind and character of his own country.
When the German ambassador asked Veniselos
to hurl his country against Serbia at a crisis of
the Great War, Veniselos made the splendid reply:
" My country is too little to commit so great a
crime." That was the height to which he attempted
to raise Greece: a heroic and splendid height, but
a little too cold for her warm temperament. He
kept her there for a time: he seemed likely to continue even longer that great elevation of the soul
of a people. But that rarefied air proved too strong
for the heart of that little country.  Veniselos
failed. It might almost be said that that great
man laid too great a strain on his fellow-citizens.
They could not climb his Everest.
Does that experience spell doom for Greece?
Are we to take it as a final proof of her incapacity
for great adventures and great policies?
I think not. Greece has great resources and great
reserves; great capacities and great possibilities.
She possesses indeed perhaps almost too many
possibilities.
The multiplication of her possibilities, indeed,
was very succinctly stated to me by one who knows
her very well. I was speaking to him about the
cleverness of the many political men I met in




176 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Athens. I ventured to remark how astonished I
was at the brilliancy of this never-failing supply
of cleverish ministers who pass through the departments at Athens, never staying long enough to
achieve their ends.
"Yes," he said; "Greece has many politicians,
but no statesman."
That is the trouble of Greece. Does no other
country suffer from the same shortcoming?
But in the case of Greece there is special need of
a statesman. Twelve years of war have left her
shattered and out of repair. The condition of her
Attic roads is only one instance of the decay that
has fallen upon her whole structure.
The Greek Civil Service, for instance, being subject to change at the hands of every new Government, has lost much of its best strength during the
civil quarrels. The vendetta of Kings and Ministers
has penetrated to every department. During the
last few years I have had many discussions with
Greek Ministers on that point, and have repeatedly
held up to them the model of our British Civil
Service, mainly appointed by competition, on the
whole permanent, and generally acknowledged
now to be the best Civil Service in the world.
They have listened politely, murmured vague
hopes about introducing the same system into
Greece, and then turned sorrowfully away. This
system of the " spoils to the victors " has eaten
into the political life of the country. It has formed
a powerful drug habit, extraordinarily difficult to
break. The whole political system tends to lean




SUNIUM                 177
upon this prop. The whole party following is held
together by the glitter of these prizes.
They quote the United States. But the United
States is strong enough to bear this drain on her
strength and virtue. Greece is not. She is visibly
weakening under it in every sphere of administration-finance, education, local government,
army, navy-everything that goes to make a state.
It is a failing so serious that it may in the end
imperil her very existence.
This is not the only weakness. The Greek constitution is in rags and tatters, lopped of its monarch
at the head, and yet not adapted to the form and
shape of a true republic. Greece is still governed
by one single turbulent Chamber, often quarrelsome and disorderly, and yet with full power over
her life and policy. These things cannot continue
without grave danger.
I had many interesting talks with Greek Ministers
about this new constitution, which all had agreed
to construct. There were the questions of the
Presidency, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.
Men's minds were divided between the examples
of France and America. But all agreed that
something must be done.
Yet months have passed since and nothing has
been done. The Greek ship drifts perilously before
the tide and the wind. Greece lacks the directing
hand. Every state requires some head, and at
the present moment Greece has none. All her
true friends are eagerly awaiting her action,
knowing that the full confidence of the world
M




178 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
can be recovered only by strength of purpose
and will.
Such will and purpose were shown by the moulders
of the Revolution-men like Plastiras and Gonatas.
But they have stepped aside from the stage, and
up to the present it is empty of their successors in
that line.
Why, then, have we faith in the future of
Greece?
Because her people are intensely patriotic, and
her heart sound. Because, with even greater difficulties, she won the War of Independence. Because
in the end she swung round to the side of justice
and right in the Great War. Because she retains so
many of the qualities that have made her mighty
past. In a word-because she is Greece!




V


THE GLORY THAT IS GREECE
I HAD many hours of leisure and pause at Athens
in which to revisit loved spots and to enlarge my
knowledge of the antiquities and vicinities. I was
not able to repeat a memorable visit once paid
to the battle-field of Marathon, where we saw the
mound of the Athenians covered with the bloodred anemone, the herald of the Greek spring. That
visit is, perhaps, the greatest experience for any
newcomer to Greece. Standing on that mound, we
could survey the whole of that tremendous field
of blood, on which West first clashed with East,
and won.
That clash was the beginning of an age-long
warfare, of which, in the perspective of time, recent
victories and defeats are but episodes. It is the
true case for modern Greece that she has still to
bear the full brunt of that warfare. Yet Europe
can never remain wholly indifferent; for, from
the beginning, Greece has been her shield: and
when the shield of Greece is dinted by Asia,
it is the whole of Europe that suffers from the
blow.
This same struggle has left its mark on Athens
itself; for on that central rock of the Acropolis,
crowned with the treasures of the ages, you can still
I79




180 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
see the marks of fire which the Persians applied to
the old temples of early Attica: when the Athenians,
obeying the Delphic Oracle, had taken refuge on
the ships which won the battle of Salamis.
Out of disaster blessing arose; for it was owing
to that catastrophe that the Acropolis was cleared
of its primitive and half-barbaric structures, and
made ready for the glorious fabrics of the Periclean
age. To-day that rock fortress contains only a
shattered shadow of those noble structures. But
even in their ruins they are the greatest monuments of ancient art. There is nothing in Europe,
not even in Italy, to rival the beauty of even what
stands there to-day.
When Byron visited the Acropolis with Hobhouse in I809 he found the centre of the Parthenon
occupied by a Turkish mosque; and the Erechtheion converted into a Turkish seraglio, where
the Governor of Athens, appointed by the Sultan,
kept his harem. The Temple of Victory was in
ruins, and on its site stood a Turkish battery.
The only concession made by the Turks to Christian
feeling was that the Sultan had surrendered to the
interested persuasions of the Earl of Elgin, British
Ambassador at Constantinople: and had given
him a firman with the right to dispose of any
antique " marbles " that he could lay hands on.
Supported by that authority, the agents of Lord
Elgin, consisting of the Italian painter Lusieri
and an army of masons, were busily dismantling
the Parthenon, and dragging from its setting
the beautiful frieze which ran round the whole




THE GLORY THAT IS GREECE 181
buildings, within the peristyle. Such a robbery
would be impossible to-day. For it is now almost
a hundred years since Greece obtained her freedom
and her control of her own monuments.
That control has been well exercised. A series of
devoted architects have presided over the fortunes
of the Acropolis, and gradually restored some of
the ancient beauty. The mosque has been torn
down, and all the little hovels which the Turks
had allowed to grow up parasitically round the
rocks have been removed. Stone by stone the
little Temple of Victory has been actually rebuilt,
and stands to-day on the westward edge of the
Acropolis, looking out over the ZEgean Sea and
the Peloponnese, commanding that famous view
which Byron so splendidly described:
"Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea's hills the setting sun:
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light;
O'er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws,
Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows."
The Greeks are now carrying this process of
renovation a step further. They are attempting
to build the northern side of the Parthenon, half
shattered by the Venetian shell which fell in the
centre of the building and blew up the Turkish
powder magazine on the 26th September I687.
The architect in charge very kindly took me up
one morning to the top of the scaffolding erected
to expedite this restoration, and from that giddy




182 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
height I looked down on the floor of the Parthenon
and on the streets of Athens far below. It is a
delicate work in which these men are engaged.
Stone by stone, and almost fragment by fragment,
they are collecting the broken drums of the ancient
pillars which still lie in disordered confusion across
the plateau of the Acropolis. Workmen of the
highest skill are occupied in reconstructing these
columns: in some cases adopting the very same
methods of jointure and dovetailing by copies of the
wooden pegs employed by the workmen of Ictinus
and Pericles. But the structure has to be supplemented with fresh marble drums and Pentelican
additions to the architrave at broken points.
This reconstruction of the Parthenon is simply
one example of the work that is going on throughout Athens and Greece, promoted by the Greeks and
helped by the many foreign centres, including the
laborious and enterprising British and American
schools, both so eminent for their share in the
revival of ancient Greek art. Under this inspiration Athens has now become a most noble city of
memory, worthy of strenuous study. It has become
truer to-day than ever it was to write, as Byron
wrote in the ecstasy of his first visit to Athens:
"Where'er we tread 'tis haunted, holy ground;
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould,
But one vast realm of wonder spreads around,
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told."
Athens is essentially a place to linger in. It is
certainly not to be mastered by one of those brief




THE GLORY THAT IS GREECE 188
raids from the sea which are now so fashionable.
You require to be at ease in this old city-to
stroll about its streets-to let the impressions
sink in.
Take, for instance, one spot of interest thrilling to students of the ancient drama-the theatre
called of Dionysus, that lies on the southern slope
of the Acropolis. This theatre has of late been
carefully tended and restored, and it is well worth
it. For here, on this spot, the Athenians gathered
to watch the plays of IEschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides, watching, with that inexhaustible
appetite for the drama, through the livelong
day: enduring not one play, but often three:
tolerant of the mask and the buskin, and all
the seemingly intolerable gear of that ancient
stage: not solaced by dresses or scenery, but
upheld by no interest or passion except their own
high enthusiasm.
The marble seats still remain, especially the
exquisitely carved seats of the priests and
archons. The stage has been diverted to ignoble uses: the centre of the theatre was turned
into a lake by the Romans, and the floor was
reddened by the blood of gladiators. The Philistines scrawled all over this exquisite structure,
and the Turks filled it with their unseemly
hovels.
But to-day it has been cleared of all this rubbish,
and you can see the rows of seats, in their exquisite
half-circles, climbing far up the hill; intersected
at regular intervals by the gangways up and down




184 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
which the Athenian multitudes flowed. Here they
passed the abundant leisure of those golden days
of peace, before the great tragedy of a dragging
war darkened and eclipsed all that glorious life.
Look down now and you will see that the
steps are worn by generations of those sandalled
feet.
Or pass on to the Pnyx-the place of assembly
and victory-where the great Athenian orators
placed before their citizens the issues of public
weal or woe. It is an impressive spot: the strangest
place of assembly in the world. It lies beyond the
Areopagus, curiously remote from the Athens of
to-day: but then, as we now know, ancient Athens
lay to the west of the Acropolis, and the Pnyx was
part of that old city.
The platform on which the orators stood was
carved out of the living rock, and stands to-day
undamaged, perfect in its form, with rough-hewn
steps leading up to it. In front is still a great,
bare, open space, where the audience stood. The
Athenian speakers must have required stentorian
voices. The mystery is that up above there is
another open space; and it is the tradition that
the later orators addressed the crowd there,
facing seaward. In that case they must have
ascended to the higher plateau.
The whole form and spirit of the Pnyx speaks
of government by oratory. It is not the place
of a true assembly.  There are no seats for the
councillors. Standing here, we understand why
the greatest Greeks, men like Plato, came to regard




THE GLORY THAT IS GREECE          185
oratory as a curse and a besetting sin of the race.
For it was not the oratory of a true parliament
that governed them-not the give-and-take of
debate. It was the oratory of the platform and the
market-place: mob oratory in its crudest form.
No wonder that Athens was undone!
But, after all, the greatest thing about Athens
is just-Athens itself.
One evening I escaped from politics and banquets
and ascended to the broken, fantastic fragment
of Roman Greece known as the Monument of
Philopappus. It is the haunt of Athenian lovers,
especially at sunset. Picking out a clear space
between the throngs of these distraught folk, I
spent an hour watching the decline of day over
the plains of Athens. Then I understood the
enthusiasm of the Athenian writers when they
sang or wrote of their beloved "City of the
Violet Crown."
The great hill-girt plain that surrounds the
Acropolis lay in a glorious calm. The golden glow
of the sunshine that had steeped the far-stretching
spaces all that spring day gradually faded. The
glare abated. Then as the sun sloped towards the
western hills there began an incredible pageantry
of colour. Waves of subtlest hue succeeded one
another in slow and pauseless gradation. Violet
changed to lilac, and lilac to saffron. The western
sky became a shield of gold: against it the Hill of
Daphne stood out in vivid outline. To the south
the mountains of the Peloponnese, loveliest symmetry of linked forms, faded blue to deepest




186 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
purple. Round them lay the sea, now sombre
and " wine dark." I began to understand why,
to men living on that plain, the loveliness of the
world must have been an enduring delight.
Beautiful countries are always homes of tragedy.
All beauty is paid for. Beautiful women often
become centres of human pain. Happiness is rarely
the lot of a beautiful land.
So Greece, the desired of men, has proved
through all the ages the tortured guerdon of combat. She lost her brief freedom: and ever since
she has been, from age to age, the slave of captors
-Rome, Byzantium, Turkey, Venice.
Now at last she is free. But she is conscious
of being desired. Scarcely has she shaken off
one possessor before she sees others encroaching
-Italy, her ancient conqueror, clutching with
feverish fingers the jewels of the ~Egean islands;
the Balkan States, Yugo-Slavia and Bulgaria, casting southward to the sea their hungry, covetous
glances.
So it is that Greece is all the time swept by
storms of fear and apprehension. She never feels
sure of her freedom. She won it so precariously.
Even now her ears are ever filled with cries of
terror and agony from tortured kinsmen across
the seas. She is overrun by desolate multitudes.
She is ever conscious of a freedom not quite
consummated: of a liberty not fully achieved.
This fear is her chief danger. It makes her




THE GLORY THAT IS GREECE             187
uncertain of herself. It is the fear of one who guards
a great prize.
To understand the greatness of that prize and
the height of that trust one must always return
to Athens.
For Athens is the heart and treasure of Greece.




VI


THE KING
WILL the King return to Greece? I found that
question still agitating Athens.
When I paid my first political visit to Greece
the young King George II. was on the throne.
His brother, Alexander, had perished from the
bite of a monkey, and the younger son had taken
his place. Constantine had died.
I paid a visit of courtesy to the Palace, and on
the following day was asked to attend an audience
by the King in his reception-room.
I was led through lines of Court attendants and
flunkeys, all very solemn and silent. I was conscious
from the beginning of a certain emptiness and
sombreness about the whole place. But all I saw
when I entered the actual room was a young man,
with an eyeglass in his right eye, very spick-and-,span, sitting at a table. George II.-for it was he
-was a little like his father, but with a shorter
face. He was very boyish-looking. He spoke
almost perfect English, rose courteously from his
chair, shook hands, and asked me to be seated.
The conversation that followed was certainly
the most interesting of any that I have ever held
with men in high places. It was no formal or
official interchange of views, but a real wrestle for
188




THE KING                189
the soul of a man. The cloak of kingship seemed
very soon to fall away, and one became conscious
merely of the human attitude: so lonely, so tragically irresolute, so fatally dowered with prejudice.
I soon realised his hatred for the men with whom
he was surrounded. At that moment Greece was
being ruled by the small revolutionary group who
had driven out Constantine and shot his Ministers.
It was clear that King George regarded them as
murderers.
He told me a terrible story of how they had put
forward the executions by an hour because they
knew that the English envoy was to arrive at noon
when the executions had been fixed for half-past
that hour. He affirmed to me that there had been
considerable cruelty to the living and indignity to
the bodies. The French attache-so he said-had
told him that a piece of one of the skulls had
been offered for sale. The King believed these
things of his Ministers, and that being so, it is
not surprising that he regarded them with the
deepest horror and hatred.
I asked him whether he was, in that case, willing
to work with them. At that point he broke out
into passionate protest.
"How can I work with them? " he cried.
" They tell me nothing. They never trust me. I
preside at no Cabinets, although my grandfather
and father always did so. They show me no foreign
dispatches. I am isolated. I do not dare to give
a luncheon or a dinner. If I entertain one side,
I offend the other; for they will not meet one




190   THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
another. I see all Greeks who ask for an audience,
even workmen. But I cannot entertain anyone. I
am alone! " he cried. " Alone! "
I looked round the empty room, and as he paused
there fell on us the silence of that deserted palace
into which no Greek dared to come. I realised
the tragedy of this king's situation.
But though he now and again gave way to
emotion, George II. had a great sense of humour,
and laughter soon followed.
"I have passed through a terrible time," he
said. "I never know what might happen-who
will come to visit me-what he will say-or door whether at any moment someone might even
come down the chimney." And he glanced at the
empty fireplace.
I determined to use the short time open to me
to persuade this young man-for the sake of
Greece-to turn his back on his father's policy and
adopt the line of a British constitutional monarch.
So with some fervour I sketched out to him the
life and influence of our British King, and strongly
pressed on him the wisdom of reversing his father's
policy and following on the lines of the British
King George V.
He listened courteously, and I am bound to say
took from my mouth advice such as only the stress
of circumstances could have justified me in urging
upon him. But he had no one to advise him, and
after all an Englishman carries with him throughout the Near East a certain aura of influence which
really belongs, not to him, but to his race.




THE KING.191


But though King George II. listened attentively
to all my persuasions, he gave singularly little
response to my enthusiasm for the life of a constitutional king. At one point he shook his head,
and brought his fist down on the table, saying
decisively: " That is not a man's job! "
I found this a little distressing, so I went on
to picture to him the amenities of the existence of
the British monarch-his great social prestige, his
philanthropic activities, the strength of his hold
on the hearts of his people. I suggested to King
George II. that if he followed these constitutional
lines for some years he would gradually acquire
experience which would give him new authority
over changing ministries. To this he replied in a
baffling way:
" Experience? How am I to get experience if I do
nothing? Am I to do nothing till I get experience?
In that case, how on earth am I to get experience? "
To that outcry of a king's tragedy I could only
remark in a gentle voice:
" I was only trying to help your Majesty! "
But he would not be helped. His position certainly was a difficult one. He told me that he was
not even consulted about finance, except on small
bills, such as the extra expenses of a Minister in
Paris-bills for five pounds or so. He could not
receive foreign diplomats because none of the
governments recognised him.
" I am between the devil and the deep sea!"
he cried. " Recognised by no one: neither by my
own people nor any other."




192   THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
" Let me submit to your Majesty," I ventured"if I may be frank-"
" By all means be frank!" he cried, in his
boyish manner. " I like it! "
"Well, then," I said, " I will be frank. Make
friends with Veniselos, who is your best ally. Ask
him to come back, although he has vowed not to
come back for three years."
The King pursed his lips and leaned back in
his chair. His face was blanched with hatred,
and his voice became cold and chilly.
" I know," he said coldly. " I think he is right."
"If he came back," I said, " I believe that he
would help you. He is the only man who could
save you."
" He has married again," said the King. "He
is fully occupied."
He hissed out the words with such fury and
detestation that I could see that this vendetta
would possess him to the end. As I looked at him
the shadow of coming eclipse seemed to fall over
him. For there is nothing more fatal to any man
than a possessing, brooding hatred-especially to
a young man.
In despair I turned to other suggestions.
" Perhaps," I said, "you might try to busy
yourself with other interests.  Go shooting, for
instance. Our King is a very good shot, and it
makes him popular."
King George II. made a gesture of impatience.
"I should like to go shooting in Macedonia," he
said sadly. "It is a good sport-but I am not




THE KING                198
allowed. The last time I went shooting in Macedonia I was accused of exercising undue influence
over the people. You do not understand! " he
cried, with passion in his voice. " I am practically
a prisoner in my Palace! "
It was a cry of the heart from this tragic youth
of destiny: the son of the man who had handed
on to his children so fatal a heritage of strife and
hatred.
This young King is now wandering about Europe
searching for sympathy and help. When I watch
his movements that cry of the heart comes back
to my memory:
" You do not understand! I am practically a
prisoner in my Palace!"
He has escaped from the Palace-but he is still
a prisoner of destiny.
But the issue still faces Greece.
Republic or monarchy? Monarchy or republic?
That is the vital question which, in both my last
two visits to Greece, I have found dividing the mind
of the people. On my Byron visit (April I924)
a final decision appeared to be arrived at. But
two years before a popular verdict was given with
almost equal emphasis on the side of King Constantine as against Veniselos. Can we, therefore,
be quite sure that this last verdict is irrevocable?
This young ex-King of Greece has since come
to London, and been accepted by the Press and
society as the still reigning King of Greece. There
are many forces on his side, beyond the natural
N




194   THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
sympathy for a man that is down. He has refused
to abdicate, and it is not quite clear whether he is,
or is not, internationally still a full King. Can we
feel quite sure that the issue is closed?
The answer will depend on the measure of success
that attends the Republic. For, after all, every
country, in the long run, chooses the form of
government which gives it the most prosperity
and happiness.
Which form of government-monarchy or republic-is best suited to the temperament of
Greece? There we get to the heart of the question.
Two years ago I found nearly every prominent
man in Greece still in favour of a monarchy. My
friend M. Veniselos upheld the monarchy right up
to the last moment. By the most extraordinary
act of self-sacrifice in history he lost his power in
Greece by one last attempt to postpone the exile
of the very family that had ruined his policy and
his career. It was because he attempted to place a
constitutional barrier between the Crown and the
plebiscite that he had to leave Greece so hurriedly
in the winter of I923-I924. It was because the
younger Greek statesmen were so resolute to finish
with the monarchy that they were able to step into
the shoes of this great man without a protest from
the people of Greece. I do not know of a greater
paradox in modern history.
Why, then, did Veniselos, who knows Greece so
well, strenuously maintain for so long, in face of the
misconduct of Constantine and his sons, that a monarchy was indispensable to Greece? Why did the




THE KING


195


monarchy last so long, and only ultimately lose its
position because of its persistent and incorrigible
defiance of the public weal and welfare?
Partly, no doubt, this result was due to the
Greek religion and the Byzantine tradition. That
tradition places the King in the very centre of the
picture. Take one complaint uttered to me by the
King: "I wish they would not pray for me so
much. If I go to church they pray for me all the
time! "
It was an unworthy complaint, revealing a character unworthy of a crown. But there is no doubt
that this concentration of the Greek religion on
the idea of the King has had a great deal to do
with the chronic return of the Greek people to
the idea of a monarchy.
For this is not the first time that the Greeks
have made a trial of monarchy. Throughout the
War of Independence the factions which so tragically divided Greece and prolonged the struggle
were always discussing this very question. It was
one of the issues that caused the deepest gulf
between the governments of Odysseus and Mavrogordato. In far-away London it threw an apple of
discord between the Radical members of the Greek
Committee.   That interesting and  attractive
soldier - politician, Colonel Leicester Stanhope,
who quarrelled with Byron almost every day in
Cephalonia, took a violent and passionate part in
the controversy. With real Stanhope fervour he
powerfully advocated the cause of a republic. He
found the Greeks at Athens eager for a limited




196 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
monarchy. He wrote home to the Greek Committee
strongly on the other side. " I tell them," he said,
" that as I was born under a mixed government, I
would endeavour to maintain that order of things;
but it would be madness in the Greeks to accept
any, but especially a foreign king."
Then he wrote, later on, in March 1824, again
strongly urging that a limited monarchy was impossible for Greece. If they were to have a king
at all he " must have unlimited power-must be a
tyrant. The first thing such a monster would do,
would be to establish a disciplined force, and the
next would be to crush those warriors and heroes
who had rescued their country from the Turks."
But then, after all, Colonel Stanhope was the son
of Earl Harrington. That nobleman was Chairman of the Revolutionary Society in England in
I788, moved in I794 to acknowledge the French
Republic, and finally ended his republicanism by
disinheriting his own children. It was not a typical
English family, and the advice of his son-still
republican in spite of his disinheritance-was not
typical English advice.
The really typical English advice was given to
Greece by the British Government itself as a
sequel to Greek emancipation. It was that they
should have a king. The Greeks first tried a
President-the famous Capo D'Istria-but as he
was assassinated by his own people his fate did not
encourage the idea of a republic. So a monarchy
was agreed to; and then came the question of
obtaining a monarch.




THE KING                197
Now from first to last in this business the Greeks
have always taken for granted that no Greek
could rule over other Greeks as king. As a faint
believer in Bolingbroke's idea of a Patriot King,
I have for many years wrestled with the Greeks
over this point, and attempted to persuade them
that if you are to have a king at all, the safest
king is one of your own blood. But from the beginning the Greeks have brushed aside this idea;
and from the very start of their independence
they searched abroad for a foreign ruler.
First they approached Prince Leopold of
Belgium-afterwards the great king who won
the friendship of his niece, Queen Victoria-but
for many reasons he declined. He was wanted
in his own country. He strongly maintained also
that the then area of Greece was too restricted for
prosperity.
They then approached the Derby family. But
they preferred to rule in England as Peers, rather
than in Greece as Kings. Perhaps they were right.
Then the Greeks finally selected the Bavarian
Prince Otho, who assumed the crown of Greece on
ist June 1835.
Now Otho was born for trouble. He was a smart
little German princeling, very young, and with a
passion for tall soldiers and Divine right. He
imported his own Ministers from Germany. He
anticipated the Kaiser in his ideas of government.
But the Greeks had not shed their blood through
ten terrible years, and wrested their freedom from
the Turk, in order to become the slave of a Bavarian




198 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
boy. In I843 there was the first sign of rebellion
in Athens-a bloodless revolution which ended in
the establishment of a liberal Constitution with
ministerial responsibility and national representation in a single assembly. After prolonged resistance, the King accepted the new Constitution in
March I844, and for a time he behaved himself.
As the years passed on, the popular will grew
stronger; and the King's resistance became more
obstinate. Finally an explosion took place between
these two forces. After a period of turbulence
and insurrection, in October I862 King Otho was
deposed, and fled with his Queen back to Bavaria.
For the moment Greece was a republic.
This republic lasted a very short time; and at
its best was little more than a provisional government. Europe very wisely recognised the failure
of King Otho and refused to intervene on his
behalf. The next phase in Greece was that she
was swept with a passionate desire for an English
prince. Prince Alfred of Great Britain was proclaimed King at Lamia, on the 22nd November;
and on the 2gth January I863 he was proclaimed
King of Greece by an almost unanimous vote of the
National Assembly. But the attitude of France
and Russia towards this proposal made it impossible for even Lord Palmerston to accept it. Their
point of view was perfectly simple. It was that
a British king would turn Greece into a British
Protectorate. So the mind of Greece was carefully
marshalled back on to safer ground.
It was the will of the Powers that Greece should




THE KING                199
choose her king from one of the small neutral
countries: so finally, after considering many
alternatives, the choice of Europe settled on the
little country of Denmark. The chosen prince was
the younger son of the Danish King: and to gild
his crown, the protecting Powers wisely decided
that he should go to Athens carrying with him the
gift of the Ionian Islands, which were now magnanimously given up by England. Prince William
of Schleswig-Holstein was proclaimed King as
George I.  He arrived in Athens on the 3oth
October 1863, took the oath to the Constitution,
and ruled over Greece constitutionally and amiably
till he was assassinated in 1912 at Salonica.
So far, so good. Throughout that period of
nearly fifty years Greece seemed to have settled
this question of achieving the balance of a constitutional monarchy. But it was only an appearance.
The admirable restraint and moderation of
George I., indeed, postponed the crisis for a generation. But it was there all the time-latent
and subconscious; and it broke out again when
Constantine, the eldest son of George I., decided,
like the good King George III. of England, to be
a "real king."
We all know how that ended-the vicissitudes
of two exiles-the far-away death on a southern
island: the cleaving of Greece into two bitter
warring halves. Only the plebiscite of April I924
prevented a second Civil War.
But since then Greek democracy has achieved
no stability.  The Greek Ministers pursue one




200 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
another across the stage at Athens-" transient
and embarrassed phantoms" indeed: and the
crash of each adds to the peril of the Royal return.
The King and his circle grow in confidence. They
intrigue openly in the palaces and departments
of Europe. The shadow still hangs over Greece.
Greece has already dismissed a king once and
recalled him.
Will she do so again?
That is the question.




VII


ASIA MINOR
ON the Byron ship at Patras, early on the morning
after the Missolonghi celebrations, the Prime
Minister of Greece came to sit next me at breakfast. Looking up from his rolls and coffee, he said:
"I am going to give you a Grand Cross."
We came back to Athens, and I was spirited
off, with the rest of my friends, to the Foreign
Office, where, in a very touching little ceremony,
M. Roussos, the Foreign Minister, hung crosses and
ribbons round our necks and gave us the kiss of
peace.
"The Order of the Redeemer "! They have
thrilling names for these gew-gaws in Greece. In
our country this business of State honours is now
" soiled by all ignoble use." It is rusted and bedimmed by time. From the beginning, indeed, it
was obscured by bad jests about baths and garters:
and it is difficult to restore our system to its
pristine beauty and simplicity. We are divided
between those who hunt and those who hide: those
who sell their souls for honours and those who
refuse honours to save their souls. We want to
return once more to the old simple conception
of an Honour as a sacred trust. In the Near East
this idea still survives.
201




202 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
It is, after all, the land of thb Crusaders. To-day,
when at home I look at this little cross, with its
enamelled head of the Christ, I feel somehow that
in that little room of the Foreign Office of Athens
I was inducted into an old age-long fellowship,
reaching back to the First Crusade, when Peter
the Hermit journeyed with his cross from village
to village in Western Europe, preaching to Christians the common duty of service to their ravaged
brothers of the East.
Perhaps it was some instinct of this historic link,
passing through the centuries like a thread of gold,
that made these little peoples of the Nearer East,
when they regained their freedom from the Turk,
dedicate these Orders, both in Greece and Bulgaria,
to the Captain of their souls. For as Talbot said
when he plucked the Garter from Fastolfe's leg:
"He then that is not furnish'd in this sort
Doth but usurp the sacred name of knight."
We passed back from the untidy street where
the Greek Foreign Office stands to visit the old
Royal Palace at the top of the Place de la Constitution, no longer occupied by Royalty, but now filled
with the activities of the refugees. The Athenian
ladies, organised in a strong committee, have
for two years devoted themselves to promoting
industries among the forlorn women from Asia
Minor: supplying them with raw materials and
the means of working them. It is a hive of happy




ASIA MINOR               208
industry: the great bare rooms are filled with
women whose eyes are bright with a new happiness: the happiness of work. It is the simple and
felicitous idea of these ladies that the women of
Asia Minor should be employed in making clothes
for one another: and thus out of the very misfortune of nakedness these Athenian helpers are
dredging weal. They showed me the bales of cloth
sent to them by helpful English firms; the looms
and sewing-machines bought from their funds. In
the rooms below we visited the bazaar and bought
beautiful embroideries, carrying back with us into
the West designs handed down from the remote
past, recalling in their primitive harmonies the
very designs of the Homeric age. Out of disaster
there is a salvage of good: and so from Asia Minor
now there is being scattered over Europe a new
tradition of skill and beauty.
Asia Minor! As I stood watching those beautiful,
dark-eyed, white-skinned women, with their deft
fingers and quick movements, their zeal and joy in
their work, their touching gratitude to those who
are helping them, I bethought me of that vast
land left vacant by their departure-Asia Minor.
Smaller Asia! What is to be the future of Asia
Minor? Smaller Asia?
It is one of the richest tracts of the world's
surface. The climate is splendid; the land, especially along the coast, is amazingly fertile. One of
the most poignant features of this great scattering
has been the grief of the coast exiles, and their
longing for return to the warmth of the Levant




204 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
from the cold of Macedonia. " Send us back!
Send us back! " has been their cry.
Many of them have died of mere homesickness.
The older people, torn from rich homes and beautiful gardens in the Smyrna district, have just turned
their faces to the wall, like Hezekiah, and refused
to live. A cultured Athenian told me that his sisterin-law, a " Mikrasiatic " exile, had not for days
ceased to weep. On one Sunday in Athens, during my
first visit, there was a procession of refugees through
the streets, demanding that the Greek Government
should send them back. Poor creatures! Yet they
are forbidden by the Turks to return: and if they
trickle back, it is at the risk of their lives.
I put all this to M. Veniselos at Lausanne in
February I923, and he shook his head. " To take
them back we should have to fight another warand we cannot do that! "
Well, the soldiers think they can: and that is
really the dream that is taking possession of the
Greek military mind-a war of recovery for Asia
Minor. Sooner or later a war of recovery and reoccupation. The great defeat of I922, the shame
of that defeat and flight of a great Greek army,
has sunk deep into the minds of the Greek officers,
who are good soldiers and proud of their record in
the wars of 1912 and I918. The defeat of Eskisheir
is the Greek " Majuba Hill," and they are as deeply
resolved to undo it as our soldiers from I882 to
I899 were intent to undo that much smaller defeat.
They will bide their time. But in the long run they
will do it.




ASIA MINOR


205


The present mystery of the Near East is-what
is the motive of Turkey in denuding Asia Minor
of her Christian population? The process goes on
steadily and relentlessly. There is no sign of relaxing. Month by month fresh waves of fugitives,
each flight more forlorn than the last, arrive on the
shores of Greece. In the summer of I924 it was
the wave from the south shore of the Black Sea, a
sunny, smiling land which has now been emptied
of all its Christian population. Then in the
autumn it was a wave from the interior, the
old Cappadocia, where some I50,000 Christians
had lingered on, hoping for exemption from the
deep curse of flight and exile. But the Turks
discovered them, and drove them to the coast:
and all through the autumn and winter months
of I924-I925 they were arriving on the shores of
Macedonia, in the last stages of exhaustion and
despair. The process still goes on: even now that
all the Turks to be exchanged under the Treaty
of Lausanne have left the shores of Europe.
Intense nationalism; crude fanaticism; war
hatred: these are the causes assigned for this
colossal expulsion. But the effects are suicidal.
Asia Minor is sinking into decay. The loss of
Greeks and Armenians means the loss to Turkey
of a fine industrial and agricultural population.
The railways are ceasing to pay or function. The
currant trade has almost disappeared. The tobacco
production has dwindled. Smyrna remains in ruins.
From the dim interior of Asia Minor-those
vast plateaux and remote mountain regions-news




206 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
arrives in Greece daily, brought by merchants as
well as refugees, of a country sinking into desolation. The Turks arriving from Europe are treated
with scant hospitality and even cruelty.    It
appears that they are fobbed off with ruined
villages and derelict land, driven to travel over
vast spaces into the distant, barren interior-6o,ooo
are said to have perished since the spring of
I924.
I discussed this question with many of the
Greek Ministers, and especially with that very
steady and sane Foreign Minister, M. Roussos.
Asia Minor, in his opinion, is the question of the
future. It is too rich a fruit, in his view, to be
allowed to rot on the tree. It contained at one
time a flourishing population of some 20,000,000:
it is capable, under modern cultivation, of containing  50,000,000.  The Turkish  proceedings
bid fair to reduce its population to a few
scattered thousands of shepherds and small cultivators, exporting nothing, living on their own
produce, cut off from Europe: an outpost of
barbarism.
The Greeks do not believe that Europe will
permanently surrender this prize to Asia - this
old battleground of the two civilisations, where
Europe ruled for the ten centuries of Byzantine
Empire and has never since wholly lost its grip.
Italy, they believe, will seize Asia Minor unless
Greece moves: that is the reason why Italy is
holding on so firmly to the twelve beautiful islands
known as the " Dodecanese "; why she is especially




ASIA MINOR


207


fortifying the little island of Leros-a jumpingoff ground for Asia Minor.
Such are the views of the Greek Foreign Office.
There is another possibility to which no Greek
Foreign Minister could commit himself. Greece
has of late been showing a new friendliness to Italy.
Left alone with her enemy by the preoccupied
Powers of the West-snubbed and neglected by
England, deeply injured by France-Greece has
been disposed to follow Scriptural advice and
"agree with her adversary quickly while she is
in the way." So she has refused to join in the
strictures passed on the League of Nations over
the Corfu episode. She wishes the Corfu episode
forgotten. She is too wise to imitate us in our
policy of nagging at the formidable Mussolini:
"Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike."
Greece is alone with Italy. She has realised how
far off-and how faint-is the good will of the
West. She is inclined to make terms. If you cannot tame a tiger, go hunting with him: that is her
feeling. It suggests a formidable possibility for
England: England, with her deep commitments
in Egypt and the Sudan —England, whose still
proud refusal of friendship is no longer coupled
with her ancient defiance of enmity.
There was a formidable group of Greeks whom
I met and saw frequently on my first visit to




208 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Greece, and have met since in London-the revolutionaries. These were the men who drove out
Constantine after that defeat in Asia Minor, and
carried out those fearful executions of the King's
Ministers. They were a group apart. Plastiras,
gaunt and grim, resolute, unsmiling, when I met
him in Athens and Lausanne: later, in London,
genial and merry. His whole appearance had
changed. Freed from the terrible, sleepless anxiety
of those months of revolution, he had put on flesh.
Then there was Gonatas, who presided over the
Government in Greece in I923 in full uniform and
with a revolver at his belt: a large-bodied, goodhumoured man; but formidable and aggressive.
He would talk no language but Greek. When I
conversed with him at his house in a set interview
it was through my friend and interpreter, Professor
Andreades.
It was at a time when England was flaming with
anger over the execution of the King's Ministers.
But Gonatas showed no repentance or regret. On
the contrary he turned on me fiercely.
" We are surprised," he said, " that you do not
give due support to Greece in her resistance to our
common enemy."
To which I replied:
" England does not like blood."
At this he broke out in soldierly bluntness of
anger:
"It was a revolutionary act, demanded by
the people and the army. Look at this photograph."




ASIA MINOR


209


He took down from the wall a picture of the
Place de la Constitution, massed with people, a
vast crowd of many thousands.
"That was the meeting that demanded the
trial," he said.
I have seen many meetings: and perhaps I
was not so very deeply impressed. So he went on
perhaps more convincingly:
"The army demanded it. If we had not tried
them, they would have taken them out and shot
them. They were resolved on justice."
The image passed across my mind of what our
army in France, if it had been deserted, betrayed,
starved and driven to defeat like the Asiatic
army of Greece, might have done to the Home
Ministry. I trembled for my friends. England
may not like blood. But she shot Admiral
Byng!
Gonatas was speaking again.
" The executions have restored order," he said.
"The revolution is now bloodless."
That was true. Not another life was taken.
" We are reorganising our army. Turkey will
advance no farther."
That also was true.  General Pangalos had
already drawn up his new army, a well-equipped
force of Ioo,ooo men, along the line of the Maritza.
It was a most wonderful military recovery, so soon
after a defeat in which Greece had lost overseas a
great army of Ioo,ooo men, with all its artillery
and ammunition. Volunteers had streamed in from
all over the world.
0o




210 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
When at Lausanne I asked Plastiras what that
army had done, Veniselos plucked my sleeve and
took the words out of Plastiras's mouth:
" It has saved the situation for Greece. It has
enabled me to say to Turkey: 'Thus far and no
further! ' "
In 1924 all these revolutionary Ministers had
gone: they had kept their word, and retired from
their offices as soon as the crisis was over. But
all the time they were somewhere behind. While
others were reaping the offices and rewards, these
men were very conscious all the time that they
had taken the risks and borne the burdens. There
were moments when they were willing to say so.
They had not lost the habit of revolutionary
frankness.
Pangalos, for instance, that capable soldier of
whom the Greek King, George II., spoke so
gravely to me in 1923, was at Salonica during my
last visit. He was shooting brigands. I met him
one evening in the one and only hotel, the Hotel
Majestic-majestic only in name. I went up to the
only reception-room and found a handsome, genial
officer in khaki, with two rows of many-coloured
ribbons across his left breast, conversing with
various citizens of Salonica. They spoke to him
with deference. He was a man in the prime of
life, and had a genial, easy air of command.
It was a radiant, cheerful, soldierly presence,
quite a contrast to the savage, tartar-like exterior of General Kondylis, who enters a room
with a rhinoceros whip in his hand, and places




ASIA MINOR


211


it between you and himself before he opens a
conversation.
The Governor of Macedonia was giving a kindly
dinner to us at the hotel that evening, and he asked
Pangalos to join us. The great soldier came willingly, and made himself extraordinarily affable,
conversing with the greatest gaiety and cordiality
in good French.
There were tense moments in that strange
banquet. In the middle a soldier entered, saluted,
and handed to General Pangalos a piece of paper.
He opened it and glanced at its contents. With
a grim smile he handed it across to me. I read
it:
"Two bandits were condemned to death this
morning."
Perhaps my civilian complexion blanched.
" That is the only way to deal with that trouble,"
he said.
Then the conversation passed to the military
situation between Greece and Turkey. He was not
so frightened of the Turks as most people in the
West:
" If I had my way, I would take my army at
once to the gates of Constantinople."
" What would you do when you got there?"
" I should go inside."
" Europe would interfere."
" Europe is very much occupied."
" She is never too much occupied to save the
Turk."
" I would take my chances."




212 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Truly a formidable man-and I began to understand why all men spoke of him with bated breath.
He is a terror to bandits and Turks. He is very
disturbing to the cause of peace.
Yet I could not help wishing that he could,
some day, somehow, be given his chance!




VIII


TO DELPHI
SATED with politics, I decided to go to Delphi.
Like the men of the Old World, I would fain
make my pilgrimage to the Oracle of Apollo.
Now Delphi lies in a curve of the southern slopes
of Mount Parnassus, at the very heart of Boeotia:
backed by grim precipices, but within sight of the
azure sea.
To ancient Greece Delphi was the hidden centre
of awful wisdom: the secret seat of veiled deity.
It was the spiritual capital of Greece-its Rome
and Jerusalem. Its very site was lost for a thousand years. But now, in very recent times, Delphi
had been unveiled once more by devout and daring
research.
From Athens you can journey to Delphi, in
ordinary times, by either of two routes-land or
sea. But to go by sea you must pass through
the Corinth Canal: and at that moment the canal
was still blocked by that little landslide in the very
centre. A little thing-but it served.
So for us the only route available was the famous
Larissa line, only completed in I9I3,' which
traverses Attica from south to north, passes Thebes
1 The Turks would never allow the Greeks to link up their
connection with the north.
2I3




214 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
and Thermopylae, and drops the Delphi pilgrim
at Bralo, the northern limit of the great plain
of the Kephisos. From Bralo a waiting motor
takes you along a noble mountain road over a
gigantic shoulder of Parnassus to the little town
of Amphissa, and thence by a rough highway up
the southern flank of Parnassus to the little Delphi
town, perched on a ledge of the great mountain.
Never was a spot better chosen for the seat of
an Oracle: withdrawn from sea access and yet
shielded from land approach; remote yet accessible; central and yet reserved. Here lay the
majestic centre of Greek mystery: shrouded in
awe; dowered with power.
Our start befell on the Greek Good Friday. All
the world was travelling. The only train of the
day started, of course, in the early morning. We
attended at dawn: but every carriage was already
packed. The word is too mild. Not only the
carriages, but every corridor, stood literally
jammed with solid and determined humanity.
We had booked seats. All in vain. Our first-class
tickets were a mock and a scorn to occupying
Greece. Possession was not nine-but ten-points
of the law. The Greeks seemed resolved to make
sure that the republic meant something to them.
We had mused a fancy dream of a tranquil
journey on soft cushions through a sunny land:
and the seats-on paper-had been hopefully
booked from a boastful agent of travel. The agent
was powerless. The seats were invisible. The three
gendarmes supplied to us by the Greek Govern



TO DELPHI


215


ment, faced with the resistance of a defiant people,
refused the challenge, and retired for private
slumber to the fourth class. We fended for ourselves: cleared a camping-place in the corridor, and
converted our hand luggage into seats for the just.
Once started on our journey, we found compensation in the airiness of our corridor. Cooled by
pleasant breezes, we glided across the Attic plain,
scented with the fresh blossoms of the springtime.
We gazed out at the varied and changing scenes
of the peninsula: the flocks and their shepherds;
the goats nibbling at the young shoots of the
trees; the lean long-tailed sheep wandering from
pasture to pasture. The country grows dry and
arid; the olives grow scarcer and scarcer: until
you mount to the highlands of Boeotia, cross once
more into the farther plain, and halt at the town
of Thebes.
Thebes is now but a shadow of what once was
great-that city of the famous little tribe which
took the torch from the failing hands of Athens
and Sparta, and carried it proudly on high till
the Macedonian phalanx quenched its light for
ever on the plains of Chaeroneia.
To-day it is but a typical little Greek town,
white and brown in the sunlight, rather dirty, very
lazy and inquisitive. We were glad to get away
from its gaze.
The real outstanding memory of that journey is
-Parnassus. It was after midday when we saw
the great heights of that majestic mountain first
rising into the sky: with its great buttresses, its




216 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
heights and valleys, and on the summit its eternal
snow.
Parnassus! One thinks of it as a fairy haunt
of the Muses, so idealised in poetry that it seems
scarcely real. But there the great mountain rose
before us, very substantial: almost prosaic in its
immensity. We left the train at Bralo and stood
in that mighty presence.
Then we became conscious of the existence of
three kindly men in uniform, who claimed to be
our protectors. They were gentle creatures. But
at that moment their role in life was that of
gendarmes. They had been told off by a kindly,
anxious Greek Government to safeguard our lives.
As the journey to Delphi is taken daily by tourists,
and is still notorious for its safety, this gentle
regard seemed a little excessive. But from that
moment forward this kindly tutelage pursued us
with its clinging embrace. Escape was impossible,
and our only refuge was good-humoured surrender
to its care.
These admirable fellows had called on the
previous evening at our hotel in Athens and had
been kindly and gently dismissed on the ground of
superfluity. But they now claimed that they had
been placed by the Greek Chief of Police under an
absolute command to protect us, and could not
disregard that order except at their peril. We were
to be guarded in spite of ourselves. This peculiar
and painful position of theirs called out our sympathy: and efforts were now made to face the
needs of our enlarged party.




TO DELPHI                217
The trouble was, that while the Greek Government had supplied the protectors, they had provided us with no means of transport. It seemed
cruel to leave our guardians at Bralo. In vain
did we look round for another automobile; and
the other tourists remained cold to the glory of
sharing our burden.
At last I evolved a brilliant theory of military
strategy. If we were to be protected it was clearly
desirable to protect our communications as well as
our actual convoy. So on that theory one of our
gendarmes was left at Bralo: another was dropped
midway at Amphissa: and only one had the special
satisfaction of protecting us as far as Delphi!
He was an amiable fellow, but of considerable
size. He sat between our party in the middle of
the car. It was magnificent-but uncomfortable.
At first we hoped to obtain some glory among the
natives from the fact of travelling with an escort.
But even that dream soon vanished. For we
rapidly discovered that these simple villagers at
once jumped to the very worst conclusion.
I remember once travelling across New York
with a large escort of police, and really enjoying
the sensation of distinction, until I heard a voice
in the crowd say in a good, clear American accent:
"So they've got those crooks at last! "
So near to dust was our glory!
This ride to Amphissa was not made easier by
our chauffeur, who kept up a running fire of protest
over this unexpected addition to his passengers.
At Amphissa, indeed, our driver reported us to the




218 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
local gendarmes for carrying an excessive number
of passengers, and there were, for a time, strained
relations between the local and the central police.
It took the form of a fiery discussion, carried on in
the midst of a great crowd of eager and appreciative villagers. In that way fame at last shone on
our modest banners.
Our gendarme was an agreeable companion.
It was he, indeed, who actually suggested that I
should enjoy some firing practice at the top of the
pass, and he lent me for that purpose his magazine
rifle. As the mountains echoed to my shots, I felt
perhaps that it was a little unfair to the real
brigands that these things should be done under
official patronage. But the gendarme was delighted,
and he seemed to feel that his journey had not been
in vain. As we had no language in common, it was
difficult to communicate with him; but I judged
from his general amiability that he was willing to
become our man, and that if we desired to bur
down any particular village he was ready to join
us in the enterprise. His general attitude was one
of deep hostility to the country through which we
were passing.
When we reached Delphi he disappeared, and
we saw no more of him until our return journey.
My attempts to employ him as a valet proved a
failure. Present to our minds, he was always absent
in his body.
It is the best road in Greece-that magnificent
highway across the mountains to Delphi. No




TO DELPHI                219
British patriot need wonder when I tell him that
the road was made by English soldiers during the
Great War. Its object was to establish communication between the Gulf of Corinth and the railway
line at Bralo. Five years have passed: and that
English road is still the best in Greece, beautifully
graded up and down those difficult hills. But since
the Greeks are now leaving its surfaces entirely
to the tender mercies of mountain weather, and
wholly lack any organised road service, I do not
forecast a very long life for this or any other
Greek road; so I would strongly advise those who
would enjoy it to go quickly.
This wonder of roads climbs those hills in great
loops and zigzags; skirts precipices and penetrates
passes; commands far-stretching views over distant country. It leads you by gentle pastures
and sweet waters. Pastures! When is a pasture
not a pasture in Greece? Where the oxen refuse
to go, the sheep will pursue: where the sheep
despair, the goats will nibble, feeding up to the
very edges of the rocks.
Then the shepherds! As you pass, you see them
standing like statues by the side of their flocks,
leaning on their wooden crooks, tall, picturesque
figures in their sheepskin jackets and their tightfitting caps. There they stand all day, like lonely
sentinels, often as handsome as young gods: for
in these hills above Delphi the old Greek strain survives, especially in the shepherd stock. Wherever
the Greek race was protected by the mountains
or the sea it seems to have been sheltered




220 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
from the Turk. For your Turk always preferred
the plain: in his division of the world he was
always willing to leave the sea and the mountains
to the infidel.
Thus these Greek shepherds have always lived
a free and roving life, which makes them extraordinarily independent of the world and its
changing events. What have they to do with
governments? They wander day after day with
their great flocks across the hills, curling themselves
up in the little shepherds' huts after they have
put their sheep to bed between the wattled cotes.
Their vagrant lives would seem to us idle: but
they are amazingly healthy. One could imagine
some "Scholar Gipsy" of Matthew     Arnold's
dream-poem wandering with his flock over these
hills and looking across to Delphi:
"Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade."
For surely in these days of wireless no life could
be imagined more remote from the restless ways
of men.
It- was Easter time in Greece, and in the villages
through which we passed the whole male population was out in the sunshine, enjoying the slipshod
indolence of an Eastern holiday. They seem to
mark their holidays by a general revolt against the
habits of ordered life-such as washing, shaving,
dressing, or even eating regular meals. Their
clothes are largely unbuttoned, and they sit for
hours in front of the cafes imbibing the sweet




TO DELPHI


221


Turkish coffee and smoking the eternal cigarette.
They drink very little wine: for Greece is a very
temperate country. You see few women about:
for the Turks seem to have left behind them a
deep-seated prejudice against women appearing
in public.
Easter has filled the air with a happy feeling of
resurrection: the true resurrection of the spring.
The sweet scents of the acacia-blossom mingle
with the fragrance that breathes from the fresh
young leafage of the trees. " Christos Anesti! "
-" Christ has Risen!"-is the greeting of one
Greek to another as they meet on the roads; and
they kiss one another on the cheeks. " Christ
has risen! "-there is something extraordinarily
touching and beautiful about this salutation, and
the manner of it: as if, every year, this Rising was
a new fact. The Good News seems in tune with
the spring.
The pity of it is that this happy atmosphere of
light and love which fills Greece at Easter should
be marred by one very bad blot-that is, the universal, ubiquitous killing of the little lambs. You
cannot escape from the slaughter: it is going on
everywhere. It is a veritable "Massacre of the
Innocents." Easter becomes a feast of Herod
rather than of Christ, the friend of the Innocents.
The air is full of the sad bleatings of these pitiful
victims, slaughtered to make a Hellenic holiday.
You see these little creatures-very small lambs
-being carried everywhere to the death and the
oven: trussed round the shoulders of their owners;




222 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
flung into motor-cars; helpless, pleading, lamenting. Some are even being slaughtered in the
streets, and their blood flows beneath your feet.
Their little carcasses are skinned and cut up in
front of the doors, and their entrails thrown into
the gutter. It is all very horrible.
Religions have some surprising results. It seems
very strange, for instance, that because, three
thousand years ago, the Israelite sojourners in
Egypt devised the idea of splashing their doorlintels with lambs' blood in order to avert from
their homes the killing of their first-born-because
of that-to-day, in Greece, so many thousands of
these pathetic, fleecy little creatures should have
to shed their blood!
Meditating on the sacrifice of the girl victim
Iphigenia to the anger of the gods, Lucretius, two
thousand years ago, uttered his famous complaint:
" How many evils has religion persuaded men to
commit! "1
It was some such thought that occurred to us
that day in Greece when, in the glowing sunshine
of that loveliest of Easter days, we watched this
work of slaughter going forward under the light of
the sun.
It is a fertile land, and on the very summit of
the high mountain pass we halted and gathered
a bunch of rare and beautiful flowers, already
blooming amid the shrubbery. Then we descended
to the valley, and for some miles ran across the
1 " Quantum religio potuit suadere malorum."-Lucretius: De
Rerum Natura, i. o02.




TO DELPHI


223


plain-the famous Phocian plain-along a broad,
smooth highway. But such mercies do not last
long in modem Greece.
We turned north again, and began to ascend
the southern slopes of Parnassus, zigzagging up
a rough mountain road; every minute enjoying
wider and nobler views of the great plain gradually
spread out beneath us-that plain that was the
cause of so many "battles long ago "-now
covered with its sage-green robe of dark olivetrees, stretching afar between the mountains to
the shores of the azure sea.
We reached the little village of Kastri, perched
on the side of the great mountain massif of Parnassus. This village, ancient in name, looks very
new in structure.  The reason is very simple.
Kastri stood for many centuries on the very site of
Delphi, and effectively estopped all research. But
at the end of last century the French diggers,
more fortunate than the English at Herculaneum,
persuaded the Greek Government to let them
move the whole village of Kastri bodily down the
hill. So Kastri, and the Kastrians-for all the
world like any Far-West American village-were
just rooted up, carried away, and planted down
more than a mile from their old mediaeval site.
There the Kastrians live to-day, at some distance
from Delphi: and continue their placid life for
all the world as if no inquisitive foreigners had
invaded their peace.
We motored slowly along the one and only
street of this transferred village of Kastri. Groups




224 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
of men were sitting on chairs in front of their
houses, drinking coffee. They were enjoying their
Easter holiday. They looked at us inquisitively,
without interest or greeting. Perhaps it was the
spectacle of the gendarme, prominent in our midst,
that kept them silent. Or perhaps they felt no
enthusiasm for these foreigners who have been
the cause of the wanderings of Kastri!
Then we resumed the zigzags; climbed another
three miles, with the great mountain looming over
us and the great valley wandering beneath:
turned a corner and found ourselves in a long
street of little houses on a road which is little
more than a ledge on the mountain-side.
It was Delphi.




IX


THE EYRIE OF THE GODS
THE Greek Government had graciously sent on to
Delphi, as to all other towns and villages on our
itinerary, an imperious command that we should
be kindly and hospitably received. The results
were electrical. Almost immediately after arrival
at Delphi, for instance, I was summoned to the
terrace in front of the one and only hotel: a clean,
sweet little hostelry worthy of the Oracle.
There the Mayor and the Director of the Museum
set forth to us their passionate desire to make our
stay as pleasant as affection could make it.
"Father of the Refugees" was one of the
amiable titles they conferred on me, a title exceeding in measure but infinitely touching in the purport of good will. They offered to us any facilities
desired, including even the use of mules! Truly
"Never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it."
But your mule and your Delphi go ill together.
Like the lion, he is a "fearful wild-fowl."  He
consorts ill with temples.
Mine host, indeed, already perhaps scenting some
rivalry, sniffed aloud at the suggestion of mules.
" Mules, indeed! " he cried. " Mules at Delphi?


P


225




226 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Why, their Excellencies would make themselves
quite ridiculous! " Which was true.
For, as we were to find, there is nothing beneath
the " Shining Rocks " round the Castalian spring
that calls for the help and carriage of that most
ingenious and independent of animals. But we
were extremely anxious not to offend these kindly
people. So we compromised by accepting the offer
of M. Kontoleon, the distinguished Director of the
very beautiful and precious Delphi Museum, to
show us round the ruins which he knows so well.
We owed much to the privilege of his escort.
During that day this excellent and learned man
spared no pains to explain and clarify those
wonderful discoveries which to-day make Delphi
one of the golden spots of Greece. With his help
our time at Delphi passed fleetingly-a day of
wonderful, unforgettable experiences for us as we
wandered to and fro over that marvellous hillside.
The beauty of Delphi is not to be figured in
any recital of ruins-the innumerable fragments
of temples, and whole temples, that adorn it. It
is the place itself that fascinates-the place and
its memories: the solemn and tremendous background of mountain and rock: the solitude of today in contrast with the peopled, crowded sanctity
of the past.
For Delphi stands in a fold of the great mountain, as on the stage of a great natural amphitheatre. It is backed by the high precipitous cliffs
of the " Shining Rocks," split into two great walls
by the great gorge of the Castalian brook.




THE EYRIE OF THE GODS            227
The road runs round and across the gorge like
one of the great galleries that run round a dolomite
mountain. At the foot of the gorge is a group
of plane-trees, beneath whose forerunners it is
fabled that Agamemnon rested. Standing on that
glorious ridge you look right across a deep valley
to the slopes of Mount Kirphis, divided from
you by the river of Pleistos; and far beyond the
olive-clad valley to the horizon rim of glittering
sea.
You seem to be nested in some eyrie of the
gods. There is a great sense of elevation and
altitude-of sublimity. It seems the right place
for the voice of an Oracle. You realise that this
position of Delphi had a great deal to do with the
age-long supremacy which the Delphians won for
themselves. It explains the long duration of that
amazing influence.
For in no other way can you account for the fact
that for so many generations, throughout the most
critical periods of Greek history, statesmen and
philosophers, poets and artists, made pilgrimages
to this spot.
Here they sought light on their perplexities,
guidance in their doubts, comfort in their troubles.
Hither came Crcesus at the moment of his fate:
hither the Athenian at the crisis of the Persian
attack: hither both Spartans and Athenians alike
at the opening of that prolonged and disastrous
civil strife called the Peloponnesian War. Hither,
in the twilight of Greece, came Theban and
Macedonian.




228 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
On this ledge, in the days of Delphi's greatness
and glory, there spread out a city of marble and
gold: matchless in the beauty of the buildings;
lovely and skilful in the planning of its site. It
was the most sacred city in Greece: a city of
peace and prophecy.
The new diggings have revealed to us the full
beauty of the plan.
In the centre was the Temple of Apollo, a mighty
structure of marble, second only to the Parthenon
at Athens: now in complete ruin. All round it
were the treasure-houses of the various states,
filled with the golden gifts made to the gods.
For the Oracle demanded heavy payment for the
wisdom so obscurely meted out.
Up the hill there wound a road called the Sacred
Way, and the treasure-houses were built on either
side of this zigzag pathway. One single building
has been faithfully restored to-day-the " TreasureHouse of the Athenians "-a very exquisite structure: a small temple with marble columns and
pediment-which contained in the old days the
gifts showered on Delphi by Athens for the oracles
which saved them at Salamis.
There were many such buildings. Every state
had one, equally exquisite in its beauty.
The Greeks gave to the god of their best; and
with absolute devotion they added building after
building to the treasured wealth that surrounded
the Temple of Apollo on this lofty hillside.




THE EYRIE OF THE GODS


229


In the very centre there is still an uncouth rock
which is supposed to have been the pulpit of the
inspired priestess who uttered the Oracle. From
that seat, it is imagined, she threw forth her wild
and whirling cries. Smoke issued from the ground;
and her uncouth words were interpreted into
poetic speech by the priests of Apollo assembled
around.
This process of interpretation gave great power
to these priests. They formed an exclusive aristocracy at Delphi. There seems little doubt that
this close aristocracy was possessed of a tradition
of hereditary astuteness. It is probable that they
even gathered information from all parts of Greece
in order to assist the inspiration of the Oracle, and
strengthen its spiritual hold. There was method
as well as madness at Delphi.
Here, indeed, was a form of political power
unique in history. We may call it theocracy; and
yet that was not all. Modern sympathisers have
suspected a touch of telepathy, or even a gift of
spiritual whispering from the Unknown, to which
some of our wisest are now giving ear. But we
must not rush to these conclusions. For there
was a great deal of worldliness in these oracular
people.
The Oracle of Delphi, we need not doubt, only
survived by exercise of great restraint and cleverness. No politician in modern times has ever
carried the art of obscure and ambidextrous utterance so far as these ancient prophetic hierophants.
They were masters of the art of double-faced




230 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
speech: there was scarcely one single famous
utterance of Delphi which could not escape from
discredit by this simple and ingenious device.
But none of these arts could have saved Delphi
from exposure by that acute sceptic, the ancient
Greek. What really saved Delphi, and maintained
its power, was the tremendous setting of nature.
Take, for instance, the actual ravine which was
the centre and the beginning of the whole Delphic
worship-the ravine of Papadia, where Apollo is
fabled to have slain the dragon Pytho.
It cuts, with its dark, profound cleft, the very
centre of the " Shining Rocks." It leads between
steep rocks up to a thickly wooded gorge; and
down the gully the brook of Castalia falls. At the
foot you find the bathing-trough which was used
to cleanse and purify every devout Greek who
wished to consult the Oracle at Delphi.
The glory of Castalia is departed. The fount
is defiled, and the stream dribbles down in lazy,
quiescent somnolence. Its divinity is clouded over.
Other gods have come-and gone. Above the
trough there are still to-day several empty niches
cut in the rock, once filled by the images of Christian saints. But in the eighth century there swept
over Eastern Europe that wave of puritan imagesmashing which split the Christian Church in
twain. The Castalian images were torn down, and
the shrine defiled.
So to-day the Castalian brook trickles down
without honour to the valley: and the passing
stranger visits the fountain no longer as a sacred




THE EYRIE OF THE GODS


281


shrine, but merely as a wonder and a show. All
passes, even the greatest:
"The tomb of Agamemnon is a show,
And ruined is his royal monument! "
The path ascends very roughly from the Castalian spring right into the darkness of the gorge.
Apollo climbed that way. I determined to follow
in his footsteps. I was intent to explore the innermost gloom of the mysterious cave. For a time it
was easy walking. Then the rocks suddenly grew
steeper. They were smooth and shining, fulfilling
their name. I took off my boots, and then my
stockings. I strove with that rock barefooted, like
the far-darting Apollo himself. I found myself in
that dark and gloomy recess where Apollo strove
with monsters. No monster was there, but only a
merry party of Greek professors.
We were standing beneath the very heights
that marked the limits of the power of Delphi.
Down those precipices Alexander of Macedonia
threw the priests of Delphi when they defied his
power. We stood where the corpses of the last
priests of Delphi cumbered the ground-the last
martyrs of a dead religion. From above the
mocking Macedonian cried: " Where be now your
gods? "
Forget that last story of shame and death, and
go back to the glorious beginning, when Apoll6
strove with the Python and slew him. Here began
that legend which in so many forms has typified
heroism for so many lands: the legend that we




232 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
still perpetuate to-day when we engrave on our
coins the images of St George and the Dragon.
It was the leading feature of all Greek idealism
that it looked at life as a whole, combining in their
scheme the triangle of religious, moral and physical
life. So here at Delphi we find that they made
provision in their sacred towns for the full Hellenic
existence. Delphi was not merely a collection of
temples. Wherever so many Greeks were gathered
together they wanted three things-a theatre, a
running track and a bath. All three have been
discovered at Delphi.
You climb the hill above the holy places by the
little path which is all that remains of the Sacred
Way. You arrive at what is, on the whole, the
most beautiful open-air theatre in the world. It
remains to-day almost perfect in its general form
and shape. The seats rise in tiers against the hillside, and are placed so that, sitting there, the great
multitudes of pilgrims were able to look out across
the plain to the distant sea.
The stage is not so elaborate as in most theatres:
and it is probable that this structure was used for
reciting poems rather than for acting plays. The
priests of Delphi here sang their hymns to Apollo
in the intervals of the exciting events which were
taking place at the Oracle below. But the size of
the theatre is a great surprise. It vividly shows
what vast crowds of Greeks assembled at Delphi
on sacred occasions. Quite ten thousand people
could have found seats in that auditorium.




THE EYRIE OF THE GODS


238


You resume your climb up the mountain-side,
and in about ten minutes from the theatre you
reach the stadium. It is a racing arena of some
two hundred yards in length, surrounded by seats,
and cut out in the side of the mountain. The
excavators have revealed the whole arrangement
of seating, including the special marble chairs
reserved for the priests of Delphi.
Here again we see the attachment of the Greeks
to their many-sided existence. Having performed
their devotions in the morning, they required
sport in the afternoon. So from the temples they
ascended the hill, and taking their seats in the
stadium, they applauded their champions in the
struggle for the " crown of wild olive."
The Delphic Games had no fame that could
match those of Olympia; but the great fact is that
here, in this centre of the Greek race, the strife
and the prize really held the Greeks together, giving
them some pause in their eternal wars, substituting
for the clash of battle the gentler contentions of
the course.
It almost looks as if we had slipped back in all
such matters. For who in the Great War would
have been listened to if he had proposed that the
enemies should break off their warfare to indulge
in Homeric contests of football or cricket? Yet we
know that, in the very height and intensity of the
wars of old, the Greek states were not ashamed to
send their delegates to race and wrestle with the
chosen athletes of enemy states.
Thus it is most typical of the double strands of




234 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
love and hatred running across that ancient complex of little states that they should have dug out,
just below the Delphi Stadium, the first assembly
place of the earliest League of Nations.
For here sat the famous Delphi Amphictyony:
the first League of the Greek States-here on this
hillside: on the ground just above where the
modem road is cut. Here the delegates sat, under
the blue sky, in a half circle: and it is fitting that
the Christian church built on this site in the Middle
Ages should have been left by the excavators: for
the dawn of peace breathes from this sacred spot.
We strolled back to our simple little hotel. We
dined and then sat out on the terrace, enjoying
the cool night. A myriad stars twinkled on us,
casual visitors to this solemn spot: the same stars
that once looked down on those old Greeks who
came here for wisdom and light. Two thousand
years have passed. We still crave for wisdom and
light: but we have no Oracle to go to. Our faith
has waned.
Stay! What is that wailing that breaks across
the quiet?
We look through the darkness of the moonless
night, and we see a line of flickering lights coming
up the hill from Kastri. It is a Good Friday
procession: and as they come nearer we can see
that a tall villager is carrying a crucifix in front of
a long procession of slow-moving men and women,
each carrying a candle which, as they move, shakes
even in that still air. There arises from the ranks
of this solemn array a chant of infinite sadness. It




THE EYRIE OF THE GODS           235
is the minor key of our moder religion, with its
breathing passion and sacrifice.
What a contrast to the glowing sunny faith of
Apollo! What a change from the long array
of brilliant, scarlet-robed priests that wound up
the Sacred Way in the sunlight of days that are
no more!
Yet, when the whole account is made up, which
faith shall be said to have brought more joy to
humanity-that glowing, confident faith of the
Ancient Greeks, or the sad, self-sacrificing creed
of a later day?




x


THE TURK TALKS
WE motored back across the hills from Delphi to
Bralo, and joined our old friend the Orient Express,
which took us through the night past Mount
Olympus to the great town of Salonica.
We arrived in the early morning, and were permitted by a lenient railway company to sleep on
and take our rest for some hours in the AthensSalonica sleeping-car, which is detached at that
point from the main train. But in doing so we
were defeated in vigilance by our amiable friends
of Salonica. Leaving my compartment, refreshed
with sleep, at the hour of eight, I was startled to
find a whole railway carriage already filled with
courtly Greeks. They were sitting there like so
many images of Patience-not on monuments,
but on railway cushions. They had been waiting
a full hour: and let no man say hereafter that
the Greeks are not early risers!
The little party included representatives of the
Governor of Macedonia, of the Exchange Commission, and of various other public bodies responsible
for the reconstruction of Macedonia.  Already,
before taking a modest breakfast at the hotel, we
had had our whole day mapped out in sections
236




THE TURK TALKS


287


of hours for the carrying out of that task of
refugee investigation which had brought me to
Salonica.
Salonica is one of the great historic cities of the
Near East. It lies in a splendid position at the
head of its ample gulf. From the sea-front one
looks across the gulf at the sublime prospect of
the immortal Mount Olympus, shining in its mystic
beauty amid the heavens. Now and again that
silver seat of the gods will disappear for a while
in cloud or storm. But, especially in the early
mornings, she will often shine on Salonica, quite
clearly, like an angel smiling amid tears. That view
of Olympus is one of the most radiant, ethereal
visions of this besmirched world.
Salonica is menaced as a port. The restless
energy of the River Vardar threatens to throw
across her gulf a breakwater of alluvial soil which
may, in the end, convert it into a lake. No
particular steps are being taken to avert that
possible doom to the city. This neglect mirrors
the sad fatalism which seems now to have fallen
like a cloud over the whole of the city and gulf.
Disaster has sapped the springs of action.
Yet this is still a beautiful port. For Salonica
stretches, crescent-shaped, in one magnificent
curve round the bay. It possesses that peculiar
charm of mingled civilisations which characterises
so many of these cities of the Near East. You
see the tapering minarets rising by the side of
the Christian spires: the streets of Turkish houses
-with their lattice windows concealing the ladies




238 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
of the harem; their blank walls and sombre enclosures-next to the open fields and sunny gardens
of the Christian merchants. East and West meet
and cross here in one inextricable tangle between
the hills and the sea.
Poor Salonica! she cannot lose her charm, even
in these days of adversity. The little streets still
climb up the hill, and the great heights behind the
city still gaze down on the gulf. But one incessant
trail of tragedy has fallen on her during the last ten
years-war, fire, pestilence, succeeding one another
with shock after shock of tragedy. She stands
here at the very centre of all the tidal strife of the
Near East: and in these ten years she has become
a "Niobe, all tears."
The great fire of I916 swept the core of the city,
and still to-day many of her streets are half in
ruins. Great spaces still lie vacant. Large bodies
of her own people still live in huts and shelters:
and just outside the town there is a big temporary
settlement of Jews, who were burnt out. For some
time after the fire there were great schemes of
town-planning: and Veniselos, when he was Prime
Minister, dreamed of building on the ruins a more
stately, ordered city. An illustrious English architect, Mr Thomas Mawson, had mapped out a vast
scheme of town-planning which would have made
Salonica one of the noblest cities of the East. But
alas! woe on woe fell upon Greece with remorseless
AEschylean doom —the downfall of Veniselos; the
disaster of Asia Minor; the influx of the refugees;
defeat, bankruptcy and chaos. Town-planning




THE TURK TALKS


289


schemes dissolved like the morning mists; and
at this very moment Salonica is farther off from
recovery than at any time since its destruction.
For by an unhappy fate it has fallen to this
afflicted city to have to bear the chief shock of the
new disaster that has befallen Macedonia. This
disaster was politely called in the salons of Lausanne the " exchange of populations." I remember
spending some days at Lausanne during the discussions of I923 and hearing this elegant phrase,
"exchange of populations," bandied to and fro
across green tables by well-groomed diplomatists.
It is to the high credit of Veniselos that he himself
deplored the whole transaction. But he was helpless in face of the resolute determination of the
Turks to expel every Christian from Asia Minor.
The only reply that Greece could make to such
a cosmic sweep of humanity was to make room in
Europe by permitting some corresponding expulsion
of Turks.
So it was decreed that 350,000 Turkish people
should leave Macedonia.
I have described the results of this policy of
"Exchange of Populations" being worked out
in every form of human suffering throughout the
length and breadth of Macedonia. But the stormcentre of the whole affair was always here, in
Salonica. For here the tides always meet and
shock. Here the unhappy exiles from two continents crowd and litter the whole town and the
whole sea-front. They fill the harbour with packed
ships; sleep in the very streets; " squat " under




240 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
the very colonnades of the houses: populate
this beautiful city with a vast, moving, shifting
concourse of beggars, derelicts and abandoned.
Here in the midst of this abounding woe a
few young Englishmen wrestle and tussle with
the ravages of starvation and disease. Miserably
armed with inadequate means from overseas, they
carry on a forlorn fight with destitution and
ruin. I visited the ships and camps. For two
days I heard the wail of these disasters: listened
to the sad and sorry tales in the refugee centres:
conversed with hundreds of people, both Turks
and Christians-people who had been wrenched
from happy homes and thrown into the welter
of the unknown. It was a sad and harrowing
experience.
But there is another side to all this. One afternoon, wearied with all this anguish, we were taken
in our little car right outside the city to visit the
refugee villages which have sprung up all around
Salonica, between the mountains and the sea.
Out of evil good begins to spring. That is the
divine law of things. So we saw in passing through
these villages the marvellous transformation of
misery into happiness, and despair into settlement.
Here, battling against the double tragedies of
poverty and disease, the exiles from Asia Minor
are making good: building their own houses
literally out of the very mud of those plains. Toiling with invincible energy, they have brought to
bear on Greece and Europe some of that indomitable resolution which enabled them to hold their




THE TURK TALKS


241


own for so many centuries in the centre of Asia
Minor and along the south shore of the Black Sea.
These Pontine exiles, descendants of the earliest
Christians, have defied fate, and taken their future
into their own hands. Supplied only with the very
elements of existence, they are building up a selfreliant life. Far away, beneath the foothills of
Macedonia, there are refugee villages which have
already so far emerged from the black cloud of
disaster as to be free of help or assistance. These
villagers, with the happy idea of paying back the
debt of Europe's charity, are actually helping the
new refugees who still pour into the port. By such
recompense do they show themselves worthy of all
and every help!
"Help yourselves and Britain will help you" was
the message which we conveyed to these villagers.
I believe that Britain will prove as good as our
word.
On one of these mornings I had the experience
of travelling round the camps with the Turkish
member of the Exchange Commission.
This young Turk certainly gave no impression
of savagery. He seemed a very perfect gentleman. Beautifully groomed, costumed in the best
European clothes, with immaculate cloth and
linen, he sat back in the car with his smooth face
and plump body radiating a sublime complacency.
The scarlet fez on his closely cropped head had
been beautifully brushed, and was only removed
now and again to wipe the perspiration from off
Q




242 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
his brow: for it was one of the hottest of those
spring days in Greece.
Perhaps the perspiration was partly due to the
simplicity and directness of the questions which
I addressed to him. For surely here was an
opportunity not to be denied.
The young Turk sat bolt upright and very still.
He was youthful, but his cheeks already had suave
contours, as of middle age. A little black moustache concealed his upper lip. His two small
black eyes were so near together that they seemed
only saved from mingling by the intervention of
an extremely small and chubby nose. His hands
were very white.
When I fired off my questions the black eyes
twinkled; the little soft white hands moved restlessly round his cane; and even the little nose
seemed to me affected by a general disturbance.
I know not what thoughts of sudden death or
torture may have passed through the deeper
recesses of his mind. But never at any moment
did he show anger or resentment.
Our talk continued for some hours as we motored
across the Salonica hills.
" Is Mustapha Kemal," I began gently, " a very
fervid Nationalist, that he should have expelled
this immense Christian population from Asia
Minor? "
My Turkish friend gave a little mild gesture of
surprise. Then he smiled indulgently, as if, after
all, the faithful must be tolerant and patient.
"No," he replied softly. "Mustapha Kemal is




THE TURK TALKS


243


a very tolerant man. A man of modem mind.
Though," he admitted, with a movement of his
hands, "not all the men behind him are quite so
modern or quite so tolerant as Mustapha himself."
"But," I demurred, "if Mustapha Kemal is
so tolerant, why then is the policy of Turkey so
intolerant-so Nationalist? "
He smiled benignly and gave the smallest
movement of impatience.
"No," he said calmly.   "Turkey is not so
Nationalist as you think. Turkey only wishes
to be master of her own house. Of course the
Capitulations had to go, because the foreigners
had misused them."
"But are you not treating these foreign traders
a little harshly? " I gently observed, having been
filled for days and weeks with stories of expulsions
and hardships from the European nationals I had
met on my travels. " Not just a little too harshly?"
I said gently.
He answered serenely.
" The foreign traders," he said, " have had their
day. It has been a long day, and they have
enjoyed amazing privileges. They have claimed
to be free of all our taxes, and to be independent
of our justice. Such claims are intolerable to any
free nation. It could not go on. Turkey must
be allowed to dispense her own justice in her own
country."
" But the Turkish Courts? " I suggested quietly.
For after all we were at very close quarters, and it
was important to keep on friendly terms. " The




244 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Turkish Courts? Are they really all that could
be desired? We are told in Western Europe that
you Turks have not yet quite attained to our
impartiality in these matters of justice."
He smiled indulgently.
" There may be some truth in that," he said
kindly. " But a commission has been appointed;
and all that will be changed."
One felt oneself back in old England.
We had reached a Christian refugee village, constructed on the heights above Salonica by a body
of forlorn exiles from the district of Trebizond, on
the Black Sea. I had visited a good many of the
people from these districts: I had heard their
stories. I had found few male children in the
families. The reason was that the Turks had
made a rule of killing most of the boys, in case
they might become Greek soldiers. The Turkish
Government is very prudent in such matters, and
takes few risks.
I knew that there was some ill feeling on this
matter among this remnant from Trebizond, who
had not quite risen to the height of the modern
view about war which started in Berlin and has
now reached London. Still, I thought I would try
to work for peace. So, after a time, I came out
and fetched the Turk, who had remained seated
in the car with a certain fine delicacy of feeling,
perhaps conscious that the men from Trebizond
might still feel some lingering resentment.
But the men from Trebizond were ready to see
him.




THE TURK TALKS             245
"Bring him in, by all means," they said. They
were not in Turkey, and they could afford to be
polite. So he came into one of the neat little
parlours in one of the houses of sun-dried bricks
and home-made carpentry which these refugees
from Trebizond had erected on that windy height
above Salonica.
The little bland Turk sat in the middle of us,
drinking his sweet coffee and smoking his cigarette,
just as if he had been at home in his cafe at
Stamboul. I see the scene now: that little group of
stalwart, seafaring men from Trebizond standing
around and looking down on the Turk as he sat
there. There was a curious steely gleam in their
eyes as they looked at him. They seemed so
extremely powerful, and he looked so amazingly
"civilised," that a horrid fancy passed across
my mind that their restraint might suddenly go:
that they might pick him up in their broad hands
and crumple him as his strong men had crumpled
their boys far away on the shores of the Euxine.
But nothing happened. When I brought him
back to the motor, my Turkish friend was still
clothed with perfect serenity. He was a little
taciturn.
I broke the silence quite gently.
"Perhaps your people were a little rough
with these folk? " I suggested. "Perhaps even
Mustapha Kemal —"
" Mustapha Kemal? " he said, with an utterance that suddenly quickened to a staccato" Mustapha Kemal is a soldier. It was war-and




246   THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
in war all sorts of things are done by all nationsnot only by the Turks."
" But," I said, " I thought the war was over."
" The war," he said, " has now come to an end.
It will now be forgotten and things will change."
I have always said that the Devil is a good
advocate.




XI


GREEK PERSONS AND POLITICS
IN the course of my association with the Balkans
I have known well all the prominent politicians
of that perilous peninsula throughout the last
generation, and it may be worth while to set
down here some personal impressions of these
men.
You cannot grow giants in a land of dwarfs, and
the constant confusions of the Balkans act as real
hindrances to statesmanship. As in the old Italian
city-states, so now among these little conflicting
states of the Near East, the prize goes to the man
of cunning rather than to the man of virtue. The
crown is for the man who follows the teaching
of Machiavelli as set forth in The Prince-with
his discourses on promise-breaking and the uses
of treachery.
The real miracle of Balkan politics is that there
are so many honest men at the head of affairs. I
remember my first visit to Athens, when I landed
from a yacht in the year I909, and journeyed up
from the Piraeus to meet my friend, Andreades.
He took me on a round of visits to the public men
of the country. At the end of the afternoon I
had seen some half-dozen ex-Prime Ministers, and
I still felt a little dizzy with the experience. Each
247




248 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
had his own faction, and each had risen to power
-or fallen-by means which would scarcely bear
the close scrutiny of a Western searchlight. There
was one really interesting man among them-old
Rhallys, who still lived in his little Athenian villa
opposite to the university- an honest man of
ramshackle habits and manners, rather like an
English country gentleman, with his love of rough
clothes and plain speech, belonging to a world that
was fast disappearing. All the other ex-Ministers
lived in beautiful French, modernised villas, with
the best of cookery and with a thick veneer of
politeness covering the innate aboriginal qualities
which still marked them in public life. They talked
cleverly, but my best comment on them is to say
that, looking back now, I remember them only
as a composite photograph of smooth manners
and pleasant phrase-making: astonishingly good
copies of Western statesmen, but little more than
copies.
This was before the time of Veniselos, who, in
the following year, arrived from Crete and swept
all these people aside.  From  the very start
Veniselos's career was a miracle of character, and
a miracle it continued until the end. It was a
triumph of sheer individuality. It was backed by
no vested interests and by no real party organisation. Of course men gathered round him and
called themselves Veniselists. Some of those men
were inspired by the same high idealism as he himself. The others were flatterers and hangers-on,
such as we see in this country gathering round any




GREEK PERSONS AND POLITICS 249
successful man. Those men just fed off his table,
and very often betrayed his cause. By the violence
of their deeds during his absence in the West they
severely compromised his name. But during his
period of real power Veniselos in Greece ruled
alone. He defied most of the powerful influences;
he waged war with the Court; he tried to break
up the big estates, and thus antagonised the big
landlords; he made a bitter enemy of every other
party. Such a triumph of one-man power could
not last. When the real stress came it broke down,
and Veniselos turned out to be alone in defeat as in
victory.
I met Veniselos first in London, and saw him
frequently, in many places, during the years I9I4 -I925. I always met him when he came to London,
and kept a careful record of all his political talks.
It was a time when I was constantly meeting the
best political brains in England. I may, therefore,
carry some weight when I say that I soon formed
the opinion that Veniselos stood among the foremost political minds of modern Europe. I believe
that Mr Lloyd George formed the same opinion,
although he afterwards somewhat lost his faith
in Veniselos in the hour of defeat.
That was because Veniselos was rather lacking
in Lloyd George's great driving motive - the
passion for victory. That was where Veniselos
failed. He possessed a passion for right in a degree
which I do not remember since Mr Gladstone.
But Veniselos was always curiously lacking in
the other great political quality-the passion for




250 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
victory. He liked power, but for it he would
sacrifice no single point of honour. Of how many
European public men can that be said? And of
how many European people can it be said that
they admire that refusal when they see it?
Veniselos is a first-class talker: he talks English,
but he generally prefers to converse in French. You
never thoroughly appreciate him as an orator
until you hear him in Greek. In dealing with
him you are apt to be deceived at first by his
demure exterior. He resembles in appearance a
rather saintly Nonconformist minister. Wearing
glasses, he is unable to bring his wonderful eyes
into full play. In order to understand him fully you
must see him in one of his bursts of rage. Then
the whole man changes. The eyes flash, the face
expands, the Nonconformist minister is thrown off,
and he becomes a very formidable human tiger.
It was the same with Mr Gladstone. Lloyd George
always says that of all his political experiences the
most terrifying was that of facing Mr Gladstone
in a rage. His eye would expand until it became
terrible. His whole form seemed to rise in height.
He seemed to aim at annihilating his antagonist.
Lord Camelford, the nephew of the elder Pitt, left
the same evidence of his uncle, although he loved
him dearly. " When he was angry or in earnest,"
he said, "no one could look my uncle in the face."
Such capacities for wrath seem to be allied with
the gift of oratory.
Even the cynic, Lord Chesterfield, who watched
Pitt in the House of Lords with sceptical eyes,




GREEK PERSONS AND POLITICS 251
uttered of that great orator a phrase which lingers
in the memory: " He carried with him unpremeditated the strength of thunder and the splendour of
lightning."
There stands out in my memory an occasion
when I saw the whole play of those lightnings,
which are so astonishing to those who are impressed
with the mildness and reserve of Veniselos.
I was sitting one afternoon in the hospitable
house of Sir John Stavridi, in Lennox Gardens, on
a Sunday in late June, I922. We were discussing
the forlorn state of the Greek cause in England,
when the door opened and Veniselos walked in.
He was in a state of great emotion. He had just
had the news of some fearful massacres of Greeks
in the interior of Asia Minor. He had returned
from his holiday in America to be greeted with
these facts. He was profoundly moved, and for
some time that drawing-room was the scene of
a tremendous human thunderstorm.    On this
occasion, indeed, Veniselos carried with him
"unpremeditated the strength of thunder and
the splendour of lightning."
I only wish I could have succeeded in bringing
him before the British public in that guise. But he
refused our offer of a public meeting. The position
at that moment was extremely delicate and
difficult. His advice had been rejected by the
Greek Royalists. Veniselos was responsible for the
invasion of Smyrna, yet he was privately advising
that the Greek armies should leave Asia Minor.
If that advice had become public, it would have




252 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
given the final touch of ruin to the military schemes
of Greece in Asia. He hesitated to take that step,
although in his clearer moments he foresaw the
catastrophe of the following September. I think
he still cherished the hope that some stroke of luck
might save the situation. He had just come back
from Paris, where he had done his utmost to win
over Poincare, but in vain.
We were all deeply impressed at this interview
by the profound emotion displayed by Veniselos
over the Greek massacres. The thought of them
seemed to tear him asunder. He almost wept in
our presence.
There again you come across an unexpected
phase of this great man-unexpected by those who
have only met his fury and his power of will. It is
his extreme tenderness: his sensibility to human
suffering. It is a curiously Christ-like trait in a
man who has lived in the rough and tumble all
his life, and was himself a revolutionary under
arms for many years.
"I wonder what you were doing," said Lord
Curzon to him at Lausanne one day, "when we
were blockading Crete?"
"I was dodging your shells," said Veniselos,
and it seems that he was the very man who, when
the Camperdown struck down the Greek flag on a
Cretan hill, immediately won the admiration of
the gallant British sailors by putting it up again.
However that may be, the tenderness is there
all the time, and it is part and parcel of that
great sensitiveness of nature which is at once his




GREEK PERSONS AND POLITICS 258
strength and his weakness. His weakness, because
it makes him suffer too much under attack. I fully
understood his calamitous breakdown in Athens
during his visit of advice in February I924, as I
had seen him break down completely in a speech
which he made at the Grafton Galleries in I918.
He was speaking of the changed condition of his
country under Constantine rule, when he stopped
in his speech: his very breath seemed to fail him:
he clutched his throat and sat down. " I cannot
go on," he said, " when I think of my country."
The whole of that audience stood in solemn silence
while the great man sat there and gradually
recovered his self-control.
Veniselos is liable to these storms of feeling. I
remember once going to see him at the Ritz Hotel
after breakfast, and finding him packing to leave
England. I asked him why he was going, and
found that it was entirely due to an attack in that
morning's Daily Mail. I pointed out to him that
such attacks formed the breakfast diet of a great
many Englishmen.
" I cannot help it," he said. "I cannot stay in
a country where I am liable to such attacks on
my private honour. Not after all I have done
for England," he added. Then suddenly his eyes
flashed, and the old lion-look came back to his
face. " At any rate," he said, " I have this consolation: I now know that there is a worse Press
in the world than the gutter Press of Athens! "
All this was very absurd, of course. The Daily
Mail is, after all, one of our national institutions,




254 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
and at that moment was simply carrying on a
habit of the British people, inherited from the days
of bull-baiting and prize-fighting-that is, to test
the spirit of public men by worrying them. If a
public man can stand this treatment, the British
people conceive an even greater admiration for
him. Like the French crowds at the September
Massacres, they embrace the survivors. But if
the victim shrink or run away they have no further
use for him.
Veniselos is the very best of friends. When he
comes to London he never forgets those who have
been good to him in adversity. He never allows
those little rough incidents inevitable in public life
to break a friendship.
He can be stern on occasions, and I once received
a terrible rating from him because I had shown one
of his letters to a doubtful friend of Greece. But
he soon forgets and forgives. He is a good correspondent and a man of indefatigable industry. The
critics who imagine him as living a lotus life in the
South of France, or who criticise him as a foolish,
uxorious man, are strangely at fault. He is happily
married to a very noble woman. But he is never
happy unless he is working for Greece. He always
so works for Greece as to be a good European, and
I count it as one of the gravest faults of Western
Europe that they have found no good service for
Veniselos-either as President of the League of
Nations or in some other great public capacity.
Not that he shares this feeling. For his sole
ambition is to serve his own country.




GREEK PERSONS AND POLITICS 255
Did Veniselos approve the shooting of the
Royalist Ministers?
He was certainly never consulted, and had no
direct responsibility for the deed. The utmost that
can be said is that he did not publicly condemn it.
But if he had taken that course, he must have
refused service under the Revolutionary Government that succeeded Gounaris, and he was, at that
moment, intent on holding up the Greek cause in
the negotiations over the Lausanne Treaty. He
decided to hold on.
I remember asking him the question almost
directly I arrived at Lausanne from Greece late
in the negotiations.
" What do you think of the conduct of those
men? " I asked.
" I think," he said slowly, " that whenever there
was a doubt those men always preferred their
king to their country -and that was to betray
their country."
That is the only definite opinion I heard him
express, for then he passed on to other matters.
I met M. Gounaris and his fellow-Ministers
several times in London when they were here
trying to secure a loan for Greece during the Asia
Minor campaign.
There was no touch of greatness about Gounaris.
He seemed a rather puzzled, baffled man, with
smaller men around him-a man who had handed
over his will to some stronger force and was no
longer master of his soul. In our interviews I often
pressed him on the point of withdrawing the Greek




256 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
armies from Asia Minor. He revealed to me that
Greece could not afford the campaign, and would
certainly collapse without outside help, which was
obviously not going to be given to her. Every
time I pressed Gounaris he always made the same
reply-that was, if the Greek armies left Asia
Minor there would be a wholesale massacre of the
Greeks who had befriended them. As it resulted,
when they were driven from Asia Minor there was
an even greater massacre. But at the same time,
such a result could not be foreseen, and I remember
that it was our opinion on the Anglo-Hellenic
League Committee that it would be too grave a
responsibility for Englishmen to recommend the
evacuation of Asia Minor.
The same feeling, I think, prevailed both with
Lloyd George and the Marquis Curzon, and the
hesitations of policy evident in the last phases
of the Coalition Cabinet were due, I imagine, to
the strong pleading of Gounaris on the side of
humanity. My only criticism of that policy is
that if Curzon and Lloyd George really intended
the Greeks to stay on they ought to have helped
Gounaris to secure a loan in the City. As it was,
the loan was refused-partly owing to Treasury
influence-and after that it was only a question
of time for the Greek forces to dwindle and perish
at the hands of the Turks. The Asia Minor disaster
was the direct result of the refusal to Gounaris of
a loan, both in London and in Paris.
Gounaris himself could not have foreseen his
tragic end. When I was in Athens later on I was




GREEK PERSONS AND POLITICS 257
approached several times by a lady who claimed
to be the mistress of Gounaris, and who described
him to me as a man of heroic character. I think
that she was deceived by her passion. Gounaris
was not a hero. But he scarcely deserved the
bitter fate that overtook him. I have read all the
proceedings of the trial, and I do not find that he
was guilty of anything that could be called treason
in English law. His punishment partook of the
" wild justice " of revenge. It was meted out to him
by a soldiery savage with defeat, and unless the
civilians had permitted the trial the four Ministers
would have been massacred.
I think that probably the same fate would have
been meted out to British Ministers in London if
our 4,000,000 men in France had in I918 been
driven to England in a state of starvation and
terror consequent on defeat directly produced by
the neglect of the responsible Ministers. That is
the utmost that can be said about that terrible
incident. Most of the Ministers around Gounaris
were just a set of courtiers, who were enjoying
the spoils of office, and who supported the King
rather from habit than from conviction.
The real criminal was King Constantine.


R




XII


THE RAGGED EDGE
TRAVELLING westward across Europe from the
Balkans to England on my journey homeward I
have often meditated over this strange problem of
the Near East.
What is it that fascinates us? Why do we
Englishmen trouble about it at all? This is the
first mystery.
An actual visit to the Balkans scarcely supplies
an answer. For it is a country of discomfort, or
rather of uncertain comfort. There is, all the time,
what I have called the " ragged edge"; and you
often wonder how you endure it.
Take a few instances of that " ragged edge."
I am enjoying at last a warm bath " somewhere
in the Balkans." I have agitated for it for long
weeks. Mainly in order to obtain it I have
changed my hotel, and am paying a good price
for it. So I stay in some time. At last I rise.
I take out the plug.
Instantly the floor of the bathroom is flooded.
It is the " ragged edge."
Or take travel.
I have described the landslip in the Corinth
Canal, which began as an accident and ended as
a feature of the landscape. I have told the story
258




THE RAGGED EDGE


259


of the bandit-raided train. But every traveller
who arrives at Athens after crossing the Balkans
brings some new anecdote for the collection.
There is the story of the train that came in half.
My friend was standing on a Balkan platform
when he saw the first half of his train-the Orient
Express-suddenly go off by itself, leaving his
own car solitary and helpless in the station. The
station-master shrugged his shoulders.
" Ah," he said. "I expect the train was too
heavy."
Another traveller arrives at Athens half
famished. I found him eating in the H6tel Grande
Bretagne.
"Yes," he said softly. "When we passed
Larissa the food gave out. We became very
hungry."
There is always that " ragged edge "!
One evening at Belgrade I was asked to dine with
the Foreign Office. I was glad: for it seemed to
mean that I should get a good dinner. So I did.
All went well until the conversation got to a very
interesting point in the relations between Bulgaria
and Yugo-Slavia. Then, at that precise point, all
the lights went out!
It is the same with the Governments.
I have described how, in spite of elaborate
diplomatic visas from the Jugo-Slavian Minister
in London and in Athens, the Chief of the Police
upset all our plans at Monastir and caused us to
miss our banquet with the Governor of Macedonia.
I ought to say, in justice to the Serbians, that




260 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
they have been apologising ever since, and that
when we reached Salonica the Yugo-Slavian Consul
was on the platform to express his deep regret. I
scarcely required it. I bore no resentment. If
I had known the equivalent expression in the
Serb language, I could have explained the matter
to him in a phrase as yet unhappily unknown to
diplomacy. It was just the " ragged edge."
I have told how we arrived at Sofia without our
big baggage. Nothing extraordinary about that.
It may happen in any country. But what was
extraordinary was that even when the Foreign
Minister appealed to the custom-house officers on
the frontier to release the luggage they refused.
It required the full strength of the whole Government, including the Prime Minister, to get that
luggage released: and not even then till we had
shown ourselves and paid tribute.
There was the " ragged edge."
Or take some fantastic incidents over Reparations.
Outside Belgrade there is at present lying a
huge pile of waterpipes sent from Germany for
Reparations. Those pipes would have been very
useful in Germany. They are quite useless in
Belgrade. For no one knows how to put them
down!
A large number of horses arrived at Durazzo as
Reparations from Austria. They were wanted sorely
in Austria: but not in Serbia. On working it out,
the Serbians discovered that it would cost more to
get the horses over the mountains than they were




THE RAGGED EDGE


261


worth. Finally they were glad to send them back
to Austria, paying the return journey out of their
own pockets!
Even in Western Europe Reparations have
not produced quite such comedies of errors as
those.
Take the supply of water.
In the Balkans every city is at present short of
water. It is the same state of affairs in all the
capitals-Athens, Sofia, Belgrade.  The British
Minister at Belgrade told me that he had not been
able to take a single, full, proper English bath
during the whole of the summer. But then, as a
Yugo-Slavian Minister remarked: "We certainly
despair of ever being able to obtain enough water
to wash an Englishman."
There are, indeed, schemes for supplying water
to the towns of Greece-bright, hopeful schemes
that never come to anything. There were schemes
in the days of Pericles. There were others in the
days of Veniselos. There is at present, under the
republic, much talk in Athens about a possible
supply of water from the slopes of Pentelicus.
But nothing ever happens.
"Water supply? " said a Minister at Sofia.
"Deficient, of course!  You see, the reason is
simple. Our supply was intended for 34,000
people. There are now I50,000! "
Of course. Quite simple. Why did we never
think of that?
" Yes," went on the Bulgarian Minister. " Last
year a scheme was proposed by an American




262 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
company. There was very nearly an agreement.
But it broke down at the last moment! "
Of course, that is just how it happens: it breaks
down at the last moment!
" There is plenty of water in the hills," he added
consolingly.
So it is that, with all these ragged edges, both
travel and residence in the Balkans is extremely
uncomfortable, and physically unattractive.
Yet one always goes back! English Ministers
resident there have told me with one accord that
they love the people and the places in which they
are domiciled. In each capital there is a little
English colony devoted to the country that they
inhabit, and every year a little body of Englishmen
come to visit.
The worst of it is that most of these Englishmen
become themselves " Balkanised." They lose their
large vision of Balkan union in the sudden and
overwhelming passion for one Balkan State. They
cannot believe that their own little favourite
people can do anything wrong. They support them
in their worst misdeeds. They have in London
corresponding committees who act as receptacles
for all their local enthusiasms, and reflect as in
a mirror the vehement passions of the Balkanised
Englishmen of the Near East. All this is very sad.
But how explain it?
I think that the root cause for this fascination
lies in the singular historical position of the Balkans
to-day. These states are all nations in the making
-while we are nations made. There is always a




THE RAGGED EDGE               263
romantic uncertainty about their future.  We
never know from year to year whether any of
these states will remain single or Will be merged
into another. There are illimitable possibilities
of friendship and hatred. War and peace keep
dodging one another in one eternal see-saw. Their
loves are as primitive as their hatreds. At one
moment Bulgaria and Greece were fighting side by
side against the Turks; the next they were flying
at one another's throats. All this has the element
of the unexpected for a travelling Englishman.
Then take the scene of this mighty drama-the
mountains and the seas of Greece, steeped in their
atmosphere of azure-blue; the hills of the Balkans,
capped with their snow; the cities lying, like
Belgrade, on the junction of two mighty rivers:
or cradled, like Sofia, between great ranges of
mountains. Greece brings with it, too, the glamour
and fascination of its mighty past; while over all
the Balkans there still lingers the mystic veil of
the East, scarcely yet withdrawn.
For in every little town of Serbia you find the
peoples of East and West still jostling one another
in the streets: the sheepskin jacket of the Christian
shepherd intermingling with the fez of the Turk.
The Turkish Government has been driven out.
But the Turk remains, and in many towns, still,
from the mosque, you can hear the daily call to
prayer. Or you pass out of the town, and you
move among a peasantry who keep up in all its
pride the habit of gaudy and picturesque costume.
You forgive the women their plainness when you




264 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
meet them in the dazzling colours of their glowing
climate; and even brigandage becomes attractive
when it is performed by men in all the varieties
of the old Macedonian costume. That side of it
must never be forgotten when we puzzle over the
fascination of the Balkans.
The variety of costume is but a reflection of the
confusion of races. Here you stand at the spot
where the tides of East and West meet in constant
turmoil. What is the tragedy of Greece? Why,
that for two thousand years she has stood as the
bulwark of Europe against the barbarism of Asiaa bulwark sometimes weak and sometimes strong;
sometimes resisting and sometimes submerged;
but always, ever since the days of Salamis and
Marathon, bearing the full shock of the Asiatic
impact. It is her tragedy to be the advance-guard
of Europe, and her glory to bear the crown of
strife.
Think of the infinite variety and changefulness
of the long story of that strife. Centuries of resistance alternate with centuries of surrender. Alexander arises, and with his Macedonian phalanx
throws back the hosts of Persia, and invades the
confines of India, carrying the Greek language and
the Greek culture right into the very heart of Asia.
On the ruins of his empire there lingers a network
of kingdoms which finally succumb to the control
of Rome. But, in the end, Rome itself is taken
captive, and with the waning of that Western
influence there arises an empire even mightier
still-the Empire of Byzantium, with its centre




THE RAGGED EDGE


265


at Constantinople. For nearly a thousand years
that Empire holds the East in fee and advances
its standards over the greater part of Asia Minor.
Then comes the rise of that wonderful Arab,
Mohammed, and under his influence the tremendous
rebound of Asia prevails over the Crusades and all
the efforts of Christian Europe, until finally his
banner is planted on the walls of Constantinople.
That calamity is followed by four centuries of
pitch-darkness-so dark that Byron, visiting
Greece in 1811-812, wrote his poems as epitaphs
on the grave of Christian Greece. But in the East
there is always a resurrection, and while the
melodious elegies of Byron were still resounding
through Europe, Greece had leapt from her tomb.
The century which has since passed has simply
been one long drama of emancipation-Greece
gradually regaining from the East what she lost a
thousand years ago. She has had to fight continuously to gain her full position. There have
been many ups and downs in that drama: the last
catastrophe of I923 was simply one phase. It
has proved a disastrous phase, and Greece is now
in eclipse. But who can doubt that she will arise
again?
The real calamity of the Balkan Peninsula is
this-that her achievements fall so short of her
ideals.
My friend, Kissimoff, the Bulgarian, explained it.
" All through our struggles with the Turk," he
said, "we were always preaching the perfection of




266 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
Christian rule. 'Drive out the Turks,' we said,
' and all will be well.' We drove out the Turks,
and everything was not well."
Hence these-still flowing-tears.
This search for the ideal is a perpetual cause of
disturbance throughout the Balkans. The people
have been led to expect too much. They cannot
be contented with the second-best. The contrast
between dream and actuality may fascinate the
visitor: but it is a perpetual vexation to the rulers.
Uneasy lies the head of the ruler whose subjects
expect perfection.
History in these regions, as I say, always moves
in a circle. Travelling out to the Balkans I opened
up a new vein of historical study by reading the
delightful essays of Mr William Miller on the littleknown story of the Balkans and the Peloponnese
during the Latin and Venetian occupations of the
fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.' The story
of that occupation has almost faded from human
memory. But it is a strange phase in the Hellenic
story, and is almost forgotten by us in the West.
For during those centuries Greece was thrown to
and fro like a football between Turkey and Venice.
They were to her just alternate masters.
Torn between these two rival conquerors, Greece
loved neither, and sometimes even threw off
Venice with more anger than she rejected Turkey.
That episode was in itself a repetition of the attitude of Greece in the second century before Christ
towards her Roman conquerors, who despoiled
1 The Latin Orient. Cambridge University Press, I92I.




THE RAGGED EDGE


267


and annexed her, and ended by adding to injury
the insult of their unsolicited admiration. Even
at a later stage, when Rome changed ferocity into
endearment, and Hadrian, in the second century
after Christ, rebuilt Athens, Greece was still cold
to these Italian wooers. In vain did Hadrian
fashion a copy of the Vale of Tempe in the bosom
of the Alban Hills. Greece cared naught for
these clumsy attentions of a country that never
understood her.
To-day she finds herself being wooed by the
same embarrassing suitors. The victory of Turkey
in the East has been followed by the same pressure
from Italy in the West, and the ecclesiastical envy
of a rival Christian Church is added to the Imperial
sentiment of Ancient Rome. Thus history has
come full circle. It is only one phase of her perilous
geographical position, lying between two great
rival fighting forces-the Turks to the east and the
Italians to the west. It adds to the perplexities
of Greek Governments. It demands the highest
statesmanship from the smallest country of
Europe. These things are surely not to be forgotten when we apply to Greece the stringency
of criticism which we should not bring to bear
on the statesmen of Holland or Norway.
So the Balkans continue to be the unanswered
interrogative on the map of Europe: a neverfailing puzzle to the chancelleries.
" Let them bleed one another to death," said a
member of the British Foreign Office to me in 1913,
contemplating the second Balkan war. But in




268 THE CAULDRON OF EUROPE
addition to bleeding one another they also bled us.
Deserted by Europe, they revenged themselves by
producing the Great War of I914-I918.
They are part of Europe. Standing in any of
their capitals-Athens, Sofia or Belgrade-you
might easily imagine yourself in Paris or London.
We are all part of the same continent, and the
troubles of one part will surely affect the other.
That is the reason why it is still worth while to
give some fragment of our minds to the Balkans.
For in helping to solve them we are helping ourselves. We are saving ourselves. We are making
friends against the time of need.
So some of us will still continue to feel the
thrill and fascination of the Perilous Peninsula,
and still listen to the bitter cry of those troubled
people.




INDEX


ACROPOLIS, the, Athens, 136; fete at
night, 15o et seq., 153, 179
Adrianople, 47
/Egean Sea, the, I52, 154, I62, 169
AEschylus, 183
Agamemnon, 227
Alban Hills, the, 267
Albania, IO, 20, I23
Alexander of Greece, King, I88
Alexander of Macedon, 23I, 264
Alexander I. of Serbia, King, iI9
Alexander of Yugo-Slavia, King, II6,
II7, iI8
Alexandroff, Todor, 121, 122, 131
Alfred of Great Britain, Prince, I98
American Near East Fund, 70-72
Amphictyony, the, 234
Amphissa, 214, 217
Andreades, Professor A., I36, 208, 247
Anglo-Hellenic League, the, 148, 256
Apollo of Delphi, the, 228, 231
Aravantinos, M., then Home Secretary
of Greece, 15I-154
Armenians, the, 73, 205
Arnold, Matthew, 220
Asia Minor, 25, 141, 203, 251, 265
Atchley, Mr S., I58
Athens, 12, 44, 69, II3, I37; British
Legation in, I40; National Theatre,
141; refugees in, I41, I46; and the
New Republic, I49, I53; University
of, I55; Byron and, I58, I6i, I72,
I73-1I76; Byron's description, I82;
at sunset, I85-I86, I87, I88, I99;
Foreign Office, 201; refugees in,
202, 20o8; to Delphi, 213, 215;
ancient, 228; in 191I, 247; Veniselos in, 253, 259, 26I, 268
Attica, I60, i62, i69, I79, 213
Austria, Io, 260, 261
Austria-Hungary, I 15
BALKAN UNION, 9, IO, 24, 104
Balkans, the, IO; possibility of war,
12, i3; wars of I912-I914, 24;
frontiers, 49; stray angels in, 69
et seq.; Dr House and, 75; cinema
films in, 97; Federation, 104;
Russians in, 113; murder habit, 119;
new combinations, 123; German
influence, 125-I26; hatreds in, 129;
the " ragged edge," 258 et seq.;
Turkish influence, 263, 265; in
earlier centuries, 266
269


Belgrade, I2, I3, 112-II113; British
Legation, II7, II8; Royal Palace,
120, I22, 124; German war cemetery,
I26, I3I, 259-261, 263, 268
Berlin, 126, 244
Black Sea, the, 205, 241, 244
Bloomington, Illinois, 74
Boeotia, I39, 213, 215
Bolingbroke, 197
Bolshevists, the, I2, I9
Boris of Bulgaria, King, 90, 91, I02
Bosnia, IO
Bralo, 214, 217, 219, 236
British Foreign Office, the, 89, 128,
268
Browning, Mrs, I75
Bryce, Mr, of The Times, 117
Bulgaria, 9, io; murders by Greeks,
II, 13; present condition, 89;
sobriety of, 95; conditions to-day,
100 et seq.; military forces, 107-109;
Reparations, 109; present policy,
III; and Serbs, I2I; and Greece,
122, I29; Mongol element, 130,
i86, 202, 263
Burne-Jones, Sir E., 66
Burnham, Viscount, 156
Byng, Admiral, 209
Byron, Lord, 45, I35, 143, I45, I57 -158, i6o, 162, I63; at Missolonghi,
I65 - I 68; at Sunium, I69 et seq.; and
the Acropolis, I8o, I8I, I87, 265
Byzantine Empire, the, 206
Byzantium, I86, 264
CALIFORNIA, 98
Calypso, H.M.S., I63
Cambridge, i56
Camelford, Lord, 250
Camperdown, H.M.S., 252
Capo D'Istria, President, I96
Cappadocia, 205
Castalian spring, the, at Delphi, 226,
230, 231
Cephalonia, 195
Chaeroneia, 215
Cheetham, Lady, I6I
Chesterfield, Lord, 250
Chicago, 35, 65
Childe Harold, Byron's, i66
Church, Sir Richard, 145
Cochrane, Lord, I45
Cockerell, Byron's companion, I69
Codrington, Admiral, 145




270


INDEX


Comitadjis, the, 25, Io2, 121, 131-132
Constantine of Greece, King, 138,
189, 253, 257
Constantinople, 9, 10, 180, 211, 265
Corfu, I64, 207
Corinth, I60; the Isthmus and Gulf,
162; Canal, 213, 219
Cozani, 42, 43, 46
Crete, I39, I6o, 164, 174, 248-249
Croatia, 115, 117-118
Croesus, 227
Cromwell, Oliver, 62
Curse of Minerva, Byron's, 1 58
Curzon of Kedleston, the Marquis,
252, 256
Daily Mail, The, 253
Danube, the, 112, 124
Daphne, 162; the Hill, 185
Delphi, 213 et seq., 216; antiquities,
225 et seq.; the Oracle, 229; Greek
games at, 232, 233, 236
Demosthenes, 157, 17I
Derby family, the, 197
Dionysus, the theatre of, 183
Dodecanese, the, 206
Draga of Serbia, Queen, 119
Drinkwater, John, 163
Durazzo, 260
EBBSFLEET, 130
Edinburgh, 155
Eleusis, 162
Elgin, Lord, 158, I8o
England and Greece, 217
Erechtheion, the, i8o
Ernle, Lord, 156
Eskisheir, 204
Euripides, 183
Europe, 211, 268
Euxine, the, 245
Evzones, the dance of the, 142, 143
Exchange of populations, the, 44, 241
FAN NOLI, the Archbishop, 123
Fastolfe, 202
Fiume, 128
Florina, 50-52
France, 10, 198
GALLIPOLI, 47, 48
Gamba, Count, 165
Geneva, II, 12
George I. of Greece, King, 199
George II. of Greece, King, 144, i88
et se., 190-I93, 2I0
George III. of England, King, 199
George V. of England, King, 190


Germany, 260
Gibbon, Edward, 67
Gladstone, Mr, 249, 250
Glucksbergs of Greece, the, I9
Gonatas, Colonel, 178, 2o8, 209
Gounaris, M., 255, 256, 257
Governor of Macedonia, 58, 2 I, 236,
260
Grafton Galleries, the, 253
Graham, Byron's companion, I69
Great Britain, 128
Great War, the, 10, 54, 219, 268
Greece, 9; population of, o0; alliance
with Serbia, 12; exchange of populations, 44; American workers in,
70, 7; alliance with Yugo-Slavia,
121, 122; entry into, 135; Republican plebiscite, 136 et seq.; monarchy
of, 138 et seq.; and Byron, 145;
dancing, I59; and Veniselos, 174,
175; Civil Service, 176-177; the new
constitution, 177; War of Independence, 178; and Europe, 179; chief
danger of, 186-187; Monarchy or
Republic, 193 et seq., 195, 198; and
Italy, 207; shooting of ministers,
208-209, 213, 214, 218, 219; the
shepherds of, 219; Easter in, 220 -222, 226, 239; and Bulgaria, 263;
tragedy of, 264 et seq.
Greek Committee of London, the, 195
HADRIAN, the Emperor, 267
Harrington, Earl, I96
Helicon, 162
Hellas, Shelley's, 154
Herculaneum, 223
Herzegovina, 10
Hobhouse, Cam (Lord Broughton),
147, 169, i8o
Holland, 268
H6tel de Bulgarie, Sofia, 97
H6tel Grande Bretagne, Athens, 138,
150, 259
House, Dr, 75, 76, 83
Hyde Park, 151
Hymettus, 171
ICTINUS, 182
India, 264
Iphigenia, 222
Ireland, 18
Italy, 122,128; and the.Egean Islands,
186; and Asia Minor, 206, 267
JERUSALEM, 213
Jonson, Ben, 173
Jutland, 130




INDEX
I


271


KALFOFF, Colonel, IOI-IO6, IIO
Karageorgevitches, the, II6, II9
Karasa, the river, 31
Kastoria, 29, 32, 34, 35, 39
Kastri, 223, 224, 234
Kavalla, 17
Kemal, Mustapha, 47, 48, 242, 243,
245
Kephisos, the river, 214
Kirphis, Mount, 227
Kissimoff, M. Boris, 92, Ioo, 10I, 105,
II2, II4, 266
Kondylis, General, 21o
Kontoleon, M., 226
Kryoneri, 163
LAMIA, I98
Lancashire, 172
Lantern of Demosthenes, the, 157
Larissa, 25, 213
Laurium, 171-173
Lausanne, the Treaty of, 44, 204, 205,
208, 2IO, 239, 252, 255
League of Nations, the, II, 23; Reconstruction Committee, I6I; and
Corfu, 207, 234, 254
Leeds, 46
Leopold of Belgium, King, I97
Lepsista, 40
Leros, 207
Lloyd George, Rt. Hon. D., 249, 250,
256
London, 35, 140, 208, 244, 249, 254,
259, 262
Lucretius, 222
Lusieri, Italian artist, 169, i8o
MACDONALD, George, 75
Macedonia, I7 et seq.; Governor of,
22; the spirit of, 23, 24, 26; roads
in, 30; impressions of, 32, 33;
Turkish influence, 37; peasants of,
64; Serbian troops in, I2I, i6o,
205; exchange of populations, 239
Macri, Catinco and Mariana, 147, 148
Macri, Theresa, the Maid of Athens,
147, I48
Majuba Hill, 204
Marathon, I79, 264
Maritza, the river, 209
Mavrogordato, Prince, I95
Mawson, Mr Thomas, 238
Megara, i6o, 162
Miller, Mr William, 266
Minkoff, M., 92, 93, 96, Ioi
Missolonghi, 146, I60 et seq.; celebrations at, 163-168
Mohammed, 265


Monastir, II, 49 et seq., 55, 56;
American school, 59; the Prefect,
60 et seq.; I22, 259
Monck Mason, Mr, British Consul at
Skopolje, 85
Monument of Lysicrates, the, 157, I58
Morava, the river, II2
Morgenthau, Mr Henry, 141, i6i
Moscow, I00, II5
Murray, Professor Gilbert, II, 12
Mussolini, Signor, 207
NEUILLY, the Treaty of, 13I
New York, 217
Nicholas of Greece, Princess, I39
Nintchitch, M., I2,  7, I I8, 120, 12I,
I22
Nish, 86, II2
Norway, 268
OBRENOVITCHES, the, 119
Odysseus, the Greek Patriot, 195
Olympia, 233
Olympus, Mount, 236, 237
Oracle of Apollo, the, 213, 227 et seq.
Order of the Redeemer, the Greek, 201
Orient Express, the, 25, 26, 77, 82,
86, 129, 136, 236
Ostrovo, Lake, 21, 22, 28
Otho of Greece, King, I97, 198
Oxford, I55, 156
PALACE HOTEL, Belgrade, 127, I30
Palmerston, Lord, I98
Pangalos, General, 26, 27,209,210,211
Papadia, 230
Papanastassiou, M., the Prime Minister
of Greece, 149, I66, 171, 201
Paris, I91
Parnassus, 162, 213, 214-216, 223
Parthenon, the, I50, I52, I8o, I8I, 182
Pasitch, M., II5, ii6, 117, II8, 122
Patras, the Gulf of, i6o, 201
Peloponnese, the, 139, 152, I6o, I62,
i86, 266
Peloponnesian War, the, 227
Pentelicus, Mount, 171, 26I
Pericles, 157
Persia, 264
Phaleron, I54
Pheidippides, 63
Philip of Macedon, 157
Philopappus, the monument of, 185
Phocian Plain, the, 222
Piraeus, the, 173, 247
Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 250
Place de la Constitution, Athens, 138,
202, 209




272


INDEX


Plastiras, Colonel, 178, 208, 2IO
Plato, 155, i85
Pleistos, the river, 227
Pnyx, the, 184
Poincare, M., 252
Politis, M., II, 12
Pytho, the dragon, 230
RADITCH, M., I 115-117, 122
Reeves, the Hon. Pember, 148, I51,
I73
Refugees, Greek, at Sorovitch, 29-30;
in Athens, 202-203; in Salonica,
240-241
Rhallys, M., 248
Ritz Hotel, London, 253
Rodd, Sir Rennell, 150, 156, i66
Rome, i86, 213, 264
Roumania, IO
Roussos, M., 201-206
Russia, 114, 128, I98
ST PAUL, 17
Salamis, i62, I8o, 264
Salisbury, the late Lord, 73
Salonica, I 7, 21, 44, 46, 59, 64;
medical  relief work, 69, 70o;
American workers, 73-76, 77, I99;
H6tel Majestic, 210, 236 et seq.;
Yugo-Slavian Consul, 260
Sams, Mr H. W., 18, 41, 65
Sava, the river, 112, 124, 126
Semlin, 124
Shakespeare, 173
Shelley, P. B., 154, 162
Shining Rocks, Delphi, 226
Sieyes, the Abbe, 118
Skopolje, lost at, 78 et seq., 122
Smyrna, 204, 205, 251
Socrates, 155
Sofia, 12, 77, 86, 89 et seq.; British
Legation, 95; description of, 96-99;
leaving, 112, 129, 260, 26i, 263, 268
Sophocles, 183
Sorovitch, 27, 28; refugees at, 29-30,
40, 46, 49, 64
Sparta, 215
Stamboul, 245
Stambulisky, 102
Stanhope, Colonel, I45, 195-I96
Stavridi, Sir John, 25
Sunium, 169, 172, 173
Sveta Nedelia, Cathedral of, Sofia, 12,
97


TEMPLE OF VICTORY, Athens, I8o,
181
Thebes, 2 3, 215
Themistocles, 172
Thermopylae, I35, 214
Thessaly, 139
The Times, 117, 157
Thrace, Western, 139, i6o
Trebizond, 244, 245
Turkey, 44; and Bulgaria, 122, i86;
and Asia Minor, 205; Veniselos and,
21, 211; Nationalist policy, 243,
267
Turks, the, in Macedonia, 23 et seq.,
44, 122; and the Acropolis, i8o,
i86; Asia Minor, 205, 210, 211,
239 et seq., 267
Tzankoff, Professor, Prime Minister of
Bulgaria, 105-111, 122, 260
UNITED STATES, the, 71-73, 77
VALE OF TEMPE, the, 267
Van Oosten, Herr, 42-44
Vardar, the river, 17, i8, 78, 237
Veles, 78
Venice, 17, i86, 267
Veniselos, M., 174-175, 192; and the
Monarchy. 194; at Lausanne, 204,
210; and Salonica, 238, 239; appre.
ciation of, 248 et seq.; Asia Minor,
251-255, 26
Verria, 19
Victoria, Queen, 197
Vienna, 115, 126
Vistritza, the river, 40
Vladivostock, 98
Vladova, 21, 31
Vodena, 20, 2i
WATTS, G. F., 45
William of Schleswig-Holstein, Prince,
I99
Williams, H. W., 147, 148
Wilson, President Woodrow, 109
YORKSHIRE, 172
Young, Sir Alban, 126
Yugo-Slavia, 9-12, 48; on the frontier,
54, 59, 63, 9i; and Bulgaria, i I, i
112 et seq.; defence of, 121; and
Pasitch, 122, 126; the Foreign Office
of, 127, 128, 132, 259-26I


PRINTED FOR MESSRS H. F. & G. WITHERBY BY
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THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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APR 2 4 1990
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FtnS IWrMsrscVNi1991