THE BYZANTINE CROWN.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14760, 2 September 1913, Page 6

THE BYZANTINE CROWN.

If the King of Greece carries out his reported intention to bo crowned with tho Imporial Byzantine Crown, robed in the Imperial purple, lie will provide a very interesting and dramatic spectacle. It is between four "and five hundred years since the capture of Constantinople by the Turks brought tho Byzantine Empire to a clbsl. Ever since then the Cross,. has been trying to drive tho Crescent out of Europe, and ha 3at last reduced the Turks' territory to the j peninsula 'in which the capital stands, and a part of Thrace, which may or may. not be further roduoed in the next few tveeks. The Greeks, as a people, are perhaps the most ambitious of the Balkan allies. No nation in the world is prouder of its past, and better acquainted with its glories. In the days before the war, when his military prestige was of little account, there seemed something almost grotesque' jn the expansive ideas of the average Greek, his talk of. reviving the glories of the Empire, and his prediction that one day the whole yEgean and Marmoran coast and all the islands would be Greek. Some ardent patriots looked forward to the time when not only Constantinople, .but part of Asia Minor would be Greek. The nation's successes in the war have -shown that there was more in these ambitions than had appeared. "With his dramatic instinct and hie devotion to the past, to the Greek it will seem but tho natural result of the war that his king should crown himself with the crown of his namesake, the last of tho Byzantine Emperors, and assume the Imperial purple. It is not to be supposed that the Greeks will always be content with what they have got. Their territory ndw stretches past Salonica to Thrace/ and the proximity, of tho Greek frontier to Constantinople will feed the flame of that ambition which will not be satisfied until the ancient capital of the Eastern Empire is once more in Christian liands. That the intended coronation will offend tho other Balkan nations is certain. The coronation would contribute to the picturesqueness of life, and stimulate one's historical imagination, but it would not make, for peace.