Evening Post. SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1918. OUR DEBT TO GREECE

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 23, 26 January 1918, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1918. OUR DEBT TO GREECE

The address of M. Venizelos to the Anglo-Hellenic Society, of which our London correspondent supplied us with a full report on Wednesday, brings into prominence once more one of the saddest "might-have-beens" of the war. Greece, said her Prime Minister, recognised "that her contribution to this' world struggle could be but small in comparison with the forces of the protagonists," but she also saw that by bringing her small force to bear in the right spot and at the right moment she could secure farreaching results. The right spot was the Dardanelles, and the right moment was early in 1915. Had. M. Venizelos then been free to carry out the policy upon which his Government, with the approval of the people, had determined, he vouches for the results in the following terms :— " Had my policy not been frustrated by dissent on the part of the Crown, I can assert without exaggeration that the occupation of the Peninsula of GaUipoli, which was then unprepared for defence, would have been the work of a week, and that the moral effect on Constantinople would have been such that a separate peace with Turkey would have been the most probable result. The Narrows would have been open to the Allies, the otherwise difficult equipment of Russia. would have been effected by way of the Black Sea, the Russian retreat of 1915 would have been prevented, Bulgaria would hot have dared to move against the Entente Powers, and peace might have been secured in the course of the year 1916."

It was the opposition of King Constantine that frustrated this plan and left the Allies to make their belated and disastrous attempt without the aid of Greece. It was Constantine, the Sovereign of the New Greece created by the Revolution of 1909, who thus made his country a liar to Servia and compensated the Turks for all that they had suffered at the hands of the Balkan Alliance in the brilliant campaign of 1912. If we may accept M. Venizelos's estimate, Constantine appears io have rendered the Central Powers a service which no other one man can reasonably claim to have surpassed. The attempt to which he sacrificed his own throne and the honour and welfare of his country achieved a striking success. Constantinople was saved and Turkey was saved; the roads to Bagdad and Egypt were kept open; and Germany and her Allies, who might have gone down in 1916, are still alive in 1918. But three years after Constantine began his course of treachery it is still too early to say that' it has not, by enabling the Central Powers to go further, compelled them to fare worse. The dethroning of the Tsar and the military paralysis of Russia, are among the fruits which the perfidy of-Constantine has already permitted Germany to reap by the prolonging of the war, but other thrones are quaking now, and it is by no means clear that Nicholas may riot be joined by Karl as his companion, and that Constantine may not have his illustrious bro-ther-in-law from Potsdam as a companion 'in exile before the war is over. "Remember, while there is time, the inscrutable nature of war,"- said the Athenian envoys at Sparta on the eve of the great war which shattered ancient Greece; "and how when protracted it generally ends in becoming a mere matter of chance, over which neither of us can have any control, the event being equally unknown and equally hazardous to both."- Is there even among the maxims of Napoleon one that comes to us with greater force as we contemplate the fruits of Constantine's betrayal of his country, and speculate upon the fruits that are still to come, than these wise words that, have been bequeathed to us by the Athens of more than two thousand years ago?

The speech of M. Venizelos takes us back to the great days. o£ Athenian democracy more obviously along other lines of thought. The visit of a Greek Prime Minister to London appeals to tho historical imagination as strongly as the viait of a British Prima Ministsv to Koine nearly two years, ago. ±'1 am the fUgb

British Premier to be received at the Capitol," said Mr. Asquith on that occasion. "The law of the nations has sprung from Rome's civilising genius, so no place is more appropriate to reaffirm the sacredness of Europe's common law." Our debt to Roman law and order is not more overwhelming than our debt to ancient Athens in literature, philosophy, and art, and in all the varied phases of freedom. The two pillars of the British race are order and liberty, and tho model of the one comes not more obviously from Rome than that of the other from Athens. When wo speak of the combination of democracy and Empire as the characteristic achievement of the British people, we are using a Greek word in the first case and a Latin word in the other, nor do the things themselves belie the origin of their names. _ Whether we banish Greek and Latin from our schools and universities or not, we can never -wipe out the obligations to those ancient peoples which are enshrined in such words and ideas as order, justice, and civilisation on tho one side, and democracy and politics on the other. In all that makes for tho freedom of the human, mind and spirit the spell of the people of Hellas is on us still. As Mr. Ernest Myers says:—. "Every thought of all their thinking swayed the world for good or ill; Every pulse of all their hfe-blood beats across the ages still." The recognition of this imperishable debt should serve to put us into a modest frame of mind, in which we shall be the better able to appreciate the tribute paid by M. Venizelos to the good use that we have made of our debt to the pioneers of freedom. He spoke of the British Empire as "the .grandest political, creation in the life of man," and concluded a | gkrwing eulogy as follows:—

' It is an edifies which, in its noblest aspect, presents to_ us the instance of a man, now active in the very centre of British Government, who but a few years ago was an heroic adversary of the British Empire, but who, thanks to a magnanimous and wise policy, has become one of the foremost guiding minds of that Empire. It is an edifice which, while holding the mastery of the seas, not only has never abused that power for selfish ends, but has brought security and has spread civilisation to the farthest ends of the earth; has develSped the means of communication; has multiplied the value of the lands thus opened up; and has dealt fairly with its own competitors—so fairly as to leave that policy open to doubt and to the criticism of many an English economist."

Snch a testimony from a fellow-country-man o£ Pericles—the greatest man sitice Pericles, according to some authorities, that Greece has produced—should gladden the heart of the student of history. "To be hateful and offensive," said Pericles himself, "has ever been at the time the fate of those who have aspired to empire." , The greatest and most brilliant of ancient democracies often herself played the tyrant to the democracies under her sway. The Eoman ideal, which made no pretensions to democracy, is well known:—

" Thou Roman, rule and o'er the world proclaim The ways of peace. Be these thy victories : To spare the vanquished and the proud to tame. _ • .. Theso are imperial arts and worthy of thy name." The Eoman genius for government did wonders in tne way of assimilation, but a genuine representative system was un- • known to the ancient world. In the Boers the British Empire had as brave and proud a foe aa ever confronted the legions of Borne. They were, indeed, too proud for any military power to tame, but liberty and trust and representative institutions have accomplished the marvel of which M. Venizelos speaks. As Mr. March Phillips has said, the British Empire is really neither British nor an Empire. Its essential characteristic is liberty, and that is the secret which has rallied its autonomous States and' even its subject peoples in the fight against the most dangerous tyranny that the world has ever seen.