STORIED CRETE

Patea Mail, 12 May 1941, Page 3

STORIED CRETE

KEY TQ AEGEAN PREHISTORIC GLORIES HISTORY OP UNREST The Historic island of Crete, home, of numberless legends, is a place of special interest to New Zealanders now that all or part of the New Zealand Division is stationed there, and that Major-General B. 0. They berg, V.C., has been appointed to .command the whole Allied garrison.

British naval, military and air units were sent to Crete immediately after Italy declared war on Greece at the end of i last October. The Royal Navv lost no time in utilising the fine harbour of Suda Bay as an advanced base, and the Roya] Air Force presumably made its headquarters on the island at the- nearby capital, Canea, where a civil aerodrome had been completed about April, 1930. STB ATEGIC IMI ’0 RTANCE Crete is a mountainous island 2950 square miles in area and 100 miles long from east to west, the width varying from 71 to 35 miles. The loftiest point is the ancient Mount Ida, 8.193 ft high.. The southern const is entirely without harbours and the only; modern port is at Oanclia, the old capital. Canea, which is near the western end of the island, can accommodate only small craft, and before the war Suda Bay was without port equipment. The western extremity is only some sixty miles from the Greek mainland, with the islands of Cerigo and Cerigotto intervening. Ninety miles of sea separate the eastern end from the Italian island of Rhodes, in the Dodecanese. Crete ’thus is the strategic kev to the Aegean, the entrance of which it commands. It is 190 miles from the nearest point on the African coast in Cyrenaica. y UNO AN CIVILISATION The population of Crete, mainly of Greek, origin, numbers about 336,000, and is engaged almost entirely in growing olives, oranges, lemons, sultanas and a certain amount of grain for local consumption. The island was the home of a remarkable prehistoric civilisation, the Minoan, which rose about 3400 B.C. and flourished between 1900 and 1700 B.C. By classical times this had been entirely forgotten except for a few legends relating to King Minos and the Minotaur, a fabulous creature, half man and half ox. It was not until the beginning of this century that Sir Arthur Evans rediscovered the Minoan a, by his excavation of the splendid palace of Knossos. Greek, American, Italian and German archaeologists worked other sites.Their labours have largely reconstructed the life of the period, but inscriptions which they found still remain undeciphired. ■ ■ TURBULENT HISTORY Crete was under Greek domination Until it was conquered by the Romans in 67 B.C. Later it became part of the Byzantine Empire, and then was successively ruled by the Saracens, by Venice from the 11th to the 17th century, and then by the Turks and the Pasha of Egypt. In 1840 the Powers handed it back to Turkey and there was a long period of revolts, culminating in the revolt of 1897. A compromise government was set up under the supervision of the Powers, but the island remained a constant source of trouble until it was finally ceded to Greece in 1913 by the Treaty of London. It is now the home of King George of the Hellenes and his government, who, with the fullest cooperation of Great Britain and the United States, are continuing their fight for their nation’s freedom.