STORIED CRETE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4427, 19 May 1941, Page 4

STORIED CRETE

KEY TO THE AEGEAN. PREHISTORIC GLORIES. NEW STATION FOR NEW ZEALANDERS. 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. C, Freyberg, 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 last October. The Royal Navy lost no time in utilising the fine harbour of Suda Bay as an advanced base, and the Royal Air Force presumably made its headquarters on the island at the nearby capital, Canea, where a civil aerodrome had been completed about April, 1939. STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE. Crete is a mountainous island 2950 square miles in area and 160 miles long from east to west, the. width varying from 74 miles to 35 miles. The loftiest point is the ancient Mt. Ida, 8193 feet high. The southern coast is entirely without harbours, and the only modern port is at Candia, 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 60 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 key to the Aegean, the entrance of which it commands. It is 190 miles from the nearest point on the African coast in Cyrenaica. The population of Crete, mainly of Greek origin, numbers about 336,000, and is engaged almost entirely growing olives, oranges, lemons, sultanas, and a certain amount of grain for local consumption.. , MINOAN CIVILISATION. The island Was the home of a remarkable prehistoric civilisation, the Minoan, which arose 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 Kino- 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 re-discovered the Minoans by his excavation of the splendid palace at 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 undeciphered. 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 eleventh to the seventeenth century, and then by the Turks and the Pasha of Egypt. In 1840 the Powers handed it back to Turkey, jand there ;was a long period of insurrections,, 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 1918 by the Treaty of. London. It is now the home of King George of the Hellenes and his Government, who, with the fullest co-op-eration of Great Britain and the United States, are continuing the fight for their nation’s freedom.