THE DEFEAT OF GREECE. T HE world is still governed in
the last resort by brute force. The gallant little man who, standing amidst a ring of burly and sneering policemen, has endeavoured to perform those policemen's duty, has been hurled back, almost with contempt, by the cruel rough he had en- deavoured to arrest. The Greek nation had not the physical force for its effort, and now lies prostrate on the ground. The pessimistic view of the situation which we published last week has turned out exactly correct. Edhem Pasha, a cool, experienced soldier, slowly ad- vanced his army in three divisions, and when he had cleared away opposition at Malouna, at Damasi, and at Nezzero, advanced on the right wing, on the left wing, and in the centre, his far superior forces converging towards Turnovo. The Greeks, with inferior artillery, bad food, and no tradition of victory, had then only two alternatives,—to retreat rapidly on Larissa, thus slipping, as it were, out of Edhem's closing grasp, or to stand and die fighting in the hope that, even if beaten, the losses they could inflict would paralyse their opponent, as we believe his frightful losses at Isandlana paralysed the victorious Cetewayo. The Duke of Sparta, remembering that he had no reserve army, conscious of his deficiencies in artillery, and probably distrusting the solidity of his men, half of whom had never been in barracks, decided on the latter course, and ordered that the retreat should not be on Larissa, a very strong position, but on Pharsala (the old Pharsalia), a weaker one, but twenty miles nearer to the Othrys Ridge, which forms the old frontier of Greece. His motive probably was a belief that the Turks did not intend to advance beyond Larissa, and that their halt would give him time ; but his order was fatal, as he should have known it would be. Only the most solidly disciplined troops can retreat after a defeat L good order, and the Greek army, the left wing partially 'pxcepted, when convinced by the order that the day was lost, was soon turned into a mob, one-third of them it is said never arriving at Pharsala at all. The rout war l rendered worse by the flight of the civil population, who, aware of the Turkish treatment of the vanquished, and not aware that the Sultan had ordered for this occasion the observance of civilised rules, went mad with fear of torture and violation, mixed with the troops as they fled, and helped to produce the scenes which appalled the special correspondents, who were themselves hustled, trampled, and even fired at by the bewildered crowd. Nothing worse was ever recorded of Dumouriez's recruits, who a year after began the conquest of Europe, and it may, we fear, be taken as certain that the Greek " army " at Pharsala is little better than a disorganised mob. Better staff officers have been appointed, supplies have been sent forward, and a desperate effort is being made to restore discipline ; but confidence in the Generals has disappeared, deficiency of artillery cows new troops, who never realise that rifle bullets kill five times as many as shells, and no other battle in the plains can reasonably be considered possible. Edhem Pasha, who has of course saved his supreme command, is encamped in security in Larissa ; he is striking at Volo ; the invasion of Epirus, which was aided by an Albanian mutiny, has collapsed ; and Turkey may be considered in full military possession of its own provinces of Epirus and Macedonia, and of the Greek province of Thessaly.
It is a horrible business, the second great defeat within a year of the civilised by the barbarous, with the aggrava- tion that it involves, as Menelek's victory did not, a civil population ; but it is vain to hide or whittle away facts. The German dynasty in Greece has not formed an army as Charles of Hohenzollern has done in Roumania, and Alexander of Battenberg did in Bulgaria, and must take the consequences of its fault or its misfortune. All the intelligence in the world, and all the wealth, and all the education will not save a State if it has not, when the enemy arrives, a sufficient number of men willing to die stolidly in its defence, and of officers competent to turn that devotion to practical account. The great law, that bullets know nothing of the character of those they strike, remains perpetually true, and should be remembered by those who believe that England is always safe because of the purity of her intentions. The Greeks have now only two alternatives before them. The one is that which all " sensible" counsellors advise,—to submit at once, to implore the intervention of the Powers, to abandon their brethren in Crete, to acknowledge humbly that they are the serfs of Europe, and to sink back degraded but safe, and work to pay off the tribute with which the Sultan in his mercy and moderation may be induced to be content. They have Germany heartily against them, and the German Emperor has half a million of soldiers ; they have Austria against them out of policy, and the Austrian Emperor has half a million of soldiers; they have Russia against them out of a crafty desire to annex Eastern Europe quietly, and the Russian Emperor has a million excellent fighting men in barracks. They have no friends except among the declining number of freemen in the world, and the freemen do not dispose just now of any Soldiers; and so their best course is to yield and set up a statue of the German Emperor in front of the Acropolis, and wait for a generation in hopes that their chance may arrive once more. The other course for them is to go mad, turn out the dynasty with all respect and a pension, appoint a Dictator, defend the Otlirys Ridge with sharp- shooting guerillas, fight, as the Spaniards did, for every hill and point of vantage, lose their ships in destroying Salomea and Smyrna, and maintain for months or years a contest, during which Turkey and Europe will be in perpetual agitation, and some unforeseen chance, an out- burst, for instance, in Paris, or a massacre in Turkey which annoys some great Sovereign, may happen in their fa.vour. There is always bread, there are always cartridges, and if they:can take three lives for every one they give, the invading host will wither as a Russian host withers upon the march. We know which course the English would choose, for all their absurd horror at the notion of such an affront to Kings ; but the Greeks must know best whether they are up to a policy which involves the dismissal of hope for a generation, and the possibility of the total destruction of their State. We should not, bad we a chance of being heard, venture to advise them to adopt it. They are very few, they have no man among them whom they know to be competent to play Hofer's part, they are not soldiers by instinct, and they are just past the point of civilisation at which brave men reconcile themselves to living as for two centuries the Montenegrins lived. The Powers will forgive them, perhaps even pat them if they are humble enough ; and remembering their weakness, and the conditions of modern war, and what they have to fear if the Turks should get to Athens, opinion will not be too hard upon them if they choose the safer course. Only they should choose it quickly, should make their King Dictator, should avail themselves to the utmost of his personal relationships, which, to the discredit of Europe, are still so influential, and while providing against any recurrence of their disasters, should maintain absolute silence as to their causes, whether military or civil. A war of slander and scandal and re- crimination is for children, not for Greeks.
The collapse of Greece will for a time be an endless subject of discussion; but we do not believe that when the experts have given opinions the causes of failure will be found to be more than two. The directing officers are incompetent, and the soldiers have not the kind of dis- cipline they require. On the first point the evidence is already quite sufficient. At no point did the head- quarters' staff accumulate men sufficient, at no point did they keep their officers sufficiently informed, at no point was any confidence felt in their ability to direct. Their plan was probably a good one, but its execution, if the correspondents may be trusted, was one long series of muddles, ending in orders so surprising that those who received them declared their Generals to be either treacherous, which is nonsense, or cowardly, which is mere abuse. No army inferior in numbers to its enemy can ever prosper if its Generals have it not perfectly in hand ; and the Greeks, even when they were successful, were successful as detached bodies, and not as parts of one combined whole. The instinct of the Athenian people, which our journalists so deride, was, we doubt not, right about that, though the mob may have ascribed to favouritism appointments which were really the result of honest, though erroneous, judgment. It is very easy to say that the Court ought not to have appointed the unfortunate Duke of Sparta to the supreme command ; but Greece had no General trusted for past exploits, and a Continental people expects its Princes to be foremost in a campaign. Then it is evident that, except in a few regi- ments, the discipline was incomplete. The Greeks, full of intelligence, entirely democratic, and with that vanity which produces criticism, need, like Frenchmen, the severest discipline, and they have not obtained it. The stolid Turk, Mongol by origin, with nerves of iron, and a creed that fosters war, has, like every other Asiatic, the instinct of obedience to a superior, and needs discipline rather to educate him than to make of him a machine. But the Greek is as nervous as a Frenchman, as full of criticism as a Berliner ; he is all talk and cheerfulness and self-will, and he needs before he is a good soldier the discipline of a man-of-war. That is why the Greek fleet is believed by all who know it to be so much better than the Greek army. Once in retreat the men, it is clear, did not obey orders, and even when advancing and successful, their courage, often heroic, was rather that of guerillas who dare because they choose to dare, than of soldiers who dare because disobedience to orders seems to them impossible. All such reflections are, we admit, perfectly useless when defeat has already occurred ; but it is well that the friends of Greece should not think Greeks cowards, or give up all hope for them, or, above all. believe that those who have defeated them are because of that success worthy to bear rule. The Turks have taken Larissa, but they remain what they always have been, a brave but cruel Asiatic tribe, with an instinct for attack- ing, and, when successful, destroying European civilisa- tion. It is a question of creed, you say. Tell that to the Arabs, and report, if decency will let you, their reply.
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