THE MODERN GREEK.
[To THE EDITOZ OF ISE "SPICTATO1P3
SIR,—It may be surmised that the writer of the article " The Modern Greek," which appeared in your issue of October 19th, has not visited Athens since the advent of Monsieur Venizelos as Premier. Had he done so I fancy that some of his asser- tions as to the Greek character would not have been written. "Infirmity of purpose," he declares, is a trait of the Modern Greek. Has he considered the recent splendid determination shown by the whole of the Greek nation to reform their civil and political life ? In what is practically a few months Greece has purified and strengthened her house from garret to base- ment. The empty boasting has been conspicuous by its absence. She has set herself in all humility to the uphill and difficult task of National Reform. Her statesmen, with but few exceptions, have sunk their fierce party hates and have relinquished their intrigues in the interests of National union. Though the present war has been forced upon her before she was prepared, she has not shrunk from loyally aiding her allies, and that in the face of terrific temptations. Two years ago the present writer ventured to prophesy the moral and political regeneration of Greece. Events have shown the truth of that prediction. In spite of cruel sneers, in the face of bitter discouragement, Greece took up the most difficult of tasks, the work of self-regeneration. Elassona. and Serfidje have shown the moral effect of her self-denying ordinance. It is time that England recognized that the Greece of to-day is not the Greece which your article describes. Above all, it is time that the English Press, more particularly those journals which call themselves Conservative, should abstain from cheap and vulgar sneers, from that insular insolence and impertinence, when speaking of Greece, which justly make the Englishman bated and despised by all European nations. Greece is no longer a negligible quantity in the Balkans. She neither implores English protection nor accepts patronizing coercion. For that she has to thank her
great Premier and her own resolution and intuition.—I am, Sir, &c., A STUDENT OF BALKAN POLITICS.
[We are delighted at the successes of the Greeks. Their achievements during the past ten days certainly seem to point to our correspondent's view of the Greeks being truer than that expressed in our article. Their military qualities seem to have risen as rapidly as those of the Turks have fallen.—En. Spectator.]
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