Part 6 (1/2)

Or, if Greece remained neutral, no one could better judge whether neutrality was or was not best for her than Constantine. In the three years before the World War, he had led his countrymen through two wars, and if both, as King and commander of her armies, he thought they needed rest and peace, he was ent.i.tled to that opinion. Instead, he was misrepresented and abused. His motives were a.s.sailed; he was accused of being dominated by his Imperial brother-in-law. At no time since the present war began has he been given what we would call a ”square deal.” The writer has followed the career of Constantine since the Greek-Turkish war of 1897, when they ”drank from the same canteen,” and as Kings go, or until they all do go, respects him as a good King. To his people he is generous, kind, and considerate; as a general he has added to the territory of Greece many miles and seaports; he is fond of his home and family, and in his reign there has been no scandal, no Knights of the Round Table, such as disgraced the German court, no Tripoli ma.s.sacre, no Congo atrocities, no Winter Garden or La Scala favorites. Venizelos may or may not be as unselfish a patriot. But justly or not, it is difficult to disa.s.sociate what Venizelos wants for Greece with what he wants for Venizelos. The King is removed from any such suspicion. He is already a King, and except in continuing to be a good King, he can go no higher.

How Venizelos came so prominently into the game is not without interest. As long ago as when the two German cruisers escaped from Messina and were sold to Turkey, the diplomatic representatives of the Allies in the Balkans were instructed to see that Turkey and Germany did not get together, and that, as a balance of power in case of such a union, the Balkan States were kept in line. Instead of themselves attending to this, the diplomats placed the delicate job in the hands of one man. At the framing of the Treaty of London, of all the representatives from the Balkans, the one who most deeply impressed the other powers was M. Venizelos. And the task of keeping the Balkans neutral or with the Allies was left to him.

He has a dream of a Balkan ”band,” a union of all the Balkan princ.i.p.alities. It obsesses him. And to bring that dream true he was willing to make concessions which King Constantine, who considered only what was good for Greece, and was not concerned with a Balkan alliance, thought most unwise. Venizelos also was working for the good of Greece, but he was convinced it could come to her only through the union. He was willing to give Kavalla to Bulgaria in exchange for Asia Minor, from the Dardanelles to Smyrna. But the King would not consent. As a buffer against Turkey, he considered Kavalla of the greatest strategic value, and he had the natural pride of a soldier in holding on to land he himself had added to his country. But in his opposition to Venizelos in this particular, credit was not given him for acting in the interests of Greece, but of playing into the hands of Germany.

Another step he refused to take, which refusal the Allies attributed to his pro-German leanings, was to attack the Dardanelles. In the wars of 1912-13 the King showed he was an able general. With his staff he had carefully considered an attack upon the Dardanelles. He submitted this plan to the Allies, and was willing to aid them if they brought to the a.s.sault 400,000 men. They claim he failed them. He did fail them, but not until after they had failed him by bringing thousands of men instead of the tens of thousands he knew were needed.

The Dardanelles expedition was not required to prove the courage of the French and British. Beyond furnis.h.i.+ng fresh evidence of that, it has been a failure. And in refusing to sacrifice the lives of his subjects the military judgment of Constantine has been vindicated. He was willing to attack Turkey through Kavalla and Thrace, because by that route he presented an armed front to Bulgaria. But, as he pointed out, if he sent his army to the Dardanelles, he left Kavalla at the mercy of his enemy.

In his mistrust of Bulgaria he has certainly been justified.

Greece is not at war, but in outward appearance she is as firmly on a war footing as is France or Italy. A man out of uniform is conspicuous, and all day regiments pa.s.s through the streets carrying the campaign kit and followed by the medical corps, the mountain batteries, and the transport wagons. In the streets the crowds are cheering Denys Cochin, the special amba.s.sador from France. He makes speeches to them from the balcony of our hotel, and the mob wave flags and shout ”Zito! Zito!”

In a play Colonel Savage produced, I once wrote the same scene and placed it in the same hotel in Athens. In Athens the local color was superior to ours, but George Marion stage-managed the mob better than did the Athens police.

Athens is in a perplexed state of mind. She does not know if she wants to go to war or wants peace. She does not know if she should go to war, on which side she wants to fight. People tell you frankly that their heart-beats are with France, but that they are afraid of Germany.

”If Germany wins,” they asked, ”what will become of us? The Germans already are in Monastir, twenty miles from our border. They have driven the Serbians, the French, and the British out of Serbia, and they will make our King a German va.s.sal.”

”Then, why don't you go out and fight for your King?” I asked.

”He won't let us,” they said.

When the army of a country is mobilized, it is hard to understand that that country is neutral. You expect to see evidences of her partisans.h.i.+p for one cause or the other. But in Athens, from a shop-window point of view, both the Allies and the Germans are equally supported. There are just as many pictures of the German generals as of Joffre, as many post-cards of the German Emperor as of King George and King Albert.

After Paris, it is a shock to see German books, portraits of German statesmen, composers, and musicians. In one shop-window conspicuously featured, evidently with intent, is an engraving showing Napoleon III surrendering to Bismarck. In the princ.i.p.al bookstore, books in German on German victories, and English and French pamphlets on German atrocities stand shoulder to shoulder. The choice is with you.

Meanwhile, on every hand are the signs of a nation on the brink of war; of armies of men withdrawn from trades, professions, homes; of men marching and drilling in squads, companies, brigades. At times the columns are so long that in pa.s.sing the windows of the hotel they take an hour. All these fighting men must be fed, clothed, paid, and while they are waiting to fight, whether they are goatherds or piano-tuners or shopkeepers, their business is going to the devil.

CHAPTER VI

WITH THE ALLIES IN SALONIKA

SALONIKA, December, 1915.

We left Athens on the first s.h.i.+p that was listed for Salonika. She was a strange s.h.i.+p. During many years on various vessels in various seas, she was the most remarkable. Every Greek loves to gamble; but for some reason, or for that very reason, for him to gamble on sh.o.r.e is by law made difficult. In consequence, as soon as the _Hermoupolis_ raised anchor she became a floating gambling-h.e.l.l. There were twenty-four first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers who were in every way first cla.s.s; Greek officers, bankers, merchants, and deputies, and their time on the steamer from eleven each morning until four the next morning was spent in dealing baccarat.

When the stewards, who were among the few persons on board who did not play, tried to spread a table-cloth and serve food, they were indignantly rebuked. The most untiring players were the captain and the s.h.i.+p's officers. Whenever they found that navigating their s.h.i.+p interfered with their baccarat we came to anchor. We should have reached Salonika in a day and a half. We arrived after four days. And all of each day and half of each night we were anch.o.r.ed in midstream while the captain took the bank. The hills of Euboea and the mainland formed a giant funnel of snow, through which the wind roared. It swept the s.h.i.+p from bow to stern, turning to ice the woodwork, the velvet cus.h.i.+ons, even the blankets. Fortunately, it was not the kind of a s.h.i.+p that supplied sheets, or we would have frozen in our berths. Outside of the engine-room, which was aft, there was no heat of any sort, but undaunted, the gamblers, in caps and fur coats, their breath rising in icy clouds, crouched around the table, their frozen fingers fumbling with the cards.

There were two charming Italians on board, a father and son--the father absurdly youthful, the boy incredibly wise. They operate a chain of banks through the Levant. They watched the game but did not play. The father explained this to me. ”My dear son is a born gambler,” he said.

”So, in order that I may set him an example, I will not play until after he has gone to sleep.”

Later, the son also explained. ”My dear father,” he whispered, ”is an inveterate gambler. So, in order that I may reprove him, I do not gamble. At least not until he has gone to bed.” At midnight I left them still watching each other. The next day the son said: ”I got no sleep last night. For some reason, my dear father was wakeful, and it was four o'clock before he went to his cabin.”

When we reached Volo the sun was s.h.i.+ning, and as the day was so beautiful, the gamblers remained on board and played baccarat. The rest of us explored Volo. On the mountains above it the Twenty-Four Villages were in sight, nestling on the knees of the hills. Their red-tiled houses rose one above the other, the roof of one on a line with the door-step of the neighbor just overhead. Their white walls, for Volo is a summer resort, were merged in the ma.s.ses of snow, but in Volo itself roses were still blooming, and in every garden the trees were heavy with oranges. They were so many that they hid the green leaves, and against the walls of purple, blue, and Pompeian red, made wonderful splashes of a gorgeous gold.

Apparently the captain was winning, for he sent word he would not sail until midnight, and nine of his pa.s.sengers dined ash.o.r.e. We were so long at table, not because the dinner was good, but because there was a charcoal brazier in the room, that we missed the moving-pictures. So the young Italian banker was sent to bargain for a second and special performance. In the Levant there always is one man who works, and one man who manages him. A sort of impresario. Even the boatmen and bootblacks have a manager who arranges the financial details. It is difficult to buy a newspaper without dealing through a third party. The moving-picture show, being of importance, had seven managers. The young Italian, undismayed, faced all of them. He wrangled in Greek, Turkish, French, and Italian, and they all talked to him at the same time.

Finally the negotiations came to an end, but our amba.s.sador was not satisfied.

”They got the best of me,” he reported to us. ”They are going to give the show over again, and we are to have the services of the pianist, the orchestra of five, and the lady vocalist. But I had to agree to pay for the combined entertainment entirely too much.”

”How much?” I asked.

”Eight drachmas,” he said apologetically, ”or, in your money, one dollar and fifty-two cents.”