alk with half-closed eyes, and whilst they seem to be thinking, they
are but taking a passive pleasure in existence. They sit down together
at their cafes which debouch upon the streets, and sip the sweetest of
coffee, and light their cigarettes, and regard the world which passes
slowly by. There are all manner of mendicants and of musicians
flitting to and fro in the sun, like shabby butterflies, and the
elegant Greek says "No" to them, not by sound of voice, but by the
slightest elevation of the eyebrows and movement of the eye. He sits
and looks occasionally at the wonderful hills above him, so fresh, so
virginal; but he does not, as an Englishman might do, pay quickly and
go out and go up. The modern Greek would never build so high as the
Acropolis.

You do not hear a good word said for the Greek by any race in Europe.
Italians, French, Serbs, Bulgars, Turks, and even British are all more
or less anti-Greek. Whilst it seems true to say that you scarcely find
any nation that likes any other nation, yet the antipathy towards the
Greek seems more marked than most others. Whatever illfeeling or
irritative may be in the air is readily vented upon the Greek. Despite
all this, however, the new Greeks are a slowly but steadily rising and
prospering people. One hundred years ago they obtained their
liberation from the Turk. The Turkish mind was shown to be incapable
of absorbing Europeanism. The light of the nineteenth century scared
the night-bird back to Asia, and there arose Serbs, and Bulgars, and
Roumanians as European nations, and Greece once more arose. Modern
civilization suits the Greek much more than it does the Turk. He can
understand it and utilize it. Because of it he has risen and perchance
will rise. The Greeks are by far the cleverest people in the Balkans,
and are perhaps the cleverest of the Mediterranean nations as well.

The Greek temperament swings between the dead calm and passionless on
the one hand, to the violent and maniacal on the other. The nation is
still convalescent, its development is slow, and it is impossible to
say how far new Greece will develop. But its strength lies in its
serpentine stillness and ancient unforgotten craft, and its weakness in
that absence of ideals and in the sudden violence of partizanship which
suggest pathological decay. What Greece does is generally subtle and
shrewd; what she says is often madness. She has little sense of
humour, and takes offenc