s of the Aegean coast lands with their large Hellenic
population which lay between the Struma and the Mesta including the
cities of Seres and Drama and especially Kavala with its fine harbor
and its hinterland famed for crops of choice tobacco.

It was on the fourth of July, 1913, a few days after the outbreak of
the war between Bulgaria and her late allies, that Mr. Venizelos
made his defence in an eloquent and powerful speech at a special
session of the Greek parliament. The accusation against him was not
only that during the late war he had sacrificed Greek interests to
Bulgaria but that he had committed a fatal blunder in joining her in
the campaign against Turkey. His reply was that since Greece could
not stand alone he had to seek allies in the Balkans, and that it
was not his fault if the choice had fallen on Bulgaria. He had
endeavored to maintain peace with Turkey. Listen to his own words:

"I did not seek war against the Ottoman Empire. I would not have
sought war at a later date if I could have obtained any
adjustment of the Cretan question--that thorn in the side of
Greece which can no longer be left as it is without rendering a
normal political life absolutely impossible for us. I endeavored
to adjust this question, to continue the policy of a close
understanding with the neighboring empire, in the hope of
obtaining in this way the introduction of reforms which would
render existence tolerable to the millions of Greeks within the
Ottoman Empire."

THE CRETAN PROBLEM

It was this Cretan question, even more than the Macedonian question,
which in 1897 had driven Greece, single-handed and unprepared, into
a war with Turkey in which she was destined to meet speedy and
overwhelming defeat. It was this same "accursed Cretan question," as
Mr. Venizelos called it, which now drew the country into a military
alliance against her Ottoman neighbor who, until too late, refused
to make any concession either to the just claims of the Cretans or
to the conciliatory proposals of the Greek government.

Lying midway between three continents, the island of Crete has
played a large part both in ancient and modern history. The
explorations and excavations of Sir Arthur Evans at Cnossus seem to
prove that the Homeric civilization of Tiryns and Mycenae was
derived from Crete, whose earliest remains carry us back three
thousand years before the Christian era. And if Crete gave to
ancient Greece