ced in imminent danger of being driven, by the first
storm, upon the rocks of a neighbouring peninsula.

[Footnote 1: The four chief ports being Peiraeus, Patras, Syra, and
Volos.]

These grave shortcomings were doubtless due in part to the geographical
character of the country, though it was clear, from what had actually been
accomplished, that it would have been both possible and profitable to
attempt much more, if the nation's energy could have been secured for the
work. But it is hard to tinker at details when you are kept in a perpetual
fever by a question of life and death, and the great preliminary questions
of national unity and self-government remained still unsettled.

Before these supreme problems all other interests paled, for they were no
will-o'-the-wisps of theoretical politics. It needs a long political
education to appreciate abstract ideas, and the Greeks were still in their
political infancy, but the realization of Greater Greece implied for them
the satisfaction of all their concrete needs at once.

So long as the _status quo_ endured, they were isolated from the rest of
Europe by an unbroken band of Turkish territory, stretching from the
Aegean to the Adriatic Sea. What was the use of overcoming great
engineering difficulties to build a line of European gauge from Athens
right up to the northern frontier, if Turkey refused to sanction the
construction of the tiny section that must pass through her territory
between the Greek railhead and the actual terminus of the European system
at Salonika? Or if, even supposing she withdrew her veto, she would have
it in her power to bring pressure on Greece at any moment by threatening
to sever communications along this vital artery? So long as Turkey was
there, Greece was practically an island, and her only communication with
continental Europe lay through her ports. But what use to improve the
ports, when the recovery of Salonika, the fairest object of the national
dreams, would ultimately change the country's economic centre of gravity,
and make her maritime as well as her overland commerce flow along quite
other channels than the present?

Thus the Greek nation's present was overshadowed by its future, and its
actions paralysed by its hopes. Perhaps a nation with more power of
application and less of imagination would have schooled itself to the
thought that these sordid, obtrusive details were the key to the
splendours of the future, and would have devo