ted itself to the systematic
amelioration of the cramped area which it had already secured for its own.
This is what Bulgaria managed to do during her short but wonderful period
of internal growth between the Berlin Treaty of 1878 and the declaration
of war against Turkey in 1912. But Bulgaria, thanks to her geographical
situation, was from the outset freer from the tentacles of the Turkish
octopus than Greece had contrived to make herself by her fifty years'
start, while her temperamentally sober ambitions were not inflamed by such
past traditions as Greece had inherited, not altogether to her advantage.
Be that as it may, Greece, whether by fault or misfortune, had failed
during this half-century to apply herself successfully to the cure of her
defects and the exploitation of her assets, though she did not lack
leaders strong-minded enough to summon her to the dull business of the
present. Her history during the succeeding generation was a struggle
between the parties of the Present and the Future, and the unceasing
discomfiture of the former is typified in the tragedy of Trikoupis, the
greatest modern Greek statesman before the advent of Venezelos.

Trikoupis came into power in 1882, just after the acquisition of the rich
agricultural province of Thessaly under the Treaty of Berlin had given the
kingdom a fresh start. There were no such continuous areas of good arable
land within the original frontiers, and such rare patches as there were
had been desolated by those eight years of savage warfare[1] which had
been the price of liberty. The population had been swept away by wholesale
massacres of racial minorities in every district; the dearth of
industrious hands had allowed the torrents to play havoc with the
cultivation-terraces on the mountain slopes; and the spectre of malaria,
always lying in wait for its opportunity, had claimed the waterlogged
plains for its own. During the fifty years of stagnation little attempt
had been made to cope with the evil, until now it seemed almost past
remedy.

[Footnote 1: 1821-28]

If, however, the surface of the land offered little prospect of wealth for
the moment, there were considerable treasures to be found beneath it. A
metalliferous bolt runs down the whole east coast of the Greek mainland,
cropping up again in many of the Aegean islands, and some of the ores, of
which there is a great variety, are rare and valuable. The lack of transit
facilities is partly remedied by t