ngthened his position at home without
impairing his reputation abroad; but his position was really made
impossible by a force quite beyond his control, the irresponsible and
often intolerable behaviour which Turkey, under whatever regime, has
always practised towards foreign powers, and especially towards those
Balkan states which have won their freedom in her despite, while perforce
abandoning a large proportion of their race to the protracted outrage of
Turkish misgovernment.

Several times over the Porte, by wanton insults to Greece, wrecked the
efforts of Trikoupis to establish good relations between the two
governments, and played the game of the chauvinist party led by Trikoupis'
rival, Deliyannis. Deliyannis' tenures of office were always brief, but
during them he contrived to undo most of the work accomplished by
Trikoupis in the previous intervals. A particularly tense 'incident' with
Turkey put him in power in 1893, with a strong enough backing from the
country to warrant a general mobilization. The sole result was the ruin of
Greek credit. Trikoupis was hastily recalled to office by the king, but
too late. He found himself unable to retrieve the ruin, and retired
altogether from politics in 1895, dying abroad next year in voluntary
exile and enforced disillusionment.

With the removal of Trikoupis from the helm, Greece ran straight upon the
rocks. A disastrous war with Turkey was precipitated in 1897 by events in
Krete. It brought the immediate _debacle_ of the army and the reoccupation
of Thessaly for a year by Turkish troops, while its final penalties were
the cession of the chief strategical positions along the northern frontier
and the imposition of an international commission of control over the
Greek finances, in view of the complete national bankruptcy entailed by
the war. The fifteen years that followed 1895 were almost the blackest
period in modern Greek history; yet the time was not altogether lost, and
such events as the draining of the Kopais-basin by a British company, and
its conversion from a malarious swamp into a rich agricultural area,
marked a perceptible economic advance.

This comparative stagnation was broken at last by the Young Turk
_pronunciamiento_ at Salonika in 1908, which produced such momentous
repercussions all through the Nearer East. The Young Turks had struck in
order to forestall the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, but the
opportunity was seized by every restive element