s, under guarantee of an autonomy after
the precedent of Krete and Samos.

[Footnote 1: Including its famous satellite Psara.]

To these arguments and demands the Greeks replied that, next to Krete;
these are the two largest, most wealthy, and most populous Greek islands
in the Aegean; that their inhabitants ardently desire union with the
national kingdom; and that the Greek Government would hesitate to use them
as a basis for economic coercion and nationalistic propaganda against
Turkey, if only because the commerce of western Anatolia is almost
exclusively in the hands of the Greek element on the Asiatic continent.
Greek interests were presumably bound up with the economic prosperity and
political consolidation of Turkey in Asia, and the Anatolian Greeks would
merely have been alienated from their compatriots by any such impolitic
machinations. 'Greek sovereignty in Mitylini and Khios', the Greeks
maintained, 'does not threaten Turkish sovereignty on the Continent. But
the restoration of Turkish suzerainty over the islands would most
seriously endanger the liberty of their inhabitants; for Turkish promises
are notoriously valueless, except when they are endorsed by the guarantee
of some physically stronger power.'

Negotiations were conducted between Greece and Turkey from these
respective points of view without leading to any result, and the two
standpoints were in fact irreconcilable, since either power required the
other to leave vital national interests at the mercy of an ancient enemy,
without undertaking to make corresponding sacrifices itself. The problem
probably would never have been solved by compromise; but meanwhile the
situation has been entirely transformed by the participation of Turkey in
the European War, and the issue between Greece and Turkey, like the issue
between Greece and Bulgaria, has been merged in the general problem of the
European settlement.

The Balkan War of 1912 doomed the Ottoman power in Europe, but left its
Asiatic future unimpaired. By making war against the Quadruple Entente,
Turkey has staked her existence on both continents, and is threatened with
political extinction if the Central Powers succumb in the struggle. In
this event Greece will no longer have to accommodate her regime in the
liberated islands to the susceptibilities of a Turkey consolidated on the
opposite mainland, but will be able to stretch out her hand over the
Anatolian coast and its hinterland, and compensat