policy she strove to baulk. Conscious of this immense privilege, she
takes the fullest advantage of it. Under such conditions no stable
coalition of the Balkan States was possible.

The remarkable ascendancy thus won by Germany over Bulgaria is but one
of the salient results of her foresight, organization and
single-mindedness which the Allies are now beginning to appreciate.
Their ideal policy in the Balkans was to have none. Great Britain in
particular was proud of her complete disinterestedness.

Between the Teutons and the Greeks there were no such close ties as
those that linked Bulgaria to the Central Empires. The Hellenic
kingdom is a democracy marked by a constant tendency to anarchy. Down
to the beginning of the reign of the present monarch its ruler was
never more than the merest figure-head, nor its people anything but an
amalgam of individuals deficient in the social sense and devoid of
political cohesiveness. The late King George, for instance, remained,
to the end of his life, an amused spectator of the childish game of
politics carried on by his Ministers; and so insecure did he consider
his tenure of the kingship, that his frequent threat to "take his hat"
and quit the country for good had become one of the commonplaces of
Greek politics. Only a few years ago his reign appeared to be drawing
to an ignominious end. His functions were usurped by a military league
and his sons removed from the army. Anarchy was spreading, at that
time I expressed the opinion that the only person capable of saving
Greece--if Greece could yet be saved--was the Cretan insurgent, M.
Venizelos. This suggestion appealed to the Chief of the Military
League and was adopted. Venizelos was invited to Athens with the
results known to all the world. At first reluctantly tolerated, he was
subsequently highly appreciated by King George and was afterwards
handicapped by King Constantine, whose impolitic instructions during
the Bucharest Conference resulted in sowing seeds of discord between
Greece and Bulgaria.

To small countries and petty personal ambitions, a war among the Great
Powers brings halcyon days of flattery, bribery and seductive
prospects in an imaginary future. In Greece all these and other
attractions were dangled before the eyes of men of power and
influence. The Sovereign, whose admiration for the Kaiser verges on
idolatry, soon extended this platonic sentiment to the Kaiser's army.
And when fortune seemed definitivel