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This liberal hospitality on the part of the ecclesiastics makes the want of it on the part of the people all the more conspicuous and inexplicable. In the event Comoundouros found his game of bluff a safe one, for his claims were just, and diplomacy was derelict, or there would have been no utility in the demonstration.
Not to be in office or near coming to office is in Greece to have no political standing whatever, and the King's defection and betrayal of the interests of Greece in 1868 convinced Comoundouros and many others that with the King there was nothing to be done for a purely Hellenic and consistent policy.
Its minister at Athens required Comoundouros to fall in with a plan for a general movement in all the Balkan provinces under Russian direction, Russia beginning to fear a pan-Hellenic rising. To this Comoundouros gave a peremptory refusal; it was a Greek movement and should remain under Greek direction. The king of Greece had married a Russian princess, and during his stay at St.
Comoundouros was a demagogue, without any scruples as to the means of success, but he was intelligent enough to understand the position and that a positive policy was necessary.
The sturdy independence of Comoundouros in 1868 was wasted, and I can imagine that the old man understood that, though the forms of independence and the semblance of progress must be kept up, there was really no hope of a truly Hellenic revival, and with his hopes and his courage he lost all his patriotic ambitions.
Gallenga, the Italian correspondent par excellence, brought me into a regular and permanent employment by the paper as its representative for Greece and Italy, with residence at Rome. Comoundouros was dead, and Tricoupi, who had succeeded, as I had long before anticipated that he would, to the lead in Greek politics, had fallen, as he had foretold, on the question of taxation.
That France or Prussia, Spain or Italy, could divide attention with this small kingdom; that the great political minds of the Continent were not more eager to know what Comoundouros thought and Bulgaris required, than all about Bismarck and Gortschakoff, he could not be brought to conceive; and in consequence of these convictions, he was an admirable Minister, and fully represented all the interests of his country.
The animosity towards the King was extreme. I saw people who happened to be sitting in front of the cafés rise and turn their backs to him when he walked past, as he used to do without any attendant. Comoundouros ran with the diplomats and hunted with the populace, I think he really meant to continue running and avoid hunting at any risk, but he talked on the other side.
He took the responsibility of openly giving aid to the insurrection, but he still had not the clear understanding of the want of a concentrated direction in Crete. Comoundouros dared not risk offending the many political partisans by imposing on the volunteers whom he sent over a competent and concentrated command.
Excitement ran very high, and the ministry was carried along with the populace, which demanded war and the military occupation of the territory assigned to Greece. Comoundouros was, on the whole, the most competent prime minister for Greece whom the country has had in my time.
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