Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
The new successor to the bad qualities of old Comoundouros, Deliyanni, in his electoral programme had promised to relieve the people of all taxation, and had, of course, been elected, and I found Tricoupi still at the head of the opposition.
But circumstances were different; Greece had on the former occasion a valid claim, admitted by the powers, while on this there was only the pretension that Greece should receive a compensation for betterments acquired by Bulgaria. In the former, the Treaty of Berlin had sanctioned the cession; in the latter, there was only the bare impudence of Mr. Deliyanni to move the powers.
The powers insisted on demobilization. Deliyanni replied by waving his torch and threatening to set fire to Europe if they did not give him a province; and meanwhile the Turkish government was gathering a solid force of about 40,000 men on the menaced frontier, and preparing silently to march on Athens.
The casual observer could see that war was not intended, and that Deliyanni was silly enough to believe that the agents of the powers did not see through his sham, and thought that he could frighten them. The men on the frontier finally amounted to about 45,000 men, kept there as a scarecrow to the powers at an expense, ascertained from the safest authorities, of 1000 deaths per month.
I then flew to all the other legations, except the French and Russian, which had been supporting Deliyanni, and repeated the request to the secretaries in charge, winding up with the Turkish minister, whose ship had not yet arrived, and who was therefore still in Athens, pending its arrival, and gave him the fullest explanation of Tricoupi's position and the difficulties of it, and begged him to telegraph Constantinople to order Eyoub Pasha to withdraw from the frontier far enough to leave the bands no outlying detachment to attack.
On the day, too, on which Tricoupi accepted the charge, the Turkish commander had received his orders to cross the frontier on the next day and march on Athens if the annoyance were not stopped. A great extent of the frontier was not provided with the telegraph, and the chosen partisans of Deliyanni were in command, and determined to force a conflict.
This saved the credit of the ministry with the country; and Deliyanni, protesting against intervention as a measure on behalf of the Sultan, and hostile to Greece, resigned, but gave no orders to his commandants on the frontier to withdraw, and the skirmishing went on.
The King in this crisis behaved well, and put Deliyanni in the alternative of demobilizing or resigning; and, when he chose the latter course, the King called Tricoupi to form a ministry. Tricoupi's position was difficult.
Deliyanni had never had the least intention of making war, but he dared not withdraw for fear of his own people and the war fever he had inoculated them with.
In his charge the foreign policy of Italy was at its best. I found affairs at Athens in a critical condition. Deliyanni was trying the game of bluff which had succeeded in the hands of Comoundouros, but with quite a different measure of competence. With Deliyanni it was an evident sham.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking