THE TRAGEDY OF GREECE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2541, 10 February 1923, Page 4

THE TRAGEDY OF GREECE.

“The Greeks have been at war for 10 years,” says the London Observer. “They have been drained of blood and money. At the end they have lost everything that was promised them. The Dead Sea fruit of hope has turned to dust and ashes. On the fringe of Asia Minor, lonian settlement after tlie 3,000 years of its survival from an age before Homer is destroyed at last. King Tino and his tools have mined a race. Imagine how we should feel if all the British Empire outside these islands had been wiped out by servile and credulous incompetence. That incompetence in. high places means that tens of thousands of the common people of the Hellenes have died in vain \t any price, statesmen in all countries must be deterred from playing with war, and from the habit of assuming with impunity that the sedentary blundering of middle-aged or >enile politicians can always be covered up by the slaughter of youth. Greece is ruined, however, and present showing suggests the plunge from bad to worse. M. Venizelos made a fatal blunder when he simultaneously antagonised Bulgaria, Turkey and Russia. He might redeem the situation partiallyreconstituting the Balkan League. He cannot do that unless he can induce the unhappy Greek people to make the concessions required for a thorough alliance with Sofia. Now that the Turks are back on the old footing in Eastern Thrace, Bulgaria becomes the key of the Balkans.”