ATHENS, November, 1915.

We are not allowed to tell what the situation is here.  But, in spite of the censor, I am going to tell what the situation is.  It is involved.  That is not because no one will explain it.  In Greece at present, explaining the situation is the national pastime.  Since arriving yesterday I have had the situation explained to me by members of the Cabinet, guides to the Acropolis, generals in the army, Teofani, the cigarette king, three ministers plenipotentiary, the man from St. Louis who is over here to sell aeroplanes, the man from Cook’s, and “extra people,” like soldiers in cafes, brigands in petticoats, and peasants in peaked shoes with tassels.  They asked me not to print their names, which was just as well, as I cannot spell them.  They each explained the situation differently, but all agree it is involved.

To understand it, you must go back to Helen of Troy, take a running jump from the Greek war for independence and Lord Byron to Mr. Gladstone and the Bulgarian atrocities, note the influence of the German Emperor at Corfu, appreciate the intricacies of Russian diplomacy in Belgrade, the rise of Enver Pasha and the Young Turks, what Constantine said to Venizelos about giving up Kavalla, and the cablegram Prince Danilo, of “Merry Widow” fame, sent to his cousin of Italy.  By following these events, the situation is as easy to grasp as an eel that has swallowed the hook and cannot digest it.

For instance, Mr. Poneropolous, the well-known contractor who sells shoes to the army, informs me the Greeks as one man want war.  They are even prepared to fight for it.  On the other hand, Axon Skiadas, the popular barber of the Hotel Grande Bretagne, who has just been called to the colors, assures me no patriot would again plunge this country into conflict.

The diplomats also disagree, especially as to which of them is responsible for the failure of Greece to join the Allies.  The one who is to blame for that never is the one who is talking to you.  The one who is talking is always the one who, had they followed his advice, could have saved the “situation.”  They did not, and now it is involved, not to say addled.  The military attache of Great Britain volunteered to set the situation before me in a few words.  After explaining for two hours, he asked me to promise not to repeat what he had said.  I promised.  Another diplomat, who was projected into the service by William Jennings Bryan, said if he told all he knew about the situation “the world would burst.”  Those are his exact words.  It would have been an event of undoubted news value, and as a news-gatherer I should have coaxed his secret from him, but it seemed as though the world is in trouble enough as it is, and if it must burst I want it to burst when I am nearer home.  So I switched him off to the St. Louis convention, where he was probably more useful than he will ever be in the Balkans.

While every one is guessing, the writer ventures to make a guess.  It is that Greece will remain neutral, or will join the Allies.  Without starving to death she cannot join the Germans.  Greece is non-supporting.  What she eats comes in the shape of wheat from outside her borders, from the grain-fields of Russia, Egypt, Bulgaria, France, and America.  When Denys Cochin, the French minister to Athens, had his interview with the King, the latter became angry and said, “We can get along without France’s money,” and Cochin said:  “That is true, but you cannot get along without France’s wheat.”

The Allies are not going to bombard Greek ports or shell the Acropolis.  They will not even blockade the ports.  But their fleets ­French, Italian, English ­will stop all ships taking foodstuffs to Greece.  They have just released seven grain ships from America, that were held up at Malta, and ships carrying food to Greece have been stopped at points as far away as Gibraltar.  As related in the last chapter, the Greek steamer on which we sailed from Naples was held up at Messina for twenty-four hours until her cargo was overhauled.  As we had nothing in the hold more health-sustaining than hides and barbed-wire, we were allowed to proceed.

Whatever course Greece follows, her dependence upon others for food explains her act.  To-day (November 29) there is not enough wheat in the country to feed the people for, some say three ­the most optimistic, ten ­days.  Should she decide to join Germany she would starve.  It would be deliberate suicide.  The French and Italian fleets are at Malta, less than a day distant; the English fleet is off the Gallipoli peninsula.  Fifteen hours’ steaming could bring it to Salonika.  Greece is especially vulnerable from the sea.  She is all islands, coast towns, and seaports.  The German navy could not help her.  It will not leave the Kiel Canal.  The Austrian navy cannot leave the Adriatic.  Should Greece decide against the Allies, their combined war-ships would pick up her islands and blockade her ports.  In a week she would be starving.  The railroad from Bulgaria to Salonika, over which in peace times comes much wheat from Roumania, would be closed to her.  Even if the Germans and Bulgarians succeeded in winning it to the coast, they could get no food for Greece farther than that.  They have no war-ships, and the Gulf of Salonika is full of those of the Allies.

 King Constantine of Greece and commander-in-chief of her
 armies.

 In two years he led his people to victory in two wars.  If now they
 desire peace and in this big war the right to remain neutral, he thinks
 they have earned that right.]

The position of King Constantine is very difficult.  He is supposed to be strongly pro-German, and the reason for his sympathy that is given here is the same as is accepted in America.  Every act of his is supposed to be inspired by family influences, when, as he has stated publicly through his friend Walter Harris of the London Times, he is pro-English, and has been actuated solely by what he thought was best for his own people.  Indeed, there are many who believe if the terms upon which Greece might join the Allies had been left to the King instead of to Venizelos, Greece now would be with the Entente.

Or, if Greece remained neutral, no one could better judge whether neutrality was or was not best for her than Constantine.  In the three years before the World War, he had led his countrymen through two wars, and if both, as King and commander of her armies, he thought they needed rest and peace, he was entitled to that opinion.  Instead, he was misrepresented and abused.  His motives were assailed; he was accused of being dominated by his Imperial brother-in-law.  At no time since the present war began has he been given what we would call a “square deal.”  The writer has followed the career of Constantine since the Greek-Turkish war of 1897, when they “drank from the same canteen,” and as Kings go, or until they all do go, respects him as a good King.  To his people he is generous, kind, and considerate; as a general he has added to the territory of Greece many miles and seaports; he is fond of his home and family, and in his reign there has been no scandal, no Knights of the Round Table, such as disgraced the German court, no Tripoli massacre, no Congo atrocities, no Winter Garden or La Scala favorites.  Venizelos may or may not be as unselfish a patriot.  But justly or not, it is difficult to disassociate what Venizelos wants for Greece with what he wants for Venizelos.  The King is removed from any such suspicion.  He is already a King, and except in continuing to be a good King, he can go no higher.

How Venizelos came so prominently into the game is not without interest.  As long ago as when the two German cruisers escaped from Messina and were sold to Turkey, the diplomatic representatives of the Allies in the Balkans were instructed to see that Turkey and Germany did not get together, and that, as a balance of power in case of such a union, the Balkan States were kept in line.  Instead of themselves attending to this, the diplomats placed the delicate job in the hands of one man.  At the framing of the Treaty of London, of all the representatives from the Balkans, the one who most deeply impressed the other powers was M. Venizelos.  And the task of keeping the Balkans neutral or with the Allies was left to him.

He has a dream of a Balkan “band,” a union of all the Balkan principalities.  It obsesses him.  And to bring that dream true he was willing to make concessions which King Constantine, who considered only what was good for Greece, and was not concerned with a Balkan alliance, thought most unwise.  Venizelos also was working for the good of Greece, but he was convinced it could come to her only through the union.  He was willing to give Kavalla to Bulgaria in exchange for Asia Minor, from the Dardanelles to Smyrna.  But the King would not consent.  As a buffer against Turkey, he considered Kavalla of the greatest strategic value, and he had the natural pride of a soldier in holding on to land he himself had added to his country.  But in his opposition to Venizelos in this particular, credit was not given him for acting in the interests of Greece, but of playing into the hands of Germany.

Another step he refused to take, which refusal the Allies attributed to his pro-German leanings, was to attack the Dardanelles.  In the wars of 1912-13 the King showed he was an able general.  With his staff he had carefully considered an attack upon the Dardanelles.  He submitted this plan to the Allies, and was willing to aid them if they brought to the assault 400,000 men.  They claim he failed them.  He did fail them, but not until after they had failed him by bringing thousands of men instead of the tens of thousands he knew were needed.

The Dardanelles expedition was not required to prove the courage of the French and British.  Beyond furnishing fresh evidence of that, it has been a failure.  And in refusing to sacrifice the lives of his subjects the military judgment of Constantine has been vindicated.  He was willing to attack Turkey through Kavalla and Thrace, because by that route he presented an armed front to Bulgaria.  But, as he pointed out, if he sent his army to the Dardanelles, he left Kavalla at the mercy of his enemy.  In his mistrust of Bulgaria he has certainly been justified.

Greece is not at war, but in outward appearance she is as firmly on a war footing as is France or Italy.  A man out of uniform is conspicuous, and all day regiments pass through the streets carrying the campaign kit and followed by the medical corps, the mountain batteries, and the transport wagons.  In the streets the crowds are cheering Denys Cochin, the special ambassador from France.  He makes speeches to them from the balcony of our hotel, and the mob wave flags and shout “Zito!  Zito!”

In a play Colonel Savage produced, I once wrote the same scene and placed it in the same hotel in Athens.  In Athens the local color was superior to ours, but George Marion stage-managed the mob better than did the Athens police.

Athens is in a perplexed state of mind.  She does not know if she wants to go to war or wants peace.  She does not know if she should go to war, on which side she wants to fight.  People tell you frankly that their heart-beats are with France, but that they are afraid of Germany.

“If Germany wins,” they asked, “what will become of us?  The Germans already are in Monastir, twenty miles from our border.  They have driven the Serbians, the French, and the British out of Serbia, and they will make our King a German vassal.”

“Then, why don’t you go out and fight for your King?” I asked.

“He won’t let us,” they said.

When the army of a country is mobilized, it is hard to understand that that country is neutral.  You expect to see evidences of her partisanship for one cause or the other.  But in Athens, from a shop-window point of view, both the Allies and the Germans are equally supported.  There are just as many pictures of the German generals as of Joffre, as many post-cards of the German Emperor as of King George and King Albert.  After Paris, it is a shock to see German books, portraits of German statesmen, composers, and musicians.  In one shop-window conspicuously featured, evidently with intent, is an engraving showing Napoleon III surrendering to Bismarck.  In the principal bookstore, books in German on German victories, and English and French pamphlets on German atrocities stand shoulder to shoulder.  The choice is with you.

Meanwhile, on every hand are the signs of a nation on the brink of war; of armies of men withdrawn from trades, professions, homes; of men marching and drilling in squads, companies, brigades.  At times the columns are so long that in passing the windows of the hotel they take an hour.  All these fighting men must be fed, clothed, paid, and while they are waiting to fight, whether they are goatherds or piano-tuners or shopkeepers, their business is going to the devil.