Abstract

The Motive of Greek Intervention

The startling turn, which the Cretan affair has taken in the shelling of the Greco-Cretan forces at Canea has reached one in all its details long ere this, but the part of the history, which the telegrams cannot tell is indispensable to the understanding of it. The intervention of Greece, after it had become known that the Powers had decided to put an end to the disorders in Crete, Greece by compulsory modifications in the government of the island, was not merely useless, but disastrous. Greece has never shown that she cared for the freedom of Crete, but, on the contrary, that she regarded the island as a means for the aggrandizement of the Hellenic kingdom. The motive is not the love of Cretan liberty, but the aggrandizement of Greece, and the Powers have taught the Greeks a lesson which has been rehearsed on other occasions with less severity, but which the Greeks would have learned before if they had been the intelligent people they have been supposed to be.