of Venizelos to Athens after weary months of building up a volunteer army at Saloniki, his success in healing dissensions and reëstablishing economic prosperity in a politician-rent country -all while the outcome of the war was still uncertain-would carry me far beyond my space. It was the experience in Crete over again, on a larger scale, with a grander setting. But Venizelos was the same, and he was playing for the same stake.

When Venizelos came to the peace conference at Paris, his prestige was far greater than that of the country he represented. Few cared about Greece: every one listened to Venizelos. But although the conference honored him, and made him a member of the League of Nations drafting commission, Venizelos found what he had always experienced in dealing with the powers, an utter unwillingness to treat sympathetically the aspirations of Greece, for Hellenism conflicted with their own political and commercial ambitions.

With the exception of the Serbians and Greeks, the territorial claims of the smaller European allies could be allowed at the expense of discredited foes to whom none was disposed to show mercy. Moreover, the resurrection of Poland and Bohemia and the aggrandizement of Rumania, far from thwarting imperialistic schemes of the victors, harmonized with their policy to crush Germany and destroy the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But success in achieving the national unity of Serbians and Greeks meant the failure of Italy to receive the reward agreed upon by the Entente powers in 1915 for Italian intervention. Pachich and Venizelos had to plead their cases before a tribunal one of whose judges, the Italian Premier, was against them. And the other judges were bound by a secret treaty to decide in favor of Italy wherever Serbian and Greek claims conflicted with Italian claims.

Venizelos was in a more difficult position than his Serbian colleague. The issue between Jugo-Slavia and Italy was clear-cut, and Pachich had an advocate in President Wilson. The quarrel involved only the Adriatic. Greece and Italy came into conflict in northern Epirus, the Dodecanese, and Asia Minor.

Nor could Venizelos allow himself to forget that if he proved too intractable, Italy had a voice in the decision that would be rendered concerning Greek claims against Bulgaria in Thrace. President Wilson heaped encomiums on Venizelos, but he did not take the side of the Greeks against the Italians, although the Dodecanese and northern Epirus were far less Italian than Fiume. Added to all this, Venizelos was forced to combat powerful influences being exercised upon all the Entente powers to spare the Turks, or to divide the Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence without regard to the aspirations of Ottoman subject nationalities.

Venizelos left Paris with nothing tangible. He went to London. Still the Entente statesmen toyed with the Ottoman treaty, and began to fight among themselves. The next act of the drama has just been played at San Remo, with America out of the decisions, Wilson's advice ignored, and Premier Nitti declaring to reporters before the terms were given out that the Treaty of San Remo, like that of Versailles, was impossible of fulfilment.

But I am sure that Venizelos will not resign himself to a temporary and makeshift solution of the problem of the unity of Hellas, for that would be to deny the precedents of thirty-six years of the most remarkably consistent career among contemporary statesmen. I can see Venizelos as I write, peering at me over his glasses, and saying in that soft voice of his: "What can I do, cher ami? Greece is such a little country, and the powers are so big. I yield none of my principles, I do not compromise the honor of my people who trust me, but must I not take what I can get? But let us wait six years-no, three years. My people are so poor and so exhausted. We need our peace. In three years much can happen-if I do not have to be all that time at a peace conference!"

Then he smiles, and changes the subject to his long-promised American visit.

"I may never come, but there are things over there I would like to know." "What most of all?" I venture.

"How your Government found out that Adrianople was Bulgarian and Smyrna Turkish," he said.