Europe-Whither Bound? Part 1

Europe--Whither Bound?

by Stephen Graham.

PREFATORY NOTE

The Author's grat.i.tude is due to many people in connexion with this book--to Bishop Nicholas of Zicca and the Rev. Hugh Chapman, of the Savoy, and Col. Treloar and Major-General Sir Fabian Ware, and the Editor of the "Narodny Listi," at Prague, and Mr. Hyka,--to these and many others who helped a traveller on his way.

The letters from each capital were published in "Country Life" under the general t.i.tle of _Quo Vadis Europa?_ A few after-thoughts have now been written on "Extra Leaves," and sewn in between these letters.

No effort at an exhaustive study of any country is made here. The object of the author was to make a rapid tour from capital to capital, "keeping the taxi waiting," so to say, and thus obtain an idea of Europe as a whole. It is perhaps one of the first books of travel written from the point of view of Europe as a unity, and it is hoped it will help to make us all good Europeans.

EUROPE--WHITHER BOUND?

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

I. FROM ATHENS

Europe, whither goest thou?--the poignant question of to-day. The pride of Christian culture, the greatest human achievement in history, with, as we thought before 1914, the seal of immortality set upon her, is now perhaps moving towards dissolution and death. Europe has begun a rapid decline, though no one dares to think that she will continue in it downward until she reaches the chaos and misery and barbarity from which she sprang. Affairs will presently take a turn for the better, Europe will recover her balance and resume the road of progress which she left seven years ago--prompts Hope.

"Europe must die in order to be re-born as something better"; "all must be destroyed," say the theorists of revolution. "She staggers and falls and falls and plunges," seem to say the facts with the inexorableness of Fate.

Prophecy can be left to all men--it does not alter the course of events. The historian in the future will ask what was the actual condition of Europe at this time, and it is possible to a.s.sume that he would grasp eagerly at an account of a visit by an impartial observer to all the princ.i.p.al capitals of Europe in the year 1921. An effort to record what Europe looks like now, a series of true reflections and verbal photographs of swirling humanity at the great congregating places, the capitals, cannot but be of value. So with the motto: "See all: reserve your judgment," let us proceed.

The winds of the mountains traverse the well-shod civilization of a great city. At the end of each of the long streets rises a mountain, and on the mountain rest the clouds and the sky. You walk outwards, and climb the nearest and most prominent of the heights to the Acropolis, to the mighty slabs of the marble of the Parthenon, simple and pure in the mountain air, a point of view where it is always morning, and you look down from the ancient Athens to the new. Your eyes rest on modern Athens all built in white stone, and extensive and handsome in a setting of mountains and sea, but the heart refuses to travel with the eyes. The heart remains in the ancient city, and there, somehow, is perfect happiness, and it is a place in which to abide.

Not without some sacred thought does one place one's feet upon the bare rock where walked the bright spirits of ancient Athens. The morning sun of Europe, the dawning vision of all that we Europeans could be or mean, dawns again in the soul. As an old or invalid man, or one at least who in middle years has sinned and gone astray, one looks back to the innocence and promise of childhood. Here shone the light of our being undimmed; here was kindled in Europe the faith of the ideal.

Yonder is Mars Hill from which St. Paul showed the new way when the light was growing dim. For Greece identified man in part with the Divine, but the new religion gave forgetful humanity its altar of remembrance, affirming that we do not belong to the beasts that perish but are affiliated to the Almighty.

It is perhaps strange that to-day the city which was the cradle of the ideal is a city where there are no ideals at all--either old or new, where Plato now means nothing, where even Bolshevism is not heard of.

S----, who took his bachelorate on divinity at Oxford, is writing a sympathetic treatise on Nietzsche and Christianity for his doctorate at the University of Athens. But what a mistake! What an unfortunate choice of place and theme! Who was Nietzsche? "I have changed my t.i.tle to 'Nietzsche as the Devil'" says S----. "Ah, that's better,"

says his professor, "that we can understand."

You come down from the heights into the modern city, and you behold the rising civilization of a new Greece. Here without question is a most pleasant city, with acacia avenues and white houses and full-bosomed abundant orange-trees hanging their golden fruits. Thus happily bowered, merchants and bankers pursue their avocations, and shopkeepers display their wares in a pleasant array of modern shops. On the streets walk leisurely an indolent and elegant people; the dark women are especially _chic_ and it must be said refined and restrained, and not so seductive in appearance as the South would suggest. You see also at the many open-air cafes and in the street a very distinguished-looking type of man with finely cut features and plentiful iron-grey hair. You surmise that you are looking upon the most indolent people in the world--not lazy like Russians or Irish, but elegantly indolent, walking so slowly, playing meditatively with their beads--for nearly every man carries his string of jet or amber beads, which he mechanically tells, though without a thought of prayer. They walk with half-closed eyes, and whilst they seem to be thinking, they are but taking a pa.s.sive pleasure in existence. They sit down together at their cafes which debouch upon the streets, and sip the sweetest of coffee, and light their cigarettes, and regard the world which pa.s.ses slowly by. There are all manner of mendicants and of musicians flitting to and fro in the sun, like shabby b.u.t.terflies, and the elegant Greek says "No" to them, not by sound of voice, but by the slightest elevation of the eyebrows and movement of the eye. He sits and looks occasionally at the wonderful hills above him, so fresh, so virginal; but he does not, as an Englishman might do, pay quickly and go out and go up. The modern Greek would never build so high as the Acropolis.

You do not hear a good word said for the Greek by any race in Europe.

Italians, French, Serbs, Bulgars, Turks, and even British are all more or less anti-Greek. Whilst it seems true to say that you scarcely find any nation that likes any other nation, yet the antipathy towards the Greek seems more marked than most others. Whatever illfeeling or irritative may be in the air is readily vented upon the Greek. Despite all this, however, the new Greeks are a slowly but steadily rising and prospering people. One hundred years ago they obtained their liberation from the Turk. The Turkish mind was shown to be incapable of absorbing Europeanism. The light of the nineteenth century scared the night-bird back to Asia, and there arose Serbs, and Bulgars, and Roumanians as European nations, and Greece once more arose. Modern civilization suits the Greek much more than it does the Turk. He can understand it and utilize it. Because of it he has risen and perchance will rise. The Greeks are by far the cleverest people in the Balkans, and are perhaps the cleverest of the Mediterranean nations as well.

The Greek temperament swings between the dead calm and pa.s.sionless on the one hand, to the violent and maniacal on the other. The nation is still convalescent, its development is slow, and it is impossible to say how far new Greece will develop. But its strength lies in its serpentine stillness and ancient unforgotten craft, and its weakness in that absence of ideals and in the sudden violence of partizanship which suggest pathological decay. What Greece does is generally subtle and shrewd; what she says is often madness. She has little sense of humour, and takes offence where other nations would laugh. Thus she wins by statecraft and loses by politics. In thought, and in the spoken word, Greece is outmatched for instance by the Slavs; but in silent action and in administrative policy Greece more often excels her neighbours. You will always hear odious comparisons made in the Near East between Greek and Turk, to the disadvantage of the former. But it seems rather absurd. The Turk, at his best, is a child or a legendary hero--not one of ourselves--whereas the Greek is a serious European with a race-consciousness of civilization thousands of years old.

Athens has quietened down after the political violence of the restoration of Constantine. One sees pictures of the King everywhere--a cavalry officer with high Greek military hat, bushy moustaches, and rather horse-like face. He has large strained eyes with a questioning, impatient expression. All these pictures were hidden during the King's exile, but on his return came forth to light again. Common also are posters of Constantine as St. George, and the Venizelist administration as a three-headed dragon of which Venizelos is the chief and certainly most loathly head. Venizelos has become violently distasteful to the people--though possibly he may return to power by as violent a reaction. The chief reason for his fall was that he offended Greek national pride by being the puppet of the Allies.

The revolution which he accomplished at the instigation of the French was highly resented. And all the mortification of the French contempt for Greece was vented upon him. Although Greece won such a goodly share of the booty of the war, she was treated throughout the war with a brutal nonchalance. Venizelos had much respect, but Greece had none.

A comparison is often made between the machinations of the Allies in Petrograd in 1917 for the deposing of the Tsar, and the intrigues which forced Constantine to flee. Venizelos nevertheless was one of the cleverest statesmen of Europe--granted one can be clever and not wise at the same time--clever and even stupid, his chief weakness being a crude violence of temperament which breaks out in his speeches:

On vient de vous dire, s'ecria-t-il, qu'il n'y avait pas de germanophiles an Grece. Cela est vrai pour le peuple, pour les homines politiques de tous les partis en grande majorite. Moi-meme je viens de l'attester a la conference de Londres. Mais cela n'est vrai du roi, ni de son entourage. Ceux-la ne sont pas seulement germanophiles. Ils sont Boches de la tete aux pieds! . . .

The good order, the low cost of living, the high value of the drachma, the excellent condition of the army, the enhanced prestige of the Greek nation after the war, all testify to the ability of Venizelos.

Venizelos won for h.e.l.las territory which extends from Salonica all the way to the Black Sea, and brought her almost to the gates of Constantinople. The role of neutrality which King Constantine affected would have left Greece without the coveted war-glory, and, of course, without the dangerous responsibility she has now. Thanks to Venizelos, Greece is almost an empire. And the Greeks are glad to have this extra sway. No sentiment has stood in the way of Constantine's Government retaining what its arch-enemy had won. "We may fall out in politics, but where our material interests are concerned you will find complete solidarity," said an Athenian journalist. And it seems true.

Not many signs of altruism are visible in Greece. There are few Germanophiles. "Do not fear for us," said M. Kalogeropoulos, to the French. "Greece will not ally herself to a corpse"--meaning Germany.

In fact, there is among the Greeks only Graecophilism. If superlative and clamorous love of country is a virtue--they have it. For Greece, when you are down, you are down. As for fallen Germany, so for Russia in her humiliation Greece has no extra thought or care. Not a humanitarian and philanthropic nation! One wonders how a Greek mind would interpret the "big-brother-love" of the Americans, which prompts the marvellous rescue-work now being done by the United States in all the stricken countries of Europe. There, however, the indolence of the Greek mind and the half-closed eye intervene. There is no curiosity about philanthropy. But it is a Greek word by origin.

One longs to see some sort of love towards the neighbour. There is a mortal enmity towards the Bulgar, a cool reciprocity of Italian dislike, a non-comprehension of the Serb, traditional hatred of the Turk--all these are intensified by egoism. New Greece, with her hazardous northern frontier, needs to cultivate friendship, and will have to employ all her strategy to gain any. Her mainstay is, of course, England. For us Greece has the natural respect which a weak country pays to a strong friend, but she has also a curious covert regard for us as one nation of sailors for another, a petty maritime State for a great one. Her weakness is in asking material favours at the same time as she pays compliments. Greece is almost our ally in the Near East. French rivalry has bound British and Greeks together.

In our employ are Greeks; in the French employ, Turks. There is no question but our employees are the cleverer and the more capable, but there is a continual clash on psychological grounds. The Greeks make mistakes and the British are not ready to make allowances. The Englishman demands that his friend shall be a "sportsman"--the Turk is, the Greek is not. Therefore we cannot fit Greece into the jig-saw puzzle which we call the comity of nations. The question is, can Greece cut herself to fit--ought she to?

It is strange to come into the martial display of Athens and find the old war still going on, see the numbers of worn soldiers weighed down with all the impedimenta of "fighting order" coming home on leave or returning to the front, to see the Turkish prisoners of war jobbing at the station and on the streets, to see the handsome Evzones, the soldiers of the King's bodyguard, strutting together in fine style along the cobbled roadway. It is impressive, and shows Greece in a new light. Then the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly with its new Turkish members in their fezes rather takes the eye as a novel synthesis of political interest in the Near East. Athens is a great capital where much that is vital in the future of Europe is at stake. It stands somewhat aside from the general misery of Europe, and for that reason more perhaps can be seen.

Not that Greece has not its poor--its appalling beggars, its miserable war-cripples, its refugees. An extensive strike was in progress in February; it had to be settled by a threat of mobilization. "Any workman not in his place on Monday morning will be called up for the next draft to Asia Minor" proved an effectual way of meeting demands for higher pay. Of the refugees, pity is first awakened for the Russians. Just outside the city of Athens, in old barracks, lie the survivors of the tuberculosis hospitals evacuated from the Crimea--pale and haggard as death--strange wisps of humanity, attended by devoted Russian doctors and nurses; but fed on the scantiest of dry army rations, short of medicine and comfort of all kinds. One ward of dying women with staring eyes, an unforgettable impression!

Whilst in Greece, every Englishman should visit our cemeteries in Macedonia, and realize that we planted many thousands of our people like seeds of a kind in this Grecian soil--that a flower of freedom might grow. On a wind-blown moor, in sight of Mt. Olympus and the sea, ranges one regular array of British crosses--now of wood, but presently to be of marble, with a stone of remembrance in their midst. It will be done well, in the British way. Even the dead might be pleased by what is being done. But here is a strange phenomenon which seems to make a mockery of our sacrifice. Around this wonderful burying ground are growing up a miscellany of alien crosses, of all shapes and sizes, stuck in ugly heaps of upturned earth. Every day a pit is dug and the dead-cart arrives. There is no service, no ceremony. But forty or fifty nearly naked bodies of women and children are shot into the pit and covered over hastily and a cross put over them. They are Russians, the so-called Russian Greeks evacuated from the Caucasus last year, now stricken with typhus and almost famished to death, some 12,000 of them in old army huts, living promiscuously together and attended by one desperate doctor and a few devoted sisters. Europe is heaping her dead around us.

This truly is not near Athens, but above the ruined ramshackle port of Salonica, once a fair city, but now facing the sea with almost a mile of fire-devastated streets. The refugees are confined to their huts, and are under a sort of military control. All the people are proletariat, and ought never to have been taken on board ships and brought to Greece. A few would have been killed by Bolsheviks, but not so many as will die here by disease. They cannot help Russia outside of Russia, and it is beyond belief that little countries can look after them indefinitely. It is pathetic to look into their huts, strung from wall to wall with crusts of bread, the floors mult.i.tudinous with people and especially with children; every serious person engaged in the hopeless task of destroying the lice. Even if these people were at once put on transports and taken to Russia half of their number would be destined to death.

The Russian scenes and episodes in Greece foreshadow the immense tragedy to be witnessed in Constantinople and on Gallipoli and at Lemnos. What touches the heart at Athens will ravage the whole being at Constantinople. But of that anon. An episode at Athens on the day of arrival had a spice of novelty in it which soon dulled on the palate in a rapidity of repet.i.tion:

It is Sunday afternoon, and on the pavement of a quiet street stands a mute and gloomy man with an armful of what appears to be paper-money.

He is holding it out in his two hands.

Impossible that it should be money!

But it is. He is holding about half a million roubles in his hands.

Yes, they are for sale. This for so much, this other for so much.

"I am sorry I have no Greek money, but please take five liras Italian and give it to your comrades. You must be very poor."

A smile appeared on the man's face.

"But you'll take some roubles," said he.

"Well, if you like, just a small note for remembrance. It doesn't matter what."

"Here's ten thousand roubles!"

And he handed out a handsome new note for that amount. It fluttered from his hand to the pavement and was caught on the wind.

"Pick it up quickly! It's ten thousand roubles," one wished to cry anxiously to the pa.s.ser-by.

Only ten thousand! And for something less than sixpence!

"Europe won't get right before the Russian business is straightened out," said an American commercial traveller at the hotel. He, for his part, was engaged in the profitless task of disposing of large margins of goods at fifty per cent below cost of production whilst the leisurely, crafty Greeks kept him waiting from day to day in the expectation of getting another ten per cent reduction.

"The whole world's out of gear," said the American in disgust. "The war and the Russian revolution are the cause. They have ruined the meaning of money."