in the inland parts of Asia Minor, have shifted their places much less than one would have expected during the course of more than six hundred years. The chief change has been the Albanian settlement in several parts of Old Greece, conspicuously in Attica itself. But, as far as the practical questions of the day are concerned, this does not affect the boundaries of the Greek nation. The Albanians of Greece are Greeks by adoption. They threw in their lot heart and soul with the Greeks in the War of Independence, and some of its noblest heroes were of Albanian blood. The same may be said of the smaller Rouman or Wallachian element in northern Greece, the remnant of the days when Thessaly was known as Great Wallachia ή μεγάλη Βλαχία). Of all the crimes and follies that diplomacy ever committed, none ever was greater than the absurdly narrow frontier which was given to the modern Greek kingdom. It is absolutely indefensible on any ground. No reason could be given for setting free one part of the nation and leaving another in bondage. If Turkish rule was the blessing which diplomatists seem to deem it, if the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire was that precious thing which treaties affirm it to be, no reason can be given why Attica or Peloponnesos, Euboia or Naxos, should have been cut off from its beneficent sway. If it was that accursed thing which those deem it who know best what it is, no reason can be given why Epeiros and Thessaly and Macedonia, Crete and Chios and Rhodes, and Psara the birthplace of Kanarês, should have been condemned to abide in barbarian bondage, while kindred lands were set free. The whole Greek nation had risen wherever it was physically possible that they should rise; all had suffered the same wrongs; all had the same claims, the same hopes, the same feelings of newly born nationality. The dictate of common sense was: As you have suffered together and striven together, the chains of all of you shall be broken together; you shall together enter into the joys of freedom.' The answer of diplomacy was: No; I will set part of you free and leave the rest in chains. I will draw an arbitrary line; those on one side shall have all that you have striven for; those on the other side of it shall be left for the Turk to deal with as he will. Crete has fought so valiantly for freedom that its freedom might lead to some new danger. If Crete is added to the new kingdom, the wisest prince in Europe will not refuse its crown. Crete therefore shall not be part of the new kingdom. The Sultan has so fully exercised his sovereign rights, especially the divine right of massacre, in Chios and in The Modern Greek Kingdom. 189 Cyprus, that we cannot think of interfering with his rights in those parts of his empire.' Common sense said: If a new state is to be formed, it should be large enough and strong enough to act as an independent power-strong enough to feel its resources and to exercise them-strong enough to walk alone, and not to be cut off from that first instinct of newborn. powers, which bids them grow if they can.' Diplomacy ruled that the new state should be small, weak, forbidden to act, forbidden to grow-condemned, as far as the bidding of diplomacy can condemn an energetic race, to remain for ever in tutelage, to remain for ever a swaddled child, instead of going forth in the free vigour of renewed youth. The professed object of diplomacy is to avoid difficulties' and 'complications; the common work of diplomacy is to create them. Never was a more fertile crop of them sown than when Epeiros, Thessaly, and Crete were forbidden to form parts of free Greece. Nothing leads to difficulties and complications so surely as reasonable discontent. And to draw such a frontier as was drawn was to plant the most reasonable, the most righteous, the most lasting, discontent on both sides of the unnatural line. There can be only one excuse for doing things by halves, for beginning a good work and leaving it unfinished. That is, when physical strength fails to finish it now, and when a fair hope is left of finishing it another time. There was no such excuse for those who invented the Greece of the present map. The Turkish power was broken; Mahmoud was on his knees; it was as easy to wrest twenty provinces from him as one. Crete could have been declared free as easily as Euboia; Thessaly could have been declared free as easily as Attica. But to follow wisdom and to do righteousness was not in the hearts of diplomatists. They better loved to follow their own narrow vision, their own crooked instincts. They decreed that Greece should be 'petty,' and ever since every lounger and chatterer has thought it clever to sneer at her for being petty.' The time has come again. The Turkish power is again broken; Abd-ul-Hamid is on his knees yet more hopelessly than Mahmoud was. No diplomacy can again set up an independent Turkish power in Europe. The talk about the Turk as a barrier against Russia or against anything else has passed away. Those who seemed lately to love the Turk are turning against him. The clamour of those who delight in war seems now to be, not for war against the Russian on behalf of the Turk, but rather for war against Turk and Russian together on behalf of it is not very clear what. And even in this frenzy there is a certain true instinct which feels that, if the Turk exists any longer as a power in Europe, he is more likely to exist as a tool of Russia than as a barrier against Russia. One reason more is thus added to the many reasons which there were before for getting rid of him altogether from Europe and European Asia, for sending him back, at the very nearest, to the old Seljuk quarters at Iconium. No reason, except sheer delight in the horrors of his rule, can be given for prolonging his rule for another moment over any spot of European ground. Every reason that can be pleaded for free Servia, for free Bulgaria, pleads no less for free Crete and free Thessaly. We claim for the Greek nation that whole extent of land in Europe and Asia wherever their race and speech is the race and speech of the Christian population; and with that we claim for them their own ancient capital, the city of the Constantines, the Leos, and the Basils. We claim all this on the score of simple justice, on the score of that general philanthropy which, when Greeks are concerned, is not ashamed of the name of philhellenism. But the same cause may be supported on quite other grounds, on grounds of policy and expediency, perhaps even of British interests." It is curious to see those who a little time back were frenzied against the cause of either the Greek or the Slave, now taking up the cause, if not of the Slave, at least of the Greek. And in very truth, if people are afraid about the Straits, the Straits cannot be in such safe hands as those of a people who would receive from the beginning, as part of the conditions of their position, whatever regulations with regard to these Straits the wisdom of Europe might light upon. The Straits would be far safer in the hands of the independent Greek than they can be in the hands of the vassal Turk. If a barrier is needed against Russia, no barrier will be so sure as an independent people who will owe nothing to Russia. Far better indeed would it have been to have worked out some scheme which might have kept the South-Eastern nations together by some kind of federal or imperial tie. But that hope was taken away when the other powers left South-Eastern Europe to its fate, and left Russia to do the work in her own way. Russia has done the work in her own way, a way, naturally enough, good for the Bulgarian and bad for the Greek. Russia was not likely to do anything for Greece, when Greece was, by the lowest backstairs intrigues of a court, kept back from taking any The Claims of Greece. 191 part in the work which Russia was left to do alone. When her army was standing ready to go to the help of her enslaved brethren, as the armies of the free Slavonic lands had gone to the help of their enslaved brethren, her hands were mysteriously tied. Her people had to stand by and keep themselves how they could from the work for which they were ready and to which the highest duty called them. And later again, when the strain could be borne no longer, when the liberating army had actually passed the frontier, diplomatic pressure again stepped in and bade the liberators stand by, while their brethren were left to do what they could singlehanded against their tyrants. All this is the more reason why the Greek cause should be warmly pressed in the Congress which is now sitting. Greece, so cruelly hindered from acting for herself, has the more right to look for favourable help from others. Free Greece must be extended far beyond the present absurd boundary. Wherever Hellênes form the mass of the Christian people, that land should be Hellas. It matters not that Hellas, so defined, will be anything but a continuous territory. Greece is now, and must ever be, a scattered land, a land of coasts and islands and peninsulas, where the communication between one part and another is mainly by sea. Such a scattered land could afford to allow her inland neighbours to come down at this or that point to the great highway of commerce. She need not imitate Austrian jealousy towards Montenegro. A Greek state might well stretch from Durazzo to Trebizond. But it need not stretch continuously ncw, any more than it did of old. The Slave may have his outlets to the sea in Europe; the Turk-the old Seljuk Turk, not the robbergang of the Ottoman-may well have his outlets to the sea in Asia. It is wonderful how nearly the map of such a Greek state as we have sketched out answers to the map of many periods of past history. It does so, because the same causes have worked in past times and in present. The massive inland region of South-Eastern Europe has become the home of the Slave. The massive inland region of the Western Asiatic peninsula has become the home of the Turk. But the coasts, the islands, the long and slender peninsulas, all that caused South-Eastern Europe first to become Europe, belong to the people who led the way in European civilization, and who now, refreshed by adoption, taught by adversity, are far from being left furthest behind in the race which they began. Greece claims her own. It is for Europe, if any sense either of righteousness or of policy be left, to give her back her own. No state has sinned more deeply against Greece than England has sinned in later days. In old Greek fable it was the hand which dealt the blow which alone could cure it. It is for England, at this great crisis of the world's history, to undo her own wrong, to wipe out her own shame, and to let the year in which we are living be an era from which future history may date the restoration of the Greek nation to the place in Europe which belongs to it of right. E. A. F. ART. VIII.-The Congregational View of Religious Communion. English Independent,' May 10th and 17th. It is with some a question whether the Congregational Union acted with wisdom or dignity, or in harmony with its own best traditions, in devoting so much thought and attention to the vague proposals as to a new basis for religious communion, which were put forward by the Leicester Conference. The movement, it is argued, has been lifted into an importance it would not otherwise have possessed by the action of its opponents, and that action has betrayed English Congregationalists into a position inconsistent alike with their cherished principles and the noblest precedents of their history. The division on the resolution of the Union showed that the opinion does not prevail widely among Congregationalists, and it is not shared by any large number outside their ranks. We believe that the broader and more catholic the spirit in which the whole subject is looked at, the less disposition will there be to treat the action of the Conference in this nonchalant style. Whatever may have been the views of some of its promoters, those who so far minimize the significance of so bold a procedure as to insist that the objects of its leaders were limited to a simple manifestation of Christian charity, must have given little heed to the facts. The fundamental principle is, as is clearly seen by all opponents of the gospel, a direct blow at its Divine authority; and when that blow was delivered by Congregational ministers, the only ground on which the Union could decline to notice it was that the men were themselves so insignificant that their action might be treated with contemptuous silence. We have little patience, indeed, with the persistent endeavours which have since been made to represent this as a very |