The real cause of failure was in the general indifference to all preparation, in which the government was supported by the nation.  The overweening confidence in themselves, which was so great as to permit them to believe that without any organization or discipline they were more than a match for the Turkish army, has always been their fatal weakness.  One of the leaders of the war party said to me a little later, “The Greeks are so clever that they do not need to be trained; they can fight without it well enough to beat the Turks.”  We saw at Corfu how ill-prepared they were, for the classes were called out to go to the frontier of Epirus, and those of Corfu marched through the streets to the place of embarkation weeping as if they went to death.  This delusion as to their natural military capacity was never dispelled until the later disaster in Thessaly.  The army did in fact cross the frontier, but within forty-eight hours they were obliged to return to Greek territory for want of provisions—­the commissariat had been forgotten!

Outside of political agitation we found living in Corfu delightful, and I question if there is, within the limits of the north temperate zone, any more delightful winter residence than was that of Corfu in the period we were there.  What remained of the advanced civilization of the English garrison period gave the island a distinct advantage over all the other Greek isles, and even over Crete with its superior natural advantages.  Greek enterprise and civilization are so far superior to that found anywhere in the Turkish territory that they are capable of maintaining the substantial progress which the English occupation achieved in Corfu; and, though we found the peasantry not largely inoculated by the fever of progress, the better classes of the city population succeed in supporting the better condition attained to.  But the obstinacy of the conservatism retained by the agricultural classes is equal to that in the least frequented islands of the Aegean.  A relative, on whose estate we passed a part of the winter, remote from the city of Corfu, had tried to introduce improvements in the culture of his olives; but the laborers not only refused to coöperate with him, but opposed the introduction of laborers who would lend themselves to his operations.  As the olives had been gathered in the days of Nausicaa they should be gathered still, and so should the oil be made, and he was obliged to yield.  But as we from the west suffer not a little from over-civilization and artifice, it is grateful to repose the eyes and the aesthetic sense in a land where there still remains something of the antique simplicity and picturesque uncouthness, and the winter in Scheria remains one of the grateful memories of a wandering life.