This opinion, formed and expressed while all my sympathies were with the Greek government, and in complete knowledge of all that it was doing for the Cretans, remains as the mildest criticism I can make on the policy of Athens.  At this time, looking over the events of the thirty years which have lapsed since the end of that unhappy affair, I can see more clearly the matter as a whole, and that the miseries of Crete especially, and of the Greeks in the Levant in general, have been mainly due to the want of commonsense in the race, and the incapacity of individuals to subordinate their personal views and interests to the general good.  The Italians have a proverb, “Six Greeks, seven captains,” which in a pithy way expresses the reason why the Greeks have never been able to succeed in any national movement—­the necessary subordination and self-effacement needed for civic or military solidity are, and always have been absolutely out of the character of the people.  Courage they had, but discipline they never would submit to, nor will they now.

Server Effendi got his deputies, some by compulsion, some by bribery, and some with good-will, and most of them he succeeded in getting to Constantinople.  One escaped and came to my house for asylum, and there he remained six weeks, and then was smuggled on board a Russian corvette, in sailor’s costume, and carried to Greece; the rest of the Christians when they got to Constantinople took refuge at the Russian Embassy, declaring that they came against their own free will and that of the Cretans.  At this time a change for the better took place at Athens, the incompetent ministry which had neither known how to do nor how not to do giving place to that in which Comoundouros was prime minister and Tricoupi minister of foreign affairs; and, while the paralysis of utter failure rested on the Turkish administration in Crete, the policy in Greece became comparatively energetic and intelligent.  Comoundouros was a demagogue, without any scruples as to the means of success, but he was intelligent enough to understand the position and that a positive policy was necessary.  He had opposed any encouragement to the insurrection in the beginning, seeing no hope for its success; but public opinion all over Europe and in America had by this time become so pronounced, and committees were beginning so widely to form to aid the Cretans, that there seemed a chance of intervention and a certainty of large assistance in money and moral encouragement.  He took the responsibility of openly giving aid to the insurrection, but he still had not the clear understanding of the want of a concentrated direction in Crete.  The bands refused to coöperate, and while Coroneos in the central districts carried on a brilliant system of harrying and raiding the Turkish detachments, the chiefs in the eastern and western sections remained inert, getting the principal portion of the supplies (as the blockade runners went mostly to the coasts of those districts) but doing the least of the work.  Comoundouros dared not risk offending the many political partisans by imposing on the volunteers whom he sent over a competent and concentrated command.  But as a collateral means of pressure the new ministry set to work organizing a movement on the Continent, and it had the courage to face all the probabilities of a war with Turkey.