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We understand Oxford; but for those who have been on the spot, facts tell another tale and speak with another voice. Where, in Greece to-day, are her men of intellect or imagination, even her aristocrats or her warriors? The millions spent in propaganda may serve to prolong the legend, they cannot alter facts. To visit, with glowing anticipations, this land of our dreams, means the awakening to bitter disillusion. Those only are still blind who will not see.
In Angora I could but plead for England: “We have loved Helen; must we divorce her?”
More than the eloquence of Venizelos, more than the gold of Zakaroff, more than any pity for Christian martyrs; it is our age-old loyalty to the civilisation to which we owe our visions and our ideals—that has led us so woefully and so wilfully astray. Is there not, after all, some “merit” in British “fair play” to a “lost cause?”
CHAPTER V
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SMYRNA: A PICTURE OF DESOLATION
For Orientals, the sky is no less variable and uncertain than the political horizon. In the space of an hour the sea, calm as a lake, has been transformed to a roaring torrent.