Fortunately even the flies could not make it a long journey from Piræus to Athens; and we could glance in passing at the quaint and not unattractive bookstalls, now showing large photographs of modern “Heroes”—the Greek generals! After all, they had done their best. They were no more responsible for the mistakes of their Government, than we are for ours.
Taking train for the last part of our route, we were packed like sardines among the ugliest possible types of human beings one could imagine; but, luckily, soon alighted at a station whose magic name should thrill the dullest heart.
We were in Athens! But the Italian could only exclaim: “What women!” I reminded him that they were, after all, descended from Helen of Troy, for whose beauty the world in its youth made war. Yet it seemed almost a heresy to name that name in such surroundings.
If only one could show all men what a tragedy is here.
“There is something I long to do,” I told my companion. “I would summon crowds of my countrymen and my countrywomen to the Albert Hall and borrow the magic tongue of Mr. Lloyd George, to draw their tears for our dear Christian brethren at the mercy of the brutal Turk! And then a deputation of these money-changing Greeks should be brought in to stand at the Welshman’s right hand and his left!”
How many, even then, would read, mark, and digest the grim comment?
But the Italian laughed again and again at the picture my words suggested. I could only murmur: “What is it, to be twenty-one!”
I believe we went into every church in Athens; for ever since I left home I have never passed a church or a mosque without sparing a moment to enter and pray for peace. “It will do no good,” said my companion, and I replied: “It will do no harm.”
We saw many women also at prayer, kneeling before their Ikons—not for victory, but in sad thoughts of their own dead, and for help and strength to bear their own terrible sorrows.
Once the Greek Pope came up and spoke to us, supposing, to my young Italian’s honest confusion, that we were man and wife. The spirit moved him to denounce, in very broken French, the treachery of England; and, whether or no it was from heat and fatigue, or from the sight of those broken-hearted women, something seemed to burst in my throat and bitter tears streamed from my tired eyes. I could not tell him I was English. I could not find words or strength, such as came to me later in Anatolia, to plead a little for England by putting some of the blame on M. Venizelos.