The Stagyra was a little cargo boat of Roumanian nationality. I was the only passenger on board, and the crew spoke only Roumanian and a few words of Levantine, picked up during their continuous trips to Asia Minor. The captain fancied himself as a French scholar, but it was very hard to understand him, and still more to be understood.
We left Kavala at night, and should not reach Pireus for nearly two days.
We passed the Isle of Athos and its twenty white convents, inhabited by over a thousand monks. A number of Greeks, who were forced to escape from Turkey, have found asylum in the large dormitories generally offered by the convents to visitors to the Peninsula. A little plume of grey smoke appeared on the horizon, and a few minutes later I could see through the captain's glasses a Greek torpedo-boat, which signalled us to stop. An officer, with a dozen blue-jackets, came on board, looked at the cargo, at the board books, at my passport, and when he saw I came from Constantinople said in excellent French, "Hope we are going against them soon. It is about time to finish the Turks, in Europe at least. I consider the Turkish intervention fortunate. We can now settle the Constantinople question together with all the others. If Turkey had not moved another war would have been necessary afterwards."
He left our boat, and the Greek torpedo-boat signalled to a few other Greek warships, which we could see in the distance, that everything was all right and that we could go ahead.
* * *
I happened never to have visited Athens when Greece was at war, and I really don't know what the town must have looked like then, since now while she is still neutral the capital shows such excitement, such anxious feelings, and such general nervousness—far greater than that shown by London, Paris, or Berlin.
Greece feels that she has to go to war again; the two questions of Northern Epirus and of the islands are still waiting solution, and the provocation of Turkey is such that war is bound to break out.
Athens, as well as most towns of Greece, is full of refugees, especially from Asia Minor. Boycott, requisition, confiscation, and forcible recruiting have made it necessary for nearly all the Greeks, who are the only Christians in the Peninsula, to fly to their Motherland. Their property has been taken by the Turks and often destroyed. Some of the refugees tell the most dreadful tales of abominable cruelty and violence. Torture and death are daily inflicted on Greek subjects by the Mahomedan mob excited by the Turkish officials, who allow all such crimes to be committed with impunity.
The patience of Greece is nearly exhausted, and especially in the army the feeling that something must be done as soon as possible is increasing every day.
Curiously enough, while Turkey seems to be carrying out a regular programme of provocation towards Greece, every time Turkey goes too far and Greece is feared to be about to take up arms, Austria and Germany try to stop her by forcing Turkey to apologise humbly.