THE ACADEMY, MOUNT LYCABETTUS IN THE BACKGROUND
Eventually a guard of police carrying rifles was sent to convey me from the Piræus to Athens, and in the middle of the afternoon I was obliged to walk as a prisoner through the streets of the Piræus, to take the tram to Phalerum, to get out there and wait for half an hour at a railway-station, and to travel in the train to Athens. In Athens I was made to walk three times, always guarded closely, through the principal streets and squares of the city, and twice past my hotel in the Constitution Square during the most busy hour of the day. Eventually, at night, I was released. Now, the Hellenes are considered by many people to be very inquisitive. During my public exposure as a prisoner I met with no really disagreeable curiosity from the crowd. Many people discreetly inquired of my guards who I was and what I had done, and naturally a great many more stared at me. But nobody followed me and my attendants as we marched on our way from one police station to another, to the War Office, etc. There was no pushing or jostling, such as there would certainly have been in an English town if a prisoner with guards was exposed to the public gaze. Curiosity was, as a rule, almost carefully dissembled, and inquiries were made with a charming discretion. I confess I felt grateful to the Greeks that day, though not to the admiral who had me arrested, or to the police who put me to so much inconvenience. And I was grateful for one thing more, that I was released just in time to see King George's arrival in Athens on the eve of the war.
The Hellenes are not an enthusiastic people, as a rule. They are critical, intellectual, sometimes rather cynical. But that night they gave way to emotion. Great crowds were lined up in Constitution Square, and were massed on the brow of the hill before the palace, when at length the police let me go. Darkness had long since fallen, but the square was illuminated brightly. All the balconies were packed with people. The terrace before the Grande Bretagne was black with sight-seers. And everywhere in the forefront were rows of eager, vivacious Greek children, many of them the soldiers of the future.
We had to wait for a very long time. But at last the king came in an open carriage, driving with "the Diádochos," as the crown-prince is always called in Greece. Both were in uniform. There was no ceremonial escort, so the people formed an unceremonial one. They ran with the carriage, shouting, waving their hats and handkerchiefs, cheering till they were hoarse, and crying, "War! War!" The great square rang with the clapping of thousands of hands. "Never before," said a Greek to me, "has the king had such a reception." When the carriages containing the rest of the royal family and the ministers had gone by, we ran in our thousands to the palace. Above the great entrance porch there is a balcony, and after a short time slim King George stepped out, rather cautiously, I thought, upon it, followed by all the princes and princesses. It was very dark, but a footman accompanied his Majesty, holding an electric light, and we had our speech.
THE ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS, EARLY MORNING
The king read the first part of it in a loud, unemotional voice, bending sometimes to the light. But at the close he spoke a few words extempore, commending the Hellenic cause, if war should come, to the mercy of God. And then, again with precaution, he retired into the palace amid a storm of cheers.
I was afterward told that, with the whole of the royal family, his Majesty had been standing upon some loose planks which spanned an abyss. The royal palace, owing to the disastrous fire, is not yet what it seems. Fortunately, the Greek army has proved more solid, and the God of battles, so solemnly invoked by their king, has been favorable to the arms of the Greeks. No one, I think, who was in Greece during that time of acute tension, who saw the feverish preparations, the devotion of the toiling soldiers, the ardor of the volunteers; no one who witnessed, as I did, the return to Athens of the "American Greeks," who gave up everything and crossed the ocean to fight for their little, splendid country, could wish it otherwise.
The descendants of those who made the Parthenon have shown something of that Doric soul which is surely the soul of Greece.