[CRETE, AND HER STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM.]
BY CYRUS C. ADAMS.
glance at the map on the next page shows a chain of islands stretching like a bent bow from the southern shore of Greece to the coast of Asia Minor. These island stepping-stones, bridging more than one-half the way across the sea, are nothing more nor less than the tops of mountain ranges with shallow valleys in between, their bases resting on the sea-floor. The largest of these islands is Crete. It is almost exactly twice as large as our Long Island, and if we were to stand on the south coast of Greece on a clear day, we should see the mountains of Crete looming above the sea. We might call it a Greek island, for nature made it a part of Greece, just as Long Island is naturally a part of America, and the people and development of Crete are Grecian to this day. The limestone mountains that stretch east and west through Crete are a part of the very ranges that extend through southern Greece and jut out into the sea as promontories, just as our Aleutian chain of islands is geologically a part of the Alaskan mountain range. Why is it, then, that Crete, geographically a part of Greece, and peopled, as it is, by Greeks, is politically severed from the mother-country? It is simply because ever since human history was recorded the nations, by their treaties and wars, have disposed of whole peoples without consulting them at all. This is the reason why Crete is a Turkish island. This is why the whole civilized world sympathizes with the Cretans in their aspirations for good government and their long struggle for freedom.
Numerous revolts against Turkish misrule have made Crete a battle-field from end to end; and perhaps Crete is the only region in the whole world where one may stand at a single point, and see spread before him practically every spot made memorable by the most momentous events in the nation's history. Snow-crowned Mount Ida is the culminating point of the island, 8060 feet above the sea. It stands in the centre of Crete, and tourists, well bundled in woollens even on a summer day, conducted by a guide to the top of the mountain, find it well worth the labor, for Europe has no finer view. If the day is clear, the whole of Crete is in plain view, save some areas of lowland hidden by hills. All the towns fringing the seaboard are in the panorama. The eye may range far over the Ægean Sea, resting on one and another of the beautiful islands of the Cyclades; and then turning from nature's grand and varied aspects, the guide willingly points out the scenes that human struggle has made memorable, just as Waterloo is fought over again every day for visitors who are led to a height overlooking the historic field.
"In that pass," the guide will say, "the Cretans ambushed the Turks, and killed them to a man. On the west side of that hill yonder are some ancient quarries, dug deep into the hill, with passages so intricate that it is called the Labyrinth; and there 500 of our Christian families took refuge, in the revolt of 1820, and the Turks never found them. Those women and children went peaceably back to their homes after quiet came again. Do you see that big oak-tree right down this slope? That marks the entrance to the cave in which the Turks suffocated 300 of our women and children and old men in 1822. In that valley yonder the Cretans made their last bloody stand in 1859; and down that wide slope, far to the west, the Sfakiotes poured, in 1866, to attack the Turks near the coast." So he goes on pointing out the battle-fields where Cretan blood has been given like water in the cause of independence. All parts of the island have witnessed their sufferings, and particularly that lying between Mount Ida and the White Mountains. The Cretans are brave fighters, and they have failed to win simply because, after they were stripped of resources and nearly dead of exhaustion, the Turks could still pour fresh troops and munitions into their mountains and plains.
Aristotle said, twenty-two centuries ago, that Crete would become a great centre of commercial exchange, because it lay midway between Europe, Asia, and Africa. This is the reason why it has been the prey of so many nations all through the Christian era. The Greeks who colonized it, no one knows how long before the dawn of history, were supreme till Crete was absorbed in the Roman empire. Then Byzantine emperors ruled it, and later it was captured by the Saracens, recaptured by a Byzantine general, sold to the Venetian Republic, and while Venice was its master the island had 400 years of greater prosperity than it has ever known since. Then the Venetians and the Turks waged a long war in Crete for possession, a feature of which was the longest siege on record. It was twenty years after the Turks invested the city of Candia before their army made its way inside the walls. Then the whole island submitted, and Crete has been a Turkish province ever since.
Under all her masters Crete has remained Greek. No other people in eastern Europe use the expression "Motherland," a term the Cretans apply to Greece. There are about 300,000 Cretans, and nearly all of them are of Greek descent. Most of the Mohammedans, who number over a quarter of the population, are of the same blood. Their Cretan forefathers, to save their lives, embraced Islam, reared their children in that faith, and to this day the Koran is expounded to them in the Greek language, for very few understand Turkish. The universal language is Greek—not pure modern Greek, but a dialect that has often suggested humorous criticism in Athens; nevertheless, it is as good Greek as Yorkshirese is good English.
Into this land came the alien Turk, 250 years ago, with his tax-gatherers, janizaries, and priests. He has done nothing for the island except to oppress it. His sole purpose was to wring from the wretched people all the taxes they could pay. Only a few thousand Turks, besides the officials, soldiers, and priests have ever lived in Crete. The Turkish outrages in Bulgaria, which caused the Russo-Turkish war of 1877, were long equalled and surpassed in Crete. Travellers and historians say that up to 1830 Crete was the worst-governed province of the Turkish empire. At that time, when the Cretans had been at war for nine years against their oppressors, the intervention of the powers secured some betterment of their condition, and further privileges were conferred upon them in 1878 through pressure exerted by the Berlin Congress. Crete has since been better governed than most Turkish provinces, but the Sultan's yoke was galling none the less.