Nine revolutions, some lasting for years, have cost the blood of many thousands of Cretan patriots; and what has Crete gained by the promises extorted from the Sultan? With a genial sky, a rich soil, and a commanding commercial position, the Cretans are very poor. They have no internal improvements, no cheap means of sending their products to the sea, little commerce, few schools or other advantages of civilization, and too few farm laborers to gather large crops if they raised them. Crete is supposed to have now about one-third the population it supported when the Christian era dawned.
In April last the people revolted again, and the clamors of the powers made the Sultan promise that definite reforms would be carried out at once. His pledges were empty words. When a fresh revolt began, a few weeks ago, the Cretans had no police, nor any other machinery for preventing or punishing crime. One cause of last year's revolt was that the Christians could not get justice in the law courts. The Sultan promised that the judiciary should be reorganized, but three months ago he decreed that the old courts should be continued.
Crete cannot forgive the Turks for their enormities. The list is very long, but here is a specimen: In 1822, 300 women, children, and decrepit old people took refuge in the cave of Melidoni. The Turkish soldiers who were pursuing them, built a great fire before the narrow opening, and the wind blew all the smoke into the cavern. The wretched fugitives retreated to the depths of the cave, but all in vain. They perished of suffocation, and their bodies were unburied, until drippings from the roof covered them at last with a calcareous winding-sheet.
Typical mountaineers live in the White Mountains of the west, in whose veins there is scarcely any admixture of foreign blood. They have guarded their valleys with jealous care, to prevent any intimate contact with foreigners, and whether Romans, Arabs, Venetians, or Turks have ruled the island, they have preserved the purity of their clans. The Sfakiotes, as they are called, have always been foremost in the uprisings against the Sultan.
The Cretans prefer union with Greece to autonomy, and this choice is probably wise. If left to themselves they and their Mohammedan relations might find it difficult to allay their long and deep-seated antagonism. If the island becomes a part of Greece, King George's government will keep the peace in Crete, and time will heal the wounds that have been kept open so many years. When the Turkish flag leaves the island forever a great many of the Mussulmans will doubtless return to the faith of their Christian fathers. Long ago the powers made the Sultan promise that persecution on religious grounds should cease in Crete. This promise has been partly fulfilled, and many Mohammedan families of Greek origin have returned to the Greek faith.
Why is Greece so eager to help these islanders throw off the Turkish yoke? It is easy to see the reason, when we think of the ties that bind these peoples together. When the Greeks won their independence from Turkey, early in this century, the Cretans fought side by side with them, and bore as glorious a part in that great struggle as any soldiers of the Greek mainland. In all the revolts in Crete that have occurred in nearly every decade of this century tens of thousands of Cretans have fled to Greece, saving nothing but their lives, and have been supported, at enormous cost, by the Greek people. We may find Cretans to-day all over Greece prominent and influential in her army, navy, civil service, and social life; and it is impossible to draw between the Greeks of the island and those of the mainland a greater distinction than that between Englishmen and Scotchmen. Who can wonder, therefore, that bound together as they are by race, history, and common interests, Greece yearns to rescue her brethren from further pillage and misery, and at the same time save herself hereafter from the agitation, unrest, and great expense which each recurring revolt, at her very doors, inflicts upon her own people?
These Cretans, among the most patriotic people in the world, have perhaps atoned in bitterness for the sins of their unpatriotic fathers. In ancient times it was the reproach of the Cretans that they had no love for the motherland, and that in the civil wars in Greece their mercenary troops were sent to support the cause that paid them the most money. They were themselves divided into petty little states, which made it all the easier for foreigners to conquer them. The dream of their sons is to become a part of united and progressive Greece: and if the shadow of the Orient may be removed from Crete, and she may share Greece's growing strength, we may expect to hear better things of the island which nature has so highly favored, and man alone has cursed.