On further consideration of the offers of the Powers, Greece refused home rule for Crete, and declared her intention of carrying out her plan of reunion with the island.
She boldly defied the Powers, and declared that she would yield only to superior force.
In replying to the note from the Powers ordering her to withdraw her troops from Crete, her Prime Minister, Delyannis, said that while Greece would not leave Crete, there should be no fighting with the Turks unless an attempt was made by them to carry the war into Greece itself. Unless the Turks invade Greece, the Greek army would only remain in Crete to protect the Christians there. If, however, the Powers made matters too difficult for Greece in Crete, she would of course have to protect herself.
This reply put Europe in a very difficult quandary. Greece says she is ready to fight the whole of Europe rather than leave her brothers in Crete in the power of the Turks.
The Powers, having threatened to make her obey if she refused to comply with their wishes, are now aghast at the prospect of having to fight with the heathen Turks against the Christian Greeks, or else steam back to their respective countries, snubbed and ridiculous.
They have long been conferring together to prevent any further misrule in Turkey, and to efface this monarchy, which is a disgrace to Europe, and they find that, by their too hasty interference, they have put themselves in the position of having to uphold the Turkish misrule against their own convictions.
The Turks are so convinced that Europe is going to stand by them, that large bodies of them are parading the streets of Canea, crying for the blood of the Christian "dogs," as they call them, and apparently expecting that the Powers are going to help them in a general massacre of the Greeks.
This state of affairs is particularly dreadful, because, at the time of the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks, not one of the European Powers fired a shot to prevent it. All that was done was accomplished by talks and conferences with the Ambassadors.
Now, when Greece tries to free her Christian brothers from the grasp of the Turks, these same Powers train their guns on the Greeks, and lend the Turks their aid to force the Christians back under the control of the murdering Turks!
It is a monstrous situation, and one that makes every honest man hate the diplomacy and politics of nations that make such things possible and necessary.