No. 294.
Mr. Read
to Mr. Fish.
Athens, July 5, 1875. (Received August 28.)
Sir: I propose to examine the present conditon of Greece in a series-of dispatches. I hope to ascertain her immediate resources, and to in dicate the probabilities of her future prosperity.
Heathen Greece was great. Christian Greece may become greater. But to-day three radical defects impede the nation’s march and check its healthy growth.
1st. The lack of proper means of transit within the kingdom, and the absence of easy daily lines of communication with the outer world. 2d. The land-tax. 3d. The instability arising from the constant change of ministers.
As the greater includes the less, it seems to me that the cure of the first evil might eventually lead to the abolition of the others.
In America we are taught to regard Greece as a part of Europe. The truth is that she is nominally in it without being of it. She has nothing in common with the European system, nor does she come into immediate contact with the rest of mankind. She does not possess even the advantages of an island, for an island can be approached from all sides. The busy currents of life-and trade sweep past her interesting shores, touching them only incidentally at two or three widely-separated spots.
Athens is an exclamation-point for every traveler arriving from the farther East, including even Constantinople, for each new comer finds at the Grecian capital abundant evidences of European taste and culture, which present a remarkable contrast to the ruder life of the remoter Orient.
But Athens is an exceptional indication of the future possibilities of Greece. She enables one to believe in the hereafter of the territory over which she reigns. She is not, however, a fair specimen of the present condition of the country at large. Whoever attempts to judge Greece by her capital will be guilty of egregious folly. Let the ardent investigator, who desires to form an accurate idea of the actual situation throughout the greater portion of modern Greece, turn his back upon the city of Minerva and plunge boldly into the intricacies of the interior. Within twenty miles of the Acropolis and the Parthenon, modern civilization vanishes like a dream, carrying with it all modern improvements, and even those smaller comforts which, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, have become the merest necessaries of life. All rules have their exceptions, and this has many very pleasant ones. Still, speaking generally, it is entirely safe to say that the agricultural life, which engages more than one-half of the entire population, is an existence of primitive simplicity. It is an existence compatible with honor and honesty, frugality and economy, hospitality and kindest dealings with strangers. But it is lacking in many of the elements which to-day seem absolutely necessary for the welfare of mankind.
Many persons contend that certain national peculiarities will forever prevent the development of Greece. I am not inclined to adopt this view. In spite of many difficulties and many delays, it seems to me that the signs are encouraging for those who will take the trouble to investigate the possibilities. The faults of Greece are the faults of a child deprived of ordinary nineteenth-century advantages. They are faults that may be outgrown and conquered. But nations are like individuals; they must [Page 665] be properly nurtured. Much depends upon their surroundings. They must have air, light, water, good food, proper lodgings, free exercise of limb, kind and encouraging words, and ready access to the best thoughts of the time. Given these, they will reach a station among their follows which can neither be ignored nor denied.
I am continually saying to those who despair of Greece, why not apply a remedy which has never been tried? Neither ancient, nor mediæval, nor modern Greece have possessed adequate means of internal and external communication. Open, therefore, roadways and railways, and let this Homeric population come into contact with the ideas of progress and civilization which belong to the age in which we live. Break up the system of isolated communities.
* * * * * * *
I believe that the unwholesome political agitation in Greece grows out of the detached condition of each handful of people and out of the want of variety and extent of industrial and commercial pursuits. Break down the barriers of centuries. Let in the sunshine of modern thought. Open new avenues for employment, for, even in high quarters, it is sometimes a question of daily bread. Patriotism would then be substituted for personal contests for place; and new trades and new professions would absorb the mass of men who now look to office for support. It is a mistake to imagine that even the most highly-educated Greeks are unwilling to engage in other than public employments. That this is not the fact is clearly proved since the establishment of banks and other financial institutions, for the greatest eagerness is manifested to obtain positions therein. So much is this the case that a person holding a public office worth 400 drachmas per month will readily relinquish it to take a clerkship in a bank at only 200 drachmas per month.
At present, as I have already remarked, the feeble means of communication weigh like a hideous nightmare upon Greece.
* * * * * * *
What the human body is without blood and without circulation, a nation is without roads and inland traffic. In both instances a corpse is before us. Health in either case is in proportion to the strength of the arterial system.
The whole Hellenic kingdom, counting even her roughest routes, possesses scarcely one-half of the length of thoroughfares which the city of Paris enjoys; and the circular railway within the Parisian capital is exactly three times longer than the total extent of railways in Greece, the latter amounting to precisely seven miles. Donkeys take the place of steam, and produce reaches the market on their backs. Travelers and natives journey in a similar manner, occasionally on horseback, skirting here a yawning precipice, and crossing there an undulating plain. Inns do not exist except in the larger towns. Shade-trees are few and far between. The mountains frequently are denuded of forests by the large population of wandering shepherds, who burn the trees for the purpose of getting grass, and cut them to give food to their goats. The existence of the latter animal in vast numbers to the exclusion of other cattle is a sign of barbarism, says the distinguished Professor Orphanides. If goat-raising could be stopped, the living in tents and the rambling habits which now so largely prevail would entirely disappear. The nomads consist principally of irresponsible foreigners, coming, in many instances, from Turkey, who hire for a season, sometimes for several years, the mountain-pastures, paying the rent, a merely nominal sum, in advance, and [Page 666] leaving whenever the weather compels them. The same shepherds do not always return to the same places, and from the ranks of these fugitive strangers, says Monsieur Burnouf, the brigands were formerly recruited.
Nomadic pasturage has discouraged agriculture, rendered the interior at times insecure, and entirely changed the climate by the destruction of woods.
“If a tourist, passing through Greece,” said the committee of the Olympian National Exhibition of 1870, “will observe the anihilation of the trees by lire and other means, and the consequent change of the country into a desert, he will justly suppose that we are a tribe living in tents, who rushed into an enemy’s country and are ready to leave it at a moment’s warning.”
The physiologist Mommsen observes that vegetation now commences and ends one month earlier than in ancient times. “It lasts two months. After that, until autumn, one may imagine himself in some part of Africa, and not in the former temperate climate of Greece. In this period of complete drought no sign of grass appears, and nature seems dead.”
The destructive habits of the nomads have cost Greece the distinction between the four seasons. The severe cold of winter is now immediately followed by the insupportable heat of summer. We have noted the pernicious effect of this abrupt change upon the vegetable kingdom. What must be its influence upon man f But how can this state of things be altered! By encouraging stable and responsible agriculture, through the development of internal improvements, and the removal of the crushing land-tax, a barbarous relic of Turkish rule, which, with all its modifications, drags to-day from the unhappy farmer forty per cent, of his earnings.
As, in my opinion, this tax is one of the three great evils under which Greece is staggering, I deem it essential to describe the intricate method in which it is levied and the oppressive details connected with its collection. This is the more necessary as the subject seems never to have been alluded to in the reports from this legation.
Reserving this part of the subject for another dispatch, I have, &c.,