GREECE BEFORE THE WAR OF 1 897. 2 1/ of humoring Turkey ; . . . Epiros and Thessaly have the right to be free, a right which Europe has admitted and Hellas accepted ; it will seem incredible to them that the European govern- ments should have played with their sufferings, or should have recanted their own doctrines for no object but to please Turkey." Greece's narrow artificial limits condemn her to be always looking to her frontiers, and the present Hellenic state has been passing for the last fifty years from one crisis into another, which were followed by periods of exhaustion. Hellas had hardly recovered from the struggles and the sacrifices which it cost her to obtain a fraction of the territory which had been added to her by the Congress of Berlin, when the re- union of eastern Roumelia with Bulgaria and the results of this violation of the treaty of Berlin involved her in new difficulties. Many hold King George responsible for many evils because he could not retain a stable ministry of state. But the political parties, which in their fight with each other caused the many changes, existed before he was called to govern. If he had attempted to suppress them he might perhaps have brought on greater evils. It was his idea to allow the people of Greece to cause
