“There is something I long to do,” I told my companion. “I would summon crowds of my countrymen and my countrywomen to the Albert Hall and borrow the magic tongue of Mr. Lloyd George, to draw their tears for our dear Christian brethren at the mercy of the brutal Turk! And then a deputation of these money-changing Greeks should be brought in to stand at the Welshman’s right hand and his left!” How many, even then, would read, mark, and digest the grim comment? But the Italian laughed again and again at the picture my words suggested. I could only murmur: “What is it, to be twenty-one!” I believe we went into every church in Athens; for ever since I left home I have never passed a church or a mosque without sparing a moment to enter and pray for peace. “It will do no good,” said my companion, and I replied: “It will do no harm.” We saw many women also at prayer, kneeling before their Ikons—not for victory, but in sad thoughts of their own dead, and for help and strength to bear their own terrible sorrows. Once the Greek Pope came up and spoke to us, supposing, to my young Italian’s honest confusion, that we were man and wife. The spirit moved him to denounce, in very broken French, the treachery of England; and, whether or no it was from heat and fatigue, or from the sight of those broken-hearted women, something seemed to burst in my throat and bitter tears streamed from my tired eyes. I could not tell him _I_ was English. I could not find words or strength, such as came to me later in Anatolia, to plead a little for England by putting some of the blame on M. Venizelos. While the Italian discreetly left me—to kneel before an Ikon in silent prayer to the Man of Sorrows—I could but stand and suffer the attack upon my beloved country, choking with tears of humiliation. Alas, the incident does not stand alone. When taking tea in an hotel, I asked my companion to make inquiries about the best place to buy a Union Jack, and the proprietor seized the opportunity to give us _his_ opinion of British honour. Now I never heard, throughout the whole of Anatolia, a single Turk speak of Britain or Mr. Lloyd George as these Greeks both spoke. It is a pity that some of our pro-Greek politicians were not with me—to learn the _real_ value of all they have undertaken for their Christian brethren. In that church, maybe, I was so cruelly overcome because the broken-hearted women had stirred in me a glowing vision of the great Pericles. “For me,” was his proud boast, “shall no man wear mourning. I have not shed one drop of human blood.” Could any ruler leave this earth with a nobler record? Could any conceive for himself so fine an epitaph? _Our_ rulers, and Venizelos, have wasted the precious blood of Europe to flatter their personal vanity and nurse an idle imperialism for Greece; and when everything goes wrong they have only to resign!