Server Effendi was really a most intelligent and (for a Turk) humane administrator, and, had he not been crippled by the necessity of keeping up the absurd pretence of an actual conquest achieved, might have found some sortie from the difficulty, which would have arrested the train of disasters which afterwards brought the Porte so near to its final quietus. He made himself no delusions, and, I believe, propagated none at Constantinople. In point of fact, no one of the responsible governments there was now deceived; but the Sultan had passed into a monomaniacal condition of fury on the subject of the conquest of Crete, and no Grand Vizier could have remained in office who proposed an abandonment of the war without conquest. The powers, except England, counselled the Porte to yield a principality, and it is probable that, if England had acceded, the Cretans would, at that time, have accepted this solution of the question in spite of the Hellenic influence. The policy of England has always seemed to me mistaken to Turkey and faithless to the Cretans, for, in effect, all the powers signatory of the protocol of February 20, 1830, were morally bound to secure to the Cretans a similar condition to that of Samos. But it must at the same time, be admitted that this policy was open, consistent, and, so far as Turkey was concerned, loyal, while that of France was double, disloyal to all her allies, wavering, and entirely egotistic; and that of Russia was consistent only in its unfaltering hostility to Turkey, and its willingness to favor any affair that promised to weaken her empire. The tactics of Greece were of a nature to make the chances of Crete more precarious than they need have been. The policy of Crete for Greece, rather than Crete for her own good, made confusion and jealousy in the conduct of the war much greater than they need have been. What the Cretans wanted was a good leader, arms, and bread. Greece sent them rival chiefs without subordination, a rabble of volunteers, who quarrelled with the islanders, and weakened the cause by deserting it as soon as they felt the strain of danger and hardship; and if, after the first campaign, they were more wise in enrolling men to go to Crete, they still allowed the jealousies and hostilities of the leaders to go unchecked by any of those measures which were in their power. But the radical fault of the Hellenes was that they compromised the question by the introduction of the question of annexation, and forced it into the field of international interests, disguising the real causes and justification of the movement, and making it impossible for England consistently with her declared policy to entertain the complaints of the Cretans without also admitting to consideration the pretensions of the Hellenes. If the latter had not intruded their views on the _tapis_, the former might have been heard; but, from the moment in which annexation to Greece became the