A change in administration at Athens had brought a more capable and thoroughly national council into power, under the presidency of Mr. Comoundouros, the ablest and clearest-headed statesman of the Hellenic kingdom, who had discouraged an appeal to arms until the war became a _fait accompli_, when he advocated a policy of aid to Crete _coûte qu'il coûte_, and, on assuming power, made the insurrection his chief care. The whole resources of Greece were devoted to it, and the funds of the insurgent committee at Athens were fed directly from the national treasury. There was, no doubt, scarcely any disguise about the complicity; but public feeling in Greece was so thoroughly enlisted that no government could have existed which did not unmistakably favor the insurrection. Unfortunately for the success of the Greek plans, the government did not impose on the Cretans an effective organization and a supreme commander. It still based its chief hope on European intervention, and counted on a limitation of the struggle by their influence, instead of preparing to act in the most complete independence. There was some excuse for this in a statesman-for-the-moment, in the fact that intervention had already begun by the overtures of Russia, acceded to at this date by France, whose Emperor was at the juncture ready to come to an understanding with the Czar on the basis of mutual concession; but Comoundouros should have seen that the readiness of Greece to endure and prolong a war with Turkey would be the best argument for the intervention the former desired. Greek politics have always had the fault of being based on sentimentality, and calculating too much on the sympathy of Christendom and classical scholars, neither of which has ever played a noteworthy part in modern Hellenic history, for even the genuine philhellenism of 1821 would have accomplished nothing had it not been that Turkey stood in the way of Russian combinations. The Greeks seem never to comprehend that governments are purely political, and never influenced by sentiment or religious affinities. They count that Hellenism and Christianity must always be weighed in the Eastern question, and in this case calculated on forcing the hand of the Christian powers by these appliances; while if they had proved that they were capable of conducting the war with energy and good system, preparing themselves meanwhile for a war with Turkey, Europe must have interfered, as a war between Greece and Turkey involved too momentous questions to be risked for so small an affair as Crete, and Christianity might have got the casting vote in deciding which side interference should favor. If Russia had been sincere in her friendship for Greece, she might have helped the question to a speedy ending by giving the word to the Danubian provinces to rise; but she has never desired a strong Hellenic kingdom, and this Comoundouros understood clearly, and that any intervention voluntarily made by Russia would be