The enemy's stubborn defence of his last colony has not only been a great feat in itself, but is also a proof of the supreme importance attached by the German Government to this African colony both as an economic asset and as a strategic point of departure for the establishment of the future Central African Empire to which I have referred. At the conclusion of peace our statesmen will be bound to bear in mind these wider and obscurer issues, fraught with such consequences to the world and to the British Empire in particular. Perhaps I may be allowed to express the fervent hope that a land where so many of our heroes lost their lives or their health; where, under the most terrible and exacting conditions, human loyalty and human service were poured out lavishly in a great cause, may never be allowed to become a menace to the future peaceful development of the world. I am sure my gallant boys, dead or living, would wish for no other or greater reward. * * * * * Greece, as a result of the intrigues of the pro-German king and queen, was a thorn in the flesh to the Allies for the first years of the war. The deposition of King Constantine, and the resumption of power of Premier Venizelos, brought Greece back to the place where her people wished to be. GREECE'S ATONEMENT LEWIS R. FREEMAN [Sidenote: A meeting with Venizelos.] The Venizelists had been having a bad time of it from the first, but the blackest hours of all were those toward the end of last April, when Constantine was still strong in Athens, and before the Saloniki Allies had found it practicable or expedient to welcome them to a full brotherhood of arms. It was during this "dark before the dawn" period that I had my first meeting with M. Venizelos, a conventional half hour's interview in the suburban villa, midway along the curve of Saloniki Bay where the Provisional Government had established its headquarters. [Sidenote: The attitude of Constantine.] I had just come up from Athens, where I had found the Allied diplomats still smarting under the memories of their ignominious experiences following Constantine's spectacular coup of the previous December, and it was by no means the least of these who had told me point-blank that he could not conceive how it would be possible that Saloniki should be returned to Greece after the war. Of course it was the Royalist Government that my distinguished friend had had in mind when he spoke, but there was not much to indicate at this time that the Greece of Constantine and his minions was not also going to be the Greece of after the war.