wicked king, James goes on, is sent by God to punish his people, who should resort to 'patience, prayer, and amendment of life' when this infliction falls upon them.

This is not the way in which the real rulers of men have spoken and acted. Oliver Cromwell, for example, did not rise to power by riding roughshod over the opinions and convictions of the English people. His rule represented the triumph of armed force, it is true; but S. R. Gardiner has shown how often he was obliged to accommodate his policy to the factions opposed to him, and how little he intended to govern by fear. Napoleon's maxims, most of which he kept to himself till his active career was over, breathe a very different spirit from Mussolini's. "The longer I live, the more convinced I am that nothing permanent can be achieved by bare force.' 'Man can be governed only through the imagination. Without it he is a brute.'

There can indeed be no more prodigious blunder for a ruler than to suppose that men are guided only by selfish material interests. It is the imponderables that count most in history. Mussolini says that there are not many heroes who would give their lives for their country. There are unfortunately some millions fewer than there were ten years ago; but the brave men were not all killed. It is difficult even to guess what Machiavelli meant by the failure of the unarmed prophets. Mohammed was an armed prophet; but the men whose ideas have influenced mankind most durably and profoundly -such as Buddha, Plato, and the Founder of Christianity — never appealed to force.

Even great military dictators have been carried to the height of power on the wave of some idealistic enthusiasm. This was true of Mohammed, Crom

well, and Napoleon. Even Lenin, who was insane for many years before his death, as the autopsy on his remains proved, was the chosen hero of other madmen. The interesting fact about his career was that he became the Bolshevist dictator because he was a maniac. No sane man could have wallowed in bloodshed for five years. But even Bolshevism was not established by mere violence. There was a kind of fanatical faith behind it.

Nor does Mussolini interpret even Machiavelli rightly. He is better represented by such maxims as these: 'When the fear of God is wanting, a kingdom must either go to ruin or be supported by fear of a prince.' 'I believe good to be that which conduces to the interests of the majority, and with which the majority are contented.'

Mussolini as dictator will probably have a short life and a merry one. But Dr. Schiller is right when he reminds us that 'the populations controlled by sheer force are to-day far greater and more important than fifty years ago'; and this may bring us to consider Mussolini's contemptuous judgment of democracy.

That fetish of our grandparents is still worshiped in America. When a nation is blatantly prosperous it forgets its God and adores its institutions. There was a time when the late lamented British Constitution was honored as the final expression of human wisdom. Chastened Europe is looking at the fetish critically, and finds that something more than the feet are of clay.

Nevertheless, we shall prefer the ills we know to a Fascist dictatorship. Mussolini's political creed does not inspire confidence. After a few years of Cromwell England welcomed Charles II, who realized Mussolini's ideal in one respect he believed most people were scoundrels, and thought no worse of them on that account.

NOTHING can be more delightful, more refreshing, more health-giving than a cruise in a comfortable yacht among the 'Isles of Greece' in spring. You are free from steamer routes and the inevitable unpunctuality of all those who go down to the sea in East Mediterranean ships. The yacht goeth where it, or rather its owner, listeth. If, as occasionally happens, a storm arises and the sea becomes, as in Homer's time, 'many-sounding,' there is almost always some quiet bay or harbor within reasonable reach. A yacht can land you at that point of an island whence a temple or monastery or Frankish castle can most easily be reached. It is independent of the island capital, often situate far from the ruins rule they are ruins - which form the main object of the visit.

for as a

At this time the Ægean Sea is at its bluest and its clearest, comparable with, though not surpassing, the brilliancy and translucency of the seas of the Bermudas and the Bahamas. The sun is warm, but not too warm, the air crisp and extraordinarily invigorating. It is of an amazing clearness and land can be seen at a distance of some forty miles, while the snow-capped mountains are visible some eighty miles off. In the spring too the snow is still there and adds a rare beauty to the background.

early foliage. Quinces in flower seem everywhere; the Judas tree adds a splash of vivid color. The smell of the orange blossom is in the air, and as a foil we have the perpetual evergreen fir, with its clean, resinous odor, the cypress, the bay, the myrtle, and above all the world-worn, sad-looking olive.

The flowers recall the foreground of a Botticelli picture. Asphodel and acanthus give a classical 'facies' to the fields where one finds large patches of anemones, the yellow allium or garlic, thought to be the moly of classical times, and poppies darker than our own. Yellow and delicate little blue irises mark the moister regions, while the gorse and the broom clothe the barren hillsides with a golden glory. Rosemary, wild thyme, and other fragrant herbs are bruised as one moves about the ruins, and bruised they yield up their fragrance.

All these flowers in bloom mean a great activity in the insect-life, and the insects rise to the occasion. Graceful butterflies and heavily laden bees frequent the flowers. Dragon flies, moths, grasshoppers abound, and beetles more brilliant than any jewel crawl about the undergrowth.

The villages in the Greek islands owe a great deal to whitewash. Dwellinghouses of every kind are whitewashed, and even churches and monasteries.

VOL. 322- NO. 4174

17

Easter, and we found the whitewashers busily at work at the monasteries in Patmos and elsewhere. Whatever the whitewash conceals, the general effect is pleasing, and one picks out in the clear atmosphere of the Egean Sea the villages on distant shadowy islands, for they look like little splashes of Chinese white on a purplish hazy background as one gazes from afar.

Coming, as we had come and as many travelers do, from Southern Italy and Sicily, it was agreeable to find that there were no beggars, or hardly any. The Greek country-folk are extremely courteous and pleasant to get on with. It is true they talk a great deal among themselves, in fact they talk all day; but that does n't trouble the casual visitor. One is almost sure, even in the remotest towns, to find someone who speaks English, generally a sailor once in our mercantile marine, but equally

often someone who has made his little pile in the United States and has returned to spend his old age in his beloved native island, for they have an intense devotion for their 'home town.'

There are very few roads in the islands. One mostly passes along uncharted paths or ascends a steep zigzag, a cobbled pathway where, although it does n't feel like it, you are really much safer on the back of a donkey than on your own legs.

At Paros, whence the marble comes, we landed to see the Church of the Hundred Gates, which has an unusually rich iconostasis with the usual three doors. Only the King and the clergy may use the central portal, and now there is no King! We also saw here a strange font shaped like a huge hollow cross. In this total immersion is indeed possible, but, as the rubric of our Baptismal Service enjoins, it would have to be done 'discreetly and warily.' . . .

Although Strabo wrote slightingly of

the local wine of Samos, its manufacture evidently greatly improved as the centuries passed. Byron selects it among all the Island wines:

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine,

and Tozer was 'regaled' at the capital, Vathy, with old wine of a splendid quality,' 'almost a liqueur.' Like other Greek wines, it is very strong and demands dilution with a considerable amount of water. . . .

The first Dodecanese island we visited was Rhodes, and to visit Rhodes is not always easy. The harbors are silted up, and when a sea is running the shore boats cannot reach the steamer. Tozer tells the story of a gentleman who left Smyrna to spend Christmas at Rhodes, and being unable to land was carried on to Alexandria; returning on the same boat he was again unable to land. In fact, he spent weeks and weeks traveling up and down the Eastern Mediterranean without ever being able to land on the island. In the end, however, he did spend Easter on Rhodes.

We were luckier and were able to land both at the south end of the island at Lindos and later at the city of Rhodes, the capital of the island, which lies farther north.

Lindos is a clean-looking little town lying athwart two small harbors. We were met by an Italian sergeant and a soldier or two, who, without being in any way obtrusive, kept a paternal eye on all our doings. The Knights of Saint John or, as they call them out there, the Cavaliers have left many mediæval marks on the windows and

-

doorways of the town. The striking

feature of Lindos is the Castle of the

Knights, which towers over the town some hundred feet up. Just the sort of place for

Sir Guy - the doughty Crusader,
A muscular knight,

Ever ready to fight,
A very determined invader.

These castles and those of the Venetians are never whitewashed, and are for the most part in ruins, but at Nauplia, in an island called Bourzi, in the harbor one is kept in fair repair, for it houses or did house the public executioner, who is always a kind of converted convict and is very unpopular, so he is or was carefully guarded. Once a year he used to be taken round the country in a man-of-war to chop people's heads off, but now that capital punishment has been abolished no one seems to know what he does or even if he still occupies his castle.

Rhodes, the capital, was the busiest town we viewed in the islands. We were there on a Sunday, and the Turks and the Jews were doing a great trade in the chief street, where shops of all kinds jostle each other. Shops selling the same wares are contiguous, an Eastern and a very practical arrangement. In a parallel and quite deserted street still stand the priories of those nations which provided the Knights. Magnificent remains, but difficult to see because of the narrowness of the thoroughfare and the accretion of the inevitable latticed Turkish balconies.

All the old Rhodian plates seem to have disappeared, though the people of the island still decorate their walls with plaques. The old Rhodian ware was used for no other purpose than decoration, and each piece is pierced by two holes for the suspending string. Tozer tells us that dishes from Kameiros, made about 700 B.C., were pierced in the same way.

--

The small island of Kos was visited to see what is left and it is not much of the temple of Esculapius and the venerable and gigantic plane under whose shade it pleased us to think, as the pious islanders think, that greatest of all physicians, Hippocrates, taught. It was at Kos that we first heard a muezzin call the faithful to prayer, and

this he did not from a minaret but from the top of a staircase leading to a classic doorway.

The landing at Crete is not always easy, as the port of Canea is an open roadstead. However, one can do much more with a motor-boat than one can with a native rowing-boat, and we landed quite comfortably. The Museum at Canea is well arranged and full of the most fascinating objects from Knossos - double-headed axes, bulls' heads with golden horns, models and pictures of ladies whose gowns recall the pictures of Keene and du Maurier, slim-waisted youths who can hardly have existed—all admirably displayed, labeled, and catalogued. To Knossos we motored out in about half an hour on a fairly good road. I rather wish Saint Paul had not given his endorsement to the saying of Epimenides, who seems to have been a poet, priest, and prophet at Knossos, that 'Cretans are always liars'; and, as far as I can make out, there was a special temporary reason for the remark of Epimenides. Burke did not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people'; apparently Epimenides did. To take the outburst of this local prophet and hand it on for all time seems to me to take a heavy responsibility. A man in the position of the Apostle should have thought twice before confirming such a wide generalization. It has prejudiced the island just as the statement of Phocylides about the badness of the people of Leros has injured Leros. We certainly did not find that the Cretans lied more than any other people we came across, and they are abstemious and thrifty folk.

During the war large deposits of coal, thrown over from the various warships which were centred there, accumulated at the bottom of the sea; but not being mechanically minded, and being devoid of dredging apparatus,

the Cretans retrieved this treasure by attaching an octopus to a string and lowering the mollusk over the coaldump. As soon as it had attached itself by its tentacles to its resting-place, they gently pulled it up; the adhering lump of coal was then detached, and the octopus dropped in again. As in Southern Italy, the octopus is used as an article of food, but this is the first instance I have come across of this mollusk being of practical value as a coal-heaver.

In many of the Islands we were offered coins. I, with the fear of the Fitzwilliam Museum behind me, did not buy any. The last time I was in Greece the late Professor J. H. Middleton told us that if one was offered a really good coin it would be well to inquire whether the seller kept turkeys. It appears that a sojourn in the gizzard of that fowl produces just the right patina, or polish, which deceives the expert. Of course, one has to sacrifice a turkey, but this is a small matter to the coiners, who demand and get hundreds of pounds for golden coins — and, after all, they can eat a great deal of the turkey.

The last of the Dodecanese we visited was Patmos.

On landing at the Scala we were received by a very courteous and aristocratic-looking young Italian officer, who, with his sergeant-major, accompanied us on our visit to the monasteries. His whole garrison consisted of only eleven soldiers, who controlled the population of Patmos. It is quite possible he took us all for Americans, for when we got back to Athens we heard at the Legation of some Englishmen who were refused permission to land on the island and had to knock about throughout the night in an open boat in the unsheltered harbor.

From the harbor we climbed up a

long ascent to the Monastery of Saint John, and were most courteously treated by the abbot and monks. They have still retained a splendid collection of sacred vessels and many documents of the greatest value. The church alone was worth the climb, for it has a wonderful decorated iconostasis. The building was the queerest jumble of rooms and staircases and tiny courts all apparently at different levels, but ultimately we got into the library and saw the precious manuscript in uncial letters of gold and silver on purple vellum. The color of the leaves was the nearest approach to the old imperial purple that I remember seeing. The art of preparing this from the sea-snail (Murex) has been lost, but they are at present making vigorous efforts to recover the mystery in the United States. Thirty-three leaves of this Codex are at Patmos and some of the others are scattered in Rome, London, and Vienna.

There are many other valuable treasures, not the least among which are some wonderful bindings. The monks also showed us some curious wooden boards which they bang with a wooden mallet, instead of ringing a bell, to summon the community to prayer or to feasting. But the most beautiful thing we saw in the Monastery of Saint John was the inscription over the door of their ancient library: ψυχῆς ἰατρεῖον. Indeed, this was one of the most delightful things I saw during all our tour in Greece.

I never could make out what the monks in Greece did. Apparently they resembled our House of Peers who, during the Napoleonic wars,

Did nothing in particular
And did it very well.

They do not seem to take any part in preaching or any charitable care of the sick or poor. They appeared to lead a