A POLITICAL RETROSPECT ON GREECE.
Those who are now blaming defeated Greece for having gone to war against Turkey unprepared and without allies, "with surprising blindness and thoughtlessness" as the prime minister of one of the great powers put it, ought to take into consideration the peculiar and exceptional circumstances under which the present Greek kingdom has been laboring since its very creation in 1830. In the revolution of 1821, or rather the war of independence as the Greeks call it, not only Greece proper, but most of the islands of the Ægean Sea, Crete included, took up arms against Turkey. The revolution lasted nearly seven years, and ended with the Battle of Navarino in October, 1827, when thirty men-of-war of England, France, and Russia destroyed the Turkish and Egyptian fleets, composed of one hundred and twenty vessels, at that port. This great act, which sealed the independence of
