or
some of their best generals. These men thoroughly made over the Greek
army and taught the Greek officers the real science of war.

[Illustration: Venizelos (left) with Greek ambassador to England]

Venizelos soon showed the politicians that he could not be frightened,
controlled, or bribed. He discharged some incompetent officials and
forced the others to attend to business. In fact he reorganized the
whole government service in a way to make every department do better
work. Few countries in Europe were as well managed as was Greece with
Venizelos as its prime minister.

Every Greek hates the Turks and looks forward to the time when no man
of Greek descent shall be subject to their cruel rule. You have been
told how the Russians have looked forward to the day when Saint
Sophia, the great mosque of the Turks, shall once more become a
Christian cathedral. In the same way the Greeks have passionately
desired to see Constantinople, which was for over a thousand years the
capital of their empire, freed from the control of the Turk. Little by
little, from the time when the Greeks first won their independence
from Turkey in 1829, the boundary of their kingdom has been pushed
northward, freeing more and more of their people from the rule of the
Ottomans. Venizelos, aiming to include in the kingdom of Greece as
many as possible of the people of Greek blood, was scheming night and
day for the overthrow of the Turkish power in Europe. You have been
told how the Russian diplomats astonished the world by inducing
Bulgaria to unite with the Greeks and the Serbs, two nations for whom
she had no love, in an alliance against the Turks. Many people felt
that this combination would never have been possible without the
far-seeing wisdom of of Venizelos. In fact, some historians give him
the credit of first planning the alliance.

His greatest trouble was with his own countrymen. The Greeks, as you
have been told, have always claimed Macedonia as part of their
country, whereas, in truth, there are more Bulgarians than Greeks
among its inhabitants. Venizelos, having agreed before the attack on
Turkey that the greater part of Macedonia should be given to Bulgaria,
had hard work after the victory in convincing his countrymen that this
was fair. In fact, the claims of the three allies to this district
proved the one weak spot in the combination. The occupation of this
country by Greeks and Serbs in the course of the first war against
Tu