, the pacific blockade is not war, but a kind of sport, as safe
as coursing, and to the educated mind much more interesting. The
interest largely depends on the duration of the blockade, and its
duration on the victims' physical and moral resources.

When the blockade was proclaimed on the 8th of December, Allied
journalists predicted that its persuasive force would be felt very
soon. The country, they reasoned, owing to the manifold restrictions
imposed upon its overseas trade by the Anglo-French Fleet, had been on
short commons for some time past. The total stoppage of maritime
traffic would bring it to the verge of famine within a week. And, in
fact, before the end of the month Greece was feeling the pinch.[3] As
might have been expected, the first to feel it were the poor. Both the
authorities and private societies did their utmost to protect them by
keeping prices down, and to relieve them by the free distribution of
food and other necessaries.[4] But, although the achievement was
great, it could not prove equal to the dimensions of the need. The
stoppage of all maritime traffic caused a cessation of industry and
threw out of employment thousands of working-people. As the factories
grew empty of labourers, the streets grew full of beggars. The
necessary adulteration of the flour produced epidemics of dysentery and
poisoning, especially among children and old people, while numerous
deaths among infants were attributed by the doctors to want of milk in
their mothers' breasts. Presently bread, the staple food of the
Greeks, disappeared, and all classes took {174} to carob-beans and
herbs.[5] On 23 February a lady of the highest Athenian society wrote
to a friend in London: "If we were in England, we should all be fined
for cruelty to animals. As there is no flour, our tiny portions of
bread are made of oats, and rather rotten ones, that had been reserved
for the cab-horses. Now the poor things have nothing to eat and have
become a collection of Apocalyptic beasts. We go on foot as much as we
can, as they really could not carry us."

Next to bread, the most prominent article of Greek diet is fish. The
French, who in their treatment of this neutral nation gave evidence of
a thoroughness and efficiency such as they did not always display in
their operations against the enemy, saw to it that this source of
subsistence also should, within the measure of their ability, fail
their victims. French cruisers s