ds
are sometimes to be won by good offices; sometimes by the promise of
good offices; and sometimes by good words. They are seldom won by
injuries, and by insults never. It is curious that so elementary a
lesson in human nature should have been unknown to the able men who
guided the policy and diplomacy of France during the War, who raised
her military prestige and re-established her position in the first rank
of the European Powers. Yet it is a fact--a fact which can be easily
verified by a reference to their utterances: they are upon record.
Brute force, and brute force, and again brute force: such is the burden
that runs through them all; and it embodies a doctrine: the Greeks are
Orientals and must be wooed with terror: on the notion, enunciated by
an English humorist as a paradox, and adopted by French statesmen as an
axiom, that terror sown in the Oriental heart will yield a harvest of
esteem--even of affection. With this mad dogma nailed to her mast,
France set out upon her voyage for the conquest of the Hellenic heart.
It was the first of her mistakes--and it was accompanied by another.

Even if Greece were willing to play the part of a French satellite, she
could not do so; for her geographical situation exposes her to the
influence of more than one Power. Italy, who has her own ambitions in
the Eastern Mediterranean, opposed during the War a policy the object
of which was Greek expansion over territories coveted by herself and a
readjustment of the balance of forces in favour of France; and it was
partly in order not to alienate Italy during the War that French
statesmen wanted Greece to come in without any specified conditions,
leaving the matter of territorial compensations for the time of
settlement. Russia showed herself not less suspicious of French
diplomacy for similar reasons. But it was with England chiefly that
France had to reckon. In the past the rivalry between France and
England in the Eastern Mediterranean, though often overshadowed by
their common antagonism, first to Russia and subsequently to Germany,
was a perennial cause of discord which kept Greece oscillating between
the two Powers.

{232}

During the War England, of necessity, lent France her acquiescence and
even assistance in a work which she would rather not have seen done.
But, once done, she endeavoured to secure such profit as was to be
derived therefrom. The Greeks in Asia Minor--it was thought--could
serve to check t