Not that he was without experience in diplomacy, for he spent some years as secretary of Italian legations at Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, and Paris.

Salandra was in one respect, said a journalist who knew him well -the Roman correspondent of the London Post-unique among Italian Prime Ministers; he alone of the unified kingdom's twenty heads of past ministries was a native of the continental south. "There has been until lately a Piedmontese prejudice that only Piedmontese, or at least northerners, should hold the first place in Italian politics." Cavour and Signor Giolitti-"who, tho not a Cavour, lived at a place of that name"-were born in Piedmont. It was not until 1887 that the insular south had its first Premier in the Sicilian Crispi, an example followed in 1891 by the Sicilian Marchese Di Rudini; but not until 1914 did the continental south see one of her sons at the head of a ministry in the person of the Apulian Salandra. Like the poet Horace, adds this authority, Salandra hailed from the land of plains and noble churches. There ran in his veins the blood of those strong-armed Norman adventurers who captured the last Byzantine possession in the Italian peninsula. But Salandra, altho bold like the Norman, was cool and without hauteur. He was born at Troja, "the hottest town in Italy," six years after the birth of Sonnino in Florence. He was bald, with "wings" of hair on each side of his head turned gray, but he was an Italian of the emotional type, ready in gesture without going to the length of mere gesticulation. He looked the beau, just as Sonnino looked the “grave and reverend signor." His was the romantic attitude to life, just as Sonnino shrank from adventure. As a student Salandra sat at the feet of Francesco de Sanctis and had lectured first in the University of Naples and then in that of Rome, his subject being the law. He revealed very early his rare aptitude for handling his native tongue poetically, musically, without rioting in an excess of metaphor and declamation.

On becoming Prime Minister, Salandra had to sever his connection with the Giornale d'Italia, the "leaders" in which often reflected his shining gifts as a master of Italian prose and his insight into the subtler phases of finance. Salandra loved to handle topics like a tariff schedule from the intimate point of view, bringing out the number of new hats a young woman could buy in the spring if one rate prevailed, and what canes a man must deny himself should the exigencies of revenue extinguish a favored class of importers. He discovered all sorts of victims of unjust fiscal measures, from the young lady in overtaxed flounces to the disconsolate widower whose mourning made a mockery of the dead by turning brown through the use of substitute dyes. Everywhere and always he manifested

this poetizing tendency, said the Tribuna, this fondness for shadows by moonlight, this aversion to the broad light of day.

The world found Salandra, in 1914, declaring first for neutrality and then proclaiming, as he put it, a "sacred egoism." In the end the forthrightness of Sonnino prevailed and Giolitti was left discredited in his private library, musing over his favorite dramatic authors. The authors loved by Salandra were dramatic, too, and he read much poetry, besides assisting his wife, Donna Maria Salandra, in prominent philanthropies. She and he were conspicuous in relief work when the earthquake ravaged Calabria and both rejoiced in the fact that their sons were old enough to go to the front. Sonnino was responsible for the entry of Italy into the struggle, according to Roman newspapers, for Salandra, unless impelled by a stronger will, would still have been hesitating, still poetizing, still making fine phrases and perfect gestures. On an eventful day long afterward Salandra lost his majority, and Orlando came to the helm. But Sonnino remained.55

GENERAL JAN CHRISTIAAN SMUTS, MINISTER OF DEFENSE IN THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA

Born in 1870, the son of J. A. Smuts, educated at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, General Smuts began public life as a lawyer. He practised at the Cape Town bar at Johannesburg in 1896, was State Attorney of the South African Republic in 1898, and served during the Boer War, being given supreme command of the Republican forces in Cape Colony in 1901. In 1907 General Smuts was elected Colonial Secretary of the Transvaal, and shortly after the outbreak of the World War was placed in command of the British East African expedition against the Germans, which he conducted with complete success during 1916-1917, when he was summoned to serve on the Imperial War Cabinet as special South African representative, a post which he held until the close of the war 56

ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS, PREMIER OF GREECE

An astonishing national revival had taken place in Greece between 1909 and 1912. Observers agreed that Venizelos was primarily responsible for it, all of which and much more was necessary to an understanding of him. The Turkish war of 1897 had apparently

55 From an article by Alexander Harvey in Current Opinion, based on articles in The Morning Post and The Times (London), the Temps (Paris), Tribuna and the Giornale d'Italia (Rome).

56 Compiled from "Who's Who, 1918-1919" (London).

done nothing completely to rouse the Greek nation. Meaningless squabbles by corrupt politicians had grown fieice, party life more and more a sordid struggle for place, until every branch of the administration was honeycombed with corruption, the army degenerating, if not disintegrating. The foreign policy was conducted with a combination of bombast and inaptitude which had drawn from Turkey a stinging rebuff to which Hellas had to bow. Popular fury over this humiliation led to an uprising in the army which, under the title of the "Military League," ousted the Government and took control.

To the Western world an army revolt meant jingo militarism, and the gloomiest prophecies prevailed. Greece was likened to a Central American republic and mourned as past redemption. Hellas was facing the supreme crisis of her destiny, in such an inextricable tangle that it seemed as if the sword alone could cut the Gordian knot. The remedy was an heroic one, which would either kill or cure, and would certainly kill if the cure were long delayed. Fortunately the head of the Military League was the man for the hour. This was Venizelos, born on the island of Crete, in 1864, of an ancient family, which according to rumor, came from the medieval Dukes of Athens, but really came from Sparta. Equipped with a good education gained in Greece and Switzerland, Venizelos plunged into the maelstrom of Cretan politics and became recognized as the strong man of the island both in peace and war. It was with a high reputation that he arrived in Athens toward the close of 1909 after being invited, not only by the Military League, but by the veteran politician Dragoumis, the least compromised figure in Greek parliamentary life at that time.

Most significant was the hold soon acquired by Venizelos over the Greek people. Athenians found themselves confronted with an iron will unshaken by the shoutings of mobs. He told them the truth, told it in fewest possible words and frequently with unpalatability. They had their choice of bowing to his decisions or getting rid of him. He was the incarnation of all that Young Greece had longed to be. Cretan deputies, Venizelos' own folk, tried by actual force to make their way into the National Assembly. It had been the dream of every Hellene, notably of Venizelos himself, that Cretans should sit there. But at the moment it meant a Turkish war and defiance of the will of Europe. Venizelos, therefore, drew up a cordon of troops about the House, repulsed the Cretans and deported them, and Athens applauded him. For nearly three years thereafter Greece dropt out of sight, the great world engrossed in international crises and local turmoils.

In the autumn of 1912 the Balkan tempest broke. That Bulgaria

would do well everybody agreed, but concerning Greece many had serious doubts. A few weeks later forebodings were dispelled. Three short years of Venizelos had resulted in a new Greece. French and English experts had done their work there well. Hellenic forces had been transformed alike in spirit and performance. In both Balkan wars the Greek armies showed workmanlike efficiency and reaped successes. Astonished at these events, the world asked an explanation, and when Greece answered, "Venizelos," all eyes were turned on this new man. At the London Conference of 1913 his diplomatic insight won golden opinions from all observers, while, at the Bucharest Conference at the close of the Second Balkan War, he displayed a statesmanlike moderation which, if acted upon, might have resulted in better Greco-Bulgarian relations. During the GrecoTurkish crisis which threatened the Near East with a fresh conflagration during the early part of 1914, Venizelos showed a happy combination of tact and firmness which ended by averting a clash. Scarcely had this storm-cloud been dissipated than the tempest of the World War broke over Europe and presently spread to the Near East, with Turkey's entrance into the struggle at the beginning of November, 1914. Problems which Venizelos had fondly believed to have been adjusted rose quivering again for solution. The little Balkan peoples, exhausted as they were by their recent conflicts, saw their destinies flung into this new and far greater boiling caldron.

A great Anglo-French fleet, the mightiest armada of modern times, attacked the Dardanelles, which was touching the very heart of the Eastern question. If the Straits were forced and Constantinople should fall, the whole vast Ottoman heritage would lie at the feet of the Allies, to be disposed of at their good will and pleasure. Things looked well for the Allies during those February days, when the Dardanelles forts seemed to crumble beneath dreadnought shells, with Russia's hosts breasting the Carpathian crests and looking down upon the plains of Hungary. However menacing Russia might be to a realization of Hellenic aspirations, fear of the Muscovite and anxiety over Constantinople were in most Greek hearts counteracted by sympathy from the other Allied Powers. To France and Great Britain Greece was bound by many ties of sympathy and gratitude. These two nations had been the prime architects of Greek national existence and had always shown themselves her friends. Germany had proved herself well disposed to Greece, but Austria had long coveted as the goal of her eastern "Drang," Saloniki, which was the apple of a Greek's eye, while Turkey, their hereditary foe, menaced Hellenism all through Asia Minor. Bulgaria, burning for revenge since the Balkan wars, and inconsolable over loss of Macedonia, stood in close relations to the Teutonic Powers and to the Ottoman Empire.

As February went by, it became increasingly clear that the Allied armada could not batter a way through the Dardanelles; that an army was needed to supplement the work of the dreadnoughts and to consolidate their gains. Allied troops, however, were none too plenty in the Levant and could ill be spared from the battlefields of western Europe. Accordingly, Allied diplomacy cast about to remedy this defect by bringing new recruits to their banner. Greece seemed the most likely possibility. Next door to the scene of action, bitterly hostile to Turkey and well disposed toward England and France, her sympathies were primed by self-interest. The whole Ægean shore of Asia Minor was thickly peopled by Greeks eager to follow their island neighbors into union with the Hellenic Kingdom. Such was the bait held out to Greece by Allied diplomacy, and Venizelos promptly accepted it on principle, offering Greek armies for the Dardanelles campaign, in return for an Allied promise of a broad slice of Asia Minor stretching from a point just south of the Dardanelles athwart Asia Minor to the southern coast on the Mediterranean. This area would have doubled the size of the existing Kingdom of Greece. Under good government it could ultimately support several million inhabitants.

The prospect for Greek patriots was intoxicating, but open to two serious objections. The first was the attitude of Bulgaria. As a result of the Second Balkan War, Greece and Serbia had seized Macedonia and divided it between them, and Macedonia was to Bulgaria the sum of all her hopes. For it she fought in the Balkan Wars. Deprived of it she nursed an unappeasable grief. Venizelos approached Bulgaria and was informed that Bulgaria would remain neutral if Serbia would cede most of her Macedonian conquests and Greece certain rich Egean coast districts, Kavala, Drama, and Serres, which stretched eastward and cut off the Bulgarian hinterland from the sea. This was a price far above what Greece was willing to pay, and Venizelos attempted a compromise, but Bulgaria absolutely refused to consider his terms. Greece itself pronounced emphatically against any Macedonian cessions to Bulgaria. Faced later by sharp differences of opinion as to Asia Minor, King Constantine summoned a Royal Council, and the council decided against Venizelos, who thereupon resigned. Events in Greece under Venizelos from this time forward have been already set forth in Volume VIII of this work in chapters on Greece and the Balkan States in the World War.

An English correspondent in Greece said Venizelos looked more like an Italian of Piedmont than a Greek islander. In fact, many foreign journalists doubted his Greek descent. His blue eyes, his surprizing coolness, his absolute self-control, his ability to overcome