The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1881-05-29
POLITICS IN MODERN GREECE.


Athens suffers from an excess @
intellectual activity. The city i
oYerstocked with brains. Its hand
are idle. Greece has no great mann
factories; it has no system of roads
Among the many failures of Kin,
OthO's reign, perhaps none wa
more injurious than his failure tt
provide any means of ready inter
communication between the pro
vinces of Greece. Of course the
topography of Greece-her noun
tain ranges and deep-reaching CULTS
and bays-renders the task of road.
building a difficult one. But ma.
tional unity and material prosperity
cannot come without good roads.
To-day all Greece has but five miles
of railroad, and hardly more than
fifty miles of good carriage roads.
Finding no outlet in the develop
ment of the cOuntry's material re-
sources, all the energy of the mar
velously active Greek mind has
been turned to trade, to study and
to politics; and chiefly to poll
tics, always a passion with the
Athenian. With a territory but
three-fifths as great as New York,
with a population of nearly 100000,
with universal suffrage, and with a
monarchy so limited that the gov
eminent is in reality democracy in
the administration of its internal
affairs, the Greek nation of to-day
deVotes ten times too much energy
to governing itself. This cOncentra-
ton of force within narrow limits
begets heat at Athens. Under such
pressure the political friction is
something enormous. Athens sup
ports from thirty to forty news
papers. Political clubs are more
numerous than in classic days, and
as influential. Every man of prom
inence has his newspaper, his club
of personal followers, his petty
party. When the death of Dele !
georges, ex-prime minister, was an
on the street to a group of
gentlemen with whom l
was talking, the first remark was,
''And now Kurie So-and-So" (naming !
a politician of little influence) "Will J
form a party, will he not?" Room
for one more aspirant to Office, with |
his organized clique of followers,
was the argument.
Salaries for public services are of
course pitifully low. Criticism of
all official acts, and of every measure
advocated by the government, is
bitter and ceaSeless. This spirit of
criticism is not merely a healthful
for the public welfare; it is
the constant effort to induce
public, ever prone to change its
political leaders, so to clamor as to
put the "ins" ont, and to give to
other men q chance at what must
be for them, too, a brief tenure of
power. Acrimonious attacks upon
men and motives abound. The
newspapers give room to angry OPP
Donents for virulent personal
1iatribes against political rivals.
The irrepreSsible life and mental
of the nation preys upon
itself.
Give Greece a mission; let her
nope for that influence in the read
iustment of power after Turkeys
approaching dissolution Of the
chronic "sick man" is indeed soon to
lie) which justly belongs to her as
he most intelligent, the most enter
prising, the most highly civilized
race of the Levant; extend her
boundaries, as we hope the great
powers will soon do; give but a
CLEAN of distant hope to such en-
.husiastlc patriots as Joined the club
some time since organized at Athens
0y Makrakes, shrewd political and
religious agitator, which processes
for its object to place Prince Con-
King Georges eldest son,
IN the throne of all Greece at Con-
'tantinople-and the truly great
qualities of this wonderful race,
which were proved to be still hers
1y the gallant, unflinching heroism
displayed in her struggle for indie
but which have suffered
/ temporary eclipse since that strug-
gle closed, will once more be dis
played to a world which has so often
been inspired by the words and
leeds of the Greeks of ancient times.
Magazine.