Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-11-08
VANDALISM IN GREECE
Picturesque Venetian Walls of ChaIkis
Being Destroyed
From the LONDON Post

From The LONDON Post
The Greek papers just to hand announce
that the picturesque Venetian walls Of
Chalkis are being ruthlessIv DESTROYED and
thus one of the most beautiful towns of
Greece, and one of the few which has hitb-
erto preserved its romantic medieval an
pearance. is being reduced to a dull Level
Of modern culture
Some years ago when. under the pretext
OF deepening the channel of the Euripos
the picturesque fortress which stood I'm tho
middle OF that extraordinary stream WAS
blown up. the late Prof Freeman pro-
tested against this wanton sacrifice of an
historical castle, which formed no unim-
poIlant part In the curious mdiaeval his
tory of NeSroponte. Now the walls VITA
their Venetian lions and their quaint tur-
refs, already partially destroyed some wears
ago, are doomed. so that erere long the
famous city where for nearly three centu-
rfes lived the Venetian bailie and the three
Gentlemen of Verona" who held the great
baronies of the Island OF Euboea, will be
merely a commonplace modern town, like
any other in Europe"
1t Is hard to understand the indifference
of educated Greeks-and In no country is
historical education more widely diffused-
10 the loss OF so fine a monument of the
Frankish period In Greece-a period which
the modern Hellenes. now that they are
emancipated. can afford to regard with
out bitterness. and to which, as some or
they owe not a little.
Personally, as an humble student of Me
dlaeYal Greece, | can see nothing but a
riddle in the academic scholarship which
raises paeans Of exultation over the discov-
cry of some nameless classic tomb. some
broken classic potsherd-of which there are
already enough and to spare IN the mu-
Seums of Europe-yet regards with con-
tempt or indifference an almost perfect
monument of an age the remains of which
are becoming scarcer and scarcer. 1t Is
conceivable that the grandsons~of men who
were under Turkish rule should view with
complacency the destruction of old Turk
ish fountains and the decay of former Turk
ish mosques; abolere nepandl Cancta Viri
monumental juvat.' But over four hundred
years have passed since the lion banner OF
Venice waved over the walls OF Negroponte~
since the Venetian galleys were stationed
in the sound, since the great Turkish cam
non balls, still piled In one of the squares
of the old town were fired by order Of
Mohammed II rom the mainland opposite.
One day too late the Greeks will regret
that their interesting medieval monuments
have been destroyed. When Chalkls mas
been stripped of her walls, when Nauplia
has been shorn of her Venetian fortifica-
lions when the last Byzantine church at
Mistra has fallen in ruins, and the By
zantine monastery at kaiseraine, despite
the efforts of scholars like NJ Lampakes'
has collapsed in a heap of rubble-then
those who believe in and care for the unity
of history and refuse the pedantic theory
of schools and colleges, that one period
Is all important and all others valueless,
will sorrowfully have to confess that mod
ern Greece has sacrificed all the records Vt
twenty centuries. and that the same pe0an-
tic classfcism which obliterates historic nle-s
diaeyal names from the map, calling Salona
Amphissa and Vostitsa, Algion. has also
ohliterated all traces of the nations life
between the Roman conquest and the war
OF independence.