Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-08-21
VANDALISM IN GREECE
Picturesque Venetian Walls of Chalkis
Being Destroyed.
From the London Post.


Inc dreek papers just to hand announce
mat the picturesque Venetian walls of
Chalkis are being ruthlessly DESTROYED
and thus one of the most beautiful towns
OF Greece, and one of the few which has
hitherto preserved its romantic medieval
appearance, IS being reduced to a dull level
of modern culture"
Some years ago, when, under the nre-
text OF deepening the channel of the Eli
ripos, the picturesque fortress which stood
In the middle of that extraordinary strea m
was blown up, the late Prof. Freeman pro-
tested against this wanton sacrifice of an
historical castle, which formed no unim-
portant part in the curious medieval his
tory of Negroponte. Now the walls with
their Venetian lions and their quaint tur-
rets, already partially destroyed some
years ago. are doomed. so that ere long the
famous city where for nearly, three CEN
turtles 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 dffused-
to the loss of so fine a monument of the
F'rankish period in Greece period which
the modern HelleneS, now that they are
emancipated, can afford to regard without
bitterness, and to which, as some of their
most eminent historians have admitted
they owe not a little. Personally, an
humble student of medieval Greece, | can
see nothing but riddle in the academic
scholarship which raises paeans of exul-
tation over the discovery of some name
less classic tomb, some broken classic
potsherd-of which there are already
enough and to spare in the museums of
Europe-yet regards with contempt or in
difference an almost perfect monument Of
n inc jat,
scarcer and scafcer. 1t is conceiva BILE
that the grandsons of men who were I'M
der Turkish rule should view with COM
placency the destruction of old Turkish
fountains and the decay of former Turkish
mosques. "abolere nepandi Cancta viri
monumental juvat. But over four hun
dred years have passed since the ion-ban-
ner of Venice waved over the walls of
Negroponte, since the Venetian gaileys
were stationed In the sound, since the
great Turkish cannon balls, still piled in
one of the squares of the old town, were
fired by order of Mohammed II from the
mainland opposite.
One day, too late, the Greeks will regret
that their interesting medieval monu-
ments have been destroyed. When Chal-
kis has been stripped of her walls, when
Nauplia has been shorn of her Venetian
Notifications, when the last Byzantine
church at Mistra has fallen in ruins, and
despite the efforts of scholars like M. Lam
pakes, has collapsed In a heap of rubble-
then those who believe in and care for the
unity of history and refuse to embrace the
pedantic theory of schools and colleges,
that one period is afl-important and all
others yaiueless, will sorrowfully have to
confess that modern Greece has sacrificed
all the records of twenty cenuries, and
that the same pedantic classicism which
obliterates historic medieval names from
the map, calling Salona Amphissa and Vos-
titsa Aigion, has also obliterated all traces
of the nations life between the Roman
conquest and the war Of independence.