How much did the Peoploponesians of the early 1800's know about "HellAss"?

Krater Makedonski

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Jun 20, 2009, 4:06:06 AM6/20/09

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Answer: They knew NOTHING. "HellAss" was invented for them by the "Western
Philhellasses" :-)

"Shortly after the outbreak of the Revolution, one of the local Greek
leaders in the Peloponese, whowas a member of the coonspiracy, issued a
manifesto to the governments and peoples of Europe.

... To the average Peloponnesian Greek of 1821, eveen had he been able to
read, the manifesto would have been incomprehensible. He would probably NOT
have recognised the appellation of "Hellene" as APPLYING TO HIMSELF and he
would CERTAINLY have had NO APPRECIATION of the conception of "HellAss" as a
nation state."

William St Clair - "That Grease Might Still Be Free - The PhilHelAsses in
the War of Independence" :-) - section 2: "The Return of the Ancient
HellAsses" :-)

"The mountains look at Marathon
And Marathon looks on the sea
And musing there an hour alone
Idream that Grease might still be free"

The English Philhellass Byron.

Panayiotis

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Jun 20, 2009, 3:54:21 PM6/20/09

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======================================
"And Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece."
(Strabo VII, Frg. 9 [Loeb, H.L. Jones])
======================================
"Krater Makedonski" <kra...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4a3c9872$0$29630$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...

Krater,
1. Please do not post such stupid quotations, or post the text itself
without your forged comments.
2. Your "one of the local Greek leaders in the Peloponese, whowas a member
of the coonspiracy" is very revealing of your sentiments about us Greeks.
Therefore, one should not take you seriously.
3. This "one of the local Greek leaders in the Peloponese" is Petrombeis
Mavromihalis, one of my heroes, leader of Mani, having roots in ancient
Sparta.
4. The text below is the declaration to the "european courts", i.e.
governments. Have in mind that each leader in our Revolution of Independence
had a scriber/secretary for carrying out his correspondence. Some were
illiterate, knowing just a few letters from church. You can put your falcons
to translate it in Bulgarian/Slavic, since you are ignorant of the Greek
language.
"� ��
�� , �� , ��
�� , ��
�� .
�� , ��
�� , ��
��. �� , ��
�� , ��
��.
��
�� , �� , ��
�� .
��
�� . � ��
�� , ��
�� .
� �� , ��
��, �� , ��
�� .
�� , � �� , � �� . ��
��
�� , ��
�� .
�� . ��
�� , �� , ��
�� , �� , �� , ��
�� , ��
�� .
1821: �� 23 : �� .
�� .
�� , ��
��".
5. In one of my visits to the National Library Workshop for Maintenance of
historical manuscripts, I had the good luck to see the original of this
declaration. Amazing to see the technique and how these manuscripts are
preserved.

Panayiotis

Spirit of Truth

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Jun 21, 2009, 2:35:26 AM6/21/09

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"Krater Makedonski" <kra...@yahoo.com
> wrote in message news:4a3c9872$0$29630$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...

Silly.

Here's some correct history for you, Bulgar:

Re Fyrom:

<>Proto-Bulgar tribe
<>led by Khan Kuber, who
<>established itself in Pelagonia, i.e., the triangle
<>between Bitola, Prilep, and Gevgeli.
<>By the late 800's, these Proto-Bulgar tribes
<>have been assimilated by the aboriginal mostly
<>Slavic inhabitants

............................................................................................................

Re Greece:

For fair use only

"In the last days of Romania, as all else was being lost, one domain
expanded. That was the Despotate of the Morea, the Mediaeval name of the
Peloponnesus. After the Fourth Crusade, the last of the Morea, the fortress
of Monembasia, had fallen to the Latins in 1248. But then Monembasia and
Laconia were returned in 1261 as ransom for William II de Villehardouin
(1246-1278), Prince of Achaea, who had been captured in battle in 1259. On
Mt. Taygetos, to the west above the ancient city of Sparta, the castle of
Mistra had been founded by Prince William in 1247. Under the Palaeologi,
this grew into a complex of buildings and became a surprising center of art
and learning as well as the capital of the Despotate. Indeed, one could even
say that the Renaissance began there, since many of its scholars, with their
books, fled the Turkish Conquest to Italy, which was ready for them. The
Morea became a kind of Viceroyalty under the Cantacuzeni Despots. Under the
Palaeologi, starting in 1383, the Despot (sometimes more than one) was
usually a son or brother of the Emperor. The last Emperor, Constantine XI,
began as a Despot of Morea. He very nearly acquired Athens in 1435. His
brother, the last Despot, Thomas, married the Heiress of Achaea and came
into possession of the Principality and all the Peloponnesus in 1432. By
then there was little time left for further successes."
.................................................................................................................

_You_ are studiously avoiding the fact the the Romaion were Greeks.
You can avoid that by talking about the Ottomans etc
but the fact is that the ancient Greek world became Orthodox Christian
and it survived in mainly the anciently Greek populated areas.

That is no coincidence.

For fair use only:

"WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IS A BYZANTINE?

by
Clifton R. Fox
Professor of History
Tomball College
Tomball, TX, USA

In the provinces close to Constantinople, where the Greek language
predominated over the Latin of Old Rome, the idea of Roman citizenship and
identity appealed to a broad segment of the population. Greek speaking
citizens were proud to be Romans: in Latin, "Romani," or, in Greek,
"Romaioi." The word "Romaioi" became descriptive of the Greek speaking
population of the Empire. The old ethnic name applied to Greeks,
"Hellene",fell into disuse. In ancient times, of course, "Hellene" had meant
Greek. Hellene meant Greek from the seventh century BC onward, if not
earlier. Although Homer called Greeks by other names, Herodotus, Pericles,
Plato and Alexander were all "Hellenes," as were Greek speaking inhabitants
of the Roman Empire in the first and second centuries AD. In the fourth
century AD, as the Empire became Christianized, the term "Hellene" became
redefined by common convention to include people who still worshipped the
old gods and studied philosophy in hopes of resisting the new faith of
Christianity. Emperor Julian II [361-363], an Emperor who tried to stop the
Christian tide, described himself as a "Hellene." By "Hellene," Julian
signified his combination of Neo-Platonic philosophy and worship of the
Olympians.

In the final years of the fourth century AD, Emperor Theodosius I [379-395]
made Christianity the sole state religion after subduing the rebellion of an
"Hellene" usurper, a westerner named Eugenius. After Theodosius' critical
decision, fewer and fewer people were willing to call themselves "Hellenes."
For centuries more, the word "Hellene" remained in bad repute, associated
with outlawed religious ideas and disloyalty to the state. Greek speakers
found the identity of "Romaioi" in place of "Hellene" to be a safe refuge in
changing times. Greek speaking "Romaioi" inhabited the Empire until the its
demise in the fifteenth century.

The Empire at Constantinople should not be called the "Byzantine Empire" at
all. If it requires a special name, we might better name the Empire at
Constantinople with the title of the "Romaion Empire" from the Greek
"Basileia Romaion" [Empire of the Romaioi]."
............................................................................................................

http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/greek-resources-constantinople.asp
............................................................................................................
http://www.greece.org/poseidon/work/occupation/constantinople.html

.............................................................................................................

----- Original Message -----
From: "Panayiotis" <panayi...@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups:
alt.news.macedonia,soc.culture.greek,alt.religion.christian.east-orthodox
Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 12:33 AM
Subject: Re: H polis ealw !! ( The City was conquered !! )

======================================
"And Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece."
(Strabo VII, Frg. 9 [Loeb, H.L. Jones])
======================================

"June R Harton" <JUNEH...@prodigy.net> wrote in message
news:d6rme.138$iA...@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com...
"Yannis the Macedonian" <mak...@vip.gr> wrote in message
news:4299a632$1...@news.sch.gr...
Old link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3550207.=
stm
"Greeks still refer to the city by its older name, Constantinopoli, and
every year on the anniversary of the city's conquest by the Ottomans,
churches across Greece and Cyprus ring their bells."
For fair use only
"----- Original Message -----
From: "miltiadiss" <miltiadis...@hotmail.com.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.news.macedonia
Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2000 8:26 AM
Subject: May 29, 1453, Constantinoupolis falls to the Turks

May 29, 1453, Constantinoupolis falls to the Turks

Romania has fallen

A bird, a nice bird, was leaving the Polis [Constantinoupolis]
It didn't stop at the vineyards, didn't stop in the gardens
It went up to St' Helias castle and there it rest.
It shaked a wing, it was full of blood
It shaked the other wing, there was a scripture
And nobody would read that, not even the Bishop
child, a nice child, comes and reads
And as he reads, he bursts in tears, he bursts in laments
"Alas, woe to us, Romania has fallen"
Laments in the churches, tears in the monasteries
St John Chrysostomus is crying and weeping
"Do not cry, my Saint-John, do not weep"
"Romania has been lost, Romania has fallen"
"Romania has been lost, but it will bloom and rise again"

Traditional Greek song from the Black Sea (Pontos) region

(Greek ISO following)

DUneai c Nuiai?a
,iai ?ioe?i, eaeui ?ioe?i aaaa?i' a?u oci Dueci�
ioaY oo' ai?Yeea euiaoai ioaY ooa ?aneaueea,
a??aai eae-i aeuiaoai a oio Ce?' oii eUoonii.
Aoa?iai o' Yiai oi ooanui oi a?ia aiooaiYiii,
aoa?iai o' Ueei oi ooanui, ?ano?i Y?ae anaiiYiii,
Aou eaia?o ee aiYaiuoai, ioa' i iconi?ie?oco�
Yiai ?aea?i, eaeui ?aea?i, Yn?aoae ee aiaai?eae.
O?o' aiaai?e' o?oa eea?aae, o?oa eniyae oci eana?ai.
"Ae? aiUo eae aUe aiUo, ?Uneai c Nuiai?a!"
Iienieiaiyi oa aeeecoeUo, eea?aia oa iiiaoo?nea
ee i AeUiiao i ?noouooiiii eea?ae, aaniiei?eYoae,
-Ic eea?o, ic eea?o Au-AeUiia iio, eae aaniiei?eoeUoae
-C Nuiai?a ?Ynaoa, c Nuiai?a '?Uneai.
-C Nuiai?a ee ai ?Ynaoai, aiea? eae oYnae ee Ueei.

(Aciioeeu onaaiyae oio Duioio)"
.....................................................................................
.....................................................................................

For three hours he fought against eighteen
thousand....
His gun was shattered....
Then his sword fell off at the handle

And Diakos fell into the hands of his enemies
alive.
A thousand men went in front of him
And a thousand behind.... (and they
demanded)
"Will you turn Turk, change your faith,
Make obeisance in the mosque and leave the
church?"
But Diakos answered....and spoke angrily:
"Go, you and your faith, you infidels, to
destruction!
I was born a Greek and a Greek I will die!"
They took Diakos and impaled him.
They stood him upright and he mocked
them....
"Dogs, though you impale me it is but one
Greek lost,
Odysseus is still well, and Captain Niketas,
And they will bring low Turkey and all your
government!"

{From a great Greek spirit of the past. For fair use only}

........................................................................................

Here some details for you, Bulgar.

http://www.hri.org:80/docs/Morgenthau/chapter3.html

I trust you will now cease posting silly things here.

Spirit of Truth

(using June's e-mail to communicate to you)!

Krater Makedonski

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Jun 22, 2009, 9:22:34 PM6/22/09

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"Panayiotis" <panayi...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:h1jeq3$2648$1...@ulysses.noc.ntua.gr...

> ======================================
> "And Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece."
> (Strabo VII, Frg. 9 [Loeb, H.L. Jones])
> ======================================
> "Krater Makedonski" <kra...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:4a3c9872$0$29630$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
>> Answer: They knew NOTHING. "HellAss" was invented for them by the
>> "Western Philhellasses" :-)
>>
>> "Shortly after the outbreak of the Revolution, one of the local Greek

>> leaders in the Peloponnese, who was a member of the conspiracy, issued a

>> manifesto to the governments and peoples of Europe.
>>

>> ... To the average Peloponnesian Greek of 1821, even had he been able to

You are shooting the messenger, grkoman, but then, the grkomani by default
are full of mani (flaws), the primary one being lack of intellect. Hence
your lack of grasp for what my message was about - to educate you about the
TRUE, NON hellenic past of today's "HellAss".

Spirit of Truth

unread,

Jun 22, 2009, 11:54:29 PM6/22/09

to

"Krater Makedonski" <som...@23895bigpond.com.au
> wrote in message news:4a402e77$0$29316$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...

> You are shooting the messenger, grkoman, but then, the grkomani by default
> are full of mani (flaws), the primary one being lack of intellect. Hence
> your lack of grasp for what my message was about - to educate you about
> the TRUE, NON hellenic past of today's "HellAss".

Are you unable to read the written word, Bulgar?

CHAPTER III

Rumblings of the Approaching Storm

The Commission's task was to deal with the Greek refugees from Asia Minor, a
people totally unlike their conquerors, the nomadic Turks. These Greeks had
a brilliant heritage of their own as direct descendants of the Ionian Greeks
who settled the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. It was in their land that Homer,
perhaps the greatest poet of all ages, sang their early history. The scene
of the Iliad is the plains of Troy, on the Asia Minor coast, south of the
Dardanelles. In Homeric times not only the Ionian coast, but also the
southern shore of the Black Sea, were populated by Greeks, who engaged in
agriculture and carried on a lively commerce by sea.

Soon after Athens had reached the height of its glory under Pericles in the
Fifth Century, B. C., and had started on its decline, the rise of Macedon
under Philip carried Greek influence into new regions. The glory of Athens
had been based upon sea power, but the conquests of Macedon were the work of
land armies- Philip invented the invincible phalanx. Upon Philip's death his
son, Alexander the Great, set forth to conquer the whole of the then known
world, and as that world in his day lay to the east, his marches were in
that direction. In a few years he had overrun the fertile plains and opulent
cities of Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia, and had carried his
conquests to the gates of Delhi. In all the cities in the intervening
countries he left large garrisons of Greek soldiers. In many of these
countries he founded flourishing new cities. In every place his soldiers
were followed by large colonies of Greek civilians. The result was that the
whole of western Asia, and of what we call the Near East, including Asia
Minor Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Persia, and
northwestern India, was saturated with the Greek influence and with Greek
colonies.

The imagination of these conquered peoples was dazzled by the introduction
of Greek art, literature, philosophy, and public works. Though the
successors of Alexander were unable to maintain the political control of the
lands he conquered, and though successive waves of Roman, Arabian, and
Tartar conquests swept over these lands in succeeding centuries, none of the
later conquerors has been able wholly to eradicate the influence of Greek
culture, nor to exterminate that element of population which was of Greek
blood.

Thus it becomes clear that when, nearly seven hundred years ago, the night
of Turkish oppression began to settle down upon the Near East, the Greeks
who were caught beneath the Turkish darkness were not merely the inhabitants
of Greece itself, but were also those several million Greeks who had been
settled for more than a thousand years in Asia Minor. This fact has played a
decisive part in the recent history of both Turkey and Greece.

To understand the modern history of the Greeks, Western readers will have to
get one idea clearly in mind-an idea that will probably astonish most of
them. This is, that the modern Greek thinks no more about the Greece of the
Classical Age than we do. The modern Greek shares our veneration of that
golden epoch of the human intellect, but it is just as remote to him, and
just as unrelated to the immediate interests of his life, as it is to us.
Until six years ago no modern Greek ever dreamed, of reconstituting Athens
as the permanent capital of the Greek world. On the contrary, every Greek in
the world shared a passionate devotion to the ideal of re-erecting the
ancient Byzantine Empire in its prime of glory as of, let us say, the Ninth
Century, with Byzantium (Constantinople) as its capital. Not to the
Parthenon at Athens, but to the Santa Sofia at Constantinople, did his
mingled emotions of religion and political greatness yearn with a burning
zeal. If this animating principle be kept firmly in mind the whole course of
Greek political aspirations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
becomes clear.

The Greek War of Independence, which came to a successful conclusion in
1832, affected less than one half of the Greeks in the Turkish Empire. It
did not bring freedom to the Greeks of Macedonia and Thrace, of Crete and
the Aegean Islands, nor to the more than two million Greeks in Asia Minor
and Constantinople. For ninety-five years following the War of Independence,
down to the destruction of Smyrna in 1922, the consuming ambition of the
Kingdom of Greece, shared by the "unredeemed Greeks" of Asia Minor and the
islands, was the liberation of this majority of the Greek race. Along with
this ambition went the desire to control the territory over which all these
Greeks were scattered.

When I arrived in Constantinople as American Ambassador in 1913 the second
Balkan War had just come to a close. My two and one half years at the
Embassy there not only gave me an intimate knowledge of Turkey and the
Turks, but of the Greeks in Turkey as well. To my astonishment I then
learned that the Greeks comprised a considerable percentage of the
population of the Turkish Empire. In Constantinople alone there were between
three hundred and four hundred thousand permanent Greek residents. They were
one of the strongest elements of the population. I learned that, not only in
Constantinople, but also throughout Asia Minor, the Greeks largely
controlled the banking, the shipping, and the general mercantile business.
Some of the Greeks in Constantinople were among the most brilliant and
cultivated people I have ever met anywhere in the world. Highly educated,
fluent linguists, and very prosperous, they would have adorned any society.
Some of them were the only non-diplomatic residents of Constantinople who
were admitted into the diplomatic social circles.

I found that the Greeks, like various other non-Mohammedans, occupied a
peculiar legal status in Turkey, for which there is no parallel in any
European country. They constituted a separate legal community, and exercised
all community rights for themselves. They organized and supported their own
schools. This peculiar status arose from the theocratic nature of the
Turkish Government. To the Turkish mind, civil government and religious
government are inseparably intertwined, the civil government deriving its
sanctions and its authority from the Mohammedan religion. Consequently, the
Turk has always regarded the non-Mohammedan minorities as being simply other
religious communities. The Turkish Government has dealt with them as such.
Therefore, the Metropolitan, or chief bishop of the Orthodox Greek Church,
was officially recognized by the Turkish Government as the head of the Greek
community. He was held responsible for the orderly behavior of his
co-religionists, and for their obedience to Turkish laws.

When I came to Constantinople the revolutionary Committee of Union and
Progress-better known to the world as the Young Turks-was in control of the
government. They had deposed the former Sultan, Abdul Hamidj and had placed
upon his throne Abdul's brother, Mohammed. Utterly incompetent and
hopelessly weak, Mohammed was ruler merely in name. The real power was
exercised by the Young Turks, whose outstanding conspirators were Enver,
Talaat, and Djemal. Their men had set up the machinery of a sham
constitutional government, including a parliament of two houses, a senate,
and an assembly. The Greek community had representatives in this body. It
was of no advantage to them, however, as the parliament had no real
authority.

As a result of the two Balkan Wars the relations between the Turks and the
Greeks were considerably strained in 1913. The first Balkan War (in which an
alliance of Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria had decisively defeated Turkey) had
resulted in the lopping off from the Turkish Empire of Albania, Macedonia,
and Thrace, leaving Turkey only a few miles of European territory just north
of Constantinople. This disaster had followed close upon the almost equally
disastrous war between Italy and Turkey in 1911, wherein Italy wrested
Tripolitania from Turkey. I could readily understand the bitter feelings
harbored by the Turks. They were being pushed out of one after another of
their possessions, and were beginning to be fearful of being crowded to
complete extinction as a nation. The instinct of self-preservation was
aroused within them. They hated with a deadly hatred all Italians,
Bulgarians, "Serbs, and Greeks. They yearned for an opportunity to strike
back and take vengeance for their losses and humiliations.

The Greeks were the only one of these hated races within striking distance
of Turkish vengeance. The Greeks alone had a considerable body of their
population living within the Turkish borders. It was-deplorable, but by no
means unnatural, that they should speedily become objects of petty
persecution where-ever they happened to be living in Turkey.

They became also objects of official suspicion on the part of the Turkish
Government. That government was concerned with more than mere revenge. It
was fighting for the life of Turkey as an independent nation. Recently
deprived of many of its richest territories, Turkey was menaced with other
losses at the hands of ambitious neighbors. Its capital, Constantinople (now
within sight of enemy guns), had been coveted by Russia since the time of
Peter the Great, and by Greece for many centuries before that.

Thus, the Young Turk government had reason enough to be fearful of the
future. But the Young Turks had friends who took pains to increase their
fears. These friends were the German Ambassador at Constantinople and the
German army officers who had been brought in to organize and train the
Turkish Army. It developed later that the German Ambassador and the German
officers were already feverishly engaged in paving the way for the World War
that broke out in the following year. They were scheming for Turkish
cooperation in that conflict.

I have explained the German plan at length elsewhere. Briefly, it was to use
Turkey and Bulgaria during the impending war for the purpose of wholly
segregating Russia from her Western allies. After the war Bulgaria and
Turkey were to be made into tributary states, forming the opened corridor of
German expansion through to Mesopotamia and India. In working out the
details of this scheme Germany had foreseen that the presence of large
bodies of recalcitrant Greeks and Armenians within the Turkish Empire would
constitute a serious military difficulty. In the excitement and confusion of
war, these minorities would be strongly tempted to organize into hostile
armies threatening the German-Turkish lines of communication. Even if they
did not carry their hostilities so far as this, they would almost certainly
use their knowledge of the country to act as spies for the benefit of
Turkey's enemies. Especially could they be dangerous along the coasts of
Asia Minor, both to the north on the Black Sea, and to the west on the
Aegean, where the Germans had planned to establish submarine bases. The
majority of the inhabitants in the cities and towns on these coasts were
Greeks. For the foregoing reasons, the German agents in Constantinople did
everything in their power to heighten the fears of the Turkish Government
and to incite it to violence against the Greeks and Armenians.

Already in the early spring of 1914 the Young Turks were scheming and
preparing to go to war with Greece. They were not going to submit calmly to
the dissection of their nation. To defend themselves, they were determined
to take the offensive. It soon became evident that they had been advised
that, in anticipation of their entering the Great War, it was essential to
remove the Greeks from the seashores. Consequently, they began a systematic
petty persecution of the Greeks in the coast towns, with the purpose of so
frightening and discommoding them as to induce them to move out. The results
of their reign of terror were apparent, to those of us who lived in
Constantinople. Whenever we passed the Greek Consulate we could see a throng
of excited Greeks besieging its doors in an effort to get passports to leave
the country. Our friends among the wealthy Greeks told me they were removing
their valuables from the country; and they repeated to me endless stories of
the persecutions and hardships of their less fortunate brethren. The Greek
Metropolitan told us something of his difficulties. The poor man was in a
truly tragic position. Appeals to him, as the head of the Greek community,
poured in by the thousands from every part of Turkey. He had attempted to
obtain redress from the Turkish Government, but had been met with rebuffs
and insults. Only too plainly he perceived that the sufferings of his
followers were more than the result of sporadic outbursts of local
patriotism: they were the result of a systematic policy emanating from the
government at Constantinople itself.

Intolerable as the government was making it for the Greeks in the coast
towns, the Greeks were not leaving their homes fast enough to suit the
Turks. More strenuous measures were therefore adopted, and the atrocious
murder of fifty Greeks at Phocaea followed. The Phocaea incident brought the
designs of the Turks out into the open, and made it evident to all that a
war between Turkey and Greece was practically inevitable. The Young Turks
realized that in such a war they could not attack Greece by way of the
traditional route through Thrace and Macedonia. Both Bulgaria and Serbia
might join Greece to bar the way. To succeed, the attack would have to be
launched by sea. The Turkish Navy and the Greek Navy were so evenly matched
that the Turks had no assurance of victory on the water.

My office at the American Embassy now became the local scene of a strange
and subterranean battle for the control of the Aegean Sea. I have once
before told this incident in print, and I cannot do better than quote it
here from my Ambassador Morgenthau's Story:

... early in June, I received a most agitated visitor. This was Djemal
Pasha, the Turkish Minister of Marine and one of the three men who then
dominated the Turkish Empire. I have hardly ever seen a man who appeared
more utterly worried than was Djemal on this occasion. As he began talking
excitedly to my interpreter in French, his whiskers trembling with his
emotions and his hands wildly gesticulating, he seemed to be almost beside
himself. I knew enough French to understand what he was saying, and, the
news which he brought-this was the first I had heard of it- sufficiently
explained his agitation. The American Government, he said, was negotiating
with Greece for the sale of two battleships, the Idaho and the Mississippi.
He urged that I should immediately move to prevent any such sale. His
attitude was that of a suppliant; he begged, he implored that I should
intervene. All along, he said, the Turks regarded the United States as their
best friend; I had frequently expressed my desire to help them; well, here
was the chance to show our good feeling. The fact that Greece and Turkey
were practically on the verge of war, said Djemal, really made the sale of
the ships an un-neutral act. Still, if the transaction were purely a
commercial one, Turkey would like a chance to bid. "We will pay more than
Greece," he added. He ended with a powerful plea that I should at once cable
my government about the matter, and this I promised to do.

Evidently the clever Greeks had turned the tables on their enemy. Turkey had
rather too baldly advertised her intention of attacking Greece as soon as
she had received her dreadnaughts. Both the ships for which Greece was now
negotiating were immediately available for battle! The Idaho and Mississippi
were not indispensable ships for the American Navy; they could not take
their place in the first line of battle; they were powerful enough, however,
to drive the whole Turkish Navy from the Aegian. Evidently the Greeks did
not intend politely to postpone the impending war until the Turkish
dreadnaughts had been finished. Djemal's point, of course, had no legal
validity. However great the threat of war might be, Turkey and Greece were
still actually at peace. Clearly Greece had just as much right to purchase
warships in the United States as Turkey had to purchase them in Brazil or
England. . . .

To Djemal and the other Turkish officials who kept pressing me I suggested
that their ambassador in Washington should take up the matter directly with
the President. They acted on this advice, but the Greeks again got ahead of
them. At two o'clock, June 2ad, the Greek charge d'affaires at Washington
and Commander Tsouklas, of the Greek Navy, called upon the President and
arranged the sale. As they left the President's office, the Turkish
Ambassador entered- just fifteen minutes too late!

Djemal treated his failure in the negotiations for the American battleships
as a personal defeat and humiliation. His anger could not, of course, find
any outlet upon me. It could, however, be turned upon the Greeks who lived
in Turkey. Djemal was the most relentless of the group of desperate leaders
of the Young Turks. Realizing that the Turkish Navy was now outmatched, and
that Turkey would have to give up the idea of open war with the Greeks to
recover the Aegean Islands, Djemal's implacable hatred took a new direction.
At his insistence the Turkish Government began the deliberate effort to
remove all Greeks from, the seashores of Asia Minor;-that I have mentioned
above-and to molest them in other ways.

These Greeks were completely at the mercy of the Turks. The Greek Government
was impotent to help them. Whole settlements of Greeks in Asia Minor were
rounded up by the Turkish troops, were loaded like cattle on to ships and
deported from the country. On shipboard these Greeks were treated with the
greatest brutality. They were given neither food nor water-in some cases for
such long periods of time that their tongues clove to the roofs of their
mouths. En route to Greece the ships called at the Island of Prinkipo, in
the Sea of Marmora. Notwithstanding the terrible sufferings of the refugees
on board, the Greek residents of Prinkipo were not permitted to do anything
to help their brethren on these ships, which were anchored within sight and
sound of the shore.

I came into intimate contact with this whole problem through the Greek
Metropolitan at Constantinople. Powerless to be of any assistance to his
fellow countrymen, he appealed to me for help for them. I sent a boat to
Prinkipo with barrels of water and boxes of crackers, with instructions to
distribute them to the distressed refugees.

The Prinkipo incident was so flagrant and was so obviously approved by the
Turkish authorities that it dispelled any lingering doubts I might have had
that an organized effort was being made to frighten the Greeks out of
Turkey. This incident had the same effect upon the minds of the Greeks
themselves, and many of the leading Greek bankers and merchants of
Constantinople left Turkey with their families, many of them removing to
Athens and Paris.

The World War broke out shortly after the Prinkipo incident. The Greeks in
Turkey were now more alarmed than ever. The Greek Government was a
traditional friend of Great Britain's, and Great Britain was now at war with
Turkey's military advisers, the Germans. The Greek inhabitants of the
Turkish Empire were therefore more than ever under the suspicion of the
Turkish rulers. The stream of Greeks besieging the consulate with
applications for passports to leave the country now became a veritable
deluge.

The Greek inhabitants of Turkey were, of course, citizens of the empire,
and, as such, were liable to military duty. Not unnaturally, they were
regarded by the Turks as unreliable soldiers in the Turkish Army.
Consequently, they were not permitted to bear arms. Those who had the means
to do so were coerced into buying exemption from military service at the
rate of about forty English pounds per capita. The less affluent Greeks-who,
of course, comprised the great majority-being unable to purchase exemption,
were enrolled in so-called "labor battalions" and were put to work at menial
tasks under the direction of Turkish officers. They built military roads,
erected barracks, and performed other tasks of manual labor behind the
lines. They were subjected to iron discipline, as the Turks regarded every
Greek as a potential traitor, insurrectionist, and spy.

I would be the last person to condone the Turkish brutality toward the Greek
labor battalions-for the Turks, undoubtedly with deliberate intention, so
overworked and underfed these men as to cause the death of several hundred
thousand of them. Nevertheless, it is only fair to the Turks to say that
they were largely justified in their fears that the Greeks would have
availed themselves of any opportunity to hamper Turkish military efficiency.

After the World War had been in progress for two years Venizelos took Greece
into the war on the side of the Allies. From that moment onward the Turks no
longer treated their Greek citizens as merely potential traitors, but began
to treat them as avowed enemies, and to make their lives miserable in every
possible way. I was besought upon scores of occasions to use my influence
with the Turkish Government to help Greek individuals and Greek communities
out of critical difficulties with the Turks. Happily, I was able on a good
many occasions to be of real service to these distressed people.

The ending of the World War, with the incidental complete defeat of the
Turks, by no means ended the troubles of the Greeks. The Kingdom of Greece,
to be sure, would inevitably gain great advantages when the terms of the
peace settlement were finally written. The Greek inhabitants of Turkey,
however, were left in little better state than they had been before. Indeed,
as will appear shortly, the extraordinary success of Venizelos at the Paris
Peace Conference, in securing for Greece exceptional advantages in the peace
terms there, eventually operated indirectly to bring overwhelming disaster
upon the Greeks in Turkey.

The conference at Paris did not include the Turkish problem in the peace
settlement. The Allies, themselves, had too many conflicting interests
involved in the Near East to permit an immediate agreement. Consequently,
that whole subject was laid aside for separate treatment after the
Versailles Treaty should be out of the way.

Even during the peace conference, however, the Turkish problem could not be
kept submerged. The Italians were determined to gain special advantage from
the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire, and Greece was only little less
anxious to do so. Italy announced her claims and proceeded to overt acts.
Italian troops seized the port of Adalia, the key to southwestern Asia
Minor, which Italy coveted. The Greeks protested that this move was intended
solely to anticipate their "own claim in Asia Minor. President Wilson
attacked the Italian move so vigorously that Premier Orlando for a time
withdrew from the conference. President Wilson now announced his support of
the long-debated claim of Greece to the possession of Smyrna, Aidin, and the
Ionian coast. Partly to block further the Italian aggression, and partly to
protect the Greek inhabitants of Asia Minor from the fury of the vanquished
Turks, President Wilson now consented that the Greeks be invited to send an
army of occupation to police this region until the Powers could finally
agree on its ultimate disposition,

Apparently, President Wilson's theory in proposing this move was that the
nearest friendly troops were the Greek divisions in Macedonia, and that
prompt action was necessary to protect the Christians of the Smyrna
district. Winston Churchill has only recently asserted that the American
missionaries in Smyrna added their warnings against this move to the
warnings of the British Foreign Office and British General Staff, declaring
that it was fraught with the gravest dangers, not only to the Greek Army
itself, but to the Christian population of Ionia as well. In any event,
Lloyd George cordially approved President Wilson's proposal, Clemenceau
offered no objections, and the occupation was ordered and quickly
accomplished. Greek troops landed at Smyrna under the protecting fire of
Greek battleships, killed a number of Turkish soldiers retreating from the
city, and quickly occupied advanced positions in the hinterland.

Churchill has described vividly the bewilderment and alarm with which he
heard the news of this action. He had made a special study of the Turkish
problem in both its military and political aspects. He was convinced that
the Greek Army would eventually meet with disaster in the exceedingly
difficult mountainous interior of Asia Minor. But he was even more alarmed,
he declares, at the political complications that would be engendered. The
defeated Turks were growing restive. Constantinople was strongly held by the
Allies with their fleets in the Bosphorus, but the dwindling Allied armies
retained only a few precarious footholds in Asia Minor, where most of the
Turks lived. This half-savage warrior race was already angry enough at its
military defeat, but to have a part of its very homeland occupied by Greeks,
whom it regarded with age-long hatred and contempt, fanned resentment to
active fury.

The results that Churchill foresaw actually came to pass. The Turks felt
that their very existence was now threatened, and they resorted to desperate
measures. Mustapha Kemal, the ablest officer the Turks had had during the
war, now emerged as the political and military leader of an organized
movement to defy the whole world, if necessary, to preserve a Turkish nation
in Asia Minor. Withdrawing from Constantinople, and setting up headquarters
in the mountain fastnesses at Angora, a group of determined Turkish leaders
issued a manifesto to the world, in which they declared that Turkey would
fight to the death of her last man to preserve Turkish nationality.

This was the beginning of the Turkish Nationalist State, which has persisted
to the present day. Kemal rapidly organized an efficient army and proceeded
to recapture the ammunition "dumps" of arms laid down when Turkey had
capitulated the year before. The Greek Army in Ionia was soon confronted
with the menace of a well-equipped Turkish army waiting only for a favorable
opportunity to join battle.

Meanwhile, in 1920, the Allies gathered at the Conference of Sevres to
thresh out the peace settlement for Turkey.

Before discussing the Sevres Conference, however, I should go back a moment
to the decision at the Paris Conference to have the Greek Army occupy Ionia.
Quite independently of Churchill, I came to the same conclusion he had
reached, for I, too, was intimately familiar with the Turkish problem from
my residence in Constantinople in the first years of the war. I told Henry
White, one of the American peace commissioners, my views on the subject. I
once before described this incident and| quote what I then printed:

"When discussing with Henry White the Greek invasion of Smyrna, I told him
that the Greeks were making a mistake and that they would be drawn into a
tedious struggle with the Turks. They would have to draw-heavily on their
resources and on their people's patience, which would be severely strained
if, as I feared, the war lasted for years. White was deeply impressed.

"I want you to tell that to Venizelos," he said.

He knew everybody, and his bringing people together was not the least of his
services to our Commission. He invited the Greek Premier to his rooms in the
Crillon, and there I repeated my opinion.

"I told him in great detail the changes that had taken place in Turkey since
the beginning of the war, and described to him the characters of the men
that were now in power. I also explained to him the great importance they
put on retaining possession of the Port of Smyrna, now that they had lost
most of their other ports on the Mediterranean, I felt certain that they
would draw the Grecian Army back into their hinterland, and away from their
base of supplies, and then would continue to fight them by legitimate, or
even guerrilla, methods, until they exhausted them. I reminded him how the
Turks not only forbade their own people to employ Greeks, but even insisted
that the American firms could not use Grecian workmen to collect the
licorice root, or the Singer Manufacturing Company continue to have Greeks
in charge of their Turkish agencies. I also alluded to the difficulties of
governing Smyrna from Athens, as Constantinople would divide their country,
and the cost of administration would be beyond the present and prospective
resources of Greece, and, finally, I reminded him that they would antagonize
Italy and said: "You know better than I do what that means for Greece."
Venizelos listened patiently to my elaboration of this theme.

"Perhaps we have acted too hastily," he said, "and if all you say is true,
it may have been unwise for us to send an army into Smyrna, but now that the
army is there, it would be more unwise to withdraw it-to do so would admit
military and court political defeat. The Monarchists are plotting constantly
against me in Athens, and they are backed by the merchants and shipping men
who are over-ambitious and want new territory for their operations."

The conference at Sevres finally worked out a treaty of peace, which
everybody signed. It satisfied nobody. Turkey was to be dismembered and left
with no territory to call her own except the interior of Asia Minor and the
city of Constantinople. The independent Republic of Armenia was erected to
the east; Mesopotamia and Palestine were put under British mandate, Syria
and Cilicia under French mandate, and to Italy was assigned Adalia and its
hinterland. Smyrna and Ionia were held by the Greeks, pending further
discussion of their eventual disposition.

The relations between Turkey and Greece now moved rapidly toward a tragic
conclusion. The Turkish Nationalists announced they would never accept the
Treaty of Sevres, and bent all their energies toward getting their army into
condition to defend their country. They were also determined to seize the
first opportunity to drive the Greeks out of Ionia.

At this juncture, when Greece had the greatest need of the genius of
Venizelos, that far-sighted statesman was overwhelmingly defeated in the
Greek general election in the fall of 1920. His Royalist enemies in Greece
were almost as much astonished at the result of this election as Venizelos
himself. Immediately, however, they hastened to take vengeance on his
adherents. Their first act upon organizing their government was to repeal
the decree of exile against Constantine, and to recall him to Athens to
resume his throne.

Reinstated in power, Constantine pursued his advantage by removing from
command all the officers of the Greek Army who owed their positions to
Venizelos. It so happened that these officers were by far the most
experienced commanders amongst the Greeks. They were replaced by favorites
of Constantine. The most grotesque example of this favoritism was his
appointment of General Hadjanestes to the supreme command of the army of
occupation in Ionia. This was the most important command in the army at the
moment. The Greek troops in Ionia were operating in a most difficult country
in the presence of a skilful and implacable enemy. General Hadjanestes, upon
whom was placed the terrific responsibility of guiding this army in its
precarious situation, was notoriously a nervous wreck at the time
Constantine appointed him.

Early in 1921 representatives of the British, French, and Italian
governments met in London to reconsider and revise the impossible Treaty of
Sevres. The London Conference worked out a set of tentative proposals for a
revision of that treaty. These proposals were indignantly rejected by the
Greeks. Constantine now thought he saw an opportunity to eclipse the glory
that Venizelos had gained by his acquisition of Ionia. He thought he saw an
opportunity to drive the Turks out of Asia Minor and to assert Greek
sovereignty over the whole of that country. He accordingly committed the
supreme folly of ordering a general offensive against the Turkish
Nationalist position. The Greeks were defeated in this attack, and
Constantine left Athens and took personal command of the army in Asia Minor
on June nth. He left Greece hailed by the government-inspired press as
Emperor-Designate of Constantinople, thus vaingloriously appealing to the
traditional ambition of the Greek nation to reconstruct the Byzantine
Empire.

The Turkish military commanders in Asia Minor now followed the strategy that
I had foreseen in Paris three years before. The Turks retired before the
Greek advance, permitting the Greek Army to capture difficult mountain
passes with only feeble resistance. Thus the Turks lured the Greeks farther
and farther into the difficult mountains just west of Angora. The Greek line
of communications was thus extended until Greece's army was barely able to
maintain its supplies from the coast. Then, one day in August, the Turkish
Army, in accordance with its long-meditated plan of action, attacked the
Greek Army on the banks of the Sakkaria River. The Greek Army was compelled
to withdraw westward until it could reform its lines on a continuous front
about four days' march east of Smyrna.

Then followed a year of international negotiation. The conflicting ambitions
of the Allied Powers regarding the future of Asia Minor resulted in some of
the most disgusting intrigues in modern history. Of these, two were
especially disgraceful. The first was the so-called Franklin-Bouillon
Agreement, arrived at between France and the Turkish Nationalist Government.
This agreement was signed on October 20, 1921, at Angora, by Kemal for the
Turks and by Franklin-Bouillon for the French. It was dictated by the greed
of French capitalists seeking concessions from the Turks for railways and
commercial privileges. In exchange, the French shamefully deserted their
support of the Greeks, whom in 1919 they (along with Great Britain and the
United States) had invited to take over the military occupation of Asia
Minor. Not only did the French withdraw their moral support from the Greeks
and transfer their friendship to the Turks, but they "abandoned" great
quantities of French ammunition in Asia Minor-practically making a present
to the Turks of munitions of war with which to destroy their former allies,
the Greeks.

Italy, like France, deserted her Greek ally. During the Paris Conference the
Italians had entered the southern coast of Asia Minor at Adalia, and were
still in possession there whilst the Greeks were operating against the Turks
from Smyrna as a base. While this Greek campaign was in progress it soon
became notorious to military observers of all nations that the Turks were
being continually supplied with ammunition "bootlegged" to them from the
Italian base at Adalia. Italy's ambitions with regard to Asia Minor were
stronger than her sense of duty to an ally. Italy already occupied the
Dodecanese Islands off the coast of Asia Minor, and the peninsula itself has
long been an object of Italy's scheme of colonial expansion. To have
remained faithful to the Greek alliance would have been to help Greece
eventually to become the owner of Asia Minor. On the other hand, to have
helped Turkey to repel the Greeks was to weaken both of Italy's rivals. The
temptation was too strong for Italy to withstand it.

Greece was almost hopelessly weakened, not only by the active betrayal of
France and Italy, but as well by the inactivity and indifference of Great
Britain, her third ally. The United States likewise shared in this disgrace.
The request that Greece should occupy Smyrna and police the Ionian shore was
initiated by President Wilson. It implied the assistance of all four of the
Great Powers, including the United States. But in 1926, following the
victory of the Republican Party in our national election, the United States
rejected practically all the commitments of the Wilson Administration. They
gave not the slightest regard to the fulfillment of our arrangement with
Greece, which was part of the general scheme of ending the war. We
precipitately retired from the scene, and so far as we were concerned left
Greece to her fate.

This fate speedily descended upon the Greeks in the most terrible form.
Following the year of futile negotiations among the European Powers, the
Turks attacked the Greek Army in Asia Minor, defeated it decisively, and put
it to ignominious rout. Two weeks later, on September 9, 1922, the Turks
entered Smyrna. Then followed the orgy of looting, outrage, massacre, and
burning, which desolated the city. The Turks segregated all the able-bodied
Greek men of mature age and drove them into the interior of Asia Minor,
where practically every one of them died of starvation, forced labor, or
assassination. The old men, the women, and the children were herded upon any
kind of craft that was available and without more ado were shipped (to the
number of several hundred thousand) to the mainland of Greece and to the
Aegean Islands under Greek sovereignty. The sudden enforced exodus of this
vast number of people, all unexpectedly uprooted from their ties of home and
occupation, all of them completely impoverished, and all of them thrown
chaotically upon Greek soil without any regard to their future welfare,
marks the beginning of the refugee problem in its most acute stage.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morgenthau: I was sent to Athens:

Spirit of Truth

Panayiotis

unread,

Jun 23, 2009, 10:56:33 AM6/23/09

to

======================================
"And Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece."
(Strabo VII, Frg. 9 [Loeb, H.L. Jones])
======================================

"Krater Makedonski" <som...@23895bigpond.com.au> wrote in message
news:4a402e77$0$29316$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
>

Krater,
"Intellect": Well, that's life! One loses, others gain. God was not just. He
gave all the brains to you (to you personaly) and to some of us Greeks "lack
of intellect"!!!
"Educate": Who and whom? You, to educate us! No thanks. We will not buy.
Skip us.

History: Petrombeis and the other Greek leaders, knew very well their true
inheritance. In his declaration to the European governments, Petrombeis
clearly states that he is representing the Spartan and Messinian army.

Greeks did not change identities. FYROMians think they have discovered the
abra katabra spell or the "touch stone" to change their identity from Slavic
to "Macedonian". Dreams, dreams!

Anyway, did not receive any reply/comment on my question:
In the revised History of FYROM, where do Czar Samuil and Alexander the
Great fit?

Panayiotis

How much did the Peoploponesians of the early 1800's know about "HellAss"? - A: NOTHING

Krater Makedonski

Panayiotis

Spirit of Truth

Krater Makedonski

Spirit of Truth

Panayiotis