In his charge
the foreign policy of Italy was at its best.
I found affairs at Athens in a critical condition. Deliyanni was
trying the game of bluff which had succeeded in the hands of
Comoundouros, but with quite a different measure of competence. With
Deliyanni it was an evident sham. He had promised war without the
least intention of preparing for it, in the childish expectation that
Europe would oblige the Sultan to make some concession which would
save his credit in the country and enable him to continue in office.
But circumstances were different; Greece had on the former occasion a
valid claim, admitted by the powers, while on this there was only the
pretension that Greece should receive a compensation for betterments
acquired by Bulgaria. In the former, the Treaty of Berlin had
sanctioned the cession; in the latter, there was only the bare
impudence of Mr. Deliyanni to move the powers. The ministry called out
class after class of the reserves and sent them northward, but made no
effective preparation for war; the men were ill-clad, worse provided,
and everything was lacking to make them ready for a campaign. The
casual observer could see that war was not intended, and that
Deliyanni was silly enough to believe that the agents of the powers
did not see through his sham, and thought that he could frighten them.
The men on the frontier finally amounted to about 45,000 men, kept
there as a scarecrow to the powers at an expense, ascertained from the
safest authorities, of 1000 deaths per month.
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