the plain of Argos, and in the suburbs of Athens, there are still Albanian enclaves, derived from those successive migrations between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries; but they have so entirely forgotten their origin that the villagers, when questioned, can only repeat:  ’We can’t say why we happen to speak “Arvanitika”, but we are Greeks like everybody else.’  The Vlachs again, a Romance-speaking tribe of nomadic shepherds who have wandered as far south as Akarnania and the shores of the Korinthian Gulf, are settling down there to the agricultural life of the Greek village, so that Hellenism stands to them for the transition to a higher social phase.  Their still migratory brethren in the northern ranges of Pindus are already ‘Hellenes’ in political sympathy,[1] and are moving under Greek influence towards the same social evolution.  In distant Cappadocia, at the root of the Anatolian peninsula, the Orthodox Greek population, submerged beneath the Turkish flood more than eight centuries ago, has retained little individuality except in its religion, and nothing of its native speech but a garbled vocabulary embedded in a Turkified syntax.  Yet even this dwindling rear-guard has been overtaken just in time by the returning current of national life, bringing with it the Greek school, and with the school a community of outlook with Hellenism the world over.  Whatever the fate of eastern Anatolia may be, the Greek element is now assured a prominent part in its future.

[Footnote 1:  Greece owed her naval supremacy in 1912-13 to the new cruiser Georgios Averof, named after a Vlach millionaire who made his fortune in the Greek colony at Alexandria and left a legacy for the ship’s construction at his death.]

These, moreover, are the peripheries of the Greek world; and at its centre the impulse towards union in the national state readies a passionate intensity.  ‘Aren’t you better off as you are?’ travellers used to ask in Krete during the era of autonomy.  ’If you get your “Union”, you will have to do two years’ military service instead of one year’s training in the militia, and will be taxed up to half as much again.’  ’We have thought of that,’ the Kretans would reply, ’but what does it matter, if we are united with Greece?’

On this unity modern Hellenism has concentrated its efforts, and after nearly a century of ineffective endeavour it has been brought by the statesmanship of Venezelos within sight of its goal.  Our review of outstanding problems reveals indeed the inconclusiveness of the settlement imposed at Bucarest; but this only witnesses to the wisdom of the Greek nation in reaffirming its confidence in Venezelos at the present juncture, and recalling him to power to crown the work which he has so brilliantly carried through.  Under Venezelos’ guidance we cannot doubt that the heart’s desire of Hellenism will be accomplished at the impending European settlement by the final consolidation of the Hellenic national state.[1]