3 AUGUST 1867, Page 15

THE SO-CALLED GARIBALDIANS, AND WHAT THEY SAW IN CRETE.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]

Sin,—As I have lately been in Crete, and seen with my own eyes what is there going forward, I feel anxious to record my ear- nest contradiction of the Garibalclian evidence in several particulars. These letters of Garibaldians, noticed at some length by the Pall Mall Gazette, were written by angry men, yrho could not or would not appreciate the nature of the struggle in which they had taken part. They found very little food in Crete, as I can well believe, and they may have seen what they thought mismanagement of public stores or isolated cases of cruelty to prisoners. But the Garibaldians must have entirely misunderstood the condition of insurgent Crete, if they really thought that the Cretans were not in earnest. Never were insurgents more terribly in earnest, and never were men called upon to bear greater hardships in defence of their opinions. I shall not trespass on your• space with minute criticism of such strange and reckless statements as that there were 8,000 volunteers in Crete before the Arkadi began her voyages. I only wish to testify to the fact that the people who are now fighting and dying for their freedom under the bright summer sky of Spakia, are worthy of better allies than the discontented Italians who left them because Crete was not what they had imagined.—