A Greek Guest
Greece in Peace and War. By Demetrius Caclamanos. (Lund Hum- phries. 9s.) M. DEMETRIUS CACLAMANOS was a young journalist when, in I889, Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Greece and tried to " tip " the dignified
Professor Cawadias, who had shown him over the Acropolis, with a handful of gold sovereigns. He was Greek Minister in Russia when, in 1915, he heard from the lips of the Dowager Queen Olga of Greece another story of the Kaiser's peculiar mentality : how she was once called (" Olga! Olga! come quickly ; I think that I will soon come across a beautiful statue ") to watch him excavate from
the soil of his Corfu estate a statuette which she recognised as belonging to the local museum. The crown of M. Caclamanos's career was his long diplomatic mission to the Court of St. James.
He loved England as he loved no other country but Greece, and
when he retired from the diplomatic service he made England his home. The essays, letters, lectures and -poems reprinted in this book are the fruits of that retirement: otii haud immeriti fructus. In wit, in wisdom and in catholicity of scholarship, M. Caclamanos is in the tradition of Montaigne. Greece has given several great
diplomats to history, but none so deeply imbued with the humanities. The essay on " Thucydides and Venizelos " leaves one uncertain with which of the two M. .Caclamanos is better acquainted, Thucy-
dides, separated from our age by 2,500 years, or Venizelos, with whom he stood on terms of intimate personal friendship. There are essays on Byron and Rupert Brooke and the author who an delicately impales a mistake of Byron in modern Greek will doubtless forgive me if I charge him with misreading one line of Brooke's sonnet, "If I should die . ." in a translation which will be a lasting memorial of the living' Greek language. Of special interest are the historical essays. Personal experience, a shrewd judgement of men and a prodigious memory for facts make M. Caclamanos an ideal political commentator. What he has to say of the background of the Balkan collapse will interest many, and not least the Yugoslav statesmen whom we now entertain in England as honoured guests. The account of the Lausanne Con- ference, with its fascinating sidelights upon the character of the present Turkish President, fits into the pattern of modern Turkish history. The essay on Metaxas is a model of political moderation: a portrait and an estimate so fair and round that it would scarcel% be guessed to be the work of a man who was passionately opposed to Metaxas's political principles. Caclamanos has to perfection Montaigne's trick of concentrating a
world into an anecdote It is such a characteristic of his style that one may choose an example at random. "I was accompanying King George (the First, of Greece) at the inauguration of a new railway branch. The peasants surrounded his Majesty, cheering. The King chatted with them in his usual democratic way : Are you content? Are crops successful this year? " God be praised, King! '—the peasantry addressed his Majesty in Homeric fashion- ' Crops are excellent, but we want the rebuilding of the bridge near here.' 'The elections are forthcoming,' replied the King ; 'elect me as your Deputy to the Chamber and I promise you that the bridge shall be rebuilt at once.' " You may write a book on the Greek countryside and never get nearer the heart of things (includ- ing, notice, even the classical echo!) than M. Caclamanos in these few words.
My only quarrel is with the title of the book which does not fairly represent the contents. "Collected Papers of Demetrius Caclamanos " would have been good enough for a more fastidious
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