THE ISLAND OF ROSES.*
THE question of the Dodecanese, one of the many nationalist problems that troubled the peacemakers in Paris, has caused Mr. Volonakis, a competent scholar, to write the history of his native islands and to describe their present condition in a volume which is rendered additionally attractive by its many illustrations and maps. The name of Dodecanese was originally given to twelve islands (including Naxos) of the Cyclades, so called because they circle around Delos. But in modem usage the Dodecanese is the group of twelve islands, with Rhodes at the head, which lie off the south-western corner of Asia Minor ; the ancients regarded these as belonging to the Sporades, the islands sown, as it were, along the Asiatic coast from Samos to Rhodes. The group includes, besides the " Isle of Roses," Patmos, where they show the cave in which St. John saw his vision of the Revelation; Cos, where the famous Coan stuffs were woven for fashionable Roman ladies; Astypalsia ; Carpathos, where Proteus reigned, and lesser islands. They are insignificant in area. Rhodes, the largest, is about twice the size of Anglesea, or about the same size as Hertfordshire. Cos is roughly equal to Anglesea. Patmos is smaller than Guernsey. But these tiny islands, as Mr. Volonakis shows, have played a very con- siderable part in history. Rhodes, owing to its geographical position at the entrance to the Aegean, and to the energy of its Greek inhabitants, was from the earliest times an important mart of Asiatic trade. The primitive voyagers, hugging the coast in their frail barques, naturally put into Rhodes for shelter from the sudden storms that sweep down from the mountains. Moreover, the island was a safer place for merchants than the coast-towns of the mainland, which in early times could not defend themselves against Hittite and other raiders from the interior. Bombay and Zanzibar, as island depots off an un- friendly coast, owed their prosperity in more recent times to the same causes which made Rhodes rich at the dawn of history. The commerce of Rhodes was at first divided among three cities, Lindos, Ialysos and Cameiros, but in 407 B.o., towards the end of the Peloponnesian War, the 'three combined to found a new and common capital, called Rhodes. It was laid out by the architect Hippodamus, who planned the Piraeus for Athens, • The Island of Roses and her Eleven Starers ; the Dodeennew kartt the Earliest Time down to the Present Day. By Michael D. Volonalrie. With an Introduction by J. L. Byres. London : Macmillan. [40e. net.]
and it was as strongly -fortified as ingenuity could devise. Strabo knew of no city equal to it. The enterprise of the Rhodians was justified by the event. They quickly became a power in the Mediterranean, and their stout walls in 305-4 B.c. foiled all the efforts of Demetrius to subject the oity to the semi- Oriental despotism of his father, Antigonus of Syria. The Rhodians were shreqed enough to ally themselves with Rome, and though. Cassius, during the civil war following Caesar's murder, pillaged Rhodes to please the greedy Senators, the city quickly recovered its commercial importance. Under the
Byzantines Rhodes had to bear the brunt of attacks from East and West alike : Saracen pirates and Latin adventurers inces- santly raided the Dodecanese. Ultimately, the Knights of St. John, who had been driven from the Holy Land, seized the island in 1309, and held it for two centuries. They foiled the Turks at the siege of 1480, but in 1522, when Suleiman brought overwhelming forces to the island, the Knights were compelled, after a long and heroic struggle, to abandon the place. The Dodecanese was then forgotten by Europe until the Italians occupied the islands in 1912 during their brief war with Turkey.
Professor Myres rightly emphasizes in his eloquent introduc- tion the interest of the author's account of the local institutions of the islands :-
"Unmodified in any vital point by Italian military adminis• tration, and guaranteed by initial proclamation of the Italian Government when these islands were occupied during its Turkish War ; undamaged by Turkish misrule during tho nineteenth century, and guaranteed already by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1522, in a formal act of liberation from overlordship of the Knights of Rhodes ; traditional already when those Knights imposed their protectorate ; and conforming in their structure and political traditions not only with the municipalized adminis- tration common to Greek communities under Roman rule, but with the normal practice of autonomous cities in the Hellen- istic age, these little communities would appear to have a longer political pedigree of continuous corporate life than any but a few similar survivals, at Castellorizo for example, and some other islands of the archipelago ; so that it is possible here to watch, in their daily functions, the actual working of a Greek city state,' with its intense local patriotism, its direct participa- tion of the citizen-body in political affairs, its annually elected executive, its keen party feuds, and all the risks, no less than the benefits, which historians are wont to ascribe to this typo of constitution."
We may account for these survivals if we remember that the old Turkish rule, though barbarous, was lethargic and devoid
of system. If the Christians paid their taxes and were reasonably peaceful, they were left to manage their own domestic affairs. The Young Turks have changed all that. They are just as cruel as their forefathers, and their cruelty is the more keenly felt because it has a German thoroughness. The islanders welcomed the Turkish Revolution of 1908, but they were speedily undeceived. The Young Turks cancelled their age-long privi- leges, imposed conscription and enforced the use of Turkish as the sole official language. Before the Turks had time to massacre the islanders, the Italian war broke out and the group was occupied by Italian troops, with the willing help of the Greeks. By the Treaty of Sevres, Italy undertook to transfer to Greece all the smaller islands, and, after an interval of fifteen years, to let the Rhodians decide between Italy and Greece " in the event of England deciding to give Cyprus to Greece."
But the Treaty of Sevres is now in the melting-pot, and Italy seems disinclined to give up any part of the Dodecanese. The islanders are, however, assured of protection against the Turks, and they will derive great material benefits from the Italian occupation.
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