CRETAN PERSISTENCY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—As I ventured to maintain that the Cretans were in terrible earnest half a year ago, when their submission was being daily an- nounced, and as the war still continues to desolate unhappy Crete, let me ask space for a few words upon their brave persistency. We may grant that the saving o4women and children by Christian frigates and the known sympathy of foreign powers have contributed to give the Cretans courage—without some such relief and some such sympathy it would have been a miracle that they should con- tinue to defy the Sultan's large forces—but, with every allowance for the political embarrassment of Turkey, the latter part of 1867 has witnessed a gallant feat of arms in Crete. Nothing has hindered Omar Pasha from killing or making prisoner each individual insurgent save the keen eyes and steady fingers of the insurgents themselves. Who has watched the mountain passes, shot down enterprising Turks, and borne privations of all sorts in the.cause of freedom? Who has been hoping against hope, and fighting the bitter struggle to the end, but the people most concerned ? It is idle to talk of " foreign sympathy " or of " diplomatic pressure," when the question has been open to a settlement by force of rifles and bayonets for almost all the time which Turkey has squandered. Even during the farce of an armistice, got up to amuse Western Europe, and during the still stronger farce of a parliament of Turks and prisoners addressed by the Grand Vizier, there has been constant skirmishing. Why has not Korakas or Hadji Michalis been brought to grace the parliamentary triumph at Canes ? Is it because the chiefs who repulse or cut to pieces some detachment of Mohammedan troops about once a week are not worth arresting? The reports of December, 1867, show that battles are being fought over the same ground which has again and again been drenched with patriot blood, and that the old year will pass away with Crete still struggling for her rights and Turkey still wasting her
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