THE ATTEMPT ON THE KING OF GREECE.
ItPLOT to assassinate the King of Greece has been . actually carried out, which is not usual with such plots, and has failed, which is usual, in the execution. The circumstances are dramatic, and rather tend to confirm the old and discredited theory that some sort of " divinity " or special Providence does hedge Kings from harm. Two villains, both instructed in the use of the rifle, were ordered by a Secret Committee to execute the King, and as both considered him guilty of treason to the country in not defeating the Turk, both accepted the order with goodwill. They had every chance, possessing a dynamite bomb, two good rifles, sufficient cartridges, and an accurate knowledge of the King's movements. On Saturday they met his Majesty driving uphill without escort on a lonely road three miles from Athens, they fired six shots at him from a distance of only" a few paces," and they hurt nobody except a valet who was seated by the coachman on the box. The dynamite bomb was left in a field, and the rifles proved ineffective. The bullets of the elder man, who had been a sergeant of artillery, and who is described as a thorough-paced ruffian, seem to have been deflected by the valet's leg and the carriage-lamp; while the younger and less hardened man, seeing the King stand up in front of his daughter and shake his stick at him, lost his nerve altogether and fired too high. The coachman, who seems to have been paralysed at first either by fear or curiosity —he was not an accomplice, or there would have been no bomb—recovered himself after the sixth shot ; and as the horses sprang into a gallop, the assassins were seen skulking away in the direction of Mount Hy mettus. They were both arrested, both confessed, and both will probably be executed. So far as appears, both were Greeks, and. both had been deceived by raging newspapers into a belief that the King was personally responsible for the defeat of his Army and the overthrow of all Greek hopes. They had no devotion to the next heir, they had no hope of a Republic, they suffered from no personal grievance, but they just resolved to kill the King as the French resolved to dismiss Jules Ferry, out of vengeance because soldiers whom he did not command had been defeated in the field. As usual, the effect of their failure has been to increase the popularity of the King ; and they will know, as they ascend the scaffold, that their attempt at vengeance has secured for their intended victim a pardon even from the disaffected. King George, it is clear, showed self-command, as Kings usually do, and the mob in every country adores courage,--cynics say because it has none itself, but more probably because, of all the virtues, bravery is the one which the vulgar most easily understand. They often misread benevolence, and hardly comprehend self-devotion, but about pluck they have an instinct which seems never to desert them, and to be almost incapable of error.
The incident brings into startling relief one of the least intelligible facts of history, the personal immunity of Sovereigns. They are always in danger. Tens of thousands hate them, thousands attribute to them per- sonal losses either of fame or relatives or property, hundreds are mad with a homicidal mania which in an extraordinary proportion of cases directs itself against the visible chief of the State. Even in our own country, where Queen Victoria enjoys a regard which in whole sections of society rises to a kind of worship, those who are charged with the safety of the Queen find it necessary to take precautions, sometimes very stringent indeed, against the attacks of semi-lunatics. Railway-stations in particular are guarded against them with a vigilance which sometimes irritates the unthinking, who cannot imagine why, when everybody is loyal, everybody should not be trusted to behave loyally. The reason is that there are always a hundred men and women in England who believe that the throne belongs to them, or would. belong if "Victoria" died, or that they are marks for the Queen's hostility, or that they have received orders from above to execute the vengeance of heaven on one who, being the Sovereign, could of course remove the grievances which have driven them mad. One would expect, considering the immensity of the interests which often hang upon a Sovereign's life, the passionate hatreds which, if he actually rules, he is almost bound to excite, and the terrible way in which the regard of the ex- citable often concentrates itself upon the throne, that liability to assassination would be one of the main objections to the Monarchical system. The ordinary liability to death ought to be multiplied by ten at least. As a matter of fact, it is not multiplied at all. Even the Emperors of Rome, who were Sovereigns in a sense which has hardly been known even in the East, who stood apart from mankind as if they had been superhuman, and who rarely died natural deaths, were seldom assassi- nated in the modern sense until they had been overthrown. Among the European Monarchs of history only Henry IV. of France, Gustavus III. of Sweden, and Alexander II. of Russia have been successfully attacked, for the death of Czar Paul, though it was violent, and actually carried out by one man, hardly comes within a true definition of the word assassination. He was rather a madman strangled by keepers, who thought his manias too dangerous to be borne. Scores of attempts have been recorded, and scores more have been concealed, but still the Sovereigns have escaped as frequently, and as surprisingly, as Generals in the field, whose Staff officers drop by their sides while they survive. No Pope in all that endless line has died by an assassin's hand. When Presidents are assailed they die, but Kings do not. The truth seems to be that Kings are wonderfully well guarded by an organisation whose busi- ness it is to discover the attempt before it is made, that the magical quality of the kingship, which certainly exists, however it may be explained, daunts even resolute assassins—this, old Southerners say, was often the best protection of the master against his slaves —and that nothing shakes even steely nerves like the prospect of popular hate. Roman patricians were not braver than the nobles of Louis XVI., and those nobles fled like hares to the frontier when the populace really rose.
There seems to be no particular reason why assassins should usually be fools utterly misconceiving the whole situation round them, but they usually are, and the assailants of King George were no exceptions. Their charge against the King was preposterous. As to the past, it is certain that if ever a King wished to defeat his enemies the King of Greece wished to defeat the Turks. He would have obtained more territory, more revenue, more power, and a distinguished place in the history, not only of Greece, but of the whole of Eastern Europe. As to the future, he is the best bulwark between his subjects and utter ruin. The single thing that protects them is the fondness felt for him by the Danish Court, which, as it happens, has the power of moving the Government of Russia to serious efforts on his behalf, and is not entirely without weight even in the counsels of Great Britain. His murder, besides irritating all the dynasties, which as against assassins entertain a unanimous and fierce opinion, would have certainly cost Greece Crete, and might have cost her Thessaly and the Seven Islands besides, even if it had not cost her her independence. Even the attempt may injure her terribly, for it has struck into the mind of the Sultan a panic which is sure to display itself in suspicion of his Greek subjects—and Abd-ul-Hamid in suspicious mood is a most terrible person—and has deepened the general im- pression that the Greeks are an ineffective and unreasoning people whom it is useless to help or deliver. The impres- sion is most unfair, as indeed is the impression produced by all that Greece has done during the last twelve months ; but the world jumps at conclusions, hates— because it dreads—assassins, and is very seldom either tolerant or just towards the unsuccessful. The escape of the King is a mercy for Greece, but she has been most unfortunate. It was just when Greece needed the sympathy of all Europe that an Emperor who disliked her was ruling Germany. It is just when she needs the belief of Europe that she is resigned, repentant, and inclined to be orderly, that a crime is committed within her boundary which intensifies the idea of her instability and subjection to mob opinion. That is horribly bad luck, and, as the Indian Empire is just now feeling, a S. tate may suffer from bad luck like an individual, and is apt to suffer longer.
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