...And Dreams Are Dreams

Even the olive trees were killed by the frost. My great-grandfather’s was the last sailing ship to enter the port of Piraeus. Piraeus was small then, with very few houses. But on that day it was deserted. Outside, the ships of the English fleet had started the blockade. Just when we thought that the following year, 1850, we’d finally get going, a new life would begin, commerce and the economy would get back on their feet. The banker Stavrou wrote: ‘ There are three things missing from Greece: quiet, order, and money. If we wish to be useful, we should bring money. ’ At the time, in the spring of 1849, the great Jewish banker Rothschild was visiting our country. In order to flatter him, Stavrou, the director of the Bank of Greece, had the police ban the traditional burning of the effigy of Judas on Good Thursday. The Christians used to burn Judas out of love for Jesus, because he had betrayed Him. But this Judas who had betrayed the Messiah was the Savior of the Jews. Stavrou was counting on a hefty loan from the international capital that Rothschild represented, and he didn’t want to hurt the banker’s feelings.

“Then the English Secret Service concocted a diabolical plan: they sent their men in the guise of

‘indignant citizens,’ who were supposedly upset by this ban, to storm the house of a Jew, Don Pacifico, who had been born in Gibraltar, was of Spanish descent, and had been a Portuguese citizen before moving to Athens, but who was actually a British national. For the pillaging of his home, Don Pacifico demanded of the Greek state the disproportionately high compensation of 886,739 drachmas, and this demand was fully supported by Lyons, the British ambassador in Athens. The Greek state referred the case to the courts, but Lyons had the British prime minister ask for the opinion of the Council of Jurists of the English Crown. That way, the English had the pretext in their pocket and were simply waiting for the right moment to broach the delicate subject of the

‘pending compensation’ of their national.”

“It was the English again, Grandfather?”

“Them again, my boy. My great-grandfather

wrote: ‘Whatever I write down here is the truth. The same way two plus two makes four. England wanted an Anglicized Greece, not a Russified one. Moreover, being selfish and most violent in her decisions, she will say one day, gun in hand: “Rather than Greece going to the Russians, we would prefer it went to the Turks.”

Those are the frightful politics of England of today. Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking she has charitable feelings toward us.’ At that time, the English wanted to have one of their own in the government, a certain Mavrokordatos, whom Otto had sent to Paris as an ambassador, just to get rid of him.

“In the same way, one hundred years later, in 1945, they still wanted to have one of their own involved in the affairs of the country. So they sent General Scobie, just as in 1849 they had sent General Parker and his ships.

“‘It is impossible for a sailboat to leave Piraeus.

An English battleship has been positioned in the middle of the section of the port occupied by the foreigners, opposite the lighthouses, and it does not allow any vessel to exit. At Spetses, the English are still seizing the vessels of civilians, and at Patras they have seized more and transported them to the Ionian Islands.”’

The captain of 1850, grandfather of the old captain of today, suffered as he saw his small homeland under seige. Of course, Piraeus was not the only port. There were Syros, Patras, and Nafplion. But Piraeus was the capital’s port, and when the capital is under seige, so is the entire country.

It was only later, much later, that the grandson, who was now the grandfather, found out what the course of events had been. After the death of the Francophile Kolletis, in 1847, the appetite of the English was whetted again. But the general climate of the period was not favorable. So they waited for the revolution of 1848, which had shaken Europe, to die down before they took action.