I find in the record I made at the time the following passage:-- "The tactics of Greece were of a nature to make the chances of Crete more precarious than they need have been.

The policy of Crete for Greece, rather than Crete for her own good, made confusion and jealousy in the conduct of the war much greater than they need have been.

What the Cretans wanted was a good leader, arms, and bread.
Greece sent them rival chiefs without subordination, a rabble of volunteers, who quarreled with the islanders, and weakened the cause by deserting it as soon as they felt the strain of danger and hardship; and if, after the first campaign, they were more wise in enrolling men to go to Crete, they still allowed the jealousies and hostilities of the leaders to go unchecked by any of those measures which were in their power.

But the radical fault of the Hellenes was that they compromised the question by the introduction of the question of annexation, and forced it into the field of international interests, disguising the real causes and justification of the movement, and making it impossible for England consistently with her declared policy to entertain the complaints of the Cretans without also admitting the pretensions of the Hellenes.

If the latter had not intruded their interests into the discussion, the former might have been heard; but from the moment in which annexation to Greece became the alternative of the reconquest of Crete, the English government could clearly not interfere against the Porte without upsetting its own work; and, if in some minor respects, especially the question of the principality, it had been more kind to Crete, no one could have found fault with a policy which was in its general tendency obligatory on it." This opinion, formed and expressed while all my sympathies were with the Greek government, and in complete knowledge of all that it was doing for the Cretans, remains as the mildest criticism I can make on the policy of Athens.