A LITTLE BARREN KINGDOM.
By H. W. H.
THE little kingdom of Greece embraces a territory of about 25,000 square miles, and has a population of a little more than 2,000,000 Greeks and Albanians. Scotland has about the same territory and almost twice as many people. Switzerland has a third less territory and a third more people. Belgium and Holland taken together have about the same territory as Greece and five times as many people. As for wealth, Greece is proverbially the poorest country in Europe. Her rugged mountains and barren shores are hardly fit in many places for the scantiest vegetation; she has no rivers with fertile banks; her commerce is still undeveloped, and she is cut off from Europe by the treacherous Adriatic and by the inhospitable strip of Turkish territory that promises to keep her for an indefinite future from opening her railway connection with the North. In Greece to-day it is the universal custom to speak of "going to Europe" just as Americans do with the stormy Atlantic between New York and Liverpool. Add to all this the fact that this little barren kingdom of 2,000,000 souls has a public debt of $80,000,000, and supports an army as large as that of the United States. The taxes are so high that the island of Crete, now under Turkish rule, would nearly double its ratio of taxation should it enter the kingdom of Greece. But in spite of all this discouragement Athens to-day is a busy hive of educational institutions, and in all the country villages there are thrifty schools, a compulsory law being carried out with more vigor year after year. Ten years ago the statistics for illiteracy in Greece were ahead of those of Italy to-day, and these ten years have revolutionized educational affairs in Greece.—H. W. H., in New York Post.