THE GRETAN QUESTION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2583, 18 August 1909, Page 5

THE GRETAN QUESTION.

DEFIANT ACTION OF CRETAN ADMINISTRATION OuMMITTEE. TAKES AN OATH OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE KING OF GREECE. United Presb Copyright. (Received August 17, 10.5 p.m.) LONDON, August 17. The Cretan Administration Committee took an oath of allegiance to King Georg© of Greece before the bishop. The official gazette of Canea has published a consular note intimating the decision of the Powers concerning the removal of the Greek flag from the fortress.

The objections entertained by the Turks to the annexation, of Crete by Greece are admirably indicated in the following comments on the Cretan problem, which we extract from the “Pall Mall Gazette”: —“The geographical conditions that obtain in this region show that Crete has a strategical importance that could not fail to make it the scene and centre of an international problem. Thrown across the southern approaches to waters of vast historic and commercial interest, like a detached breakwater enclosing a harbor, it gains command over the means of access to Turkish and Greek ports, for the direct route to Athens, Smyrna, Salonika, Constantinople, and the Black Sea- from all the European markets of importance passes between its western extremity and the Morea, and this entrance is capable of being controlled by Suda Bay, one of the finest harbors in European waters. Situated and equipped as it is, Crete forms an essential part of the outworks in the defences of Constantinople from attack by sea, as it forms the most advantageous position from which an attack on the Ottoman capital by sea can he made. The union of Crete with Greece means the placing of this advantage in the hands of people who will be the most disposed to use it to the discomfiture of the Turks, since it will give a fresh stimulus to PanHellenism that cannot fail to revive in the Greeks ambitions directed towards the creation of a new Byzantium. Moreover, from the endeavor to so construct one political unit out of two, to make o? the kingdom of Greece a united kingdom, there will be set up in Greece those conditions most calculated to give rise to sea-power. In like manner as the union of Great Britain and Ireland is the root explanation of British maritime advancement, so the union of Greece and Crete, from the need it will present of a bond of union, will prove the means most directed to promote Greek maritime advancement. Thus the Turks, in relinquishing their hold upon the island, not only give to Greece opportunities of recovering her lost possessions on the Bosphorus, but they furnish her with a natural stimulus to create the means to utilise them.”