Show GREEKS AS DEGENERATES l I English Traveler on the Mode Inhabitants habitants of Hellas I Is a beautiful corner of the earth where every prospect pleases and only man disappointing He falls pain fully below his surroundings and his name The men do not inspire confidence dence especially when one meets them on the lonely hillside They may be all right but appearances are aii them says the St James Gazette They are tall and swarthy but without the fine features characteristic of Arabs and Moors or the dignified demeanor common to most orientals And then their dress I often find English people peo-ple refusing to believe that the Greeks really wear those incredible petticoats I but It is a fact They are much more generally worn In Greece than kilts are Iin the highlands and much more absurd ab-surd They consist of a fabulous number num-ber of yards of some white material which looks like highly starched muslin mus-lin standing out stiff and barely reaching to the knee exactly like a ballet dancers skirt The lower part of the leg Is swarthed in swathed bandages on the body is worn a short jacket a briiant in color and material a possible pos-sible and on the head a bright cap with a long tassel The whole is an exact presentation of the stage bandit with all his tawdry finery and melodramatic melo-dramatic suggestion and when one encounters such a figure on the countryside coun-tryside armed with a rifle that looks I like a legacy frcm the Saracens with I various knives and pistols one feels transported Into a barbaric age when human life was cheap and murder the main business o the day To be honest I was never molested by any of these gentlemen but one day I had the greatest difficulty in persuading persuad-ing a companion of mine to turn his back on a pair of them He was convinced con-vinced that they Would plug us from behind so sinister was their appearance I appear-ance The fisherfolk are a shade or two worse than the rustics and the town rabble more villainous than either Of course the educated people I wear ordinary European dress or uniform I uni-form As for the ladles doubtless they are charming bur la for the beauty I of Helen O Phryne of Aspasia and the other legendary heroines Looks area I are-a matter of taste and I have neither the wish nor the right to say anything rude but I anybody goes to Greece expecting to see in the face of man or I woman anything remotely resembling what we hpe learned from sculpture to call the reek type he will most I certainly be disappointed The common com-mon people appeased to me neither clean nor industrious I and I have rea I son to know that many are rank thieves But all the same they are I not wholly degenerate Did not a Greek win the longdistance event at i the Olympian games And in one thing at least they excel They are the I finest divers in the world and exclusively I ex-clusively engaged for the most arduous ardu-ous and dangerous kind of sponge fishing the headquarters of which is r on the Island of Aeglna pronounced Ehgina with the lS 1 short Classical scholars please notice I The degeneracy of the modern Greek is shown in nothing more plainly than I In the wretched appearance and tco e I abounding dirt I of his towns Athens r f Bourse Is I a city apart where classical classi-cal association swallows up all other Hipiecsions And Corfu presents a pleasant aspect on a superficial survey The harbor the citadel and the seafront sea-front are very charming and the hotels well enough but the tack quarters and slums into which few travelers venture I to penetrate are nothing less than pestilential Yet Corfu Is a showplace the Brighton of Greece In all the Ionian Islands It is melancholy to seethe I see-the signs of an absolute arrest of progress pro-gress followed by decay which fell I I upon the people from the moment when he stimulus of British civilization was removed There are the halffinished houses showing how enterprise and progress were at work left as they stood and rotting away Patras the commercial capital Is mean and squalid without a redeeming feature The disorder of Greek finances needs no explanation to anyone who has seen the Greek at home He Is good for an I empty and vainglorious excitement but of real effort and progress of anything any-thing approaching to western civilization I civiliza-tion he seems quite Incapable when left to himself |