GREECE OE TODAY 



329 



home to break their long fast, each house- 

 hold having sacrificed a lamb for the 

 paschal roasting. For days before Easter 

 the roads leading into Athens are white 

 with the flocks being driven for the festal 

 sacrifice. 



GREEK LABOR WELL ORGANIZED 



Greek labor, though extremely well 

 organized, is meagerly paid, day laborers 

 receiving no more than three drachmae 

 a day (a little less than 60 cents), while 

 skilled labor in the trades will average 

 hardly more than twice as much. Car- 

 penters, masons, and mechanics gener- 

 ally use the most primitive of imple- 

 ments ; yet the amount of work which 

 they perform in a day is astonishing. 

 The guilds, or corporations, which cor- 

 respond to our labor unions, embrace 

 practically all the manual pursuits, and 

 one of the most striking scenes that I re- 

 call from my Athens days was the won- 

 derful demonstration of the organized 

 euilds, 50,000 strong, who marched 

 through the streets of the city in the 

 early autumn of 1909 and presented to 

 their King a petition embodying the de- 

 mands of the revolutionary leaders of 

 that year. 



That revolution for a time threatened 

 the throne. Its leaders sent the Crown 

 Prince into virtual exile, where he re- 

 mained for more than a year; and the 

 King himself during that period was 

 often of two minds regarding abdication. 



But with the coming of Venizelos from 

 Crete, to extricate the Military League 

 from the parliamentary pitfalls into 

 which it had tumbled, began the rejuve- 

 nation of modern Greece. Constantine 

 was summoned home and replaced at the 

 head of the army ; military reorganiza- 

 tion was taken up in all branches of the 

 service ; the ministries, too, were purged ; 

 the constitution was rewritten, and the 

 country set in the path which led to the 

 glories of the Balkan wars. The dread- 

 ful assassination at Saloniki cast only a 

 brief shadow across the sun of Hellenic 

 promise, and the recent general elections 

 have shown that the Greek mind is now 

 fairly freed from the shackles of jeal- 

 ousy, prejudice, and insubordination 

 which so long have bound it. 



Thus Greece of today looks both to the 

 past and to the future. From the ages 

 that are gone she has derived a splendid 

 tradition. From the days that are to 

 come she doubtless will take new glories. 



ARMENIA AND THE ARMENIANS 



By Hester Donaldson Jenkins 



Author oe "Bulgaria and its Women," in the National Geographic Magazine, 



April, 191 5 



A RMENIA is a word that has widely 

 l\ different connotation for different 

 X Jl peoples. To us Americans it 

 means a vague territory somewhere in 

 Asia Minor ; to the makers of modern 

 maps it means nothing — there is no such 

 place ; to the Turks of a few years ago 

 it was a forbidden name, smacking of 

 treason and likely to bring up that buga- 

 boo "nationalism," than which Abdul 

 Hamid II feared nothing more, unless it 

 were "liberty" ; but to nearly two mil- 

 lions of Russian, Persian, and Turkish 

 subjects it is a word filled with emotion, 



one that sends the hand to the heart and 

 calls up both pride and sorrow. 



Armenia is not easy to bound at any 

 period of history, but, roughly, it is the 

 tableland extending from the Caspian 

 Sea nearly to the Mediterranean Sea. 

 Its limits have become utterly fluid; the 

 waves of conquering Persians and Byzan- 

 tines, Arabs and Romans, Russians and 

 Turks have flowed and ebbed on its 

 shores until all lines are obliterated. Ar- 

 menia now is not a State, not even a 

 geographic unity, but merely a term for 

 the region where the Armenians live (see 

 map, page 359). 



