What insanity corrupted the British after the Great War? It was commercial greed and debilitating socialism, united by the mortar of false pride. I have seen Empires collapse across the world, and it is always at the hand of the Red and the Jew. ‘Look,’ cries Harold Wilson, ‘you are rich. You can swing. You can join the Common Market. You can give up your homes to Pakistanis.’ I have heard him on the television. ‘You must compete,’ he says, ‘like the Americans. You must borrow more money. You must be better than your neighbour.’ And when the worker refuses to work, because his job is threatened by a black, this great Socialist, Champion of the Mob, turns on the worker. He is unpatriotic if he asks for more money. He is reminded of the Spirit of Dunkirk, of his national honour and pride. But Harold Wilson has said that honour and pride are old-hat. Money is of paramount importance. And they come into my shop with their posters to tell me the Labour Party looks after my interests! It looks after nobody save financiers and party members. It is no different to Moscow. Stalin destroyed a nation, then called on the ghosts of great nationalists, on those he had himself murdered, to rally the people against Hitler. Honour means nothing to them. It is only a bell to which people salivate; but when it rings, nobody answers. The people yearn desperately for the restoration of their pride and their religion. It returned briefly to Greece, then the Reds, the Jews, the Mapmakers arrived to steal it away again, purchasing it for forged currency, grinning at it, mocking it as if at Christ Himself. It was Socialists, not Tories, who celebrated Pragmatism over Honour. National pride was sold as a job lot during the Swinging Sixties. It was sold in Carnaby Street and Brussels, on Union Jack underpants and Lord Kitchener carrier-bags. It left the country on umbrellas, baskets, ashtrays and plaster guardsmen carried back to America and Japan. When they came to call upon it, in their need, there was nothing left. National Pride was a melted ice cream on the steps of the Tate Gallery, a broken trinket on the floor of an Air Singapore jumbo, a comic bowler hat sported by a Saudi schoolboy. The Silver Jubilee will be a miserable remnant sale. Scraps of honour will be hawked by Asian ragamuffins, like false holy relics, to drunken foreign mobs along Pall Mall. For if Britain betrayed her past when she betrayed the Greeks, she also betrayed her future, the greatest folly of all. They sent Greeks naked into battle. The British watched Russians run from Ukraine and Georgia and did nothing. They watched Polish cavalry flood into Galicia and Moldavia, grabbing lands coveted for centuries. They watched Socialists march through the streets of Munich and Hamburg. Helplessly they threw up their hands as Gandhi hurled his dissident armies against the Crown, as Irish Republican gangsters blew up police barracks and bombed post offices. And fastidious America drew away from the chaos she had helped create. She said she was disgusted with Europe and elected a President who turned his back on his own heritage, driving his nation towards the dream which almost destroyed it.
They gave women the vote, listened to Nellie Melba on their radios and thought they saw the road to Utopia. Here and there pockets of farsighted men tried to stem the tide. Admiral Horthy fought against Communism. Hungarians knew what it was to fear the Turk. Still the Great Powers laughed in putrid complacency while signing papers sentencing whole countries of Christians to tyranny and death. But the single, most powerful symbol of this betrayal remained their refusal to support Greek against Turk. Christ was stripped naked. He was flogged. He was recrucified. Not by the Pharisees, however. It was the Romans, the very people He sought to save, who betrayed Him. Jehovah was a Jew, but Christ was a Greek. Let the Jews have their drooling Jehovah, their Judah Ben Hur, their Jonah, Jeremia, Joshua and their Judas. We shall keep Jesus. We shall defend Him. Kyrios, the Lord! The Cross is Greek. Byzantium is our capital. Wann werden wir Zurück sein? We shall take up our spears to drive forth the red-eyed wolf, the hot-tempered jackal and the gibbering ape! Our honour shall shine golden as the sun. We shall be radiant with our zeal and our courage; we shall be like Angels come to Earth, reclaiming the pride of Christendom, erecting the Cross at the centre of the world. Let no man try to injure me, for my shield is strong. It deflects all lies. I cannot be confused by their calumnies. They would turn me from my true path; they whisper about my blood. Mine is the blood of the Christian Cossack! No metal can pollute it. No metal shall pour its rust into my veins! I am mercury. I am silver. My stomach is strong. They tried to weaken me, praying over me when I was too small to resist. That quasi-Abraham! What did he mean by it? My father took his knife and cut me. In the name of Progress he branded me with the mark of Judas. But I have laughed at all my enemies. On clashing, silver wings I fly over their heads and resist the bodies of their whores. I escape their arrows as easily as their threats! My honour is whole. They shall not condemn me as they condemned the Greek.
I sat drinking with Captain Paparighopoulos and was soon unable to feel the pain in my back. From time to time one of his staff would run up to the carpet shop requiring orders. He would give them airily after a while, quite as drunk as I was. But a certain order seemed to have reference to me and towards evening, he gripped my shoulder, pointing towards the roof of the wool exchange. He chuckled, handing me his fieldglasses so I could see better.
They had strapped my prototype onto the wretched Hassan. Helplessly I watched them pour petrol into the engine, spin the propeller and send the boy screaming and wailing from the roof to his death. Captain Paparighopoulos was highly amused. ‘I wished to help you test the machine.’ I tried to tell him it needed expert handling, but he refused to listen. It had been Hassan’s chance, he said, to fly either to freedom or to Paradise.
The machine was smashed to pieces. Through the glasses I saw the boy’s twisted, bloody body twitching in the wreckage. He deserved no more, I suppose, for his part in tricking me, yet it was an unpleasant sight and has remained imprinted in my memory. A thoroughly wasted opportunity.
A day later I was borne back to Scutari, first in the armoured train, then in a Crossley car, with all honours. On the train a Greek colonel acted as my host, taking notes as I gave him my information. Count Siniutkin would be arrested, he promised; also those who worked with him, Turkish and foreigners both. The colonel had a bronzed genial face and a walrus moustache. He looked like a good-natured Georgian patriarch. He told me I should go to Athens. Greeks respected courage and learning. I wish I had listened more carefully. When the Greeks had conquered Turkey, he said, they would secure the Balkans and the Caucasus until they could easily challenge Trotski himself. My mother, he promised heavily, would be saved. I believed him. How was I to know that secret treaties in Whitehall and Washington already sealed the doom of Greece, supplying them with unkept promises with which to go against Zaharoff’s eighty-pounders? Hellenic youth was to be crucified on Turkish bayonets stamped ‘Made in France’, torn on barbed-wire twisted by Roman Catholic women in the factories of Turin. It was once said of Lord Palmerston that if an individual behaved as he made his nation behave, he would immediately be ostracised by Society. Palmerston reduced English politics to their crudest, most self-serving, short-sighted level, then compounded it all by making a Jew his successor! His shadow fell across the conference tables and condemned half of modern Europe to death. They thought it more important to squeeze a few more marks from Germany than to preserve the ideals for which their kinsmen had died.