31137 - Petty politicking delays

N. Lygeros
Translated from Greek by Athina Kehagias

“Public opinion is, that we ought to be happy if we were not to lose anything.
Besides, whatever we might have gained wouldn’t be proportionate to the catastrophe inflicted upon the land.
Chania the 25th of July , 1889
Regards
Your friend
El. K. Venizelos “.

This is the epilogue of Venizelos’s letter to his political friends in order to advise them regarding the developments of the movement.
And even since then we can see, that he considered that it’s not the right time for the liberation of Crete from the Turkish yoke, and that he states that the benefits of the revolution aren’t comparable to the cost inflicted upon the land.
And while the Governor General was replaced by Riza Pasha who was trying to disorientate the movement though sending a delegation of both Christians and Muslims to Constantinople, Venizelos downgrades the gains of the 1889 movement.
Likewise in the case of the 1895 revolution under the leading political personage of Manousos Koundouros (1860-1933), he opposed it, as he did consider that these moves shouldn’t have occurred that early.
With these decisions we’ve ended up waiting up until WWI in order to actually see the island liberated.