A vigorous, charming, and idiosyncratic man, a prominent member of the elite, a diplomat, a hero of a national liberation struggle (the Macedonian), a politician, an intellectual, Ion Dragoumis is among the leaders of anti-Venizelism during the National Division.

He was murdered by Venizelists the day after the assassination attempt on Eleftherios Venizelos in Paris. This particular biography attempts to present the thoughts of the politician without the various ideological distortions and perversions that prevail, outside of a certain romanticism that surrounds it. Ion Dragoumis remains the first Greek intellectual of such caliber who seriously and elaborately posed the great question: how can a small nation of the Old Continent become and be an equal interlocutor with the European centers.

Thanks to Mazi's study, Ion Dragoumis lives once again. Mainly, however, I believe he is restored among the major Greek intellectuals of the early 20th century, beyond the myths, whether of his canonization or his condemnation to the black darkness of oblivion. For the figures and their worldviews can certainly be politically instrumentalized at will, from one side or the other, within the free market of ideas, but one of the duties of calm historiography is to strive to bring them back to us in the relativity of the time in which they lived and thought.

From the foreword by Dimitris Sotiropoulos