“The despondency that seized the Greek world the day after the defeat of 1897 was such that the arrival of the new century went unnoticed. Nonetheless, only the duration and intensity of this despondency were unprecedented. With the establishment of the Greek state, the Greeks engaged for decades in crafting a very gloomy self-image, which was not automatically negated by the predictable optimism of their nascent national identity: faith in its antiquity, first, and then faith in the future of the race, arrogance towards neighboring nations and 'ethnarchs', and the occasional unrestrained national delirium.

The subsequent developments that marked the fate of the Balkans (Young Turk Revolution, Balkan Wars) or specifically of Greece (Goudi) favored a generous reading of the Greek defeat as the beginning of a new start. And even without these events, the period of mourning had to come to an end at some point.”

[Excerpt from the text of the prologue]