...And Dreams Are Dreams

“History provides us with very little information of Kontostavlos’s actions in America. The rest is left to our imagination. But imagination is not enough. We do not have sufficient knowledge of the period to know what he would do. All we know is that he is a patriot and he is concerned for his homeland, which is in a state of revolt, and which is waiting for these ships to arrive at last so that the struggle may begin.

“First he goes to the American builders, who tell him that if they don’t get any more money they will auction off the two frigates they’ve already built. They are unyielding, but L’Allemand has given them the right to be so by ganging up with them.

“Kontostavlos is alone in New York. Emigration has not yet begun because there is no Greek state.

Emigration will start a few decades later, when this state, for which Kontostavlos is now fighting, will become independent under such conditions that it will force its inhabitants to seek a better future elsewhere, especially in America.

“Kontostavlos is unaware of this. And it is just as well, because if he had known about it, perhaps he would not have fought with the same courage that he did then, when, upon realizing he had fallen victim to a gang of London swindlers, who were eating away at the money so that England would later be entitled to ask for it back, he listened within himself to the cries and pleas of the brave men who were fighting for their homeland, giving their all for freedom, going into battle with regard to everything but their lives; he listened and he took heart.

“In order to understand the loneliness

Kontostavlos must have felt, we should remember that in 1824, Greece only existed on the map as a province of the great Ottoman Empire, and that in the minds of most Americans, there was only ancient Greece, cradle of civilization. In America at that time, there were no Greek American organizations, no Greek lobby to put pressure on Congress and the Senate. Kontostavlos was probably the first Greek who Sodart, the secretary for Marine Affairs; Henry Clay, the foreign secretary; and Noah Webster, the famous professor of law, had ever seen. As Colonel Benton said when Kontostavlos went to ask him for his help, ‘When I studied Homer, I never imagined that I would ever, in my lifetime, be of use to his descendants.’ He shed tears of joy because he was able to help. And he did help.

“So, without counting on the all-powerful Greek colony, on the archbishop of the Orthodox Church, on John Brademas or any other senators and politicians of Greek descent (which is the sole weapon that Greece has acquired since then, and which she only uses when the Turkish threat appears), Kontostavlos had an advantage over his modern-day equivalent, whether he is called an ambassador, a minister without portfolio, or a special envoy sent to negotiate military aid or the rent paid by United States military bases or the preserving of the 7:10 ratio of United States military aid to Greece and Turkey respectively. His advantage was not knowing in advance what the result of his efforts would be, of having the right to dream of an independent, strong, autonomous state, free of foreign guardianship, where those who fought in the revolution would become the leaders of the liberated nation.

While he understood, because he was an intelligent man, that absolute independence is difficult to achieve, he hoped nevertheless that the Greeks would succeed as much as possible, since the name of Capodistrias had already been mentioned by the foreign protecting powers. He hoped nevertheless that that great diplomat who had helped the czar to solve the hitherto unsolvable problems of Russia in Geneva would be able to solve the problems of little old Greece.

Kontostavlos hoped, the way those people at the end of World War I dreamed of a better world and fought for it with the self-sacrifice and courage of giants. The disappointment that came later in no way diminishes their glory. After all, that is the way the world goes forward: with its ignorance of what is to come.

Fortunately, this ignorance allows humankind the necessary margins for it to hope, for it to struggle to change the world. If everybody knew in advance what was to come, then not a leaf would move in the human forest. There would have been no Paris Commune, no October Revolution. Thus, armed with his ignorance of what it meant to create an independent Greek state, the same ignorance that kept Kolokotronis and Karaiskaki fighting in the trenches, Kontostavlos struggled and fought all alone.