When Greece said ‘No’ and played its part in saving democracy

The Greek flag flies beside the European flag and the flag of the Ecumenical Patriarchate at Arkadi Monastery in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

Today is Ohi Day or Oxi Day (Επέτειος του «'Οχι»), and it is celebrated throughout Greece and Cyprus and by Greek communities around the world on 28 October each year.

Ohi Day commemorates the day the Greek Prime minister Ioannis Metaxas rejected the ultimatum from the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on 28 October 1940. This day also recalls the Greek counter-attack against invading Italian forces in the mountains of Pindus during World War II, and he Greek Resistance during the occupying Italians and Germans.

Mussolini’s ultimatum was presented to Metaxas by the Italian ambassador to Greece, Emanuele Grazzi, around 3 a.m. on the morning of 28 October 1940.

Mussolini demanded Greece would allow Axis forces to enter Greek territory and occupy certain unnamed strategic locations – or face war. It is said Metaxas replied with a one-word laconic response: Όχι (No!).

Despite popular aside, the actual reply was in French: ‘Alors, c’est la guerre!’ (‘Then it is war!’)

In an immediate response to Metaxas’s ‘No’, Italian troops based in Albania attacked the Greek border two hours later at 5.30 a.m. That ‘No!’ brought Greece into World War II on the side of the Allies. Indeed, for a period, Greece was Britain’s only ally against Hitler.

Without that ‘No,’ some historians argue, World War II could have lasted much longer. One theory is that had Greece surrendered without any resistance, Hitler could have invaded Russia in the spring, rather than his disastrous attempt to capture it during winter.

On this morning 77 years ago, 28 October 1940, Greek people of all political persuasions took to the streets in masses, shouting «'Οχι», ‘No!’ From 1942, this day was celebrated as Ohi Day, first within the resistance and then after the war by all the Greeks.

The Battle of Crete and the extra resources required to subdue Greece drained and distracted Nazi Germany from its efforts on other war fronts.

Today, Ohi Day is a public holiday in Greece and Cyprus. The events of 1940 are commemorated with military and student parades, public buildings are decorated with Greek flags, there folk dances, and Greek Orthodox churches hold special services. Coastal towns may have naval parades or other celebrations on the seafront. In Thessaloniki, reverence is also paid to the city’s patron, Saint Dimitrios, and the city celebrates its freedom from Turkey.

There are traffic delays, especially near parade routes, some streets are blocked off, and most archaeological sites are closed for the day, along with most businesses and services.

In Dublin, Ochi Day and the fallen will be marked at 11 a.m. tomorrow morning [Sunday 29 October 2017], during the Divine Liturgy in the Greek Orthodox Church, with the Greek Diplomatic Corps in attendance. This will be followed by a holiday banquet at the Mykonos Restaurant with Irish and Greek music.

In the West, politicians are always happy to credit ancient Greece with the development of democracy. But in the present crises in Europe, when Greece is often seen as a burden rather than a partner, it may be worth remembering that Europe owes modern Greece an unacknowledged debt for helping to preserve democracy against the Nazis and Fascists during World War II.

The Greek flag at the church in Tsesmes, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

A reminder of a once regal presence in Limerick city centre

Costa café and Cruise’s Street … on the site of Cruise’s Royal Hotel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

Limerick is endowed with an abundant supply of good coffee shops and cafés throughout the city centre. I have enjoyed trying new ones at regular intervals, although the well-known brands and chains also have their merits as ‘pit stops’ on days when I am trying to make haste between one bus connection and the next on the way between Dublin and Limerick.

Costa on the corner of Cruise’s Street and O’Connell Street is one of these convenient ‘pit stops’ for much-needed double espressos because it is also close to newsagents where I can stock up reading such as the The Guardian, New Statesman and Private Eye for the next long leg of the journey.

But the very name of Cruise’s Street and a plaque on the O’Connell Street façade of Costa are also reminders of an hotel that was torn down in 1991-1992 but that had been a Limerick institution for 200 years.

Cruise’s Royal Hotel was founded in 1791 on what was then George Street. In its final days it was one of the finest hotels in Limerick’s City Centre. The 80-room hotel provided a variety of entertainment for local people. The hotel had a presidential suite, and many Presidents and dignitaries who visited Limerick stayed there, including Richard Nixon.

In the 19th century, the guests at the hotel had included Daniel O’Connell, Charles Dickens and Charles Stewart Parnell.

George Russell was the first proprietor of the hotel when it was built in 1791. It passed through a number of hands before it was bought by the colourful Edward Cruise, who was a personal friend of Daniel O’Connell. In the 1820s, O’Connell conducted his Clare election campaign from Cruise’s Hotel, and later celebrated his victory there.

When the Viceroy of Ireland, Lord Mulgrave opened the new Wellesley Bridge in Limerick in 1835, he was feted afterwards at Cruise’s Hotel. The bridge is now known as Sarsfield Bridge.

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) visited Limerick in 1842, and stayed at ‘one of the best inns in Ireland - the large, neat, and prosperous one kept by Mr Cruise.’ This was the Royal Mail Coach Hotel or Cruise’s Hotel. There He was delighted to meet the proprietor, which he claimed was a rare occurrence in Ireland where hoteliers ‘commonly (and very naturally) prefer riding with the hounds, or manly sports, to attendance on their guests.’

He arrived in Limerick by boat, and his first impressions seem to have taken him aback: ‘… you are, at first, half led to believe that you had arrived in a second Liverpool, so tall are the warehouses and broad the quays: so neat and trim a street of near a mile which stretches before you.’

He found the men handsome and the women pretty: ‘If the women of the place are pretty, indeed the vulgar are scarcely less so, I never saw a greater number of kind, pleasing, clever-looking faces among any sort of people.’

Some years after his visit to Limerick, Thackeray caused offence with his comic song ‘The Battle of Limerick,’ which trivialises the Young Ireland movement and mocks and mimics Irish accents – although William Carleton remarked that he ‘writes very well about Ireland, for an Englishman.’

John Bright (1811-1889), the radical British politician who was almost a lone voice in opposing the Crimean War, regularly visited Castleconnell, Co Limerick, and on visit he was entertained at Cruise’s by the Mayor and Aldermen of Limerick. Bright often stayed at Cruise’s on his way to Castleconnell, as did his friend the London-born American financier and philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869). The historian AJP Taylor says ‘John Bright was the greatest of all parliamentary orators … the alliance between middle class idealism and trade unionism, which he promoted, still lives in the present-day Labour Party.’

Cruise retired from the business in 1854, but his name continued to be part of the name of the hotel.

During his visit to Limerick in 1858, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) stayed at the hotel, which he referred to as the Royal Hotel. He was touring Ireland, visiting Belfast, Dublin and Cork, and in Limerick he was reading on the stages at the Theatre Royal on Henry Street, close to the corner of Mallow Street – a building that was destroyed by fire in 1922.

In a letter to his nephew, Dickens described the hotel and his stay in Limerick in September 1858. The Royal Hotel referred to was Cruise’s Royal Hotel on what was then George Street.

Writing about Limerick, Dickens told his nephew:

This is the oddest place of which nobody in any other part of Ireland seems to know anything. Nobody could answer a single question we asked about it … It is a very odd place in its lower-order aspects …

The Royal Theatre was ‘a charming theatre. The best I ever saw, to see and hear in’ with ‘an admirable audience. As hearty and demonstrative as it is possible to be.’

John Joseph Cleary, who succeeded Edward Cruise as proprietor, made many modern improvements to the hotel, including the introduction of hot baths and showers. He was Mayor of Limerick in 1873 and 1874.

From the 1870s and 1880s on, political guests in the hotel included Charles Stewart Parnell, John Redmond and John Dillon.

Other guests in the Victorian period included Alfred Lord Tennyson and his son, as they were passing through Limerick on their way to Curragh Chase to visit their friend, the poet Aubrey de Vere and his family.

When Edward Cruise, who gave his name to the hotel, died on 25 July 1887, in his 86th year, he was buried in Saint John’s churchyard, Limerick, close to the original proprietor, George Russell.

The hotel was demolished in 1991 to make way for Cruise’s Street, a pedestrianised street between O’Connell Street and Chapel Street, and that opened 25 years ago, in late 1992.

A visit by Charles Dickens remembered on a plaque on the site of Cruise’s Royal Hotel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)