King George himself was a ruler of large experience, of great practical
wisdom, and of fine diplomatic skill. He had shortly before {37}
selected as prime minister the former Cretan insurgent, Mr. Eleutherios
Venizelos. It is significant that the new premier had also taken the
War portfolio. He foresaw the impending conflict--as every wise
statesman in Europe had foreseen it--and began to make preparations for
it. For the reorganization of the army and navy he secured French and
English experts, the former headed by General Eydoux, the latter by
Admiral Tufnel. By 1914 it was estimated that the military and naval
forces of the country would be thoroughly trained and equipped, and war
was not expected before that date. But now in 1912 the hand of the
Greek government was forced. And a decision one way or the other was
inevitable.
Mr. Venizelos had already proved himself an agitator, an orator, and a
politician. He was now to reveal himself not only to Greece but to
Europe as a wise statesman and an effective leader of his people. The
first test came in his answer to the invitation to join Bulgaria and
{38} Servia within three days in a war against Turkey. Of all
possibilities open to him Mr. Venizelos rejected the programme of
continued isolation for Greece. There were those who glorified it as
splendid and majestic: to him under the existing circumstances it
seemed stupid in itself and certain to prove disastrous in its results.
Greece alone would never have been able to wage a war against Turkey.
And if Greece declined to participate in the inevitable conflict, which
the action of the two Slav states had only hastened, then whether they
won or Turkey won, Greece was bound to lose. It was improbable that
the Ottoman power should come out of the contest victorious; but, if
the unexpected happened, what would be the position, not only of the
millions of Greeks in the Turkish Empire, but of the little kingdom of
Greece itself on whose northern boundary the insolent Moslem oppressor,
flushed with his triumph over Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro, would
be immovably entrenched? On the other {39} hand, if these Christian
states themselves should succeed, as seemed likely, in destroying the
Ottoman Empire in Europe, the Kingdom of Greece, if she now remained a
passive spectator of their struggles, would find in the end that
Macedonia had come into the possession of the victorious Slavs, and the
Great Idea of the Greeks--the idea of expansion into Hellenic lands
eastward toward Constantinople--exploded as an empty bubble. It was
Mr. Venizelos's conclusion that Greece could not avoid participating in
the struggle. Neutrality would have entailed the complete bankruptcy
of Hellenism in the Orient. There remained only the alternative of
co-operation--co-operation with Turkey or co-operation with the
Christian states of the Balkans.