King George himself was a ruler of large experience, of great
practical wisdom, and of fine diplomatic skill. He had shortly
before 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 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 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.