M. Zaimis formed a Government pledged to the policy which Greece had
pursued since the beginning of the European War: her future course
would be guided by the course of events: meanwhile, she would seek to
safeguard her vital interests by remaining armed.[1]
As regards Servia, the new Premier had an opportunity of expressing his
views at length soon after his accession to office. The Servian
Government, judging that the imminent attack from Bulgaria realized the
_casus faederis_, asked him if, in conformity with her alliance, Greece
would be ready to take the field. M. Zaimis answered that the Hellenic
Government was very sorry not to be able to comply with the Servian
demand so formulated. It did not judge that in the present conjuncture
the _casus faederis_ came into play. The Alliance, concluded in 1913,
for the purpose of establishing an equilibrium of forces between the
Balkan States, had a purely Balkan character and nowise applied to a
general conflagration. Both the Treaty and the Military Convention
accompanying it showed that the contracting parties had in view only
the case of an isolated attack by Bulgaria against one of them.
Nowhere was there any allusion to a concerted attack by two or more
Powers. Nor could it be otherwise: it would have been an act of mad
presumption for either of the contracting parties to offer the other
the manifestly powerless and ridiculous assistance of its armed forces
in the case of a war with several States at once. And such was the
present case. If the Bulgarian attack apprehended by the Servian
Government took place, it would be in concert with Germany, Austria,
and Turkey: it would be combined with the attack already carried on by
the two Central Empires: it would be an episode of the European War.
{66} The Servian Government itself had recognized this in advance by
breaking off diplomatic relations with Bulgaria in imitation of the
Entente Powers, her European Allies, without a previous understanding
with Greece, her Balkan ally. In these circumstances, the Hellenic
Government was convinced that no obligation weighed upon it.
Further, Greece was persuaded that her armed assistance freely offered
at such a moment would ill serve the common interest of the two
countries. Greece had remained neutral in the European War, judging
that the best service she could render Servia was to hold in check
Bulgaria by keeping her forces intact and her communications open. The
common interest demanded that the Greek forces should continue in
reserve for better use later on: that Greece should remain neutral and
armed, watching the course of events carefully with the resolution to
guard in the best possible way, not only her own vital interests, but
also those which she had in common with Servia.
The Hellenic Government, while deeply and sincerely regretting that it
was materially impossible for it to do at present more for Servia,
wished to assure her that, faithful to their friendship, it would
continue to accord her every assistance and facility consistent with
its international position.[2]
The Entente Powers took no exception to this attitude; which is not to
be wondered at, seeing that they had hitherto uniformly ignored the
Graeco-Servian Treaty, and, by their project of territorial concessions
to Bulgaria, had laboured, as much as in them lay, to annul a pact made
for the defence of the territorial _status quo_ against Bulgaria: not
until Bulgaria had been at open war with Servia for some days (14
Oct.), could they bring themselves to declare that the promises of
Servian and Greek territory which they had made to her no longer held.
Unable, therefore, to tell Greece that she was under any obligation to
enter the War on Servia's behalf, Sir Edward Grey attempted to induce
her to do so for her own benefit by offering her the island of Cyprus.
This offer, made on 17 October, Greece felt compelled to decline: what
would it have profited her to gain Cyprus and lose Athens? And what
could an acceptance have profited Servia either? As {67} M. Zaimis
said, by intervening at that moment Greece would perish without saving
Servia.
Servia could have been saved had an Anglo-French expedition on an
adequate scale taken place at any of the times which the Greek General
Staff proposed for Graeco-Servian co-operation--indeed, at any time
except only the particular time chosen by the Entente. When their
troops arrived at Salonica, the Servian army--what had been left of it
after fourteen months' fighting and typhus--was already falling back
before the Austro-Germans, who swarmed across the Drina, the Save, and
the Danube, occupied Belgrade and pushed south (6-10 Oct.), while the
Bulgars pressed towards Nish (11-12 Oct.). On the day on which the
English offer was made (17 Oct.), the Austro-Germans were fifteen miles
south of Belgrade, and by the 2nd of November there was no longer any
Servia to save, the Bulgars having on that day entered Monastir.
The co-operation of Greece might still have been obtained if the Allies
could even then have sent to Salonica forces large enough to assure her
that the struggle would be waged on more equal terms.[3] There had
always been an influential group among the principal military leaders
at Athens who held that it was to the vital interest of their country
that Bulgaria should be attacked, and who, to secure the help of the
Entente Powers against Bulgarian pretensions in the future, were
prepared to run great immediate risks. As it was, the dilatoriness of
the Allies imposed upon M. Zaimis a policy of inaction.
This policy, besides being imposed by circumstances, also accorded with
the new Premier's character.
M. Zaimis stands out in the political world of Greece as a singular
anomaly: a politician who never made speeches and never gave
interviews: a silent man in a country where every citizen is a born
orator: an unambitious man in a country where ambition is an endemic
disease. To find a parallel to his position, one must go back to the
days when nations, in need of wise guidance, implored reluctant sages
to undertake the task of guiding them. This thankless task M. Zaimis
performed several times to everybody's temporary satisfaction. On the
present, as on other occasions, he enjoyed the confidence of the
Entente Powers, {68} as well as the confidence of the King and the
people of Greece. Even the journals of M. Venizelos, and the
Anglo-French Press which M. Venizelos inspired, paid the customary
tribute to M. Zaimis's integrity and sagacity. The homage was due to
the fact that M. Zaimis was neither a Venizelist nor an
anti-Venizelist, but simply a Zaimist. In domestic affairs he belonged
to no party; in foreign affairs to no school: he neither sought nor
shunned a change of course.
That explains why he succeeded in ruling Greece for four weeks, and
also why he failed to rule her longer.
M. Venizelos had not abandoned his standpoint. Of M. Zaimis's person
he spoke with much respect; but of his policy he spoke just as one
might have expected M. Venizelos to speak: M. Zaimis had broken the
Servian Treaty and would go down to history as a man who had
dishonoured the signature of Greece. With regard to the Entente
Powers, M. Venizelos thought that M. Zaimis meant honestly--the fact
that he was as well known to them as M. Venizelos himself, having
served as their High Commissioner in Crete for two years (1906-08),
exempted him from the imputation of duplicity--and since the Entente
Powers tolerated him, he would do likewise. He only taunted the Zaimis
Government in Parliament for not obtaining for its policy a price from
those whom that policy unintentionally helped: Greece, to be sure, did
not remain neutral to serve Germany's but her own interests,
nevertheless, as Germany benefited by that neutrality, she should be
asked to give a _quid pro quo_.[4]
It was not the first time that M. Venizelos expressed this idea. At
the Crown Council of 3 March he had suggested, if his own policy of
intervention was not adopted, to ask from Germany compensations for the
continuance of neutrality; and he urged that the King should personally
bargain with the Kaiser's Minister. Again on 21 September, when
sounding the Entente Powers on the {69} possibility of sending troops
to Salonica, he advised the King simultaneously to sound the German
Emperor on the price of neutrality.[5] King Constantine had always
shrunk from entering into any understanding whatever with Germany.
And, although the advice may have been given in good faith, it is easy
to guess the use to which its acceptance might be turned by M.
Venizelos, who, even as it was, did not hesitate to whisper of
"pledges" given to Germany. So M. Zaimis endured the taunt and avoided
the trap.
This state of truce lasted for a month. Then strife broke out afresh.
Early in November a member of the Government insulted the Opposition.
The Opposition demanded his dismissal. This was refused and matters
were pushed to a crisis--whether by the adversaries of M. Venizelos,
anxious to get rid of a Chamber with a hostile majority, or by M.
Venizelos himself, anxious to get rid of a Cabinet that had succeeded
in establishing friendly relations with the Entente, it is impossible
to say. Both conjectures found favour at the time, and both seem
probable.[6] In any case, M. Venizelos made of that incident an
occasion for an attack on the Government's foreign policy, which,
ending in an adverse vote, led to the resignation of M. Zaimis and the
formation of a new Ministry under M. Skouloudis (7 November).
There ensued a dissolution of the Chamber (11 November) and a fresh
appeal to the people; the King, on the advice of M. Skouloudis,
inviting M. Venizelos to the polls, as who should say: When you got
your majority in June, the nation was with you; many things of the
gravest national concern have happened since; let us see if the nation
is with you now. M. Venizelos declined the invitation: "The
elections," he said, "will be a farce. All my supporters are detained
voteless under arms, and the only votes cast will be those of the older
and more timid men." How many supporters he had under arms the near
future was to show. Meanwhile, he and his partizans reinforced this
reason for abstention from the polls with other arguments.
{70} King Constantine, they alleged, was guilty of unconstitutional
behaviour. He had twice disagreed with a Government supported by a
majority of the representatives of the people, and twice within a few
months had dissolved a Parliament duly chosen by the people. Was such
a thing ever heard in a constitutional State? The Constitution had
been violated: openly, insolently violated.
In Greece this cry has always been among the Opposition's common
stock-in-trade: it is enough for a Minister to misapply fifty drachmas
to acquire the title of a violator of the Constitution, and nobody ever
is the wiser or the worse for it. M. Venizelos himself had often been
accused by his opponents of aiming at the subversion of Parliamentary
Government. But in this instance the cry was destined to have, as we
shall see, epoch-making results, and for this reason it merits serious
examination.
The King's supporters denied that any violation of the Constitution had
taken place. The Constitution of Greece, they pointed out, gives the
Crown explicitly the right to dismiss Ministers and to dissolve
Chambers.[7] M. Venizelos himself had, no longer ago than 5 March, at
the second sitting of the Crown Council, declared himself an adversary
of the doctrine that the Parliamentary majority is absolute, and
recognized the right of the Crown to choose another Government; "On the
other hand," he said, "the necessary consequence of the formation of a
Cabinet not enjoying a majority in the Chamber is the dissolution of
the Chamber." [8] It was in pursuance {71} of this advice that the
King, who, as M. Venizelos on that occasion emphatically stated, "has
always absolutely respected the Constitution," [9] dissolved the
Chamber.
The only question, therefore, is about the dissolution of the Chamber
elected on 13 June, 1915, which gave M. Venizelos a majority of 56.
This action, it was alleged, violated the spirit, though not the
letter, of Constitutional Law, because the dissolved Chamber
represented the will of the people. But, the other side retorted, it
was precisely because there was ground for believing that the
Parliamentary majority had ceased to represent the will of the people
that the King proceeded to a dissolution; and in so doing he had
excellent precedent. His father had dissolved several Chambers
(specifically in 1902 and 1910) on the same ground, not only without
incurring any censure, but earning much applause from the Venizelist
Party.[10] In fact, the last of those dissolutions had been carried
out by M. Venizelos himself under the following circumstances: The
General Elections of August, 1910, had given a majority to the old
parties: King George, however, in the belief that public opinion really
favoured M. Venizelos, called him to power, though he was only the
leader of a Parliamentary minority. M. Venizelos formed a Government,
but, as the majority in Parliament obstructed his policy, he persuaded
the Sovereign to dissolve it,[11] declaring in the House (11/24
October, 1910): that "it is impossible to limit the prerogative of the
Crown to dissolve any Chamber." Obviously, what was {72} lawful for
King George could not be unlawful for King Constantine; and the fact
that M. Venizelos's majority of 56 had since the recent elections
dwindled to 16, was reason sufficient for the belief that he no longer
represented the will of the people, even if it were conceded that the
issue of war had been clearly put before the electors who had voted for
him in June, and that, at best, a majority of 56 in an assembly of 314
was an adequate expression of the will of the people on so grave an
issue. Events had moved so fast in those months and the situation
changed so abruptly that King Constantine would have been guilty of a
dereliction of duty had he not, by exercising his indisputable
prerogative, given the nation an opportunity to reconsider its opinion.
Sophisms suited to the fury of the times apart, the whole case of M.
Venizelos against his Sovereign rested, avowedly, on the theory,
improvised for the nonce, that the Greek Constitution is a replica of
the British--a monarchical democracy in which the monarch is nothing
more than a passive instrument in the hands of a Government with a
Parliamentary majority.[12] It is not so, and it was never meant to be
so. The Greek Constitution does invest the monarch with rights which
our Constitution, or rather the manner in which we have for a long time
chosen to interpret it, does not. Among these is the right to make, or
to refrain from making war. That was why M. Venizelos in March, 1915,
could not offer the co-operation of Greece in the Dardanelles
enterprise officially without the King's approval, and why the British
Government declined to consider his semi-official communication until
after the King's decision. Similarly M. Venizelos's proposals for the
dispatch of Entente troops to Salonica in September, so far as that
transaction was carried on above-board, were made subject to the King's
consent. Of course, if the King exercised this right without advice,
he would be playing the part of an autocrat; but King Constantine
always acted by the advice of the competent authority--namely, the
Chief of the General Staff. In truth, if anyone tried to play the part
of an autocrat, it was not the King, but M. Venizelos. His argument
seemed to be that the King should acquiesce in the view {73} which a
lay Minister took of matters military and in decisions which he arrived
at without or in defiance of technical advice.
In this again, M. Venizelos appears to have been inspired by British
example. We saw during the War the responsibility for its conduct
scattered over twenty-three civil and semi-civil individuals who
consulted the naval and military staffs more or less as and when they
choose, and the result of it in the Gallipoli tragedy. We saw, too, as
a by-product of this system, experts holding back advice of immense
importance because they knew it would not be well received. The
Reports of the Dardanelles Commission condemned this method. But it is
to a precisely similar method that the Greek General Staff objected
with such determination. "Venizelos," they said, "does not know
anything about war. He approaches the King with proposals containing
in them the seeds of national disaster without consulting us, or in
defiance of our advice. Greece cannot afford to run the risk of
military annihilation; her resources are small, and, once exhausted,
cannot be replaced." The King, relying on the right unquestionably
given to him under the terms of the Constitution, demanded from his
chief military adviser such information as would enable him to judge
wisely from the military point of view any proposal involving
hostilities made by his Premier. It was this attitude that saved
Greece from the Gallipoli grave in March, and it was the same attitude
that saved her a second time at the present juncture.
But, in fact, at the present juncture the King acted not so much on his
prerogative of deciding about war as on the extreme democratic
principle that such decision belongs to the people, and, finding that
the Party which pushed the country towards war had only a weak
majority, he preferred to place the question before the electorate, to
test beyond the possibility of doubt the attitude of public opinion
towards this new departure.
From whatever point of view we may examine Constantine's behaviour, we
find that nothing could be more unfair than the charge of
unconstitutionalism brought against it. M. Venizelos himself a little
later, by declaring that he aimed at the "definite elucidation of the
obligations and rights of the royal authority," through a "new {74}
Constitution," [13] unwittingly confessed that the actual Constitution
could not bear his interpretation. As things stood, the charge might
with a better show of justice be brought against M. Venizelos, who, it
was pointed out, had violated the Constitution by inviting foreign
troops into Greek territory without the necessary Act of Parliament.[14]
Nor should it be forgotten that King Constantine had suffered
grievously both as a Greek and as a general from too punctilious an
observance of parliamentary etiquette by his father in 1897. At that
date the policy of M. Delyannis was supported by the whole Chamber. It
was a policy which the late Lord Salisbury very aptly summed up at the
time in the one word, "strait-waistcoat." But, for lack of a man at
the top strong enough and courageous enough to take the responsibility
of opposing it, it was carried out: Greece rushed headlong into war
with a superior power and was smashed. Upon King Constantine, then
Crown Prince, had devolved the tragic duty of leading the Greek army to
self-destruction, and it was upon his devoted head that afterwards the
nation visited the criminal levity of M. Delyannis. Was he to suffer
calmly a repetition of the same catastrophe on an infinitely larger
scale--to see his country trampled under German and Bulgarian
heels--for M. Venizelos's sake?
The practical wisdom and patriotism of the King's conduct cannot be
questioned; but we should guard ourselves against exaggerating its
moral courage. King Constantine, in turning an inattentive ear to the
warlike outpourings of the People's Chosen, knew perfectly well that he
ran no risk of wounding the people's conscience--just {75} as in
offering to lay the question before the tribunal of public opinion he
knew that he ran no risk of finding it at variance with his own. He
could afford to act as he did, because the country trusted him
implicitly. Writing about the middle of November, an English observer
described the situation as follows: "The people generally are afraid,
waiting and leaving everything to the King. . . . No one now counts in
Greece but the King." [15] And the absence of any popular murmur at
the rejection of the offer of Cyprus, to anyone who knows how deeply
popular feeling is committed to the ultimate union of that Greek island
with the mother country, speaks for itself.
This does not mean that M. Venizelos had as yet lost caste altogether.
On that fateful 5th of October his reputation as a serious statesman
among his countrymen had received a severe blow. The idolatrous
admiration with which he had been surrounded until then gave way to
disenchantment, disenchantment to bewilderment, and bewilderment to
dismay: the national prophet from whom fresh miracles had been
expected, was no prophet at all, but a mere mortal--and an uncommonly
fallible mortal at that. Nevertheless, while many Greeks found it hard
to pardon the Cretan politician for the ruin into which he had so very
nearly precipitated them, there were many others who still remained
under the spell of his personality. Yet it may well be doubted
whether, had a plebiscite been taken at that moment, he would have got
anything more than a substantial minority. Fully conscious of the
position, M. Venizelos, in spite of advice from his Entente friends to
stand his ground, boycotted the polls, and the new Parliament, returned
by the elections of 19 December, was a Parliament without an
Opposition. M. Skouloudis remained at the helm.
[1] _White Book_, No. 45.
[2] _White Book_, No. 46.
[3] See _The Times_, 1 Nov., 1915.
[4] _Orations_, pp. 143-50. It would hardly be credited, did it not
come out of his own mouth, that the compensations and guarantees which
M. Venizelos thought, or at least said, that Greece could obtain from
Germany in return for her neutrality (a neutrality always benevolent
towards Germany's enemies) exceeded those which the Entente had refused
to grant Greece for her active alliance!
[5] _The Balkan Review_, Dec., 1920, pp. 384, 387; _Orations_, p. 266.
[6] It may not be irrelevant to note that the end of the truce
coincided with the end of the Allies' uncertainty as to whether they
would persist in the Salonica enterprise or give it up.
[7] Art. 31, 37.
[8] Extracts from Minutes in _The Balkan Review_, Dec., 1920, p. 385.
Not for the first time had M. Venizelos expounded that thesis. Here is
a speech of his on 2/15 May, 1911.
"We are accused of seeking the destruction of Parliamentary Government,
because we conceive that one of the foundations of the Government is
that those who represent the majority do everything, that it is enough
for them that they represent the majority to impose their will. But
we, the Liberal Party, entertain an entirely opposite conception both
of the State and the Laws and of the powers of majorities, because
modern progress has proved that humanity cannot prosper so long as the
action of those in authority is not subjected to rules and restrictions
preventing every transgression or violation of justice. We shall make
the Greeks truly free citizens, enjoying not only the rights which
emanate from the Constitutional ordinances, but also those which
emanate from all the laws. _We shall defend them against every
tyrannical exercise of Government power derived from a majority._"
This report is taken from a panegyric on the speaker: _Eleutherios
Venizelos_, by K. K. Kosmides, D.Ph., Athens, 1915, pp. 56-7. On p. 58
of the same work, occurs another reply by M. Venizelos to a charge of
anti-Parliamentarism, dated 14/27 Nov., 1913.
[9] _The Balkan Review, loc. cit_. Cp. _The New Europe_, 29 March,
1917, where M. Venizelos expressly admits that "in February, 1915, the
King's action might be regarded as constitutional."
[10] _Orations_, pp. 17-8. Cp. p. 217.
[11] His opponents then acted as he did now: to avoid exposing their
weakness, they pronounced the dissolution unconstitutional and
boycotted the new elections. For a full account of these events see
another panegyric: _E. Venizelos: his life--his work_. By Costa
Kairophyla, Athens, 1915, pp. 73-82.
[12] _Orations_, pp. 12-15.
[13] _Eleutheros Typos_, 23 Oct./5 Nov., 1916; _Orations_, p. 102.
[14] See Art. 90 of the Constitution.
It was in order to defend himself against this grave charge that M.
Venizelos denied in the Chamber and out of it, that he had "invited"
the Allies to Salonica. Just as it was in order to avoid the charge of
violating International Law that Sir Edward Grey in the House of
Commons (18 April, 1916) and M. Briand in the Chamber of Deputies (20
June, 1916), affirmed that the Allies had been "invited." From the
account of that affair already given, the reader will easily see that,
for forensic purposes, both the denial and the affirmation rest on
sufficient grounds. The discrepancy might be removed by the
substitution of "instigated" for "invited."
[15] J. M. N. Jefferies, in the _Daily Mail_, 23 Nov., 1915. The
testimony is all the more notable because it comes from an avowed
partisan of M. Venizelos: "the only man in Greece with a policy."
{76}