It seems now proper to return to M. Venizelos and to consider in some
detail the other measures which he and his patrons at this time adopted
for the purpose of consolidating and extending his dominion.
As we have seen, shortly after the Cretan's installation at Salonica,
the Entente Powers, by a diplomatic fiction, decided to treat his
Committee as a _de facto_ Government. It was not until his countrymen
impeached him as a traitor that the recognition assumed a _de jure_
character, by the appointment of duly accredited diplomatic agents to
his capital. These steps were accompanied by other marks of sympathy.
While the Allies negotiated with the King, their naval commanders
canvassed for M. Venizelos--sweeping islands under his sway: Syra was
first shepherded into the fold, and a little later the rest of the
Cyclades.
A brief suspension of operations supervened as a result of the solemn
promise given to Athens that the Allies would neither by land nor by
sea allow the extension of the revolutionary movement. For an instant
the Entente respected its own pledges. Just before the surrender of
the Lambros Cabinet, on 10 January, the Cretan had rushed to establish
another accomplished fact by liberating the island of Cerigo; but, on
the Government's protest, the Allies obliged him to undo his
accomplishment; though, on the plea that the island would resent being
replaced under King Constantine's yoke, it was made temporarily
autonomous.[1]
Soon, however, these pledges went the way of all words. Between
February and May, Cephalonia, Zante, and Corfu {178} were converted one
by one: everywhere the apostles from Salonica preaching, "Be our
brethren or die of hunger"; and everywhere having behind them the guns
of France and England to enforce respect for their gospel. The
instance of Leucas, the last of the Ionian Isles to be gathered into
the fold, will suffice as an illustration. In the middle of March a
French vessel, carrying a consignment of maize, rice, and Venizelist
missionaries, called at the island and invited the inhabitants to come,
buy, and be saved: they answered that they would never touch food
brought by traitors. Towards the end of May, the French Admiral
commanding the Ionian Reserve was able to announce that the Leucadian
population had joined the National Movement.[2]
To secure his authority over these maritime possessions, the Cretan
obtained from his patrons some of the warships of which they had robbed
the King.
A similar propaganda was simultaneously going on in the "neutral zone"
and in the lands to the south of it--particularly Thessaly--whose
immunity from emancipation the Allies had also guaranteed. Only, as
this region lay nearer to the base of the Franco-Venizelist Mission, it
benefited more severely from its influence. General Sarrail's patrols
raided the villages, harrying the peasants and sparing not even the
honour of their women. Anyone who knows the Greek peasant's fierce
views on feminine chastity can imagine the indignation which such an
outrage would have aroused in any case; but in this case their horror
was deepened by the circumstance that the assailants sometimes were
African semi-savages--the Senegalese whom France brought to Greece, as
to other parts of Europe, oblivious of the most rudimentary dictates of
decency and sound policy. On one occasion (22 Feb.) the coloured
libertines paid for their lust with their lives: a patrol of a dozen of
them was surprised and massacred.[3]
Summary executions were among the methods of {179} military tyranny in
which General Sarrail rejoiced without scruple and with a certain
brutal pride. When once he found himself obliged to justify his
conduct, he wrote: "The six inhabitants of Dianitza, who were shot,
were _Comitadjis_. There is no doubt in that respect. Doubt still
exists about eight others. If they are proved to be in the same case
as the former, they will be shot in the same way. The two men shot at
Lourani were put to death because they were known to be _Comitadjis_.
The other two, whose houses were burnt down, are likewise _Comitadjis_:
they would have been shot, if they were not away: they shall be, if
they are caught. If a church has been burnt down, it was because it
had been transformed into a magazine for arms. If barley has been
carried away, it has been paid for or requisitioned." After some more
statements of the same enlightening kind, the gallant soldier
concludes: "To sum up, the Greek Government organizes bands and
maintains them. The security of our Army in the Orient exacts their
suppression. I have given orders to put to death all irregulars.
These orders have been carried out: they shall continue to be carried
out." [4]
It was by precisely similar arguments that General von Bissing
justified his severities in Belgium: with this difference, that in
Greece the danger never existed. Comitadjis--bands of irregulars--did
exist; it would have been strange if the adherents of the King had not
done everything to counter the efforts of his enemies. Long before
this period the French Secret Service, Admiral Dartige du Fournet tells
us, had been busy equipping guerillas on the frontier.[5] Further, in
the mainland, as in the islands, the Venizelist recruiting sergeants
sought "volunteers" by force: "How many villages had to be surrounded
by constabulary. . . . How much shooting had to be done to keep the
men of military age from escaping. . . . How many deserters or those
unwilling to serve had to be rounded up from hiding places!" exclaims
General Sarrail.[6] Some of the recruits thus enlisted snatched at the
earliest opportunity of regaining {180} their freedom: they fell in
during the day, and at night they fled with their arms.
The assertion that these bands were organized and maintained by the
Greek Government to harass the Allies and keep the line of
communication with Albania open, with a view to an eventual junction
between the forces of King Constantine and those of the German Emperor,
rested on evidence which, for some obscure reason, was not produced.[7]
But it supplied pretexts for action the true objects of which were not
obscure.
Despite his press-gangs, in six months M. Venizelos had only succeeded
in sending to the front some 10,000 men. He explained to his Western
friends that he had failed to fulfil their expectations better because
the neutral zone barred the extension of his movement into Thessaly.[8]
He had respected that zone until now; but now that the Allies gave him
a free hand over the sea, he saw no longer any reason why they should
restrain him on land. Therefore, while the agents from Macedonia
goaded the inhabitants to seek rest in apostacy and provoked incidents
supplying an excuse for intervention, the advocates of M. Venizelos in
Paris and London laboured to clear his way by publishing reports which
told how the people of Thessaly prayed for liberation from the yoke of
King Constantine,[9] and exhausted their ingenuity in endeavours to
show the Entente publics how to break faith with honour and decency, as
well as with advantage.
The victualling of the Allied army in Macedonia, always difficult, had
become distressingly precarious with its own growth and the growth of
the enemy's submarine activity. Were the Allies to go on transporting
food and fodder from distant lands across dangerous seas, with the rich
cornfields of Thessaly within short and safe reach of their trenches?
The seizure of the Thessalian granary, besides {181} helping to keep
the Allies in plenty, would help to reduce the Royalists to despair by
robbing them of the harvest to which they looked forward with strained
eyes and tightened belts. In this wise both military and political
problems could be solved by one masterly stroke.
In April, General Sarrail obtained from his Government the orders he
had been soliciting since January, to go to Thessaly and seize the
crops; only, as the offensive against the Bulgars deprived him of
adequate means for the moment, he decided to put off the stroke until
the middle of May.[10]
Alarmed by these sudden, though not wholly unexpected, developments,
King Constantine dismissed Professor Lambros, and had once more
recourse to M. Zaimis; hoping that this statesman, the only
non-Venizelist Greek whom the slander of Germanophilism had left
untouched, might prove able to placate the Allies. M. Zaimis, as in
all previous crises, so now obeyed the call and set himself to discover
some path out of the wood (2 May). On the one hand, he opened
negotiations with the Entente Ministers; on the other, he tried to
bring about a reconciliation with M. Venizelos--the King being
understood to be willing to meet the Cretan half-way.
M. Venizelos, on his part, alarmed by the prospect of a _rapprochement_
between Athens and the Entente Powers, set himself, as on all similar
occasions, to impugn the Hellenic Government's sincerity. At a signal
from the Conductor, all the instruments of the orchestra broke into the
familiar chorus. The whole Press of France and England rang again with
calumny and fairy-tale. Out they came again in regular sequence and
with unvarying monotony: plots and secret letters, weird stories of
German intrigue, constant repetition of names compromised or
compromising; all ready, cut and dried, for burking any attempt at
accommodation that did not include the return and domination of the
Great Cretan.
It was maintained that the formation of a Government under M. Zaimis
was but a new artifice of King Constantine, adopted at the Kaiser's
suggestion, to temporize by ostensibly throwing over a few of his
Germanophile favourites. During more than five months he had contrived
{182} to checkmate the blockade by drawing on the reserves of food he
had laid up at his depots. Now those reserves were exhausted: he
needed the Thessalian corn to replenish his magazines, to feed and
increase his army, so that in the fullness of time he might bring it
out of the Peloponnesus against the Allies.[11]
Even more sinister were the motives which prompted the King's advances
to the Cretan. While holding out the right hand to M. Venizelos,
Constantine with the left aimed a dagger at his heart: a band of eleven
assassins had just been arrested at Salonica on a charge of conspiring
to murder him--to murder him in the very midst of his own and his
allies' military forces, and under circumstances which made detection
certain and escape impossible. Even thus: "their plan was to arrange a
banquet to which M. Venizelos would have been invited. _They are said_
to have confessed that they were sent from Athens to kill the Head of
the National Government and were promised 4,000 pounds for the murder."
[12]
Day by day it became increasingly clear that the question of Thessaly
formed only part of the larger question of Greece; that behind the
campaign for the crops lurked the conspiracy against the King. A
"radical solution" was demanded, on the ground that so long as he
reigned at Athens we could not consider Greece a friendly neutral. The
Greek organ of M. Venizelos in London now openly described the Cretan
as a man sent to heal Hellas of the "dynastic canker," and expressed
the opinion that the healing could only be effected by "Prussian
methods." [13]
During the whole of May this concert of sophistry and calumny went on:
now sinking into low, deadly whispers; now swelling into an uproar that
rolled like a mighty, muddy river in flood through every Allied
capital, ministering to the inarticulate craving of the public for
fresh sensations, thrilling its nerves, and feeding its hate and fear
of King Constantine. At the end of the month the curtain went up, and
M. Venizelos stepped forward to {188} make the declaration for which
his instrumental music had prepared our minds: "I reject all idea of
reconciliation firmly, flatly, and finally!"
His confederates and subordinates, as usual, went further: Admiral
Coundouriotis: "Neither in this world nor in the next will I have
anything to do with King Constantine or his dynasty."
Minister Politis: "No compromise is possible between Liberal Greece and
the reigning dynasty."
Minister Averoff: "The one and most important thing is that the dynasty
of Constantine should, like the Turks, be turned bag and baggage out of
Greece." [14]
So the Great Cretan and his company had given up at last pretending
that their plot was not directed against their King, or that they
intended to postpone the settlement of their accounts with him till
after the War. Their relief must have been proportionate to the
strain: it is not hypocrisy, but the need of consistency that harasses
a hypocrite. But their outburst of candour was chiefly interesting as
an index to the attitude of the Powers from whom they derived their
significance.
France had long since made up her mind on the deposition of
Constantine, if not indeed on the subversion of the Greek throne.
Apart from the hold upon Greece which they would gain by placing her
under a ruler created by and consequently dependent on them, French
politicians did not lose sight of the popularity which the sacrifice of
a king--and that king, too, the Kaiser's brother-in-law--would earn
them among their own compatriots. Further, a triumph of French policy
over Greece was calculated to obscure in the eyes of the French public
the failure of French strategy against Bulgaria: "For me the
destruction of Athens the Germanic came second to the struggle against
Sofia," wrote General Sarrail[15]; and there were those who believed
that his expedition had for its primary objective Athens rather than
Sofia.
For a time French politicians had flattered themselves that their aim
would be attained by an explosion from within. But it was gradually
borne in upon them that the National Movement represented but a small
minority {184} of the nation. That truth first became manifest in the
summer of 1916, when the demobilization set the Reservists loose--the
Reservists upon whom M. Venizelos had miscounted: their verdict was
conclusive; for they were drawn from all districts and all classes of
the community: the tillers of the plains, the shepherds of the hills,
the fishermen who lived by the sea, the traders, the teachers, the
lawyers--they represented, in one word, the whole population of
military age. The disillusion was furthered by the swift suppression
of the seditious attempt on 1 December, and was completed by the
Blockade, which demonstrated the solidarity of the nation in a manner
that utterly upset the calculations and disconcerted the plans of its
authors. Instead of a people ready, after a week or two of privation,
to sue for mercy--to revolt against their sovereign and succumb to his
rival--the French found in every bit of Old Greece--from Mount Pindus
to Cape Malea--a nation nerved to the highest pitch of endurance:
prepared to suffer hunger and disease without a murmur, and when the
hour should come, to die as those die who possess things they value
more than life. This was not what the inventors of the Pacific
Blockade contemplated: this was not sport: this was strife--strife of
strength with strength.
There was nothing left but force--the danger of creating a new front
had been eliminated by the internment of the army, and by the blockade
which had succeeded, if not in breaking the spirit of the people, in
reducing it to such a state of misery that it now offered a safe
subject for attack. M. Ribot, who had replaced M. Briand as Premier
and Minister for Foreign Affairs, adopted this "radical solution." He
proposed to dispatch to Athens a plenipotentiary charged with the
mission of deposing King Constantine, raising M. Venizelos to
dictatorial power, and thus establishing the influence of France
throughout Greece.
There remained some difficulties of a diplomatic character. Russia had
never viewed her ally's uncompromising hostility to King Constantine
with enthusiasm. But the French thought that this attitude was due to
dynastic ties and monarchic sympathies, and expected the downfall of
the Tsar to change it: they could hardly {185} imagine that the Russian
Republic would withdraw even that reluctant co-operation in the
coercion of Greece which the Russian Empire had accorded; and, at any
rate, the voice of a country in the throes of internal disintegration
could have little effect upon the march of external events.
The decision really lay between France and England. England's, like
Russia's, co-operation hitherto had been but a concession to France.
Neither the Foreign Office nor the War Office had ever taken the
Salonica Expedition seriously; and both departments would gladly have
washed their hands of a business barren of profit and credit alike.
But the motives which had impelled London to keep Paris company so far
were as potent as ever, and English politicians had hitherto proved
themselves so pliant that, provided French pressure continued, the
utmost which could be apprehended from them was a feeble show of
resistance followed by abject acquiescence. Notwithstanding the
moderation England had insisted upon at the Boulogne and Rome
Conferences, France had managed to lead her from violence to violence,
till this last iniquity, to the logical French mind, seemed inevitable.
[1] Zalocostas to Greek Legations, Paris, London, Rome, Petrograd, 30
Dec./12 Jan.; to Entente Legations, Athens, 19 Jan./1 Feb.; 8/21 March,
1917. For a full and intimate account of this intrigue, somewhat
ambitiously styled "The Conquest of Cerigo," see Lawson, pp. 241 foll.
[2] Zalocostas to Greek Ministers abroad, 12/25 March; The _Nea
Himera_, 8/21 March; Exchange Tel., Athens, 16 April, 28 May, 1917.
[3] General Sarrail mentions the punishment (Sarrail, p. 235), but not
the provocation. This, together with other atrocities, is the subject
of a Note from M. Zalocostas to the French Minister at Athens, 9/22
March, 1917.
[4] Le Temps, 11 April, 1917; Sarrail, pp. 236-7.
[5] Du Fournet, p. 116.
[6] "La Grèce Vénizeliste," in the _Revue de Paris_, 15 Dec., 1919.
[7] Such a project is only discussed in some of the messages exchanged
between Athens and Berlin in December, 1916 (_White Book_, Nos. 177,
183, 186)--before the definite acceptance of the Allies' terms by the
Lambros Cabinet. But there is absolutely nothing to show that the idea
ever materialised.
[8] The _New Europe_, 29 March, 1917.
[9] See telegrams, dated Salonica, 29 March, published in the London
Press by the Anglo-Hellenic League; letter from _The Times_
correspondent, dated Syra, 23 April, 1917, etc., etc.
[10] Sarrail, p. 238.
[11] For details of this apocryphal scheme see a report from Salonica,
dated 16 May, disseminated by the Anglo-Hellenic League; _The Times_, 8
and 30 May; the _Daily Mail_, 9 and 30 May, 1917.
[12] _The Times_, 14 May, 1917, dispatch dated Salonica 11 May.
[13] _The Hesperia_, 11, 18, 25 May, 1917.
[14] _The Times_, 30 May, 1917.
[15] Sarrail, p. 234.
{186}