It is not my intention to give a minute and consecutive account of the
abnormal state which prevailed in Greece during a period of more than
three years. I will, for once, flatter its authors by imitating their
summary methods.
M. Venizelos, hating monarchy, yet unable to dispense with it;
despising democracy, yet obliged to render it lip-homage; maintained
his own unlimited power by the same system of apparent liberty and real
violence by which he had attained it. The semblance of a free
Constitution was preserved in all its forms: Crown, Parliament, Press,
continued to figure as heretofore. But each only served to clothe the
skeleton of a dictatorship as absolute as that of any Caesar. King
Alexander, without experience or character, weak, frivolous and
plastic, obediently signed every decree presented to him. When
recourse to the Legislature was thought necessary, the Chamber
perfunctorily passed every Bill submitted to it. The newspapers were
tolerated as long as they refrained from touching on essentials.
At the very opening of Parliament, for so we must call this
illegitimate assembly, the King, in a Speech from the Throne written by
M. Venizelos, expounded his master's policy, external and internal.
Externally, Greece had "spontaneously offered her feeble forces to that
belligerent group whose war aims were to defend the rights of
nationalities and the liberties of peoples." [1] Internally, she would
have to be purified by the removal of the staunchest adherents of the
old regime from positions of trust and influence. But neither of these
operations could be carried out save under the reign of terror known as
martial law. Parliament, therefore, voted martial law; and M.
Venizelos, "irritated by the arbitrary proceedings" {208} of the
Opposition, which protested against the restrictions on public opinion,
"emphasised the fact that the Government was determined to act with an
iron hand and to crush any attempt at reaction." [2]
Never was promise more faithfully kept. Within the Chamber it soon
became a parliamentary custom to refute by main force. Sometimes
Liberal Deputies volunteered for this service; sometimes it was
performed by the Captain of the Premier's Cretan Guard, who of course
had no seat in the House, but who held a revolver in his hand.
Out of Parliament the iron hand made itself felt through the length and
breadth of the country.
With a view to "purging and uplifting the judiciary body" and "securing
Justice from political interference," [3] all the courts were swept
clean of Royalist magistrates, whose places were filled with members of
the Liberal Party. In this way the pernicious connexion between the
judicial and political powers, abolished in 1909--perhaps the most
beneficial achievement of the Reconstruction era--was re-established,
and Venizelism became an indispensable qualification for going to law
with any chance of obtaining justice.
An equally violent passion for purity led at the same time, and by a
process as unconstitutional as it was uncanonical, to ecclesiastical
reforms, whereby the Holy Synod was deposed and an extraordinary
disciplinary court was erected to deal with the clerical enemies of the
new regime, especially with the prelates who took part in the
anathematization of M. Venizelos. Only five bishops were found in Old
Greece competent or compliant enough to sit on this tribunal; the other
seven came from Macedonia, Crete, and Mytilene, though those dioceses
were under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople, whose
sanction was neither asked nor given. With the exception of six, five
of whom belonged to the disciplinary court, all the prelates of the
Kingdom were struck by it: some were degraded and turned out to subsist
as they might, on charity or by the sale of their holy vestments;
others were sentenced to humiliating punishments; and {209} where no
plausible excuse for a trial could be discovered, exile or confinement
was inflicted arbitrarily. On the other hand, as many as repented
received plenary absolution. For instance, the Bishops of Demetrias
and Gytheion were deprived for having cursed M. Venizelos; but on
promising in future to preach the gospel according to him, they were
not only pardoned, but nominated members of the second disciplinary
court created to continue the purification of the Church. Even more
instructive was the case of the Metropolitan of Castoria who was tried,
convicted, and confined in a monastery, but after recanting his
political heresies was retried, unanimously acquitted, and reinstated.
All this, in the words of the Speech from the Throne, "to restore the
prestige of the Church."
Side by side went on the reform of every branch of the Administration.
All the Prefects, and many lesser functionaries, were discharged.
Schoolmasters and schoolmistresses were dismissed by the hundred. The
National University, the National Library, the National Museum, the
National Bank, underwent a careful disinfection. In every Department
the worst traditions of the spoils system prevalent before 1909 were
revived and reinvigorated. Other measures marked an improvement on
tradition. Some two thousand Army and Navy officers, from generals and
admirals downwards, were put on the retired list or under arrest. And
an almost hysterical desire manifested itself to strike terror into
every civilian whom his opinions rendered objectionable and his
position dangerous to the new order: tactics the full brutality of
which was revealed in the treatment of M. Venizelos's principal
adversaries.
M. Rufos, a former Cabinet Minister, languished in the Averoff gaol
from 1917 until the spring of 1920, when the Athenian newspapers
announced his release. About the same time M. Esslin, an ex-President
of the Chamber, who had been imprisoned at the age of seventy-eight in
the Syngros gaol, was released by death.
All the members of the Skouloudis Cabinet, with the exception of
Admiral Coundouriotis, Minister of Marine who had afterwards proved his
patriotism by enlisting under the Cretan's banner, were arraigned for
high treason, {210} referring mainly to the surrender of Fort Rupel.
The preliminary examination dragged on from year to year and produced
only evidence which established the innocence of the accused.[4] One
of them, ex-Premier Rallis, in April 1920, after being for years
libelled as a traitor, suddenly found himself exempted by Royal Decree
from further persecution, because at that time M. Venizelos conceived
the hope that this statesman might be induced to undertake the
leadership of an Opposition accepting his regime. The rest,
particularly M. Skouloudis and M. Dragoumis, one aged eighty-two and
the other seventy-seven, after a long confinement in the Evangelismos
Hospital, remained to the end under strict surveillance, with gendarmes
guarding their houses and dogging their footsteps.
The Lambros Cabinet was similarly harassed, until one of its members
turned Venizelist and three others died; among the latter M. Lambros
himself and his Minister for Foreign Affairs, M. Zalocostas. Both
these gentlemen, though in poor health, had been confined on desolate
islets of the Archipelago, where they were kept without proper medical
attendance or any of the comforts which their condition required, and
were only brought home to expire.
In each case--as also in that of the soldiers responsible for the
surrender of the Cavalla garrison, whose "treasonable" conduct became
likewise the subject of judicial investigation--trial was sedulously
deferred by a variety of ingenious contrivances; nothing being more
remote from the Government's mind than an intention to draw the truth
into the light. The motive of these proceedings doubtless was one of
policy chiefly--to ruin the enemies of the regime in public esteem by
branding them as traitors, even if no conviction could be obtained.
But policy was not the only element. To judge by the harshness
displayed, there was the personal factor, too. M. Venizelos had had a
feud with these men and had vanquished them. They were men whom, all
things considered, it was more a shame to fight than an honour to
vanquish--and they were humbled: they were in his power. For a proud
spirit that would have been enough; it was not enough for {211} M.
Venizelos. He acted as if he wanted to enjoy their humiliation, and
because he had them down to profit by their helplessness.
Identical treatment could not be meted out to those in Corsica and
Switzerland, though some of them were sentenced to death by default for
conspiring against M. Venizelos. But all that could be done from a
distance to embitter their lot was done. Whilst at home the blackest
calumnies were thrown upon them: in exile they were pursued by the same
blight. Special attention was directed to the "arch-traitor." He had
been dethroned and expatriated; but this was not enough. His pension
was cut off. He and all the members of his family, with the exception
of Prince George, who stayed in Paris, were forbidden to visit Entente
countries, even for the purpose of attending the death-bed of a
relative. Entente subjects visiting Switzerland were forbidden to go
near them: lest any particle of the truth should percolate. Until the
end of the War they lived segregated, shunned, and spied upon like
malefactors. During the Liberal regime in Greece, while Italian and
Swiss hotels flourished all the year round on Royalist refugees,
Royalist exiles populated the semi-desert islands of the Archipelago:
they were gathered in batches and shipped off--persons of every degree,
from general officers whose guilt was attachment to their King, down to
poor people convicted of owning the King's portrait. For the
possession of a portrait of Constantine supplied one of the most common
proofs of "ill-will towards the established order" (_dysmeneia kafa tou
kathestotos_)--a new crime invented to meet a new constitutional
situation. It extended to the utmost confines of the kingdom. As the
farmers were at work in the fields, gendarmes raided and ransacked
their cottages for such portraits; butchers and fishmongers were haled
before courts-martial for like indications of ill-will; and--matter for
laughter and matter for tears are inseparable in modern Greek history
(perhaps in all history)--one met a cabman beaten again and again for
calling his horse "Cotso" (diminutive of "Constantine"), or a woman
dragged to the police-station because her parrot was heard whistling
the Constantine March. Volumes would be needed to record the petty
persecutions which arose from {212} the use of that popular name:
suffice it to say that prudent parents refrained from giving it to
their children.
If enemies had to be frightened by every exhibition of severity, it was
not less imperative to gratify friends by every mark of generosity. As
already noted, a Mixed Commission had been appointed under the old
regime to indemnify out of the public purse the Venizelists who
suffered during the Athens disturbances of 1 and 2 December, 1916.
This body, after the expulsion of the King, was remodelled by the
substitution of a Venizelist for the Royalist Greek member; was
authorized to enlarge its purview so as to cover all losses occasioned,
directly or indirectly, by Royalist resentment throughout the Kingdom
throughout the six months' blockade--including even the cases of
persons who, compelled to flee the country, were torpedoed in the
course of their voyage; and was invested with powers of deciding
unfettered by any legislation or by any obligation to give reasons for
its decisions. Thanks to their unlimited scope and discretion, the
Commissioners, after rejecting some 2,500 claims as fraudulent, were
still able to admit 3,350 claims and to allot damages representing a
total sum of just under seven million drachmas.[5]
The number of old adherents confirmed in the faith through this
expedient, however, was as nothing to the legions of proselytes won by
the creation of new Government posts of every grade in every part of
the Kingdom, by the facilities afforded in the transaction of all
business over which the State had any control--which under existing
conditions meant all important business--and by the favours of various
sorts that were certain to reward devotion to the cause. Beside the
steadily growing swarm of native parasites, profiteers, jobbers and
adventurers who throve on the spoils of the public, marched a less
numerous, but not less ravenous, host of foreign financiers, concession
and contract hunters, to whom the interests of the State were freely
bartered for support to the party in the Entente capitals.
The economic exhaustion caused by this reckless waste of national
wealth, in addition to the necessary war {213} expenditure, was
concealed at the time partly by credits furnished to M. Venizelos in
Paris and London, and partly by an artificial manipulation of the
exchange for his sake. It became apparent when these political
influences ceased to interfere with the normal working of financial
laws. Then the Greek exchange, which at the outbreak of the European
War stood at 26 or 27 drachmas to the pound sterling, and later was
actually against London, dropped to 65, and by a rapid descent reached
the level of 155. Thus in the domain of finance, as in every other,
the valuable reconstructive achievement of 1909--which had led to the
transformation of a deficit of from ten to twelve millions into a
surplus of fifteen millions and to the accumulation of deposits that
enabled the Greek exchange to withstand the shock of several
conflicts--was demolished by its own architect.
The illusion that M. Venizelos had the nation behind him was diligently
kept up by periodical demonstrations organized on his behalf: joy bells
announced to the Athenians his home-comings from abroad, the destitute
refugees harboured at the Piraeus were given some pocket money and a
free ticket to attend him up to the capital, the cafés at the bidding
of the police disgorged their loafers into the streets, and the army of
genuine partisans thus augmented with auxiliaries, accorded their Chief
a reception calculated to impress newspaper readers in France and
England. But observers on the spot knew that the "national enthusiasm"
was as hollow as a drum, which under the manipulation of an energetic
minority could be made to emit a considerable amount of noise; that the
demonstrators to a large extent were a stage crowd which could be moved
rapidly from place to place and round the same place repeatedly; that
since the schism the great Cretan had loomed small in his own country
and that he had grown less by his elevation.
Such terrorism of opponents and favouritism of adherents; such
encouragement of oppression and connivance at corruption; such a
prostitution of justice; such a cynical indifference to all moral
principle--unparalleled even in the history of Greece--could not but
make the Cretan's rule both odious and despicable. What made it more
hateful still in the eyes of the people was the fact {214} that it had
been imposed upon them by foreign arms, and what made it more
contemptible still was the fact that it functioned under false
pretences. As free men, the Greeks resented the violence done to their
liberty; but as intelligent men they would have resented open violence
less than a profanation of the name of liberty that added mockery to
injury and administered a daily affront to their intelligence. There
was yet a spirit of resistance in the country which would not be
crushed, and a fund of good sense which could not be deceived. If they
formerly anathematized M. Venizelos as a traitor, the masses now
execrated him as a tyrant: a mean and crafty bully without bowels of
mercy who gave licence to his followers to commit every species of
oppression and exploitation in the interest of party.
Such were the feelings with which the very name of Venizelos inspired
the mass of the people. And that the mass of the people was in the
main right can scarcely be contested. It would, of course, be absurd
to hold M. Venizelos directly responsible for every individual act of
oppression and corruption, most of which occurred during his absences
from the country and of which he was not cognizant. But it was he who
had initiated both oppression and corruption. M. Jonnart's
prescriptive lists were really M. Venizelos's, who had long since made
his own enemies pass for enemies to the Entente. The "purification" of
the public services, as well as the prosecutions, the imprisonments and
deportations of eminent personages, some of whom died of the hardships
and privations they underwent, were his own doing. The multiplication
of offices and officials began with his creation, at the very outset,
of two new Ministries; a measure to which even King Alexander demurred
when the list of M. Venizelos's Cabinet was presented to him.[6] Nor
is there upon record a single case in which the Chief seriously
attempted either to restrain or to punish his subordinates. In truth,
he was not free to do so. He was bound to the system he had brought
into being and was irretrievably committed to all its works.
A man who gains supreme power against the wishes of {215} the majority,
and only with the consent of a faction, cannot maintain himself in it
except by force and bribery. He must coerce and corrupt. Moreover, to
rule without a rival, he must surround himself with men vastly inferior
to him both in talent and in virtue: men who, in return for their
obsequious servility, must be humoured and satisfied. Whenever such a
usurpation occurs, all the maxims upon which the welfare and freedom of
a community normally rest are annihilated, and the reign of profligacy
and of tyranny inevitably supervenes: a regime born in party passion
must live for purely party ends.
We may break or circumvent all laws, save the eternal and immutable law
of cause and effect.[7]
The best of M. Venizelos's followers sincerely regretted the unceasing
persecution of their adversaries: they saw that stability could not be
attained without conciliation and co-operation; but they did not see
how clemency could be combined with safety. The thousands of officers
and officials who had been turned out of their posts, and the
politicians who were kept out of office found employment, and the
private individuals who had suffered for their "ill-will towards the
established order" relief in plotting and intriguing: there was so much
unrest that the authorities had to use severe measures.
M. Venizelos himself wished to make his administration milder and
cleaner and to broaden its basis--he was even credited with the one
joke of his life in this connexion: "I will yet head anti-Venizelism."
But the thing was beyond his power: he had not a sufficient following
in the country to replace armed force; and he dared not trust the
Royalists with a share in the government for fear lest they should use
it against him. None, indeed, was more painfully conscious of the hate
for him which every month increased in the breasts of his countrymen
than M. Venizelos himself. From the very beginning of the schism he
had assumed a prophylactic in the form of a cuirass;[8] and since his
installation he neglected none of {216} the precautions requisite for
his personal security. During his rare sojourns in Athens he always
went about escorted by his Cretan guards; while on the roof of a
building facing his house stood two machine-guns, "for," as a witty
Athenian informed an inquisitive stranger, "the protection of
minorities."
In general, it is true, the plotting and intriguing which permeated the
country were too fatuous to be dangerous. But every now and then they
took on formidable shape. In November, 1919, a carefully organized
military conspiracy at Athens only miscarried through the indiscretion
of a trusty but tipsy sergeant. Among the letters intercepted and
produced at the trial was one from a Royalist exile in Italy to another
at home. The writer, a lady, reported her brother as wondering how
anybody in Greece could fail to understand that there no longer existed
such things as a Government and an Opposition, but only tyrants and
tyrannized over, who worked, the former to maintain their arbitrary
authority, the latter to shake it off and recover their liberty. The
work of neither could, in the nature of things, be carried on according
to any constitutional rule or law. He went on to argue that, under
such conditions, deeds which would otherwise be crimes were justified
and even glorified by history as unavoidable fulfilments of a patriotic
duty: force must be met by force.[9]
So the national demoralization inaugurated by foreign pressure went on
being promoted by domestic tyranny; and of cure there was no hope.
Good men would not associate themselves with the Venizelist regime,
because it was bad; and even men by no means notorious for goodness
shunned it, not because it was bad, but because they were shrewd enough
to perceive it was too bad to last.
[1] For the full text of the Speech, see _The Hesperia_, 10 Aug., 1917.
[2] The _Morning Post_, 9 Aug., 1917.
[3] Speech from the Throne.
[4] It also brought to light documents of real historic value, such as
the dispatches included in the _White Book_ (Nos. 70 foll.).
[5] _Rapport officiel de la Commission mixte des indemnités_, Paris,
1919.
[6] Jonnart, p. 183: "A clean sweep in Greece."--The _Daily Chronicle_,
2 July, 1917--an outline of M. Venizelos's programme.
[7] There have been usurpers, like Oliver Cromwell, who managed to
temper tyranny with probity; but their cases are exceptional and their
success only a matter of degree.
[8] An article of this kind was found in his house after the fighting
of 2 Dec., 1916.
[9] _The Hestia_, 27 Dec. (O.S.), 1919.
{217}