politician and every third-rate staff officer in the countries, not
only of the Allies but of the Central Powers, has very decided opinions
upon the Dardanelles. They say, “If only Tino had done this,” or “If
only Tino had done that,” or “If only the Turks had been a few days
later, or the Allies a few days sooner,” or “If only Winston had had
his way.” In fact they go on saying “if only” until the whole thing
becomes a tragic farce.
‘But I tell you, young man, that I _know_ the Dardanelles. I _know_ the
Black Sea. I _know_ that there are certain ways in which Constantinople
can be attacked, and certain ways in which it can’t. I know a good
deal more about both the military and the naval sides of the question
than even your friend Mr. Winston Churchill, and my staff probably
know more than I do myself. Don’t you see that for generations the
eyes of Greece have been fixed on Constantinople? Don’t you realize
that in the heart of every Greek there lies the dream that one day he
will be able to throw his cap into the air at the news that Greece
has re-entered into the inheritance which every Greek regards as his
natural birthright? Why, there is even a legend that when there sits on
the Greek throne a monarch of the name of Constantine and a Queen of
the name of Sophie, ... Greece will capture Constantinople. A foolish
legend, perhaps you may say. But the conditions of it were fulfilled
when, thirty years ago, I married my wife. And the coincidence has been
working in my people’s imagination ever since.’
He paused, rose from his seat, and went over to the window. And when he
went on talking it was with his eyes fixed on the quiet lawns outside.
‘Now,’ he resumed, ‘I’m not saying that this dream is right or wrong.
I’m merely telling you that the dream is there. And since it is there,
and since the Greeks, though they may be superstitious, are also a
practical people, it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that the Greek
Officers and Staff, not only of the army but of the navy, should have
the whole situation at their finger-ends? Doesn’t it? Tell me. Am I
being logical or am I not?’
I reassured him on that point.
‘Very well then,’ he continued. ‘When I first heard of the Dardanelles
Campaign, I knew that it was doomed to failure. I knew it in my very
bones. I expressed my opinion in public and in private. I was called
a pro-German because I would not join it, because I would not send at
least 10,000 Greek soldiers to help the Allies. Was I right or wrong?
I knew that if I sent 10,000 soldiers that there would be 10,000 widows
in Greece in a few weeks. And I was damned if I would do it.’
And then he said something which made me sit up. ‘_If I had been
pro-German I could have wrecked the whole Allied course in the Near
East as easily as I can flick my fingers._’ And he flicked his fingers
in my face.
‘How?’
He laughed. ‘You’re an inquisitive youth, aren’t you? Well, I’ll
explain.
‘You may remember,’ he said, ‘that in the autumn of 1915 the Allies
were in a very bad way. The armies of Austria and Germany were
sweeping down through the Balkans like a great black cloud. Serbia was
overrun and desolated. The whole of the north was in the grip of the
Central Powers. Bulgaria was closing in on the east. The only refuge
was--Greece.
‘I had already violated my neutrality in favour of the Allies by
allowing General Sarrail, the Allied Commander, to use Salonika as a
base for his troops. A fat lot of thanks I got for it--but that is by
the way. I was therefore in an exceedingly difficult position. If I
allowed the Allies to retreat over my frontier I could hardly, as a
neutral monarch, forbid the Germans from doing the same thing. To do so
would be tantamount to a declaration of war against Germany.
‘Consider the position if you want to prove that I was _not_
pro-German. Here was the Allied Army retreating into Greece, beaten
and exhausted. They were cut off from the north and from the east.
My own army was in their rear, fresh and intact. _If I had wished to
declare War on the Allies could you possibly imagine a more favourable
opportunity?_ I could have wiped out Sarrail without the loss of
more than a thousand men. The whole of the Balkans would have been
completely, irrecoverably German. And the war would not have ended as
it has done.
‘But what did I do? For that I would again refer you, not to the
newspapers, but to the official documents. I sent a telegram to the
Kaiser stating that if one German soldier advanced a yard over the
Greek frontier, I should consider it a hostile act, and should declare
war. In other words, I saved the Allies at one of the most critical
moments of the struggle.’
He stopped abruptly. ‘And that,’ he said, ‘is all I’ve got to say to
you this evening.’
I rose to go, feeling a little bewildered. When I returned to my hotel
I wrote down the whole of the foregoing conversation, word for word,
and I think it is almost verbally accurate.
And that is all I am going to write about the Greek question, for I
have discovered, on bitter experience, that people don’t care a damn
about it, and that the whole question bristles with difficulties.
I only write to ease my own conscience, and to pay a humble little
tribute to two people whom I learnt to regard as friends.
One cannot, however, write about Tino without also writing about
Compton MacKenzie. It may seem a long step from the most hated monarch
of Europe to a man who used to be one of England’s most popular
novelists, but it is not quite so long as you might imagine, for,
according to Greek Royalists, Compton MacKenzie was the evil genius of
Greece during the war.
In early 1915 (I think it was) he was appointed head of the
Anglo-French police in Athens. A curious appointment, one would think,
but those days of chaos abounded in curious appointments, and at least
one could say about Compton MacKenzie that he had a sense of style.
They told me that he fell out of a balloon somewhere in the Near East,
and was on the point of being invalided out of the army when this
appointment suddenly became vacant. He accepted it with alacrity, for
he had very clear ideas on the Greek question. The first of these ideas
was that Tino was violently pro-German and as treacherous as they
make them. The second was that he himself was called, whatever the
sacrifice, to lead a crusade of neo-Hellenism against the Turk, the
Bulgarian, the German, or any other nation that got in the way.
His methods of work, they alleged, were remarkable. He is said to have
taken a little office, and there concocted his wicked schemes, clad in
garments more fitted for the less reputable colleges of Oxford than
for His Majesty’s Service. I was told of purple waistcoats, long black
walking-sticks, heavy cloaks lined with green silk, black stock ties.
It cannot be true, but at least there is something most intriguing in
the picture of this young and rather decorative relic of the nineties
carrying out Balkan intrigues against a background of classic pillars
and traitorous monarchs.
They alleged also (I am scattering that blessed word ‘alleged’
all over the place, as a sort of disinfectant against libel
actions)--they alleged that on several occasions he tried to murder
King Constantine--rather hot work for the head of the British police
stationed in a neutral and officially friendly country. I saw a
newspaper cutting of some Greek paper in which there was a photograph
of one of the King’s bodyguard, together with a long legend that
Compton MacKenzie had bribed him to put poison in the King’s wine. The
story ran something like this. MacKenzie, having found out that bombs
were too dangerous and that daggers made too much mess, decided that he
would employ the more cleanly and efficient aid of arsenic. He obtained
the arsenic and also managed, somehow or other, to get hold of a very
simple and child-like soldier who was in attendance on the King, at a
time when the King’s health was giving rise to grave anxiety.
‘Do you know why the King is so ill?’ he is alleged to have said to the
Evson.
‘No?’
‘Because he is bewitched by the Queen.’
Here the Evson began to take keen interest. He knew all about
witcheries, and such-like.
‘Yes,’ MacKenzie is alleged to have continued. ‘And the only way in
which we can break the spell is for you to put this powder into his
glass when he is at dinner. It is a very wonderful powder--the crushed
essence of a herb that only grows in England. When he has drunk it you
will find that immediately he will be cured.’
After a little persuasion, the story runs, and a rather larger amount
of bribery, the Evson departed with the arsenic, promising faithfully
that he would give it to the King. But as the evening shadows fell
his courage failed him. Supposing that, after all, the herb should not
do its work? Supposing that it did his master actual harm? No. It was
really a little risky. And so he went to a certain Court official and
told him the story. Consternation. Curses against England. Salvation of
King Constantine. Tableau.
A childish story of course. But it was believed by a great many
otherwise sane people. And it only shows you how careful you must be in
the Secret Service.
Another, and even more lurid tale, was told about Mr. Compton
MacKenzie. I never saw any newspaper cuttings on the subject, because I
don’t think it got into the Press. But I _was_ furnished with a great
many strange-looking documents, much thumbed, and decorated at all the
available corners with red sealing-wax. This story was also concerned
with an alleged attempt by the English novelist on King Constantine’s
life--an attempt that, if it had been true, would have been about the
most ingenious piece of inventive work that he had ever done.
In the summer of 1915 (I think that is the right date), the King’s
Palace at Tatoy--some twenty miles outside Athens--was burnt. For miles
round the heath and scrub were devastated by fire. The King was in his
Palace at the time and only escaped by a miracle. And even so, several
of his bodyguard were burned to death.
All this, the Royalists alleged, was the work of Compton MacKenzie.
With devilish ingenuity he was described as having obtained the
services of some half-dozen of the riff-raff of Athens, among whom
was a German prostitute in the pay of the Allies, of having bought a
quantity of petrol and benzine, hired four motor-cars, and set out from
a low café at dawn in order to accomplish his dirty work. The plan was
to surround the Palace with fire from all sides, so that there should
be no possible escape, and with this object some six points had been
marked on a map, in the form of a wide circle, which were to be soaked
with benzine and set alight. The wind would do the rest.
I myself saw a map which was supposed to have been stolen from
Compton MacKenzie’s headquarters, but had, as a matter of fact, been
manufactured by my informant. It showed a number of mysterious crosses,
and subsequent inquiry proved that fires had actually broken out,
almost simultaneously, at all these places, proving beyond a shadow
of doubt that the ‘accident’ was not an accident at all. But why poor
Compton MacKenzie should have been accused of it I could never quite
make out.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
From the Regal to the Ridiculous
Those little Balkan Courts were terribly pathetic. They always gave me
the impression of a rather threadbare musical comedy on tour. There was
so much pomp, such a glitter of uniforms, and so little money. I shall
never forget my first sight of a Royal car. Tino was in it, plumed and
feathered, and were it not for the large crown painted on the back, one
would have said that the car was a dilapidated Ford. So dilapidated
that the tyres were bound up with tape and seemed to be of different
shapes. I watched the car trundle out of sight, and just as it turned
the corner there was a loud bang. The first tyre had burst, and Tino
had to get out and watch his chauffeur struggling in the dust.
If Queen Sophie had sold her pearls, which were amazingly beautiful,
the whole Royal Family would have had plenty for the rest of their
lives. But I suppose she could not do that, since they were Crown
jewels. As things were, the severest economy had to be used to make
both ends meet.
One day I went to tea with her and after tea we walked, as usual, in
the garden. It was looking exquisite that evening, the bougainvillæa, a
mass of purple, dripping from the walls, and all the lemon trees heavy
with golden fruit. By and by we came to a little pond of marble, which
was empty.
‘How lovely this must be when it is filled with water,’ I said.
‘Yes. But I don’t know when we shall be able to fill it.’
‘Is the drought as bad as all that?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I wasn’t referring to the drought. The pond
has to be cleaned before it can be filled. And that means another
gardener. And gardeners cost 15 drachmæ a day.’
Now fifteen drachmæ, at that period, was about half a crown. Can you
imagine a Queen not being able to have a pond cleaned out because she
had not the necessary half a crown?
And yet, during the war, people used to talk ridiculous nonsense about
the Greek Royal Family revelling in gold owing to the marriage of the
American millionairess, Mrs. Leeds, with Prince Christopher, the King’s
youngest brother. Sheer nonsense. She was not allowed to do so. I
believe that she was very generous and sweet in giving presents in the
ordinary run of affairs, but as for financing Tino’s family (let alone
financing Greece, as they said she did)--that was quite out of the
question.
Princess Irene--one of the most attractive girls I have ever seen--once
said to me, ‘Isn’t the price of clothes appalling?’
Mindful of tailor’s bills, I fervently agreed with her.
‘I want to get some new evening frocks,’ she added, ‘but I can’t get
any under twenty pounds.’
If only things had been different, what a paradise the Queen would
have made of Athens, and of the Palace in particular. ‘Before the
war,’ she said, ‘we had all the plans ready. We were going to have a
beautiful new hotel in Constitution Square, we were going to make the
roads good again, we were going to plant thousands of trees all over
the mountains. And I had dozens of English furniture catalogues which
I used to read and read, thinking of all the lovely things we should
have in the Palace. All that is finished--absolutely finished. We must
get along as we can. I can’t even afford to have the English magazines
now....’
And then, ‘Isn’t it perfectly _appalling_ the way we always talk
about money nowadays? I never used to. My mamma would have thought
it terrible. But now it’s, “I can’t afford this, and I can’t afford
that.” And it’s such a dreary topic of conversation. Let’s talk about
something else.’
We both laughed, and talked instead of England.
* * * * *
Endless comedies arose out of the fact that the Royal Family were not
recognized by the Allies, because the members of the British Legation
had to be officially unaware of their very existence. Francis Lindley,
our Minister at Athens, said to me that it was damnably awkward for
him, because sometimes he would meet Tino in the street, or driving in
a motor-car, and they both had to look the other way.
A regular game of hide-and-seek sometimes ensued. I remember once going
with Bridget Lindley and some others from the Legation to play tennis
in the gardens of the British School of Archæology. We had a divine
game of tennis, and when it was over strolled round the garden looking
for flowers. We had just turned a corner when, there, a few yards in
front of us was the Queen of Greece, with a lady-in-waiting. With a
hoot of dismay the young ladies from the Legation turned on their heels
and fled. (It sounds rude, but it was the only thing they could have
done.) I was left alone to greet the Queen.
‘Who were those girls who rushed away like that?’ said the Queen.
‘Oh--they were just some people who have been playing tennis.’
‘Yes. But who _were_ they?’
I had to tell her that they were the Lindleys.
She made a little gurgling noise of laughter. ‘I see. Isn’t it
ridiculous?’ And then ... ‘We might be such good friends. It’s a
pity....’
Occasionally, however, some man from the Legation, in an access of
boldness, _would_ visit the Palace, and a very good time he was given.
But these things had to be worked out with great secrecy, because
naturally, if the Minister knew, he would be forced to take severe
measures against the offenders. There was one young man (I can’t, of
course, give his name) whom we smuggled into the Palace one afternoon,
and the arrangements for getting him there and back were worthy of
an _opéra bouffe_ conspiracy. We had to go in a closed motor and be
hustled up a back staircase into the boudoir of a lady-in-waiting. It
was then arranged that the Queen and some of the Princesses should
cross the garden, come up another staircase, and enter a few minutes
later. We used to make absurd jokes about it, saying that the Queen
might suddenly shoot down the chimney, or that the Englishman should
disguise himself as a piano-tuner, and enter in that manner.
It was at one of these tea-parties that the Queen, becoming serious
for a moment, gave us just a hint of some of the tortures she must
have suffered in exile. ‘When we were exiled from Greece,’ she said,
‘the only place which was open to us was Switzerland. We went there,
and stayed at an hotel. I wanted to be just like the other guests--I
wanted, as they said I was no longer a Queen, _not_ to be a Queen,
just to be an ordinary human being. Staying in the hotel were several
of my old English friends, whom in days gone by I had known quite
intimately. They used to be of my party in the opera; I have danced
at their houses, dined with them. One and all, they cut me dead. I
shouldn’t have minded that--for, after all, there are _ways_ of cutting
people, aren’t there? But they did it in the unkindest way possible,
publicly--not only to myself but to my husband--leaving any room that I
entered, and staring me straight in the face as they went out. Now--it
isn’t like English people to do that, is it? And yet they did. It was
not till I picked up some of the English papers, and learnt what they
were saying about us over there, that I realized the reason for it.’
* * * * *
None of the restrictions which so hampered any members of the Legation
when they wanted to go to the Palace applied to me, because I had
no official position, and nobody seemed to know what I was doing in
Athens. But Athens is a very small place, and very soon some remarkable
legends began to spread about me. Some people said I was in the pay of
the Bolsheviks, others in the pay of Germany, others that I was a young
English millionaire forced to fly my country because of some scandal
connected with a Greek lady, and that I was in Athens to settle it
up. Being very young, I rather enjoyed these legends and had Compton
MacKenzie not apparently forestalled me, should probably have purchased
a wardrobe in keeping with the part I was supposed to be playing,
consisting of a red tie, a pair of check knickerbockers, and a heavy
gold watch-chain. However, I contented myself with a black evening
cloak, lined with pale grey satin, that called forth rude and Bacchic
remarks from the ladies of light virtue who lurked under the lemon
trees of an evening.
I only realized, however, the true thrill of being a political
intriguer one night towards the end of my stay in Athens when I was
walking home, along the deserted sea-front, after a night’s gambling at
a little roulette place near the harbour. It sounds very dissipated,
and I suppose, in some ways, it was. Here is the story:
The Greeks are born gamblers. They would gamble away their final
drachma on the slightest provocation, and frequently do so. Every
other day in the streets of Athens one sees boys going round with
long slender sticks, on which are pinned fluttering tickets of blue
and white--and very pretty they look, rustling in the wind. These are
lottery tickets, and have a tremendous sale. I had often purchased
them, without any result, and finding some sort of gambling essential
to existence, decided to throw in my lot with the roulette players of
the Piræus.
I wish you could have seen that Greek gambling house. It lay in a
rather deserted position facing the sea, along a road that had never
been finished. On a moonlight night you could see from its windows
the white sails of the ships that search for sponges and tunny fish
among the waters of the Archipelago, but on other nights you would see
nothing at all except a solitary lamp-post outside the door.
Inside, one discovered a sordid room, containing one long table, round
which were congregated a remarkable assemblage of persons. There were
Russian ladies of apparent wealth, Italians, swarthy and silent,
excitable Greek merchants, now and then a German, some odd-looking
Americans, and Venizelists and Royalists all jumbled together, drinking
quantities of bad whisky and smoking black cigarettes.
The value of a classical education, in such surroundings, was
immediately apparent. For one thing, the numbers were almost exactly
the same as one learnt at school, and sometimes even the pronunciation
also. For example, ochto was eight and deka was ten. That was a great
help. In addition, ‘mavro,’ for black, sounded like an old friend, and
it was easy to recognize ‘coichinou’ the word cochineal (with which, if
I remember rightly, the Greek ladies used to dye their robes in days
gone by).
Play seemed to me to be very high that night, although, as my later
and more abandoned years have taught me, it was not. Still, a man with
heavy pouched eyelids and a made-up bow had a habit of putting fifty
pounds on a single number, and sometimes winning it, which made my
hundred drachma pieces look very foolish. However, I successfully lost
twenty pounds, and feeling exceedingly irritable left the room.
It was then about two o’clock in the morning. I hadn’t any money to pay
for a taxi, and in any case there were no taxis about. And so I started
on the walk home--about seven miles.
Now, the streets of Athens at night, especially of this part of Athens,
are not as the streets of Piccadilly. For one thing, they are execrably
lit. For another they contain large holes in the middle of the road, in
which it would be quite possible to bury a dead horse. For another they
contain--dogs, lean, snarling, yellow-fanged dogs that rush out from
the darkness, growling and yelping, and taking an unhealthy interest in
one’s heels.
Several such came out during my journey home. I put on a wooden
expression, lifted my feet very high, took quick short steps, and
muttered at intervals ‘pretty doggy, pretty doggy.’ It seemed the only
thing to do. And by and by the pretty doggies departed, though the
sound of their strident voices still echoed in the distance.
I was now on a long, straight road, bounded on either side by pepper
trees and shrubberies of orange and lemon. Suddenly out of the shadows
appeared a figure ... the figure of a youngish man in a badly fitting
black coat. It sounds dramatic and it _was_ dramatic. Worse even than
the dogs.
This person accosted me. Where was I going? (He spoke in French, and
was, I believe, a Frenchman.)
I was going home, thank him very much.
So was he.
Indeed.
It was pleasant, was it not, to have company on such a lonely road?
Delightful. (Pretty doggy, pretty doggy.)
Especially on so warm a night.
Yes.
Ah! but I had not experienced the summer. That was epouvantable.
I looked at him quickly. How did he know that I had not ‘experienced’
the summer?
‘I know you quite well,’ he said. And he calmly gave my name, age,
address, and occupation.
This was all very odd. I walked a little more quickly. Athens was still
some five miles away. I could see the Acropolis gleaming like a distant
rock of refuge. A nasty young man, I thought.
Then he began to talk. He talked like a gramophone running at three
times its normal speed. A high unnatural voice. A superfluity of
gesture. And all about King Constantine. How he had betrayed the
Allies. How he had kept a private submarine. How he was a knave, a
poltroon, a pig, a female dog. How he had a hoard of German gold. And
how....
Here, at a bend in the road, he suddenly stopped, gripped my arm,
looked me straight in the eyes and said:
‘And you--you who call yourself an Englishman--are helping him!’
I regarded him as calmly as the circumstances warranted. And in English
I said:
‘You appear to be a little mad!’