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."