The character of this prince has been painted in the most opposite colours, as must always be the case when a man becomes the object of fervent worship and bitter enmity. But the bare record of what he did and endured reveals him sufficiently. His qualities speak through his actions, so that he who runs may read. His most conspicuous defect was a want of suppleness—a certain rigidity of spirit which, when he succeeded, was called firmness, and when he failed, obstinacy. Yet the charge so often brought against him, that he allowed himself to be misled by evil counsellors, shows that this persistence in his own opinion did not spring from egoism nor was incompatible with deference to the opinions of others. It arose from a deep sense of responsibility: he stubbornly refused to deviate from his course when he believed that his duty to his country forbade deviation, and he readily laid down his crown when duty to his country dictated renunciation. For the rest, a man who never posed to his contemporaries may confidently leave his character to the judgment of posterity.
As for M. Venizelos, history will probably say of him {229} what it has said of Themistocles: Though he sincerely aimed at the aggrandizement of his country, and proved on some most critical occasions of great value to it, yet on the whole his intelligence was higher than his morality—a man of many talents and few principles, ready to employ the most tortuous and unscrupulous means, sometimes indeed for ends in themselves patriotic, but often merely for aggrandizing himself. By nature he was more fitted to rule in a despotic than to lead in a constitutional State. Had he been born an emperor, his fertile genius might, unless betrayed by his restless ambition, have rendered his reign prosperous and his memory precious. As it is, in his career, with all its brilliance, posterity will find not so much a pattern to imitate as an example to deter.
[1] There is always so much of mystery surrounding the peasant mind, that its workings must often be accepted rather than understood. But those who wish to understand somewhat the psychological process which led in antiquity to the deification of kings during their life-time could not do better than study the cult of Constantine among the modern Greek peasantry.
[2] See Vice-Admiral Mark Kerr, in the Morning Post, 13 Dec., 1920.
[3] The Daily Mail, Aug. 13, 1920.
[4] Eleutheros Typos, 5/18 Aug., 1920.
[5] The New Europe, 29 March, 1917, p. 327.
[6] "Even if the Opposition sweeps the Peloponnese and gains a majority in Acarnania and Corfu, it is still doubtful whether it will have 120 seats in the new Chamber, which will contain 369 Deputies; and the Venizelists anticipate that their opponents will emerge from the struggle with less than 100 Deputies."—The Times, 15 Nov., 1920.
[7] The Daily Mail; The Evening News, 16 Nov, 1920; Reuter, Athens, 15 Nov.: "Not a single Venizelist was returned for Macedonia and Old Greece, except in Epirus and Aegean Islands."
[8] We learn that his followers "urged upon him the advisability of a coup d'état. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to carry out, and with so much at stake for Greece and for democratic principles generally, it seemed justifiable."—"M. Venizelos at Nice," in The Times, 29 Nov., 1920. But, "fears are entertained, it is said, that the regular Army—which is strongly anti-Venizelist—may get out of hand."—The Daily Mail, 17 Nov.