[9] The terms of the Note were communicated to the House of Commons by Mr. Bonar Law the same night.
[10] Reuter, Athens, 9 Dec., 1920.
[11] Another version of this refrain, which might be seen in crude lettering over a café at Phaleron, is: "So we willed it, and we brought him back" (Etsi to ethelame, kai ton epherame)—a distinct expression of the feeling that the people, by bringing back its sovereign in the face of foreign opposition, asserted its own sovereignty.
[12] See The Times, 20 Dec.; The Daily Mail, 21 Dec., 1920.
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AFTERWORD
In default of a Providence whose intervention in human affairs is no longer recognized, there still is a Nemesis of history whose operations can scarcely be denied. International morality, strange as the juxtaposition of the two words may seem, exists no less than the law of gravity; and a statesman who offends against the one must expect much the same catastrophe as an engineer who ignores the other. But it is not often that this law of retribution asserts itself so swiftly as it has done in the drama for which Greece supplied the stage to French statesmen during the last few years; for it is not often that a Government in the pursuit of practical interests overlooks so completely moral principles, flouts so openly national sentiments, and, while priding itself on realism, shuts its eyes so consistently to realities.
The logic of French action is as above reproach, as its motives are beyond dispute.
Nine decades ago the Duc de Broglie clearly explained that the aim of France in assisting to liberate Greece from the Turkish yoke was to have in the Eastern Mediterranean an instrument of her own ambition: "a State disposed to turn her eyes constantly towards that Power who has made her free—to watch for us over the ports of the Levant, to guard with us the mouth of the Black Sea and the keys of the Bosphorus [Transcriber's note: Bosporus?]";—it followed that the greater the client, the better for the patron's purpose. After undergoing many fluctuations and modifications, this idea was revived at the time of the Balkan wars, when France, together with Germany, supported the Greek claim to Cavalla, and it was fostered to an unhealthy growth during the European War. Hence the identification of France with M. Venizelos, who stood for a policy of expansion at all hazards, and her hostility to King Constantine who, preferring safety to hazardous ventures, stood for Greece's right to shape her course without dictation from Paris any more than from Berlin.
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