By the methods which she employed, France succeeded in gaining Greece and losing the Greeks. Nothing else could have been expected: friends are sometimes to be won by good offices; sometimes by the promise of good offices; and sometimes by good words. They are seldom won by injuries, and by insults never. It is curious that so elementary a lesson in human nature should have been unknown to the able men who guided the policy and diplomacy of France during the War, who raised her military prestige and re-established her position in the first rank of the European Powers. Yet it is a fact—a fact which can be easily verified by a reference to their utterances: they are upon record. Brute force, and brute force, and again brute force: such is the burden that runs through them all; and it embodies a doctrine: the Greeks are Orientals and must be wooed with terror: on the notion, enunciated by an English humorist as a paradox, and adopted by French statesmen as an axiom, that terror sown in the Oriental heart will yield a harvest of esteem—even of affection. With this mad dogma nailed to her mast, France set out upon her voyage for the conquest of the Hellenic heart. It was the first of her mistakes—and it was accompanied by another.
Even if Greece were willing to play the part of a French satellite, she could not do so; for her geographical situation exposes her to the influence of more than one Power. Italy, who has her own ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean, opposed during the War a policy the object of which was Greek expansion over territories coveted by herself and a readjustment of the balance of forces in favour of France; and it was partly in order not to alienate Italy during the War that French statesmen wanted Greece to come in without any specified conditions, leaving the matter of territorial compensations for the time of settlement. Russia showed herself not less suspicious of French diplomacy for similar reasons. But it was with England chiefly that France had to reckon. In the past the rivalry between France and England in the Eastern Mediterranean, though often overshadowed by their common antagonism, first to Russia and subsequently to Germany, was a perennial cause of discord which kept Greece oscillating between the two Powers.
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During the War England, of necessity, lent France her acquiescence and even assistance in a work which she would rather not have seen done. But, once done, she endeavoured to secure such profit as was to be derived therefrom. The Greeks in Asia Minor—it was thought—could serve to check the Turks from troubling us in Mesopotamia and other parts of the Near and Middle East. Hence the Treaty of Sèvres, which provided for the aggrandizement of Greece at the expense of the Ottoman Empire in Asia as well as in Europe, to the seeming satisfaction of both French and British interests. But the adjustment—even if it had been forced upon Turkey—could, by the nature of things, be only temporary. Owing to her geographical situation, Greece must inevitably move within the orbit of the Power who dominates the sea.
Psychology accelerated a movement imposed by geography. While France based her action upon an English humorist's paradox, England based hers upon a French thinker's maxim: Lorsqu'on veut redoubler de force, il faut redoubles de grâce. Although her diplomatic, military, and naval representatives did participate in every measure of coercion and intimidation as a matter of policy, they (if we except the Secret Service gentry) never forgot the dictates of decency: they never, figuratively, kicked the person whom they deemed it necessary to knock down. The ordinary British soldiers, too, for all the relaxation of moral rules natural in war, maintained throughout the campaign a standard of behaviour which contrasted so favourably with their comrades' that it earned them among the inhabitants of Macedonia the honourable nickname of "the maids." It was particularly noted during the fire which devastated Salonica that, while others took advantage of the turmoil to loot, the British soldier devoted himself wholly to rescuing. Some of these things were perhaps resented by our allies as weak, and some were ridiculed as naïve; but they must be judged by their effect. At the end of the War one nation was respected by the Greeks as much as the other was hated and despised. British prestige rose exactly in proportion as French prestige sank. And the object which France elected to seek, and sought in vain, by {233} means of violence and terror, England attained by a conduct which, if not more lawful, was much more graceful.
Still, French statesmen counted on M. Venizelos—"l'homme politique qui incarne l'idée de la solidarité des intérêts français et grecs"—to keep his country on their side. And as in the first instance they had made the alliance conditional on his being placed in control, so now they made the benefits accruing from it to Greece dependent on his remaining in control. That M. Venizelos could not always remain in control does not seem to have occurred to them. Nor that he might not always be content to be a mere puppet in their hands. Murmurs at his pro-British leanings were indeed heard occasionally. But on the whole the Cretan possessed in an adequate measure the faculty of adapting himself to rival points of view, of making each Power feel that her interests were supreme in his regard, and of using the ambitions of both to promote his own. As long as he remained in control, France, with whatever reservations, felt sure of her share of influence.
The collapse of M. Venizelos and the demand of the Greek people for King Constantine's return, came to French statesmen as a painful surprise. That they had for several years been laboriously building on illusions could not be disguised, and being made to look absurd before those of their own compatriots who had all along advocated a policy based on the preservation and exploitation of Turkey, rendered the situation doubly awkward. Unable to rise above personal pique, they would fain veto the return of a prince whom they hated and whom they had wronged beyond hope of conciliation. England, however, free from petty animosities, and sensible that, under whatever ruler, Greece would be with her, refused to sanction lawlessness in the midst of peace; and her view that, if the Greeks wanted Constantine, it was their business and not ours, prevailed. But, on the other hand, by way of compromise, France obtained that he should return to an empty treasury, with foreign credits cut off, and the loans made by the Allies to the Venizelist Government, to facilitate the waging of a common war against Turkey, revoked.
It was an impossible position which King Constantine was called upon to face: a position none of his own making, {234} yet one from which there was no retreat. The Greek people's imperialism had been roused. The leaders who once criticized M. Venizelos's Asiatic policy as a dangerous dream, opposed to economic, strategic, and ethnic realities, might still hold those views and mutter in secret that Smyrna would prove the grave of Greece; but they no longer dared express them, out of deference to public opinion. To the masses M. Venizelos's wild game of chance seemed vindicated by its results, and while they rejected the man they clung to his work.
The Greek Government had no choice but to carry on the conflict under enormous disadvantages. As France anticipated, with foreign credits cut off and a progressive fall in the exchange, the expense of maintaining a large army on a war footing proved too heavy for the National Exchequer. And that was not the worst. France, who since the Armistice had betrayed a keen jealousy of England's place in a part of the world in which she claims special rights, presently concluded a separate agreement with Turkey—an example in which she was followed by Italy—and gave the Turks her moral and material support in their struggle with the Greeks; while England, though refusing to reverse her policy in favour of their enemies, contented herself with giving the Greeks only a platonic encouragement, which they were unwise enough to take for more than it was worth.
Everyone knows the melancholy sequel: our unhappy "allies," left to their own exhausted resources, were driven from the Asiatic territories which in common prudence they should never have entered; and the overseas Empire which M. Venizelos had conjured up vanished in smoke.