Greece and the Allies, 1914-1922

by G. F. Abbott

The King's supporters denied that any violation of the Constitution had taken place. The Constitution of Greece, they pointed out, gives the Crown explicitly the right to dismiss Ministers and to dissolve Chambers.[7] M. Venizelos himself had, no longer ago than 5 March, at the second sitting of the Crown Council, declared himself an adversary of the doctrine that the Parliamentary majority is absolute, and recognized the right of the Crown to choose another Government; "On the other hand," he said, "the necessary consequence of the formation of a Cabinet not enjoying a majority in the Chamber is the dissolution of the Chamber." [8] It was in pursuance {71} of this advice that the King, who, as M. Venizelos on that occasion emphatically stated, "has always absolutely respected the Constitution," [9] dissolved the Chamber.

The only question, therefore, is about the dissolution of the Chamber elected on 13 June, 1915, which gave M. Venizelos a majority of 56. This action, it was alleged, violated the spirit, though not the letter, of Constitutional Law, because the dissolved Chamber represented the will of the people. But, the other side retorted, it was precisely because there was ground for believing that the Parliamentary majority had ceased to represent the will of the people that the King proceeded to a dissolution; and in so doing he had excellent precedent. His father had dissolved several Chambers (specifically in 1902 and 1910) on the same ground, not only without incurring any censure, but earning much applause from the Venizelist Party.[10] In fact, the last of those dissolutions had been carried out by M. Venizelos himself under the following circumstances: The General Elections of August, 1910, had given a majority to the old parties: King George, however, in the belief that public opinion really favoured M. Venizelos, called him to power, though he was only the leader of a Parliamentary minority. M. Venizelos formed a Government, but, as the majority in Parliament obstructed his policy, he persuaded the Sovereign to dissolve it,[11] declaring in the House (11/24 October, 1910): that "it is impossible to limit the prerogative of the Crown to dissolve any Chamber." Obviously, what was {72} lawful for King George could not be unlawful for King Constantine; and the fact that M. Venizelos's majority of 56 had since the recent elections dwindled to 16, was reason sufficient for the belief that he no longer represented the will of the people, even if it were conceded that the issue of war had been clearly put before the electors who had voted for him in June, and that, at best, a majority of 56 in an assembly of 314 was an adequate expression of the will of the people on so grave an issue. Events had moved so fast in those months and the situation changed so abruptly that King Constantine would have been guilty of a dereliction of duty had he not, by exercising his indisputable prerogative, given the nation an opportunity to reconsider its opinion.

Sophisms suited to the fury of the times apart, the whole case of M. Venizelos against his Sovereign rested, avowedly, on the theory, improvised for the nonce, that the Greek Constitution is a replica of the British—a monarchical democracy in which the monarch is nothing more than a passive instrument in the hands of a Government with a Parliamentary majority.[12] It is not so, and it was never meant to be so. The Greek Constitution does invest the monarch with rights which our Constitution, or rather the manner in which we have for a long time chosen to interpret it, does not. Among these is the right to make, or to refrain from making war. That was why M. Venizelos in March, 1915, could not offer the co-operation of Greece in the Dardanelles enterprise officially without the King's approval, and why the British Government declined to consider his semi-official communication until after the King's decision. Similarly M. Venizelos's proposals for the dispatch of Entente troops to Salonica in September, so far as that transaction was carried on above-board, were made subject to the King's consent. Of course, if the King exercised this right without advice, he would be playing the part of an autocrat; but King Constantine always acted by the advice of the competent authority—namely, the Chief of the General Staff. In truth, if anyone tried to play the part of an autocrat, it was not the King, but M. Venizelos. His argument seemed to be that the King should acquiesce in the view {73} which a lay Minister took of matters military and in decisions which he arrived at without or in defiance of technical advice.

In this again, M. Venizelos appears to have been inspired by British example. We saw during the War the responsibility for its conduct scattered over twenty-three civil and semi-civil individuals who consulted the naval and military staffs more or less as and when they choose, and the result of it in the Gallipoli tragedy. We saw, too, as a by-product of this system, experts holding back advice of immense importance because they knew it would not be well received. The Reports of the Dardanelles Commission condemned this method. But it is to a precisely similar method that the Greek General Staff objected with such determination. "Venizelos," they said, "does not know anything about war. He approaches the King with proposals containing in them the seeds of national disaster without consulting us, or in defiance of our advice. Greece cannot afford to run the risk of military annihilation; her resources are small, and, once exhausted, cannot be replaced." The King, relying on the right unquestionably given to him under the terms of the Constitution, demanded from his chief military adviser such information as would enable him to judge wisely from the military point of view any proposal involving hostilities made by his Premier. It was this attitude that saved Greece from the Gallipoli grave in March, and it was the same attitude that saved her a second time at the present juncture.

But, in fact, at the present juncture the King acted not so much on his prerogative of deciding about war as on the extreme democratic principle that such decision belongs to the people, and, finding that the Party which pushed the country towards war had only a weak majority, he preferred to place the question before the electorate, to test beyond the possibility of doubt the attitude of public opinion towards this new departure.

From whatever point of view we may examine Constantine's behaviour, we find that nothing could be more unfair than the charge of unconstitutionalism brought against it. M. Venizelos himself a little later, by declaring that he aimed at the "definite elucidation of the obligations and rights of the royal authority," through a "new {74} Constitution," [13] unwittingly confessed that the actual Constitution could not bear his interpretation. As things stood, the charge might with a better show of justice be brought against M. Venizelos, who, it was pointed out, had violated the Constitution by inviting foreign troops into Greek territory without the necessary Act of Parliament.[14]

Nor should it be forgotten that King Constantine had suffered grievously both as a Greek and as a general from too punctilious an observance of parliamentary etiquette by his father in 1897. At that date the policy of M. Delyannis was supported by the whole Chamber. It was a policy which the late Lord Salisbury very aptly summed up at the time in the one word, "strait-waistcoat." But, for lack of a man at the top strong enough and courageous enough to take the responsibility of opposing it, it was carried out: Greece rushed headlong into war with a superior power and was smashed. Upon King Constantine, then Crown Prince, had devolved the tragic duty of leading the Greek army to self-destruction, and it was upon his devoted head that afterwards the nation visited the criminal levity of M. Delyannis. Was he to suffer calmly a repetition of the same catastrophe on an infinitely larger scale—to see his country trampled under German and Bulgarian heels—for M. Venizelos's sake?

The practical wisdom and patriotism of the King's conduct cannot be questioned; but we should guard ourselves against exaggerating its moral courage. King Constantine, in turning an inattentive ear to the warlike outpourings of the People's Chosen, knew perfectly well that he ran no risk of wounding the people's conscience—just {75} as in offering to lay the question before the tribunal of public opinion he knew that he ran no risk of finding it at variance with his own. He could afford to act as he did, because the country trusted him implicitly. Writing about the middle of November, an English observer described the situation as follows: "The people generally are afraid, waiting and leaving everything to the King. . . . No one now counts in Greece but the King." [15] And the absence of any popular murmur at the rejection of the offer of Cyprus, to anyone who knows how deeply popular feeling is committed to the ultimate union of that Greek island with the mother country, speaks for itself.

This does not mean that M. Venizelos had as yet lost caste altogether. On that fateful 5th of October his reputation as a serious statesman among his countrymen had received a severe blow. The idolatrous admiration with which he had been surrounded until then gave way to disenchantment, disenchantment to bewilderment, and bewilderment to dismay: the national prophet from whom fresh miracles had been expected, was no prophet at all, but a mere mortal—and an uncommonly fallible mortal at that. Nevertheless, while many Greeks found it hard to pardon the Cretan politician for the ruin into which he had so very nearly precipitated them, there were many others who still remained under the spell of his personality. Yet it may well be doubted whether, had a plebiscite been taken at that moment, he would have got anything more than a substantial minority. Fully conscious of the position, M. Venizelos, in spite of advice from his Entente friends to stand his ground, boycotted the polls, and the new Parliament, returned by the elections of 19 December, was a Parliament without an Opposition. M. Skouloudis remained at the helm.

[1] White Book, No. 45.