[10] Orations, pp. 17-8. Cp. p. 217.
[11] His opponents then acted as he did now: to avoid exposing their weakness, they pronounced the dissolution unconstitutional and boycotted the new elections. For a full account of these events see another panegyric: E. Venizelos: his life—his work. By Costa Kairophyla, Athens, 1915, pp. 73-82.
[12] Orations, pp. 12-15.
[13] Eleutheros Typos, 23 Oct./5 Nov., 1916; Orations, p. 102.
[14] See Art. 90 of the Constitution.
It was in order to defend himself against this grave charge that M. Venizelos denied in the Chamber and out of it, that he had "invited" the Allies to Salonica. Just as it was in order to avoid the charge of violating International Law that Sir Edward Grey in the House of Commons (18 April, 1916) and M. Briand in the Chamber of Deputies (20 June, 1916), affirmed that the Allies had been "invited." From the account of that affair already given, the reader will easily see that, for forensic purposes, both the denial and the affirmation rest on sufficient grounds. The discrepancy might be removed by the substitution of "instigated" for "invited."
[15] J. M. N. Jefferies, in the Daily Mail, 23 Nov., 1915. The testimony is all the more notable because it comes from an avowed partisan of M. Venizelos: "the only man in Greece with a policy."
{76}
CHAPTER VII
A momentous question—upon the answer to which depended, among other things, the fate of Greece during the War—confronted the Allies as soon as they realized that their Balkan campaign had come to an untimely beginning.