One more corollary of the Salonica Expedition deserves to be noted. Since the beginning of the War, Athens, like other neutral capitals, had become the centre of international intrigue and espionage; each belligerent group establishing, beside their officially accredited diplomatic missions, secret services and propagandas. In aim, both establishments were alike. But their opportunities were not equal. The Germans had to rely for procuring information and influencing public opinion on the usual methods. The French and the British added to those methods others of a more unusual character.
From the riffraff of the Levant they had recruited a large detective force which operated under the sanctuary of their Legations.[10] The primary function of these gentry was to discover attempts at the fuelling and victualling of German submarines; and, stimulated by a permanent offer of a reward of 2,000 pounds from the British Minister, they did their best to discharge this necessary function. Hardly a day passed without their supplying information which, transmitted to the Fleets, led to raids at all points of the Greek coasts and isles. Let one or two examples suffice for many.
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The French Intelligence Service reported that the Achilleion—the Kaiser's summer palace at Corfu—was a thoroughly organized submarine base, with a wharf, stores of petrol, and pipes for carrying it down to the water's edge. On investigation, the wharf turned out to be an ordinary landing stage for the palace, the stores a few tins of petrol for the imperial motor cars, and the pipes water-closet drains.[11]
In consequence of similar "information received from a trustworthy source"—that a Greek steamer had by order of the Greek Government transported to Gerakini and handed over to the Custom House authorities for the use of German submarines a quantity of benzine—a French detachment of marines landed, forced its way into the Custom House, and proceeded to a minute perquisition, even digging up the ground. The result was negative, and the officer commanding the detachment had to apologize to the Chief of the Custom House. Whereupon the Greek Government asked the French Minister for the source of the information, adding that it was time the Allies ceased from putting faith in the words of unscrupulous agents and proceeding to acts both fruitless and insulting.[12]
Were the Allies in the mood to use ordinary intelligence, they would have seen the truth themselves; for not one discovery, after the most rigorous search, was ever made anywhere to confirm the reports of the Secret Services.[13] As it was, the spies were able to justify their existence by continuing to create work for their employers; and the {92} lengths to which they were prepared to go are well illustrated by a case that formed the subject of some questions in the House of Commons. M. Callimassiotis, a well-known Greek Deputy, was denounced by the French Secret Service as directing an organization for the supply of fuel and information about the movements of Allied shipping to German submarines. A burglarious visit to his house at the Piraeus yielded a rich harvest of compromising documents. The British Secret Service joined in following up the clues, and two Mohammedan merchants of Canea were arrested and deported to Malta on unimpeachable evidence of complicity. Closer investigation proved the whole affair from beginning to end a web of forgery and fraud. The hoax ended in the British Minister at Athens apologizing to the Greek Deputy, and in the Mohammedan merchants being brought back home as guests aboard a British destroyer.[14]
Thus a new field was opened up to those who wished to ruin business competitors, to revenge themselves on personal enemies, or, above all, to compromise political opponents. From the words of Admiral Dartige: "The revelations of the Venizelist Press concerning the revictualling of German submarines in Greece are a tissue of absurd legends," [15] we learn the main source of these myths and also the principal motive. For if M. Venizelos and his party had, by their voluntary abstention, deprived themselves of a voice inside the Chamber, they more than made amends by their agitation out of doors. The coercion of Greece came as grist to their mill. The Liberal newspapers triumphantly pointed to it as concrete proof of the wisdom of their Leader's policy, and held up the names of the men who had thwarted him to obloquy and scorn. M. Skouloudis and his colleagues were abused for drawing down upon the country through their duplicity the wrath of the Powers which could best help or harm it. The "revelations" served a twofold purpose: to foster the belief that they promoted secretly the interests of Germany, and to furnish the Allies with fresh excuses for coercion. And in the Franco-British Intelligence organization the scheming brain of M. Venizelos found a {93} ready-fashioned tool: men willingly shut their eyes to the most evident truths that hinder their designs, and readily accept any myth that furthers them.
Nor did that organization assist M. Venizelos merely by traducing his opponents' characters and wounding their amour-propre. In March, 1916, the Chief of the French Secret Service, at a conference of the Allied admirals, proposed that they should lay hands on the internal affairs of Greece: that they should stick at nothing—qu' on devait tout oser. The motion was rejected with disgust by the honest sailors. But the mover was in direct communication with political headquarters in Paris; and his plan was only deferred. Meanwhile he and his associates with the rogues in their pay made themselves useful by collaborating in the Venizelist agitation, mixing themselves up in party disturbances, carrying out open perquisitions and clandestine arrests, and preparing the ground for graver troubles in the future.[16]
The representatives of the Entente at Athens pursued these unedifying tactics in the firm conviction that the cause of M. Venizelos was their cause; which was true enough in the sense that on him alone they could count to bring Greece into the War without conditions. As to the Entente publics, M. Venizelos was their man in a less sober sense: he kept repeating to them that his opponents under the guise of neutrality followed a hostile policy, and that his own party's whole activity was directed to preventing the King from ranging himself openly on the side of the Central Powers. The Entente Governments, whatever they may have thought of these tactics and slanders, did not dream of forbidding the one or of contradicting the other, since the former aided their client and the latter created an atmosphere which relieved them from all moral restraints.
They only upbraided M. Venizelos gently for keeping out of Parliament. So M. Venizelos, seeing that he had gained nothing by abstention and forgetting that he had {94} pronounced the Chamber unconstitutional, obeyed. Early in May, two of his partisans carried two bye-elections in Eastern Macedonia, and the leader himself was returned by the island of Mytilene. Three seats in Parliament could not overturn M. Skouloudis; and it cannot be said that his re-appearance on the scene enhanced the credit of M. Venizelos with the nation. Ever since the landing of the Allies, and largely through their own actions, his prestige in Greece declined progressively. He was reproached more and more bitterly for his "invitation" to them; and these reproaches grew the louder, the closer he drew to the foreigners and the farther he diverged from his own King. In a letter from Athens, dated 24 May, occurs the following passage: "Venizelos becomes every day more and more of a red republican. How that man has duped everybody! We all thought him a genius, and he simply is an ambitious maniac."