"Under certain circumstances, rendering the participation of Greece useful and conformable to our interests, I have already declared that I am ready to enter into the war on the side of the Entente. I am ready to envisage negotiations in this sense. But, before all, I need, that I may be able to occupy myself usefully and with a certain mental calmness with foreign questions, to see comparative quiet restored at home, and so to save the appearances of liberty of action. In this I ask, for the sake of the common interest, the Powers to give me their help.
"I have charged M. Calogeropoulos to form a Ministry: he is equally animated by the best intentions towards the Entente."
The new Premier, who had already held office with distinction as Minister of the Interior and as Minister of Finance, possessed every qualification for the delicate task entrusted to him. On the day of his accession The Times Correspondent wrote of him: "In the Chamber he is highly esteemed. Although he is a Theotokist, and {125} therefore anti-Venizelist, M. Calogeropoulos, who studied in France, declared to me that all his personal sympathies are with the Entente. He is likewise a member of the Franco-Greek League." [1] In harmony with this character was his programme: "The new Cabinet, inspired by the same policy as M. Zaimis, is resolved to pursue it with the sincere desire to tighten the bonds between Greece and the Entente Powers." This declaration, made in every Allied capital, was supplemented by a more intimate announcement in Paris and London: "Sharing the views which inspired the negotiations opened by its predecessor, the Royal Government is resolved to pursue them in the same spirit." [2]
No sooner had M. Calogeropoulos spoken than M. Venizelos set to work to cast doubts on his sincerity, with remarkable success: "M. Venizelos does not believe that the composition of the new Ministry permits of the hope that a national policy will be adopted, since it springs from a party of pro-German traditions," [3]—this ominous paragraph was added by the Times Correspondent to his report the same day. And next day the British Minister, in an interview with the editor of a Venizelist journal, said: "The situation is certainly not an agreeable one. I have read in the papers the declaration of the new Premier. What has surprised me is to find that M. Calogeropoulos characterized his Ministry as a political one, whereas in their last Note the Allies required that Greece should be governed by a business Cabinet. This, as you see, makes a distinct difference." [4] Simultaneously, the Entente Press, under similar inspiration, reviled the new Cabinet as pro-German, clamoured for M. Venizelos, whom they still represented as the true exponent of the national will, threatened King Constantine with the fate of King Otho, and his country with "terrible and desperate things." [5]
{126}
It was in such an atmosphere that M. Calogeropoulos and his colleagues attempted to resume the conversations which M. Zaimis had opened. They realized that, since elections and like legal methods no longer commended themselves to the Allies, since they menaced the country with "terrible and desperate things," Greece might drift into chaos at any moment. They were anxious to avoid chaos. But how? A blind acceptance of the Venizelist policy of an immediate rush into the War, without regard to ways and means, might prove tantamount to burning one's blanket in order to get rid of the fleas: while saving Greece from the coercion of the French and the British, it might expose her to subjugation by the Germans and the Bulgars: the plight of Rumania afforded a fresh warning. They therefore adopted the only course open to sane men.
On 19 September Greece formally offered to the Entente Powers "to come in as soon as by their help she had accomplished the repair of her military forces, within a period fixed by common accord." But, "as her armed intervention could not, obviously, be in the interest of anyone concerned, unless it took place with chances of success, the Royal Government thinks that Greece should not be held to her engagement, if at the time fixed the Balkan theatre of war presented, in the opinion of the Allies' General Staffs themselves, such a disequilibrium of forces as the military weight of Greece would be insufficient to redress." [6]
Russia received these advances with cordiality, her Premier declaring to the Greek Minister at Petrograd that she would be happy to have Greece for an ally, and that the Tsar had full confidence in the sentiments of King Constantine. He added that he would immediately communicate with Paris and London.[7] There was the rub. French and British statesmen affected to regard the offer as a ruse for gaining time: they could not trust a Cabinet three members of which they considered to be ill-disposed towards the Entente: a "national policy" {127} should be carried out by a "national Cabinet"—that is, by M. Venizelos.[8]
While frustrating his country's efforts to find a way out of the pass into which he had intrigued it, the Cretan and his partisans did not neglect other forms of activity. We have seen that rebellion had already broken out at Salonica. In Athens itself the walls were pasted with Venizelist newspapers in the form of placards displaying headlines such as these: "A LAST APPEAL TO THE KING!" "DRAW THE SWORD, O KING, OR ABDICATE!" It was no secret that arms and ammunition were stored in private houses, that the French Intelligence Service had a depot of explosives in a ship moored at the Piraeus, and a magazine of rifles and grenades in its headquarters at the French School of Athens.[9] The Royalist journals threatened the Venizelists with condign punishment for their treasonable designs. The Venizelist journals, far from denying the charge, replied that they would be fully justified in arming themselves against the hostile Reservist Leagues. In short, the capital swarmed with conspirators, but the guardians of public order were powerless, owing to the proximity of the Allied naval guns, ready to enforce respect for the Allied flags under whose protection the conspiracy was carried on. By this time the French and British detectives had usurped the powers and inverted the functions of the police organs;[10] and the French and {128} British agents, after fomenting those fatal differences which divide and degrade a people, had developed into directors of plots and organizers of sedition.
But, in spite of such encouragement, the capital—or, indeed, any part of Old Greece—had never appealed to M. Venizelos as a starting-point of sedition. He knew that only in the recently acquired and as yet imperfectly assimilated regions—regions under the direct influence of the Allies—he could hope to rebel with safety. His plan embraced, besides Salonica, the islands conquered in 1912, particularly his native Crete. In that home of immemorial turbulence his friends, seconded by British Secret Service and Naval officers, had found many retired bandits eager to resume work. Even there, it is true, public opinion was not strikingly favourable to disloyalty; but the presence of the British Fleet in Suda Bay had much of persuasion in it.[11]