[15] Zalocostas to Ministers of the United States, etc., Athens, 14/27 Nov.
[16] Lambros to Dartige du Fournet, Athens, 17/30 Nov., 1916.
[17] Du Fournet, p. 204.
[18] Du Fournet, pp. 210-51; Paxton Hibben, pp. 440-80; Resumé du Rapport Official sur les Evenements du 18 novembre/1 decembre, 1916.
[19] According to the Hellenic Government, the losses of the Royalists in this civil strife amounted to 13 soldiers killed and 24 wounded, 6 civilians killed and 6 wounded, besides 5 killed (including 3 women) and 6 wounded (including 4 women) by the insurgents accidentally; the Venizelist losses were limited to 3 killed and 2 wounded.—Zalocostas to Greek Legations abroad, Athens, 27 Nov./10 Dec. 1916.
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CHAPTER XV
By 3 December calm had descended on Athens. But echoes of the storm continued reverberating in Paris and London. In Paris it was asserted, and in London repeated, that the French Admiral had fallen into a cunningly laid trap: King Constantine had promised to hand over his war material; but when the Allies landed to receive it, he caused them to be treacherously attacked and murdered.[1] On the strength of this assertion, the Entente newspapers demanded punishment swift and drastic: a prince who broke faith deserved no pity. His offer of six batteries was "an atonement" both cynical and inadequate for the "ambush" by which French and English blood had been spilt. Similarly the internecine strife of 2 December and the subsequent proceedings against the Venizelists were depicted as a wanton hunt of harmless and law-abiding citizens. Day by day the stream of calumny, assiduously fed from the fountain-head at Salonica, grew in volume and virulence; and King Constantine was branded with every opprobrious epithet of liar, traitor, and assassin.
These were weapons against which the King of Greece and his Government had nothing to oppose. They tried to explain the true nature of the abortive Benazet negotiation, showing that, if there was any breach of faith, it was not on their part; they denounced the falsehoods and the exaggerations relating to the suppression of the seditious outbreak; they asked that a mixed Commission should be appointed to conduct an impartial inquiry on the spot while the events were still fresh and evidence abundant. The French and British Press Censors took care that not a whisper of their defence should reach the French and British publics.[2] Frenchmen and Englishmen {163} might hear of M. Venizelos's deeds through his friends. They were allowed to hear of the King's only through his enemies. It was clear that the policy which had prompted the disastrous enterprise of 1 December had not yet worked itself out to its full issue.
Admiral Dartige could not very well endorse the breach of faith legend. He knew that the engagement about the delivery of arms was reciprocal, and that, as France had failed to ratify it on her part, King Constantine rightly considered himself free from all obligations on his part. He also knew that, far from being lured into landing by false assurances of surrender, he had been emphatically warned against it by categorical refusals and intimations of resistance. Yet, human nature being what it is, the honest sailor, maddened by his discomfiture, called the inevitable collision a "guet-apens" and, even whilst negotiating for release, he meditated revenge.