These speeches confirmed the general suspicion that the ultimate object of the blockade was to propagate rebellion. Other things spoke even more eloquently. The few cargoes of flour that arrived in Greece now and then were sequestered by the Allies and sent to the Salonica Government, which used them as a bait, inviting the King's subjects through its agents to sell their allegiance for a loaf of bread. Generally the reply was: "We prefer to die." [7] Of this stubborn endurance, the women of modern Greece gave instances that recall the days of ancient Sparta. In a village near Eleusis, on the Sunday preceding Lent, the matrons and maidens set up a dance, and while dancing they improvised songs in praise of Hunger. At the end, {175} the men who stood round listening with tears in their eyes, burst into frenetic cheers for the King.[8]
Never, indeed, in the hour of his triumphs had King Constantine been so near the hearts of his people as he was in this period of their common affliction. Although the operation-wounds in his ribs were still open, he met the emergency with dauntless fortitude, and never for a moment forgot his part, either as a prince or as a man. "The King is wonderful," wrote the correspondent already quoted. "He never complains, and gives us all courage." Many a time, as the weary months dragged on, he went over his past course, asking himself: "Could he have been mistaken, after all?" No; the more he pondered, the more convinced he felt that what he had done was the best for Greece. Now, if the worst came to the worst, his sincerity at least could not be questioned. When his friends ventured to express their admiration of his stoicism, he answered simply: "I know that I am doing right." The great source whence he derived consolation amidst all his calamities was undoubtedly this consciousness of rectitude: a sense which in him seems to have been as free from arrogance as it was from rancour.
The people who had formerly admired their sovereign as a hero, now revered him as a martyr; and the man upon whom they visited their anger was he whom they regarded as the true cause of their misery. After his flight to Salonica M. Venizelos was never mentioned except by the name of The Traitor; after the events of 1 December he was formally impeached as one; and after the blockade had been in force for some weeks, he was solemnly anathematized: on 26 December, the Archbishop of Athens, from a cairn of stones in the midst of a great multitude, pronounced the curse of the Church upon "the traitor, Venizelos." The Government had forbidden the demonstration, but that did not prevent myriads of people from going to add their own stone to the monument.[9] One old woman was heard, as she cast her contribution, crying: "We made him Premier; but he was not content. He would make himself king. Anathema!" Subsequently, every village and hamlet repeated the ceremony. "These {176} spontaneous ceremonies," observes an eye-witness, "were vastly more indicative than any elections could ever have been of the place to which the great Cretan had fallen in the esteem of his countrymen." [10]
Appeals from the Holy Synod of the Greek Church to the Pope and the heads of other Christian Churches availed as little as the appeals of the Greek Government to Allied and neutral Governments. Month after month the blockade went on, and each month produced its own tale of suffering: deaths due directly to starvation; diseases due to the indirect effects of inanition; a whole nation wasting for want of food; horses starved to provide it; mothers praying to God for their daily bread with babes drooping at their desiccated bosoms.[11] Yet of yielding there was no sign: "Give in?" said a woman outside a soup-kitchen at the Piraeus, in March. "We will eat our children first!"
In such a manner this ancient race, which has lived so long, done so much, and suffered so much, bore its martyrdom. By such an exercise of self-discipline it defied the Powers of Civilisation to do their worst. In spite of the licence given to brute force, in spite of the removal of the machinery of civil control, in spite of the internment of the army and its arms, in spite of the ostentatiously paraded support to the Rebel, in spite of actual famine and the threat of imminent ruin, the people held to the institutions of their country, rallied to their King; and expressed their scorn for the usurper of his authority by inscribing over the graves of their babies: "Here lies my child, starved to death by Venizelos."
[1] See the article on "Pacific Blockade" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (10th Ed.), Vol. XXXI, p. 401.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Times, 9, 19, 21, 30 Dec., 1916.
[4] Among these charitable organizations the foremost place belongs to the "Patriotic League of Greek Women," which, under the competent management of the Queen, was able to distribute 10,000 meals a day, as well as clothes, blankets, medicine, milk for infants, etc.
[5] Zalocostas to Greek Legations abroad, 25 Jan./7 Feb.; 3/16 Feb.; 12/25 March, 1917.