Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 Part 6

[17] Venizelos to Guillemin, Athens, 19 Sept./2 Oct., 1915. This merely formal protest-quite distinct from the confidential dispatch given above-is the only one of which the world has. .h.i.therto been allowed to hear.

[17] M. Venizelos had insisted that the reports spread through the Press concerning the divergence of views between him and the Crown should be contradicted, and, by telling the King that otherwise the mobilization would have no effect on Bulgaria, had obtained the King's permission to publish a communique in which he stated that "the Crown is in accord with the responsible Government not only as regards mobilization but also as regards future policy."-Orations, p. 136.

[18] See House of Commons Debate, in The Times, 19 April, 1916; Chambre des Deputes, secret debate of 20 June, 1916, in the Journal Officiel, p. 77.

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CHAPTER VI

M. Zaimis formed a Government pledged to the policy which Greece had pursued since the beginning of the European War: her future course would be guided by the course of events: meanwhile, she would seek to safeguard her vital interests by remaining armed.[1]

As regards Servia, the new Premier had an opportunity of expressing his views at length soon after his accession to office. The Servian Government, judging that the imminent attack from Bulgaria realized the casus faederis, asked him if, in conformity with her alliance, Greece would be ready to take the field. M. Zaimis answered that the h.e.l.lenic Government was very sorry not to be able to comply with the Servian demand so formulated. It did not judge that in the present conjuncture the casus faederis came into play. The Alliance, concluded in 1913, for the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng an equilibrium of forces between the Balkan States, had a purely Balkan character and nowise applied to a general conflagration. Both the Treaty and the Military Convention accompanying it showed that the contracting parties had in view only the case of an isolated attack by Bulgaria against one of them. Nowhere was there any allusion to a concerted attack by two or more Powers. Nor could it be otherwise: it would have been an act of mad presumption for either of the contracting parties to offer the other the manifestly powerless and ridiculous a.s.sistance of its armed forces in the case of a war with several States at once. And such was the present case. If the Bulgarian attack apprehended by the Servian Government took place, it would be in concert with Germany, Austria, and Turkey: it would be combined with the attack already carried on by the two Central Empires: it would be an episode of the European War. {66} The Servian Government itself had recognized this in advance by breaking off diplomatic relations with Bulgaria in imitation of the Entente Powers, her European Allies, without a previous understanding with Greece, her Balkan ally. In these circ.u.mstances, the h.e.l.lenic Government was convinced that no obligation weighed upon it.

Further, Greece was persuaded that her armed a.s.sistance freely offered at such a moment would ill serve the common interest of the two countries. Greece had remained neutral in the European War, judging that the best service she could render Servia was to hold in check Bulgaria by keeping her forces intact and her communications open. The common interest demanded that the Greek forces should continue in reserve for better use later on: that Greece should remain neutral and armed, watching the course of events carefully with the resolution to guard in the best possible way, not only her own vital interests, but also those which she had in common with Servia.

The h.e.l.lenic Government, while deeply and sincerely regretting that it was materially impossible for it to do at present more for Servia, wished to a.s.sure her that, faithful to their friends.h.i.+p, it would continue to accord her every a.s.sistance and facility consistent with its international position.[2]

The Entente Powers took no exception to this att.i.tude; which is not to be wondered at, seeing that they had hitherto uniformly ignored the Graeco-Servian Treaty, and, by their project of territorial concessions to Bulgaria, had laboured, as much as in them lay, to annul a pact made for the defence of the territorial status quo against Bulgaria: not until Bulgaria had been at open war with Servia for some days (14 Oct.), could they bring themselves to declare that the promises of Servian and Greek territory which they had made to her no longer held. Unable, therefore, to tell Greece that she was under any obligation to enter the War on Servia's behalf, Sir Edward Grey attempted to induce her to do so for her own benefit by offering her the island of Cyprus. This offer, made on 17 October, Greece felt compelled to decline: what would it have profited her to gain Cyprus and lose Athens? And what could an acceptance have profited Servia either? As {67} M. Zaimis said, by intervening at that moment Greece would perish without saving Servia.

Servia could have been saved had an Anglo-French expedition on an adequate scale taken place at any of the times which the Greek General Staff proposed for Graeco-Servian co-operation-indeed, at any time except only the particular time chosen by the Entente. When their troops arrived at Salonica, the Servian army-what had been left of it after fourteen months' fighting and typhus-was already falling back before the Austro-Germans, who swarmed across the Drina, the Save, and the Danube, occupied Belgrade and pushed south (6-10 Oct.), while the Bulgars pressed towards Nish (11-12 Oct.). On the day on which the English offer was made (17 Oct.), the Austro-Germans were fifteen miles south of Belgrade, and by the 2nd of November there was no longer any Servia to save, the Bulgars having on that day entered Monastir.

The co-operation of Greece might still have been obtained if the Allies could even then have sent to Salonica forces large enough to a.s.sure her that the struggle would be waged on more equal terms.[3] There had always been an influential group among the princ.i.p.al military leaders at Athens who held that it was to the vital interest of their country that Bulgaria should be attacked, and who, to secure the help of the Entente Powers against Bulgarian pretensions in the future, were prepared to run great immediate risks. As it was, the dilatoriness of the Allies imposed upon M. Zaimis a policy of inaction.

This policy, besides being imposed by circ.u.mstances, also accorded with the new Premier's character.

M. Zaimis stands out in the political world of Greece as a singular anomaly: a politician who never made speeches and never gave interviews: a silent man in a country where every citizen is a born orator: an unambitious man in a country where ambition is an endemic disease. To find a parallel to his position, one must go back to the days when nations, in need of wise guidance, implored reluctant sages to undertake the task of guiding them. This thankless task M. Zaimis performed several times to everybody's temporary satisfaction. On the present, as on other occasions, he enjoyed the confidence of the Entente Powers, {68} as well as the confidence of the King and the people of Greece. Even the journals of M. Venizelos, and the Anglo-French Press which M. Venizelos inspired, paid the customary tribute to M. Zaimis's integrity and sagacity. The homage was due to the fact that M. Zaimis was neither a Venizelist nor an anti-Venizelist, but simply a Zaimist. In domestic affairs he belonged to no party; in foreign affairs to no school: he neither sought nor shunned a change of course.

That explains why he succeeded in ruling Greece for four weeks, and also why he failed to rule her longer.

M. Venizelos had not abandoned his standpoint. Of M. Zaimis's person he spoke with much respect; but of his policy he spoke just as one might have expected M. Venizelos to speak: M. Zaimis had broken the Servian Treaty and would go down to history as a man who had dishonoured the signature of Greece. With regard to the Entente Powers, M. Venizelos thought that M. Zaimis meant honestly-the fact that he was as well known to them as M. Venizelos himself, having served as their High Commissioner in Crete for two years (1906-08), exempted him from the imputation of duplicity-and since the Entente Powers tolerated him, he would do likewise. He only taunted the Zaimis Government in Parliament for not obtaining for its policy a price from those whom that policy unintentionally helped: Greece, to be sure, did not remain neutral to serve Germany's but her own interests, nevertheless, as Germany benefited by that neutrality, she should be asked to give a quid pro quo.[4]

It was not the first time that M. Venizelos expressed this idea. At the Crown Council of 3 March he had suggested, if his own policy of intervention was not adopted, to ask from Germany compensations for the continuance of neutrality; and he urged that the King should personally bargain with the Kaiser's Minister. Again on 21 September, when sounding the Entente Powers on the {69} possibility of sending troops to Salonica, he advised the King simultaneously to sound the German Emperor on the price of neutrality.[5] King Constantine had always shrunk from entering into any understanding whatever with Germany. And, although the advice may have been given in good faith, it is easy to guess the use to which its acceptance might be turned by M. Venizelos, who, even as it was, did not hesitate to whisper of "pledges" given to Germany. So M. Zaimis endured the taunt and avoided the trap.

This state of truce lasted for a month. Then strife broke out afresh. Early in November a member of the Government insulted the Opposition. The Opposition demanded his dismissal. This was refused and matters were pushed to a crisis-whether by the adversaries of M. Venizelos, anxious to get rid of a Chamber with a hostile majority, or by M. Venizelos himself, anxious to get rid of a Cabinet that had succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng friendly relations with the Entente, it is impossible to say. Both conjectures found favour at the time, and both seem probable.[6] In any case, M. Venizelos made of that incident an occasion for an attack on the Government's foreign policy, which, ending in an adverse vote, led to the resignation of M. Zaimis and the formation of a new Ministry under M. Skouloudis (7 November).

There ensued a dissolution of the Chamber (11 November) and a fresh appeal to the people; the King, on the advice of M. Skouloudis, inviting M. Venizelos to the polls, as who should say: When you got your majority in June, the nation was with you; many things of the gravest national concern have happened since; let us see if the nation is with you now. M. Venizelos declined the invitation: "The elections," he said, "will be a farce. All my supporters are detained voteless under arms, and the only votes cast will be those of the older and more timid men." How many supporters he had under arms the near future was to show. Meanwhile, he and his partizans reinforced this reason for abstention from the polls with other arguments.

{70} King Constantine, they alleged, was guilty of unconst.i.tutional behaviour. He had twice disagreed with a Government supported by a majority of the representatives of the people, and twice within a few months had dissolved a Parliament duly chosen by the people. Was such a thing ever heard in a const.i.tutional State? The Const.i.tution had been violated: openly, insolently violated.

In Greece this cry has always been among the Opposition's common stock-in-trade: it is enough for a Minister to misapply fifty drachmas to acquire the t.i.tle of a violator of the Const.i.tution, and n.o.body ever is the wiser or the worse for it. M. Venizelos himself had often been accused by his opponents of aiming at the subversion of Parliamentary Government. But in this instance the cry was destined to have, as we shall see, epoch-making results, and for this reason it merits serious examination.

The King's supporters denied that any violation of the Const.i.tution had taken place. The Const.i.tution of Greece, they pointed out, gives the Crown explicitly the right to dismiss Ministers and to dissolve Chambers.[7] M. Venizelos himself had, no longer ago than 5 March, at the second sitting of the Crown Council, declared himself an adversary of the doctrine that the Parliamentary majority is absolute, and recognized the right of the Crown to choose another Government; "On the other hand," he said, "the necessary consequence of the formation of a Cabinet not enjoying a majority in the Chamber is the dissolution of the Chamber." [8] It was in pursuance {71} of this advice that the King, who, as M. Venizelos on that occasion emphatically stated, "has always absolutely respected the Const.i.tution," [9] dissolved the Chamber.

The only question, therefore, is about the dissolution of the Chamber elected on 13 June, 1915, which gave M. Venizelos a majority of 56. This action, it was alleged, violated the spirit, though not the letter, of Const.i.tutional Law, because the dissolved Chamber represented the will of the people. But, the other side retorted, it was precisely because there was ground for believing that the Parliamentary majority had ceased to represent the will of the people that the King proceeded to a dissolution; and in so doing he had excellent precedent. His father had dissolved several Chambers (specifically in 1902 and 1910) on the same ground, not only without incurring any censure, but earning much applause from the Venizelist Party.[10] In fact, the last of those dissolutions had been carried out by M. Venizelos himself under the following circ.u.mstances: The General Elections of August, 1910, had given a majority to the old parties: King George, however, in the belief that public opinion really favoured M. Venizelos, called him to power, though he was only the leader of a Parliamentary minority. M. Venizelos formed a Government, but, as the majority in Parliament obstructed his policy, he persuaded the Sovereign to dissolve it,[11] declaring in the House (11/24 October, 1910): that "it is impossible to limit the prerogative of the Crown to dissolve any Chamber." Obviously, what was {72} lawful for King George could not be unlawful for King Constantine; and the fact that M. Venizelos's majority of 56 had since the recent elections dwindled to 16, was reason sufficient for the belief that he no longer represented the will of the people, even if it were conceded that the issue of war had been clearly put before the electors who had voted for him in June, and that, at best, a majority of 56 in an a.s.sembly of 314 was an adequate expression of the will of the people on so grave an issue. Events had moved so fast in those months and the situation changed so abruptly that King Constantine would have been guilty of a dereliction of duty had he not, by exercising his indisputable prerogative, given the nation an opportunity to reconsider its opinion.

Sophisms suited to the fury of the times apart, the whole case of M. Venizelos against his Sovereign rested, avowedly, on the theory, improvised for the nonce, that the Greek Const.i.tution is a replica of the British-a monarchical democracy in which the monarch is nothing more than a pa.s.sive instrument in the hands of a Government with a Parliamentary majority.[12] It is not so, and it was never meant to be so. The Greek Const.i.tution does invest the monarch with rights which our Const.i.tution, or rather the manner in which we have for a long time chosen to interpret it, does not. Among these is the right to make, or to refrain from making war. That was why M. Venizelos in March, 1915, could not offer the co-operation of Greece in the Dardanelles enterprise officially without the King's approval, and why the British Government declined to consider his semi-official communication until after the King's decision. Similarly M. Venizelos's proposals for the dispatch of Entente troops to Salonica in September, so far as that transaction was carried on above-board, were made subject to the King's consent. Of course, if the King exercised this right without advice, he would be playing the part of an autocrat; but King Constantine always acted by the advice of the competent authority-namely, the Chief of the General Staff. In truth, if anyone tried to play the part of an autocrat, it was not the King, but M. Venizelos. His argument seemed to be that the King should acquiesce in the view {73} which a lay Minister took of matters military and in decisions which he arrived at without or in defiance of technical advice.

In this again, M. Venizelos appears to have been inspired by British example. We saw during the War the responsibility for its conduct scattered over twenty-three civil and semi-civil individuals who consulted the naval and military staffs more or less as and when they choose, and the result of it in the Gallipoli tragedy. We saw, too, as a by-product of this system, experts holding back advice of immense importance because they knew it would not be well received. The Reports of the Dardanelles Commission condemned this method. But it is to a precisely similar method that the Greek General Staff objected with such determination. "Venizelos," they said, "does not know anything about war. He approaches the King with proposals containing in them the seeds of national disaster without consulting us, or in defiance of our advice. Greece cannot afford to run the risk of military annihilation; her resources are small, and, once exhausted, cannot be replaced." The King, relying on the right unquestionably given to him under the terms of the Const.i.tution, demanded from his chief military adviser such information as would enable him to judge wisely from the military point of view any proposal involving hostilities made by his Premier. It was this att.i.tude that saved Greece from the Gallipoli grave in March, and it was the same att.i.tude that saved her a second time at the present juncture.

But, in fact, at the present juncture the King acted not so much on his prerogative of deciding about war as on the extreme democratic principle that such decision belongs to the people, and, finding that the Party which pushed the country towards war had only a weak majority, he preferred to place the question before the electorate, to test beyond the possibility of doubt the att.i.tude of public opinion towards this new departure.

From whatever point of view we may examine Constantine's behaviour, we find that nothing could be more unfair than the charge of unconst.i.tutionalism brought against it. M. Venizelos himself a little later, by declaring that he aimed at the "definite elucidation of the obligations and rights of the royal authority," through a "new {74} Const.i.tution," [13] unwittingly confessed that the actual Const.i.tution could not bear his interpretation. As things stood, the charge might with a better show of justice be brought against M. Venizelos, who, it was pointed out, had violated the Const.i.tution by inviting foreign troops into Greek territory without the necessary Act of Parliament.[14]

Nor should it be forgotten that King Constantine had suffered grievously both as a Greek and as a general from too punctilious an observance of parliamentary etiquette by his father in 1897. At that date the policy of M. Delyannis was supported by the whole Chamber. It was a policy which the late Lord Salisbury very aptly summed up at the time in the one word, "strait-waistcoat." But, for lack of a man at the top strong enough and courageous enough to take the responsibility of opposing it, it was carried out: Greece rushed headlong into war with a superior power and was smashed. Upon King Constantine, then Crown Prince, had devolved the tragic duty of leading the Greek army to self-destruction, and it was upon his devoted head that afterwards the nation visited the criminal levity of M. Delyannis. Was he to suffer calmly a repet.i.tion of the same catastrophe on an infinitely larger scale-to see his country trampled under German and Bulgarian heels-for M. Venizelos's sake?

The practical wisdom and patriotism of the King's conduct cannot be questioned; but we should guard ourselves against exaggerating its moral courage. King Constantine, in turning an inattentive ear to the warlike outpourings of the People's Chosen, knew perfectly well that he ran no risk of wounding the people's conscience-just {75} as in offering to lay the question before the tribunal of public opinion he knew that he ran no risk of finding it at variance with his own. He could afford to act as he did, because the country trusted him implicitly. Writing about the middle of November, an English observer described the situation as follows: "The people generally are afraid, waiting and leaving everything to the King... . No one now counts in Greece but the King." [15] And the absence of any popular murmur at the rejection of the offer of Cyprus, to anyone who knows how deeply popular feeling is committed to the ultimate union of that Greek island with the mother country, speaks for itself.

This does not mean that M. Venizelos had as yet lost caste altogether. On that fateful 5th of October his reputation as a serious statesman among his countrymen had received a severe blow. The idolatrous admiration with which he had been surrounded until then gave way to disenchantment, disenchantment to bewilderment, and bewilderment to dismay: the national prophet from whom fresh miracles had been expected, was no prophet at all, but a mere mortal-and an uncommonly fallible mortal at that. Nevertheless, while many Greeks found it hard to pardon the Cretan politician for the ruin into which he had so very nearly precipitated them, there were many others who still remained under the spell of his personality. Yet it may well be doubted whether, had a plebiscite been taken at that moment, he would have got anything more than a substantial minority. Fully conscious of the position, M. Venizelos, in spite of advice from his Entente friends to stand his ground, boycotted the polls, and the new Parliament, returned by the elections of 19 December, was a Parliament without an Opposition. M. Skouloudis remained at the helm.

[1] White Book, No. 45.

[2] White Book, No. 46.

[3] See The Times, 1 Nov., 1915.

[4] Orations, pp. 143-50. It would hardly be credited, did it not come out of his own mouth, that the compensations and guarantees which M. Venizelos thought, or at least said, that Greece could obtain from Germany in return for her neutrality (a neutrality always benevolent towards Germany's enemies) exceeded those which the Entente had refused to grant Greece for her active alliance!

[5] The Balkan Review, Dec., 1920, pp. 384, 387; Orations, p. 266.

[6] It may not be irrelevant to note that the end of the truce coincided with the end of the Allies' uncertainty as to whether they would persist in the Salonica enterprise or give it up.

[7] Art. 31, 37.

[8] Extracts from Minutes in The Balkan Review, Dec., 1920, p. 385. Not for the first time had M. Venizelos expounded that thesis. Here is a speech of his on 2/15 May, 1911.

"We are accused of seeking the destruction of Parliamentary Government, because we conceive that one of the foundations of the Government is that those who represent the majority do everything, that it is enough for them that they represent the majority to impose their will. But we, the Liberal Party, entertain an entirely opposite conception both of the State and the Laws and of the powers of majorities, because modern progress has proved that humanity cannot prosper so long as the action of those in authority is not subjected to rules and restrictions preventing every transgression or violation of justice. We shall make the Greeks truly free citizens, enjoying not only the rights which emanate from the Const.i.tutional ordinances, but also those which emanate from all the laws. We shall defend them against every tyrannical exercise of Government power derived from a majority."

This report is taken from a panegyric on the speaker: Eleutherios Venizelos, by K. K. Kosmides, D.Ph., Athens, 1915, pp. 56-7. On p. 58 of the same work, occurs another reply by M. Venizelos to a charge of anti-Parliamentarism, dated 14/27 Nov., 1913.

[9] The Balkan Review, loc. cit. Cp. The New Europe, 29 March, 1917, where M. Venizelos expressly admits that "in February, 1915, the King's action might be regarded as const.i.tutional."

[10] Orations, pp. 17-8. Cp. p. 217.

[11] His opponents then acted as he did now: to avoid exposing their weakness, they p.r.o.nounced the dissolution unconst.i.tutional 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 Const.i.tution.

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 subst.i.tution 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."

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CHAPTER VII