A DETACHMENT OF THE WOMAN'S BATALLION OF DEATH RESTING IN THE FIELD By Courtesy of the Red Cross Magazine Greece and the War-The Venizelist Revolt THE ATTEMPT OF KING CONSTANTINE TO ESTABLISH ABSOLUTISM IN A DEMOCRATIC LAND GREECE lies in the pathway from Asia to Europe, and when East invaded West, and the Turk entered Europe, Greece became a subject nation for many centuries. Enslavement almost blotted out her previous history, and that any fraction of individuality and tradition survived is due to the fact that her mountain fastnesses and multitudinous islands preserved it from utter extinction. With the turn of the tide in the other direction in the nineteenth century, what was left of Greece began a new life in common with all the other subject races under Turkish rule in the Balkans. USTRIA-HUNGARY AND RUSSIA DESIRED AUS The history of the wars against Turkey has been told in a previous chapter (Chapter IV). Who should take the Turk's place in the peninsula was a complicated problem. From the point of view of Austria or Russia it was advantageous to maintain a balance of power among the Balkan States that would be so nicely poised as to keep all the rivals engaged in maintaining its equilibrium. It was a menace to this balance of power when Bulgaria precipitated the second Balkan War, ending in the Treaty of Bucharest which left her so angry. Stripped of the Dobrudja by Rumania, and of Macedonia by Greece and Serbia, Bulgaria bided her time. She had brought on the war herself rather than submit her claims in Macedonia to arbitration, but she felt that she had been over-punished and her services against the Turk under-recognized by the terms of the treaty. On the other hand, Serbia and Greece knew they had reason to fear Bulgaria and had a treaty of mutual support in case of Bulgarian aggression. HE ALLIES SEEK TO WIN THE FAVOR TOF BULGARIA. Bulgaria was the pivot upon which the whole question of the Near East turned, and their mistaken attitude toward that country is the cause of the failure of the Allies in the Balkans. They thought to recast the Treaty of Bucharest and cut up Macedonia into slices, apportioning-with a fair consideration for racial distribution-slices of it among Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria, hoping to establish a united action of the Balkans against the Austro-Germanic League. Thus Serbia and Greece-their certain friendswere to be made to pay to placate Bulgaria-a possible enemy. So thinking, Allied diplomacy ignored two facts: the ambition of Bulgaria towards the hegemony of the peninsula, and her strongly developed Austro-Germanic leanings. But Serbia saw these things and to Greece they were particularly distinct. When the Triple Entente pressed concessions to Bulgaria upon Greece and Serbia, an atmosphere of doubt was created in the Greek mind which the Central Powers were quick to foster by vigorous propaganda. Further, not content with blinding itself as to the signs of the times in Bulgaria, Allied diplomacy neglected all means of cultivating popular support in Greece, or of counteracting German propaganda. With the failure at the Dardanelles, the tragedy of Serbia, and the sacrifice of Rumania before her eyes, was it astonishing that Greece held back and hesitated to pay the debts of honor and of gratitude that she owed to Serbia. and professed to Russia, England and France? At the beginning of the war, popular sympathy had been with the Allies, for Greece and Serbia had been allies in the last war, Russia, France, and England had set Greece up as a nation, and their Premier, M. Venizelos, was popular and pro-ally. But the Greek Queen, Sophia, was the Kaiser's sister and she exercised a powerful influence with all members of the governing classes, and was moreover clever enough to take advantage of political divisions to aid the German cause. In the tangle there was only one man who in spite of Allied blunders saw and persisted in seeing that the cause of liberty must be that of Greece. VENIZELOS THE GREATEST OF MODERN GREECE. STATESMAN That man was Eleutherios Venizelos, premier of Greece and leader of the Liberal party. In 1864, in the little village of Murniaes on the island of Crete, was born the greatest statesman modern Greece has known. He was christened Eleutherios, meaning Liberty, and the name seems to have influenced his vocation in life through the years he struggled for the liberation of Hellas and to free Christendom from Prussian militarism. His father had first intended him to follow in his own steps as a merchant, but gave the boy a liberal education in the University of Athens, where he passed his examinations brilliantly, and returned to Crete to practice as a lawyer. When only twenty-three he entered the Cretan Assembly and soon succeeded M. Mitsotakis as leader of the Liberal party. It seemed to be the Turkish policy to stir up factions among the population so as to involve them in internal political struggles. When strife flared into bloodshed in 1889, Turkey stepped in and took sanguinary reprisal. reprisal. Again in 1895 revolution broke out, and in the following year Turkey laid more massacres to her account. At last the Greek government asked the Great Powers to intervene on behalf of their little neighbor, and through their concerted action for a time Crete had a measure of autonomy under the Sultan. Self-government afforded little protection against the Turk, however, and when further massacres took place the Cretans proclaimed their union with Greece. Leaving his practice, Venizelos placed himself at the head of the insurgents who resisted the interference of the Great Powers with obstinate intrepidity until they were obliged to yield. In 1897, war, which the Powers had striven to avert, broke out between Greece and Turkey because of Crete. Greece was obliged to withdraw her forces from the island, and the Cretans were again forced to accept autonomy, though Venizelos and his supporters did so conditionally, claiming it was only a stage towards the national aim of final union with Greece. HROUGH VENIZELOS CRETE BECOMES GREEK TERRITORY. The Powers Powers appointed as High Commissioner of the island Prince George, son of the King of Greece, and in 1898 he took over the reins of government. Time passed, however, the goal of union seemed no nearer, and administrative mistakes added to general dissatisfaction. A general rising at Therisso broke out in 1903. Venizelos led with the mountaineers their rough life and shared their fortunes until Prince George resigned in July, 1904. The rebels had taken a vow to recognize no ruler save one M. ELEUTHERIOS VENIZELOS, GREEK PREMIER The Greek premier whose meteoric career during recent years has astonished the world. A patriot, feeling the most sacred obligation to the Constitution and to the National Cause, he was for long styled a traitor and an adventurer by ungrateful fellow-countrymen. Not only had he to fight against a treacherous king and unscrupulous and self-seeking rivals, but he had to fight against them without open support from his natural friends. Patient and long-enduring, possessed of great vision and imagination, Venizelos could realize the difficulties of the Allied Powers as well as his own. In the bud he saw the triumph of his dreams: a Greece freed from tyranny and once more united, a Greece allied with those powers whose traditional ally she had always been. appointed by the King of Greece, and so with the nomination of M. Zaïmis, a former premier, brief_tranquillity succeeded. The Young Turk revolution began in 1908, with a general loosening of authority in the Ottoman Empire. Austria took advantage of the time to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Bulgarians asserted their complete independence, and on October 7, the fourteenth insurrection since 1830 broke out in Crete with the same object as heretofore-the union of the island with Greece. The government took an oath of fidelity to King George and chose a committee of six to govern the island in the name of the Hellenic King, but it was not until 1912, when Venizelos had left them, that the Cretans were formally annexed to Greece. and in May, 1912, when Greece held some grand manoeuvres the Bulgarian and Serbian attachés were so much impressed by what they saw that soon. after a treaty of alliance between the three powers was signed. As a consequence of Bulgaria's defeat in the Second Balkan War, and through M. Venizelos' influence in the Conference of Bucharest, the territory of Greece was much enlarged, and the population almost doubled. M. Hanotaux in "La Guerre des Balkans et l'Europe" thus sums up the benefits acquired by Greece, "If ever Pan-Hellenism felt on the point of realizing her dream it is at the present hour; Crete, the islands, Albania, Saloniki, the coast as far as Kavalla is a haul the consequences of which in the future can hardly be estimated. Greece seems to be the maritime heir of the Turkish Empire." Two years before this the Cretan deputy had been summoned to Athens by the Military League which had been formed by the officers of the army in hopes of bringing about a better state of affairs in their country. General unrest, parliamentary slackness, governmental indifference and laxity of discipline were reacting upon the national life so that the country seemed dead. With the determination of, breaking altogether with the past the Military League was formed and it hoped by recasting the laws to revive the nation. There had been no time to evolve a policy to fit the new situation, and it soon became evident that a leader with a matured political programme which he would apply without flinching, was imperative. In VVEL THE DYNASTY. King Constantine (succeeding his father who was assassinated in Saloniki, March 18, 1913) was pleased to confer upon his Prime Minister the Grand Cross of the Order of the Saviour accompanied by a telegram: "I thank you for announcing the signing of peace. . . . You have deserved well of your country." One wonders if King Constantine and M. Venizelos remembered these last words when the time of exile for both came, for the one a brief stay in Saloniki to be ended by a triumphant recall to Athens, for the other an indefinite sojourn in Switzerland, his future as closed in as the valleys before him. their need, the officers of the army HE GREEK CONSTITUTION REVISED AND The constitution was revised, legislative and administrative reforms were carried out, the favlokratia or "rule of the incompetent" done away with, and-greatest of all-the Balkan League brought about. Knowing that such a project must be supported by military preparedness, Venizelos directed improvements in army and navy, VENIZELOS RESTORED AND STRENGTH The issue between King Constantine and his minister was never a personal one. When their ways of thought divided, the enemies of the Cretan patriot always sought to make out that Venizelos was anti-dynastic and anti-Constantine. On the contrary, when Venizelos was called upon to address the crowd in Athens in the early days of his premiership, he spoke of the Greek chamber as being revisionary in ary in character. "Constituent!" shouted the frenzied crowd who blamed the royal house for all the evils from which the people suffered. "Revision |