And so the fight for the soul of Greece ended in a victory for Constantine.
The character of this prince has been painted in the most opposite colours, as must always be the case when a man becomes the object of fervent worship and bitter enmity. But the bare record of what he did and endured reveals him sufficiently. His qualities speak through his actions, so that he who runs may read. His most conspicuous defect was a want of suppleness-a certain rigidity of spirit which, when he succeeded, was called firmness, and when he failed, obstinacy. Yet the charge so often brought against him, that he allowed himself to be misled by evil counsellors, shows that this persistence in his own opinion did not spring from egoism nor was incompatible with deference to the opinions of others. It arose from a deep sense of responsibility: he stubbornly refused to deviate from his course when he believed that his duty to his country forbade deviation, and he readily laid down his crown when duty to his country dictated renunciation. For the rest, a man who never posed to his contemporaries may confidently leave his character to the judgment of posterity.
As for M. Venizelos, history will probably say of him {229} what it has said of Themistocles: Though he sincerely aimed at the aggrandizement of his country, and proved on some most critical occasions of great value to it, yet on the whole his intelligence was higher than his morality-a man of many talents and few principles, ready to employ the most tortuous and unscrupulous means, sometimes indeed for ends in themselves patriotic, but often merely for aggrandizing himself. By nature he was more fitted to rule in a despotic than to lead in a constitutional State. Had he been born an emperor, his fertile genius might, unless betrayed by his restless ambition, have rendered his reign prosperous and his memory precious. As it is, in his career, with all its brilliance, posterity will find not so much a pattern to imitate as an example to deter.
[1] There is always so much of mystery surrounding the peasant mind, that its workings must often be accepted rather than understood. But those who wish to understand somewhat the psychological process which led in antiquity to the deification of kings during their life-time could not do better than study the cult of Constantine among the modern Greek peasantry.
[2] See Vice-Admiral Mark Kerr, in the Morning Post, 13 Dec., 1920.
[3] The Daily Mail, Aug. 13, 1920.
[4] Eleutheros Typos, 5/18 Aug., 1920.
[5] The New Europe, 29 March, 1917, p. 327.
[6] "Even if the Opposition sweeps the Peloponnese and gains a majority in Acarnania and Corfu, it is still doubtful whether it will have 120 seats in the new Chamber, which will contain 369 Deputies; and the Venizelists anticipate that their opponents will emerge from the struggle with less than 100 Deputies."-The Times, 15 Nov., 1920.
[7] The Daily Mail; The Evening News, 16 Nov, 1920; Reuter, Athens, 15 Nov.: "Not a single Venizelist was returned for Macedonia and Old Greece, except in Epirus and Aegean Islands."
[8] We learn that his followers "urged upon him the advisability of a coup d'état. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to carry out, and with so much at stake for Greece and for democratic principles generally, it seemed justifiable."-"M. Venizelos at Nice," in The Times, 29 Nov., 1920. But, "fears are entertained, it is said, that the regular Army-which is strongly anti-Venizelist-may get out of hand."-The Daily Mail, 17 Nov.
[9] The terms of the Note were communicated to the House of Commons by Mr. Bonar Law the same night.
[10] Reuter, Athens, 9 Dec., 1920.
[11] Another version of this refrain, which might be seen in crude lettering over a café at Phaleron, is: "So we willed it, and we brought him back" (Etsi to ethelame, kai ton epherame)-a distinct expression of the feeling that the people, by bringing back its sovereign in the face of foreign opposition, asserted its own sovereignty.
[12] See The Times, 20 Dec.; The Daily Mail, 21 Dec., 1920.
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AFTERWORD
In default of a Providence whose intervention in human affairs is no longer recognized, there still is a Nemesis of history whose operations can scarcely be denied. International morality, strange as the juxtaposition of the two words may seem, exists no less than the law of gravity; and a statesman who offends against the one must expect much the same catastrophe as an engineer who ignores the other. But it is not often that this law of retribution asserts itself so swiftly as it has done in the drama for which Greece supplied the stage to French statesmen during the last few years; for it is not often that a Government in the pursuit of practical interests overlooks so completely moral principles, flouts so openly national sentiments, and, while priding itself on realism, shuts its eyes so consistently to realities.
The logic of French action is as above reproach, as its motives are beyond dispute.
Nine decades ago the Duc de Broglie clearly explained that the aim of France in assisting to liberate Greece from the Turkish yoke was to have in the Eastern Mediterranean an instrument of her own ambition: "a State disposed to turn her eyes constantly towards that Power who has made her free-to watch for us over the ports of the Levant, to guard with us the mouth of the Black Sea and the keys of the Bosphorus [Transcriber's note: Bosporus?]";-it followed that the greater the client, the better for the patron's purpose. After undergoing many fluctuations and modifications, this idea was revived at the time of the Balkan wars, when France, together with Germany, supported the Greek claim to Cavalla, and it was fostered to an unhealthy growth during the European War. Hence the identification of France with M. Venizelos, who stood for a policy of expansion at all hazards, and her hostility to King Constantine who, preferring safety to hazardous ventures, stood for Greece's right to shape her course without dictation from Paris any more than from Berlin.
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By the methods which she employed, France succeeded in gaining Greece and losing the Greeks. Nothing else could have been expected: friends are sometimes to be won by good offices; sometimes by the promise of good offices; and sometimes by good words. They are seldom won by injuries, and by insults never. It is curious that so elementary a lesson in human nature should have been unknown to the able men who guided the policy and diplomacy of France during the War, who raised her military prestige and re-established her position in the first rank of the European Powers. Yet it is a fact-a fact which can be easily verified by a reference to their utterances: they are upon record. Brute force, and brute force, and again brute force: such is the burden that runs through them all; and it embodies a doctrine: the Greeks are Orientals and must be wooed with terror: on the notion, enunciated by an English humorist as a paradox, and adopted by French statesmen as an axiom, that terror sown in the Oriental heart will yield a harvest of esteem-even of affection. With this mad dogma nailed to her mast, France set out upon her voyage for the conquest of the Hellenic heart. It was the first of her mistakes-and it was accompanied by another.