Chapter 17

Thus the Greek nation’s present was overshadowed by its future, and its actions paralysed by its hopes. Perhaps a nation with more power of application and less of imagination would have schooled itself to the thought that these sordid, obtrusive details were the key to the splendours of the future, and would have devoted itself to the systematic amelioration of the cramped area which it had already secured for its own. This is what Bulgaria managed to do during her short but wonderful period of internal growth between the Berlin Treaty of 1878 and the declaration of war against Turkey in 1912. But Bulgaria, thanks to her geographical situation, was from the outset freer from the tentacles of the Turkish octopus than Greece had contrived to make herself by her fifty years’ start, while her temperamentally sober ambitions were not inflamed by such past traditions as Greece had inherited, not altogether to her advantage. Be that as it may, Greece, whether by fault or misfortune, had failed during this half-century to apply herself successfully to the cure of her defects and the exploitation of her assets, though she did not lack leaders strong-minded enough to summon her to the dull business of the present. Her history during the succeeding generation was a struggle between the parties of the Present and the Future, and the unceasing discomfiture of the former is typified in the tragedy of Trikoupis, the greatest modern Greek statesman before the advent of Venezelos.

Trikoupis came into power in 1882, just after the acquisition of the rich agricultural province of Thessaly under the Treaty of Berlin had given the kingdom a fresh start. There were no such continuous areas of good arable land within the original frontiers, and such rare patches as there were had been desolated by those eight years of savage warfare[1] which had been the price of liberty. The population had been swept away by wholesale massacres of racial minorities in every district; the dearth of industrious hands had allowed the torrents to play havoc with the cultivation-terraces on the mountain slopes; and the spectre of malaria, always lying in wait for its opportunity, had claimed the waterlogged plains for its own. During the fifty years of stagnation little attempt had been made to cope with the evil, until now it seemed almost past remedy.

[Footnote 1: 1821-28]

If, however, the surface of the land offered little prospect of wealth for the moment, there were considerable treasures to be found beneath it. A metalliferous bolt runs down the whole east coast of the Greek mainland, cropping up again in many of the Aegean islands, and some of the ores, of which there is a great variety, are rare and valuable. The lack of transit facilities is partly remedied by the fact that workable veins often lie near enough to the sea for the produce to be carried straight from mine to ship, by an endless-chain system of overhead trolleys; so that, once capital is secured for installing the plant and opening the mine, profitable operations can be carried on irrespective of the general economic condition of the country. Trikoupis saw how much potential wealth was locked up in these mineral seams. The problem was how to attract the capital necessary to tap it. The nucleus round which have accumulated those immense masses of mobilised capital that are the life-blood of modern European industry and commerce, was originally derived from the surplus profits of agriculture. But a country that finds itself reduced, like Greece in the nineteenth century, to a state of agricultural bankruptcy, has obviously failed to save any surplus in the process, so that it is unable to provide from its own pocket the minimum outlay it so urgently needs in order to open for itself some new activity. If it is to obtain a fresh start on other lines, it must secure the co-operation of the foreign investor, and the capitalist with a ready market for his money will only put it into enterprises where he has some guarantee of its safety. There was little doubt that the minerals of Greece would well repay extraction; the uncertain element was the Greek nation itself. The burning question of national unity might break out at any moment into a blaze of war, and, in the probable case of disaster, involve the whole country and all interests connected with it in economic as well as political ruin. Western Europe would not commit itself to Greek mining enterprise, unless it felt confident that the statesman responsible for the government of Greece would and could restrain his country from its instinctive impulse towards political adventure.

The great merit of Trikoupis was that he managed to inspire this confidence. Greece owes most of the wheelroads, railways, and mines of which she can now boast to the dozen years of his more or less consecutive administration. But the roads are unfinished, the railway-network incomplete, the mines exploited only to a fraction of their capacity, because the forces against Trikoupis were in the end too strong for him. It may be that his eye too rigidly followed the foreign investor’s point of view, and that by adopting a more conciliatory attitude towards the national ideal, he might have strengthened his position at home without impairing his reputation abroad; but his position was really made impossible by a force quite beyond his control, the irresponsible and often intolerable behaviour which Turkey, under whatever régime, has always practised towards foreign powers, and especially towards those Balkan states which have won their freedom in her despite, while perforce abandoning a large proportion of their race to the protracted outrage of Turkish misgovernment.

Several times over the Porte, by wanton insults to Greece, wrecked the efforts of Trikoupis to establish good relations between the two governments, and played the game of the chauvinist party led by Trikoupis’ rival, Deliyannis. Deliyannis’ tenures of office were always brief, but during them he contrived to undo most of the work accomplished by Trikoupis in the previous intervals. A particularly tense ‘incident’ with Turkey put him in power in 1893, with a strong enough backing from the country to warrant a general mobilization. The sole result was the ruin of Greek credit. Trikoupis was hastily recalled to office by the king, but too late. He found himself unable to retrieve the ruin, and retired altogether from politics in 1895, dying abroad next year in voluntary exile and enforced disillusionment.

With the removal of Trikoupis from the helm, Greece ran straight upon the rocks. A disastrous war with Turkey was precipitated in 1897 by events in Krete. It brought the immediate _débâcle_ of the army and the reoccupation of Thessaly for a year by Turkish troops, while its final penalties were the cession of the chief strategical positions along the northern frontier and the imposition of an international commission of control over the Greek finances, in view of the complete national bankruptcy entailed by the war. The fifteen years that followed 1895 were almost the blackest period in modern Greek history; yet the time was not altogether lost, and such events as the draining of the Kopais-basin by a British company, and its conversion from a malarious swamp into a rich agricultural area, marked a perceptible economic advance.

This comparative stagnation was broken at last by the Young Turk _pronunciamiento_ at Salonika in 1908, which produced such momentous repercussions all through the Nearer East. The Young Turks had struck in order to forestall the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, but the opportunity was seized by every restive element within it to extricate itself, if possible, from the Turkish coils. Now, just as in 1897, Greece was directly affected by the action of the Greek population in Krete. As a result of the revolt of 1896-7, Krete had been constituted an autonomous state subject to Ottoman suzerainty, autonomy and suzerainty alike being guaranteed by four great powers. Prince George of Greece, a son of the King of the Hellenes, had been placed at the head of the autonomous government as high commissioner; but his autocratic tendency caused great discontent among the free-spirited Kretans, who had not rid themselves of the Turkish régime in order to forfeit their independence again in another fashion. Dissension culminated in 1906, when the leaders of the opposition took to the mountains, and obtained such support and success in the guerrilla fighting that followed, that they forced Prince George to tender his resignation. He was succeeded as high commissioner by Zaimis, another citizen of the Greek kingdom, who inaugurated a more constitutional régime, and in 1908 the Kretans believed that the moment for realizing the national ideal had come. They proclaimed their union with Greece, and elected deputies to the Parliament at Athens. But the guarantor powers carried out their obligations by promptly sending a combined naval expedition, which hauled down the Greek flag at Canea, and prevented the deputies from embarking for Peiraeus. This apparently pedantic insistence upon the _status quo_ was extremely exasperating to Greek nationalism. It produced a ferment in the kingdom, which grew steadily for nine months, and vented itself in July 1909 in the _coup d’état_ of the ‘Military League’, a second-hand imitation of the Turkish ‘Committee of Union and Progress’. The royal family was cavalierly treated, and constitutional government superseded by a junta of officers. But at this point the policy of the four powers towards Krete was justified. Turkey knew well that she had lost Krete in 1897, but she could still exploit her suzerainty to prevent Greece from gaining new strength by the annexation of the island. The Young Turks had seized the reins of government, not to modify the policy of the Porte, but to intensify its chauvinism, and they accordingly intimated that they would consider any violation of their suzerain rights over Krete a _casus belli_ against Greece. Greece, without army or allies, was obviously not in a position to incur another war, and the ‘Military League’ thus found that it had reached the end of its tether. There ensued a deadlock of another eight months, only enlivened by a naval mutiny, during which the country lay paralysed, with no programme whatsoever before it.

Then the man demanded by the situation appeared unexpectedly from the centre of disturbance, Krete. Venezelos started life as a successful advocate at Canea. He entered Kretan politics in the struggle for constitutionalism, and distinguished himself in the successful revolution of 1906, of which he was the soul. Naturally, he became one of the leading statesmen under Zaimis’ régime, and he further distinguished himself by resolutely opposing the ‘Unionist’ agitation as premature, and yet retaining his hold over a people whose paramount political preoccupation was their national unity. The crisis of 1908-9 brought him into close relations with the government of the Greek kingdom; and the king, who had gauged his calibre, now took the patriotic step of calling in the man who had expelled his son from Krete, to put his own house in order. It speaks much for both men that they worked together in harmony from the beginning. Upon the royal invitation Venezelos exchanged Kretan for Greek citizenship, and took in hand the ‘Military League’. After short negotiations, he persuaded it to dissolve in favour of a national convention, which was able to meet in March 1910.

Thus Greece became a constitutional country once more, and Venezelos the first premier of the new era. During five years of continuous office he was to prove himself the good genius of his country. When he resigned his post in April 1915, he left the work of consolidating the national state on the verge of completion, and it will be his country’s loss if he is baulked of achievement. Results speak for themselves, and the remainder of this pamphlet will be little more than a record of his statesmanship; but before we pass on to review his deeds, we must say a word about the character to which they are due. In March 1912 the time came for the first general election since Venezelos had taken office. Two years’ experience of his administration had already won him such popularity and prestige, that the old party groups, purely personal followings infected with all the corruption, jingoism, and insincerity of the dark fifteen years, leagued themselves in a desperate effort to cast him out. Corruption on a grand scale was attempted, but Venezelos’ success at the polls was sweeping. The writer happened to be spending that month in Krete. The Kretans had, of course, elected deputies in good time to the parliament at Athens, and once more the foreign warships stopped them in the act of boarding the steamer for Peiraeus, while Venezelos, who was still responsible for the Greek Government till the new parliament met, had declared with characteristic frankness that the attendance of the Kretan deputies could not possibly be sanctioned, an opening of which his opponents did not fail to take advantage. Meanwhile, every one in Krete was awaiting news of the polling in the kingdom. They might have been expected to feel, at any rate, lukewarmly towards a man who had actually taken office on the programme of deferring their cherished ‘union’ indefinitely; but, on the contrary, they greeted his triumph with enormous enthusiasm. Their feeling was explained by the comment of an innkeeper. ‘Venezelos!’ he said: ‘Why, he is a man who can say “No”. He won’t stand any nonsense. If you try to get round him, he’ll put you in irons.’ And clearly he had hit the mark. Venezelos would in any case have done well, because he is a clever man with an excellent power of judgement; but acuteness is a common Greek virtue, and if he has done brilliantly, it is because he has the added touch of genius required to make the Greek take ‘No’ for an answer, a quality, very rare indeed in the nation, which explains the dramatic contrast between his success and Trikoupis’ failure. Greece has been fortunate indeed in finding the right man at the crucial hour.

In the winter of 1911-12 and the succeeding summer, the foreign traveller met innumerable results of Venezelos’ activity in every part of the country, and all gave evidence of the same thing: a sane judgement and its inflexible execution. For instance, a resident in Greece had needed an escort of soldiers four years before, when he made an expedition into the wild country north-west of the Gulf of Patras, on account of the number of criminals ‘wanted’ by the government who were lurking in that region as outlaws. In August 1912 an inquiry concerning this danger was met with a smile: ‘Oh, yes, it was so,’ said the gendarme, ‘but since then Venezelos has come. He amnestied every one “out” for minor offences, and then caught the “really bad ones”, so there are no outlaws in Akarnania now.’ And he spoke the truth. You could wander all about the forests and mountains without molestation.

So far Venezelos had devoted himself to internal reconstruction, after the precedent of Trikoupis, but he was not the man to desert the national idea. The army and navy were reorganized by French and British missions, and when the opportunity appeared, he was ready to take full advantage of it. In the autumn of 1912, Turkey had been for a year at war with Italy; her finances had suffered a heavy drain, and the Italian command of the sea not only locked up her best troops in Tripoli, but interrupted such important lines of communication between her Asiatic and European provinces as the direct route by sea from Smyrna to Salonika, and the devious sea-passage thence round Greece to Scutari, which was the only alternative for Turkish troops to running the gauntlet of the Albanian mountaineers. Clearly the Balkan nations could find no better moment for striking the blow to settle that implacable ‘preliminary question.’ of national unity which had dogged them all since their birth. Their only chance of success, however, was to strike in concert, for Turkey, handicapped though she was, could still easily outmatch them singly. Unless they could compromise between their conflicting claims, they would have to let this common opportunity for making them good slip by altogether.

Of the four states concerned, two, Serbia and Montenegro, were of the same South-Slavonic nationality, and had been drawn into complete accord with each other since the formal annexation of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary in 1908, which struck a hard blow at their common national idea, while neither of them had any conflicting claims with Greece, since the Greek and South-Slavonic nationalities are at no point geographically in contact. With Bulgaria, a nation of Slavonic speech and culture, though not wholly Slavonic in origin, Serbia had quarrelled for years over the ultimate destiny of the Üsküb district in north-western Macedonia, which was still subject to Turkey; but in the summer of 1912 the two states compromised in a secret treaty upon their respective territorial ambitions, and agreed to refer the fate of one debatable strip to the arbitration of Russia, after their already projected war with Turkey had been carried through. There was a more formidable conflict of interests between Bulgaria and Greece. These two nationalities are conterminous over a very wide extent of territory, stretching from the Black Sea on the east to the inland Lake of Okhrida on the west, and there is at no point a sharp dividing line between them. The Greek element tends to predominate towards the coast and the Bulgar towards the interior, but there are broad zones where Greek and Bulgar villages are inextricably interspersed, while purely Greek towns are often isolated in the midst of purely Bulgar rural districts. Even if the racial areas could be plotted out on a large-scale map, it was clear that no political frontier could be drawn to follow their convolutions, and that Greece and Bulgaria could only divide the spoils by both making up their minds to give and take. The actual lines this necessary compromise would follow, obviously depended on the degree of the allies’ success against Turkey in the common war that was yet to be fought, and Venezelos rose to the occasion. He had the courage to offer Bulgaria the Greek alliance without stipulating for any definite minimum share in the common conquests, and the tact to induce her to accept it on the same terms. Greece and Bulgaria agreed to shelve all territorial questions till the war had been brought to a successful close; and with the negotiation of this understanding (another case in which Venezelos achieved what Trikoupis had attempted only to fail) the Balkan League was complete.

The events that followed are common knowledge. The Balkan allies opened the campaign in October, and the Turks collapsed before an impetuous attack. The Bulgarians crumpled up the Ottoman field armies in Thrace at the terrific battle of Lule Burgas; the Serbians disposed of the forces in the Macedonian interior, while the Greeks effected a junction with the Serbians from the south, and cut their way through to Salonika. Within two months of the declaration of war, the Turks on land had been driven out of the open altogether behind the shelter of the Chataldja and Gallipoli lines, and only three fortresses—Adrianople, Yannina, and Scutari—held out further to the west. Their navy, closely blockaded by the Greek fleet within the Dardanelles, had to look on passively at the successive occupation of the Aegean Islands by Greek landing-parties. With the winter came negotiations, during which an armistice reigned at Adrianople and Scutari, while the Greeks pursued the siege of Yannina and the Dardanelles blockade. The negotiations proved abortive, and the result of the renewed hostilities justified the action of the Balkan plenipotentiaries in breaking them off. By the spring of 1913 the three fortresses had fallen, and, under the treaty finally signed at London, Turkey ceded to the Balkan League, as a whole, all her European territories west of a line drawn from Ainos on the Aegean to Midía on the Black Sea, including Adrianople and the lower basin of the river Maritsa.

The time had now come for Greece and Bulgaria to settle their account, and the unexpected extent of the common gains ought to have facilitated their division. The territory in question included the whole north coast of the Aegean and its immediate hinterland, and Venezelos proposed to consider it in two sections. (1) The eastern section, conveniently known as Thrace, consisted of the lower basin of the Maritsa. As far as Adrianople the population was Bulgar, but south of that city it was succeeded by a Greek element, with a considerable sprinkling of Turkish settlements, as far as the sea. Geographically, however, the whole district is intimately connected with Bulgaria, and the railway that follows the course of the Maritsa down to the port of Dedeagatch offers a much-needed economic outlet for large regions already within the Bulgarian frontier. Venezelos, then, was prepared to resign all Greek claims to the eastern section, in return for a corresponding concession by Bulgaria in the west. (2) The western section, consisting of the lower basins of the Vardar and Struma, lay in the immediate neighbourhood of the former frontier of Greece; but the Greek population of Salonika,[1] and the coast-districts east of it, could not be brought within the Greek frontier without including as well a certain hinterland inhabited mainly by Bulgarians. The cession of this was the return asked for by Venezelos, and he reduced it to a minimum by abstaining from pressing the quite well-founded claims of Greece in the Monastir district, which lay further inland still.

[Footnote 1: The predominant element within the walls of Salonika itself is neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but consists of about 80,000 of those Spanish-speaking Jews who settled in Turkey as refugees during the sixteenth century.]