Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 Part 16

[13] In his one message (6 January) he dwelt on Greece's critical condition, asking if a German attack was intended, and when it would probably take place. Such is the gist of these famous telegrams. For the rest, they consist of allusions by the Queen to her sufferings and appropriate epithets applied to the authors of them. See White Book, Nos. 177 foll.

[14] Zalocostas to Legations of France, England, Italy and Russia, 28 Dec./10 Jan., 1917.

[15] See The Times, 20, 23, 24, 30 Jan., 1917.

{172}

CHAPTER XVI

Among the acts sanctioned by International Law, none is more worthy of a philosopher's or a philanthropist's attention than the "pacific blockade." The credit for the inst.i.tution belongs to all the great civilised communities, but for its pleasant designation the world is indebted to the eminent jurist M. Hautefeuille-a countryman of the ingenious Dr. Guillotin. It denotes "a blockade exercised by a great Power for the purpose of bringing pressure to bear on a weaker State, without actual war. That it is an act of violence, and therefore in the nature of war, is undeniable";[1] but, besides its name, it possesses certain features which distinguish it advantageously from ordinary war.

First, instead of the barbarous effusion of blood and swift destruction which open hostilities entail, the pacific blockade achieves its ends by more refined and leisurely means: one is not shocked by the unseemly sights of a battlefield, and the wielder of the weapon has time to watch its effects as they develop: he can see the victim going through the successive stages of misery-debility, languor, exhaustion-until the final point is reached; and as his scientific curiosity is gratified by the gradual manifestation of the various symptoms, so his moral sense is fortified by the struggle between a proud spirit and an empty stomach-than which life can offer no more enn.o.bling spectacle. Then, unlike crude war, the pacific blockade automatically strikes the nation at which it is aimed on its weakest side first: instead of having to begin with its manhood, one begins with its old men, its women, and its infants. The merits of this form of attack are evident: many a man who would boldly face starvation himself, may be reasonably expected to flinch at the prospect of a starving mother, {173} wife, or child. Lastly, whilst in war the a.s.sailant must inevitably suffer as well as inflict losses, the pacific blockade renders him absolutely exempt from all risk. For "it can only be employed as a measure of coercion by maritime Powers able to bring into action such vastly superior forces to those the resisting State can dispose of, that resistance is out of the question." [2]

In brief, the pacific blockade is not war, but a kind of sport, as safe as coursing, and to the educated mind much more interesting. The interest largely depends on the duration of the blockade, and its duration on the victims' physical and moral resources.

When the blockade was proclaimed on the 8th of December, Allied journalists predicted that its persuasive force would be felt very soon. The country, they reasoned, owing to the manifold restrictions imposed upon its overseas trade by the Anglo-French Fleet, had been on short commons for some time past. The total stoppage of maritime traffic would bring it to the verge of famine within a week. And, in fact, before the end of the month Greece was feeling the pinch.[3] As might have been expected, the first to feel it were the poor. Both the authorities and private societies did their utmost to protect them by keeping prices down, and to relieve them by the free distribution of food and other necessaries.[4] But, although the achievement was great, it could not prove equal to the dimensions of the need. The stoppage of all maritime traffic caused a cessation of industry and threw out of employment thousands of working-people. As the factories grew empty of labourers, the streets grew full of beggars. The necessary adulteration of the flour produced epidemics of dysentery and poisoning, especially among children and old people, while numerous deaths among infants were attributed by the doctors to want of milk in their mothers' b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Presently bread, the staple food of the Greeks, disappeared, and all cla.s.ses took {174} to carob-beans and herbs.[5] On 23 February a lady of the highest Athenian society wrote to a friend in London: "If we were in England, we should all be fined for cruelty to animals. As there is no flour, our tiny portions of bread are made of oats, and rather rotten ones, that had been reserved for the cab-horses. Now the poor things have nothing to eat and have become a collection of Apocalyptic beasts. We go on foot as much as we can, as they really could not carry us."

Next to bread, the most prominent article of Greek diet is fish. The French, who in their treatment of this neutral nation gave evidence of a thoroughness and efficiency such as they did not always display in their operations against the enemy, saw to it that this source of subsistence also should, within the measure of their ability, fail their victims. French cruisers stopped the fishing-smacks and asked if their community had joined the Rebellion. When the answer was in the negative, they sank the vessel and confiscated the tackle, often accompanying the robbery of property with violence on the persons of the owners and abuse of their sovereign. To the wretched fishermen's protests, the French commanders replied: "If you want to be left alone, you have only to drive out your King." [6]

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 fort.i.tude, 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 rect.i.tude: 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 mult.i.tude, p.r.o.nounced 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 G.o.d 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 inst.i.tutions 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. x.x.xI, 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.

[6] Zalocostas to Greek Legations abroad, 3/16 Feb.; to French Minister at Athens, 16/29 March, 1917.

[7] Zalocostas to Greek Legations abroad, 25 Jan./7 Feb.; 15/28 Feb.; 12/25 March.

[8] The Nea Himera, 15/28 Feb., 1917.

[9] Zalocostas to Greek Legations abroad, 14/27 Dec., 1916.

[10] Paxton Hibben, p. 522.

[11] The Censorship succeeded in keeping these facts, as it kept many others, from the British public; they were not suitable subjects for war propaganda.

{177}

CHAPTER XVII

It seems now proper to return to M. Venizelos and to consider in some detail the other measures which he and his patrons at this time adopted for the purpose of consolidating and extending his dominion.

As we have seen, shortly after the Cretan's installation at Salonica, the Entente Powers, by a diplomatic fiction, decided to treat his Committee as a de facto Government. It was not until his countrymen impeached him as a traitor that the recognition a.s.sumed a de jure character, by the appointment of duly accredited diplomatic agents to his capital. These steps were accompanied by other marks of sympathy. While the Allies negotiated with the King, their naval commanders canva.s.sed for M. Venizelos-sweeping islands under his sway: Syra was first shepherded into the fold, and a little later the rest of the Cyclades.

A brief suspension of operations supervened as a result of the solemn promise given to Athens that the Allies would neither by land nor by sea allow the extension of the revolutionary movement. For an instant the Entente respected its own pledges. Just before the surrender of the Lambros Cabinet, on 10 January, the Cretan had rushed to establish another accomplished fact by liberating the island of Cerigo; but, on the Government's protest, the Allies obliged him to undo his accomplishment; though, on the plea that the island would resent being replaced under King Constantine's yoke, it was made temporarily autonomous.[1]

Soon, however, these pledges went the way of all words. Between February and May, Cephalonia, Zante, and Corfu {178} were converted one by one: everywhere the apostles from Salonica preaching, "Be our brethren or die of hunger"; and everywhere having behind them the guns of France and England to enforce respect for their gospel. The instance of Leucas, the last of the Ionian Isles to be gathered into the fold, will suffice as an ill.u.s.tration. In the middle of March a French vessel, carrying a consignment of maize, rice, and Venizelist missionaries, called at the island and invited the inhabitants to come, buy, and be saved: they answered that they would never touch food brought by traitors. Towards the end of May, the French Admiral commanding the Ionian Reserve was able to announce that the Leucadian population had joined the National Movement.[2]

To secure his authority over these maritime possessions, the Cretan obtained from his patrons some of the warships of which they had robbed the King.

A similar propaganda was simultaneously going on in the "neutral zone" and in the lands to the south of it-particularly Thessaly-whose immunity from emanc.i.p.ation the Allies had also guaranteed. Only, as this region lay nearer to the base of the Franco-Venizelist Mission, it benefited more severely from its influence. General Sarrail's patrols raided the villages, harrying the peasants and sparing not even the honour of their women. Anyone who knows the Greek peasant's fierce views on feminine chast.i.ty can imagine the indignation which such an outrage would have aroused in any case; but in this case their horror was deepened by the circ.u.mstance that the a.s.sailants sometimes were African semi-savages-the Senegalese whom France brought to Greece, as to other parts of Europe, oblivious of the most rudimentary dictates of decency and sound policy. On one occasion (22 Feb.) the coloured libertines paid for their l.u.s.t with their lives: a patrol of a dozen of them was surprised and ma.s.sacred.[3]

Summary executions were among the methods of {179} military tyranny in which General Sarrail rejoiced without scruple and with a certain brutal pride. When once he found himself obliged to justify his conduct, he wrote: "The six inhabitants of Dianitza, who were shot, were Comitadjis. There is no doubt in that respect. Doubt still exists about eight others. If they are proved to be in the same case as the former, they will be shot in the same way. The two men shot at Lourani were put to death because they were known to be Comitadjis. The other two, whose houses were burnt down, are likewise Comitadjis: they would have been shot, if they were not away: they shall be, if they are caught. If a church has been burnt down, it was because it had been transformed into a magazine for arms. If barley has been carried away, it has been paid for or requisitioned." After some more statements of the same enlightening kind, the gallant soldier concludes: "To sum up, the Greek Government organizes bands and maintains them. The security of our Army in the Orient exacts their suppression. I have given orders to put to death all irregulars. These orders have been carried out: they shall continue to be carried out." [4]

It was by precisely similar arguments that General von Bissing justified his severities in Belgium: with this difference, that in Greece the danger never existed. Comitadjis-bands of irregulars-did exist; it would have been strange if the adherents of the King had not done everything to counter the efforts of his enemies. Long before this period the French Secret Service, Admiral Dartige du Fournet tells us, had been busy equipping guerillas on the frontier.[5] Further, in the mainland, as in the islands, the Venizelist recruiting sergeants sought "volunteers" by force: "How many villages had to be surrounded by constabulary... . How much shooting had to be done to keep the men of military age from escaping... . How many deserters or those unwilling to serve had to be rounded up from hiding places!" exclaims General Sarrail.[6] Some of the recruits thus enlisted s.n.a.t.c.hed at the earliest opportunity of regaining {180} their freedom: they fell in during the day, and at night they fled with their arms.

The a.s.sertion that these bands were organized and maintained by the Greek Government to hara.s.s the Allies and keep the line of communication with Albania open, with a view to an eventual junction between the forces of King Constantine and those of the German Emperor, rested on evidence which, for some obscure reason, was not produced.[7] But it supplied pretexts for action the true objects of which were not obscure.

Despite his press-gangs, in six months M. Venizelos had only succeeded in sending to the front some 10,000 men. He explained to his Western friends that he had failed to fulfil their expectations better because the neutral zone barred the extension of his movement into Thessaly.[8] He had respected that zone until now; but now that the Allies gave him a free hand over the sea, he saw no longer any reason why they should restrain him on land. Therefore, while the agents from Macedonia goaded the inhabitants to seek rest in apostacy and provoked incidents supplying an excuse for intervention, the advocates of M. Venizelos in Paris and London laboured to clear his way by publishing reports which told how the people of Thessaly prayed for liberation from the yoke of King Constantine,[9] and exhausted their ingenuity in endeavours to show the Entente publics how to break faith with honour and decency, as well as with advantage.

The victualling of the Allied army in Macedonia, always difficult, had become distressingly precarious with its own growth and the growth of the enemy's submarine activity. Were the Allies to go on transporting food and fodder from distant lands across dangerous seas, with the rich cornfields of Thessaly within short and safe reach of their trenches? The seizure of the Thessalian granary, besides {181} helping to keep the Allies in plenty, would help to reduce the Royalists to despair by robbing them of the harvest to which they looked forward with strained eyes and tightened belts. In this wise both military and political problems could be solved by one masterly stroke.

In April, General Sarrail obtained from his Government the orders he had been soliciting since January, to go to Thessaly and seize the crops; only, as the offensive against the Bulgars deprived him of adequate means for the moment, he decided to put off the stroke until the middle of May.[10]

Alarmed by these sudden, though not wholly unexpected, developments, King Constantine dismissed Professor Lambros, and had once more recourse to M. Zaimis; hoping that this statesman, the only non-Venizelist Greek whom the slander of Germanophilism had left untouched, might prove able to placate the Allies. M. Zaimis, as in all previous crises, so now obeyed the call and set himself to discover some path out of the wood (2 May). On the one hand, he opened negotiations with the Entente Ministers; on the other, he tried to bring about a reconciliation with M. Venizelos-the King being understood to be willing to meet the Cretan half-way.

M. Venizelos, on his part, alarmed by the prospect of a rapprochement between Athens and the Entente Powers, set himself, as on all similar occasions, to impugn the h.e.l.lenic Government's sincerity. At a signal from the Conductor, all the instruments of the orchestra broke into the familiar chorus. The whole Press of France and England rang again with calumny and fairy-tale. Out they came again in regular sequence and with unvarying monotony: plots and secret letters, weird stories of German intrigue, constant repet.i.tion of names compromised or compromising; all ready, cut and dried, for burking any attempt at accommodation that did not include the return and domination of the Great Cretan.

It was maintained that the formation of a Government under M. Zaimis was but a new artifice of King Constantine, adopted at the Kaiser's suggestion, to temporize by ostensibly throwing over a few of his Germanophile favourites. During more than five months he had contrived {182} to checkmate the blockade by drawing on the reserves of food he had laid up at his depots. Now those reserves were exhausted: he needed the Thessalian corn to replenish his magazines, to feed and increase his army, so that in the fullness of time he might bring it out of the Peloponnesus against the Allies.[11]

Even more sinister were the motives which prompted the King's advances to the Cretan. While holding out the right hand to M. Venizelos, Constantine with the left aimed a dagger at his heart: a band of eleven a.s.sa.s.sins had just been arrested at Salonica on a charge of conspiring to murder him-to murder him in the very midst of his own and his allies' military forces, and under circ.u.mstances which made detection certain and escape impossible. Even thus: "their plan was to arrange a banquet to which M. Venizelos would have been invited. They are said to have confessed that they were sent from Athens to kill the Head of the National Government and were promised 4,000 pounds for the murder." [12]

Day by day it became increasingly clear that the question of Thessaly formed only part of the larger question of Greece; that behind the campaign for the crops lurked the conspiracy against the King. A "radical solution" was demanded, on the ground that so long as he reigned at Athens we could not consider Greece a friendly neutral. The Greek organ of M. Venizelos in London now openly described the Cretan as a man sent to heal h.e.l.las of the "dynastic canker," and expressed the opinion that the healing could only be effected by "Prussian methods." [13]

During the whole of May this concert of sophistry and calumny went on: now sinking into low, deadly whispers; now swelling into an uproar that rolled like a mighty, muddy river in flood through every Allied capital, ministering to the inarticulate craving of the public for fresh sensations, thrilling its nerves, and feeding its hate and fear of King Constantine. At the end of the month the curtain went up, and M. Venizelos stepped forward to {188} make the declaration for which his instrumental music had prepared our minds: "I reject all idea of reconciliation firmly, flatly, and finally!"

His confederates and subordinates, as usual, went further: Admiral Coundouriotis: "Neither in this world nor in the next will I have anything to do with King Constantine or his dynasty."

Minister Politis: "No compromise is possible between Liberal Greece and the reigning dynasty."

Minister Averoff: "The one and most important thing is that the dynasty of Constantine should, like the Turks, be turned bag and baggage out of Greece." [14]

So the Great Cretan and his company had given up at last pretending that their plot was not directed against their King, or that they intended to postpone the settlement of their accounts with him till after the War. Their relief must have been proportionate to the strain: it is not hypocrisy, but the need of consistency that hara.s.ses a hypocrite. But their outburst of candour was chiefly interesting as an index to the att.i.tude of the Powers from whom they derived their significance.