Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 Part 21

[10] Reuter, Athens, 9 Dec., 1920.

[11] Another version of this refrain, which might be seen in crude lettering over a cafe 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, a.s.serted 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 a.s.serts 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 a.s.sisting 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 h.e.l.lenic heart. It was the first of her mistakes-and it was accompanied by another.

Even if Greece were willing to play the part of a French satellite, she could not do so; for her geographical situation exposes her to the influence of more than one Power. Italy, who has her own ambitions in the Eastern Mediterranean, opposed during the War a policy the object of which was Greek expansion over territories coveted by herself and a readjustment of the balance of forces in favour of France; and it was partly in order not to alienate Italy during the War that French statesmen wanted Greece to come in without any specified conditions, leaving the matter of territorial compensations for the time of settlement. Russia showed herself not less suspicious of French diplomacy for similar reasons. But it was with England chiefly that France had to reckon. In the past the rivalry between France and England in the Eastern Mediterranean, though often overshadowed by their common antagonism, first to Russia and subsequently to Germany, was a perennial cause of discord which kept Greece oscillating between the two Powers.

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During the War England, of necessity, lent France her acquiescence and even a.s.sistance in a work which she would rather not have seen done. But, once done, she endeavoured to secure such profit as was to be derived therefrom. The Greeks in Asia Minor-it was thought-could serve to check the Turks from troubling us in Mesopotamia and other parts of the Near and Middle East. Hence the Treaty of Sevres, which provided for the aggrandizement of Greece at the expense of the Ottoman Empire in Asia as well as in Europe, to the seeming satisfaction of both French and British interests. But the adjustment-even if it had been forced upon Turkey-could, by the nature of things, be only temporary. Owing to her geographical situation, Greece must inevitably move within the orbit of the Power who dominates the sea.

Psychology accelerated a movement imposed by geography. While France based her action upon an English humorist's paradox, England based hers upon a French thinker's maxim: Lorsqu'on veut redoubler de force, il faut redoubles de grace. Although her diplomatic, military, and naval representatives did partic.i.p.ate in every measure of coercion and intimidation as a matter of policy, they (if we except the Secret Service gentry) never forgot the dictates of decency: they never, figuratively, kicked the person whom they deemed it necessary to knock down. The ordinary British soldiers, too, for all the relaxation of moral rules natural in war, maintained throughout the campaign a standard of behaviour which contrasted so favourably with their comrades' that it earned them among the inhabitants of Macedonia the honourable nickname of "the maids." It was particularly noted during the fire which devastated Salonica that, while others took advantage of the turmoil to loot, the British soldier devoted himself wholly to rescuing. Some of these things were perhaps resented by our allies as weak, and some were ridiculed as nave; but they must be judged by their effect. At the end of the War one nation was respected by the Greeks as much as the other was hated and despised. British prestige rose exactly in proportion as French prestige sank. And the object which France elected to seek, and sought in vain, by {233} means of violence and terror, England attained by a conduct which, if not more lawful, was much more graceful.

Still, French statesmen counted on M. Venizelos-"l'homme politique qui incarne l'idee de la solidarite des interets francais et grecs"-to keep his country on their side. And as in the first instance they had made the alliance conditional on his being placed in control, so now they made the benefits accruing from it to Greece dependent on his remaining in control. That M. Venizelos could not always remain in control does not seem to have occurred to them. Nor that he might not always be content to be a mere puppet in their hands. Murmurs at his pro-British leanings were indeed heard occasionally. But on the whole the Cretan possessed in an adequate measure the faculty of adapting himself to rival points of view, of making each Power feel that her interests were supreme in his regard, and of using the ambitions of both to promote his own. As long as he remained in control, France, with whatever reservations, felt sure of her share of influence.

The collapse of M. Venizelos and the demand of the Greek people for King Constantine's return, came to French statesmen as a painful surprise. That they had for several years been laboriously building on illusions could not be disguised, and being made to look absurd before those of their own compatriots who had all along advocated a policy based on the preservation and exploitation of Turkey, rendered the situation doubly awkward. Unable to rise above personal pique, they would fain veto the return of a prince whom they hated and whom they had wronged beyond hope of conciliation. England, however, free from petty animosities, and sensible that, under whatever ruler, Greece would be with her, refused to sanction lawlessness in the midst of peace; and her view that, if the Greeks wanted Constantine, it was their business and not ours, prevailed. But, on the other hand, by way of compromise, France obtained that he should return to an empty treasury, with foreign credits cut off, and the loans made by the Allies to the Venizelist Government, to facilitate the waging of a common war against Turkey, revoked.

It was an impossible position which King Constantine was called upon to face: a position none of his own making, {234} yet one from which there was no retreat. The Greek people's imperialism had been roused. The leaders who once criticized M. Venizelos's Asiatic policy as a dangerous dream, opposed to economic, strategic, and ethnic realities, might still hold those views and mutter in secret that Smyrna would prove the grave of Greece; but they no longer dared express them, out of deference to public opinion. To the ma.s.ses M. Venizelos's wild game of chance seemed vindicated by its results, and while they rejected the man they clung to his work.

The Greek Government had no choice but to carry on the conflict under enormous disadvantages. As France antic.i.p.ated, with foreign credits cut off and a progressive fall in the exchange, the expense of maintaining a large army on a war footing proved too heavy for the National Exchequer. And that was not the worst. France, who since the Armistice had betrayed a keen jealousy of England's place in a part of the world in which she claims special rights, presently concluded a separate agreement with Turkey-an example in which she was followed by Italy-and gave the Turks her moral and material support in their struggle with the Greeks; while England, though refusing to reverse her policy in favour of their enemies, contented herself with giving the Greeks only a platonic encouragement, which they were unwise enough to take for more than it was worth.

Everyone knows the melancholy sequel: our unhappy "allies," left to their own exhausted resources, were driven from the Asiatic territories which in common prudence they should never have entered; and the overseas Empire which M. Venizelos had conjured up vanished in smoke.

The rout in Asia Minor had its repercussion in Greece. For nearly two years the people, though war-worn and on the edge of bankruptcy, bore the financial as they had borne the famine blockade, trusting that England would at any moment come forth to counter the vindictiveness of France, and st.u.r.dily resisted all the efforts of the Venizelist party to shake the stability of the Royalist regime: Constantine again appeared in their eyes as a victim of the Cretan's intrigues. But the loss of Ionia and the danger of the loss of Thrace; the horror and {235} despair arising from the sack of Smyrna, whence shiploads of broken refugees fled to the Greek ports; all this, reinforced by an idea that the maintenance of the King on the throne prevented the effective expression of British friendship and his fall would remove French hostility, created conditions before which questions of personalities for once faded into insignificance, and put into the hands of M. Venizelos's partisans an irresistible lever.

On 26 September an army of 15,000 insurgent soldiers landed near Athens and demanded the abdication of the King. The loyal troops were ready to meet force by force. But the King, in order to avert a fratricidal struggle which would have dealt Greece the finishing stroke, forbade opposition and immediately abdicated, "happy," as he said, "that another opportunity has been given me to sacrifice myself once more for Greece." In fact, once more Constantine was made the scape-goat for disasters for which he was in no way responsible-disasters from which he would undoubtedly have saved his country, had he been allowed to pursue his own sober course.

M. Venizelos would not go back to Athens until the excitement subsided, lest people should think, he said, that he had had any part in the revolution: but undertook the defence of the national interests in the Entente capitals. His mission was to obtain such support as would enable him to save Greece something out of the ruin which his insane imperialism had brought upon her, so that he might be in a position to point out to his countrymen that he alone, after the disastrous failure of Constantine, had been able to secure their partial rehabilitation. That accomplished, he might then hope to become a perpetual Prime Minister or President.

France made it quite clear that no changes in Greece could alter her policy: however satisfied she might be at the second disappearance of the antipathetic monarch, it should not be supposed that, even were a Republic to be set up, presided over by the Great Cretan, her att.i.tude on territorial questions would be transformed: Thrace, after Ionia, must revert to Turkey. French statesmen longed for the complete demolition of their own handiwork. M. Poincare, in 1922, was proud to do what the Duc de Broglie ninety years before scoffed at as an {236} unthinkable folly: "Abandonner la Grece aujourd'hui, detruire de nos propres mains l'ouvrage que nos propres mains ont presque acheve!"

England's expressed att.i.tude was not characterized by a like precision. It is true that after the Greek debacle she dispatched ships and troops to prevent the Straits from falling into the hands of the Turks; but in the matter of Thrace she had already yielded to France: and how the restoration of Turkish rule in Europe can be reconciled with the freedom of the Straits remains to be seen.

What the future may have in store for Greece and Turkey is a matter of comparatively small account. What is of great and permanent importance is the divergence between the paths of France and England revealed by the preceding a.n.a.lysis of events.

From this a.n.a.lysis have been carefully excluded such superficial dissensions as always arise between allies after a war, and were especially to be expected after a war in which every national susceptibility was quickened to a morbid degree: they belong to a different category from the profound antagonisms under consideration. These-whatever the philosopher may think of a struggle for domination-present a problem which British statesmen must face frankly. It is not a new problem; but it now appears under a new form and in a more acute phase than it has ever possessed in the past-thanks to the success of the "knock-out blow" policy which governed the latter stages of the War.

With the German power replaced by the French, the Russian for the moment in abeyance, French and Italian influences competing in Turkey, French and British aims clashing in the Arab regions wrested from Turkey-while indignation at Occidental interference surges in the minds of all the peoples of the Orient-the Eastern Mediterranean offers a situation which tempts one to ask whether the authors of that policy have not succeeded too well? Whether in pursuing the success of the day-to which their personal reputations were attached-they did not lose sight of the morrow? Whether they have not scattered the seed without sufficiently heeding the crop? However that may be, unless this situation was clearly foreseen by its creators and provided for-a hypothesis {237} which, with the utmost goodwill towards them, does not appear very probable-they have an anxious task-a task that, under these conditions, demands from British statesmanship more thinking about the Near Eastern question and the Greek factor in it than was necessary before 1914.

As a first aid to an appreciation of the problem by the public-which the present crisis found utterly unprepared-it would have been well if the fundamental differences between the respective att.i.tudes of France and England towards each other and towards the peoples concerned had been candidly acknowledged, and all pretence of Franco-British co-operation in the Near East abandoned. Lasting co-operation cannot be where there is neither community of interests nor consonance of ideas: where the loss of one party is welcomed as gain by the other, and the wisdom of the one in the eyes of the other is folly. Pious talk of a common Allied mission in the Near East has only served to obscure issues and to render confusion in the public mind worse confounded. It was idle to make a mystery of the support given by France to the Turks and of her insistence on the revision of the Sevres Treaty-preliminary steps to her demand for the evacuation of Chanak and the consequent elimination of British sea-power. The object of these tactics was evident to every serious student of history: France pursues now the plan laid down by Louis XIV, continued by Napoleon, fitfully carried on throughout the nineteenth century, and facilitated by her installation in Syria-the equivalent of the German Drang nach Osten: a plan incompatible with the safety of the British Empire in the East. This is the truth of the matter, and nothing has been gained by hiding it.

The people who fought a ruinous war without quite knowing the ends aimed at, had a right to know at least the results obtained; and after France's separate agreement with Turkey, the denial to them of any part of that knowledge could not be justified on any principle of honour or plea of expediency.