Greece and the Allies | Page 4

to his soldiers during the
campaigns, but rather that his relations with the rank and file of the
people at large were marked by the intimate interest of a personal
companion.
In peace, as in war, he seemed a prince born to lead a democratic
people. With his tall, virile figure, and a handsome face in which
strength and dignity were happily blended with simplicity, he had a
manner of address which was very engaging: his words, few, simple,
soldier-like, produced a wonderful effect; they were the words of one
who meant and felt what he said: they went straight to the hearer's heart
because they came straight from the speaker's.
Qualities of a very different sort had enabled M. Venizelos to impose
himself upon the mind of the Greek nation, and to make his name
current in the Chancelleries of the world.
Having begun life as an obscure lawyer in Crete, he had risen through a
series of political convulsions to high notability in his native island;
and in 1909 a similar convulsion in Greece--brought about not without
his collaboration--opened to him a wider sphere of activity. The
moment was singularly opportune.
The discontent of the Greek people at the chronic mismanagement of
their affairs had been quickened by the Turkish Revolution into
something like despair. Bulgaria had exploited that upheaval by
annexing Eastern Rumelia: Greece had failed to annex Crete, and ran
the risk, if the Young Turks' experiment succeeded, of seeing the {3}
fulfilment of all her national aspirations frustrated for ever. A group of
military malcontents in touch with the Cretan leader translated the
popular feeling into action: a revolt against the reign of venality and
futility which had for so many years paralyzed every effort, which had
sometimes sacrificed and always subordinated the interests of the
nation to the interests of faction, and now left Greece a prey to
Bulgarian and Ottoman ambition. The old politicians who were the
cause of the ill obviously could not effect a cure. A new man was
needed--a man free from the deadening influences of a corrupt past--a
man daring enough to initiate a new course and tenacious enough to

push on with inexorable purpose to the goal.
During the first period of his career, M. Venizelos had been a capable
organizer of administrative departments no less than a clever
manipulator of seditious movements. But he had mainly distinguished
himself as a rebel against authority. And it was in the temper of a rebel
that he came to Athens. Obstacles, however, external as well as internal,
made a subversive enterprise impossible. With the quick adaptability of
his nature, he turned into a guardian of established institutions: the foe
of revolution and friend of reform. Supported by the Crown, he was
able to lift his voice for a "Revisionist" above the angry sea of a
multitude clamouring for a "Constituent Assembly."
All that was healthy in the political world rallied to the new man; and
the new man did not disappoint the faith placed in him. Through the
next two years he stood in every eye as the embodiment of constructive
statesmanship. His Government had strength enough in the country to
dispense with "graft." The result was a thorough overhauling of the
State machinery. Self-distrust founded on past failures vanished.
Greece seemed like an invalid healed and ready to face the future. It
was a miraculous change for a nation whose political life hitherto had
exhibited two traits seldom found combined: the levity of childhood
and the indolence of age.
For this miracle the chief credit undoubtedly belonged {4} to M.
Venizelos. He had brought to the task a brain better endowed than any
associated with it. His initiative was indefatigable; his decision quick.
Unlike most of his countrymen, he did not content himself with ideas
without works. His subtlety in thinking did not serve him as a substitute
for action. To these talents he added an eloquence of the kind which, to
a Greek multitude, is irresistible, and a certain gift which does not
always go with high intelligence, but, when it does, is worth all the arts
of the most profound politician and accomplished orator put together.
He understood, as it were instinctively, the character of every man he
met, and dealt with him accordingly. This tact, coupled with a smile
full of sweetness and apparent frankness, gave to his vivid personality a
charm which only those could appraise who experienced it.

Abroad the progress of M. Venizelos excited almost as much interest as
it did in Greece. The Greeks are extraordinarily sensitive to foreign
opinion: a single good word in a Western newspaper raises a politician
in public esteem more than a whole volume of home-made panegyric.
M. Venizelos had not neglected this branch of his business; and from