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 attitude 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. Poincaré, in 1922, was proud to do what the Duc de Broglie ninety years before scoffed at as an { 236} unthinkable folly: "_Abandonner la Grèce aujourd'hui, détruire de nos propres mains l'ouvrage que nos propres mains ont presque achevé!_"
England's expressed attitude 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 analysis of events.
From this analysis 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.