M. Venizelos himself wished to make his administration milder and cleaner and to broaden its basis--he was even credited with the one joke of his life in this connexion: "I will yet head anti-Venizelism." But the thing was beyond his power: he had not a sufficient following in the country to replace armed force; and he dared not trust the Royalists with a share in the government for fear lest they should use it against him. None, indeed, was more painfully conscious of the hate for him which every month increased in the breasts of his countrymen than M. Venizelos himself. From the very beginning of the schism he had assumed a prophylactic in the form of a cuirass;[8] and since his installation he neglected none of { 216} the precautions requisite for his personal security. During his rare sojourns in Athens he always went about escorted by his Cretan guards; while on the roof of a building facing his house stood two machine-guns, "for," as a witty Athenian informed an inquisitive stranger, "the protection of minorities."
In general, it is true, the plotting and intriguing which permeated the country were too fatuous to be dangerous. But every now and then they took on formidable shape. In November, 1919, a carefully organized military conspiracy at Athens only miscarried through the indiscretion of a trusty but tipsy sergeant. Among the letters intercepted and produced at the trial was one from a Royalist exile in Italy to another at home. The writer, a lady, reported her brother as wondering how anybody in Greece could fail to understand that there no longer existed such things as a Government and an Opposition, but only tyrants and tyrannized over, who worked, the former to maintain their arbitrary authority, the latter to shake it off and recover their liberty. The work of neither could, in the nature of things, be carried on according to any constitutional rule or law. He went on to argue that, under such conditions, deeds which would otherwise be crimes were justified and even glorified by history as unavoidable fulfilments of a patriotic duty: force must be met by force.[9]
So the national demoralization inaugurated by foreign pressure went on being promoted by domestic tyranny; and of cure there was no hope. Good men would not associate themselves with the Venizelist regime, because it was bad; and even men by no means notorious for goodness shunned it, not because it was bad, but because they were shrewd enough to perceive it was too bad to last.