The illusion that M. Venizelos had the nation behind him was diligently kept up by periodical demonstrations organized on his behalf: joy bells announced to the Athenians his home-comings from abroad, the destitute refugees harboured at the Piraeus were given some pocket money and a free ticket to attend him up to the capital, the cafés at the bidding of the police disgorged their loafers into the streets, and the army of genuine partisans thus augmented with auxiliaries, accorded their Chief a reception calculated to impress newspaper readers in France and England. But observers on the spot knew that the "national enthusiasm" was as hollow as a drum, which under the manipulation of an energetic minority could be made to emit a considerable amount of noise; that the demonstrators to a large extent were a stage crowd which could be moved rapidly from place to place and round the same place repeatedly; that since the schism the great Cretan had loomed small in his own country and that he had grown less by his elevation.
Such terrorism of opponents and favouritism of adherents; such encouragement of oppression and connivance at corruption; such a prostitution of justice; such a cynical indifference to all moral principle--unparalleled even in the history of Greece--could not but make the Cretan's rule both odious and despicable. What made it more hateful still in the eyes of the people was the fact { 214} that it had been imposed upon them by foreign arms, and what made it more contemptible still was the fact that it functioned under false pretences. As free men, the Greeks resented the violence done to their liberty; but as intelligent men they would have resented open violence less than a profanation of the name of liberty that added mockery to injury and administered a daily affront to their intelligence. There was yet a spirit of resistance in the country which would not be crushed, and a fund of good sense which could not be deceived. If they formerly anathematized M. Venizelos as a traitor, the masses now execrated him as a tyrant: a mean and crafty bully without bowels of mercy who gave licence to his followers to commit every species of oppression and exploitation in the interest of party.