[3] See Art. 4 of the Greek Constitution.
[7] The _New Europe_, 29 March, 1917, p. 327.
[9] Sarrail, pp. 102, 153, 234-5. One of their quarrels arose from the fact that General Sarrail claimed entire jurisdiction over the inhabitants of the country, many of whom he had deported to France as suspects and refused to give them up to the courts competent to deal with them.
[13] Jonnart, pp. 176-8, 199-201. The Italians, who had stepped into Epirus, only evacuated it when they made sure that their allies were quitting Thessaly and Attica.
[14] Regnault, pp. 100-2; Jonnart, p. 184; The _Morning Post_, 29 June, 1917.
It is not my intention to give a minute and consecutive account of the abnormal state which prevailed in Greece during a period of more than three years. I will, for once, flatter its authors by imitating their summary methods.
M. Venizelos, hating monarchy, yet unable to dispense with it; despising democracy, yet obliged to render it lip-homage; maintained his own unlimited power by the same system of apparent liberty and real violence by which he had attained it. The semblance of a free Constitution was preserved in all its forms: Crown, Parliament, Press, continued to figure as heretofore. But each only served to clothe the skeleton of a dictatorship as absolute as that of any Caesar. King Alexander, without experience or character, weak, frivolous and plastic, obediently signed every decree presented to him. When recourse to the Legislature was thought necessary, the Chamber perfunctorily passed every Bill submitted to it. The newspapers were tolerated as long as they refrained from touching on essentials.
At the very opening of Parliament, for so we must call this illegitimate assembly, the King, in a Speech from the Throne written by M. Venizelos, expounded his master's policy, external and internal. Externally, Greece had "spontaneously offered her feeble forces to that belligerent group whose war aims were to defend the rights of nationalities and the liberties of peoples." [1] Internally, she would have to be purified by the removal of the staunchest adherents of the old regime from positions of trust and influence. But neither of these operations could be carried out save under the reign of terror known as martial law. Parliament, therefore, voted martial law; and M. Venizelos, "irritated by the arbitrary proceedings" { 208} of the Opposition, which protested against the restrictions on public opinion, "emphasised the fact that the Government was determined to act with an iron hand and to crush any attempt at reaction." [2]