Preposterous falsehoods were freely scattered and
readily snatched at on both sides: the side of M. Venizelos and the
side of M. Gounaris. Politicians who had been eclipsed by the Cretan's
brilliance, came forth now to regain their lustre at his expense. For
like all men who have played leading parts on the world's stage, M.
Venizelos had gathered about him as much animosity as admiration; and
hate is more enterprising than love.

M. Venizelos and his partisans were at least as resourceful as their
opponents. The Cretan had never been able to bear contradiction. If
his greatness had created him {45} many enemies, his pettiness had
created him more. His tone of prophetic and impeccable omniscience was
vexatious at all times, but particularly galling at this agitated
period. It was now his constant cry that the situation called for the
work of a statesman and not of an international lawyer or strategist.
There were times when he declaimed this thesis in so violent a fashion
that no self-respecting man could work with him. He had lost all the
able collaborators of the great Reconstruction era, and nothing could
make him forgive these "apostates." Everybody who could not see eye to
eye with him was to M. Venizelos a traitor. It was impossible for M.
Venizelos to admit that others besides himself might be actuated by
patriotic as well as by personal motives; that he did not possess an
exclusive patent of sincerity any more than of vanity. He found it
easier to believe that the alpha and the omega of their policy was to
undo him. He would undo them--even at the cost of the cause he had at
heart: to see Greece openly on the side of the Entente. It is not that
he thought less of the cause, but he thought more of himself. His
egoism was of that heroic stature which shrinks from nothing. His
nature impelled him to this labour; his privileged position as the
particular friend of the Entente supplied him with the means.

M. Venizelos had taken a long stride towards that end when he
insinuated that King Constantine's disagreement with him was due to
German influence. Henceforth this calumny became the cardinal article
of his creed, and the "Court Clique" a society for the promotion of the
Kaiser's interests abroad and the adoption of the Kaiser's methods of
government at home. M. Streit, though no longer a member of the
Cabinet, was represented as its mainspring: a secret counsellor who
wielded the power, while he a