him. It was not so much, they would say, that he had
stood godfather to the children born to his soldiers during the
campaigns, but rather that his relations with the rank and file of the
people at large were marked by the intimate interest of a personal
companion.

In peace, as in war, he seemed a prince born to lead a democratic
people. With his tall, virile figure, and a handsome face in which
strength and dignity were happily blended with simplicity, he had a
manner of address which was very engaging: his words, few, simple,
soldier-like, produced a wonderful effect; they were the words of one
who meant and felt what he said: they went straight to the hearer's
heart because they came straight from the speaker's.

Qualities of a very different sort had enabled M. Venizelos to impose
himself upon the mind of the Greek nation, and to make his name current
in the Chancelleries of the world.

Having begun life as an obscure lawyer in Crete, he had risen through a
series of political convulsions to high notability in his native
island; and in 1909 a similar convulsion in Greece--brought about not
without his collaboration--opened to him a wider sphere of activity.
The moment was singularly opportune.

The discontent of the Greek people at the chronic mismanagement of
their affairs had been quickened by the Turkish Revolution into
something like despair. Bulgaria had exploited that upheaval by
annexing Eastern Rumelia: Greece had failed to annex Crete, and ran the
risk, if the Young Turks' experiment succeeded, of seeing the {3}
fulfilment of all her national aspirations frustrated for ever. A
group of military malcontents in touch with the Cretan leader
translated the popular feeling into action: a revolt against the reign
of venality and futility which had for so many years paralyzed every
effort, which had sometimes sacrificed and always subordinated the
interests of the nation to the interests of faction, and now left
Greece a prey to Bulgarian and Ottoman ambition. The old politicians
who were the cause of the ill obviously could not effect a cure. A new
man was needed--a man free from the deadening influences of a corrupt
past--a man daring enough to initiate a new course and tenacious enough
to push on with inexorable purpose to the goal.

During the first period of his career, M. Venizelos had been a capable
organizer of administrative departments no less than a clever
manipulator of seditious movement