y foreign journalist and diplomatist who came his way was
made to feel his fascination: so that, even before leaving his native
shores, the Cretan had become in the European firmament a star of the
third or fourth magnitude. Reasons other than personal contributed to
enlist Western opinion in his favour. Owing to her geographical
situation, Greece depends for the fulfilment of her national
aspirations and for her very existence on the Powers which command the
Mediterranean. A fact so patent had never escaped the perception of
any Greek politician. But no Greek politician had ever kept this fact
more steadily in view, or put this obvious truth into more vehement
language than M. Venizelos: "To tie Greece to the apron-strings of the
Sea Powers," was his maxim. And the times were such that those Powers
needed a Greek statesman whom they could trust to apply that maxim
unflinchingly.

{5}

With the recovery of Greece synchronized, not by chance, the doom of
Turkey: a sentence in which all the members of the Entente, starting
from different points and pursuing different objects, concurred. The
executioners were, naturally, the Balkan States. Russia began the work
by bringing about an agreement between Bulgaria and Servia; England
completed it by bringing Greece into the League. There ensued a local,
which, in accordance with the old diplomatic prophecy, was soon to lead
to the universal conflagration. Organized as she was, Greece succeeded
better than anyone expected; and the national gratitude--the exuberant
gratitude of a Southern people--went out to the two men directly
responsible for that success: to King Constantine, whose brilliant
generalship beat the enemy hosts; and to M. Venizelos, whose able
statesmanship had prepared the field. Poets and pamphleteers vied with
each other in expatiating on the wonders they had performed, to the
honour and advantage of their country. In this ecstasy of popular
adoration the spirit of the soldier and the spirit of the lawyer seemed
to have met.

But the union was illusive and transient. Between these two men, so
strangely flung together by destiny, there existed no link of sympathy;
and propinquity only forced the growth of their mutual antagonism. The
seeds of discord had already borne fruit upon the common ground of
their Balkan exploits. Immediately after the defeat of Turkey a
quarrel over the spoils arose among the victors. King Constantine,
bearing in mind