esting to trace mighty events to trifling
causes; and it would have been particularly pleasant to believe that the
destinies of Greece for once literally stood "on a razor's edge." [15]
But we will do M. Venizelos the credit of believing him less childish
than he represents himself. There were weightier things "to shake" him
into a decision.

On 20 September, when, according to plan, he was due in Crete, the train
laid there exploded. His friends had come down from the hills thirsting
for the blood of Greek and Mohammedan victims: should the massacre they
meditated take place, M. Venizelos would never leave Athens alive.[16]
The news was of a nature to compel him at last to take the plunge; and in
the small hours of 25 September, the National Leader stole out of Greece
on a ship escorted by a French torpedo-boat. His flight had been
organized by the French Secret Service like a carnival masquerade, on the
painful details of which, says Admiral Dartige, it would be better not to
dwell.[17]

His advent in Crete had been so efficiently prepared by the British
Secret Service and naval officers--without whom there would have been
neither mutiny nor insurrection--that, on landing, M. Venizelos had
nothing to do but instal himself in the best hotel at Canea and proclaim
himself with his confederate Admiral Coundouriotis the Provisional
Government.[18]

Under the fostering care of the Allied men-of-war the movement spread to
Samos, Mytilene, Chios, Lemnos, and Thasos, where the constitutional
operations witnessed in Crete were duly repeated. But all the other
islands and the mainland--that is, the whole of the Hellenic Kingdom,
with the exception of the new territories--adhered {131} steadfastly to
the person and the policy of their King. As for the armed forces of the
Crown, Admiral Coundouriotis had hoped by his prestige, deservedly high
since the Balkan wars, to bring away with him the whole or a large part
of the Fleet: he brought away only two torpedo-boats and another small
unit, the desertion of which was effected by a trick, "for which," says
the French Admiral, "France would have cause to blush." [19]

In itself the Venizelist movement, as a disruptive force, was
negligible.[20] But the co-operation of the French Republic and the
British Empire invested it with an alarming significance.

M. Calogeropoulos and his colleagues who watched this rising tempest
anxiously did everything they could to conjure it. A