connected
with it ensued. Prince George was attacked--not directly, but through
his entourage--as a born autocrat holding in scorn the rights of the
people, tyrannizing over the Press, persecuting all those who refused to
bow to his will, aiming at the subversion of free institutions. At first
this campaign met with more success abroad than at home. The Cretan
people expressed its opinion by its vote: among the sixty-four deputies
elected to the Chamber in 1903 there were only four Venizelists.

His defeat did not daunt M. Venizelos, who, after a brief repose, resumed
operations. He hesitated at no calumny, at no outrageous invention, to
get even with his adversaries. Charges of all kinds poured in upon the
Prince. Speeches which he had never made were attributed to him, and
speeches which he did make were systematically misreported and
misinterpreted. At last, in 1904, when Prince George decided to visit
the Governments of the Protecting Powers in order to beg them to bring
about the union of Crete with Greece by stages, M. Venizelos, dropping
the scheme which had lost him his popularity, rushed in with an
uncompromising demand for immediate union, though he knew perfectly well
that such a solution was impracticable. The Cretans knew it, too. On
finding that they looked upon his change of creed with suspicion, he
resolved to seize by violence what he could not gain by his eloquence.
With some 600 armed partisans (out of a population of 300,000) he took to
the hills (March, 1905), called for the convocation of a National
Assembly to revise the Constitution, and meanwhile urged the people to
boycott the impending elections. Despite his speeches and his bravoes,
only 9,000 out of the 64,000 electors abstained from voting; and most of
them abstained for other reasons than the wish to show sympathy with the
insurgents.

The High Commissioner wrote to the Powers at the time: "If M. Venizelos
was truly animated by the desire to defend constitutional institutions,
he would have come before the electors with his programme and, whatever
the result, he would certainly have earned more respect as a politician.
But, instead of choosing the legal road to power, he preferred to stir up
an insurrection, disguising his motives under the mask of 'The National
Idea,' but, {136} as is proved by his own declarations, really inspired
by personal animus and party interest. It mattered little to him how
disastrous an effect this