upheaval might have on the national cause by
plunging the country into civil war or into fresh anarchy. Can anyone
recognize in this way of acting the conduct of a genuine and serious
patriot?"

M. Venizelos repelled these imputations, protesting that his movement was
no way directed against the Prince. Yet it resulted in the departure of
the Prince: the Powers who went to Crete to restore order entered into
relations with the rebels; the manner in which these intimacies were
carried on and the decisions to which they led made the Prince's position
untenable, and he gave up his Commissionership in 1906. Likewise M.
Venizelos affirmed that he had not stirred up an insurrection, but only
headed a spontaneous outbreak of popular discontent. Yet even after his
triumph he failed, in the elections of 1907, to obtain a majority.[27]

The Therisos performance in every point--plot and staging, methods and
motives--was a rehearsal for the Salonica performance. Would the
denouement be the same? This question taxed M. Venizelos's dialectical
dexterity very severely.

At the outset he repudiated as a monstrous and malicious calumny the
common view that his programme was to march on Athens and to dethrone the
King. His movement was directed against the Bulgars, not against the
King or the Dynasty: "We are neither anti-royalist nor anti-dynastic," he
declared, "we are simply patriots." Only, after the liberation of Greece
from the foreign invaders, her democratic freedom should be assured by a
thorough elucidation of the duties and rights of the Crown--a revision of
the Constitution to be effected through a National Assembly.[28]

So spoke M. Venizelos at the outset, partly because the {137} Allies, who
did not want to have civil war in the rear of their armies, bade him to
speak so,[29] and partly because he wished to give his cause currency by
stamping upon it the legend of loyalty. He realized that for the present
any suspicion that he wished to embark on a campaign against King
Constantine would be fatal, and by declaring war only against the Bulgars
he hoped to entice patriotic citizens anxious to help their country
without hurting their sovereign. But when time proved the futility of
these tactics, the same M. Venizelos avowed that his programme was, first
to consolidate his position in Macedonia by breaking down resistance
wherever it might be encountered, and then, "when we had gathered our
forces, we meant to fo