r, and then attack it from
behind.[14] After reading M. Venizelos's own avowal of his intention
to follow up the conversion of Macedonia with an attack on the rest of
Greece, particularly Thessaly,[15] one hardly needs to be told at whom
King Constantine's precautions were aimed.

Yet, wishing to prove his good faith in a practical manner, the King
called the British Minister and offered to reduce his army to less than
half by disbanding about 35,000 men and to withdraw certain units from
Thessaly. The British Minister, delighted by this spontaneous offer,
thanked the King, expressing the hope that his action would be greatly
appreciated, that all mistrust would vanish, and that the Powers would
moderate their coercions. With a remark from the King, that the one
thing he would not tolerate was a descent of rebels on Thessaly and the
rest of Old Greece, and that he would attack them if they appeared, Sir
Francis Elliot fully concurred.

Instead of the return which the King expected to this spontaneous proof
of his sincerity, he received (20 October) an intimation that the
Powers not only demanded what he had already granted, but in addition
things which he could not possibly grant--the internment of the small
remnant of his army in the Peloponnesus and a surrender of arms and war
material equivalent to a complete disarmament. These measures, while
exceeding all requirements for the security of the Allies, put the
security of Greece in danger by leaving her a prey to revolutionary
agitation. The King, therefore, begged the Powers not {146} to insist
on concessions which neither could he make nor would his people let him
make.[16]

Nothing, indeed, was better calculated to excite to the highest degree
the passions fermenting against the Allies than an insistence on total
disarmament at a moment when M. Venizelos at Salonica and his partisans
at Athens were arming. Fortunately a mediator appeared in the person
of M. Benazet, a French Deputy and Reporter of the War Budget, who was
passing through Athens on his way to Salonica to inspect the sanitary
condition of the Army. His connexions had brought him into touch with
the most influential leaders of both Greek parties; and with the
sanction of M. Briand, procured through M. Guillemin, who, himself no
longer received at Court, saw an advantage in reaching it by proxy, he
undertook to negotiate an amicable arrangement between King Constantine
and the Entente.

M. B