repeated, that the French Admiral had fallen into a
cunningly laid trap: King Constantine had promised to hand over his war
material; but when the Allies landed to receive it, he caused them to
be treacherously attacked and murdered.[1] On the strength of this
assertion, the Entente newspapers demanded punishment swift and
drastic: a prince who broke faith deserved no pity. His offer of six
batteries was "an atonement" both cynical and inadequate for the
"ambush" by which French and English blood had been spilt. Similarly
the internecine strife of 2 December and the subsequent proceedings
against the Venizelists were depicted as a wanton hunt of harmless and
law-abiding citizens. Day by day the stream of calumny, assiduously
fed from the fountain-head at Salonica, grew in volume and virulence;
and King Constantine was branded with every opprobrious epithet of
liar, traitor, and assassin.

These were weapons against which the King of Greece and his Government
had nothing to oppose. They tried to explain the true nature of the
abortive Benazet negotiation, showing that, if there was any breach of
faith, it was not on their part; they denounced the falsehoods and the
exaggerations relating to the suppression of the seditious outbreak;
they asked that a mixed Commission should be appointed to conduct an
impartial inquiry on the spot while the events were still fresh and
evidence abundant. The French and British Press Censors took care that
not a whisper of their defence should reach the French and British
publics.[2] Frenchmen and Englishmen {163} might hear of M.
Venizelos's deeds through his friends. They were allowed to hear of
the King's only through his enemies. It was clear that the policy
which had prompted the disastrous enterprise of 1 December had not yet
worked itself out to its full issue.

Admiral Dartige could not very well endorse the breach of faith legend.
He knew that the engagement about the delivery of arms was reciprocal,
and that, as France had failed to ratify it on her part, King
Constantine rightly considered himself free from all obligations on his
part. He also knew that, far from being lured into landing by false
assurances of surrender, he had been emphatically warned against it by
categorical refusals and intimations of resistance. Yet, human nature
being what it is, the honest sailor, maddened by his discomfiture,
called the inevitable collision a "_guet-apens_" and, even whilst
n