d to do so: "We
heartily consent to your receiving large compensations in Asia Minor,"
said the Russian Minister at Athens, in the presence of his British
colleague, to a high official of the Greek Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
"But as to Constantinople, we prefer that you should not come there; it
would afterwards be painful for you and disagreeable for everybody to
turn you out." [22]

M. Venizelos knew these views perfectly well, and did not covet
Constantinople: what he coveted, so far as material gains went, were the
large compensations in Asia Minor.[23] There lay the chief objective of
his strategy, and its net outcome was to widen the breach between him and
those elements in the country which still believed that the policy of
Greece must be governed by the solid necessities of the Balkan situation,
not by nebulous visions of Imperialist expansion.

[1] Psycha to Venizelos, Bucharest, 23 Oct./6 Nov.; Venizelos to Greek
Legations, London, Bordeaux, Petersburg, 24 Oct./7 Nov., 1914.

[2] Romanos, Bordeaux, 19 Nov., 1914.

[3] He explained, three years afterwards, that at the time of making his
offer of 18 Aug., 1914, he bore in mind "the impossibility of going to
Servia's assistance on account of the danger from Bulgaria."--_Orations_,
p. 93. But precisely similar was the objection to going against Turkey
without a guarantee of Bulgarian neutrality: only the Bulgars, in the one
case, would have been on Greece's left flank and in the other on the
right. The truth seems to be that the vision of M. Venizelos lacked the
penetration which, in matters of this sort, can only come from long study
and reflection.

[4] First Memorandum, 11/24 Jan., in the _Nea Hellas_, 21 March (O.S.),
1915.

[5] Gennadius, London, 10 Aug. (O.S.), 1914.

[6] _Orations_, p. 43.

[7] Second Memorandum, 17/30 Jan., in the _Nea Hellas_, 22 March (O.S.),
1915.

[8] See his own statement in the _Nea Hellas_, 22 March (O.S.), 1915.

[9] Dragoumis, Petrograd, 16 Feb., 1915.

[10] Dardanelles Commission, First Report, pp. 14-5, 31-3; Final Report,
pp. 6-8.

[11] Deville, pp. 163, 215.

[12] _Orations_, pp. 103, 104.

[13] Dardanelles Commission, Supplement to First Report, p. 3.

[14] _Orations_, pp. 105-6.

[15] See Extracts from the Crown Council Minutes, in the _Balkan Review_,
Dec., 1920, pp. 384-5, which supplement M. Venizelos's very meagre
account of these proceedings in _Orations_, pp. 107-8.

[16] _Orations_, pp