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If Venezelos, to go back no further than that, had remained in Crete and had been content to be an island politician, would not the course of events in the Balkans have been very different? Out of his course came events which no one could have foreseen, but which, without similar actions on the part of individuals producing other links in the chain, would not have taken place.
The Greece of Venezelos was the ward of the Entente almost more than Poland itself. Having participated in the War to a very small extent and with almost insignificant losses, she has, after the War, almost trebled her territory and almost doubled her population. Turkey was put entirely, or almost so, outside Europe; Greece has taken almost everything.
So far Venezelos had devoted himself to internal reconstruction, after the precedent of Trikoupis, but he was not the man to desert the national idea. The army and navy were reorganized by French and British missions, and when the opportunity appeared, he was ready to take full advantage of it.
Then the man demanded by the situation appeared unexpectedly from the centre of disturbance, Krete. Venezelos started life as a successful advocate at Canea. He entered Kretan politics in the struggle for constitutionalism, and distinguished himself in the successful revolution of 1906, of which he was the soul.
The cession of this was the return asked for by Venezelos, and he reduced it to a minimum by abstaining from pressing the quite well-founded claims of Greece in the Monastir district, which lay further inland still. But Venezelos' conciliatory proposals met with no response from the Bulgarian Government, which was in an 'all or nothing' mood.
The time had now come for Greece and Bulgaria to settle their account, and the unexpected extent of the common gains ought to have facilitated their division. The territory in question included the whole north coast of the Aegean and its immediate hinterland, and Venezelos proposed to consider it in two sections.
The Kretans had, of course, elected deputies in good time to the parliament at Athens, and once more the foreign warships stopped them in the act of boarding the steamer for Peiraeus, while Venezelos, who was still responsible for the Greek Government till the new parliament met, had declared with characteristic frankness that the attendance of the Kretan deputies could not possibly be sanctioned, an opening of which his opponents did not fail to take advantage.
The actual lines this necessary compromise would follow, obviously depended on the degree of the allies' success against Turkey in the common war that was yet to be fought, and Venezelos rose to the occasion. He had the courage to offer Bulgaria the Greek alliance without stipulating for any definite minimum share in the common conquests, and the tact to induce her to accept it on the same terms.
So I put on my life-saving waistcoat and blew it out; clapped my new gas-mask on my head and entered. They were really startled, thinking the devil had come for them before their time. Just got a telegram saying that M. Venezelos has gained a big majority in the Greek Election.
So long, therefore, as the question of Kavala remains unsettled, Greece will not be able to put the preliminary problem of 'national consolidation' behind her, and enter upon the long-deferred chapter of 'internal development'. To accomplish once for all this vital transition, Venezelos is taking the helm again into his hands, and it is his evident intention to close the Greek account with Bulgaria just as Serbia and Rumania hope to close theirs with the same state by a bold territorial concession conditional upon adequate territorial compensation elsewhere.
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