Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 27, 2025
This was, however, something very different from Greece's attitude under the Venizelist régime. The Allies' weapon had thus broken in their hands. Meanwhile Mustapha Kemal was not merely consolidating his authority in Asia Minor but was gaining allies of his own. In the first place, he was establishing close relations with the Arabs.
Venizelos addressed a mass meeting of protest at Athens on the 27th, and on the 30th a revolution broke out at Salonika under Colonel Zimbrakakis, the Venizelist deputy for Seres. Regiments were enrolled for service against Bulgaria, and one of them set out for the front on 22 September.
And when the elections were coming on every venal man of influence who could damage Venizelos or help his antagonists was bought with hard cash. In order to defeat some Venizelist candidates whose return would have been particularly distressing, the Baron is said to have spent six hundred thousand francs. And it is held that the results obtained by these means were well worth the money spent.
Thence the mob proceeded to the office of the "Nea Hellas," a Venizelist journal, hurled stones through the windows and assaulted the editor and his staff. The editor, in defending himself, fired a revolver over the heads of the mob, whereupon he was arrested and thrown into jail.
By the 16th all Athens seemed to be in an uproar, but the violence which took place was directed against Venizelist sympathizers, while in their demonstrations against the Allies the rioters contented themselves with jeering and hurling insulting remarks. In these disorders the police remained absolutely passive, and on some occasions joined with the rioters.
France and Great Britain were stoutly Venizelist; but the Tsar had personal reasons for dreading revolutions, particularly one against his cousin, and Italy had no liking for that greater Greece which was represented by Venizelos, might become a rival in the eastern Mediterranean, and would certainly reclaim the Dodecanese from its Italian masters. The Rumanian Campaign
Athens has quietened down after the political violence of the restoration of Constantine. One sees pictures of the King everywhere a cavalry officer with high Greek military hat, bushy moustaches, and rather horse-like face. He has large strained eyes with a questioning, impatient expression. All these pictures were hidden during the King's exile, but on his return came forth to light again. Common also are posters of Constantine as St. George, and the Venizelist administration as a three-headed dragon of which Venizelos is the chief and certainly most loathly head. Venizelos has become violently distasteful to the people though possibly he may return to power by as violent a reaction. The chief reason for his fall was that he offended Greek national pride by being the puppet of the Allies. The revolution which he accomplished at the instigation of the French was highly resented. And all the mortification of the French contempt for Greece was vented upon him. Although Greece won such a goodly share of the booty of the war, she was treated throughout the war with a brutal nonchalance. Venizelos had much respect, but Greece had none. A comparison is often made between the machinations of the Allies in Petrograd in 1917 for the deposing of the Tsar, and the intrigues which forced Constantine to flee. Venizelos nevertheless was one of the cleverest statesmen of Europe granted one can be clever and not wise at the same time clever and even stupid, his chief weakness being a crude violence of temperament which breaks out in his speeches: On vient de vous dire, s'écria-t-il, qu'il n'y avait pas de germanophiles an Grèce. Cela est vrai pour le peuple, pour les homines politiques de tous les partis en grande majorité. Moi-même je viens de l'attester
Word Of The Day
Others Looking