VENIZELOS BACK IN GREEK FAVOUR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18546, 21 August 1928, Page 9

VENIZELOS BACK IN GREEK FAVOUR.

HIS PARTY GAINING SWEEPING VIC

(United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Received August 21, 11.30 a.m.) ATHENS. August 20. The Venizelos forces are scoring all along the line.

AU the Royalist leaders have been defeated, except M. Tsaldaris, who was elected for Corinth. He declared that the Royalist reverse is epidemic.— Australian Press Association.

The greatness of Venizelos lies in the fact that he is a compound of two great qualities—simplicity and subtlety (wrote Harold Spender some years ago). He has the air of a Trappist; but behind that austere front, as so many of his enemies have discovered, is the skill and resourcefulness of a —trapper. I remember his describing to me once how he escaped from the officer-assassins sent to kill him by the Constantinian Government on the platform of a Paris railway station. “I recalled a device of my old revolutionary days in Crete; and so I ran down the station, dodging from side to side until they grew confused in their aim. and I escaped—with my life.”

With little more, it is true, because he was hit in the shoulder. But th« assassins were close to him, and he would have been a dead man but for that resourcefulness. Just so, he would be a dead man politically but for the same element in his political character —resourcefulness—ruse-ness whatever you may prefer to call it. The quality of Ulysses 1 His has been, indeed, an amazing career. He started with nothing be hind him—except the rocks of Crete

“I have lived on an olive and a glass of wine,” he said gaily when I once asked him how he had survived ii those early days of Cretan revolution Everything seemed against him—the Turks, the Greek Royal family, the Greek politicians.

Alone, and almost unaided, he drove the Turks out of Crete. His rifle played its part. His life was in constant danger—especially when the Powers aided Turkey by shelling the Cretan rebels. “What were you doing a.t that time?” asked a sympathetic British Conservative Minister of Venizelos a 4 Versailles. “I was dodging your shells!” was the startling reply, for the Minis ter had forgotten that episode of his shelling Cretan “rebels.” Very gradually M. Venizelos swung the Powers round tohis ©lde, and, finally, it was a British ''••sea-dog -then, as at Navarino—that freed the Cretan from the oppressor. It was Admiral Noel, who, when the Turks made the little blunder of killing British bluejackets, cleared the Turks out of Crete “bag and baggage.” But it was Venizelos who was behind him.

Then came the Athenian phase. Crete became too small a sphere for Venizelos. Greece, confounded by her own success, could not tackle the new situation. The old Greek political leaders, incurably factious, quarrelled over xhe conquests which they had not won. Venizelos landed in Athens and brought a new breath of that larger air that blows doyfn the Central Mediterrane.an. He came fresh from battle with the ancient enemy. He came to a country weary of the feuds of politicians. He came—he saw—he conquered. Athens accepted him. The factions disappeared. That was a great and splendid day in the history of modern Greece. But in Crete Venizelos had made a new enemy for himself while defeating the enemy of his country. He had told Prince George of Greece, the appointed Governor, that Crete had been won for Greece and not for the Greek Royal family. He had made a vital, active, unrelenting enemy. The Greek Monarchy took up the quarrel, and especially Constantine, the brother of Prince George. From that time forward the life of Venizelos became one long duel —between him and the Ro)*al family. George, the constitutional King, was assissinated-v Constantine camp to the throne. The issue was joined. It came to a head over the Great War. Mr Winston Churchill has revealed to us in his book the great secret that at the opening of the war Venizelos succeeded in swinging the Greek Monarchy into the orbit of the Allies. Greece, he tells us, offered to lend all her forces to the Entente. Lord (then Sir Edward) Grey refused the offer. That was a pity; because once the offer was refused it could not be renewed in the same form. Constantine, repulsed by the Allies, swung over to the Germans. He fell more and more under the influence of his brother-in-law. Venizelos played a lone hand; the splendid champion of a cause, faithful to it in spite of the coldness of its chiefs. The Allies helped him little in his fearful civil combat. But throughout those years Greece remained faithful to him and to the Allies; it was only after two general elections by a brutal exercise of power that Constantine was able to prevail. Even so, Venizelos returned, and in the last phase of the war he brought 250,000 Greeks to the help of the Allies. Let us never forget that 1

Venizelos won that round in the combat. But no sooner had he won than the Greek Monarch®—implacable and resourceful, began to plot revenge from the villa of their exile far awav in Zurich. Venizelos had come back to Athens escorted by foreign bayonets —French soldiers and British bluejackets. That gave to his enemies a great patriotic rallying cry. From all the purlieus of Greek politics the old defeated party chieftains began to emerge. Thev rallied to the cause of the King. They, too, hoped to secure their revenge. For King and politicians had one common cause—hatred of Venizelos. They used one common cry —a fatherland soiled by the feet of a foreign soldiery. Even so, Venizelos might have “won through” if he had been able to remain on the spot. But he had to go and serve his country abroad. He was wanted at Versailles for two j’ears. Tt ■was a long time. He had bad agents in Athens. The Royalists redoubled their plots and intrigues in his absence. The Zenidelist authorities hit back pretty ruthlessly. In that process Venizelos. like Cromwell in his later stages, lost the magic of his previous influence. His had been the alchemy of liberty, and it faded in company with coercion.