longed
to no party; in foreign affairs to no school: he neither sought nor
shunned a change of course.

That explains why he succeeded in ruling Greece for four weeks, and
also why he failed to rule her longer.

M. Venizelos had not abandoned his standpoint. Of M. Zaimis's person
he spoke with much respect; but of his policy he spoke just as one
might have expected M. Venizelos to speak: M. Zaimis had broken the
Servian Treaty and would go down to history as a man who had
dishonoured the signature of Greece. With regard to the Entente
Powers, M. Venizelos thought that M. Zaimis meant honestly--the fact
that he was as well known to them as M. Venizelos himself, having
served as their High Commissioner in Crete for two years (1906-08),
exempted him from the imputation of duplicity--and since the Entente
Powers tolerated him, he would do likewise. He only taunted the Zaimis
Government in Parliament for not obtaining for its policy a price from
those whom that policy unintentionally helped: Greece, to be sure, did
not remain neutral to serve Germany's but her own interests,
nevertheless, as Germany benefited by that neutrality, she should be
asked to give a _quid pro quo_.[4]

It was not the first time that M. Venizelos expressed this idea. At
the Crown Council of 3 March he had suggested, if his own policy of
intervention was not adopted, to ask from Germany compensations for the
continuance of neutrality; and he urged that the King should personally
bargain with the Kaiser's Minister. Again on 21 September, when
sounding the Entente Powers on the {69} possibility of sending troops
to Salonica, he advised the King simultaneously to sound the German
Emperor on the price of neutrality.[5] King Constantine had always
shrunk from entering into any understanding whatever with Germany.
And, although the advice may have been given in good faith, it is easy
to guess the use to which its acceptance might be turned by M.
Venizelos, who, even as it was, did not hesitate to whisper of
"pledges" given to Germany. So M. Zaimis endured the taunt and avoided
the trap.

This state of truce lasted for a month. Then strife broke out afresh.
Early in November a member of the Government insulted the Opposition.
The Opposition demanded his dismissal. This was refused and matters
were pushed to a crisis--whether by the adversaries of M. Venizelos,
anxious to get rid of a Chamber with a hostile majority, or by M.
Venizelos himself,