nation. "Venizelos," they said, "does not know
anything about war. He approaches the King with proposals containing
in them the seeds of national disaster without consulting us, or in
defiance of our advice. Greece cannot afford to run the risk of
military annihilation; her resources are small, and, once exhausted,
cannot be replaced." The King, relying on the right unquestionably
given to him under the terms of the Constitution, demanded from his
chief military adviser such information as would enable him to judge
wisely from the military point of view any proposal involving
hostilities made by his Premier. It was this attitude that saved
Greece from the Gallipoli grave in March, and it was the same attitude
that saved her a second time at the present juncture.

But, in fact, at the present juncture the King acted not so much on his
prerogative of deciding about war as on the extreme democratic
principle that such decision belongs to the people, and, finding that
the Party which pushed the country towards war had only a weak
majority, he preferred to place the question before the electorate, to
test beyond the possibility of doubt the attitude of public opinion
towards this new departure.

From whatever point of view we may examine Constantine's behaviour, we
find that nothing could be more unfair than the charge of
unconstitutionalism brought against it. M. Venizelos himself a little
later, by declaring that he aimed at the "definite elucidation of the
obligations and rights of the royal authority," through a "new {74}
Constitution," [13] unwittingly confessed that the actual Constitution
could not bear his interpretation. As things stood, the charge might
with a better show of justice be brought against M. Venizelos, who, it
was pointed out, had violated the Constitution by inviting foreign
troops into Greek territory without the necessary Act of Parliament.[14]

Nor should it be forgotten that King Constantine had suffered
grievously both as a Greek and as a general from too punctilious an
observance of parliamentary etiquette by his father in 1897. At that
date the policy of M. Delyannis was supported by the whole Chamber. It
was a policy which the late Lord Salisbury very aptly summed up at the
time in the one word, "strait-waistcoat." But, for lack of a man at
the top strong enough and courageous enough to take the responsibility
of opposing it, it was carried out: Greece rushed headlong into war
wit