rchants
of Canea were arrested and deported to Malta on unimpeachable evidence
of complicity. Closer investigation proved the whole affair from
beginning to end a web of forgery and fraud. The hoax ended in the
British Minister at Athens apologizing to the Greek Deputy, and in the
Mohammedan merchants being brought back home as guests aboard a British
destroyer.[14]

Thus a new field was opened up to those who wished to ruin business
competitors, to revenge themselves on personal enemies, or, above all,
to compromise political opponents. From the words of Admiral Dartige:
"The revelations of the Venizelist Press concerning the revictualling
of German submarines in Greece are a tissue of absurd legends," [15] we
learn the main source of these myths and also the principal motive.
For if M. Venizelos and his party had, by their voluntary abstention,
deprived themselves of a voice inside the Chamber, they more than made
amends by their agitation out of doors. The coercion of Greece came as
grist to their mill. The Liberal newspapers triumphantly pointed to it
as concrete proof of the wisdom of their Leader's policy, and held up
the names of the men who had thwarted him to obloquy and scorn. M.
Skouloudis and his colleagues were abused for drawing down upon the
country through their duplicity the wrath of the Powers which could
best help or harm it. The "revelations" served a twofold purpose: to
foster the belief that they promoted secretly the interests of Germany,
and to furnish the Allies with fresh excuses for coercion. And in the
Franco-British Intelligence organization the scheming brain of M.
Venizelos found a {93} ready-fashioned tool: men willingly shut their
eyes to the most evident truths that hinder their designs, and readily
accept any myth that furthers them.

Nor did that organization assist M. Venizelos merely by traducing his
opponents' characters and wounding their _amour-propre_. In March,
1916, the Chief of the French Secret Service, at a conference of the
Allied admirals, proposed that they should lay hands on the internal
affairs of Greece: that they should stick at nothing--_qu' on devait
tout oser_. The motion was rejected with disgust by the honest
sailors. But the mover was in direct communication with political
headquarters in Paris; and his plan was only deferred. Meanwhile he
and his associates with the rogues in their pay made themselves useful
by collaborating in the Venizelist ag