g else a paternal
character towards the people of this country. The Protecting Powers
have acted only like parents reclaiming a son's birthright." [2]

Pared down to realities, the aim of the Protecting Powers was to bring
their protege to power and Greece into the War. The demobilization of
the army, which stood first on their list, was the first step to that
end. M. Venizelos {106} had been asserting that the people were still
with him, and, given a chance, would uphold his policy, but that chance
was denied them by the mobilization. With a pardonable ignorance of
the people's feelings, and also, it must be owned, with a too naive
confidence in the accuracy of the People's Chosen, the Allies had
decided to act on this assumption: an assumption on which M. Venizelos
himself was most reluctant to act.

We have it on his own evidence that he looked for a solution of his
difficulties, not to an election, but to a revolution. Further, he has
told us that, eager as he might be for a revolutionary stroke, he could
not lose sight of the obstacles. To those who held up French
revolutions as a model, he pointed out that the analogy was fallacious:
in France "long years of tyranny had exasperated the people to its very
depths. In Greece the people had a king who, only two years earlier,
had headed his armies in two victorious campaigns." [3] So he scouted
the idea of intervention at Athens, convinced that any attack on the
Crown would spell destruction to himself.[4] His project was to steal
to Salonica and there, under General Sarrail's shield, to start a
separatist movement "directed against the Bulgars, but not against the
king," apparently hoping that the Greek troops in Macedonia, among whom
his apostles had been busy, fired by anti-Bulgar hate, would join him
and drag king and country after them. This project had been
communicated by the French Minister at Athens to General Sarrail on 31
May:[5] but, as the British Government was not yet sufficiently
advanced to countenance sedition,[6] M. Venizelos and his French
confederate saw reason to abandon it for the present.

Thus all concerned were committed to a test of the real desires of the
Greek people by a General Election, which they declared themselves
anxious to bring off without delay--early in August. This time there
would be no ambiguity about the issue: although the Allies in their
Note, as was proper and politic, had again disclaimed any {107} wish or