h General. It was the goal towards which they had
moved steadily and methodically, step tracing step, through so many
weary months--the crown of their joint adventure. Why, then, did he
not seize it? Why did he shrink from possession? What did he mean by
it? The General did not know. But he felt that it would not do. "M.
le President," he said to him, incisively, "Here you are in power; it
is up to you to assume the responsibility. I have the force in my
hands, and it is my business to secure your installation in Athens.
But I must have your instructions. Tell me what measures you want me
to take." The request was a command. M. Venizelos thanked the General
effusively, pressing his hands. "After all," he said, "it is certain
that people will always say that I did not return to Athens but with
the support of the Allies." Finally it was arranged that he should
land in the forenoon of 27 June. An ordeal which could not be avoided
ought not to be postponed.

At the appointed hour the French troops entered Athens with their
machine-guns and occupied the principal points along the route by which
M. Venizelos was to proceed, while the vicinity of the Royal Palace
where he was to take the oath of office and the interior of it were
watched by 400 Cretan gendarmes, his faithful bodyguard, come from
Salonica. Notwithstanding all these precautions, M. Venizelos and his
Ministers, modestly averse from exposing themselves to the enthusiasm
of their fellow-citizens, motored at top speed straight to the Palace,
eschewing the central thoroughfares, and thence to the Hotel Grande
Bretagne, in the corridors of which also Cretan stalwarts mounted
guard. Thanks to this vigilance, as General Regnault observes, the
assassins whom the Premier and his friends feared to see rise from
every street corner, and even in the passages of the Palace and hotel,
had not materialized. But M. Venizelos, where his own life was
concerned, took no chances: a Cretan regiment {205} from Salonica
landed that afternoon to replace the foreign battalions.[14]

Towards evening a demonstration organized in the square before the
hotel gave M. Venizelos an opportunity of appearing on the balcony and
making an eloquent speech. He reminded his hearers how the last
warning he had addressed to King Constantine from the balcony of his
house ten months ago had been disregarded, and how, in consequence, the
part of the nation still healthy had risen to save