rents refrained from giving it to
their children.

If enemies had to be frightened by every exhibition of severity, it was
not less imperative to gratify friends by every mark of generosity. As
already noted, a Mixed Commission had been appointed under the old
regime to indemnify out of the public purse the Venizelists who
suffered during the Athens disturbances of 1 and 2 December, 1916.
This body, after the expulsion of the King, was remodelled by the
substitution of a Venizelist for the Royalist Greek member; was
authorized to enlarge its purview so as to cover all losses occasioned,
directly or indirectly, by Royalist resentment throughout the Kingdom
throughout the six months' blockade--including even the cases of
persons who, compelled to flee the country, were torpedoed in the
course of their voyage; and was invested with powers of deciding
unfettered by any legislation or by any obligation to give reasons for
its decisions. Thanks to their unlimited scope and discretion, the
Commissioners, after rejecting some 2,500 claims as fraudulent, were
still able to admit 3,350 claims and to allot damages representing a
total sum of just under seven million drachmas.[5]

The number of old adherents confirmed in the faith through this
expedient, however, was as nothing to the legions of proselytes won by
the creation of new Government posts of every grade in every part of
the Kingdom, by the facilities afforded in the transaction of all
business over which the State had any control--which under existing
conditions meant all important business--and by the favours of various
sorts that were certain to reward devotion to the cause. Beside the
steadily growing swarm of native parasites, profiteers, jobbers and
adventurers who throve on the spoils of the public, marched a less
numerous, but not less ravenous, host of foreign financiers, concession
and contract hunters, to whom the interests of the State were freely
bartered for support to the party in the Entente capitals.

The economic exhaustion caused by this reckless waste of national
wealth, in addition to the necessary war {213} expenditure, was
concealed at the time partly by credits furnished to M. Venizelos in
Paris and London, and partly by an artificial manipulation of the
exchange for his sake. It became apparent when these political
influences ceased to interfere with the normal working of financial
laws. Then the Greek exchange, which at the outbreak of th