fund of good sense which could not be deceived. If they
formerly anathematized M. Venizelos as a traitor, the masses now
execrated him as a tyrant: a mean and crafty bully without bowels of
mercy who gave licence to his followers to commit every species of
oppression and exploitation in the interest of party.

Such were the feelings with which the very name of Venizelos inspired
the mass of the people. And that the mass of the people was in the
main right can scarcely be contested. It would, of course, be absurd
to hold M. Venizelos directly responsible for every individual act of
oppression and corruption, most of which occurred during his absences
from the country and of which he was not cognizant. But it was he who
had initiated both oppression and corruption. M. Jonnart's
prescriptive lists were really M. Venizelos's, who had long since made
his own enemies pass for enemies to the Entente. The "purification" of
the public services, as well as the prosecutions, the imprisonments and
deportations of eminent personages, some of whom died of the hardships
and privations they underwent, were his own doing. The multiplication
of offices and officials began with his creation, at the very outset,
of two new Ministries; a measure to which even King Alexander demurred
when the list of M. Venizelos's Cabinet was presented to him.[6] Nor
is there upon record a single case in which the Chief seriously
attempted either to restrain or to punish his subordinates. In truth,
he was not free to do so. He was bound to the system he had brought
into being and was irretrievably committed to all its works.

A man who gains supreme power against the wishes of {215} the majority,
and only with the consent of a faction, cannot maintain himself in it
except by force and bribery. He must coerce and corrupt. Moreover, to
rule without a rival, he must surround himself with men vastly inferior
to him both in talent and in virtue: men who, in return for their
obsequious servility, must be humoured and satisfied. Whenever such a
usurpation occurs, all the maxims upon which the welfare and freedom of
a community normally rest are annihilated, and the reign of profligacy
and of tyranny inevitably supervenes: a regime born in party passion
must live for purely party ends.

We may break or circumvent all laws, save the eternal and immutable law
of cause and effect.[7]

The best of M. Venizelos's followers sincerely regretted the unceasi