ng
persecution of their adversaries: they saw that stability could not be
attained without conciliation and co-operation; but they did not see
how clemency could be combined with safety. The thousands of officers
and officials who had been turned out of their posts, and the
politicians who were kept out of office found employment, and the
private individuals who had suffered for their "ill-will towards the
established order" relief in plotting and intriguing: there was so much
unrest that the authorities had to use severe measures.

M. Venizelos himself wished to make his administration milder and
cleaner and to broaden its basis--he was even credited with the one
joke of his life in this connexion: "I will yet head anti-Venizelism."
But the thing was beyond his power: he had not a sufficient following
in the country to replace armed force; and he dared not trust the
Royalists with a share in the government for fear lest they should use
it against him. None, indeed, was more painfully conscious of the hate
for him which every month increased in the breasts of his countrymen
than M. Venizelos himself. From the very beginning of the schism he
had assumed a prophylactic in the form of a cuirass;[8] and since his
installation he neglected none of {216} the precautions requisite for
his personal security. During his rare sojourns in Athens he always
went about escorted by his Cretan guards; while on the roof of a
building facing his house stood two machine-guns, "for," as a witty
Athenian informed an inquisitive stranger, "the protection of
minorities."

In general, it is true, the plotting and intriguing which permeated the
country were too fatuous to be dangerous. But every now and then they
took on formidable shape. In November, 1919, a carefully organized
military conspiracy at Athens only miscarried through the indiscretion
of a trusty but tipsy sergeant. Among the letters intercepted and
produced at the trial was one from a Royalist exile in Italy to another
at home. The writer, a lady, reported her brother as wondering how
anybody in Greece could fail to understand that there no longer existed
such things as a Government and an Opposition, but only tyrants and
tyrannized over, who worked, the former to maintain their arbitrary
authority, the latter to shake it off and recover their liberty. The
work of neither could, in the nature of things, be carried on according
to any constitutional rule or law. He wen