attached to the district and city of
Athens--"which," M. Venizelos said, "symbolizes the very soul of the
country," [5]--it was incumbent upon him to pay special attention to this
area. The difficulty was that the actual population was notoriously
unsympathetic. M. Venizelos hastened to overcome this difficulty by
three strokes of the pen: 18,000 refugees from all parts who lived on the
Ministry of Public Relief were enrolled as Athenian citizens; to these
were added some 6,000 Cretan gendarmes and policemen; and, to make up the
deficiency, 15,000 natives of Smyrna, supposed to have earned Greek
citizenship by volunteering in the war, had their names inscribed on the
electoral lists of Attica.

There followed promises and warnings. On the one hand, the people were
promised fresh labour legislation, the conversion of the great landed
estates into small holdings, and public works on a large scale. On the
other hand, they were warned that an adverse vote from them would have
disastrous consequences for the country: Greece had been aggrandized by
the Allies for the sake of M. Venizelos; if she discarded him, she would
forfeit their goodwill and her territorial acquisitions. But M.
Venizelos and his partisans did not trust altogether to the practical
sense and the Imperialist sensibilities of the people.

For months past the extremists among his followers openly threatened
that, if by any mishap Venizelos did not win the day after all, they
would make a _coup d'etat_ and strike terror into the hearts of their
adversaries. This threat, which primarily presented itself as an
extravagance of irresponsible fanaticism, was on 7 September officially
espoused by M. Venizelos, who declared in Parliament that, should
perchance his adversaries obtain a majority in the new Assembly, and
should that Assembly decide {224} to convoke a Constituent Assembly, and
should this Constituent Assembly invite King Constantine back, the
"Reaction" would find itself confronted with the hostility of a large
political party which had become the mortal enemy of the ex-king; and he
went on to foreshadow a fresh schism in the army: that is, civil war.
Encouraged by so solemn a sanction, Venizelist candidates--notably at
Tyrnavo in Thessaly and Dervenion in Argolis--told their constituents
without any circumlocution that, in the event of a defeat at the polls,
the Government would not surrender its power, but would maintain it
through the Army of N