Still, French statesmen counted on M. Venizelos--"_l'homme politique qui incarne l'idée de la solidarité des intérêts français et grecs_"--to keep his country on their side. And as in the first instance they had made the alliance conditional on his being placed in control, so now they made the benefits accruing from it to Greece dependent on his remaining in control. That M. Venizelos could not always remain in control does not seem to have occurred to them. Nor that he might not always be content to be a mere puppet in their hands. Murmurs at his pro-British leanings were indeed heard occasionally. But on the whole the Cretan possessed in an adequate measure the faculty of adapting himself to rival points of view, of making each Power feel that her interests were supreme in his regard, and of using the ambitions of both to promote his own. As long as he remained in control, France, with whatever reservations, felt sure of her share of influence.
The collapse of M. Venizelos and the demand of the Greek people for King Constantine's return, came to French statesmen as a painful surprise. That they had for several years been laboriously building on illusions could not be disguised, and being made to look absurd before those of their own compatriots who had all along advocated a policy based on the preservation and exploitation of Turkey, rendered the situation doubly awkward. Unable to rise above personal pique, they would fain veto the return of a prince whom they hated and whom they had wronged beyond hope of conciliation. England, however, free from petty animosities, and sensible that, under whatever ruler, Greece would be with her, refused to sanction lawlessness in the midst of peace; and her view that, if the Greeks wanted Constantine, it was their business and not ours, prevailed. But, on the other hand, by way of compromise, France obtained that he should return to an empty treasury, with foreign credits cut off, and the loans made by the Allies to the Venizelist Government, to facilitate the waging of a common war against Turkey, revoked.
It was an impossible position which King Constantine was called upon to face: a position none of his own making, { 234} yet one from which there was no retreat. The Greek people's imperialism had been roused. The leaders who once criticized M. Venizelos's Asiatic policy as a dangerous dream, opposed to economic, strategic, and ethnic realities, might still hold those views and mutter in secret that Smyrna would prove the grave of Greece; but they no longer dared express them, out of deference to public opinion. To the masses M. Venizelos's wild game of chance seemed vindicated by its results, and while they rejected the man they clung to his work.