He began with the enfranchisement of Thrace (9 Sept.). This province, still under military occupation and martial law, was to vote: further, a political frontier was erected between it and the rest of Greece, which only those possessing a special pass could cross, whilst a rigorous censorship kept all anti-Venizelist newspapers out of it; and, lastly, it was enacted, for the benefit of an electorate alien in its majority and unable to read or write Greek, that the { 223} Thracian votes, contrary to the general rule, should be polled by ballot paper, instead of by a ball.
Another Bill enabled the army on active service, for the first time in the history of Greece, to participate in elections, the assumption being that among the soldiers Venizelist feeling predominated, or that, at all events, they would be controlled by their officers.
As exceptional importance has always 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'état_ 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 National Defence, which was pledged to a new Revolution: the Parliamentary system would cease to function even in name, and many a malignant would swing.