GREECE'S ATONEMENT

T

LEWIS R. FREEMAN

HE Venizelists had been having a bad time of it from the first, but the blackest hours of all were those toward the end of last April, when Constantine was still strong in Athens, and before the Saloniki Allies had found it practicable or expedient to welcome them to a full brotherhood of arms. It was during this "dark before the dawn" period that A meeting I had my first meeting with M. Venizelos, a Venizelos, conventional half hour's interview in the suburban villa, midway along the curve of Saloniki Bay where the Provisional Government had established its headquarters.

with

The attitude of Constantine.

I had just come up from Athens, where I had found the Allied diplomats still smarting under the memories of their ignominious experiences following Constantine's spectacular coup of the previous December, and it was by no means the least of these who had told me point-blank that he could not conceive how it would be possible that Saloniki should be returned to Greece after the war. Of course it was the Royalist Government that my distinguished friend had had in mind when he spoke, but there was not much to indicate at this time that the Greece of Constantine and his minions was not also going to be the Greece of after the war.

It was with this state of things in mind, and recalling his well known ambitions to found a Greater Greece-by extending Epirus north

Copyright, World's Work, January, 1918.

along the Adriatic, and bringing the millions of Greeks of Asia Minor at least under the protection of the Government at Athensthat I mustered up my courage and asked M. Venizelos offhand if he felt confident of being able even to maintain the integrity of his country as it existed before the war.

must do

Allies.

"Not unless those of us Greeks who have what remained faithful to the cause of humanity and Greece our honor are ultimately able to lend the Allies for the material help in a measure sufficient to counterbalance the harm the action of the Royalists has caused them," was the prompt reply; "and by material help I mean military aid. We must fight, and fight, and keep on fighting, for it is only with blood-with Greek bloodthat the stain upon Greek honor can be washed away. It is only our army that can save us, and that is why we have been so impatient of the delay there has been in equipping it and getting it to the front. The one division we have in the trenches now, and the two others that are ready to go, are not enough, but they are about all we have been able to raise so far. Thessaly is for us (as you may have seen in traveling across it), and would give us two more divisions at least; but our Allies have not yet seen fit to allow us to go there after them."

M. Venizelos spoke of a number of other things before I left him (notably of the extent to which the Russian revolution and the entry of America had helped him in his fight to save Greece), but it was plain that the problem Venizelos uppermost in his mind was that of wiping out to aid the the score of the Allies against his country by Allies. giving them a substantial measure of assistance in the field.

"Do not fail to visit our force on the sector before you leave the Balkans," was his parting injunction. "There may be a chance

determines

Unenviable position of the Venizelists.

of seeing it in action before very long, and if you do, you will need no further assurance of the way in which we shall make our honor white before our Allies and all the world."

The Serbian and two or three other Armies have been worse off in a physical way, but no national force since the outbreak of the war has been in so thoroughly an unenviable position on every other score as was that of the Venizelists at this time. The Serbs and the Belgians had at least the knowledge that the confidence and the sympathy of the Allies were theirs. Also, they had chances to fight to their hearts' content. The Venizelists had scant measure of sympathy, and still less of confidence; and when their first chance to fight was at last given them, they were allowed Elaborate to face the foe only after elaborate precautions had been taken against everything, from incompetence and cowardice on their part to open treachery. That this was the fault neither of themselves nor of their Allies, and had only come about through the perfidy of a King to whom they no longer swore fealty, did not make the shame of it much easier to bear for an army of spirited volunteers who had risked their all for a chance to wipe out the dishonor of their country.

precautions against treachery.

Spies sent in the guise of deserters.

The thing that for a while made it so difficult for the Allies to know what to do with the Venizelist army was the almost ridiculous ease with which, under the peculiar circumstances of its recruitment, it lent itself to spying purposes. All the Royalists, or their German paymasters, had to do to establish a spy in the Saloniki area was to send over one of their Intelligence Officers in the guise of a deserter from the Greek army to that of Venizelos, and there he was! To send back information, or even to return in person, across the

but partially patrolled "Neutral Zone" was scarcely more difficult, and it was the wholesale way in which this sort of thing went on that made it so hard for the Allies to decide just who the bona fide Venizelists were, and just how far it would be safe to trust a force to which the enemy still had such ready means of access.

common

There was nothing else for the Allies to do but "go slow" and "play safe" in dealing with the Venizelist army, and, under the circumstances, there is no doubt that a difficult situation was handled with a good deal of tact and common sense. Just how trying the Tact and situation of the Venizelists was, however, I sense had a chance to see one day when I happened used. to be at their Headquarters arranging for my visit to the Greek sector of the Front. Their troops had acquitted themselves with great credit in some gallantly carried out raiding operations, which must have made it doubly hard for them to put up with a new restrictive order just promulgated by the Supreme Command as a further precaution against the leakage of information to the enemy.

Just as I was about to take my departure, a copy of the new order was delivered to the Staff Officer with whom I had been conferring about my visit to the Front. He read it through slowly, his swarthy face flushing red with anger as he proceeded.

"Have you heard of this?" he said, handing me the paper, and controlling his voice with an effort. "No man or officer of our army is to cross the bridge without a special permit from General Headquarters. It is only the latest in the long series of humiliations A series we have had to put up with. Just look at the of humilway we stand. In Athens our names are posted as traitors who can be shot on sight. Here it isn't quite like that, but-well (he

iations.

troops

succeed in big attacks.

raised his hand above his head and let it fall limply in a gesture of despair), all I can say is that the only officers of the Venizelist army to be envied are those whose names are recorded here (indicating a file at his elbow). It's the death-list from day-before-yesterday's fighting."

Owing to the delay in issuing my pass in Saloniki, I did not arrive at Greek Headquarters until the evening of the day on which the big attack had taken place, and it was daybreak of the morning following before I was able to make my way up to the advanced lines. Venizelist The Venizelist troops had taken all their objectives, and held them with great courage against such counterattacks as the surprised Bulgars-who, not expecting an attack from the Greeks, had made the mistake of massing too much of their strength against the British and French attacks to east and west-were able to organize against them. They had been busy all night "reversing" the captured trenches in anticipation of a determined attempt on the part of the reinforced enemy to retake them in the morning.

The hilly but well-metaled cartroad, along which by the light of the waning moon I cantered with an officer of the Greek staff, had been thronged all night with the surging current of the battle traffic-an up-flow of munition convoys and reinforcements, and back-flow Movement of Wounded and prisoners-but I could not help remarking the comparative quiet and without absence of confusion with which the complex movement was carried on.

carried

out

confusion.

The Greeks seem to under

stand the game of war.

"Somehow this doesn't seem quite like the transport of a new army just undergoing its baptism of fire," I said to my companion. "I've seen things on the roads behind the western front in far worse messes than any of these little jams we've passed to-night. These chaps