was allowed to die. During the administration of President Taft the struggle for conservation centred in the so-called Ballinger- Pinchot controversy, the cause of which was an effort on the part of Richard Achilles Ballinger, then Secretary of the Interior, to transfer to private ownership certain valuable coal lands in Alaska, and to throw open to private acquisition highly valuable water-power sites upon the public lands which had been set aside by President Roosevelt. The controversy resulted in the resigna- tion of Mr. Ballinger, and had much to do- with the defeat of President Taft in the election of 1912. The coal lands and water- power sites which formed the subject matter of the dispute remained in the public hands.
In the effort to secure the use of the natural resources so as to promote the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time, President Roosevelt, in support of legislation by Congress to that end, withdrew from private entry 148,000,000 ac. of forest land, 80,000,000 ac. of coal land, 4,700,000 ac. of phosphate land, and 1,500,000 ac. containing water-power sites on the public lands. Thus during the Roosevelt administration more than 234,000,000 ac. of land were preserved, most of which will probably be permanent property of the nation.
Because of the abolition of the National Conservation Commission, the movement threatened to be seriously hampered by the lack of a central body in which could be conjoined for united and effective action the many persons and agencies devoted to the movement. Accordingly, the National Conservation Association, whose purpose was to inform and give effect to public sentiment, was established in 1909. In its successful efforts to prevent the passage of bad laws and to secure the enactment of good laws, this association became an effective factor in the passage by Congress of measures that carry out the Roosevelt policies of Conservation. The more important of these measures are: the Weeks law, to purchase lands for national forests in the White Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains where there was no public land; the Coal and Oil Leasing bills (for the continental United States, including Alaska) which are securing conservation by wise use, without waste and without monopoly, of valuable resources still in the public hands; and the Federal Water-Power Act, to provide for the development by private enterprise, under Federal ownership and control, of water-power in the public domain and navigable streams. Here again public property worth thousands of millions of dollars has been saved for the benefit of all the people of the United States. The association has been especially influential in defeating legislation that sought to destroy the national forests and to permit the diversion to private ownership of natural resources.
The Conservation movement is probably, among the many constructive policies inaugurated by President Roosevelt, that which will be most influential for good, and for which he will be longest remembered. (G. P.)
CONSTANS, JEAN ANTOINE ERNEST (1883-1913), French statesman (see 6.986), resigned from the embassy at Constanti- nople in May 1909. His success as a diplomat was less marked than as a minister. Presenting himself for the Senate (for Aveyron) in 1912 he was defeated. He died April 7 1913.
CONSTANTINE, King of the Hellenes (1868- ), eldest son of George I. of Greece, was born Aug. 2 1868, and succeeded to the throne March 18 1913, on the assassination of his father. As the first prince of a Greek reigning dynasty born in modern times on Greek soil, and reared in the Greek Orthodox faith, he became from his birth to the Greek people the embodiment of their national aspirations, and was given the name of the last Emperor of Constantinople, in the superstitious hope that he would fulfil the old prophecy that the Empire of Byzantium would be restored to the Greek nation, when a king named Constantine and a queen named Sophia should reign on the Greek throne. This strange legend strengthened Constantine's popularity amongst the Greeks, and when in 1889 he married Sophia Dorothea of Hohenzollern, daughter of the Emperor Frederick of Germany, the coincidence of the name enhanced immensely the superstitious belief of the Greeks. He received his early education under private tutors at Athens. At the age
of 18 he was sent to Berlin for a military education, and served in one of the Imperial Guard regiments, attending also a few desultory courses at the university of Leipzig. It was during his stay in Berlin that he made the acquaintance of his future wife, and (very much against his father's wishes) formed the attachment that was destined to exert such an important in- fluence on his career.
After returning to Greece he was given various military com- mands. In 1897 he was sent to Larissa to take command of the Greek army in Thessaly, just before the outbreak of the dis- astrous war with Turkey. At the close of the war the Crown Prince was probably the best-hated man in Greece. The popular voice attributed the disasters to him and to his father. He still retained, however, his nominal post of commander-in-chief.
It was only in Aug. 1909, when the garrison of Athens sud- denly revolted and demanded sweeping reforms, including the reorganization of the army and navy and the removal of the princes from all military commands, that Constantine and his brothers, George, Nicholas and Andrew, hastened to resign their commissions and to go abroad to escape the open hostility of public opinion. From this practical exile the Crown Prince first, and his brothers Nicholas and Andrew afterwards, were recalled and reinstated in their commands by Venizelos, when the latter became the all-powerful head of the Greek Government. His bill for the reappointment of Crown Prince Constantine as commander-in-chief of the army was bitterly opposed in the Greek Chamber by Theotokis, Gounaris, Rallis and other poli- ticians, who a few years later were to become King Constan- tine's chief supporters. The army officers, too, with few excep- tions, were much opposed to the bill. By a curious irony, it was only Venizelos' determined attitude that saved it from rejection. The Greek successes in the Balkan wars subsequently enhanced the Crown Prince's credit, and it was in an atmos- phere of renewed popularity (Venizelos himself helping to exploit it) that he succeeded unexpectedly to the throne oh his father's assassination.
King Constantine at once showed his monarchical spirit. He took to copying the modes of speech and action of his brother-in-law, the German Emperor. He began to speak, in his official utterances, of "My army" and "My navy"; to attend in person the swearing-in of the annual recruits and to impress upon them the extreme sanctity of their oath of allegiance to him. Officers were made to feel that their only hope of advancement lay in their devotion to the War-lord. And when his youngest daughter was born in 1913, he proclaimed " his " army and navy godfathers to the little princess. Such incidents attracted little serious attention at the time. But the subsequent course of events showed that the King was intent on converting the democratic, ultra-constitutional monarchy, which that of Greece had been, into one of a more absolute type on the Prussian model. Constantine and his defenders have indeed vehemently denied the existence of any secret understanding between himself and the Kaiser, either before or after the outbreak of the World War. Apart, however, from the indirect evidence furnished by the private telegrams exchanged between the royal couple of Greece and the Kaiser in 1916-7, which came to light after Constantine's dethronement, the existence of a definite understanding between William II. and Constantine to secure Greek neutrality in an impending European war has been expressly attested by Gen. Ludendorff himself in his war memoirs. During the first six months of the war Constantine gave no sign, even when Venizelos, before the first battle of the Marne, offered the alliance and aid of Greece to the Entente Powers. But when in Jan. 1915 the Entente promised Greece extensive territory in Asia Minor if she would join in the Dardanelles operations, and Venizelos proposed to cooperate, Constantine refused to give his sanction. Venizelos at once resigned, and at the ensuing parliamentary election a large Venizelist majority was returned (June 1915)- The King was seriously ill at the time, and the Queen and the Government flatly refused to allow the appointment of a regent. Thus it was a full three months after the election before Venizelos
