returned to power; during that interval every effort was vainly made by Court and Cabinet to seduce the Venizelist deputies into joining the " King's party," as it was now openly termed. When Venizelos finally was reinstated in office Bulgaria was preparing to fall upon Serbia in the flank, and Venizelos hastened to inform Bulgaria that any attack by her upon Serbia would cause the intervention of the Greek army. But Constantine, sending for the Bulgarian minister behind Venizelos' back, authorized him -to inform his Government confidentially that Bulgaria need not fear any intervention on Greece's part. He gave the same assurance through the channel of the German Government. Thus Bulgaria proceeded unhesitatingly to order a general mobilization (Sept. 1915). To this step Venizelos at once replied by ordering a general mobilization of the Greek army. The King offered no objection to signing the decree, but when the next day Venizelos announced in the Greek Chamber that Greece would declare war against Bulgaria if she attacked Serbia, Constantine immediately sent for him and asked for his resignation, informing him that he would never consent to attack one of Germany's allies. To Venizelos' remonstrance that after the recent popular verdict the Crown was bound to follow the responsible Government's policy, Constantine replied that in questions of foreign policy he did not hold himself bound to follow the popular will, as he considered himself " personally responsible to God alone." Thus, after Venizelos' fresh resigna- tion and the formation of a Zaimes Cabinet, the Greco-Serbian treaty was repudiated and Serbia was abandoned to her fate. As the Venizelist parliamentary majority refused to support the new Government a fresh dissolution was decreed, and in the new election (Dec. 1915), owing to the Venizelist party abstain- ing as a protest against the repeated unconstitutional proceed- ings of the Crown, a new Chamber was elected, composed entirely of Constantine's supporters. At Venizelos' invitation just before his resignation an Anglo-French force of over 100,000 men had been landed at Salonika, too late indeed to save Serbia but strong enough to entrench itself at Salonika.
Constantine and his party did not yet dare to commit them- selves to a policy of open hostility to the Entente, although the Greek army, mobilized by Venizelos to defend Serbia, re- mained under arms in Macedonia until July 1916 to " de- fend Greek neutrality." But the Allied army in Macedonia was subjected to every sort of petty annoyance and even to espionage on the part of the Greek authorities; thus a Greek lieutenant, who was accused of tapping the Allied military telephone wires, was ostentatiously decorated by the King within the week. On May 26 1916, by direct order of Gen. Dousmanes, the King's chief-of-staff, over the head of the responsible Minister of War, Fort Rupel, which commanded the Struma Pass into east Macedonia, was surrendered to the Bul- garians by pre-arrangement between Constantine and the Ger- man general staff.
After Venizelos had seceded from Athens and established his " Provisional Government of National Defence " at Salonika, Constantine's movements became more and more openly hostile to the Entente. Regular communications with the Central Empires were kept up through north Epirus and Albania, and the German-Austrian submarines were suspected of receiving valuable assistance from royalist agents in Greece. Finally, Constantine's troops having become a standing menace to the Allied army in Macedonia, the Allies demanded the surrender of a quantity of arms and ammunition on the part of the Athens Government. The Lambros Ministry protested against this demand, but the King privately promised the French admiral, Dartige du Fournet, to surrender these arms if Athens were occupied by an Allied force to " save his face." When, however, on the following day (Dec. i 1916) a body of 1,800 Allied blue- jackets landed at the Piraeus and marched up to Athens, they were allowed to walk into positions carefully ambushed, and there were set upon by the royalist troops and thousands of reservists specially enrolled and armed for the purpose over- night. The Allied force drew off at nightfall with heavy losses. They would have been annihilated but for the presence at
Phaleron of a powerful Allied fleet, which late in the day hurled a few shells into the royal palace and caused Constantine to order a cessation of hostilities.
This act of treachery on Constantine's part was followed the next day by wild scenes of hunting down as rebels and enemies of the King the unarmed Venizelist citizens of Athens. But the Powers took no immediate steps either to protect their friends or to avenge the insult to their own flags. After a whole month of deliberation, on Dec. 31, they declared a blockade of Greece and demanded the removal of the entire Greek army to the Peloponnesus. But no measures were taken against Constan- tine himself, since apparently there were still quarters within the Entente unwilling to believe the worst. It was only on the downfall of the Tsar (March 1917) that Great Britain and France finally arrived at a decision. On June n 1917 a power- ful Anglo-French fleet arrived at the Piraeus, carrying a land force of 30,000 men; and M. Jonnart, in the name of the Allies, demanded the immediate abdication of Constantine and his eldest son and their departure from Greece. Constantine saw that resistance was hopeless and bowed to the inevitable. Con- stantine (or " Tino," as he was commonly called) withdrew to Switzerland; there, with the aid of the German propaganda, he organized intrigues in Greece among the disaffected. He went so far in 1918 as to send his chief aide-de-camp to Germany to select two officers of the Greek army corps of Kavalla, then interned at Gorlitz, to proceed to Greece on board a German submarine, to spy upon the Allied army in Macedonia and to organize an armed uprising in their rear. And he openly pro- claimed urbi et orbi that he had never renounced his rights to the Greek throne and was still the only legitimate sovereign, his son Alexander (who had been proclaimed the new king) being merely his temporary locum tenens. Thus it came about that upon Alexander's untimely death and Venizelos' defeat at the polls in Nov. 1920, Constantine returned in triumph to Athens, in defiance of the Allies' non-recognition of him. He was not recognized in 1921 by any of the Allied Powers. On June ii 1921 (still without any formal recognition from the Allies) he left for Smyrna to take command of the Greek army in Asia Minor in the renewal of war (England and France standing aloof) against Turkey.
CONVOY (see 7.67*). The system of convoy adopted by the British and American navies in 1917, by which merchant vessels sailed in organized groups under naval escort, played an important part in the World War. In the following account it should be noted that the term is used in the British Admiralty sense to signify not only the system but also the merchant ships under escort; in the U.S. navy the warships are the escort, the mer- chant ships the " train," and the whole is the convoy.
At the beginning of the war the British system of commerce protection was based on cruiser squadrons stationed at the focal points of trade and in important areas to deal with enemy cruisers and raiders. Though it proved sufficient to accomplish the destruction of the " Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse " and the " Cap Trafalgar," the principal cruiser raiders escaped its clutches; for the " Emden " was sunk by the " Sydney " escorting a convoy at the time, the " Karlsruhe " was blown up by an internal explosion and the " Dresden " was sunk by a squadron detached for that purpose. From the first the system had been dislocated in every sea by demands for convoy, but by March 1915 the cruisers had been run to earth, and though raiders such as the " Moewe " and the " Wolf " reappeared, it was only occasionally and one at a time. The system of convoy was used in the case of the first large contingents of Australian and Canadian troops. The " Sydney " with the " Melbourne " and the Japanese cruiser " Ibuki," was escorting the Australian convoy across the Indian Ocean when she was detached to run the " Emden" down at Cocos I. on Nov. 9. The first Canadian contingent of 31,200 men which sailed from Quebec on Oct. 3 1914 in 31 transports was escorted by the cruisers " Charybdis," "Diana," "Eclipse" and " Talbot," reenforced, as they approached British shores, by the battle cruiser " Princess Royal " and the old battleship " Majestic." The system was
- These figures indicate the volume and page number of the previous article.
