868.00/251
The Minister in Greece (Capps) to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received February 26.]
Sir: Continuing my dispatch No. 500 of December 30, 1920,5 concerning the recent political events in Greece, I have the honor to submit the following observations on the constitutional and legal basis of the restored monarchy, and the constitutional and legal interpretation given by the party of Mr. Venizelos to the events which led to the removal of King Constantine from the throne in 1917.
It has become increasingly clear, through the convergence of various pieces of evidence, that the Royalists decided at some time, perhaps not until after the death of King Alexander, to take the position that Constantine had never ceased to be King and that, therefore, he had merely to choose the time and occasion that seemed to him most suitable for returning to Greece and resuming the throne.
It is not at all clear that either he or his advisors had this idea of the matter at the time he was forced by Mr. Jonnart, the Special High Commissioner representing the Protecting Powers, France and England, to leave the country and hand over the throne to his second son, Alexander. It is true that he did not “abdicate” to the extent of signing a legal document of that character. The demand was indeed originally made by Mr. Jonnart that he should sign formal articles of abdication, but on the advice of Dr. Streit, his most astute, most intimate and most pro-German counsellor, Constantine demurred; he would agree to leave the country together with the Crown Prince, George, and to hand over the royal power to his second son, Alexander, if they would not force him to sign the [Page 140] abdication. It was understood by Jonnart, according to his own testimony, that the abdication was complete and final, in spite of the fact that the formal act was not executed. Whether Constantine and his advisors also regarded it in this light at this time is uncertain, though quite probable; and yet the momentary weakness of Commissioner Jonnart, in making this concession to the pride of the deposed King, furnished the basis—and a very good basis, it must be confessed—for all that has happened in the last two months.
During the sickness of King Alexander, when doubts began to be entertained about his recovery, one began to see in the Royalist papers in Athens and in the newspaper stories which emanated from Lucerne, intimations to the effect that if Alexander should die the throne would automatically revert to his father, whose locum tenens Alexander was. Then, when Alexander died and the Council of Ministers, at the suggestion of Mr. Venizelos, tendered the throne to Prince Paul, whom they regarded as the only rightful successor in accordance with the terms of the Constitution, the proffer was accompanied by a stipulation which indicated that Mr. Venizelos himself was aware of the technical weakness in his own position; for he laid down to Prince Paul the condition that his father and his oldest brother should both confirm their abdication and renounce all rights to the throne before he himself would be permitted to occupy it. The very statement of these conditions was as good as suggesting the reply which was actually received from Prince Paul—his father was still the King and he, Prince Paul, could not accept the offer of the throne.
The election, as I stated in my previous dispatch, really hinged upon the administration of Mr. Venizelos, and not upon the succession to the throne. If Venizelos should be defeated, a new Ministry would be formed by the opposition upon the invitation of the Regent, and the new Parliament would determine who should be King. But when Mr. Gounaris announced that his party denied the right of the Protecting Powers to drive out Constantine, who was still the lawful King, Venizelos accepted the challenge and declared that Constantine could never return, for that would mean civil war. The dynastic question was therefore the largest factor in the actual result. Although the overthrow of Mr. Venizelos did not necessarily mean the desire of the people to have King Constantine back, it was a clear indication that the forces of reaction were strong, and that, if the dynastic issue were brought before the people they would probably vote for their former King. This Constantine himself was quick to realize. Both he and Dr. Streit gave out statements to the effect that they would require a plebiscite in which the Greek people [Page 141] should have an opportunity of expressing its wish on the precise question of the dynasty; and it was at their instance that the Ministry decided upon this course, which was followed in the manner described in my previous dispatch. But in spite of their announcement of a plebiscite, the Rhallys Ministry assumed from the first moment that Constantine was King in absentia, and that they governed in his name.
Its first act, after the result of the election became known, was in strict accordance with their theory that Constantine had never ceased to be king: they forced Regent Koundouriotis to resign, on the ground that the Parliament which had elected him was an illegal body, and set up Dowager Queen Olga as Regent. She then issued a proclamation announcing that she was Regent during the absence of her beloved son and would, until his return, act in his name. The new ministry put up the portraits of Constantine and Sophia in all the public offices and instructed the courts to issue their decrees “in the name of Constantine, King of the Hellenes”. In all this they acted with entire consistency, but at the same time had to face a serious dilemma: namely, if Constantine had never ceased to be King, and if, therefore, the acts of the Government of Greece during the interval of three and a half years of his absence from the throne were invalid, by what authority did the Royalist Ministry itself come into power—a Ministry which was summoned to take office by Regent Koundouriotis, whose authority was derived from the Parliament whose very existence these ministers now declared to be illegal? And by what right did Dowager Queen Olga become Regent after the enforced resignation of Admiral Koundouriotis, when the invitation to become Regent was extended by a group of political leaders who could only, on their own theory, be acting as individual citizens? Disregarding all these embarrassments, the new ministers forged ahead, following out their theory as rigorously as circumstances would permit.
Their desire would have been to have the Regent issue a sweeping decree invalidating every act of Parliament and Ministry and King since the retirement of King Constantine; this, however, they did not dare to do because it was, after all, this Parliament and the Venizelist Ministry which had laid the basis for the treaties of Sevres and Neuilly, which had brought to Greece large territorial accessions which the Royalists were eager to possess and enjoy. They have, therefore, proceeded by means of special decrees to revoke piecemeal such of the acts of the preceding Parliament as hindered them in carrying out their political wishes. Consequently we have seen an unending succession of decrees whose sole purpose has been to put Venizelists out of office and to reinstate Royalists in their [Page 142] places, to abolish public undertakings instituted by the Venizelist government, and to give back pay for three and one half years to a multitude of officers of the Army and Navy and to officials and employees of the Civil Service who had lost their positions, as the loyalists claim, because of their political faith. As a matter of fact very large numbers of these persons were removed during the war as a result of disloyal or treasonable actions. And although no formal action has been taken invalidating concessions, contracts for public works, etc., granted under the Venizelos government, doubt has been thrown upon the validity of all such agreements, and Athens is full of contractors vainly seeking to learn where they stand.
Consistently with their theory, the new regime does not recognize Alexander as having been King. In the royal household he is studiously referred to as ‘Prince’ Alexander. They admit that he exercized the royal prerogatives, but insist that he did so at the request of his father and as provisional substitute for him. They have not ventured to call him “Regent”, but that is precisely what they mean. They also pretend that this was Alexander’s own conception of his position. The hard fact, however, which all the rest of the world recognizes, that Alexander became King, if at the request of his father, nevertheless on the nomination of the representative of the Protecting Powers; that all the Governments which maintained relations with Greece recognized him as King, and that his acts as King during the last year and a half of the war were of fundamental importance to the Greater Greece which has been erected as the result of Greece’[s] participation in the war—all this gives the Constantinist theorists a hard nut to crack and they have as yet not openly essayed it.
If Constantine never ceased to be King during the period when he was not permitted to exercize his royal functions, it logically follows that he is entitled to the stipends and honoraria which he enjoyed while in the active administration of his office. The King has not failed to see the opportunity which this argument offers him, and has filed a formal claim with the present Government for three and one half years’ back salary, amounting to something over seven and one half million drachmas. It is probable that he will receive this sum as soon as the Government, which is practically bankrupt, can find the money. How they will be able to manipulate the item for salary and perquisites already paid to King Alexander, it is difficult to see. But it will be managed somehow.
A very complete, and it must be acknowledged, a very convincing, argument from the legal standpoint in favor of the Constantinist [Page 143] theory has been made and published by Mr. Nicholas Stratos. Mr. Stratos was at one time Minister of Marine in the Venizelist Cabinet and a very efficient executive. He, however, committed an indiscretion in connection with a contract for some ships in England, acting directly contrary to instructions which he had received from Mr. Venizelos, and in consequence was asked to resign. He thereupon became an ardent Royalist and a bitter opponent of Mr. Venizelos. He is an exceedingly clever lawyer and has made a telling argument in his pamphlet, which is a study of the constitutional and legal basis for the act of the Protecting Powers in deposing Constantine. Mr. Stratos denies absolutely to the Protecting Powers as such any right whatever to intervene in the internal affairs of Greece, even if, as they alleged, the King or his ministers were failing to carry out the provisions of the Constitution which these Powers had assisted the Greek people in 1868 to adopt and put into force. Their demand that Constantine should abdicate was not, he argues, an act of war nor was it legally justified from any point of view. The Greek people are therefore required, as a self-respecting nation, to restore the situation as it was before it was changed by this outside intervention and to recall Constantine to the active resumption; of his Royal functions. It must be acknowledged that Mr. Stratos makes a very strong case, and also that the explanation given by the Protecting Powers at the time of their intervention gives him a very plausible basis for his argument.
The position of Mr. Venizelos himself is much more consistent and legally considered much stronger than that of the Protecting Powers. He has always maintained that the abdication of Constantine was demanded by the Powers, not only because he had violated the articles of the Greek Constitution, but also because he had committed definite acts of hostility against the Entente Allies, and that it was the direct outcome of the revolutionary movement which Mr. Venizelos and his associates inaugurated when they formed the provisional Government at Salonika and called upon all Greeks to join them in fighting the common foe by the side of their natural friends and allies the English, French, Italians and Serbs. This movement was avowedly a revolution. Its immediate object was not indeed the overthrow of Constantine, but rather the active participation of Greece in the war. Mr. Venizelos made it perfectly plain that he would not participate in a civil war, but he appealed to all Greeks to take their position on the issue of honor which was inevitably forced upon Greece, whether they should fight actively on the side of the Entente Allies as their treaty obligations required and as the people had repeatedly, in general elections, evidenced their desire to do, or actively (or by abstention [Page 144] almost as effectively) on the side of the Central Empires. It can hardly be doubted that a very large majority of the Greek people took his side in the revolution, and certainly the 200,000 Greeks who volunteered for the Army at Salonika contributed very essentially to the final Allied success in arms. Inasmuch as the Greek people were divided into two utterly hostile camps by this issue, and the side of Venizelos had come out triumphant, and since furthermore the continued presence of Constantine in Athens, working insidiously and constantly to thwart the purposes of the Allies, was a standing menace both to the Allied cause and to the Greeks who participated on that side; and since, finally, Constantine’s Government had publicly declared that all who participated with Mr. Venizelos in the Revolution and took the field in the Allied cause were traitors to Greece and would be so treated if apprehended, the forceful removal of Constantine from the scene was a legitimate and necessary outcome of the Revolution and was a belligerent act in the prosecution of the war. The method by which the abdication was achieved was not altogether unobjectionable, from the point of view of Mr. Venizelos, but the alternative would have been the intervention in Athens of an armed force of Greeks from Salonika, which would have either seized Constantine and his entourage or have driven them into exile. This would have been a perfectly simple matter to carry out and there were many who advocated it; it, however, would have meant some shedding of blood in the capital; some lives would have been lost, including those of innocent bystanders, and Mr. Venizelos took the method which the Protecting Powers offered him in preference to the method of bloodshed. It was probably not a difficult choice to make at the time, but it was a choice which offered the royalist lawyer the best possible occasion for assailing the illegal character of the intervention.
That the war could not have been won on the Salonika front except by the removal of Constantine and his principal adherents who constantly menaced the Allied Army in the rear can hardly be doubted, and I know of no student of the war on this front who does doubt it. Nor can it be doubted that his removal was for the best interests of the Greek people both morally and materially. The best conscience of the nation demanded that it should participate in the war on the side of the Entente Allies; the results obtained for Greece through the treaties which have since been negotiated by the successful Venizelist regime amply justify the revolution, which put the major part of Greece into the war, and also the act by which Greece as a nation, instead of that portion of Greece which took up arms as revolutionists from the Constantine government, became a belligerent.
I have [etc.]
- Not printed.↩