The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath: The Athenian Press and the Asia Minor Crisis 9780755625116, 9781845117870

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To Dimitris and Garyfallia Στο Δημήτρη και στη Γαρυφαλλιά

List of Figures

Chapter 1 1.1 ESY Census, 1927 1.2 Educational Level of the Greek Population, 1920 & 1928  1.3 Social Classification of the Greek Population, 1920 & 1928  1.4 Circulation of Athenian newspapers in 1928 according to Svolos Appendix A.1 Circulation in Athens and Provinces in 1920 according to SIS Statement  A.2 Total Circulation in 1920 according to SIS Statement A.3 Circulation in Athens and Provinces in March 1923 A.4 Total Circulation in March 1923 A.5 Circulation in Athens and Provinces in June 1923 A.6 Total Circulation in June 1923 A.7 Total Circulation in March & June 1923 A.8 Circulation of Athenian newspapers in Athens-Piraeus in 1924 according to Bentinck’s Statement A.9 Circulation of Athenian newspapers in Athens-Piraeus and provinces in November 1924 according to Cheetham’s statement  A.10 Total Circulation in November 1924 according to Cheetham’s statement A.11 Total Circulation in 1920, 1923 & 1924

Abbreviations

AYE DBFP ELIA FEK IAMM IEE KKE ESY SEKE SIS

Archio Ypourgiou Exoterikon [Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs] Documents on British Foreign Policy Elliniko Logotechniko kai Istoriko Archio [Greek Literary and Historical Archive] Fyllon Efimeridos tis Kyverniseos [Official Greek Gazette] Istorika Archia Mousiou Mpenaki [Historical Archives of Benaki Museum] Istoria Ellinikou Ethnous [History of the Greek Nation] Kommounistiko Komma Elladas [Communist Party of Greece] Ethniki Statistiki Ypiresia [National Statistical Service] Socialistiko Ergatiko Komma Ellados [Socialist Labour Party of Greece] Secret Intelligence Service

Acknowledgements

In this ‘journey’ there were a number of people who stood by me, supported me and helped me both scholarly and personally. My debts begin with my supervisors Professor John Haldon and Dr Steven Morewood of the Centre of Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies of the University of Birmingham for their encouragement and support and their patient supervision of my thesis. I am particularly grateful to Dr Morewood for giving me his own notes on the unpublished primary sources of TNA CAB 45/108 and HW 12 series and for his keen support regarding the publication of this work. I am deeply indebted to Professor Scott Lucas of the Department of American and Canadian Studies of the University of Birmingham who took over the co-supervision of the thesis from Professor Haldon. He read this work in its entirety and offered incisive commentaries. His generosity has meant much more to me than these words of acknowledgement might suggest. My debt to the AHRB for their fees award and to the School of Historical Studies of the University of Birmingham for their scholarships is inestimable. I am also indebted to: Dr Despina Papadimitriou from Pantion University in Athens who was always willing to answer all my enquiries and offer me her constant support and encouragement; Professor Giannis Gianoulopoulos who commented on parts of the drafts; Dr Kyriaki Mamoni who, despite her serious health problems, was always willing to offer advice and help (regrettably she is no longer alive); Dr Gioula Koutsopanagou with whom I had useful discussions. I am also indebted to the journalists Nikos Karantinos, Giorgos Moraitis, Takis Psarakis, Michalis Katsigeras, Alexandros Mallis, Giorgos Petropoulos and Stavros Christakopoulos for their help and to Mrs Fani Metaxa and Periclis Voutieridis who were kind enough to let me consult their father’s

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archives. Many thanks to those who gave me an interview, Giannis Bastias, Renos Apostolidis, Dimitris Kaloumeros, Adonis Kyrou, Giannis Kapsis, Vasos Tsimbidaros and Petros Metaxas. I would also like to thank the staff of the Benakion Library and especially Dimitris Lymberopoulos who did everything in his power to help me during the period of my research. For the same reason I am grateful to the staff of the Greek Parliament’s Archives of Newspapers in Athens, and particularly to Thanasis Tsiropoulos. I would also like to thank the staff of the TNA in London, of the General Archives of the State in Athens, of the Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of ELIA and of the Historical Archives of the Benakion Museum for the same reason. Many thanks to Christos Tsintsilonis, Director of the Historical Archives of KKE, for his help. I would also like to thank the staff of I.B.Tauris Publishers and particularly Rasna Dhillon for her help in the publication of this book. Many thanks to Matthew Brown for his help with the typesetting of the manuscript. To my friends Maria Verde, Eleni Vasilikopoulou, Evi Petropoulou and Argyro Deligianni I offer my grateful thanks for the help they gave me. To Dr Gerard O’Grady I am deeply indebted both scholarly and personally. He offered me substantial help, continuous moral support, encouragement and much more. My greatest debt of all, however, will remain to the two people whom I owe the most, Dimitris, my father, and Garyfallia, my mother. Without their love, patience, moral encouragement and financial support this work would never have been embarked upon, let alone completed. Most of all I am grateful to them for believing in me even at times when I did not believe in myself. By far the greatest pleasure in writing this book has been the knowledge that at the end it would be dedicated to them.

INTRODUCTION

This book examines the close relationship which existed between the Greek political world and the Athenian press during the years 1919–22. The role of the press cannot be examined without taking into consideration three major issues of Modern Greek history: ethnikos dichasmos (the political and social polarisation which led to a major political cleavage), irredentist nationalism1 and foreign intervention. The period is important because it covers the key moments of the transition from the old to the new Greece. These years, which were marked by the ill-conceived Asia Minor military campaign undertaken by the Greek state resulted, both in the decisive defeat of the Greek army by the Turks in September 1922 and in the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923 (which fixed Greece’s boundaries). The end of the dream of the Megali Idea was replaced by a ‘new’ future for the Greek state, which had to take account of all the important political and social changes. In the long term this new future provided an opportunity for Greece to embrace a fresh social, political and ideological vision. The ideals of Westernisation and development, which had been constants ever since the establishment of an independent state, became the focus of the ‘new’ country.2 Some previous works have considered the political transition but these works need to go further as the transition was not only caused by the government but also by institutions such as the press. The much-studied Asia Minor campaign will be analysed from a new perspective, that of the Athenian press. In general, the present research sets out: (a) to identify the role, nature, content and function of the press in Athens during the years 1919–22 as well as the political factors that determined them; (b) to investigate the extent to which the Athenian press was responsible

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for the moulding of public opinion regarding the issue of the Asia Minor campaign and its disastrous consequences; and (c) to examine the connection between the Athenian press and the issues of national schism, irredentist nationalism and foreign intervention. As it is important to capture the mood swings which the Athenian press did so much to engender, a chronological approach in presenting the gradual unfolding of the crisis was chosen. The Asia Minor campaign began in a euphoric atmosphere, with the Megali Idea seemingly on the verge of final realisation. The majority of the capital’s newspapers, with the important exception of the Socialist/Communist Rizospastis, encouraged this feeling and adopted an uncritical approach to the situation. Public expectations were aroused when in fact what Greece was undertaking was far beyond the ability of its forces to achieve. The initially favourable international environment, which was all-important to the Greek cause, soon fractured as the Allies’ unity became strained by imperial rivalries and through the increasing challenge to the Near Eastern peace settlement posed by the Kemalists. Although political point-scoring soon returned to the Athenian press, reflecting the pro- and anti-Venizelos camps, there remained an element of unreality in the majority of the coverage of the unfolding drama in Asia Minor. It is also important to establish that certain themes will be drawn out to provide a framework for analysis. The influence of the government of the day in utilising sympathetic titles to put across its messages is readily apparent, even though it is difficult to establish a paper trail of conclusive evidence detailing the connection; this applies to both Venizelist and Royalist governments. Distortions of the truth are also clear in the coverage of the perceived attitudes of the Great Powers towards the Greek cause. Furthermore, reporting from the war front was censored and generally misleading, presenting an image that was removed from reality. All these ingredients ensured that the general public was ill-prepared for a disaster on the scale of what eventually occurred, and as a consequence the shock at the news from the front was all the greater. The book is divided into three parts. The first examines the readership and circulation of the Athenian press. The second examines the period from January 1919 to November 1920, when the Liberal Party of Eleftherios Venizelos was in power. The third part covers the period from November 1920, after Venizelos’s electoral defeat, until September 1922, when the United Opposition was in power, with Dimitris Gounaris as the leading figure. The aftermath is briefly considered in a short examination

Introduction

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of the trial and the execution of the Six and the Treaty of Lausanne, which reversed Greek gains at Sèvres, and the attitude of the newspapers towards this setback. Most of the dates in this study correspond to both the Julian and the Gregorian calendars; Greece adopted the latter in 1923. Thus, 10 December 1922 is written as 10/23 December 1922. However, the dates of the Greek newspapers correspond to the Julian calendar, while the dates of the British documents correspond to the Gregorian. Obstacles to research A researcher who undertakes an investigation in Greece of the kind reported here has to overcome several obstacles. Many of the archives have been lost or remain closed to the public. The available primary material, including Athenian newspapers, has suffered the consequences of the neglect caused by lack of funds for proper preservation. Only during recent years have serious efforts been made by archivists to remedy the situation. Greek newspapers of the years 1919–23 can be found in the Parliament Newspaper Archives in Lenorman Street, Athens. However, only two newspapers were available on microfilm; the rest are in bound volumes. Regrettably it proved impossible to examine complete runs for every title: several volumes have been lost while others, during the research period, were undergoing preservation work. Nonetheless, more than enough accessible material has survived to allow a worthwhile investigation into the role of the Athenian press to be undertaken. The Athenian titles had a national circulation, which more or less guaranteed their country-wide impact, but the circulation of the regional newspapers was limited to the provinces where they were published. The newspapers of the New Lands were not examined for practical reasons, as they would render the available press data unwieldy. This is not to deny that the regional press, especially around large population centres such as Salonika, exerted an important influence on public opinion. In the present work the most important Athenian newspapers were examined in greatest detail. The data examined consisted of entire articles; in other words it was not limited to words and phrases, which could have misrepresented the facts or obscured the true attitude of the newspaper. Day-to-day editorial decisions proved hugely difficult to analyse. Consultation of the newspapers’ archives was not possible; most had been destroyed, and no access was possible to those which still existed. For instance: Estia’s archives, as its owner Adonis Kyrou informed me, had been destroyed during the years of the German occupation; access

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to the archives of the newspaper Vima was impossible and my attempt to meet the owner Christos Lambrakis, the son of Dimitris Lambrakis, a wellknown Venizelist, was unsuccessful; no access was possible to the archives of the newspapers Ethnos and Akropolis; my attempt to consult the archives of KKE to find information about Rizospastis, the official organ of the Communist Party, was to no avail. Nor were the personal unpublished accounts of the reporters themselves of great value, given the limited number of surviving journalists’ archives. Only four were located – those of Ilias Voutieridis and Vasos Tsimbidaros in ELIA, of Kostas Michailidis’s in the Estia Neas Smyrnis and of Spyridon Simos in the General Archives of the State. These archives were of variable quality; the most revealing material was Ilias Voutieridis’s. A further problem is that the distance from the events of 1919–22 means that no influential figures remain alive. Although interviews were conducted with relatives and colleagues of the journalists who were in Asia Minor, they were not a productive source as most of the journalists themselves had avoided making reference to those years. Only four published their memoirs for the period: Michail Rodas,3 Christos Angelomatis,4 Fokos Kountouriotis5 and Ioannis Passas.6 Inevitably, therefore, much emphasis had to be given to what was written in the Athenian newspapers, especially in the leaders, often without being able to examine the thinking behind them. The limitations of the surviving evidence and the inaccessibility of editorial meeting minutes and internal correspondence (assuming these records survive) meant that great store had to be placed on the published word. There was an element, therefore, of reading the Athenian press and reliving the delusions foisted on the readership in the capital and beyond, in what were often little more than propagandist titles seeking to galvanise support for the Venizelist or anti-Venizelist camps. At the same time, two important qualifications are in order. First, my reading extended to all sides of the argument, with a range of titles far greater than the typical literate Athenian of the day would have digested. The extent of the research undertaken provided a comparative framework for a critical evaluation of which side was more deceived than deceiving. Second, an extraneous source was discovered which proved invaluable as a research tool. The British Foreign Office and the British Embassy in Athens had been seriously occupied with what had been written in the Athenian newspapers and with the attitudes of their editors. Some evidence concerning secret meetings was also uncovered at the National Archives in Kew, (formerly the Public Record Office). Even data regarding the circulation of the Athenian newspapers since 1920 was discovered there, when in Greece the only information available dates from 1927.

Introduction

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Further information regarding the press of the period, such as the relationship between leading politicians and members of the press, e.g. Venizelos and Kavafakis, was found in the Historical Archive of the Greek Foreign Ministry, in Venizelos’s private papers, which are kept in the Historical Archives of the Benaki Museum, and in Gounaris’s papers, which can be found in ELIA. The Asia Minor Campaign and Disaster: Myths and Realities The impact of the Asia Minor disaster on Greece was tremendous, and left an indelible mark upon the internal development and the external orientation of the country. It was ‘the fundamental event which transformed the character and the flow of the history of the nation in the contemporary era’.7 This is shown by the huge bibliography devoted to the Asia Minor campaign and to the political events surrounding the final defeat of the Greek army in August 1922.8 The subject is mired in controversy. For years afterwards one-sided accounts were published by Venizelists or antiVenizelists, each putting the blame on the other.9 In the 1970s a new generation of historians re-examined the period and questioned many of the traditional interpretations. M. Llewellyn Smith’s Oxford University DPhil dissertation, The Greek Occupation of Western Asia Minor 1919–22 and the ‘National Schism’, published later as a book under the title Ionian Vision,10 is considered a reliable work. In 1974 a Birkbeck College (London) PhD thesis by G. Gianoulopoulos, The Conference of Lausanne, 1922–1923, covered the negotiations at the Conference of Lausanne which led to the signing of the Treaty. N. Petsalis-Diomidis’s Greece at the Paris Peace Conference (1980) offers an excellent interpretation of the events and was an invaluable source of hitherto unpublished information. A. Karagiannis’s 1981 PhD thesis (Indiana University), Greece’s Quest for Empire at the Peace Conference, 1919–1920: The Diplomacy of Illusions also examined the Paris Peace Conference. V. Solomonidis’s 1985 PhD thesis (King’s College London), Greece in Asia Minor: the Greek Administration of the Vilayet of Aidin 1919–1922, covered the occupation of Smyrna by the Greeks. Her extensive research on the archives of different countries involved in the crisis sheds new light on the period. There have also been studies on the effect of foreign interference in Greek affairs. In the 1990s the most recent generation of historians examined the diplomatic dimensions of the period. T. Karvounarakis’s Cambridge University PhD thesis (1990), Anglo-Greek Relations, 1920–1922, is one of them. In 1999 Panagiotis Grigoriou in his thesis Vie et Représentations du Soldat Grec pendant la Guerre Gréco-Turque en Asie Mineure (1919–1922), at the Université de Picardie, examined the life and

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the representations of Greek soldiers at the Asia Minor front especially their experience of the culture of war. One of the most recent works on the period is Eleftheria Dalesiou’s PhD thesis Britain and the Greek–Turkish war and settlement of 1919–1923: the pursuit of security by ‘proxy’ in Western Asia Minor at the University of Glasgow in 2002. The Modern Greek State and the Greek Press The modern history of the Greek state coincides with that of the Athenian press, which in turn is closely connected with the history of Greek irredentist nationalism, providing as it did the technical means of ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is a nation.11 The press was one of the means which contributed to the transformation of a fervent belief in the idea of a Greek nation, based mainly on nationalist emotion, into a major force and into the mass movement which led to the Greek Revolution in the nineteenth century. In the first two decades of the twentieth century it played a leading role in the last and most disastrous phase of the realisation of the Megali Idea. It is therefore worth examining briefly the history of the Greek press from its very beginnings. The first Greek newspapers were not published on the mainland but in the Greek diaspora in Venice and Vienna. In fact, the idea of the revolution was imported from that diaspora and based on the idea of the creation of a new Greek state which would be the great successor to Ancient Greece. The press became the means for the promotion of such an idea.12 Reportedly, the first Greek newspaper, published weekly by George Bentoti, appeared in Vienna in 1784. Its publication was banned after the Turkish authorities complained to their Austrian counterparts that the newspaper was inciting the Greeks to revolt.13 The first Greek newspaper for which evidence exists was Efimeris, published in Vienna at the end of 1790. It contributed to the promotion of Greek independence in containing not only news but also insurrectionary poems by Rigas Phaireos. As a result both Phaireos and the publishers of the newspaper were imprisoned.14 Other newspapers which were published in the diaspora were Ermis o Logios and Ellinikos Tilegrafos. The former was published in Vienna for ten years (1811–21).15 The latter was the longest-published newspaper in the diaspora.16 The publication of three handwritten newspapers within the boundaries of what later became the Greek state, Pseftolyllada tou Galaxidiou, Etoliki and Acheloos coincided with the Greek revolutionary movement.17 The first newspaper to be printed was the Salpigx Elliniki.18 in Kalamata in August 1821, using equipment brought from abroad by Dimitrios Ypsilantis.19

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In 1824 the first Athenian newspaper, Efimeris ton Athinon,20 was published. In 1873 Dimitrios Koromilas founded in Athens the first Greek daily, Efimeris. Only four pages long, it contained news not only from Greece but also from the rest of the world.21 Soon afterwards other dailies were published, such as Akropolis by Vlasis Gavriilidis in 1883, Estia by Georgios Drosinis in 1894 and Embros by Dimitrios Kalapothakis in 1896, all of which played a significant role in the life of the country. The twentieth century was the golden age of Greek newspapers. Several important titles appeared in the opening two decades: the first two evening newspapers, Astrapi in 1901 and Esperini in 1903, Ethnos, published by Spyros Nikolopoulos, in 1913, Eleftheros Typos in 1916, Kathimerini, published by Georgios Vlachos, in 1919 and Eleftheron Vima, published by Dimitrios Lambrakis, in 1922.22 All the newspapers in circulation during the first two decades of the twentieth century – with the notable exception of the Socialist/Communist Rizospastis – played a leading role in educating the mass of the people in irredentist nationalism. They gave voice to the ideology of the organised political forces of the country and their different approaches to irredentism by being their organs of propaganda. The two opposing expressions of irredentist aspirations were manifested in the mottos ‘Great Greece’ and ‘Greece of the Two Continents and the Five Seas’ for the Venizelists, in contrast to the nostalgic concept of a ‘small and honourable Greece’ for the anti-Venizelists. On the one hand, the Venizelists were the principal, most dynamic and consistent agents of Greek irredentism, supporting a ‘pragmatic irredentism’ which involved plans for territorial expansion and for an increase in Greek economic power in the area of Asia Minor. On the other hand, the anti-Venizelists, while ostensibly expressing a similar conception of irredentist nationalism, actually came to represent the introverted patriotism and reactive parochialism of Old Greece, supporting a ‘romantic and utopian irredentism’ which was based on a ‘traditional military and bureaucratic regime under the monarchy’. This was expressed in their war-weariness and in their defensive patriotism.23 Whatever their differences, the irredentist nationalism shared by the two major political camps was the force which propelled the country into the disaster of 1922. The Athenian press was a weapon of propaganda, which gave voice to the irredentist nationalism of both factions and contributed to the transition of the Greek state from the era of irredentism to one of more realistic goals. Therefore the study of the Athenian press during the formative period 1919–22 is important not only for its impact on events but also in order to understand the evolution and formation of the modern Greek state, Greek politics and Greek identity.

1 The Athenian Press in the 1920s

… πρέπει προτού κυτάξω τις εφημερίδες να διαβάζω κάτι άλλο κάθε πρωί, γιατί το διάβασμα των εφημερίδων πρωί πρωί προστυχίζει τον άνθρωπο. Να διαβάζω κάτι άλλο, όπως στην Κορσική και έπειτα τις εφημερίδες. Στην Κορσική ήμουν ευτυχής που δεν είχα εφημερίδες να διαβάσω ή υποχρέωση να διαβάζω εφημερίδες. Ιον Δραγούμης, Αθήνα, Απρίλης 19201 Introduction Pierre Nora considers that an axiomatic function of the press, and the media in general, is to ‘give speeches, proclamations and interviews the authenticity and the efficiency of an irrevocable gesture’.2 Publication of an event in the media becomes the prerequisite for its existence. Leading events can exist only when they become known. Therefore the relationship between a type of event and a type of media are so intense that they seem inseparable. From the moment a speech, a proclamation or an interview is published in the press or other media it becomes an event which is distinguished by its importance and by the newness of its message, as scoops are fresher than common news.3 This chapter is devoted to the press generally and to the role played by the Athenian press in Greece after WW1. Section One includes a general overview of the role and importance of the press in society. The second part of Section One focuses on the Athenian press in the aftermath of WW1. The issues of readership and circulation are considered in relation to the population of the country and the social status of the newspaperreading public. Section Two seeks to examine the general connection of the

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Athenian press with the national political parties, as well as to discuss the political role the former played domestically. Section Three discusses the legal restrictions which were imposed by the state on the press and which served to censor critical news and information. I 1. The Role of the Press Communication is a necessary social activity; without it there can be no society – only a collection of individuals;4 and the press is one of the most vivid mediums of communication. It is a means by which the public acquires information about the world and through which it derives its knowledge and perceptions of current political and social problems and of the way they are either completely resolved, partially resolved or left to fester. The press is a very significant source in history. Macaulay once said that ‘the only true history of a country is to be found in its newspapers’.5 The press as a historical source should be examined carefully not only as an object but also as a subject.6 The press is ‘alive’, and a very revealing and vivid element for historians. It can describe the historical period they study and can help them to draw important conclusions. There is a special bond between the press and contemporary history. It is not possible for a historian to study the history of Modern Europe without referring to the press as a source. However, when historians study the press, they should bear in mind two very important rules. First, they should take into consideration the conditions of the era under examination, especially what the individuals and the specific groups knew, and not read through the prism of hindsight. What is now a known past was then an unknown future. The second rule is connected with the first: the evaluation-appreciation of past events should not be undertaken through present knowledge, but through knowledge of the past: the importance of an event is relative. The press publishes and evaluates an event according to the particular conditions of the historical period to which that event belongs. The opinions are expressed in connection with this event in its creation and in its experience, and not in connection with the historical event of the ‘present’ past.7 The impact of the press on public opinion is a constant cause of debate. Does the press mould public opinion? And what do we mean by the expression ‘public opinion’? The term is used for the prevailing and often diverse views of the public concerning a particular topic. Public opinion is neither unitary nor stable. It is changeable. Alexandros Svolos even claimed that public opinion does not exist. It is the systematic processing of ideas for



The Athenian Press in the 1920s

5

the creation of a false opinion through which the public expresses itself in a certain way on a specific matter.8 There are in fact many public opinions – the most important attitudes of groups and individuals, which are always in constant development.9 The relationship between public opinion and the press is mutual and bilateral. The press can influence public opinion, but no newspaper can survive without readers. Another view is that the press is the echo of the ideas and the attitudes of the readers rather than the echo of the opinions and choices of editors.10 People usually prefer to read newspapers which strengthen their pre-existing attitudes, opinions and world views. However, the press can be more than a tool which individuals use in order to form their own opinions. In long-established titles, the more serious ones guide readers.11 The press is a form of propaganda. It is a transmitter of messages which the reader should analyse and assimilate, and the message is the primary element of propaganda. Although veiled, propaganda seeking to influence thoughts, beliefs and actions, is conscious and deliberate in such a way that the interests of editors, or those they support, will be enhanced.12 It can shape opinions and influence the reaction of readers to what they read. However, the press can also influence the public for whom journalists write. Its power is exercised not only on society but also on the political system. The link between the press and politics can be very strong. The press can be the most significant arm of a political party, as it can promote party aims. But the press can also hold the party – especially the one in power – responsible, safeguarding the public against corruption, incompetence and despotism. If the party in government betrays its principles, then the titles which helped thrust it into power can just as easily bring it down. The press can be, according to the allegiance of the proprietors, either a mouthpiece for the government or a ‘watchdog’. The power of the press, as first reported in Thomas Carlyle’s book,13 is revealed by the phrase ‘fourth estate’, which was originally used as a synonym for newspapers and has been attributed to Edmund Burke. The press was a new fourth estate added to the three existing estates of priesthood, aristocracy and commons. Modern commentators interpret the term ‘fourth estate’ as meaning the fourth ‘power’, which checks and counterbalances the three state ‘powers’ of executive, legislature and judiciary. Since the mid-nineteenth century, conventional liberal thought has subscribed to the view that the press is an instrument against rather than of political power. However, to argue that the press necessarily takes an anti-government stance is as simplistic as the notion that the press simply represents the government. Representing people to authority is, in liberal theory, the third key democratic function of the media. The other two functions, according

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to that theory, are the ‘watchdog’ role, through which the media acts as a check on the state and monitors the full range of state activity by fearlessly exposing abuses of power, and the agency role of informing its readers of the current political debate. All of the above can be achieved, in the liberal view, through the free market.14 According to the pluralist liberal democratic model, the press, and the mass media in general, are seen as fulfilling the vitally important role of the fourth estate, the guardians of democracy and defenders of the public interest. James Mill, the originator of the concept of a watchdog function for the press, advocated press freedom because it made known the conduct of the individuals who have chosen to wield the powers of government.15 The watchdog role assumes that democracies need informed and participating citizens to manage their common affairs, and believes that public debate is more likely to produce rational and just outcomes if it takes account of different views and interests.16 According to Jane Seaton and James Curran, the idea that the press defends the public interest is a myth. They have argued that the press is not a defender of the public interest by sketching out the interlinked political and commercial powers that came to preside over the media industry in Britain. According to them the media have not been ‘instruments of crude propaganda: rather the media are political actors in their own rights’.17 In recent years increasing attention has been paid to the work of Jürgen Habermas,18 who emphasised that a healthy democratic system is one in which concerns are transmitted from the civil-social periphery to the political centre, for deliberative debate and appropriate action. He concluded that there is no question that politics and the public have a mutual influence on each other. In this relationship the media can play the role of the mediator between the state and the public, assume an active and momentous role and get the chance to ‘reverse the normal circuits of communication in the political system and the public sphere’ and ‘shift the entire system’s mode of problem solving’. Only through their presentation in the media do important topics reach the public and gain a place on the ‘public agenda’.19 Sometimes before an issue can make its way into the political system, via the election of marginal candidates, radical parties or ‘established’ parties, and receive formal consideration, it requires support by the public, which can be accomplished by the help of the media. However, there is no lack of examples of newspapers which have received secret subsidies in return for political favours – the refutation or suppression of stories which could harm politicians – or of journalists who have acted as little more than government mouthpieces.20 The state has at



The Athenian Press in the 1920s

7

its disposal a wide range of means – coercion, regulation and patronage – which enable it to control the press, and the media in general. James Curran mentioned some of the measures which have been deployed to encourage the media to support dominant government interests: … repressive legal limitations on freedom of media expression, backed by tough punishment; the licensing of newspapers; control over entry into the journalism profession; partisan allocation of commercial television and radio franchises; packing public broadcasting and media regulatory authorities with government supporters; the lifting of monopoly restraints and provision of financial aid to assist only pro-government media.21 The relationship between the press and the state is not one of equals, but depends on who holds the political power and who deploys it and who is subject to it. A change in the regime brings a change in the relationship between the press and the state. Curran considered the individual regime present in each country to be the key factor that influences the media. In authoritarian societies political power is monopolised by the ruling party and ‘is maintained through a clientelist system of patronage which binds together different social groups within the structure of the party and the state’. Therefore the ‘will of the people’ represented by the media tends to be defined by the ruling party. In this case the information read in the newspapers could be true or false, and the impact of their views on the people’s views could be strong or weak. Nevertheless, the political significance would be nil as the political action would be dictated by the government. The more repressive a regime is the more it exercises limitations on the freedom of the media, and of the press in particular. In liberal corporatist societies, on the other hand, a consensus is formed through consultation between government and organised interests.22 Within this system the consensus of society tends to prevail regardless of which party is in power, and this consensus is echoed by the media.23 The above analysis is drawn from theorists who have mainly focused on the media in ‘democratic’ systems, especially Britain and Western Europe in the twentieth century. However, none of the cases described above fits that of early twentieth-century Greece in terms of the political system and the relationships between the state, the media and the public. As mentioned above, ‘in authoritarian societies political power is maintained through a clientelist system of patronage which binds together different social groups within the structure of the party and the state.’24 Although the system in

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The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

Greece was a ‘democratic’ rather than authoritarian regime – a constitutional monarchy based on the principles of the people’s sovereignty and universal male suffrage – a clientelist system of patronage determined the relationship of the state, the opposition parties and the press. In substance the constitutional liberalism which had been established by the revised 1864 constitution did not manage to adjust to the demands of the new social and financial situation of the country, which needed the authorities to be more effective in their activities and to function more rationally within the parliamentary system. Several political crises deeply affected constitutional liberalism, although the system never lost its legal status. However, the state often violated the principle of constitutional legitimacy. Here lies one of the most important peculiarities of the Greek case. Several legal violations of the constitutionally established liberties occurred because of the arbitrariness of how power was exercised. One of the deepest blows to the parliamentary system was struck by King Constantine in 1915, when he twice forced Prime Minister Venizelos to resign and dissolve parliament, as it was not willing to follow the monarch’s Germanophile policy.25 The violation of the constitutional liberties also involved the institution of the press. The arbitrariness in the imposition of the law of the ‘state of siege’, for example, deprived the press of its freedom to publish all the information it considered important and gave the state the power to stop the publication of certain newspapers, using the excuse of external danger.26 On the surface, the state, through its regulatory instruments, was empowered to supervise and control the press. Such an interpretation, however, does not take into account the complex political and media environment of the 1920s. An approach which analyses the political, economic and cultural pressures and influences affecting how the Athenian press in the 1920s operated leads to recognition of the ‘give-and-take negotiation’ that took place between the state and media throughout the period. 2. The Athenian Press in the Aftermath of WW1 In the 1920s Greece was suffering from a financial, ideological and political crisis. After the end of WW1 and the belated participation of Greece, the country found itself involved in another conflict, the Asia Minor campaign, which almost bankrupted it. 1,500,000 refugees from Asia Minor and Thrace, who had arrived in Greece before and after the Asia Minor Disaster, increased the already significant financial hardships of the country. The financial crisis was followed by an ideological and political one. Ideologically, the Asia Minor Disaster ended the irredentist dreams of the Greeks and the Megali Idea, the romantic dream of the revival of the Byzantine-



The Athenian Press in the 1920s

9

Greek Empire centred on Constantinople by uniting within the bounds of a single state all the areas of substantial Greek population.27 Politically, the military movement of 1922 and the counter-revolution of Leonardopoulos-Gargalidis in 1923 raised a constitutional question: whether the head of state should be a hereditary monarch or an elected president. The establishment of the republic in 1924, after a plebiscite, did not terminate the political crisis.28 These political, ideological and financial crises were reflected in the press in the 1920s. It was both a mirror of the neo-Hellenic society and an instrument for the political and ideological struggles within the regenerated nation.29 The National Statistical Service [Ethniki Statitstiki Ypiresia](ESY) provided official information on the Greek press in the 1920s, in the figures published in 1931 which referred to the year 1927.30 According to this source, 440 newspapers and periodicals were published in Greece in 1927, of which 261 were newspapers and 179 periodicals.31 During the years 1901–25, 246 newspapers and periodicals were founded, that is 33 per cent of the newspapers and 50 per cent of the periodicals published in Greece in 1927. Of the newspapers published in 1926–27, 17 per cent were founded in those years. 48 per cent of all Greek newspapers and periodicals were published in the province of Sterea Ellada, which included Athens. Most of the newspapers incorporated socio-political content.32 25 per cent of Greek socio-political newspapers were published in Athens. The daily Athenian socio-political newspapers amounted to 11 per cent of all newspapers published in the country. The concentration of titles in the capital reflected its manifest significance as the centre of domestic politics and the heart of government. Of the newspapers which were published in the country, 85 per cent were owned by single proprietors and only ten per cent by companies or associations. Figure 1.1 presents the national circulation of the Athenian newspapers according to the ESY, with the Kathimerini and the Eleftheron Vima having the lead and the Eleftheros Typos the lowest circulation, reflecting its post-1922 decline (during the years 1917–22 its circulation was reputedly much larger).33 In Megali Elliniki Engyklopedia it is claimed that the overall newspaper circulation in Athens in 1920 was 75,000 copies.34 This is, unfortunately, the only official information concerning press circulation during the years 1919–22. Data on circulation figures comes from the newspapers themselves, and so one cannot be sure of its reliability. However, it is indicative of the production figures of each newspaper. A factor which should be taken into consideration in gleaning some understanding of the particular readership of individual Greek newspapers

10

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

Figure 1.1 1927 ESY census

in the 1920s is literacy, a social ‘bias’ which makes newspapers a less accessible medium to some members of a society than others.35 According to the ESY census, data on the educational level of the population in 1920 exists for 4,816,025 people (out of a national population of 5,531,474). Only 42 per cent were literate. In 1928 50 per cent of the population were literate. The illiterate category includes not only those unable to read, but also those incapable of understanding the meaning of what they read.36 The number of literate people aged 20 and over was 1,773,236 (29.36 per cent).37 Figure 1.2 presents a comparison between the educational level of the Greek population between the years 1920 and 1928. Another important factor concerning readership is the employment and the social classification of the population. In the 1920s Greece was a predominantly rural country, with the largest percentage of the population belonging to the lower classes. In 1920 49.31 per cent of the working population were peasants and 7.48 per cent cattle breeders. By 1928 the percentage of peasants had increased to 53.56 per cent, while that of cattle breeders had declined to 6.93 per cent (see Figure 1.3).38 Both Figures 1.2 and 1.3 provide an explanation of why the readership of Greek newspapers in the 1920s was low. Svolos estimated that the daily circulation of Athenian newspapers in 1928 nationally was almost 200,000. Taking into account the estimate that five people read the same title, 1,000,000 people out of a total population of approximately 6,000,000 people read a newspaper (Figure 1.4).39 It is probable that the circulation of newspapers and consequently their readership



The Athenian Press in the 1920s

11

Figure 1.2 Educational level of the Greek population during the years 1920 (column 1) and 1928 (column 2)

Figure 1.3 Social classification of the Greek population during the years 1920 and 1928

12

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

Figure 1.4 Circulation of Athenian newspapers in 1928 according to Svolos

in 1920 was similar, though slightly smaller. The readers or the ‘audience’ of newspapers were far greater than the circulation figures alone indicate. For example, coffee-house proprietors usually subscribed to a newspaper, and men read the news out loud in coffee houses for the benefit of those who were illiterate.40 Thus the dissemination of press stories was actually more extensive than the available circulation figures suggest. The low circulation of Athenian newspapers is confirmed by data derived from six documents found in the The National Archives (TNA) covering the years 1920, 1923 and 1924.41 The Athenian newspapers, both morning and evening, chosen for this research were all political dailies. The choice was mainly based on the number of copies produced in 1927, according again to the ESY. The information concerning the circulation of Greek newspapers in 1920, 1923 and 1924 derived from TNA was also taken into consideration. The newspapers chosen are the following: Kathimerini, Eleftheron Vima, Ethnos, Estia, Esperini, Scrip, Embros, Politia, Rizospastis and Eleftheros Typos. However, two newspapers incorporated here were not mentioned in the ESY data: Akropolis, which was not published after November 1920, and Patris. Although the former was a newspaper which did not have a high circulation, it is included in the research because of the prominent personality of its founder V. Gavriilidis, who was known to often change the political leaning of his newspaper in the belief that the attachment of a newspaper to a political camp resulted in the ‘sacrifice’ of the interests of the people and of the country.42 Patris,



The Athenian Press in the 1920s

13

on the other hand (which ceased publication in 1923) is included because of its strong Venizelist leanings and because it was mentioned as being the newspaper with the highest circulation in 1920 in the TNA document. II 1. The Athenian Press and the Domestic Political Situation The Athenian press during the years 1919–22, like the political forces, divided in such a way that they can be put mainly into two categories, the Venizelists, who supported Eleftherios K. Venizelos and his Liberal Party, and the anti-Venizelists, who supported the royalist camp. Venizelism and Venizelists on one side and anti-Venizelism and antiVenizelists on the other are terms which were first used during the years of the Ethnikos Dichasmos, an intense political conflict which split Greek society into two bitterly antagonistic camps, one loyal to the monarch, the other to Venizelos. King Constantine was intent on preserving Greece’s neutrality in WW1, which he considered a Great Power struggle, but Venizelos believed that even though it was a small power, Greece should participate in the war on the side of the Entente. He believed that the war provided a unique opportunity to fully realise the Megali Idea and form a ‘Great Greece’ that, in time, could itself become a Great Power. Venizelism and anti-Venizelism were both collective mentalities and ideologies on specific topics like the monarchy, parliamentarism, old party spirit, peace, war and national interests.43 Within the Liberal Party liberal and socialist ideas44 co-existed with other traditional, and unrealistic, ideas for a Great Greece, and yet others about the importance of the protection and help of the Western Powers, which determined the foreign policy of the Liberal Party. The anti-Venizelist camp, on the other hand, had adopted a friendly attitude towards the Germans during WW1, having identified itself with the monarchy and the intense opposition to the dependence of Greece on the Western Powers.45 The dispute over the direction of foreign policy was an inter-dominant class-type conflict46 between the traditional and liberal elements of the bourgeoisie regarding hegemony over the nature and the pace of the transformation which Greek society was undergoing during the inter-war period.47 George Mavrogordatos summarised the interpretation of the conflict in three words: charisma, the emergence of inspirational leaders and movements, clientelism, the formation and operation of a patron-client system, and cleavages, the politically relevant divisions in the social structure. Charismatic leaders cause a schism. In the case of the Venizelist and anti-Venizelist

14

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

camp it was during the Ethnikos Dichasmos in 1915–16 that their respective leaders consolidated their authority. If the Ethnikos Dichasmos was a conflict over charisma, both camps can be considered to have had charismatic leaders. There was no doubt that Venizelos was a charismatic leader. On the anti-Venizelist side a competing charismatic authority existed – King Constantine. Clientelism, on the other hand, was based on a patron-client relationship which had been in force in Greece since the mid-nineteenth century. Political parties consisted of unstable coalitions of patrons at the head of their clientele-coalitions which were formed for the conquest of office, which was essential if protection and services to clients were to be provided. Voters behaved as clients who supported their own patron, and changed parties with him. More than policies and groups, they responded to private inducements. Clientelism can lead to conflict between those who benefit from the system and those who are excluded from it, and between political forces based on patron-client relations and those created on different bases. Finally, the most important source of social cleavage is class. There can be distinct and often inconsistent dimensions of social stratification and cleavage. Different class divisions can be expected to emerge or predominate at different stages of historical development, and class cleavages will dominate certain phases rather than others. In the case of Greece, in addition to such cleavages there were also ethnic, religious and regional divisions which were interrelated and overlapping dimensions of political conflict. Cleavages interacted with charisma and clientelism.48 The Greek press during the years 1919–22, both Venizelist and anti-Venizelist, represented the organised voice of the ideology of the political party it supported, and disseminated propaganda on behalf of that party. More than that, such propaganda used political myths,49 symbols and images.50 The most important and longest-lived myth in Greek history51 was that of the national interest, presented as influencing every stage of political and social life, and this resulted in the consolidation of certain attitudes and behaviour. Supporters of the rival camp were considered to be personal enemies, and members of the competing party were presented as dangerous traitors opposed to the national interests of the country.52 Several other myths were mobilised by the Athenian press, such as the myth of internal enemies, which labelled political opponents as enemies of the nation, the myth of external enemies and the myth of Great Power protection. A mythology around Venizelos and around King Constantine was also mobilised. These myths had a twofold role: they were deployed by the government press in order to allow the government to remain in power; and they were used by the opposition press as a ‘rebound’ against the government, whenever there



The Athenian Press in the 1920s

15

was a change in the political, military and economic situation. The myths, symbols and images were also used by the press in order to encourage a national ‘we-feeling’, and to incite readers to feel a sense of pride in every success and displeasure at every national failure. Two groupings of Athenian newspapers existed. On the one side, there were the serious quality titles, which exercised systematic and organised propaganda; Kathimerini, Patris, Eleftheron Vima, Estia, Ethnos, Politia, Embros, Eleftheros Typos and Akropolis (although Akropolis had some elements of demagogic discourse) are classified in this category. On the other side, there were the populist newspapers which, apart from spreading propaganda, acted demagogically, trying to fanaticise and incite the public through the use of emotive language. Rather than leading their readers to conscious political choices, they used extremist phrases to provoke emotional ebullition. The Esperini and the Scrip were populist newspapers; in the 1920s there were no newspapers which could be called popular.53 All the above newspapers were private businesses, and their financial interests were closely linked to the political conditions of the country. They were outwardly independent, but in substance they served the particular interests of the party they supported. The only exception was the Rizospastis, which had originally been a newspaper of socialist and progressive liberal ideas, interested in the concerns of the working class, but in 1920 became the official organ of the Socialist Labour Party of Greece (then known as SEKE, but in 1924 renamed the Kommounistiko Komma or Communist Party). It propagated the ideology of SEKE, which was a party of internationalist orientation. Rizospastis opposed both bourgeois parties and the newspapers which promoted their ideology. 2. The Athenian Press and the Political World Greek inter-war politics was dominated, as mentioned above, by the polarisation of two major political camps, each consisting of one major party. Excluding these two, there were several minor and often short-lived political parties which lacked what Mavrogordatos labeled the presumed requirements of democracy and modernity.54 The relationship between the political parties and press during the inter-war period in Greece was close. The party in power could not survive without the support of the press. Therefore it sought to remain in authority, through the support of the pro-government press, in the form of ‘give and take’ agreements which included not only the interests of the state but also the interests of the press. The Athenian press was not immune from this relationship with the source of political power. The press functioned in a

16

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

patron-client system in which politicians and the owners/editors of the newspapers were involved, exchanging services for the mutual benefit of both. This patron-client relationship had all the characteristics defined by Mavrogoradatos: dyadic and personal, contractual and achieved, informal, fundamentally instrumental, predicated on reciprocity, asymmetrical and vertical.55 An example is found in the relationship between Petros Giannaros, the owner of Esperini, and Venizelos, which lasted as long as Venizelos and Giannaros were exchanging mutually beneficial services. While Venizelos met Giannaros’s personal demands the newspaper supported Venizelos and his policy, but the relationship ended in 1915 when Venizelos stopped meeting the other’s demands (his desire to be elected as a deputy), and the newspaper ceased its support.56 The allegiance of the newspaper Eleftheros Typos for Venizelos was the outcome of his relationship with Kavafakis, which, although a personal friendship, still did not escape the patron-client system. Venizelos not only provided exclusive information to Eleftheros Typos but also supported the newspaper financially.57 The press also had a strong connection with the opposition parties which challenged the existing government in order to supplant it.58 In order to accomplish its goals, the opposition needed the backing of influential newspapers. The role of the opposition press was to challenge the government’s authority, particularly during elections, and to support the interests of the group it supported in order to gain power. The opposition press and parties were also involved in a patron-client relationship. The sole exception was Rizospastis.59 The relationship between the opposition parties and the press had a twofold function: (a) to complement the relationship between the state and the press, especially in moments of crisis when a united front was needed in order for an external danger to be confronted effectively; and (b) to work against the government, when it was considered incapable of dealing with difficult conditions which put the state in danger. On the national level, parties were primarily ‘informal parliamentary parties of notables’, loose groups of people who had standing in society. The two basic elements of a party as the only sources of authoritative decisions were ‘a group of deputies’ who recognised ‘the same leader’. According to Mavrogordatos there were two forms of party meetings: the party caucuses, which had an informal character – meetings of the leader with political friends (i.e. those who held the same political beliefs), or with members of the party; and the general meeting (or general assembly), which had a formal character and was an assembly of actual members of Parliament or those of the last elected Parliament. It was also possible for former deputies, unsuccessful or future candidates, and professional politicians to be invited to the general meeting.60



The Athenian Press in the 1920s

17

In the absence of a formal constitution, the actual party operation can be reconstructed through press reports.61 The press provided information regarding party caucuses as well as general meetings, not only of the party they supported but also of the other parties.62 Reporting the meetings of parties which the individual newspaper did not support was mainly undertaken in order to present the other parties’ disorganisation and the lack of coherence and cooperation of the other parties, to show the unsuitability of the other camp assuming power. The term ‘cooperation’ was used to describe the informal meetings of the party leader with the political friends and members of the party. However, the ‘friends’ were mostly not named – the general cover-term was used. Several of these informal meetings were not reported by the press, but an invaluable source of information about them are the memoirs and diaries of those who attended them. There the term ‘friends’ was expanded to include a full description of these participants. The issues which were discussed are recorded in the memoirs.63 People of the press – owners/editors and journalists – participated both in party caucuses and in general meetings. However, there were newspaper publishers, such as Georgios Vlachos and Dimitris Lambrakis (owners of Kathimerini and Eleftheron Vima respectively) who, although they rarely attended the official party meetings, exercised a powerful and often decisive influence on party affairs. The former exercised the strongest influence in the anti-Venizelist camp and the latter in the Venizelist.64 Press reports regarding the general meetings of the other parties were used by the press for the transmission and formation of values and opinions. The general meeting of the Socialist Party in April 1919, for example, in which the party’s platform was presented, was used by the Venizelist newspapers to discourage workers from voting for the Socialists. The Venizelist press alleged that it put in danger all the ‘sanctities of the nation’, the institution of the formation of the Balkan Federation, which would open the borders to enemies such as the Bulgarians).65 In substance one of the main worries of the Liberal Party was the expansion of the socialist movement’s influence within the working class. The major political camps in Greece were also divided at the local level into groups, called associations. Initially the associations aligned themselves with the Liberal Party (e.g. the Political Association of Athens). The associations existed before 1909, but mushroomed on the eve of and after the coup d’état of 1909; they had mostly an urban, middle-class and elite character, and were opposed to the Old Parties. However, in 1916 they changed, becoming popular, mass organisations in both town and country. This time the anti-Venizelist camp held the initiative. The associations were formed by discharged

18

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

soldiers, and were known as the League of Reservists (Epistrati). It seems that these mass organisations were planned by the General Staff (particularly its deputy-in-chief, General Ioannis Metaxas66) and directed by royalist officers together with the local kommatarches of the Old Parties. During the years 1916–20 the Epistrati developed into a mass movement which terrorised the Venizelists, usurped legal authority and put pressure on the anti-Venizelist party leaders. Before the elections of 1920 the anti-Venizelist camp reconstituted the Leagues of Reservists as People’s Political Clubs, with the role of organising the pre-electoral campaign of the anti-Venizelist camp. In substance they continued to play the role they had played in 1916: they were extremist pressure groups and instruments of repression.67 It seems that there was a strong connection between the associations and individual supportive newspaper titles, as the latter were transformed into their own organs, and consequently encouraged and justified the violent activities of the extremist groups. The Kathimerini and Esperini were the two anti-Venizelist newspapers which supported the activities of the People’s Political Clubs.68 A similar effort to organise associations by the Liberal Party had begun in January 1916, when it founded the Liberal Association of Macedonia. Similar efforts continued during the years 1917–20 but these efforts were not as successful as those of the anti-Venizelist camp. The creation of the Liberal clubs had the support of the Venizelist press, which considered them a serious effort to organise the party.69 III 1. The Greek State, Censorship and ‘Control’ Censorship, the action of the state which protects itself from the reality reported by the press,70 is a factor that should be taken into consideration when studying the press. The Athenian press in the 1920s was full of censored blank columns. Censorship took two forms in Greece, political and military. Although legislation guaranteeing freedom of the press existed, there were distinct limits, particularly when the country was involved in a warlike situation, and the government had imposed a ‘state of siege’; this included censorship exercised by the military authorities. A series of laws restricting the freedom of the Greek press was passed, at the beginning of the 1910s which were strengthened in 1917 when the country entered WW1. However, there were several instances of improper and arbitrary use of the state of siege, such as when it was imposed for reasons of internal order rather than for the protection of state security from external threats, as defined by Article 91 of the 1911 constitution.



The Athenian Press in the 1920s

19

Censorship before and during the years of WW1 The 1911 constitution consolidated the freedom of the press in times of peace. According to Article 14 the press was free and everyone could make known their thoughts within the bounds of law by writing in the press. It forbade censorship and other preventive measures, such as the seizure of copies of newspapers or other printed material, before or after publication. However, the qualification ‘within the bounds of law’ in fact placed distinct limits on this putative freedom. Seizure was permitted, in exceptional cases and after publication, when the printed material insulted the Christian religion, the King or was regarded by law as indecent and an insult to public morality. Also forbidden was the publication of news or announcements which referred to military movements or defensive military constructions. When publications libelled the private life of notables such as politicians, both the editor and the writer shared the responsibility, and were obliged to compensate the victim with damages as decided by a judge.71 However, Article 91 of the same constitution could override Article 14 in cases of emergency; the latter defined when a state of siege could be imposed on the country. According to Article 91, in cases of a warlike situation or general mobilisation arising from an external danger, the provisions of Articles 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 14, 20 and 95 would be suspended, either nationwide or in selected parts of the country, by royal decree.72 On 6 October 1912, as Greece became embroiled in the First Balkan War, a state of siege was imposed. Law 4069 (ΔΞΘ΄) determined the conditions under which it could be imposed; it consisted of 13 articles.73 When a state of siege was imposed all the power invested in the civil authorities, including responsibility for law and order, was transferred to the military, which had the right to forbid the publication of news that might endanger the country, and the power to seize the entire print run of any offending newspapers or other printed material, before or after publication. Violation of Law 4069 resulted in a court martial, which had the power to imprison. The same punishment would be imposed on those whose publications in the press put the security of the state of siege in danger, or endangered public order, or led to the incitement of offences referred to in Article 5 of the same law.74 The ‘state of siege’ was raised after the end of the Balkan Wars on 18 November 1913.75 In 1914, Law 173 forbade the publication of news and announcements concerning military movements, defensive military constructions and royal decrees. This law consisted of two articles. Violators were punished by a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months and the seizure of printed material, including the offending publication.76

20

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

Greece entered WW1 in June 1917. In times of war no nation gives out information regarding the military or political situation which could damage its fighting power or dishearten its population.77 Before the imposition of a state of siege in Greece, the Office of Censorship was founded in the Ministry of Transport by the legislative decree of 7 July 1917 to exercise censorship on the telegraphic, postal and telephonic correspondence of the press.78 On 2 September 1917 Law 818 was passed; this concerned the validation of the foregoing decree. It determined the purpose of the Censorship Office and the conditions under which it was to serve. After censorship was abolished, the office would be closed down and all who had worked there would be dismissed, including the director and the assistant director. A special credit was set aside in the annual state budget for the Censorship Office.79 A few days after Greek involvement in WW1, a state of siege was imposed incrementally, by royal decree, throughout the country, starting from Attiki (which included Athens) and Viotia.80 On 19 September 1917 a further law was passed which involved the Ministry of Defence in the exercise of censorship. This was Law 913, concerning the foundation of a service for the censorship of the press.81 The Minister of Defence had the right to found offices of censorship in other towns which were under the state of siege and to appoint the staff of those offices.82 Censorship after the end of WW1 Greece continued in a state of siege even after the end of WW1, although the justification for it, namely protection from an external military enemy, no longer existed. Similar measures had been taken in other countries which participated in the Great War. In France, Great Britain and even the United States the war news which could be published had to emanate from official sources; no independent reporting was allowed.83 Yet such restrictions were lifted in these countries after the end of the war. The strict measures in Greece offered the opposition grounds for accusing Prime Minister Venizelos of imposing dictatorial and unconstitutional restrictions. However, for the Greek government the restrictions were the only way it had of controlling what was written in the Athenian press, particularly in the opposition titles, when Venizelos himself had to deal with very difficult diplomatic negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference, and when the domestic situation had deteriorated so far that it had become known even in the West, following the discouraging reports coming out of the country.84 Even the Venizelist newspapers such the Anglophile Estia were mobilised to write articles justifying the government’s strict measures.



The Athenian Press in the 1920s

21

However, although censorship was strict, some anti-government articles escaped the censor and were published in newspapers in Athens85 and in the provinces.86 Ostensibly the state of siege was raised across the country on 23 April 1920, but censorship of the press continued to be imposed. Therefore, the publication of news or announcements regarding military movements and defensive military constructions was forbidden as was criticism of the warlike policy of the government. Officers could force the press to publish the official proceedings of all criminal trials. Finally all crimes which were committed against the security of the country, the constitution, public order and peace, no matter what the position of the instigator or his collaborators, came under the jurisdiction of the courts-martial.87 However, on 21 May 1920 the state of siege was officially re-imposed, nationwide, because of the Asia Minor campaign.88 After the atrocities in Smyrna in May 191989 censorship of the news from Asia Minor became much stricter. Prime Minister Venizelos, himself, ordered the censorship. Afraid of any obstacles which could derail the smooth occupation of Smyrna and its neighbouring hinterland, Venizelos realised how much he needed the full support of the entire Greek population. He needed news which served the national purpose to be published in the newspapers. He did not want it disclosed that a report was being prepared which put the entire blame for the atrocities in Smyrna on the Greeks and in addition might recommend the termination of the Greek occupation. He also realised that restrictive measures should be extended beyond the Greek mainland to incorporate the occupied area of Smyrna. He sent two telegrams, one to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the other to Aristidis Stergiadis,90 in which his directions were very clear: the censors should not permit any publication of descriptions of the Greek army’s advance into the interior of Asia Minor. Each Greek military victory had to be mentioned with praise, but it was not useful to the national cause to state that each part of the land which was claimed had been seized only after overcoming heavy Turkish resistance. The Greek army, according to Venizelos’s telegram, did not need advertising.91 However, in certain cases Venizelos sent his own directions to the Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerning the publication of news about the campaign in Asia Minor when he believed that the army’s advance should be used in order to excite the Greek people’s patriotism on the mainland, or when he was afraid that certain news, even if it was not published in the press, could be leaked through the telegrams of foreign newspaper correspondents.92

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The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

The state of siege was raised for the elections of 1920, but on 1 April 1921 was partly re-imposed (in Articles 5, 6, 14 and 95 of the constitution) in the Peloponnese, Sterea Ellada, Thessaly, Epirus and Macedonia, and all the Greek islands. The state of siege included restrictions limiting press freedom. All mention of news and information concerning the army, the navy and events from the front was forbidden.93 With the royal decree of 6 June 1921 the government imposed a further state of siege on security grounds, as new military operations were about to begin. It was a legitimate pretext by which the government could control not only news from the front but also criticism from its political opponents. From 1911 to 1922, therefore, the Greek state tried to limit the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press. The regulations imposed under the state of siege and during the period of war were designed to establish a permanent system of control and to block the free expression of dissenting views in the press. However, while attention must be paid to the state’s effort to regulate what could be printed, it should not be considered in isolation from the dynamics of the media environment of the 1920s. Far from being the primary marker of the state’s relationship with the press, censorship was secondary to the daily development of a media culture which encouraged the press to co-operate with elements of the state. Conclusion The Athenian press was an essential part of the political culture of the country. However, despite the private ownership of the Athenian newspapers – excluding Rizospastis – which is said to provide the final guarantee of the press’s independence from political pressure and executive interference,94 the Athenian press was far from being an independent fourth estate. Proprietors and editors had tight alliances with politicians or they were strong figures actively involved in politics behind the scenes, like Georgios Vlachos and Dimitris Lambrakis. In certain cases the personal relations between the owners and the politicians determined the attitude of the newspaper, for example, in the case of Giannaros’s relations with Venizelos and the resultant effect on Esperini. These connections indicate that the Athenian press was not ‘free’. On the contrary political considerations led to strict censorship. Particularly in wartime, the country had a government which officially withheld certain information in order to protect the national cause but in reality did so in order to protect its own interests and remain in power. It would be simplistic, however, to argue that the government imposed censorship upon an unwilling press and public. On the contrary, the press generally reflected a politicised society which was polarised and divided into two distinct camps.



The Athenian Press in the 1920s

23

The National Schism, which had started during WW1, determined this relationship between State, press, and public, but the crisis of 1919–22 served as a catalyst for tensions and developments in this relationship. While the other belligerents were trying to recover from WW1, Greece found itself involved, for three and a half years, in the Asia Minor campaign. This was at first supported by the Greek people as it promised the realisation of their irredentist nationalist aspirations, but gradually it lost support as it created serious political and economic problems. During this period the press was not only the people’s main source of news on the state of the campaign, but also an organ of modern propaganda, against enemies which were not only external but also internal in the form of political opponents. It used propaganda to define ‘allied’ countries according to changing national interests. Through propaganda it mobilised support from civilians by exploiting their prejudices and enthusiasms and bolstered the morale of the fighting forces. Simultaneously, the Russian Revolution in 1917 could not leave Greece unaffected. The propaganda which became the essential ingredient in the ideological war of the Bolsheviks against capitalism and in the struggle for world revolution95 was exercised in Greece through the newspaper Rizospastis which became the organ of the newly created SEKE. Although Rizospastis was not a significant challenge to the system, it was a different voice which in several cases provided the most realistic interpretation of events.

2 From the Paris Peace Conference to the Smyrna Landing1

… every Greek is still inspired with the ultimate ideal of recovering Byzantium. Folk stories and popular poetry keep alive an ideal which undoubtedly has a strong hold on popular imagination … R. Rodd to Balfour, 15 October 19182 In September 1918 the Bulgarian front broke and Germany’s allies collapsed.3 Facing the prospect of invasion, even if its forces held the Allies on the Western front, Germany’s leaders preferred an armistice to the prospect of attack from two directions. This marked the end of the Great War and of the age of massacre which had started in 1914,4 or at least so it seemed. In October 1918 the Armistice of Mudros was signed: the future of the Ottoman Empire was in the hands of the Allies.5 However, the Greeks were not at all enthusiastic about the terms of the Armistice as they considered them too lenient towards Turkey and disliked the fact that the terms did not refer to the rights and aspirations of the Greeks residing within the Ottoman Empire. Such views were openly expressed in leading Athenian newspapers.6 After the Bulgarian defeat the Greek appetite for territory increased. At first Greek claims were phrased moderately in the press. However, references to the realisation of Greek dreams soon multiplied. Only censorship prevented direct reference to Constantinople itself, and references to Asia Minor, Thrace and Northern Epirus were much more frequent than to the Aegean islands and Cyprus.7 The campaign was directed by the government itself, which had realised that it was crucial to gain the support of the Greek public – no government could hope to win without a united nation behind

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The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

it, and no government could have a united nation without controlling the minds of its people.8 All the newspapers, even those of the opposition (with the exception of Rizospastis), were partisans of irredentist nationalism and participated in the campaign, which was considered ‘patriotic’. The present chapter is divided into four sections. The first will examine the propaganda strategy of the Greek government in pressing the Greek claims and in securing foreign support for them. It will investigate the role of the press at the Paris Peace Conference and the patron-client relationships between the Greek government and the Athenian press. The second section will seek to explore the difficulties in Venizelos’s foreign policy and the attitude of the entire Athenian press towards his diplomatic strategy. The third section will focus on the Greek army’s landing in Smyrna, the coverage of the event by the Athenian press, and the efforts of the government to hide the truth from the Greek public. The final section will focus on the political mythology that both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist press invoked and ‘the troubled relationship between “reality” and “stories” about reality’.9 I 1. Propaganda Strategy and Foreign Support Prime Minister Venizelos realized that he needed an effective propaganda strategy, both at home and abroad – along with an effective diplomatic strategy – in order to educate and persuade the Greek public and international opinion on the ‘legitimacy’ of the Greek claims. Venizelos’s strong Anglophile attitude, coupled with foreign, and especially British, backing helped to strengthen his propaganda effort not only abroad but also at home. In October and November 1918, Venizelos spent most of his time in London, where he had meetings with British opinion makers, as he knew that ‘it is better to influence those who can influence others’.10 He met statesmen, journalists and philhellenes and organised Greece’s propaganda machine. It was time for him to demonstrate to the Allies the value of Greece’s contribution to the Great War. Venizelos knew the importance of propaganda, and devoted ample time and energy to it. He was a considerable advertisement for Greece, as a revered statesman with a high reputation. Resolutions were passed, money was raised, lectures were sponsored, maps of the Balkans were printed, articles and pamphlets were published in the capitals of Europe. British philhellenes, such as Harold Spender, Lord Bryce and Ronald Burrows, willingly participated in this project.11

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The permanent and principal centre of Greek propaganda in Europe was in London, directed by the Greek Minister there, Dimitris Kaklamanos.12 Andreas Michalakopoulos13 supervised the overall propaganda machine. Venizelos and Nikolaos Politis14 also directed propaganda during the Paris Peace Conference, but were also responsible for other work. As there was nobody in Paris whom the Greek government trusted enough to take over the propaganda network, Kaklamanos, although in London, took over the task of directing propaganda in Paris, and earned considerable merit in doing so.15 In London, Kaklamanos had become friendly with a number of powerful British men, like Henry Wickham Steed, until February 1919 editor-in-chief of the Foreign Politics Department of The Times, this leading to many proGreek articles and letters appearing in the newspaper. The Greek government also influenced16 three other British newspapers: The Manchester Guardian, The Morning Post and The Westminster Gazette. The Greek Legation’s channel to The Manchester Guardian was through Constantine Nomikos, a Greek businessman, who was friendly with its editor, C.P. Scott. What the newspaper did was to reproduce regularly the communications of the Greek government.17 The Westminster Gazette was also very pro-Greek. Alfred Spender, its managing editor, was a close friend of Arthur Crosfield, who in turn was friendly with Kaklamanos. Crosfield wrote several articles in the British press defending the Greek cause. However, the most pro-Greek newspaper was The Morning Post. H.A. Gwynne was its managing editor and N.F. Grant the editor-in-chief of the Foreign Politics Department. Both had personal contacts with Kaklamanos and were favourable to Greece. The Morning Post published the greatest number of articles, letters and interviews by representatives and friends of the Greek government. There was even a Greek journalist, Kalopothakis, working on the paper.18 The sole occasion the newspaper criticised Greece was over the atrocities in Smyrna on the first day of the Greek occupation. Even the director of Reuters, H.P. Sargint, was a friend of Kaklamanos. Sargint, who was also director of the Department of Propaganda in the British Ministry of Communication, helped in predisposing the British press to support the Greek claims.19 The Greek government also sought to influence some newspapers in France. It had some success with Le Temps and Le Journal des Débats, less success with Le Figaro and even less with Gaulois. Leon Makkas, managing editor of the journal Les Études Franco-Grecques,20 was responsible for Greek propaganda in the French press.21 Given the close relationship between Venizelos and the press, the British in effect contributed to Venizelos’s propaganda strategy inside Greece. At

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The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

the beginning of 1919 the Greek press was very short of newsprint, and only telegrams which referred to important international questions or to issues of direct interest to Greece appeared in the Athenian newspapers.22 However, the Venizelist press were luckier than the anti-Venizelist because the British Foreign Office continued to subsidise the former and to supply paper free of charge: a practice begun in 1917. Newspapers such as Patris, Estia and Ethnos received money from the British, but direct payment from the British legation was avoided. The money purportedly came from a fictitious group of Greek exiles living in Britain. In addition, Venizelist newspapers with financial difficulties were supported by the British. However, the method of payment varied, and the British purposely sent money irregularly. Payment was stopped from time to time to prevent the newspapers from feeling that they could depend permanently on British money.23 2. The Paris Peace Conference and the Press The Paris Peace Conference officially began in January 1919. Representatives from almost 30 countries attended, as well as many representatives of different national, religious, financial and other interests.24 The power to make crucial decisions was remarkably concentrated.25 However, the peace settlement was effectively a world settlement, as it dealt with territories both inside and outside Europe, and many non-European voices were heard at the conference.26 For the victorious powers, the overwhelming priority was the ‘German Problem’, but for Venizelos the Paris Peace Conference provided the opportunity he needed to impose Greek claims on the defeated Ottoman Empire. It also proved to be the opportunity he had long sought to try to realise his grand vision of a Great Greece astride two continents and five seas. Venizelos was a fervent partisan of the Megali Idea and made every effort to achieve it during the years of his leadership. The Paris Peace Conference was the opportunity he had long sought to extend his accomplishments in the Balkan Wars. He had realised that in order to succeed he needed the support of the three important national leaders: Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson. Italy, because of its rival claims in Asia Minor, could not be depended upon. The Paris Peace Conference was reported prominently by newspapers world-wide. Some 500 special correspondents assembled in Paris to cover it. The world’s leading newspapers went to great expense to send their best people.27 However, there was a lack of reporting facilities, and from the beginning of the proceedings correspondents protested that the negotiations were being conducted behind closed doors. As a result of the protest

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the Supreme Council decided to admit the press to all plenary meetings. But this amounted to a token concession: no more than six plenary meetings took place, and only the meetings which dealt with the agreement on the League of Nations were open and transparent (ibid.). In order to calm the indignation of their own national correspondents, the delegates were forced to provide information on their own account. However, this led to mutual accusations of ‘leaks’ and to bitter counteraccusations. It would have been better had the press been warned before the Conference that there was no reason to send special correspondents, as all the discussions would take place in secret and only agreed communiqués would be issued for publication. According to Harold Nicholson, a member of the British delegation, there was a risk of the sessions becoming a farce if journalists were admitted to them all. Delegates, concerned with domestic opinion, would make speeches for public consumption and all the real work would be done by private lobbying.28 However, the worst method of dealing with the press was to tell half-truths in the form of deliberate leaks. Unfortunately, this was the method adopted at the Conference.29 Reports regarding the Conference and Venizelos’s participation in it were prominent on the front pages of all Athenian newspapers. Among the journalists who had been sent to Paris were representatives of the Athenian press. These newspapers relied not only on their own sources but also on information distributed by the Press Office of the Greek Legation in the Rue de Brassano in Paris,30 directed from London by Kaklamanos. Greek delegates, adopting the same methods as delegates from other countries, leaked information to Greek journalists. Select details regarding the Conference – censored and directed by the government – were also given out by the Conference Press Office. It also distributed an insufficient number of tickets for the signing of the treaties to Greek journalists. All the correspondents telegraphed their reports to their newspapers in Athens, but those of the Venizelist press were accorded preferential treatment by the Greek delegates, the Press Office of the Greek Legation and particularly Venizelos himself. They received exclusive information denied to the correspondents of antiVenizelist titles. In addition, some Venizelist journalists had their own offices in the Press Office, a privilege denied to anti-Venizelist journalists.31 At the beginning of 1919 Venizelos and his party had the support of several leading Athenian newspapers. Eleftheros Typos, Estia, Patris, Ethnos and Embros. The opposition, on the other hand, although weaker – because of the fact that several leading opposition politicians were in exile and leading anti-Venizelist newspapers like Scrip had ceased publication – also had many newspapers on its side: Esperini, Akropolis, Politia, Athinaiki and Athine.

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The Venizelist press mobilised their most qualified journalists for the Paris Peace Conference. Two covered the Conference for Estia: Christos Kesaris, as a special correspondent and Alexandros Mavroudis, who was the permanent correspondent in Paris. A. Georgiadis was the correspondent of Eleftheros Typos in Paris. At the same time the owner and editor of Eleftheros Typos, Andreas Kavafakis, Venizelos’s personal friend, went to Paris to cover the Conference. This indicates the attention which was paid by the newspaper to the Conference and Venizelos’s ‘mission’ in Paris. On 28 January 1919 another Venizelist journalist, Kostas Kairofylas, joined Kavafakis at Paris, but he left in April due to health problems and Epaminontas Kyriakidis temporarily assumed his duties.32 G. Lambridis, editor-in-chief of Patris during the years 1917–18, was the correspondent sent to Paris. Dimitris Pournaras represented Ethnos and Rizospastis. 3. The Athenian Press and Patron-Client Relationships When the whole network of Greek politics was based on patronage and political favour,33 the Greek press could not have been immune to pressures to contract similar relationships. Naturally the emphasis on networks based on patronage and favouritism existed in the institution of the press, too. In substance this prevented the development of the press as a true and independent fourth estate. In the Paris Peace Conference the personal relationship between Venizelos and Kavafakis resulted in Eleftheros Typos, which was the Greek delegates’, and particularly Venizelos’s, favourite newspaper, gaining exclusive access to the news. For example Venizelos’s memorandum34 was exclusively published on the first two pages of the issue of 27 January 1919. Publication of such an important document, revealing the ideological and philosophical underpinnings of the ‘legal’ claims put forward by Venizelos, demonstrated that Eleftheros Typos enjoyed far closer connections with the Greek delegation than the other Athenian newspapers. Eleftheros Typos accompanied the memorandum with a story which explained the delay in its publication.35 The following day Eleftheros Typos celebrated its scoop, and seized the opportunity to praise Venizelos’s ability.36 There was a tacit give-and-take agreement between the parties: he offered Eleftheros Typos exclusive information and in return the newspaper rewarded him with its absolute devotion and support. The preference for Eleftheros Typos was also obvious from the fact that a monthly allowance of 2,500 francs was paid from the press appropriation fund of the Greek Legation in Paris to the Eleftheros Typos correspondent, Kostas Kairofylas, for the duration of the Conference. The measure was taken, according to a document discovered in the AYE, in

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order to inform the Greek public by supporting a newspaper which did not aim to distort the truth.37 Eleftheros Typos was also the newspaper in which Venizelos chose to give interviews. On 16 February 1919 he gave an interview to Kavafakis in Paris in which he tried to calm the spirit of the Greek people, which the opposition newspapers had made every effort to incite, by questioning what territory would be given to Greece by the Allies. Venizelos expressed his conviction that justice would be done regarding the Greek claims. Both the publication of the memorandum and the interview were favourably commented on by the other Venizelist newspapers38 – a clear indication that party interests outweighed individual newspaper interests and the struggle for exclusiveness. Venizelos’s preference for Eleftheros Typos was of course criticised by the opposition newspapers. It was a good opportunity for them to attack the government by claiming that it put party interests before national interests. The fact that the memorandum was only given to Kavafakis and his newspaper was considered by the opposition press to be an ‘inconceivable gesture’ for the sake of self-interested aims. The anti-Venizelist press claimed that the government chose Eleftheros Typos in order to show its disrespect towards opposition titles, that it forgot that public documents belonged to the people and not just to certain persons, and that their publication had to occur in all the press irrespective of which political parties the newspapers supported. The anti-Venizelist press protested that there was no division between opposition and government when such important national matters were in contention, but only Greeks, who were servants of their country. Editorials considered the particular attitude of the government was proof of the detestable stance of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs towards the press and the public alike. More than that, it was evidence that there was no Chamber and no government and ministers but only a ‘state of unaccountabily’.39 4. The Relationship between the Government and SEKE In late 1918 the socialist movement of Greece, after several upheavals during the previous years, united and a new party under the name SEKE (Socialist Labour Party of Greece) was formed and the newspaper Rizospastis became its press outlet. SEKE strongly opposed Venizelos’s foreign and internal policy. The unification of the Greek socialist movement took place at a time when Venizelos’s government, because of economic instability and general unrest in the country, was insecure. Soon SEKE became the target of the government and repressive measures, such as the arrest of principal socialist leaders, and the prohibition of meetings and of free travel by socialist members,40 were

34

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

imposed after it was realised by Venizelos’s regime that, as well as attacks from the right-wing opposition, it also had to deal with attacks from the left, which together increased the lack of public confidence in the government. The government also had other reasons to impose strict measures against the socialists: its ideological opposition to socialism; the growth of the socialist party at the expense of the Liberal Party, and the general fear of the ruling classes world-wide about an international conspiracy to overthrow the established world order.41 Venizelos’s efforts to cultivate relations with the socialist and labour movements were not successful. He had failed to gain their support for the Greek territorial claims set out at the Paris Peace Conference. However, during the first months of 1919 the Venizelist newspapers made an effort to split the socialist party from Greek labour unions. Simultaneously, restrictive measures against Rizospastis intensified. For example, Petsopoulos, its editor, was arrested and imprisoned in February. The socialist deputy of Corfu, Aristidis Sideris, sent a protest telegram to Venizelos in Paris seeking to reverse the injustice and to stop the systematic prosecution of socialist ideas.42 However, the measures later became stricter, and the government even forbade soldiers, on pain of imprisonment, to read Rizospastis.43 What deeply worried the Greek government was the propaganda of the Greek socialists abroad. Their effort to present the Venizelist government as anti-labour was considered dangerous, given the fact that Venizelos gave much importance to the opinions of socialists abroad. What was a real headache for Venizelos were articles in the foreign press which defamed the labour policies of the Greek government. Pournaras, the correspondent of Rizospastis and Ethnos in Paris wrote such articles for the French communist newspaper L’Humanité, in which he revealed how oppressed the Greek workers were. The government mobilised its own people to write rebuttals which were published in the foreign press.44 However, in addition to the internal difficulties caused by the attitude of the opposition press, Venizelos faced difficulties on the diplomatic front, as the Greek claims were not considered ‘legitimate’ by all the countries which participated in the Paris Peace Conference. II 1. The Allied Decision to Land Greek Troops at Smyrna On 21 January/ 3 February 1919 Venizelos laid the Greek claims before the Council of Ten. The British and French delegates took a favourable view. However, Venizelos’s rhetorical abilities were not enough to dispel the

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35

objections of the Italian and American representatives. The Italians were convinced that the Treaty of London in 1915 and the Agreement of St Jean de Maurienne in 1917 had settled all territorial claims in Asia Minor in the best interests of Italy, and at the same time they strongly opposed almost every Greek claim. The Americans, for their part, were keen to project President Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points’ and dissented from the Greek claims in Asia Minor.45 At first no information was given to the public about American and Italian objections. In fact, Estia’s leading article of 25 January 1919 spoke of an improvement in Greco-Italian relations.46 When American objections to the Greek claims in Smyrna and the rest of Asia Minor became known, they were considered by Embros to be ‘the strangest and most unexpected adventure concerning a matter of justice and freedom’. It demanded that the voices of the Greeks in Greece, in Thrace, in Asia Minor and even in the United States be heard, in support of the Greek claims, by all countries which had objections.47 On 12 March 1919 the Italians began to take military steps in an attempt to influence the Conference’s decisions concerning territorial claims in Asia Minor. After the occupation of Adalia, Venizelos emphasised the danger inherent in the Italian action to the Council of Ten. Simultaneously, information was sent regarding the awakening of Turkish fanaticism. Attacks against the Italians and the Turks in the Athenian press became a daily phenomenon. On 30 March/12 April 1919 Venizelos informed the President of France of the deterioration of the situation in the vilayet of Aydin, where the Muslims, under the tolerance of the Allies and the Turkish authorities, were permitted to attack the Greek population. Venizelos raised the issue of the danger of massacres of Christians and the landing of the Italians in Adalia before the Council of Ten on 22 April/5 May 1919, when the Italians walked out of the Conference in protest at the decision regarding the future of Fiume and the handling of the Adriatic question. Great publicity was given by the Athenian press to the issue of the violent acts committed by the Turks against the Greek population of Asia Minor, and when the Italians walked out of the Conference the newspapers informed their readers, but nothing was written about the discussions which followed. It seems that the Greek delegates, following Venizelos’s instructions, did not provide any information to the Greek journalists on the secret negotiations. Lloyd George suggested taking advantage of the Italians’ absence, and urged the sending of Greek troops to Asia Minor to prevent massacres and also the landing of the Italians in the vilayet of Aydin. The French president, Clemenceau, afraid of the Italian reaction,

36

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

voiced his objections. Finally, the decision was taken that the Greeks would send troops to occupy Smyrna. The following day Venizelos informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens and Kanellopoulos, the Greek High Commissioner in Constantinople.48 None of this was reported by the Athenian press. The Italians learned of the Allies’ decision from Clemenceau at the meeting on 29 April/12 May 1919. Clemenceau also invited them to participate in an inter-allied landing of Smyrna, but he made it clear that the Greeks would land and occupy the town. He further stated that the landing did not prejudice the final decision on the future of Smyrna. The main purpose of the landing was the protection of the population. On the same afternoon, after consulting his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sonnino, the Italian Prime Minister Orlando yielded. However, the decision was taken suddenly, casually and in great secrecy by the British, the French and the Americans, with Venizelos’s encouragement. The Greek public was only informed about the landing on 1 May, just before the Greek troops started landing in Smyrna. Nothing was mentioned regarding the exact conditions under which the decision was taken. However, it was emphasised that the decision had been taken unanimously by all the Great Powers, even by Italy. Italy’s change in attitude in Greece’s favour was considered a clear indication that it would also oblige over the future of the Dodecanese and Northern Epirus. The Athenian press emphasised that the decision regarding the landing of the Greek troops in Smyrna meant the permanent handing-over of western Asia Minor to Greece.49 Before the landing, Venizelos’s telegrams ordering the army to Smyrna were sent out in complete secrecy. In case anyone asked why the navy was sailing and where it was sailing to, the putatively confidential answer would be that it was moving in order to transfer new refugees from Russia and probably to supply more troops to Romania.50 2. The Attitude of the Athenian Press towards Greek Claims Whatever their allegiance, all Athenian newspapers bar Rizospastis supported Venizelos’s irredentist aspirations and expansionist foreign policy. The antiVenizelist press nevertheless believed that they would be in a good position to attack him if he failed to fulfil all his aspirations.51 The entire Venizelist and anti-Venizelist press saw the recent events as confirming Greece’s right to a lion’s share of territory. Their main propaganda effort sought to persuade the Greek people that the claims were ‘just’: (a) because they were the outcome of a war in which Greece had participated on the side of the victors. More than that, they were the outcome of the key role that Greece had played in the final triumphant battles alongside

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37

the Allies against Germany, and that Greece had every right to ask for a reward for the sacrifices of the Greek people; (b) because the time was ripe for the small but glorious Greek nation to ask for what historically and ethnologically belonged to it from the new, just and peaceful world which would be created.52 Rizospastis, following the foreign policy programme which had been adopted by SEKE,53 was unique in opposing the Greek claims, as it believed that they were in conflict with the national interests of the adjacent countries. However, the newspaper recognised that there was a chance Great Britain, which was interested in creating a powerful Greece for the promotion of its own interests in the area, would support the Greek claims.54 Rizospastis was not optimistic about the outcome of the Conference. It believed that the national interests of Greece would be solved one day according to justice and morality, but that they would not be solved at the present conference, which was a ‘conference of the representatives of the imperialistic governments, who shared the same views on the exploitation of weaker countries’. Only a conference in which representatives from all countries participated would be able to solve all disputed matters on a moral basis, which would be in the best interest of the entire world. That was why the newspaper considered all the noise concerning the attempts, the successes or the failures of the representatives of the Greek government to be not only aimless but also comical.55 III After Constantinople, Smyrna, with its thriving port, was the second most important city for the Greeks, and one in which thousands of Greeks had lived for centuries. In the nineteenth century it had become primarily Greek, as many Greeks from Greece went there in order to take advantage of the new railways, which offered fresh opportunities for trade, employment and investment. Before WW1 the population was about half a million people, with the Greeks who lived there dominating the export trade. In substance Smyrna was the centre of Greek learning and irredentist nationalism in Asia Minor, but at the same time it was also very important to the Turkish economy.56 The British had made promises to Venizelos regarding the area during the years of WW1, as an inducement for Greece to join the Allies. In Paris, when Venizelos pressed the Greek claims he did not omit to mention Smyrna and its hinterland and sent several Greek journalists there to organise propaganda and to prepare the Christian population of the city for the prospect of its falling into Greek hands.

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The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

1. The Greek Journalists in Smyrna From January 1919 a number of Greek journalists arrived in Smyrna as correspondents of the Athenian press, but in substance they aimed to stir up popular enthusiasm for Greek rule.57 Smyrna was still in Turkish hands, and the presence of the Greek journalists was not welcomed by the Turkish authorities. Consequently, the journalists arrived as members of the Greek Red Cross. Among them was Fokos Kountouriotis, the correspondent for the Venizelist newspaper Astir. In November 1919 he also became a correspondent for the anti-Venizelist newspaper Kathimerini and also the Venizelist Ethnos. Other journalists who arrived in Smyrna ostensibly as members of the Greek Red Cross were Kostas Athanatos, Michail Rodas, Giannis Stogiannis and Taxiarchis Papathanasiou.58 Michail Rodas was responsible for propaganda promoting the Greek cause inside Smyrna. Under the direction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens, Rodas wrote articles which were published not only in the Greek newspapers in Smyrna but also in the French, Jewish and Armenian ones.59 Pantelis Kapsis worked in the same office, and both sent reports to the Athenian newspapers. The aim of their articles was to enlighten and serve the national interest of the country.60 They were agents of the government, and had been sent there in order to promote its propaganda aims. Other correspondents of the Athenian newspapers in Smyrna included Achilleas Vafiadis from Eleftheros Typos, Kostas Triantafyllou and Kostas Athanatos from Patris, G. Filianis from Ethnos and G. Kakomanolis from Athinaiki. N. Zografos, the correspondent of Rizospastis on Lesbos, reported on the situation in Smyrna before the landing of the Greek troops. After the landing Th. Daniilidis, editor-in-chief of the Smyrna newspaper Patris, became the regular correspondent of Rizospastis. Pavlos Kalapothakis was sent by the newspaper Embros as a special correspondent to Smyrna.61 Finally, the correspondent of the Politia in Smyrna was Dimitris Gatopoulos. Before the landing journalists dispatched their articles by ship back to Athens. This method imposed a delay in news appearing in Athens, but it was the only safe way to communicate as the post office was under the control and censorship of French, Italian and British officers. The Italians exercised strict censorship over the reports of the Greek journalists. Telegrams which were to be sent to the Athenian newspapers were similarly censored.62 However, things did not improve for the Greek journalists after the occupation of Smyrna by Greek troops. Indeed, censorship became the means by which the Italians made every effort to sabotage the Greek occupation. The Italians strictly censored all Greek newspapers and did not permit the publication of any information which supported the Greek

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claims. Conversely, they acted very differently concerning censorship of articles for the Turkish newspapers – for example they permitted publication of insults and calumnies against Greece and false news which excited fanaticism among the Turkish population.63 Despite the fact that there was an inter-allied committee which exercised censorship in the name of the High Commissioners of Constantinople, and consisted of British, French, Italian and Greek representatives, the Italians exercised the leading role in the censorship of Turkish newspapers and enjoyed the co-operation of the French representative. There were also cases when they did not permit the publication of articles which supported Greek interests in the French newspapers of Smyrna.64 From June 1919 Stergiadis, the Greek High Commissioner in Smyrna, in an attempt to control news dangerous to public order, forbade the publication of any information without his written approval.65 He was particularly strict with articles which were provocative and ironical towards the Turks.66 Written approval was also necessary for the publication of every new political newspaper.67 P. Skeferis and Michail Rodas organised a service responsible for censorship which was staffed by trustworthy bureaucrats. Soon Skeferis was dismissed by Stergiadis because of a poem published in the weekly periodical Kopanos, and Rodas assumed sole control.68 However, Turcophile circles made every effort to defame the Greek administration in Smyrna to the High Commissioners in Constantinople regarding censorship. The High Commissioners transferred their complaints to the committee responsible for Greek matters in Paris and the committee, in turn, sent them onto Venizelos.69 2. The Coverage of the Landing in the Athenian Press The Smyrna landing resulted in a further deterioration of Greco-Turkish relations; and study of the Athenian press coverage of the event is essential in construing these relations. Particular emphasis will be given to the fact that the press focused on ‘good’ irredentist nationalism, while covering up the atrocities committed by the Greek troops during the landing. The casual and sudden decision taken by the Great Powers to send Greek troops to occupy Smyrna without serious consultation with the relevant experts, or any thought being given to the consequences, materialised on the morning of 2/15 May 1919. For the Greeks the landing was the accomplishment of a dream. For the Turks, on the other hand, it was the beginning of their resistance. The news of the landing of the Greek troops dominated the front pages of the Athenian newspapers, which celebrated the great accomplishment. However, the first day of celebrations was soon overshad-

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The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

owed by reports that the landing had been marked by horrible incidents between the Greeks and the Turks. The Athenian newspapers covered up Greek responsibility for these incidents, putting the entire blame on the Turks, despite their being victims of several atrocities.70 The Athenian newspapers were preoccupied with news of the landing, as the event symbolised the triumph of Greek irredentist nationalism. However, it made no reference to the atrocities of the first day. On 2/15 May the occupation was on the front page of every newspaper, both Venizelist and antiVenizelist. Both factions were euphoric. The fulfilment of the Megali Idea appeared finally at hand, and both sides of the Athenian press celebrated. The description of the landing of the troops was very optimistic, in every newspaper. This created an illusion of victory which had to be nourished in order to maintain public confidence. The landing was considered (a) as the continuation of the revolution of 1821 and of the victorious Balkan Wars of 1912–13, which had resulted in important Greek territorial gains, (b) as a victory against the Turks, the traditional enemy, (c) as the outcome of Venizelos’s grandeur,71 (d) as the embodiment of the alliance with the Great Powers (according to the Venizelist press), which had not sent Greece to Smyrna as temporary occupiers but rather to ratify the right of Smyrna to become Greek again, (e) as the starting point for the development of Greece as a great Mediterranean power,72 and (f) as proof that Greece had historical and racial rights in the area. Furthermore, Greek civilians living in Asia Minor also had rights based on their long residency in the area.73 The same uncritical enthusiasm was expressed in all the Venizelist and anti-Venizelist newspapers. Estia, Eleftheros Typos, Ethnos, Akropolis, Embros, Politia, Athine, Athinaiki – all celebrated the glory of Greece.74 On their front pages banner headlines informed the Greek public about the new Greek era which had begun with the occupation of Smyrna. Only Rizospastis was suspicious about the occupation. It considered it an ‘imperialistic expansion’ and the ‘outcome of Greece’s alliance with the Entente’. Its leading article on 2 May 1919 was heavily censored; the only paragraph to survive connected the occupation with Greece’s obligations and with events such as the occupation of Adalia by the Italians, which it stated had clearly been an imperialistic coup d’état.75 Rizospastis stated that the Paris Peace Treaty had been dictated by the Entente in order to further the imperialist interests of the Allied Powers. Rizospastis’s attitude was the beginning of the anti-war stance that the newspaper kept up throughout the Asia Minor campaign. The events surrounding the landing were published in most of the Athenian newspapers after 3 May, and continued to be published for almost

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a month. However, the coverage of the landing was completely different from the real events. All the blame was put on the Turks; it was emphasised that Greek irredentist nationalism was ‘good’ and the Greek army had gone to Smyrna with only the best intentions; only half-truths were published. When the brutality of the events surrounding the landing was hidden from Venizelos himself, it was to be expected that the truth would be hidden from the Greek public.76 Newspapers interpreted the events as instances of ‘minor conflict’77 and ‘incidents of narrow extension’.78 The first details of the incidents came from an official report produced by the Army General Headquarters, which had been carefully written and checked before being released to the public. According to this document, the Turks were responsible for what had happened. Order was violently imposed at once, and several Turkish officers who were suspected of preparing resistance and inciting the Turkish population were arrested by Greek soldiers and imprisoned on a Greek ship. However, information regarding the treatment of the Turkish prisoners was withheld from the Greek public. Even the ‘alternative’ voice of Rizospastis did not express a contrary opinion regarding the events, after being muzzled by the government’s strict censorship, which made every effort to hide the truth. While it was admitted that some of the prisoners had been drowned at sea, they themselves were deemed responsible as they had ‘tried to escape’. According to the reports sent from Smyrna to Athens, some newspapers, such as Estia, estimated the number of victims at 40, and mentioned that over a thousand Turks had been arrested.79 Others referred only to Greek casualties.80 The Times of London, on the other hand, wrote that ‘a series of pitched battles took place in the streets’ resulting in ‘considerable loss of life’. Its estimate of the number of victims was much higher: 300 Turks and 100 Greeks had been killed.81 Over the following days the newspapers, through their propaganda, stirred up the Greek people’s hatred of the Turks and galvanised public involvement in a cause aimed at the liberation of their Greek brothers from the ‘yoke of barbarism’. They removed any suspicion that the Greek army had any responsibility for the events in Smyrna by cultivating the false image of a superior army with ‘a civilised attitude’. The Turks, in contrast, were presented as cowardly murderers who lacked the courage to deal openly with the Allied decision – while feigning acceptance they had attempted to ambush the Greek soldiers who had landed in Smyrna. The distorted presentation of events in the Greek newspapers was appropriate, given the purposes of the hate-inspired propaganda of the previous months, and it justified the occupation of Smyrna. The Greek army, meanwhile, was presented as courageous. Although Greek blood had been shed, it was

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not seen as a time for mourning – the honour and glory of the Greek army were more important. The bravery and the calmness with which the army handled the ‘sinister murderers’ and the speed with which it arrested them, strengthened Greek claims to Smyrna and made the Greek nation feel proud once again.82 It was an effort to cover up the reality of an army which could easily lose control, and commit outrages which would damage the morale of the people in Greece. 3. The Dawning Reality Despite the efforts of the government to mould domestic opinion regarding the events of Smyrna, the external influence exercised by the Great Powers did not permit it. In July 1919 the Council announced to Venizelos that the Great Powers had decided to send a Commission of Enquiry to Smyrna to investigate the excesses of the Greek army. During its investigation, which lasted from 12 August to 15 October, the Commission examined 175 witnesses, composing a report which was submitted to the Conference together with a separate report written by Colonel Mazarakis, a Greek observer with no right to sit on the Commission. Mazarakis had written his report according to the directions sent by Venizelos.83 The Commission’s report blamed the Greeks for the atrocities, and advised the termination of the Greek occupation. The testimonies of the witnesses had been kept secret, and witnesses proposed by Mazarakis had been refused a hearing before the Commission. As a result, Venizelos accused the Commission of bias and of condemning Greece without giving his government an opportunity to defend its actions. The report, however, was published in spite of Greek objections.84 The decision of the Great Powers to send a Commission of Enquiry to Smyrna had been announced in the press, but relegated to the inside pages. When the Commissioners arrived in Smyrna in August, the Greek public was informed of their arrival by the correspondents in Smyrna. They insisted that Mazarakis had participated in the Commission. Both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist press informed the Greek public daily about the progress of the investigation. They reassured their readers that the testimony taken by the Commission, even that which was not favourable, disproved the Turkish allegations that the Greek army had committed unjust acts. On the contrary, their reporting suggested that very important documents had been submitted to the Commission, from which a report was composed which considered the Turkish government and the local Turkish authorities responsible for the events.85 The truth was that the Commission in its report not only placed the blame firmly on the Greeks but also reached the

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conclusion that the Greeks were not capable of maintaining themselves in Smyrna by their own efforts.86 Even Venizelos was forced to admit, during the meeting of the Heads of Delegations of the five Great Powers – Britain, France, Italy, the USA and Japan – on 8 November 1919, that excesses had occurred, but insisted that heavy penalties had been imposed on those who were guilty of the atrocities.87 The occupation of Smyrna seemed to overshadow the different attitudes in the Greek press. However, developments would soon get worse, reigniting the bitterness between the Venizelists and the anti-Venizelists. The National Schism was knocking at the door once again, and it would not be long before the door was opened to it; and the Athenian press contributed to its coming. IV The Mythology of the Athenian Press The political mythology of the Greek political camps must be studied if the complex issues of the National Schism and irredentist nationalism are to be understood. What interests us here is the role the press played in the transmission of myths, how they functioned in political discourse and how these myths were represented in the newspapers. The press and the media in general have the ‘power to place people and events into the pre-existing categories of hero, villain, good or bad, and thus to invest their stories with the authority of mythological truth’.88 A myth, in order to have power, must be constantly retold. Themes are not reinvented every time the need arises; instead they are an inventory of discourse established over time.89 Myths are not a distortion of reality, but its qualitative transformation. They form another reality as important as the ‘objective’. We cannot define the content of myths if we treat them as lies.90 Myths consist of elements of reality which they depict in their own way. A myth constitutes ‘mythical speech’ which has its own coherence and is itself a complete and cohesive system that asks only for our confirmation. However, this does not mean myths do not have fluidity in their limits and multiple meanings.91 Myths as second order abstracted retellings necessarily distort and alienate the underlying reality they themselves are based on; however, they do not abolish it.92 Myths interpret, in a simplistic way, a complicated reality. They place individuals in groups and define them as enemies or friends.93 Therefore political myths set goals and create consciousness and party unity. Especially in periods of crisis, when the psychology of collective insecurity dominates

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– which can reach the limits of a collective obsession – the activation of a myth is determined by the juncture between the crisis and the collective insecurity. During times of crisis, ideology, which is based on rational thought, does not have the power to overcome internal conflicts, mobilise the masses, or solidify a national view. Myth alone has the power to do so.94 1. The Myth of Protection The need for the support of the Great Powers for the realisation of the Greek claims led the Venizelist press to adopt the myth of the protection of the Powers and to define the country’s friends according to that myth. It was a myth that was used repeatedly during the years of the WW1 in order to justify Greek participation on the side of the Entente. According to that myth the Great Powers were those who had liberated Greece at Navarino, guaranteed its independence, ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece and supported the country after 1897.95 That myth justified all foreign interference in the country in the past, the present and the future, as the Great Powers were true and steady friends and allies. The Powers’ opposition to the nation’s enemies meant that the need to preserve their friendship was crucial for the country’s future growth. The myth of protection first referred to France and Britain; then because of American participation in the Paris Peace Conference and the important role that President Wilson played, it was extended to include the USA. By contrast, Italy, once it revealed that its interests conflicted with those of Greece, was depicted as an enemy. The cordial relations with France and Britain which, it was claimed, had always protected Greece were cultivated in the Venizelist press and an idealised image of them was presented. To stimulate pro-Allied emotions at home the Venizelist newspapers expressed gratitude for the Allied support at the conference. Despite the fact that the Americans had at first been neutral and later had objected to the realisation of the Greek claims, the Venizelist newspapers presented them as friends along with the British and the French. The main reason was that without US support Greek irredentist aspirations could not be fulfilled. When the objections of the Americans became known, the Venizelist newspapers kept a moderate attitude. The Americans were the ‘honest teachers of the values of their own republic on the other side of the Atlantic’.96 The Athenian Press considered ‘anachronistic missionaries’ to be responsible for the Americans’ attitude. These missionaries could not understand national matters but still negatively influenced the American delegates. However, the newspapers believed that Wilson’s arrival would put an end to the situation and that a new examina-

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tion of the Greek question would persuade the Americans to re-examine their reservations and finally vote in support of the Greek case.97 The myth of protection referred mainly to France and Britain. They were the Great Powers which represented the struggle of a united Europe against Germany during the years of the war. They were the ‘fighters of the great aspirations’ which were responsible for the ‘victory of freedom against tyranny and crime’.98 There was a special relationship between France and Greece which had been cultivated since the years of the French Revolution which was the symbol of liberty for the Greeks. This relationship had been strengthened by French support during the struggle for Greek independence.99 However, the recent past contributed even more powerfully to the formation of the image of France. France was ‘the centre of modern civilisation’ and ‘spread widely the lights of its spiritual grandeur all over the world’. This was a fact that the Germans ‘envied’ and so they destroyed ‘all its monuments, and pieces of work’ in an effort to devastate the whole country. And until the moment when the Allies organised their defences France ‘managed to bear alone the colossal burden of defence not only of France but of the whole world’.100 The attempt on the life of Clemenceau in February 1919 strengthened the newspapers’ pro-French campaign. Clemenceau was considered ‘the warmest friend of humanity and a strong guardian and defender of freedom and the rights which arose from it’.101 Therefore a country like France, which had made so many sacrifices, which had shed so much blood during the years of the war and which was represented by a politician like Clémenceau could do nothing other than support the ‘just’ claims of Greece. In the same way Britain was a ‘friend of Greece’. It was represented by a ‘powerful man’, Lloyd George, who did not hesitate to ‘thunder out the truth’ with every ‘freedom and causticity’. Nor did he forget the orders he received from his people as he fought for the ‘prevalence of the values of humanity’.102 In order to stimulate pro-allied emotions, the ‘warm defence’ of the Greek people’s ‘rights’ in the French and English newspapers was praised by the Athenian press. The attitude of the French and English press was proof that both countries recognised the ‘reasonableness’ and the ‘moderation’ of Venizelos’s programme, which was destined to be realised. Special reference was made to The Times of London.103 When news regarding the behaviour of the Turks towards the Christians started appearing in the Greek newspapers, an appeal was made to the Allies to do their duty to humanity and take action to stop the Turkish acts of ‘oppression and extermination’ which were shameful towards civilisation.104

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On the contrary, the myth of the protection of the Powers was not the nucleus of the propaganda of the anti-Venizelist press, which proceeded to refute the myth of the protection of Greece and its interests by France and Britain through the demystification of the ‘traditional’ role of the Great Powers, as it was presented in the Venizelist press. Therefore in the antiVenizelist press the Allies – France and Britain – were presented as ‘selfish’ agents who wanted to ‘arrange their victory according to their selfishness without paying attention to the consequences that their decisions would have for the future’. They ‘were judging matters solely according to their own imperialistic, commercial and speculative interests’.105 Britain, in the person of Lloyd George himself, had signed a secret treaty in 1915 with the Italians. The French Prime Minister was a co-signatory.106 This treaty gave Italy ‘Smyrna, the whole of Asia Minor, the Dodecanese, Northern Epirus’ and gave Russia ‘Greek Constantinople and Greek Thrace’.107 The antiVenizelist newspapers considered the diplomacy of the Entente ‘completely unprepared for the work of reformation of a new Europe’.108 At the same time the anti-Venizelist newspapers continued to express their admiration for defeated Germany. In this way they made efforts to legitimise the political ideology they had propagandised during the years of the Great War. The anti-Venizelist newspapers considered Germany a ‘great nation’.109 ‘Despite the fact that Germany had been defeated, it had never stopped being an actor in the political world, with the same rank as Britain or France and the USA. Germany is part of the European order and world civilisation’, wrote Akropolis.110 2. The Myth of the ‘External Enemy’ Support of or opposition towards Greek claims at the Paris Peace Conference was the criterion by which the enemies of the country were classified by the Athenian press. Enemies were constructed as ‘evil’, others who should be wiped off the face of the earth, and portrayed as lacking legitimacy for their own claims. The Venizelist newspapers incited the hatred of the Greek people by differentiating the unified ‘us’ from the external ‘them’, and furthermore the Athenian press attempted to legitimatise the realisation of Greek claims by publishing stories of enemy atrocities, which led to the criminalisation of the enemy. The external enemies of the country were not only those who traditionally opposed the realisation of national aspirations, but also all who resisted their fulfilment. Greece’s traditional enemies were the Turks and the Bulgarians, who were singled out for criticism on a daily basis by both sides of the Athenian press. The main emphasis was on atrocities, as they helped to sustain a

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brutal and barbaric image which justified intervention to protect Christians. The national claims of Greece were closely connected with the protection of the Greek population, which had suffered at the hands of the Turks and the Bulgarians in the past and was still suffering. Newspaper accounts of atrocities increased the hatred of the Greek people for the Turks and the Bulgarians, who were depicted as having no respect for the life and honour of their Greek brothers. The emotive word ‘innocent’ appeared frequently, with the additional meaning of ‘civilians’ or traditionally vulnerable people, including women and children. The Greek people had the opportunity to read more about the suffering of their brothers in a press campaign after the signing of the Armistice of Mudros.111 Powerful negative images of the Turks from the years of the Great War had a strong impact on the Greek people. The Turks were considered ‘insolent’. They continued to ‘torture the poor brothers, who still groan under their heel’,112 and still practised ‘the methods of ‘humanhunting’, which they had been employing since the years of Enver Pasha and Talaat Pasha’.113 The Turks perpetrated ‘acts which were offensive to the prestige and the dignity of the Allies, when they should have been in custody for their crimes’.114 Both the Turks and the Bulgarians were presented as ‘murderers of women and children’ and ‘violators of women’. Moreover, their crimes mainly took place, according to the Athenian press, in the areas which Greece had claimed at the Paris Peace Conference. ‘The Turks want to leave a reminder of horror and blood in Ionia and the coastline of the Aegean Sea … Their recent atrocities serve as a last farewell in the Turkish way’, wrote Ethnos.115 The Bulgarians, on the other hand, invaded Greek soil in hordes and committed atrocities against the Greek inhabitants in villages near the borders.116 The press took advantage of the inherited hatred towards Bulgaria, a hatred which had long-lived, ancient and deep roots.117 The Italians were also considered enemies, as they had rival territorial claims, and were lambasted by both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist press. Similar attacks against the Italians had occurred in the Greek press at the end of 1918, following an article which had appeared in the Italian newspaper Idea Nazionale and in which Italy claimed Smyrna and its hinterland. The Athenian newspapers asked ‘why the rights of 600,000 Italians in Austrian territory were more important than those of 800,000 Greeks in western Asia Minor’.118 On 12 March 1919 the Italians began to intervene in Asia Minor.119 The Venizelist newspapers considered that the Italians had no right to land troops in order to bring order, whereas Greece had had populations in Asia Minor for centuries. ‘Who were the Italians who

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had been slaughtered and murdered to the point that the Italian occupation could be justified by the Greek press and be tolerated by the Allies without protest?’, wondered the Venizelist Estia.120 The anti-Venizelist press criticised the occupation of Adalia on different grounds. According to them, permission for the occupation had been given by the Allies, who seemed unconcerned about returning to Greece territories which belonged to it and ignored all the sacrifices of the Greek people during the Great War.121 However, after the occupation attacks against the Italians multiplied in both the Venizelist and the antiVenizelist press. The negative image of the Italians was cultivated by the presentation of persecutions and violent acts against the Greeks of the Dodecanese at a time when the Paris Peace Conference was talking about the freedom of nations and of people.122 According to the newspapers the final goal of the Italians was to take Smyrna – however, they stated, Asia Minor was inhabited by solid Greek populations and could not be the object of a shameful counter-balancing between the Great Powers. The newspapers accused Italy of carrying out infernal activities in order to realize their imperialistic visions, at the expense of the just claims of other small states.123 3. The Mythology Surrounding Venizelos During the years of the National Schism a whole mythology surrounding Venizelos was promoted by the press. To the anti-Venizelist press, he was ‘an anarchist who acted against the State’ and as a person ‘who subverted the institution of the monarchy’. He had, they claimed, all the characteristics of a ‘corrupted and paranoid nature’. This contrasted sharply with his image in the Venizelist press as a ‘charismatic leader’, a ‘political prophet’, the ‘creator of Great Greece’ and the ‘only guarantor of the creation of Great Greece’. Furthermore he was the ‘only hope for the nation’ and the ‘representation of the national will’.124 In 1919 the Venizelist press took advantage of the Paris Peace Conference in order to praise Venizelos’s unique skills and to connect the outcome of the Greek claims with the fact that Venizelos was a charismatic party leader. More than that, they considered him a ‘politician of European importance’.125 Therefore it was impossible that such a charismatic leader could fail. He was the ‘capable Cretan Governor of Great Hellenism’126 and the only person who could present the Greek claims with such lucidity and moderation. He claimed Thrace, Smyrna and the Aydin region, Northern Epirus and the Dodecanese for Greece. He was satisfied to see Constantinople as an ‘international city under the protection of

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the League of Nations’. He did so because all the practical disadvantages and strategic obstacles blocking the ‘return’ of Constantinople to Greece outweighed the glory of that return.127 Through Venizelos, Greece had the power to become whatever it wished to become.128 On 3 March 1919 Pavlos Nirvanas129 wrote in Estia an article which heaped praise upon Venizelos, under the title Prosopolatria:130 His high intelligence, his moral beauty, his inflexible will are not abstract nouns. They are presents of Nature towards the special and the privileged … And the Hero worship is our debt. It is not the blind fanaticism of the primitive. Whilst the anti-Venizelist newspapers did not create a myth around Venizelos’s abilities they nevertheless agreed that Venizelos was the only person capable of representing Greece at the Paris Peace Conference.131 But when Venizelos presented the Greek claims, the anti-Venizelist newspapers damned him with faint praise by writing that the claims he had presented to the conference did not go far enough, as there were areas, including Constantinople, with a considerable Greek population which had been left out. All these areas had to be given to Greece, and Venizelos had every right to ask for them.132 4. The Myth of the Bolshevist Threat The role of Bolshevik propaganda in spreading an international class-based ideology that recognised no national frontiers was a serious threat in 1919 to the established regimes which suffered from intense socio-economic and political chaos caused by WW1. For Russia’s former allies, ‘Prussian militarism’ was supplanted by Bolshevism, which had become the principal threat to civilisation and which required urgent counter-measures. Therefore propaganda in the Allied press cultivated the myth of the Bolshevist threat towards Western countries.133 The Athenian press tried to exploit the fear of Bolshevism, which dominated the whole of Europe. In this way the Venizelist press wanted to justify the measures of the government towards SEKE and its newspaper Rizospastis. Both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist press made efforts to persuade workers to join their camps and to remain uninfluenced by Bolshevik propaganda, which would lead them to ‘a worse tyranny than any mentioned in World History’.134 Bolshevism meant, according to the Venizelist Estia, ‘Russian imperialism’. This it claimed was clear from the ‘abolition of the right to vote, the

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closure of the Russian Parliament, the violent dissolution of the Russian Chamber’. In the same way supporters of Bolshevism in Greece wanted to ‘poison the Greek people’. These people were ‘criminals, enemies of the people and the country, who wished to subvert the acquired liberties and are suspects who oppose everything the nation holds dear’.136 Although the Venizelist press had approved of the formation of a labour party in Greece, as it considered a party which ‘consisted of pure workers’ to be ‘necessary’, it distinguished the workers from ‘anyone … who wants to influence the working class with ideas and tendencies which were strange and against its real interests’.137 The anti-Venizelist press considered Bolshevism to be the ‘threat of the Russian storm’ which wanted to ‘eat the civilisation of Europe’.138 ‘The enemy’ was so powerful, according to Akropolis, that ‘only a strong, satisfied and fully-armed Europe’ could defeat it. Moreover, the anti-Venizelist newspapers connected the issue, and the ‘victory of Europe’ over Bolshevism, with the participation of Germany in the struggle, as Germany with its people and its territory was also a part of Europe.139 Conclusion The Greek government in 1919 emphasised propaganda and constructed a machine for its dissemination both at home and abroad in an effort to strengthen its hand in the diplomatic negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference. The relationship between the Athenian press and the government was determined by the patron-client relationship between the politicians and the members of the press. The Venizelist press had the privilege of publishing exclusive information given to them by the regime. The opposition newspapers, both those which supported the Royalists and SEKE, suffered from restrictions. Despite this, Venizelos’s efforts for ‘national unity’ were supported both by the government and the anti-Venizelist newspapers, with the exception of Rizospastis. When the Great Powers allowed Greece to send troops to Smyrna, all the newspapers except the Rizospastis adopted the same attitude, celebrating the triumph of irredentist nationalism and making efforts to emphasise the ‘good’ Greek irredentist nationalism and the ‘bad’ Turkish nationalism by putting the blame for the horrible events which occurred on the first day of the occupation solely on the Turks, though in reality Greek troops were largely to blame. The presentation of the events by all the Athenian newspapers lacked objectivity and accuracy, and their interpretation favoured the Greeks. The Athenian newspapers, both Venizelist and anti-Venizelist, invoked myths in order to support their propaganda and form party consciousness

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on a mass level. The myth of the protection of the Powers was mobilised by the Venizelist press, in order to justify foreign interference in the matters of the Greek state. The anti-Venizelist press, on the other hand, proceeded to refute the myth of the protection through the demystification of the traditional role of the Powers. A whole mythology was used by the Venizelist press to praise Venizelos and his abilities. Finally, when the fear of Bolshevism dominated Western countries both the Venizelist and anti-Venizelist press considered it to be the ‘most terrible tyranny’, from which workers had to be protected.

3 From Triumph to Defeat (January 1920–November 1920)

…η συνεννόηση ολόκληρου λαού για ένα αποτέλεσμα τόσο θλιβερό και επιζήμιο για τον ελληνισμό, είναι άξιο απορίας όσο και ανησυχίας. Δεν ξέρει κανείς τι πρέπει να θρηνήσει περισσότερο, την καταστροφή μιας μεγάλης ιδεολογίας ή το ψυχικό βρώμισμα ολόκληρου λαού. Πηνελόπη Δέλτα, 20 Νοεμβρίου 1920, Ημερολόγιο.1 1920 found Venizelos in a good mood. He was optimistic about the outcome of both the Paris Peace Conference and the forthcoming elections. Violent acts by Venizelists against the anti-Venizelists ceased at the end of July, but began again after the lifting of martial law and the proclaiming of elections in September 1920.2 The anti-Venizelists, on the other hand, were trying to create a united front to fight the anticipated elections. Despite martial law, the efforts of the Venizelists and the opposition of some of the old anti-Venizelist politicians, People’s Political Clubs, as they were called, were organised nation-wide. The Clubs succeeded the League of Reservists, founded in 1916 and officially dissolved in 1917.3 They were nominally political organisations, which Mavrogordatos describes as ‘the first mass organisation in the country’s political history’.4 Ventiris5 linked Ioannis Metaxas with the Clubs, and Compton Mackenzie did the same for Dimitris Gounaris.6 Both in 1916 and in 1920 the formation of the Clubs was not only supported but also proposed by the anti-Venizelist press. The Clubs, together with the anti-Venizelist newspapers, were responsible for well-organised, nationwide anti-Venizelist propaganda during the pre-electoral campaign. The present chapter will examine the party political campaign leading up to the 1920 elections. Although Greece’s irredentist claims had still not

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been successfully achieved, domestic political issues were becoming more important. The first section of the chapter will focus on the internal conditions within Greece up to June 1920, and analyse how the two camps acted throughout the election period. However, there came a point when the issue of foreign policy and the irredentist claims not only intervened in domestic politics but also became a government election banner, to balance the mistakes and omissions in domestic policy. The second and third sections will thus examine how the issue of foreign policy returned to the domestic arena and influenced the election campaign. They will also focus on the elections themselves and the final efforts of the political parties to gain, through the press, the public’s support. Finally, the last section will discuss the myths invoked by the Athenian press to justify their stance. I 1. The Lawyers’ Elections and the Attitude of the Athenian Press In January Venizelos met with the British Minister in Athens, Lord Granville, after a meeting on the island of Chios,7 to resolve the conflict between Stergiadis and the military authorities.8 Venizelos declared his absolute confidence that he would win with a very large majority. He had calculated that a foreign policy triumph extending the Greek borders would be the passport to electoral victory. When Granville reminded him of the result of the elections for the Lawyers’ Committees, where hardly a single Venizelist had been elected, Venizelos replied that these elections were of little importance,9 claiming that the lawyers had hated him since his first accession to power because he had upset their privileges of having access to every sort of office and employment. Venizelos believed that he had every right to be optimistic. Although the probable decision of the Paris Peace Conference was that Constantinople would remain in Turkish hands, with an international force deployed to ensure the freedom of the Straits, it was likely that the whole of Thrace up to the Chataldja lines would be ceded to Greece. He was also convinced, after the assurance he had received from Lloyd George, in the presence of Bonar Law, that the Greeks would be allowed to remain in Smyrna.10 The Athenian press started their pre-electoral party propaganda early by providing their readers with arguments which would reinforce their partisanship and at the same time offer them guidance in how to vote and reassurance that their voice would be meaningful and integrated into the ideology of the respective party. They had realised that one could not speak of effective propaganda in an election campaign lasting only two weeks. Propaganda

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has to first create a climate and then have continuity, duration and intensity.11 Both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist press lacked objectivity in their reporting. The Athenian press was partisan and concerned with getting their readers’ electoral support. However, the ‘irredentist issue’ was still unsolved, and these titles continued to be keen supporters of irredentist nationalism. For the Venizelist newspapers a triumph on the diplomatic front would provide arguments to persuade readers to vote for the Liberal Party. Conversely, the anti-Venizelist newspapers used the irredentist issue to diminish the importance of the government’s foreign policy accomplishments because the government was unlikely to be able to realise all the irredentist aspirations. The anti-Venizelist newspapers had publicised widely the results of the lawyers’ elections. Kathimerini considered the result to be the first electoral victory of the anti-Venizelist camp. The fact that it was won by the lawyers made the victory very important, argued the newspaper, as they had a special education which equipped them for political action. At a time when the attempts of the anti-Venizelist camp were concentrated on creating a United Opposition, the result of the lawyers’ elections was used by the anti-Venizelist press to arouse interest in the electoral process and to secure their readers’ votes for the United Opposition. The more the public read of and listened to news of other groups’ support for the opposition, the more convinced they became of the rightness of the opposition’s stance, as they were reminded that people with important positions in Greek society agreed with it. Furthermore emotional appeals were made in order to convey the opposition’s message. Therefore terms which incited people’s collective prejudices were used. Kathimerini, for example, considered the result of the elections to be a ‘bad omen’ for Venizelos and invited him to pay attention to the ‘omens’.12 The Venizelist newspapers, on the other hand, directed their efforts to attacking anti-Venizelist voices in order to raise doubts in the public mind. Therefore they downplayed the result of the lawyers’ election by emphasising the anti-Venizelists’ inability to form a powerful and coherent opposition. They did not hesitate to take advantage of leading articles in the anti-Venizelist press when it served their purpose. One article, published in Akropolis, characterised the anti-Venizelists as ‘captains’ and ‘crowds’. The Venizelist press considered such characterisations to be a careful and accurate attribution of the psychology and the qualifications of the executive members of the opposition. The writer of the leading article, Vlasis Gavriilidis, was seen as an independent observer who was not blinded by hatred and accordingly had the capacity to stand between the two political camps

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and tell the truth. The Venizelist press also accused the anti-Venizelists of pretending that they had faith and courage, when the truth was that they were ‘gangs’ who would participate in the elections as defenders of a collapsed system.13 2. Pre-electoral Efforts of the Anti-Venizelist Camp to Organise Itself The anti-Venizelist camp was making efforts to form a united body to fight the forthcoming elections. None of its leaders were initially prepared to humble themselves and accept a single leader. However, at the beginning of April most of the opposition leaders came to terms and formed a committee consisting of 16 members.14 The committee issued a manifesto which was full of generalities and did not contain any concrete proposals except for the ejection of the Venizelist government. It announced that the union was purely for the duration of the election campaign, after which all parties would be free to take their own line. Even the anti-Venizelist press admitted that the committee had been formed only to fight the elections. The Venizelist press, on the other hand, made every effort to defame the union by asking how the public could be asked to vote for a body of men whose only points of agreement were hatred towards Venizelos and perhaps the desire to reinstate ex-King Constantine.15 The anti-Venizelists had realised that there was a need for them to develop an organisation in order to eventually assume power, and this idea was expressed for the first time by the anti-Venizelist press. Kathimerini took the initiative in organising the anti-Venizelists into clubs which would promote the pre-electoral campaign of the anti-Venizelist union. Ten days after the formation of the committee, the newspaper emphasised for the first time the need to organise opposition clubs in every Greek town to work to win the elections. From the beginning of April, Kathimerini repeatedly raised the issue, even making a direct appeal to the Greek people,16 – an initiative that was adopted by the committee, which claimed that it itself had taken the decision, from the day of its formation, to work in unison to win the elections. Panagis Tsaldaris undertook to write the original charter, which was approved three days later. Although Tsaldaris’s most accurate biography does not mention anything regarding his possible connection with the People’s Political Clubs,17 there is a possibility that Georgios Vlachos wrote the articles in Kathimerini after discussing their content with Tsaldaris. Two weeks later, after the approval of the United Opposition, the ‘Sample of the Charter of the People’s Political Club’ was published in the anti-Venizelist press. Gounaris, in a letter to the committee of his party, approved the charter on 25 May.18 His letter was published in the anti-Venizelist press in

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order to keep partisans in line and to strengthen their decision to be organised into People’s Political Clubs. Ten thousand copies of the charter were printed and sent to the provinces.19 The Venizelist newspapers identified the People’s Political Clubs with the Leagues of Reservists, whose violent role in the past had been proven. Such identification could only lead to the creation of a strong revulsion among the public. It was the ‘revival of the horrible memory of the institution of the Leagues of Reservists, wrote Ethnos at the end of April.20 However, some other Venizelist newspapers, such as Estia, hastened to deride the idea of the People’s Political Clubs as a clumsy imitation of the Liberal Clubs,21 as on 19 May 1920 the Liberals had decided to form Liberal Clubs in areas without one. It seems, however, that in substance the Liberal Clubs were an imitation of the People’s Political Clubs.22 At the beginning of June, the opposition restated its programme, which the Venizelist newspapers made every effort to defame by pointing out that there was nothing in it which was not also in the Venizelist programme, other than the proposal to restore the ex-King. In substance they considered the opposition programme to be an imitation of the Venizelist one.23 3. The Attitude of SEKE during the Pre-electoral Period SEKE supported the Bolsheviks, who claimed to be interested in fermenting a world revolution. At the beginning of April (5–13), SEKE held its Second Congress in Athens, where the question of formally joining the Third International was extensively discussed. Although most of the delegates were confused about the nature of the Comintern, the Congress voted to affiliate SEKE with the Third International and to accept all its principles and resolutions, under the pressure of those who were determined to bring the Greek Socialist movement into the Comintern. The Congress approved a new Charter under which the Central Committee became the ‘high command and the executive body of the Party, possessing all party powers’. The word ‘Communist’ was added in parenthesis to the party’s title. A few days later a May Day proclamation was published in Rizospastis in which ‘all the proletariat in Greece’ were urged to cheer for the ‘World Soviet Republic’ and told that non-attendance at the May Day demonstrations ‘is desertion from the struggle, it is a denial of the honest duty that the slave has against his tyrant’.24 Only by their participation in the demonstrations would the workers be able to express their feeling of unity and maintain a fighting spirit and firmness.25 Venizelos was worried because the influence of SEKE was growing, and he realised that a triumph in foreign policy was needed, to strengthen the position of the Liberal Party. However,

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despite his promises to abolish martial law and censorship he did not do so. Censorship was the only means of muzzling the press for political reasons. II 1. The Triumph The international dimension returned to the domestic arena with the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres.26 It was a peace which started with war, as Greek troops were moved out of Smyrna to create a wide bridgehead in order to allow them to reach the interior. For Venizelos, the treaty was the success he needed in order to remain in power. In reality it was a peace which was impossible to realise; the Allied military advisers had warned that at least 27 divisions, which did not exist, would be needed permanently to enforce its terms. However, Venizelos was – or seemed to be – confident. He had even said to Woodrow Wilson that Atatürk’s forces would collapse and Greek power would extend into the interior of Asia Minor, into Constantinople and probably as far as Pontus.27 The triumph of the Treaty of Sèvres was for the Venizelists the main argument on which they would base their pre-electoral campaign. Venizelos had promised that after the signing of the Treaty he would declare elections, and so a date was announced. However, several mistakes of the Venizelist ministers in the exercise of their internal policy were to be the main preelectoral argument for the anti-Venizelists. As in 1919, the entire Athenian press except Rizospastis at first adopted an enthusiastic attitude towards the Treaty of Sèvres. At last the irredentist aspirations of the Greeks were being achieved. The excitement and enthusiasm generated by the apparent fulfilment of the Megali Idea dominated the front pages of the newspapers, even the opposition ones.28 The antiVenizelist newspapers warmly welcomed the Treaty of Sèvres and considered it to be a means for the achievement of the irredentist aspirations of the Greeks.29 However, after initial praise the opposition newspapers, in the context of the forthcoming elections and because of their concerns that Venizelos’s success in foreign policy could cost the opposition votes, focused their propaganda on efforts to belittle his achievement. They attempted to diminish the triumph arising from the Treaty of Sèvres by highlighting the disadvantages of Venizelos’s foreign policy. They insisted that if Venizelos had played his hand better, Greece could and would have got much more out of the Great War than it had so far obtained, and that Greece would have accomplished peace without sinister threats from the Turks. For party reasons the anti-Venizelists became even more nationalist

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than Venizelos. In Kathimerini’s leading article of 31 July, Vlachos accused those who had signed the treaty of being eager to present it as an epilogue to the history of the Greek struggles, and to persuade the people that their dreams had been fulfilled. Vlachos emphasised that despite the great importance of the Treaty of Sèvres it did not give the country all it deserved to have: specifically Constantinople and the other Greek territories, which were to be outside the new frontiers of Greece. And most of all it did not give Greece what it had every right to ask for: peace. Moreover, there were serious threats hidden behind the treaty. The direct threat remained from Kemal’s Nationalist army, whose extermination the Greek army was prevented from accomplishing. The indirect threats were the creations of deadlocks, quarrels and disputes, and unexpected adventures, because of the kind of solutions which were set out in the treaty – the matter of Constantinople, the Straits and Smyrna. The Treaty of Sèvres offered improvised compromises which could only be kept through ideal harmony, interests and attitudes among many other factors. Vlachos predicted that nothing good could be envisaged.30 The second line of attack sought to separate the Treaty of Sèvres from Venizelos. This argued that it was absurd for the Venizelists to claim Greece’s successes as a triumph for their leader, when it was in fact due to the force of circumstances and the splendid behaviour of the Greek troops. Other anti-Venizelist newspapers, e.g. the Politia, attributed the Treaty of Sèvres to the Greek people.31 In addition they made efforts to gain the friendship of the Allies, even by twisting the facts of the past – the opposition newspapers were careful to express the warmest pro-Entente sentiments, declaring also that they had always shown these sentiments, particularly when they were in power.32 The Venizelist newspapers celebrated the treaty with banner headlines in which they declared that ‘Great Greece has become a reality’,33 and focused their propaganda on the fact that the treaty was exclusively the outcome of Venizelos’s ability to negotiate skilfully in the country’s interests; he was therefore to be considered the only person capable of continuing to govern Greece. He was characterised as a ‘man of destiny’34 and the treaty as a ‘polemical and diplomatic triumph’, which Venizelos, ‘the great national wrestler’, personified.35 Through his ‘vigilance’ and ‘his daily ceaseless struggles’ he had succeeded in giving Greece a day of ‘absolute triumph’. He had managed to overcome the sad events of the past and to create a ‘giant Hellenism’, which would dominate the East with its stature.36 Some newspapers, such as Estia, considered the Treaty to be the accomplishment of the Greek people, the Greek army and the Prime Minister equally. ‘For eight years they had all been walking towards the day of success, which

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is also a day of justice as well’, Estia wrote in a leading article.37 All the Venizelist newspapers accused Venizelos’s opponents of trying to belittle his accomplishment and of insulting him.38 Rizospastis was the only newspaper to oppose the Treaty of Sèvres from the outset giving it a ‘class-type’ interpretation. The enemies who were identified with the bourgeois parties did not hesitate to exploit the working classes for the promotion of their own interests. The newspaper considered the treaty to be the accomplishment of the bourgeoisie, which was trying to lead the working class astray under the false banner of the ‘enlargement of the country’ and the ‘liberation of the brothers in slavery’, at a time when the miserable people did not even have a chance to breathe. It wrote that when the nightmare of the war and all the misery and disaster it had caused were over, they would have to gather up the ruins, which would be squandered in the hands of the victors and the defeated by the avidity of the bourgeoisie in power. The working class, Rizospastis maintained, knew that the country had been enlarged in order that the cycle of exploitation by their tyrants could be extended. The people had been released from political slavery, only to find themselves under the financial slavery of the country’s capitalists.39 Rizospastis’s attitude towards the Treaty of Sèvres accorded with SEKE’s programme, which had condemned Greece’s war aims as imperialistic. It advocated that only areas which had an overwhelmingly Greek majority should be granted the right to determine their future allegiance, while areas like the Aydin vilayet and Eastern Thrace had to be by-passed. As for the future state of Turkey, it suggested that it should be organised into autonomous vilayets which would have local self-government and guarantees for the minority populations.40 2. The ‘Iouliana’: Propaganda and Violence On 30 July 1920, two days after the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres, Venizelos was attacked by two royalist Greek officers in the Gare de Lyon in Paris, when he was about to board the Orient Express to return to Greece.41 The attempt on Venizelos’s life showed that the National Schism was still alive, and it offered the extremist Venizelists the pretext to proceed to violent acts which became ‘propaganda of deed’.42 In those acts the Athenian newspapers played the leading role both as ‘persecutors’ and ‘victims’. When news of the assassination attempt reached Athens, the government tried to conceal it until full details had been received and it was certain that Venizelos was in no danger. When the news was finally published, it caused a series of riots in Athens by extremist members of the Venizelist camp, known as the ‘Iouliana’. Demonstrators wrecked the offices of all the anti-

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Venizelist newspapers; the offices of Kathimerini and Rizospastis ‘suffered’ the worst damage. The demonstrators also attacked and caused considerable damage to the houses of some opposition leaders. It was not possible for the government to maintain order because the police and troops in Athens were mostly Cretans and extreme Venizelists. Orders were promptly given for the arrest of all the principal men of the opposition, partly because the government believed that there was a plot to overthrow it and partly on the pretext of protecting them from possible ill-treatment by the mob. Even so, murders were committed: Ion Dragoumis,43 a member of the opposition, was killed by men of the ‘Battalion of Security’, a special Cretan corps which acted as a kind of bodyguard to Venizelos and whose commander, Captain Gyparis, had become notorious because of the violent and illegal actions he had previously carried out. All the members of the government invariably declared their horror of the crime and their determination to find the murderers and punish them severely. However, although a strict enquiry was said to have taken place, nobody was ever punished and the crime remained a serious stain on the reputation of the government. The vice-president of the council, Repoulis, and his colleagues completely lost control, believing that the attempt on Venizelos was part of a deep-laid plot. However, some of the arrested opponents were released after a few days, as no evidence was found against them. A few, such as Mavromichalis, were brought to trial but were acquitted in early November. The government – in an effort to distinguish itself from the extreme Venizelists – expressed disapproval of the excesses committed and undertook to indemnify the victims, especially the editors of the opposition press, to whom they promised assistance and the government’s full protection to help them to re-start their newspapers.44 The only titles which were in circulation in Athens at this time were the Venizelist ones. The Venizelist press, instead of making efforts to calm the spirits of the hot-headed Venizelists, not only justified their acts but also incited fanaticism. The anti-Venizelists were presented as enemies whose only intention was to damage the country, and therefore every violent act against them was justified. Leading Venizelist newspapers, such as Eleftheros Typos and Patris – as well as Akropolis, which had become one of the most fervent Venizelist organs – considered the riots to be the ‘natural’ consequence of the attempt on Venizelos’s life. The headline of Akropolis claimed that ‘they attempted to murder not only Venizelos, but Greece itself ’.45 Without hesitation, the leading article in Akropolis accused the anti-Venizelists of the assassination attempt. The people who had put the gun into the hands of the two officers, it suggested, were like those who, after the

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celebrations for peace, had invited the people to rebel against their leaders, and also like the opposition press who used every means in order to poison the convictions of the people, to cool their enthusiasm and to ridicule the victories of the Greek army. The article went further, accusing the anti-Venizelist camp of being so afraid of the results of the forthcoming elections that they had sought a way, by murdering Venizelos, of not having to face the public’s verdict. Akropolis also accused the Venizelists of allowing the anti-Venizelists to say whatever they wanted, with ‘stupid tolerance’, when they should have expelled them from Greek soil. Eleftheros Typos and Patris openly accused ex-King Constantine and Dimitris Gounaris of being the moral perpetrators behind the attempt on Venizelos’s life46 and labeled the Iouliana the revenge of the Greek people.47 The Akropolis considered the Iouliana a divine punishment which struck the opposition. ‘The Opposition dies. The Opposition is dead!’, concluded the leading article of Akropolis.48 Patris urged the government to proceed with the renewal of the country by purging all remaining monarchist supporters.49 In substance, the Iouliana were violent acts initiated for their psychological effect, which became an instance of ‘propaganda of deed’. The prompt destruction of life and property by the Venizelist extremists – including the police and the troops in Athens – after news of the attempt on Venizelos’s life became known was a demonstration of strength aimed at their political opponents in order to demoralise and instil fear. The Venizelist newspapers, by justifying those violent acts, became the means through which the propaganda of violence was exercised. Although propaganda and violence are separate activities, in the case of the Iouliana propaganda and violence not only had common goals but also reinforced one other. Simultaneously, the anti-Venizelist newspapers, by being the targets of violent acts, became the victims of rigid fanaticism. By attacking their opponents’ means of propaganda the Venizelists made efforts to quash their thoughts and opinions. ‘We were closed down, we suffered great losses and were imprisoned once more during the ‘Iouliana’ …’; this was how, a few years later, Vlachos, the owner of the Kathimerini, described the episodes in Athens after the attempt on Venizelos’s life.50 The anti-Venizelist newspapers were closed down from 1 to 10 August 1920. However, when they reappeared they showed very little sign of moderation.51 On the contrary, they took advantage of the episodes caused by the extremist Venizelists to attack the government in the harshest possible way, and to reveal its autocratic nature by illustrating that it would employ every means – including violence – in order to control its opponents. One of the first newspapers to be published after the Iouliana was

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Rizospastis. ‘It is time for the farce to end’, was the headline of the heavily censored leading article. Large blank spaces appeared on the front page. Rizospastis stated that the Liberal Party had robbed the people by every legal and illegal means for three years. Its supporters were ready to ‘exterminate’ anyone who was eager to question its power, and they considered the workers their enemy. That was the reason why they used ‘every means of violence, pressure and extermination against the workers’ and why they reached the point where they launched their thugs against the offices of Rizospastis and caused the ‘shame’ of 31 July 1920, in order ‘to provoke terror’.52 Rizospastis accused the government of not punishing any of the guilty, although the police had been informed of who they were.53 The newspaper also labelled members of the officer class as guilty, and saw this as a clear indication of the beginning of changes which would lead to the destruction of the bourgeois regime. It claimed that any diminishment in the popular esteem of the regime would contribute to a faster awakening of the working and suffering classes.54 Kathimerini reappeared on 13 August 1920. There was an effort to take advantage of the riots and Dragoumis’s murder to prove the excellence of the opposition and the vileness of the government. Simultaneously, the attempt on Venizelos’s life was condemned. Vlachos wrote in the leader of the same day that ‘We protest with indignation and disapprove of that action’, in an effort to deny any responsibility for the attempt on Venizelos’s life. Kathimerini claimed that the attack and the elections were unconnected events. It explained that even if the Greek people were in despair, no excuse could justify an action which amounted to attempted political murder.55 On the same page there was an article about the Iouliana and the murder of Dragoumis. Such events perpetuated, according to the newspaper, the gap between the two camps which had caused the schism, responsibility for which lay with Venizelism.56 It accused the state of ‘a lack of public order’ and the government of ‘a lack of responsibility’, as nobody would resign or be put on trial. In the centre of the front page, a photograph of the murdered Dragoumis appeared, and at the bottom of page two photographs of Kathimerini’s destroyed offices. Some opposition newspapers, such as Politia, took a different line, justifying the attempt on Venizelos’s life as the ‘consequence of the oppressive measures of the government’. The government was also held even more responsible for not preventing some ‘vagrants’ from provoking the earlier disorder and then from assuming the role of the ‘avenger’ by causing disaster, wreckage and arson when a few soldiers could have dispersed the mob and prevented the attacks. It was a lie, according to Politia, that the

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events were the result of popular fury, and it argued the government could benefit from the attempt on Venizelos’s life if the Venizelists showed moderation. It considered that what had subsequently happened in Athens had completely destroyed the advantages that the indignation at the attempted murder could have offered the party in power.57 The riots of the Iouliana seemed to overshadow the triumph of Greek irredentist nationalism. During August 1920 the political parties concentrated their efforts on accusing each other, as the National Schism once more reached its peak. However, the return of Venizelos to Greece and the presentation of the Treaty of Sèvres to Parliament offered the pretext for the Venizelist newspapers to praise Venizelos’s diplomatic accomplishments once more. As the pre-electoral campaign was in its last and most crucial phase, the Treaty of Sèvres became a banner used by the government press to strengthen its position and persuade readers to vote for the Liberal Party. The anti-Venizelist newspapers, on the other hand, focused on the government’s many mistakes in domestic policy. III 1. Venizelos in Athens and the Attitude of the Athenian Press After his return to Greece, Venizelos presented the Treaty of Sèvres to Parliament.58 Before the Chamber was dissolved on 23 September it passed a resolution which stated that its successor would be ‘revisionist’, i.e. charged with amending specified articles of the constitution concerning the prerogatives of the Crown. Venizelos insisted that the proposed changes would not alter the spirit of the constitution, but would render it impossible for a future sovereign to misinterpret the constitution as Constantine had done.59 The Venizelist newspapers praised Venizelos’s speech in the Chamber and gave full details of it. ‘The Chamber declared Venizelos to be the Benefactor and the Saviour of the Country’, proclaimed their headlines. To them this was proof that the Chamber had praised Venizelos for his creation of a Great Greece, and reassured him that through the power and the will of the people his work would be safe and remain indestructible.60 The anti-Venizelist press, on the other hand, criticised Venizelos’s speech, and also exploited the ‘Iouliana’ and Dragoumis’s murder to demonstrate Venizelos’s ‘evilness’, his lack of respect for the Greek people and his false intentions. For them his speech was deficient, full of chasms and nonsense,61 insufficient and lacking in inspiration.62 It was no more than an ironic address which mocked the people,63 as he had omitted to refer to subjects

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of vital importance to them. His speech was considered to be an ‘apology’; the apology of a man who carried a heavy burden of responsibility for the National Schism on his shoulders, who had divided Greece, who had sowed hatred, who had opened a gap between the two camps and had done whatever was possible to make it wider.64 He had failed to mention Dragoumis’s murder and the episodes of 31 July 1920. They criticised Venizelos for his declarations concerning the new military undertakings of the Greek army, which had unexpected consequences for the people. According to the anti-Venizelist newspapers, Venizelos tried to reduce his responsibilities by referring to the young men who were fighting, and in whose name the state demanded sacrifices from those who remained at home. He did not ask for sacrifices for the sake of the war, but rather the Liberal Party demanded the sacrifice of the people’s freedom for the sake of the interest of ‘some’. The best thing Venizelos could do to prove that the Greek people were free, and that there was no place for political interest or ambition, was to let a caretaker government hold the elections. The opposition newspapers warned him that the achievement of an electoral triumph could not justify the suppression of the people’s freedom which, they claimed, was necessary for the attainment of his electoral success.65 Rizospastis criticised Venizelos and his regime for their warlike programme and their intention to continue the war. The celebration of the peace treaty in Parliament was, it suggested, a complete mockery because the expansion of Greece’s borders would result in Greece becoming the guarantor of the interests of her protectors in the Near East. In addition to the government’s warlike plans, the other coercive measures which had been taken during the previous three years would remain. The people were naive to expect that the repressive laws would be repealed after the signing of the Treaty. Rizospastis emphasised the fact that the elections would not re-establish normal political life in the country, but would instead only lead to the ratification of all that had taken place and allow the existing state of affairs to continue. The newspaper also accused the opposition of not objecting to the continuation of the war but of supporting it, and of asking for the re-establishment of the Byzantine Empire. Rizospastis not only had strong objections to the war but also declared that it would do whatever it could to end it. Finally, the newspaper invited the working class to react and to develop its own programme of peace and freedom.66 The announcement of the dissolution of the ‘Lazarus’ Chamber and the date of the elections marked the official beginning of the electoral campaign, though in reality it had begun earlier. During the month prior to the elections, propaganda by both wings of the press was intensified as editorials

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sought to explain what the victory of one or the other party would mean for the country and for the individual readers themselves. The Venizelist press attempted to prove that the opposition had previously harmed the country and to present Venizelos as the only person who could successfully govern Greece. They also praised Venizelos’s skilful diplomacy, which had laid the foundations for a new Great Greece. Venizelos was considered to be an inspired leader who had managed to awaken the numbed senses of the Greek people and inspire them with confidence that he would lead them to the fulfilment of their national aspirations.67 The anti-Venizelist press, on the other hand, focused particularly on Venizelos’s domestic policy, accusing him of being a tyrant. He was presented as the internal enemy who had deprived the Greek people of freedom, and the anti-Venizelist press, especially Kathimerini, urged the public ‘to end the tyranny’ and remove him from power. It suggested that Venizelos had falsely assumed the role of the conqueror of tyranny on the international stage, but in fact he and not the ex-King was the real despot.68 Rizospastis also strongly opposed Venizelos and his government, following the same line as the anti-Venizelist newspapers. Extensive references were made daily to the imprisonment of citizens, to martial law and to censorship. Venizelos was characterised by the newspaper as a dictator.69 2. The Monkey’s Bite and Its Consequences Events now took an unexpected turn. On 17/30 September King Alexander was bitten by his pet monkey. He died three weeks later of blood poisoning. Although King Alexander had never been popular, his death forced the government to face the problem of an empty throne and to realise that ‘he was an asset to his country’.70 After King Alexander’s death Venizelos recalled the Chamber, which elected Admiral Kountouriotis as regent. The elections were postponed for a week. The constitutional issue also had to be faced, as King Alexander had no heir. The Venizelist newspapers started to suggest Prince Paul, King Alexander’s brother, as the future monarch, and claimed the decision had already been taken by Venizelos even before Alexander’s death in order to exclude any possibility of the return of Constantine to the throne. A Venizelist newspaper even suggested that Alexander’s unborn child by his morganatic wife Madame Manos should be proclaimed heir, something which Venizelos himself had thought of as a possible solution.71 The antiVenizelist press now started to campaign for Constantine’s restoration. Finally the issue was left in abeyance until after the elections. Because of Alexander’s death, the elections were postponed until 1/14

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November and Venizelos announced that the one restriction he had previously imposed, namely that candidates were prohibited from advocating the return of the ex-King, would be removed. On 12/25 October, Gounaris returned to Greece from Italy and landed at the city of Patras, his old constituency, and proceeded on to Athens the following day. Both he and his associates stood openly for the return of the ex-King. At the same time the Venizelist ministers visited their constituencies or toured the country. Venizelos himself visited Volos and Salonika, where he received enthusiastic receptions. However, some generals in Salonika were planning a coup d’état in order to proclaim a republic – a clear sign that a number of Venizelists had lost confidence in their party’s electoral prospects.72 At the same time the anti-Venizelist newspapers became strong supporters of Constantine, and campaigned for his restoration. He was the sole person, they contended, who was unconnected to the hatreds of the recent past, a unifying figure who could dissolve potential future animosities. He was also the only person who had a legal right to return to the throne.73 Venizelos was once more accused of being against the Greek dynasty, to the extent of preferring Alexander to be the last-ever monarch.74 Three days before the elections the opposition press predicted what would happen when the ‘Reaction’75 won. First of all, they would bring back the King, who had fought as bravely as all the other Greeks to enlarge Greece and to offer it days of glory, enthusiasm, and happiness. The King had been tyrannised as much as the people had, and he had agreed to vacate his throne for the sake of the interests of the state. Constantine’s return would end the adventures which Greece had suffered during the previous five years under the criminal Venizelos. It would mark the beginning of an internal reformation and the end of ‘the regime of the secret agent, the factionalism of the State and the terrorism against the citizens’. Secondly, when the ‘Reaction’ won, they would forgive, as forgiveness and tolerance had always been their policy. For example, despite having been victims of a cowardly attack by foreign troops promoting the interests of Venizelism, they forgave their enemies.76 The Venizelist press had a diametrically opposed opinion of Constantine, and concentrated their efforts on persuading the public that the former monarch was an enemy whose return could only damage the country. Just before the elections Estia and Eleftheros Typos reminded their readers of the harm that the ex-King had done to the interests of Greece, and invited the Greek people to vote for Venizelos and the Liberal Party. Akropolis told its readers that a vote for the Liberal Party was a vote for the prosperity of

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the country, for their family, for their children, for their honour, for their property, for their national and civil peace.77 Rizospastis took a strong anti-monarchical stance and in so doing it adopted an attitude which distinguished it from the opposition and the Venizelist newspapers alike. It maintained that both parties wished to maintain the institution of the monarchy and that the only disagreement between them concerned who was to be King. The newspaper considered the institution of the monarchy foreign and anachronistic; it had always been accompanied by great suffering and led to bankruptcy. Rizospastis asked both bourgeois parties to place the future of the institution before the judgement of the people.78 3. The Elections and the Aftermath Sunday 1/14 November 1920 was election day,79 which passed with very little disturbance of the peace. When the results began to arrive in the evening, it soon became clear that the Venizelist candidates in Athens and the surrounding areas had not been elected, and that Venizelos himself had been heavily defeated. The results from the provinces were similar, except in Epirus, Thrace, some of the Aegean islands and Crete.80 The same evening Granville telegraphed the stark news to London: ‘Monsieur Venizelos is hopelessly beaten.’81 Venizelos himself was not only disappointed, but also deeply hurt.82 Among the reasons which could be considered responsible for the defeat was the widespread feeling of opposition to the Venizelist ‘tyranny’; a reaction to the repressive measures which had been imposed as a result of the war, and out of fear of Constantinist plots; the unjust actions of minor officials; and riots caused by the extreme Venizelists. In addition, there was a good deal of war weariness and a desire for demobilisation. Venizelos had also been away from Greece for much of the period since early 1919, and had lost touch with the popular mood. There was also a strong feeling of loyalty and devotion to Constantine from a large part of the population.83 The Venizelist press was just as shocked as Venizelos. The following day, Estia acknowledged in its leader its mistaken view of public opinion. The results were not those anticipated, but Estia announced that it would bow to the popular will.84 The following day Akropolis declared that the one who was punished was not Venizelos – who had spent the previous five years working hard for the interests of the country – but rather Greece itself. It claimed that despite Venizelos being the greatest national asset Greece had, nevertheless the people had decided to give him ‘bile instead of manna’. For three years the Greek people had been brainwashed with

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the words ‘tyrant’, ‘tyranny’ and ‘tyrannise’; such words and phrases had excited the people’s imagination and had resulted in the electorate momentarily forgetting their sacred duties.85 However, Akropolis could not hide its sorrow and hoped that the new government would deliver as great, powerful and rich a Greece to their successors as Venizelos had handed to his. Patris was the only newspaper which, incredulously, acted as if the Liberals had won: it even printed a bold headline which stated: ‘We shall win the greatest victory of the last decade.’ The leading article assured its readers that the Liberal Party would be the winner of the elections when the results at the front were taken into account. It claimed that 90 per cent of the troops at the front had voted for the Liberal Party;86 in fact the opposite was true. Rizospastis stated that the cause of Venizelos’s defeat in the elections was the Liberal Party’s attitude towards the working class. It was liberal in name only: the country had never before been administered more illiberally. It accused the recent government of suppressing the life of the workers, blindly obeying the orders of the capitalists, voting through antiworking decrees, using martial law against freedom of thought – especially against the socialist movement – and being a government which had imposed heavy taxes on the poor while ignoring the huge profits of the rich. It had not taken any measures to help the peasants, had paid no heed to the opinion of the people on political matters, and had used power to silence the voice of protest. The government had taken advantage of the war, which it itself had started, to suspend civic freedoms. Furthermore, the government had enforced its repressive laws in an unequal manner: attacks on opposition newspapers went unpunished. The Greek people could not tolerate the situation any longer, and had decided to overthrow the tyranny.87 The opposition newspapers celebrated the victory of the United Opposition. They regarded it as proof that the Greek people were steadfast and determined to fight the tyranny and overcome all its pretences, and were not afraid of its threats and humiliations.88 Vlachos, of Kathimerini, devoted the leading article on 3 November to Venizelos, writing that he had got what he deserved. He had broken the laws, had tyrannised and imprisoned, murdered and terrorised, exiling all who had opposed his views.89 The populist titles held a similar view of Venizelos’s defeat which, they claimed, was the result of the rejection of his tyrannical oligarchy, which had scourged the country and tyrannised the people, dividing and devastating the nation. Normality would only be achieved by Venizelos’s removal from power.90

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IV 1. The Myth of the Conspiracy of the Anti-Venizelists and King Constantine The Venizelist press mustered the myth of the conspiracy91 of the antiVenizelists and Constantine not only to justify the government’s oppression but also to raise the ex-King as a putative threat to the people which could only be defeated if the public voted for the Liberal Party in the forthcoming elections. By invoking the myth of the conspiracy they also discredited their opponents and made them the natural scapegoats for any misfortune. The myth determined who were the friends and the enemies of the country. The latter were interested in ‘selling out’ the nation’s interests, and thus in subverting national integrity, independence, the regime, national unity and internal order. Provocative language was used in order to denigrate the ‘other’ and to maintain a view of their opponents as ‘bad’ and ‘dangerous’, while they themselves were ‘good’; a view which presented the two sides as radically different. The anti-Venizelists were ‘conspirators’ in a ‘nest of anarchy’ who ‘plotted’, ‘set traps’, ‘incited crimes’ and created ‘victims’ whose goals were to ‘destroy whatever Venizelos’s genius and the sacrifices and triumphs which the Greek army had created’.92 The Venizelist press imputed the lowest motives and the most ruthless methods to the anti-Venizelists, who were considered responsible for ‘the attempt on Venizelos’s life and the conspiracy to overthrow the government’.93 The anti-Venizelists were presented as animals, an image which was used to emphasise their ‘nonhuman’ nature: they were portrayed as ‘mad dogs’ looking for ‘prey’,94 ‘mad wolves’ who wanted to ‘tear Greece to pieces’, as having ‘the thick skin of an elephant’.95 Their non-human nature was also emphasised when they were symbolised as ‘dark vampires from the past’.96 The myth of the conspiracy also provided the opportunity for the Venizelist press to incorporate aspects of contemporary political reality and recent history into their discourse and to offer an explanation of what had happened, what was happening and also what was very likely to happen. For example, they held the anti-Venizelists responsible for the surrender of the fort of ‘Rupel’ and of the Fourth Army Division.97 They had also surrendered Epirus to the Italians98 and Eastern Macedonia to the Bulgarians,99 acts which did not bode well if they ever came to power again.100 The conspirator-in-chief was considered to be ex-King Constantine, who had tried unsuccessfully with his ‘harmful mania’ ‘to overthrow Venizelos’ in the past and was now ‘making efforts to knock down the “edifice” that

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Venizelos had erected and bury him under its ruins’.101 Several examples of Constantine’s disastrous acts were dug up from the past: at the beginning of the Great War, he had ‘embraced the enemies of old’ by co-operating with the Germans, although he was aware of the fact that ‘the Germans were allied to the Turks and the Bulgarians’ and that the ‘Kaiser had given promises to them which harmed Greece’. He had shown openly his animosity towards Great Britain, France and Serbia, especially in November 1916 when he committed his worst ‘slip’ by starting an ‘open and ignominious war against the Powers’.102 His ‘blind and morbid ambition’ was responsible for his determination to establish ‘absolutism in the country where democracy had been born’. Therefore he did not hesitate ‘to provoke the Schism’ and ‘praise his adherents who perpetrated acts of murder, injury and insult against the Venizelists’.103 He was considered responsible for the blockade of 1916, as his ‘sins’ provoked the embargo which caused the people to suffer from ‘hunger’. He was also accused of several other ‘crimes’ during the years of the Great War: violating all the articles of the Constitution, tyrannising the army without cause; handing over a whole section of an army corps to the Bulgarians; organising a series of conspiracies; insulting the national army by calling it ‘the army of national shame’; and, by renouncing a territorial claim to Eastern Macedonia, bringing Greece below the level of Ioannina and Katerini.104 He had also promised the Dodecanese to Italy, destroyed the Cypriot cause, the irredentist aspirations of the Greeks, deceived the Allies and murdered their soldiers.105 Metaphors of ‘dangerous animals’ and ‘incurable diseases’ were used to symbolise his malevolent nature: he was a poisonous ‘wasp’, an ‘elephant who wanted to smash the world under his feet’ and a ‘horrible cancer’ that ‘sapped the national organism’. 106 Gounaris was also involved in the conspiracy as an ‘agent’ of ex-King Constantine, and as a ‘puppet’ whose positions were dictated by the moves of shadowy figures in the Palace.107 He was presented as the ‘missionary of a discredited religion’ whose sole intention was to ‘cause trouble without having any regard for the tranquillity and the prosperity of the country’.108 The past was recalled in order to show that in 1915 Gounaris had proved he was a ‘despiser’ of the Greek people, one who only believed in the ‘star of Germany’, and now that the German ‘star had set’, remembered the Greek people in order to ‘lead Greece to disaster’, something that he had not previously managed, ‘despite his best efforts to achieve it’.109 The myth of the conspiracy was closely connected with an appeal to the ‘Saviour’. The Saviour was a charismatic leader, like Venizelos, who had the attributes which could protect the country from all the plots organised by the anti-Venizelists. Venizelos, the ‘creator of Great Greece’, was presented

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as the symbol of order and stability and as a ‘guarantor of impartiality and justice’. He was the one who ‘had freed the country from the tyranny of Constantine’ and ‘had burst the Greek people’s fetters’.110 A powerful image was used to describe his accomplishments: he was the ‘Olympic champion’ at the most difficult game.111 2. The Myth of the ‘Tyrant’ Venizelos and the Saviour King While the Venizelist press criticised the opposition for acting in a conspiratorial manner, the anti-Venizelist press presented Venizelos as aiming to destroy the country with his tyrannical regime, invoking the myth of him as a ‘tyrant’. Although Venizelos had imposed oppressive measures because of the ‘state of siege’ in which the country was under, the accusations were also part of the political game. They were an attempt to highlight the tyrannical nature of Venizelos and present the United Opposition, supported by the anti-Venizelist press, as the camp which held the public interest at heart and was patriotic and virtuous. Venizelos’s image was also presented by the anti-Venizelist press as a total negation of his positive qualities as presented in the Venizelist press.112 The myth of the tyrant was closely connected with that of the ‘Saviour’. Constantine, the competing charismatic authority to Venizelos,113 was presented as the only person who could save the country from Venizelos’s tyranny. Venizelos was presented as a ‘compulsive’ personality who displayed, according to the anti-Venizelist press, all the ‘satanic’ attributes: despotism, mania for revenge, a lust for defaming his opponents. The monarchy was portrayed as the symbol of stability, with emphasis placed on anti-monarchical events of the past where Venizelos’s actions showed his negative values: for example, when he had revolted against Prince George in Crete; when, invited by the Military League, he had appeared at the Palace in 1910; in 1916 when he had revolted against the King; in 1917 when he had managed, with help from the Allies, to exile the King from Greece. His previous actions had all been designed to lessen the prestige of the Crown. The events of the past were presented as indicative of Venizelos’s future acts. He was also considered responsible for several ‘satanic’ acts against the Greek people: he shot soldiers who had shed their blood for their country; he abused people; he killed people in the middle of the streets who had sacrificed everything for the sake of their country; he insulted old people who deserved respect; he sacrificed innocent women and children; he tyrannised men devoted to good purposes; he stained unstained reputations; he was contemptuous of centuries-old traditions.114 Two of the most

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revealing images employed by the anti-Venizelist press were that he was ‘Attila the Hun’ who ‘set fire to the Greek state’,115 and a ‘Mephistopheles’ with ‘satanic inspirations’.116 Several antisemitic metaphors were used to emphasise Venizelos’s criminal acts: he was presented as a ‘Jewish’ merchant who was unable or unwilling to pay his employees: to keep them satisfied he promised every month to raise their salary despite his inability or unwillingness to pay even the original amount. He was presented as a ‘Cretan policeman’ who ‘was mounted on the back of the Greek people’ and now ‘governs them’ as if they were ‘beasts of burden’ to be ridden into the ground.117 Finally, he was mocked as an actor who had exchanged the ‘costume of liberalism’ backstage for the ‘costume of despotism’.118 Special emphasis was given to the relationship Venizelos had with the Allies. He ‘had usurped Greek power’ with the help of the ‘British-French campaign against Athens’ in May 1917, and had ‘taken revenge on the Greek people for their compliance to law’.119 He was the ‘conspirator’ who had used ‘every illegal means in order to draw the country prematurely into a war without a guarantee of ultimate success’.120 Venizelos was presented ironically as a ‘sunflower’ who was attracted at first by the ‘British star’ and then by the ‘French star’.121 Constantine was presented as the only figure who had the power to save the country from Venizelos’s ‘tyranny’. The myth of the ‘Saviour’ was invoked by the anti-Venizelist press to provide a way out from under Venizelos’s tyranny and the ‘regime of informers, of narrow party interests, and of the terrorising of ordinary citizens’. Constantine was considered to have suffered from Venizelos’s tyranny as much as the Greek people had, although he had fought to ‘expand his country and to offer it the best days of glory, enthusiasm and joy’, 122 a description which eulogised Constantine’s personal charisma as a victorious military leader.123 Therefore it was time for him to return to the throne and start a period of ‘internal reformation’.124 Metaphors were used to emphasise the power of Constantine to ‘save’ the country. He was a ‘strong branch’ of the ‘vigorous tree of the Greek dynasty’ which had been ‘blessed by the God’.125 Conclusion Three factors opened a space for the opposition to operate politically during the period from January to November 1920. The formal influences were the elections and the long pre-electoral period. The structural features were the government’s repression and its effects. Finally, the national factor was the issue of the monarchy.

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The press played a leading role during the period in all three areas. During the pre-electoral period the Athenian newspapers were partisan organs of the political parties they supported and were concerned only with victory in the elections. Their main effort was to keep their readers, who were of course mainly partisans of the party that the newspaper supported, in line. They did not hesitate to take advantage of any event which could promote their goals. The nature of the electoral struggle meant that, far from promoting the Venizelist vision of ‘national unity’, the press was now perpetuating the National Schism, which reached its peak after the attempt on Venizelos’s life and the transformation of Athens into a battlefield in which the fanatical Venizelists attacked the anti-Venizelists – in one case going as far as murder – and wrecked their newspapers, their houses and their offices. The government press, instead of making efforts to calm spirits, incited them by providing a justification for the riots. It invoked the myth of the conspiracy in order to justify the oppressive measures of the government and persuade the Greek people to vote for the Liberal Party. The repression and its effects created an opportunity for the opposition to accuse the government of exercising dictatorial rule. This was expressed through the organs of the opposition press. The anti-Venizelist press emphasised the mistakes of the government’s domestic policy and accused Venizelos of being a ‘tyrant’, while downplaying his diplomatic accomplishments. For this reason the myth of the ‘tyrant’ was mobilised by the antiVenizelist press in an effort to negate Venizelos’s qualities. Finally, the sudden death of King Alexander opened up another issue – the future of the monarchy – for the opposition to exploit. The issue of the return of Constantine became a pre-electoral banner around which the opposition was able to unite. The former monarch was presented as the leader of the United Opposition. The Liberal Party used the ‘national triumph’ in order to defeat its opponents, but its effort turned out to be unsuccessful. Venizelos was heavily defeated in the elections and decided to resign immediately as soon as the results were clear. The anti-Venizelists, under the name of the United Opposition, came to power, and their first concern, as they had declared during their pre-electoral campaign, was to restore Constantine to his throne; and so they did, in the process widening the divisions in the country.

4 Transition and Change

Ήτο ωραίος και είχεν αληθώς βασιλικόν το παράστημα. Με μόνον το βλέμμα του οι στρατιώται εγίνοντο ήρωες. Η παρουσία του εξήσκει μαγικήν επιρροήν εις τα στρατεύματα. Το όνομα Κωνσταντίνος έκαμνε την καρδίαν της Ελλάδος να σκιρτά .1 After the elections Venizelos resigned without waiting to be defeated in the new Chamber, and left the country. Two significant changes were about to occur: the restoration of Constantine and the projection of his role as a unifier of the nation; and the establishment of the new government. Dimitrios Rallis was used as a unifying figure by the United Opposition and appointed as Prime Minister, despite his limited support in Parliament. His great experience and his moderate views made him more acceptable to the Allies than any other anti-Venizelist leader. Rallis hastened to reassure the Allies that there would be no change in Greece’s foreign policy, nor would there be any reprisals against the Venizelists. In substance Rallis was a figurehead: the real head of government was Gounaris. Stratos, on the other hand, had his own ambitions and hoped that he would succeed in usurping Gounaris.2 The anti-Venizelist newspapers, even those that supported other members of the United Opposition, made efforts to demonstrate the unity of the new government by supporting Rallis’s appointment.3 The Venizelist newspapers, even the extremist ones, expressed their support for Rallis, but considered his premiership temporary.4 They also invited the government to restore law and order which, they claimed, had been lost from the moment it was known that the United Opposition had won the election.5 Rallis’s government proceeded to the restoration of Constantine, who could allegedly provide national unity, as he could claim personal charisma as a victorious military leader and capture the popular imagination with the religious and nationalist mythology that surrounded him.6 Despite such appeals to

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and protestations of national unity, some acts of violence targeted against anti-Venizelists occurred.7 The aim of the present chapter is to explore the attitude of the press towards the decision of the new government to realise its pre-electoral promise and restore Constantine to the throne. The present chapter is divided into five sections. The first will examine the attitude of the Athenian press towards the referendum. The second will focus on the restoration and the Allies’ intervention in the issue. The third will cover the return of Constantine. The fourth will examine the initial acts of ‘propaganda of deed’ by both the opposition and the government. Finally, the fifth will concentrate on the myths which were propagated by the Athenian press to provide an explanation for their stance and their presentation of government policy. I 1. The Attitude of the Venizelist and the Anti-Venizelist Press towards the Referendum Despite the fact that his monarchical beliefs had no mass appeal, Constantine was a charismatic rival to Venizelos. He, unlike any previous monarch, inspired as a person an extraordinary devotion among the Greek people, especially after the Balkan Wars, in which he had led the triumphant march to Salonika. In the 1920 elections Constantine functioned as a rival charismatic party leader to Venizelos. Popular imagination was captured by the fact that his name was connected with Greek irredentism and with the myth of the king who, although frozen in marble, would rise when Constantinople became the Greek capital again.8 The anti-Venizelist politicians, with the support of the anti-Venizelist press, had made the return of the expelled ‘martyr king’ their pre-electoral banner, and upon assuming power they hurried to realise Constantine’s restoration. The issue of the return of the ex-King hid several other issues: the competition between the two political camps over irredentist nationalism, which led the anti-Venizelist government to take advantage of the connection between the name Constantine and Greek irredentist dreams to prove that it was as nationalistic as the previous government, or more so. The anti-Venizelists contrasted their ‘romantic and utopian irredentism’ based on a ‘traditional military bureaucratic and monarchical regime’ with the ‘pragmatic irredentism’ of the Venizelists, which involved plans for territorial expansion and an increase in Greek economic power in Asia Minor.9 After his return to the throne Constantine personified ‘romantic and



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utopian’ irredentism. The competition between the Venizelists and the antiVenizelists also raised other major issues, especially whether Greece should be a monarchy. The first ideological difference within the Liberal Party was reflected in the Venizelist press, which was divided between the titles which supported the monarchy and the return of Constantine, and those which were not only against the ex-King’s return but also starting to doubt the institution of monarchy itself. Space for dissent within the United Opposition opened up because of the personal ambitions of its members, especially Stratos, who was supported by certain pro-government titles. The first act of the Rallis government was to restore Constantine to the throne. A referendum was proclaimed for Sunday 22 November/5 December 1920: the Greek people were invited to vote for or against the return of the ex-King.10 Pro-government newspapers focused their propaganda on efforts to persuade their readers to vote for restoration, as it promoted the national interest. For the anti-Venizelists, after their election victory, the restoration of Constantine symbolised their complete triumph over the Liberal Party (and especially Venizelos himself), which was considered guilty of expelling Constantine. The fact that Constantine was presented more as a charismatic party leader than as a monarch was a unique phenomenon. Ironically, Venizelos had himself contributed to this image by appointing him Commander-in-Chief during the Balkan Wars.11 The Venizelist press, on the other hand, being organs of the Liberal Party, concentrated their propaganda on persuading readers that the restoration would damage the national interest. For the Venizelists, the name of the ex-King was connected with Venizelos’s resignation as Prime Minister in 1915, when Constantine had exceeded his constitutional powers.12 All the anti-Venizelist newspapers started their propaganda for the restoration of Constantine before the elections on 1/14 November, and after the proclamation of the referendum by the new government their propaganda intensified. Quality newspapers like Kathimerini and Politia, and also the populist Scrip and Esperini, urged the people to vote for restoration. Their propaganda was focused on the proposition that the participation of the entire electorate in the referendum was a duty owed to King and country: (a) in order to prove the unanimous will of the whole nation – only those (the Venizelists) who were against the idea of internal unity would not participate;13 (b) the King had a legal right to return, as he had never abdicated officially, and the Greeks had never ceased to regard him as ‘the King of the Hellenes’; moreover, all those who denied the monarch his right to reign did not have any other option but to yield to the will of the nation;14 (c) his presence was important for the future of Greece, as he was

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the personification of the unity and the strength of the country;15 (d) he was a ‘martyr’ who had suffered greatly at the hands of his opponents;16 (e) foreign countries would realise that the nation was united and would be at peace;17 (f) the restoration would be the people’s answer to Venizelism, which had defiled the electoral process by misrepresenting the meaning of the constitution, through its attempt to persuade the people that their King had acted illegally in 1917,18 and would liberate the nation from the ‘political jugglers’ who had misled it.19 The Venizelist newspapers were divided into those, such as Patris, who were against the return of the King from the outset and who advised Liberal supporters to abstain from the referendum, and more moderate ones, like Estia, representing the conservative wing of the Liberal Party, which were not against Constantine’s restoration. However, they all were sceptical about the referendum and considered that it was not the proper time to hold it. Patris declared that the Liberal Party would abstain and boycott the referendum. The newspaper focused its propaganda on efforts to reveal the sinister motives of the government, which would only harm the people. The newspaper protested that the government was trying erroneously to present the whole country as a supporter of Constantine, and to force the people to vote for his return. In two leading articles Dimitris Lambrakis argued that the Greek people would be manipulated by the government to vote for the restoration. There were a number of people who did not want the return of Constantine but did not dare to express their opinion. Lambrakis accused the government of planning to put the blame for future calamities onto the people, and that was why it had decided to hold the referendum; he invited all Liberals to be faithful to their political ideology and not to be involved in the referendum in any way.20 Estia focused on more ‘practical matters’. Although it was not against the return of Constantine, it opposed the fact that the referendum was to take place without a proper period for mature consideration, and stated that the duty of the government was first of all to realise the consequences of such a referendum, and to present the issues carefully to the people, who needed to decide after careful consideration of the pros and cons of the issues, as it was possible that, overcome by excitement, they would take a decision without giving sufficient mature thought to the consequences of their vote.21 2. The Attitude of Rizospastis towards the Referendum Rizospastis, which was against the institution of monarchy itself – in line with SEKE’s official stance – was naturally opposed to the referendum, and linked the issue of the monarchy not only with domestic concerns



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but also with ‘the impending international revolution’. In the pages of the newspaper two opinions were expressed concerning the referendum, the first by Sideris and the second by Petsopoulos. Sideris emphasised the ‘dependent character’ of the Greek State. He considered that the government had decided to hold the referendum only to predispose the Great Powers to accept Constantine’s return. To him, the saddest fact was that Greece, although it had participated in the war on the side of the Great Powers for the freedom of the small nations, was not free to handle its internal affairs without being threatened by those Powers. He predicted that the future of the country would be bleak, and urged SEKE to participate in the referendum in order to vote against the return of the King, which would only bring misfortune to the Greek people.22 Petsopoulos emphasised the common nationalist policy of the two bourgeois parties, and hurried to distinguish SEKE’s attitude from the Liberal Party’s. He also emphasised the fact that there was no difference between the two mainstream camps, for what the former (Venizelos) had started, the latter (Constantine) was willing to continue, and the mission of SEKE was to enlighten the Greek people about the new deception which they would experience. He was of the opinion that SEKE should abstain from the referendum, while concomitantly informing the working people that their reasons for abstaining were completely different from those of the Liberal Party.23 SEKE’s official stance on the referendum was published in the newspaper on 15 November 1920, where it adopted Petsopoulos’s opinion. It connected the referendum with the war in Asia Minor, a war which, SEKE contended, served only the imperialistic interests of the Great Powers. According to the official declaration SEKE had decided to abstain from the referendum as the latter’s only purpose was to deceive the people into assuming responsiblity (a) for future mobilisations, which would be required to fight the wars to come, and (b) for the policy of violence which would be imposed in the name of the King to allow the new government to keep the promises it had given to the Great Powers. The newspaper believed that Greece would continue to be subordinate to the Great Powers, and the Greek people would have to pay the price for the policy of the two parties in blood as well as money.24 From that day onward Rizospastis urged the working people not to participate in the referendum, as both the Venizelists and the Royalists were competing to sell the country to foreign interests.25

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1. Foreign Interference on the Issue of the Return of Constantine The Allies did not seem to be convinced by the Rallis government’s declarations that there would be no change in Greece’s foreign policy. Venizelos’s demise changed their attitude significantly, and more than that it showed how intrusive and widespread was foreign interference in the internal affairs of the country. At the same time Venizelos’s departure revealed the divergence of views between France and Great Britain over Turkey’s future, caused by their imperialist competition, and it provided them with the excuse needed to stop their financial support for Greece. The French especially were against the return of Constantine; their justification was the events of 1916 when French marines had been shot in Athens by Royalist troops. For the French, Constantine was unacceptable, and they focused their propaganda on efforts to incite the hatred of the French public against his return to the Greek throne. When news of Venizelos’s defeat became known, the French press started to campaign for the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres, claiming that the past illustrated that Constantine was an enemy of the Allies. The attitude of the French press was harshly criticised by the Athenian press, particularly the anti-Venizelist titles. The Greek government even attempted to gain the support of part of the French press by funding journalists and newspapers to publish articles supporting Greek policy.26 The French government suggested that they and the British issue a joint declaration which would state their implacable opposition to the return of the ex-King.27 Such a declaration, the French government calculated, would also help France reconcile with the Kemalists. The British, on the other hand, feared a rapprochement between the Kemalists and the Bolsheviks, and realised that they needed to work on the differences between the Russians and the Turks in order to stop the Kemalists and Bolsheviks from working together to harm British interests. Thus it was time for the British to readjust their whole policy in the Near East, as they considered it unsafe to rely on the Greek army to cover the Allied position in Turkey, and so decided to follow the lead of the French in opposing the restoration of the ex-King. However, they did not agree to the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres.28 The attitude of the Great Powers was an external complication, and proved how serious Allied interference, both internally and externally, could be. On 19 November/2 December the Allies, gathered in London for the Anglo-French Conference, agreed on a joint declaration in which they declared their implacable opposition to the restoration of Constantine. His



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treachery to the Allied cause in the Great War had caused the Allies ‘great embarrassment and loss’. They would regard his restoration ‘as a ratification by Greece of his hostile acts’ and warned that if the Greek people voted to restore Constantine the Allied governments would regard themselves as free to pursue new policies to deal with the changed situation. Rallis received the declaration from representatives of the three Allied powers on 20 November/3 December. The Allies reinforced their message by formally notifying the Greek government that if Constantine were restored Greece would not receive any further financial help. The first note was published in the press on 21 November/4 December, only a day before the poll. On 22 November/5 December, the day of the referendum, the second note was published in the Athenian press. The Allies had previously agreed that their ambassadors should remain in Greece, but in the event of Constantine’s restoration their diplomatic staff would boycott all functions and representatives of Constantine’s court. Once again foreign interference in the domestic issues of Greece, although it did not affect the decision of the government to proceed with the referendum, demonstrated the extent of foreign control over the Greek government’s ability to exercise an independent foreign policy. In substance, the restoration offered the Allies, particularly France and Italy, the pretext required to cease their support of Greece and to start working with the Turkish nationalists. The British, on the other hand, through Lloyd George, continued to offer the Greeks ‘moral’ encouragement.29 2. The Attitude of the Athenian press towards the Foreign Interference There was a powerful reaction from both sides of the press towards the Great Powers’ declarations. The anti-Venizelist press argued that the declaration was only a ‘bluff ’ and urged the Greek people to vote for the restoration. They based their argument on the fact that (a) Greece had nothing to fear from the Great Powers, as the opinion of Great Britain prevailed on the issue of the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres; (b) Greece was the dominant power in the East, as it had Thrace and Smyrna in its possession and its strong army could cope with Kemal’s attacks, which could become stronger only with the assistance of the Great Powers; and (c) the government would provide the Great Powers with confirmation of the friendly attitude of the restored King and the people. What the people had to do was show firmness in their decision. It was in the interests of the country that the Greek people be united and determined and not be influenced by the Allied ultimatum which sought to dampen their enthusiasm for the restoration.30

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Other anti-Venizelist newspapers, such as Kathimerini and the populist Esperini and Scrip, expressed their painful surprise at the declaration of the Great Powers, who had suddenly remembered the old accusations against Constantine. The newspapers made efforts to gain the support of the Great Powers by reminding them that the Greek people had participated in the Great War on the Allied side to uphold the principle of self-determination. The newspapers did not hesitate to misinterpret the past by emphasising that Constantine had never been the enemy of the Western Powers, and claimed that he would be a friend who would fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the Allies. They expressed relief at the fact that the Great Powers did not take any irremediable measures, and were convinced they would realise that what had happened in the past had been no more than a misunderstanding and that they would change their mind when they realised that the ex-King was on their side.31 Scrip and Esperini wrote that the return of Constantine was not a hostile act against the Great Powers; the Greek people had demonstrated their friendship and their reliability towards the Powers by inviting the ex-King to undertake his duties. The populist newspapers did not hesitate to put the blame again on Venizelos, considering him responsible for the declaration of the Great Powers, which defamed Constantine and the government.32 The most moderate anti-Venizelist newspaper was Embros, which wrote that the joint declaration ended the delusions and placed the government in a terrible dilemma – to proceed with the referendum and disobey the Great Powers, and be prepared to lose Asia Minor and Thrace as a consequence, or to postpone the referendum. The newspaper stated that the duty of the government was to postpone the referendum, communicate with Constantine and present the situation to him, and let him take the decision which his patriotism and love for Greece would inspire. However, the newspaper was convinced that Rallis, Gounaris and Calogeropoulos were ‘honest and clever men’ who were in a position to realise the situation they faced and would postpone the referendum, as not to do so would have terrible consequences for Greece.33 The anti-Venizelist press expressed their surprise at the new ultimatum of the Great Powers on the day of the referendum. It was an ‘inconceivable act’34 tantamount to ‘blackmail’. Were the Greek people to obey the Great Powers they would only be led to despair.35 The newspapers seemed convinced that in the end the Powers would respect the decision of the Greek people.36 The Venizelist press, on the other hand, attacked the government and demanded that it block Constantine’s return by cancelling the referendum. Patris considered the referendum a criminal act which would bring calamity



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to the country, and would take it back to the time when it waited passively for the powerful countries to decide its future. It declared that the joint declaration of the Great Powers was a ‘mournful warning of a terrible tragedy which would be played at the expense of the nation’, for which the government was responsible as it had led the people to such a condition and turned the public into unwitting murderers of their own country.37 Estia, which supported the restoration, but was against the policy of the anti-Venizelist government, considered the joint declaration of the Great Powers as ‘sad’, but was not surprised by it. What surprised the newspaper was the involvement of Italy in the declaration, a country which did not have the same historical bonds with Greece as the other two countries, and often had interests which opposed Greek interests. On the day of the referendum Estia accused the Greek government of being irresponsible towards the people, Constantine and the Powers alike. It also accused it of not informing the people of the true conditions, and of putting the burden of responsibility on their shoulders, of using the name of Constantine as a political banner behind which it tried to hide and of using the referendum as a means to secure its grip on power. Estia invited the government to resign and allow others to undertake ‘the struggle for restoration’ of the monarchy.38 3. The Referendum The referendum took place on 22 November/5 December. The antiVenizelist newspapers focused their efforts on persuading the Greek public that there was no reason to take the Allied warning seriously. They were convinced that all the people would participate in the referendum, and that the result would be a triumph for Constantine.39 The electorate voted overwhelmingly for the restoration, and it seemed that the propaganda for the restoration of Constantine had been effective. However, although an enormous majority had voted in favour, the government had employed some not so ‘democratic’ methods to terrorise the people and ensure that the armed forces and the general population voted in accordance with what were considered to be ‘correct’ views.40 The Venizelist newspapers attempted to persuade their readers that the national interest had been damaged by the referendum, and appealed to the patriotism of both the government and Constantine. Estia considered that it was Prime Minister Rallis’s responsibility to redeem the situation. It was sure that Greek politicians, in particular Rallis, had not lost their patriotism, and invited them to do something in order to save the country from the real dangers which had arisen. The newspaper concluded by stating that

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only patriotism could rescue the country from a day as tragic as the fall of Constantinople in 1453. According to Ethnos the solution lay with Constantine, and it expressed the opinion that he would be very satisfied with the result of the referendum but that the voice of prudence would prevail and he would do what his patriotism dictated.41 Eleftheros Typos considered that the country had been driven to the present situation because of the absence of a real government, which would have dealt with the situation in a responsible manner. Constantine and the people had the power to change the situation. However, the people were ignorant of the danger which the country faced, and furthermore could no longer change the result of the referendum. The only person with power to alter the situation was Constantine, and Eleftheros Typos hoped that his patriotism would result in his taking the right decision.42 Rizospastis attacked the Great Powers by writing that the Allied ultimatum confirmed its insistent editorial line that the Allies wanted to create a Great Greece only to make it a conduit for their own interests in the East. The Allies wished to appoint the kings and prime ministers of Greece, which would result in the appointment of stooges who would guarantee that Greece would always be their ‘feudal vassal’, which they could exploit financially and politically. The Great Powers preferred Venizelos because they considered that he could fulfil their ‘mission’ more efficiently than Constantine. However, the newspaper was sure that if the Great Powers were convinced of Constantine’s suitability then they would no longer object to his restoration. It concluded by stating that it was the first time the Powers had overtly shown the Greek people that they lived in a country which was controlled by foreign interests and was politically and financially under their external thumb.43 Despite such warnings Constantine was determined to reclaim the throne and fulfil his own ambitions. By returning he had one final opportunity to become what he believed himself to be, an absolute monarch on the Prussian model, responsible only to God.44 III 1. The Return of Constantine Constantine’s arrival on 6/19 December 1920 was welcomed with ‘intense enthusiasm’ by the public, according to the British Minister in Athens.45 He was in their eyes the living personification of Greek hopes: a monarch able to unite all Greeks under his protection and to create a Great Greece. The old prophesy of King Constantine delivering the church of Saint Sofia



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from the Turks was strongly rooted among the people: ‘the reclamation of Constantinople remained the dream of every Greek’, as Lindley wrote in his annual report in 1922.46 On the day of Constantine’s arrival the front pages of all the anti-Venizelist titles were devoted to the story, presented him as the charismatic leader of the nation – indeed, he was the trump card that the anti-Venizelist camp needed in order to remain in power. Therefore their propaganda was focused on presenting him as the man who symbolised and crystallised the feelings of the people. His return was seen as a triumph for justice; his name was identified with the wishes and the will of the whole nation, and his return guaranteed the internal and external freedom of the people. He was seen as the protector of the interests of the country, and the personification of strength and stability – with such a king the Greek people could achieve great things.47 According to the anti-Venizelist newspapers his return was a historic day for which the entire Greek people had waited for over three-and-a-half years. The people had promised to bring him back, and they had kept their promise, contrary to the will of the Venizelists and the Great Powers.48 Scrip and Esperini emphasised that the King’s martyrdom had ended with his return.49 Rizospastis connected the return of Constantine with the war in Asia Minor. It focused on proving the government’s true intentions, which were hidden behind false promises. It considered the celebrations marking the return of the King a farce detrimental to the well-being of the people, who were asked to applaud Constantine’s policies – policies identical to the Venizelist ones they had rejected in the recent elections. The exiled King falsely symbolised the idea of peace and national independence for the people because of his opposition to Greece’s entry into the Great War on the Allied side. That was why the people had voted against Venizelos, who had violently dragged them into a war they had not wanted, and whose tenure in office had seen the most hateful form of interference in the internal affairs of the country, a period which had left the people humiliated and disgraced. The electorate believed erroneously that by voting for the restoration of Constantine they had voted for peace and freedom. This was an illusion. The truth was that his restoration would be followed by the continuation of the war in Asia Minor and the strengthening of ‘foreign capitalism’ in the East.50 The Venizelist press appeared divided. The extremist titles predicted that the country would soon be in great danger. Patris hastened to declare that it did not participate in the general enthusiasm and joy at the restoration, as the future was bleak. Although the King and the United Opposition had

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declared that they were prepared to make whatever sacrifices were needed, the newspaper hoped that the future would not be so bleak as to require both the King and the government to be sacrificed in order to appease Allied anger.51 Estia and Ethnos, on the other hand, showed signs of reconciliation with the King by declaring that they would honestly cooperate with Constantine’s efforts to restore internal peace and to pursue the realisation of the national programme. They considered patriotism to be the most important feeling, and the Liberal Party, as a patriotic party, was willing to do everything in its power to assist the monarch, as it was time for Greece to be united in order to realise its aspirations. Estia stated that Constantine had the support of the entire people, and they welcomed him in the expectation that he would manage to make Greece greater and more powerful.52 Eleftheros Typos urged him to unite the country. It expected Constantine to demand that the anti-Venizelists stop the systematic persecution, exercised in his name, of their opponents. It also expected him to restore complete equality in how the state treated all its citizens, and most of all to work for reconciliation and for the true healing of the schism, for only a united Greece could follow the road to complete restoration.53 These efforts to create unity soon came to grief. Constantine proved to be a puppet in the hands of the government, when on 23 December/5 January he opened the Chamber, amid much enthusiasm, and in his speech praised the achievements of the government while simultaneously denigrating the achievements of the Liberal Party. The King also emphasised his devotion to the Allies. The government newspapers published the entire speech and, as expected, praised it.54 The Venizelist press accused Gounaris of being responsible for the content of the speech, which showed his sinister motives. They considered that the content of the speech was vague, holding Gounaris responsible for the lack of explicit content. Part of the speech referred to plans to reform the Constitution, and the Venizelist newspapers accused the United Opposition of planning reforms which did not enjoy ‘popular consent’. Instead they claimed that the United Opposition tried to deceive the people, and that the most important aim of the government was to diminish public sovereignty. They invited the government to tell the Greek people the truth.55 On 22 January/4 February the crisis which had been threatening the government came to a head. Rallis was convinced of the need to obtain the support of Politis, the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Venizelos’s government, and also ultimately that of Venizelos himself. Gounaris and Calogeropoulos strongly disagreed with Rallis, and both resigned. Constantine sided with Gounaris and thereupon Rallis resigned. A cabinet was formed,



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with Calogeropoulos as Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs; a few days later, on 28 January/10 February 1921, after he had met with the Diplomatic Corps, he left for Paris and then London to participate in the conference beginning on 8/21 February 1921, accompanied only by technical advisers.56 IV 1. The Government, the Opposition and the ‘Propaganda of Deed’ Meanwhile some extreme Venizelists expressed their disapproval of Constantine’s return by attempting to murder the anti-Venizelist Alexandros Dragoumis, a major in the artillery in Constantinople.57 This act demonstrated that Constantine’s return had not healed the National Schism. Despite the fact that the Venizelists denied any responsibility, presenting the attack as an isolated incident carrying no political importance and as an act of ‘personal revenge’, they were blamed for it by the anti-Venizelists. The entire anti-Venizelist press expressed their horror at the attempt on Dragoumis’s life. Kathimerini seemed the most moderate: it hoped, which it also suggested was the wish of the King and the government, that it would not be the beginning of reprisals, which should not, under any conditions, follow.58 However, its message could also be considered a warning and an indirect threat. All the Venizelist newspapers condemned the attempt on Dragoumis’s life, and conveyed their sympathy to Stefanos Dragoumis, the victim’s father. They expressed their abomination at the attack, as a crime against the whole nation which needlessly excited political passions at a time when the country required tranquillity.59 Nevertheless, they accused some anti-Venizelist newspapers of taking advantage of the attempt in order to accuse the entire Venizelist camp of being ‘murderers’ and ‘traitors’ and of responsibility for the attempt, though it had in fact been committed by a criminally insane man. The Venizelist press claimed that the anti-Venizelist press were perpetuating the political animosity between the two camps. More than that, the government newspapers had started to threaten that the government would take ‘tough’ measures against the Venizelists, which would result in endangering the peace and tranquillity of the people.60 A day after the attempt on Dragoumis’s life, Colonel Fatseas, president of the court-martial under the Venizelist government, was murdered in Athens. The act was the beginning of a series of attacks and assassinations directed against the Venizelists, which continued during the following two years when the anti-Venizelists remained in power. ‘Propaganda of deed’, which had been mobilised under the former Venizelist regime, was also

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used by the anti-Venizelist government. The People’s Political Clubs, the organised groups which had been formed during the period just before the elections to organise the United Opposition’s campaign, continued a clandestine existence even after the assumption of power by the antiVenizelists. Most of the anti-Venizelist newspapers published the news of Colonel Fatseas’s murder without comment. However, there were some which not only attacked the Venizelists, but also sought to justify the murder. In this way they were transformed from voices promoting acts of ‘propaganda of deed’ into active participants who incited and justified rigid fanaticism. Concomitantly the newspapers tried to present the murder as an act of personal revenge. Kathimerini and the populist Esperini devoted their leading articles to the murder, using harsh language against the Venizelists. They considered the murder an act of ‘personal revenge’, as Fatseas had several personal enemies after sentencing many people, without just cause, to death, and several others to life imprisonment. The anti-Venizelist newspapers were convinced that his murder was linked to one of these victims. While expressing their horror at the murder,61 they considered it justified, as Fatseas had been party to the ‘Venizelist tyranny’ and ‘made many people, officers and civilians alike, suffer’.62 According to Esperini Fatseas was an agent of the Liberal Party and personified the ‘spirit of revenge that emanated from its leader’. The newspaper did not hesitate to declare that his murder was an act sanctioned by the ‘national conscience’. However, Esperini insisted that it did not approve of political murders, and asked the government to take measures to protect those who had committed the Venizelist crimes to prevent isolated murders like Fatseas’s. Similarly, Kathimerini hoped that Fatseas’s blood would be the last shed, and urged the government to take measures to prevent acts of vigilante justice and force those who wanted to play the role of vigilante to stop. The government had the sole legal authority to punish and imprison those who had committed crimes, and if it wanted to exercise clemency then it had every right to do so.63 All the Venizelist newspapers commented on Fatseas’s murder. He had been, they contended, an honest man, faithful to his duties, whose main concern was to judge fairly in accordance with the laws of his country. They invited the government to protect the ‘tranquillity of the country’ and urged the pro-government press to stop the incitement of hatred against the Venizelists; otherwise further similar events were certain to take place.64 Meanwhile the anti-Venizelists were making plans for organised ‘propaganda of deed’, which was to include numerous attacks against the Venizelists. Many rumours circulated within the Venizelist camp regarding



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the danger of attack; it was believed that the extreme anti-Venizelists would postpone the attacks until Allied recognition of Constantine was achieved. After that they would be free to wreak their vengeance and an organised massacre would take place. Although the rumours seemed exaggerated at times, the British Minister in Athens realised that if and when his government came to terms with Constantine and the Royalist government, the terms must insist that law and order be maintained and political adversaries protected.65 Violent scenes against the Venizelist deputies occurred even in the Chamber. Amid loud cheers government deputies called them murderers and demanded that Venizelos, Admiral Kountouriotis and General Danglis be sentenced to death and all their accomplices deprived of their civil rights. Similar scenes occurred on another day, causing the Venizelists to march out in unison from the Chamber. The extreme pro-government newspapers attacked the Venizelists for disrespecting parliamentary procedure.66 V 1. The Myth of the Conspiracy of the Venizelists The anti-Venizelist press, particularly the populist titles, invoked the myth of the conspiracy of the Venizelists in the same way that the Venizelist press had invoked that of the anti-Venizelists as conspirators during the recent electoral campaign. The myth of the conspiracy became a press device used by each of the major parties to establish authority. It became a tool, a rhetorical ploy, which the anti-Venizelist press used to highlight the dishonesty of the Liberal Party and to legitimise government actions, especially the resultant oppression. It also provided an emotive explanation or cover story for all the issues on the domestic and diplomatic fronts that the government could not properly deal with, by deliberately manipulating the fears of the people. The conspiracy, the anti-Venizelist press claimed, was motivated by the issue of the restoration of the King and also by the ‘unbalanced’ character of Venizelos. The Venizelists were presented as ‘self-interested partisans’ who conspired against the public good while the government was making major efforts to promote the public interest. Their main conspiracy was directed against the restoration of Constantine, who was presented as the ‘Messiah’67 and the ‘symbol of unity’.68 A conspiracy against the King was considered to be a serious assault on the public good, as the King was defined as the father of the people, an idealised figure who could resolve all problems. Without Constantine on the throne, the road would be open for the acces-

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sion of George, and this was the only possible way for Venizelos to return to power.69 The Venizelists plotted both inside and outside the country: inside Greece they made efforts to take advantage of British protection, and defamed the government to the British by accusing it of carrying out violent acts against the Venizelists, when it was in fact the Venizelists themselves, according to the anti-Venizelist press, who were ‘as bold as brass’ as they ‘murdered’ and ‘injured’ people. The power of the Venizelists to harm the nation was emphasised by a metaphor: they were the ‘cancer’ of Greek politics for which the only treatment was ‘radical’ surgery which reached the ‘bones’ and the ‘marrow’ and rooted the Venizelist sarcoma out.70 The Venizelists, resentful at their rejection by the Greek electorate, ‘defamed’ Greece abroad with the sole intention of ‘causing foreign intervention’, an act for which they had been responsible several times in the past, such as when they ‘falsely accused the League of Reservists of threatening and carrying out attacks on the Venizelists’ during the Great War, which had induced ‘French intervention’ in the country.71 One of the Venizelists’ ‘conspiracy headquarters’ was considered to be in Constantinople, where ‘deserters’ conspired ‘against their country’ and ‘plotted murder’72 and ‘acts of sedition’.73 In Constantinople ‘Venizelist officers’ who had violated their ‘oath’ and the ‘basic obligations of a moral and decent person’ committed their worst ‘crime’: ‘they plotted’ in order to ‘stir up the Greek population against the Greeks of the free kingdom’.74 The mastermind of the conspiracies was considered to be Venizelos himself, who, according to the anti-Venizelist press, had an ‘unhinged’ personality dominated by a ‘satanic spirit for revenge’. His ‘mental decay’ and his ‘spiritual imbalance’ were considered responsible for the fact that he wanted ‘to take revenge on the people who had voted against him’. His corruption was so perverse that he planned to plot with the Bulgarians and Turks in order to start a ‘campaign against Greece’ and ‘damage his country’. The Bulgarians and the Turks were the only allies he could find as the Great Powers no longer believed his lies.75 Venizelos was considered responsible for the change in France’s position towards the Treaty of Sèvres, as he had provided arguments in the French press against the treaty, such as relaying the ‘most unjust accusations against Greece’, which he claimed were ‘true’, suggesting that since Greece ‘had abandoned Serbia’ during the Great War, France should not provide her with any help. He also presented Greece as a country ‘inimical’ to the Allies. His ‘dangerous’ and ‘treasonous’ attitude could only be compared with the attitude of Hippias in Ancient Greece.76



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2. The Myth of British Friendship and French Animosity The attitude of the press towards the Great Powers was defined with reference to the position taken on the issue of Constantine’s restoration. Curzon’s memorandum77 concerning the attitude of the British government towards the restoration, which was leaked, and printed in the British press,78 was accepted with satisfaction by the anti-Venizelist newspapers, although the conditions set out in the memorandum were harsh, necessitating Allied interference in several internal and external issues. Because Britain accepted the monarchy, it was treated as an ally not only of the Greek state but also of the Greek nation. Therefore the anti-Venizelist press invoked the myth of British protection in an effort to calm the people’s fear. The myth of the protection determined that the British were friends who wanted to protect Greece’s interests, while the French were enemies, as they were mostly focused on their own selfish interests. The British were presented as willing to support Greece in the ‘realisation of the cherished ideals of the nation’, irrespective of the issue of the ex-King’s return, as they had ‘realised that Greece was both the strongest regional military power and a civilising agent in the East’.79 The British did not wish to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, a desire which showed ‘respect’ for the will of the Greek people.80 Great Britain was considered to be the sole country which wanted to protect the ‘status quo’ established by the Treaty of Sèvres from the ‘Kemalist danger’, as the British had ‘made the most significant contribution’ to this accomplishment.81 Great Britain had also proved that it recognised the ‘power and value of the Greek army in the East’ and understood ‘how important the presence of King Constantine was for its discipline’.82 The myth of the protection was not invoked in respect of France. The anti-Venizelist press refuted the myth of France as a ‘protector’ by demystifying its traditional role as a ‘protector’ of Greece. Although France, the ‘liberal state’, had always been a ‘friend’, on this occasion it was not willing to recognise the ‘inalienable rights of Hellenism’ in the ‘Greek areas’ which were occupied by the Turkish army, nor to help Greece to achieve its ‘civilising mission’.83 On the contrary, France wanted to become an obstacle to the ultimate Greek victory.84 France was accused of being the ‘iconoclast of the treaties’.85 There was harsh criticism directed against the French press, which did not want to ‘forget that Constantine had allegedly been responsible for the murder of French sailors’ during the years of the Great War. To the anti-Venizelist press, the attitude of French journalists was equally hostile towards Venizelos, despite the fact that he had ‘killed Greek soldiers in

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the Crimea’ in order to prove the ‘devotion of Greece’ to ‘its older sister [France]’. The anti-Venizelist press argued that the ‘events of 1916’ had been caused by ‘clumsy French officers’ and by ‘Greeks that the military headquarters of Salonika had sheltered as friends’.86 The press claimed that lurking behind French policy towards Greece were the interests of the ‘stock market circle’. French financiers had realised that the ‘narrow area that the French occupied in Cilicia’ was extremely financially draining. As a result, France had decided to ‘sacrifice’ Cilicia ‘for the sake of friendship between France and Turkey’.87 The Venizelist press invoked the myth of British protection: Britain was presented as a country which ‘respected the rights of the Greek people’. However, the press argued that Venizelos had contributed significantly to the positive attitude of Great Britain, as he had assured the British government that ‘the Greek people would never follow a policy other than the one exercised by the Liberal government’.88 After the ultimatum, the newspapers started to accuse the government of having ‘colossal historical responsibilities’ for the ‘unfriendly attitude’ of the Allies towards Greece, as the Great Powers had lost their ‘trust’ in the Greek government.89 The present government consisted of ‘blind and unscrupulous people’ whose only interest was how they would ‘sit on the throne of Greece’.90 3. The Myth of the Nation’s Mission Myths are stories which reflect public dreams and are the product of an oral culture musing about itself.91 The self-image that the Greeks had of themselves affected the way they perceived non-Greeks, and determined whether the latter were classified as friends or enemies. The fact that the Greeks perceived their past as glorious and their ancestors as worthy of celebration made them proud, and caused them to consider themselves superior to others, particularly those who were stereotypically considered enemies. It also made them believe that they had a ‘special mission’ to establish ‘a new and civilised society’ for those they considered ‘barbarians’ and ‘dangerous’. The anti-Venizelist press invoked the myth of the nation’s mission in order to justify further military operations in Asia Minor. This myth was combined with the issue of the restoration of Constantine, who, since the Balkan Wars (when he had been commander-in-chief) had himself assumed the persona of a victorious military leader. In Greek-Orthodox and Byzantine romantic tradition Constantine was considered a ‘warrior-king by the grace of God’ who defended Orthodoxy from non-Christian foes.92 However, although considered a warrior-king, during the years of the National Schism he had assumed the ‘mission’ of preserving peace and sheltering his kingdom from



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the hardships of war.93 His restoration in 1920 reactivated his old image as a military leader. Constantine was hailed as a man who, armed with ‘all the gifts of his noble origin’, would ‘lead the nation to the fulfilment of its great mission in the East’. The newspapers claimed, absurdly, that he was the most ‘capable military commander in the world’ who would direct the ‘most powerful army in the East’ to its ‘glorious destination’.94 Metaphors from Byzantine mythology presented Constantine as the ‘triumphant winner of justice’, who had been separated from his people by the ‘hatred and malice’ of the Venizelists but who nonetheless had managed to overcome ‘Death’ (exile) like a new ‘Digenis’ in the battle he had with Charon, whom he had vanquished, and as the ‘marble king’ who had rid himself of the ‘white dress of death’ (the costume of exile) and ‘came back to life’ (reclaimed his throne).95 His mission was to ‘open with his sword the road to the city of dreams (Constantinople)’.96 His past illustrated his power: he had led Greece ‘to glory’ during the Balkan wars and after his restoration he would achieve further glory97 by starting a ‘new national and civilising period’ which would impose ‘peace and civilisation on the East’.98 The press made an effort to dramatise and romanticise the war in order to convince its readers of the validity of the myth of the nation, and thus justify Greece’s historic civilising mission in the East. Greece was presented as a sole ‘Christian sentinel’ which, under the command of Constantine, had the power to resist military attack from Asia and was ‘ready to save every member of the Christian civilisation who was in danger’. It was the only country with the power to ‘save Armenia by militarily crushing Kemalism’.99 It was also the only country which had a legitimate claim to Constantinople.100 The newspapers continued to cultivate a prejudicial and stereotypical image of Turkey as Greece’s traditional enemy and as a ‘menacing aggressor’. This image was used to promote the validation of the war in Asia Minor and the ‘idealised mission’ of Greece. So the press portrayed Turkey as a state which must be limited to areas where ‘the Turks were the majority’, as Turkey was considered a source of trouble for the world – it ‘provoked wars’ in order to expand the hegemony of the Turkish state.101 The Turks were demonised, presented as the ‘evil other’ and defined through their actions: they were ‘tyrants’102 who committed ‘the continual and ruthless persecutions of the Armenians’, ‘suppressed the small minority of the Greeks’ and ‘committed several crimes undisturbed’. The policy the Turks followed was the policy of the ‘gunshot’103 – in other words a policy dictated by the tyranny of military force.

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Conclusion Both anti-Venizelists and Venizelists sought to control the press when in power; but given the National Schism, total control was not possible. The new government could count on the support of the anti-Venizelist press, particularly in their efforts to persuade the people to vote for the restoration of Constantine, but they were not able to control the Venizelist newspapers or Rizospastis. The continuation of the National Schism resulted in tensions between government and opposition and within the Venizelist camp. While most Venizelists opposed the return of Constantine, the restoration brought the first hints of internal ideological differences. For example, extreme Venizelist newspapers, led by Patris, questioned the institution of monarchy itself, while the moderate and more conservative Venizelist newspapers, especially Estia, supported the return of Constantine and royalist institutions, even though they urged the government to cancel the referendum on Constantine’s future after the two Allied declarations. The conservative Venizelist newspapers declared their support for Constantine after his return to the country. The issue of the interference of the Great Powers in an internal issue, such as the restoration of Constantine, was presented as a matter of no importance by the anti-Venizelist press, while the Venizelist press concentrated their propaganda on blaming the government for paying insufficient attention to the Great Powers’ warnings, and at the same time downplayed the fact that their actions and attitudes showed that the country was a dependent power, and that its nationalist aspirations were in the hands of its Allies. The myth of British protection was invoked by the antiVenizelist press in order to calm the fears of the people. On the contrary, they proceeded to refute the myth of French protection because the French government favoured the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres. While the government paid lip service to ‘national unity’ they were in fact uninterested in healing the political schism. Rather they employed the ‘propaganda of deed’ in order to maintain control; and such propaganda was realised in the form of an assassination. The government newspapers invoked the myth of the conspiracy of the Venizelists in order to justify the government’s ‘propaganda of deed’ as well its inability to gain the support of all the Allies.

5 The London Conference1

What if Greece defied us? Are we prepared and are we capable to enforce our decision? Kemal defied us and we asked Greeks to enforce our decision and now seem to be abandoning her. Granville to Curzon, 28 February 19212 On 12/25 January 1921 the Inter-Allied Conference met in Paris, and decided to reconvene in London on 8/21 February for the settlement of the Eastern Question, a meeting at which the Greek and Turkish governments would be represented. Representatives of Mustapha Kemal were included in the Turkish delegation. The negotiations were to be based on the provisions set out in the Treaty of Sèvres, which would be subject to certain modifications. The Greek government accepted the invitation immediately, but the Prime Minister expressed his surprise at Kemal’s invitation because the British Prime Minister had earlier publically declared that he was a rebel and impossible to negotiate with.3 The Minister of Foreign Affairs sent a confirmatory letter in which he stated that the Greek people were firmly determined to execute to the full the engagements undertaken by them. He felt, however, that the Conference could only be justified if it imposed on Turkey the penalties determined by the signatories of the Treaty of Sèvres.4 In Greece, all the newspapers expressed their bitter disappointment that the decision on Greek claims had been postponed and that Kemal’s delegates would come to London. The Venizelist press blamed the government for the unjustifiable optimism which had led the anti-Venizelist press to assure the people that all would be well. At the same time, the Venizelist newspapers called on the Greeks to put all their differences aside and to work together to save Greece.5 The aim of the present chapter is to examine the attitude of the Greek press regarding key issues of the new government’s foreign and domestic

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policy. It will also investigate the relations of the press with the government, the Liberal Party and SEKE, and examine how the issues dividing them were reported by the newspapers. The chapter is divided into five sections. The first will explore the attitude of the press towards the government and the delegation which represented Greece at the London Conference. The second will focus on the Conference itself, and on how the difficulties experienced by the Greek delegates were covered by the anti-Venizelist and Venizelist press. The third will focus on the crucial and ultimately unsuccessful military operations of spring 1921, which weakened the government. The fourth will examine the attitude of the press towards the new government under Gounaris and the acts of ‘propaganda of deed’. Finally, the fifth will examine the myths invoked by both the Venizelist and antiVenizelist press to justify their own position. I 1.The Attitude of the Athenian Press towards the Greek Delegation at the London Conference Having realised its first goal, the government of the United Opposition, with a new prime minister, set new international and domestic goals; priority was to be given to supporting the Greek claims at the London Conference, where the government expected that Allied opinion, because of the return of Constantine, would be unfavourable to the Greek position. Domestically, the government aimed to get rid of its political opponents. In substance, the new regime under Calogeropoulos was a puppet government. The real leader was Gounaris, who commanded a majority of 250 anti-Venizelist votes in the Chamber of 350 deputies. His only parliamentary rival was Stratos, the old Liberal minister, who, although a member of the United Opposition, dissociated himself from Gounaris. Stratos held a strong ambition to become Prime Minister, but he commanded only 30–40 votes in the Chamber.6 The new government had the support of the anti-Venizelist press, which functioned primarily as agents and propaganda organs, of the government in particular and of the United Opposition in general. Their purpose was to support the government in the realisation of its goals, to persuade their readers that on both the domestic and the international fronts the government was making every possible effort to promote the country’s national interests, and that those responsible for the its problems were (a) the external enemies, among whom the pro-government press included the ex-friends and Allies, and (b) political opponents of the United Opposi-



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tion. However, during the early months of 1921 the first signs of division appeared within the United Opposition, signalled by Stratos’s first attack on the government, which aimed to further his own political ambitions. The split within the United Opposition was mirrored by divisions inside the progovernment press, with Embros expressing its support for Stratos.7 The Greek delegation left for London on 28 January/10 February. The government newspapers concentrated on concealing what was really happening by (a) persuading the public that their political opponents, and particularly Venizelos – now residing in Paris – were responsible for the unfavourable climate abroad, (b) praising Gounaris for his patriotism, which had led him to sacrifice his political ambitions for the sake of the country, and (c) expressing their confidence in Calogeropoulos. Quality titles, such as Kathimerini and Politia, and populist ones, like Esperini, considered that the unfavourable climate towards Greece within Europe was the result of Venizelos’s propaganda against the government. They also blamed Venizelos for the negative attitude of the Great Powers towards Gounaris, which they had adopted because of the calumny to which Venizelos had devoted himself during the months he was abroad.8 Most of the government newspapers stated that Gounaris’s decision not to participate at the conference was a ‘sacrifice’ in the interests of the country; a statement which was untrue, as Gounaris already knew that he would not be accepted by the Allies at the London Conference. The main reason for the Allies’ hostility was the fact that Gounaris’s name was connected with the National Schism, especially the anti-Venizelist government he formed in 1915 after Venizelos had been forced to resign by Constantine, and also with his successful efforts to ensure the latter’s restoration. The anti-Venizelist press interpreted Gounaris’s absence from the Conference as showing his willingness to follow ‘the Allies’ policy’. The newspapers publicly supported Calogeropoulos: he was an ‘honest’ and ‘sincere’ man, they wrote, whose elevation to the premiership was good for the nation.9 They were convinced that his new government would bring peace to the country, and expected it to come to an all-important understanding with the Allies.10 Their optimism blithely ignored indications that the attitude of the Allies was becoming unfavourable, especially after the return of the King. The newspapers considered that the government was in a strong position because it reflected the desires and hopes of a unified nation; virtually all Greeks, regardless of their party affiliation, supported an identical national aim. The government also had numerous arguments to offer for consideration at the conference, namely that the Treaty of Sèvres had recognised the

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country’s ‘national rights’, its great sacrifices, its military successes and the ‘superiority of Greek civilisation’ compared with ‘Turkish barbarism’. The newspapers admitted the Greek delegation’s task would be arduous because of the prejudices of the Allies – particularly the French and the Italians – but were sure that the delegates would work hard to gain the support of the Allies regarding their just claims.11 The populist Esperini hoped that the new government would use the platform offered by the conference to enlighten the public throughout Europe, and refute Venizelos’s calumnies.12 Embros, despite its anti-Venizelist leanings, was the only anti-Venizelist title to recognise Venizelos’s ability to represent Greece. It favoured the participation of the moderate Rallis in the delegation, believing he could co-operate unofficially with Venizelos; in addition, the Allies thought highly of him. Embros regretted that he had been forced to resign after secret meetings and conspiracies between Gounaris and his supporters.13 Moreover, the newspaper had doubts regarding Calogeropoulos’s capacity to negotiate with foreign diplomats.14 The Venizelist newspapers for their part took a more realistic approach. They sought to persuade their readers firstly of Calogeropoulos’s unsuitability to represent Greece, alleging that he was Gounaris’s puppet. While not doubting Calogeropoulos’s good intentions, they were dubious of his ability to deal with such a crucial situation, and predicted that sooner or later he would be forced to withdraw.15 They were aghast at the fact that Calogeropoulos had admitted he did not have time to read in full the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres.16 Secondly, they wanted to persuade their readers of Rallis’s suitability to represent Greece, as he was liked by the Allies and therefore could succeed. His forced resignation17 proved that the United Opposition was not a worthy successor to Venizelos.18 Thirdly, Gounaris’s motives were considered to be sinister, and if realised would seriously damage national interests.19 Finally, they praised Venizelos’s influence on the British government – which, as a result, was against the revision of the treaty – and believed that his diplomatic efforts were the only hope of success. The more moderate titles, such as Ethnos, emphasised that it was not the time for a division between Venizelists and anti-Venizelists, but instead for the ‘sacred unification’ of the political parties.20 2. The Venizelist Press and the Liberal Party The Venizelist newspapers continued as organs of the Liberal Party, and focused on the government’s incompetence and of its sinister motives, which put its desire to remain in power above the country’s national interests. However, due to the danger the country was in, partisan interests were



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set aside for a short time and blame for the crisis was put on the ex-friends and Allies, which had created obstacles blocking the realisation of the irredentist aspirations of the Greeks. Because of the fact that the Venizelists had lost significant support in the elections, they made efforts to reinforce their propaganda against the government and gain more support for their party by acquiring more newspapers; efforts which ultimately turned out to be unsuccessful. Panagiotis Danglis,21 who had taken over the leadership of the Liberal Party after Venizelos, sent a letter to Venizelos in Paris pointing out how important and useful it would be for a newspaper like Akropolis, which had ceased publication in November 1920, to appear again as a Venizelist organ. Georgios Pop22 had already made a proposal to Spyros Dasios23 enquiring if he was interested in buying his newspaper Athine for 150,000 drachmas. Danglis emphasised how important the publication of both Athine by Dasios and Akropolis by another member of the Liberal Party would be for the party. Danglis was of the opinion that the Venizelists could publish both newspapers. He requested that Venizelos should make an effort to collect the additional amount of money required from Greeks living abroad. Finally, neither Athine nor Akropolis were in fact bought by the Liberal Party or its supporters, possibly because Venizelos, who was deeply disappointed by his defeat in the elections, showed no interest in arranging the purchase of the titles. Akropolis was not published again and Athine continued under Pop.24 II 1. The Greek Delegation in London before the Conference On 4/17 February the Greek delegation arrived in London, and the following day Calogeropoulos met Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, who encouraged the Greeks to put into effect their plans for the advance of Greek troops in Asia Minor in the direction of Eskisehir and Afyon Karahissar, and to pursue the military defeat of Kemal. He advised the Greek delegation to show consideration at the conference and to accept the need for a partial revision of the Treaty of Sèvres, in the form of a new settlement of the regime in Smyrna which would not substantially alter the Greek occupation.25 Some anti-Venizelist titles attacked those who supported the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres, while the others praised the British Prime Minister for his attitude. Kathimerini wrote that the Treaty of Sèvres was identified with justice, for which many Greeks had shed their blood, and it was not possible

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for the Powers to inform the public that the treaty and all the sacrifices they had made were all in vain. It was time, wrote the newspaper, for those who supported the treaty revision to change their minds and realise that it would be a most unworthy act.26 Politia remained optimistic, as it was convinced by Lloyd George’s attitude that he would do everything in his power to block any revision.27 The only newspaper which wrote articles against Great Britain was Rizospastis, accusing it of only being interested in imposing its policy and following its own interests in the East. Therefore it needed an army there, the cost of which would be borne by the Greek people. Greek politicians had no difficulty in promising Great Britain what it asked for without considering the will of the people.28 Even the Venizelist newspapers protested against France’s and Italy’s signing of agreements with Kemal; they could not understand why liberal France had decided to approach ‘the butchers’ of the Christians.29 It was crystal clear that the London Conference would not start auspiciously for the Greeks. In substance, it only required a single Greek action opposed by the Allies for them to adopt a hostile stance against Greek interests, following Constantine’s restoration, which had already damaged Greece’s relationship with the Powers. Additionally, the Greek delegation consisted of those who completely lacked the capacity to cope with the demands of the conference. Under the circumstances, it was almost expected that the outcome of the London Conference would not be favourable for Greece. 2. Greek Journalists at the London Conference The London Conference attracted the attention of some of the best known Greek journalists. However, what had occurred during the Paris Peace Conference between Venizelos and the correspondents of the Venizelist press was repeated during the London Conference between Calogeropoulos, and later Gounaris, and the anti-Venizelist journalists. In February 1921 the correspondents of the anti-Venizelist newspapers were the ‘favourites’ of the Greek delegation, and consequentially they were given privileged information. Vlachos, the owner of Kathimerini, played the leading role. He went to London to cover the conference, sending his reports by telegram. He praised the Greek delegation, and chose to hide the truth from the Greek public regarding the development of the negotiations.30 On the contrary, unsympathetic newsmen were denied special information and private interviews. Another journalist who covered the London Conference was N. Karvounis, the London correspondent of Politia. On the Venizelists’ side,



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Andreas Kavafakis, owner of Eleftheros Typos and Ch. Chourmouzios of Ethnos covered the conference. Kavafakis revealed to the Greek public several tactical mistakes made by the Greek delegation, though his main goal was to promote the interests of the Liberal Party, which he supported, and most of all to prove Venizelos’s charisma and to demonstrate the complete inability of the new government to present Greece’s national claims successfully. He therefore accused the Greek delegation of being ‘inadequate’ and extremely over optimistic, and of trying to mislead the press that everything was in order and that there was no need to worry. He considered Calogeropoulos to be incapable of dealing with the situation, citing the fact that he had presented false population statistics to the Allies. Kavafakis thought the situation so crucial that only Venizelos had the power to negotiate effectively with the Allies.31 He also accused Rangavis, the Greek Minister in London, of sending false information to Athens that ‘everything was well’.32 There were cases in which the Great Powers interfered in order to prevent correspondents of anti-Venizelist newspapers from attending the conference. For example, Petros Giannaros, the owner and editor of Esperini, who was considered by the Allies to be uncooperative, was denied a visa. On 3 February 1921 the newspaper announced that the following day Giannaros and the distinguished journalist N. Anysios, the former correspondent of Esperini in Rome and London for many years, would leave for London in order to cover the conference. Just before the beginning of the conference Giannaros had applied to the British and French Legations for a diplomatic visa for a ‘special mission’ to Italy, Switzerland, Germany and London. The British checked his ‘worst possible anti-Allied record’ and refused the application. The French did the same. Esperini hurried to announce that Giannaros had attempted to obtain a consular visa, but he had, in fact, not applied for one.33 However, he did make an effort to go to London, but in vain; the French authorities prevented him from going. Only Anysios managed to get to London, via Switzerland, Germany and Belgium; he started to telegraph his newspaper with reports from London on 17 February. 3. The Conference On 8/21 February the conference began. For a while all the Greek newspapers set their partisan differences aside, let their irredentist aspirations unite them and adopted a united attitude. They focused on efforts to strengthen the unity of the Greek people by reassuring them that the conference would have a favourable outcome. They all expressed their conviction that the Greek voice would be powerful in the proceedings.

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The pro-government newspapers, especially Kathimerini, suggested that the best solution would be to restrict the Turks to the areas where a homogenous Turkish population existed ‘and create national states for the other populations of the East’. Greece was seen as participating in the conference not only because of its historical and ethnological rights in Asia Minor, but also because of the sacrifices endured in the Asia Minor struggle to impose the Treaty of Sèvres.34 The Venizelist title Eleftheros Typos considered that the conference was a ‘sacred’, ‘great’ and ‘historical’ moment which would determine the past, present and future of the country. Under the circumstances, the Greeks should not be divided into Venizelists and anti-Venizelists: there should only be Greeks, united, and ready to bear any sacrifice and to undertake any struggle to preserve a ‘Great Greece’. The newspaper expressed its support for the Greek delegation in London by writing that ‘We stand by its side’ and ‘We unite our voice with it with no hesitation, resentment and reservation’. Venizelos was the first to show an example by his attitude, according to Eleftheros Typos. Finally the newspaper expressed its trust in the ‘Great Allies’, in the Greek people and in victory.35 Ethnos even expressed its satisfaction at Calogeropoulos’ declarations in London when he stated that his government was grateful to Venizelos for what he had done for his country and was willing to follow his policy. His actions proved that all the Greeks were united and ready for any sacrifice for the protection of Venizelos’s great accomplishment.36 Patris alone doubted Calogeropoulos’s ability. ‘If the Greek delegation failed,’ wrote the newspaper, ‘they will carry the burden of responsibility for their failure.’ According to Patris, the government had not realised the catalogue of difficulties that Calogeropoulos had to face at the conference. Even Calogeropoulos himself had not managed to understand the true number of obstacles facing his delicate mission, as in leaving for Europe he had merely been obeying the will of Gounaris, and had not had time to examine matters thoroughly. The newspaper accused both Calogeropoulos for not hesitating to confess that he did not even have time to study the Treaty of Sèvres and the government for not making any effort to support him in his mission.37 At a time of general consensus, the one newspaper which stood aside was Rizospastis. From the outset it considered that the outcome of the conference would be based solely on the interests of the Great Powers. It made no distinction between the two bourgeois political camps or their policies. It claimed that when Venizelos was in power, he was persuaded by the British to continue the struggle against Kemal, notwithstanding the French withdrawal. Calogeropoulos was now in London in order to play a similar



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role, namely to convince the Great Powers that the new regime was ready to continue the struggle in Asia Minor in the Great Powers’ interests. Yet those who would pay for the struggle with their blood were the rank-andfile Greek soldiers. The newspaper ironically invited the ‘patriots’ of the country not to worry about the outcome of Calogeropoulos’s ‘mission’ as the issue of the Treaty of Sèvres would be solved according to the government’s ‘wishes’. In reality, Rizospatis argued, those who should worry were the Greek people, who would be called upon once more to pay heavy taxes in order to allow the campaign to continue.38 The proposals made at the conference referred to Smyrna, Eastern Thrace and Constantinople, and the demilitarised zone.39 The Greek delegation was most indignant at the proposal regarding the establishment of a national commission for Smyrna and Thrace, a view echoed by both the anti-Venizelist and the Venizelist newspapers, which condemned them as ‘unjust’, ‘wrong’ and ‘dangerous’. According to the newspapers the decision reached at the conference was a ‘detestable and treacherous trap’, which was set to ensnare the Christian populations. However, after the initial unity among the Athenian newspapers, the anti-Venizelist press blamed the opposition camp for the lack of Greek success at the conference. They stated that Calogeropoulos had made an excellent impression on the French and the English, but that he had been undermined by Venizelos’s calumnious campaign.40 The populist anti-Venizelist newspapers considered the decision reached at the conference to be the consequence of the arguments of the French and the Italians, which they identified with Venizelos’s arguments.41 The Venizelist newspapers, on the other hand, questioned the Greek delegation’s handling of the situation. They felt that the blame should be put on Calogeropoulos, who was incapable of dealing with the demands of the conference. Patris accused the government of not informing the Greek people of the forthcoming danger; as a result, they did not have sufficient opportunity to respond to the changed circumstances in time. Although the antiVenizelist newspapers considered Venizelos to be an ‘ignorant lawyer’, as Patris wrote ironically, the truth was that Venizelos was the creator of the Treaty of Sèvres and ‘Great Greece’. The newspaper emphasised that, while Calogeropoulos was an ‘excellent lawyer’, he could not sufficiently defend what Venizelos had accomplished.42 Ethnos wrote that the Greek delegation proved to be weak and incapable of dealing with such important issues, though it considered that the incompetence of the Greek delegates did not justify the policy of Britain and France, which chose to betray their friends and embrace their enemies.43

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4. Gounaris in London During Calogeropoulos’s absence from Greece, Gounaris became Acting President of the Council and Baltatzis Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs. Gounaris wanted to accompany Calogeropoulos to London, but eventually he did not do so. Calogeropoulos told a journalist friend that if Gounaris came to London, he would resign. However, on 20 February Gounaris left for London, after the Powers had hinted to Calogeropoulos that he was at liberty to summon Gounaris,44 as the practical objection – that Calogeropoulos was not qualified to negotiate – outweighed the issue of the Allied reaction. The anti-Venizelist newspapers chose to lie, giving false reasons for Gounaris’s departure, which they presented as a great victory. It was the first step towards Allied recognition of Gounaris as the leader of the majority in Greece, and showed that Greece could entrust its future to the ‘chosen man’ who was also respected by the Great Powers.45 They suggested it proved that wiser thoughts had started to prevail among the Allies regarding the ‘Greek issue’. It was the first sign that the Allies intended to accept Greek objections concerning the appointment of a committee in Thrace and Asia Minor, and indicated that their ultimate decision would be favourable to Greece.46 Embros regarded Gounaris’s sudden invitation to London as an indication of a favourable turn in British policy towards Greece.47 For the populist newspaper Scrip Gounaris’s invitation was the first step towards the eventual recognition of Constantine by the Allies.48 Two Venizelist titles, Eleftheros Typos and Patris, revealed the true reason why Gounaris was permitted to attend the conference, which was that Calogeropoulos could not satisfactorily handle the Greek issue in London. Eleftheros Typos accused the anti-Venizelist newspapers of falsely presenting Gounaris’s invitation to the conference as a great victory, and as an indication that the national matters of the country would be solved in the optimum fashion. The newspapers chose to attack the government on a matter which it considered crucial for the country: the national interest, which, according to the Venizelist newspapers, the government had subverted in favour of its own selfish party interests. The truth was that the government newspapers were concerned about the interests of their party rather than ‘national issues’, and chose to hide from their readers that Calogeropoulos, after the matter of the appointment of a committee in Smyrna and Thrace had been raised, contacted Gounaris, as Calogeropoulos could not deal with the negotiations alone. Patris did not hesitate to write that the Greek delegation had failed and that Calogeropoulos was unable to deal with the situation; it asked the government to reinforce the delegation, a point which its editorial



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echoed.49 Ethnos considered, on the contrary, that Gounaris’s presence in London was necessary, as final decisions were about to be taken on peace in the Near East, and this would place some obligations on the Greek people. In response to pro-government newspapers’ claims that Gounaris’s visit to London was a great victory, Ethnos wrote that as it was not the time for political divisions, Gounaris represented all the Greek people, irrespective of the political camp to which they belonged; it stated that the entire populace was ready to praise him if he managed to keep the Treaty of Sèvres unrevised.50 All the Athenian newspapers, however, expressed their annoyance that Greece, instead of being included in the preliminary Allied Conference in Paris as one of the Allies, was invited to attend in London on the same footing, not only as the Turkish Government, but also as the rebel Mustapha Kemal.51 Another compromise scheme was presented to the Greek and Turkish delegations at the beginning of March, according to which no ethnic commission would be appointed; but the new proposal was not accepted by the Greeks.52 The Athenian press wrote that the whole edifice erected at Sèvres was about to disintegrate. The Sultan would be sovereign in Smyrna and its hinterland, the Christian Governor would not be appointed by the Greeks, and Greek troops would be confined to the town. Greece, the press wrote, as reality suddenly dawned, was about to lose Smyrna. The withdrawal of the penalty regarding Constantinople, the only restraining factor, would leave the Turks free to massacre the Greeks who had not been repatriated.53 The Greek delegation, after meeting with the British Prime Minister, preferred to let the issue be decided by an appeal to the sword, especially as it was reported that the Kemalists were ready to attack.54 This was to be Britain’s last chance to swing behind Greece in order to ‘balance’ France and Italy, but the failure of the March compromise rendered this balancing attempt futile. III 1. The Campaign of the Greek Army in Asia Minor In order to exercise pressure on the conference, Gounaris decided that it was time for the Greek army to engage Turkish forces in Asia Minor. He believed that a victory over the Turks would put him in a powerful position to negotiate with the Great Powers and to reach a favourable agreement. Gounaris sent hurried instructions to the Commander-in-Chief at the front to attack Eskisehir in order to impress the conference; General Papoulas did so at once.

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On 7/20 March Constantine, after receiving instructions from Gounaris,55 sent a message to the Greek people through the press, calling on them to reinforce the troops in Asia Minor in order to protect the Christian populations and effect the final pacification of the Near East.56 The Greek Minister of War claimed that he had received direct encouragement from London, as did Gounaris, who said that he had been given to understand that the British government wished the Greeks to attack if they thought they would succeed, and if they did then the British would support them.57 However, the British government denied any involvement in influencing the Greek government to order its troops to attack. Both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist press adopted a similar attitude to their stance. They hailed the mobilisation of the ‘three classes’ as a sign of victory in London, and expressed great optimism regarding the quick and easy defeat of Kemal.58 They were all convinced that the renewed campaign of the Greek troops in Asia Minor would be victorious.59 The lone dissenting voice was again Rizospastis. The propaganda propogated by the newspaper was combined with mass gatherings; a big Socialist Party meeting had already taken place in which speeches had been made against mobilisation, war and the abuses of the Entente, especially those of Great Britain regarding alleged militarism and imperialism.60 The stance of the Socialist Party was reflected in Rizospastis, which protested strongly against mobilisation, which it denounced as a tyrannical measure similar to those of Venizelos. The intention of the King’s message was to take advantage of the respect the people felt towards the monarchy and to exploit all those who were naive enough to believe that the ‘rapprochement’ between Gounaris and the British was a great accomplishment. Once again the workers, the soldiers and the peasants of Greece were to be sacrificed for the sake of Great Power interests. The solution was an alliance with the Soviets, who, it claimed, were the only hope for the enforcement of world peace.61 In mid-March Afyon Karahissar was captured; this news was greeted enthusiastically in Greece. The front pages of all the Venizelist and antiVenizelist newspapers trumpeted its capture.62 It was reported that after such a victory there was no doubt that the Greek army would enforce the terms of the treaty.63 Due to the enthusiasm generated by the Greek military triumph Constantinople was openly talked about as the ultimate goal.64 However, the Greek army soon suffered a severe setback near Eskisehir, on 20 March/2 April 1921, when it incurred heavy losses and was forced to retreat.65 Both the northern and southern columns retired to their original lines four days later.66 At first the bad news was not published in the Athe-



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nian newspapers, but after some days of concealment it was announced that the troops who had been attacking Eskisehir had withdrawn to their original positions east of Brussa. Absurdly, official explanations were issued that the attack on Eskisehir had never been intended to be a serious operation, but was only a feint to render the capture of Afyon Karahissar easier.67 However, it could not be hidden that the Greek forces had met with a serious rebuff and suffered heavy casualties. In addition it was evident that there was a danger of Afyon Karahissar being attacked by the Turkish forces, from the south and the north, which had been freed up by the Greek withdrawal. A deep feeling of depression caused by the military setback became evident in Athens. Nonetheless, the declarations of the government and both the pro-government and Venizelist press remained optimistic.68 Their continued optimism can be explained by the fact that reinforcements were about to arrive in Asia Minor. The mobilisation of the three classes had already yielded an additional 40,000 men, and the government seemed confident of enlisting 45,000 men in total. In truth, the government had great difficulties throughout the country in getting men to present themselves.69 The government press tried to emphasise the importance of the mobilisation for the national future, urging all Greek men to do their duty and enlist in the army.70 Several Athenian newspapers spoke of further mobilisation, and a journalist told Granville that three divisions were ready. However, the Greek Minister of War told the head of the French Mission that there was no point in further mobilisation as the government did not possess the necessary equipment. There was a plan to launch an immediate attack with five divisions on Koutahia from the south, with the object of attacking Eskisehir. The head of the French Mission considered the plan good but believed that two of the five divisions should be kept for defence against a possible Turkish counter-attack from the south-east; but three divisions were hardly sufficent to take Koutahia and the two forward positions, which the Turks had probably had time to fortify strongly. There was talk of the King going to the front to boost morale, but the idea was rejected for the time being.71 IV 1. Gounaris in Power On 26 March/8 April 1921 Calogeropoulos resigned from the premiership, and a new government was formed with Gounaris as Prime Minister and Minister of Justice. Both the new government and the Liberal Party concentrated their propaganda, disseminated by the newspapers which supported

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them, on efforts to persuade their readers that the difficulties the country faced had been caused by the other political camp. The anti-Venizelist newspapers praised the new government and were convinced that it would concentrate all its efforts on the Asia Minor front.72 The Venizelists were in despair – they considered the new cabinet incompetent – but what comforted them was the thought that the confusion and the disorganisation of the government would hasten the collapse of the regime and lead to Venizelos’s return. The Venizelist newspapers considered the mission of the new government very difficult, as the situation was crucial and the country was isolated internationally and under financial blockade. They invited the government to put the country’s interest above its selfish party interests, to approve of the contribution of anything which would promote the national interest, and to stop using methods which perpetuated the internal schism.73 The Assembly met again on 29 March/11 April, when Gounaris released a statement on the conference. He also announced the proposals which the Allies had made, and to which the Greek delegation had not replied. The first signs of division within the United Opposition appeared when Stratos74 linked the stalled diplomatic efforts with the military action, and attacked the government by criticising its conduct of the negotiations in London and hinting at faults on its part in the Asia Minor campaign. The government was also rebuked by some independent Royalist and several Venizelist deputies. Although the Venizelists were very careful and moderate in their language, some of them were subjected to constant interruptions, with one howled down and forced to leave the Chamber. The government took no part in the debate, as it declared that the moment was not ripe to decide how to answer the resolutions of the London Conference and hence it considered that discussions on the subject were inopportune. At the same meeting strong complaints were made by most of the speakers that the government was deceiving the people by hiding the true military situation in Asia Minor.75 The division was also reflected in the press when one newspaper, Embros, expressed its support for Stratos and accused Gounaris of withholding crucial information from the Greek people. It expected Gounaris to present the relations between Greece and its Allies in more detail, as well as setting out the financial hardships which threatened the country, but to which he chose not to refer.76 The Venizelist newspapers found Gounaris’s declarations very disappointing.77 They asked the government to stop hiding the truth because rumours would negatively influence public morale.78



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2. The Government and the Arrests of the Opponents The government hoped to defeat its political opponents by cultivating the psychological objective of instilling fear; it therefore did not hesitate to proceed to violent acts, such as arresting political opponents or publishing threats against leading members of the Liberal Party. The government had already arrested the editor of Rizospastis on baseless charges, after the protests of the Socialists and of Rizospastis itself against the new mobilisation decree, and a strong protest was published in the newspaper regarding the arrest.79 When news regarding the defeat of the Greek army on the Asia Minor front was published in a leading Venizelist newspaper, another arrest occurred, the pretext for which was that the newspaper had published military news which could harm the struggle for the national cause. However, other news from the front which promoted the government’s aim was allowed to be published in the anti-Venizelist newspapers. The arrests were used by the government to control, even to terrorise, the opposition in order to stop harsh criticism of government policies. The Venizelist newspapers, on the other hand, wanted to reveal the truth, not only for patriotic reasons but also to promote their own partisan interests. They wished to expose the government’s deception and to prove the Liberal Party’s excellence. Dimitris Lambrakis, the editor of the Venizelist title Patris, was the first to be arrested, on a charge of endangering the safety of the state; the basis of the charge was a signed leading article that he had published in Patris on 27 March. He wrote that the demand for success before Eskisehir had resulted in the High Command tearing up carefully prepared plans at the last moment. His criticisms of the government were, however, vitiated by the fact that the authors of the new plan were Venizelist generals, who had made a frontal attack without proper reconnaissance. In the article Lambrakis had emphasised that ‘lying during moments of national crisis is treason’. He asked the government to assume the burden of responsibility for what happened, and to hasten to make the necessary changes in the command structure of the Greek army. It was, he wrote, time for Papoulas, the Commanderin-Chief, to have the colleagues needed to allow the army to succeed in its difficult task.80 The article managed to shake public confidence in the war policy of the government and army. As expected, the Venizelist newspapers protested strongly against Lambrakis’s arrest, considering it completely unjustified, and maintaining that he had done his duty, which was to tell the Greek public the truth,81 – indeed, even the anti-Venizelist newspapers joined the protests about Lambrakis’s arrest – and asked the government to release

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him. The anti-Venizelist newspapers seized the opportunity to accuse the Liberal party, writing that the arrest was reminiscent of ‘Venizelist tyranny’. People, they claimed, were not to be arrested for the thoughts conveyed by their articles; they were free to write whatever they wanted, as indeed was Lambrakis. The government had every right to make recommendations and prevent reprehensible articles from being published, but not to imprison people as the Liberals had.82 However, the populist Scrip and Esperini considered Lambrakis’s article ‘vile and treacherous’ because it gave false information to the public regarding ‘accidents’ at the Asia Minor front, which demoralised soldiers and revealed military plans to the enemy. The newspapers asked the government to arrest Lambrakis, but considered that his arrest was too late, as the article had already been published. However, they claimed that the person who revealed the military plan was a general – evidently a Venizelist one – who had chosen to hide his name behind Lambrakis’s signature. The two newspapers insisted that the government had to pay attention to the censoring of defeatist propaganda and take ‘measures’ to ensure that similar articles did not appear.83 Patris answered that, despite the arrest, it would continue with its duty ‘to enlighten the people and to protect the interests of the nation’, by following Lambrakis’s example. The newspaper accused the government of failing to take the measures necessary for a crucial situation such as the one the nation faced, as Lambrakis had recommended, and criticised the arrest.84 Finally, Lambrakis was released on bail.85 On 29 March another article considered provocative by the anti-Venizelists was re-published in Patris by Papanastassiou, Minister of Communication in Venizelos’s government. He declared that due to Greece having lost the sympathy of the Allies, it was obvious that the King should abdicate for the good of the country, and asked the government to recommend this course.86 The government press reacted with indignation. This time, instead of proceeding with another arrest, the government chose to let the People’s Political Clubs respond, which they did by publishing a warning in the antiVenizelist press: Taking into consideration the article in yesterday’s Patris by Papanastassiou, in which the sacred person of our King was attacked, we bring to the notice of the government that this club, which is unsleepingly watchful of these sacrilegious people, is prepared, especially during the present crisis when all of Greece with religious faith and devotion looks to its heaven-sent General, to punish all such sacrilege by means easy to be understood.87



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The fervent writers of Patris, represented by Papanastassiou and others, thought that a furious campaign should be conducted against King Constantine. The majority of the Liberal Party, however, considered that for the moment such action was useless and would only have the effect of re-uniting the anti-Venizelists.88 The populist anti-Venizelist newspapers used very harsh language against Papanastassiou, describing him as ‘stupid’ in daring to discuss the responsibility of Constantine with the Greek people and as ‘an idiot’ in recommending abdication.89 No measures were taken by the government to deal with a threat of assassination against Papanastassiou made by the People’s Political Clubs. The government claimed that the Clubs no longer existed, as all their members were at the front in Asia Minor. In fact the Clubs were against mobilisation and had succeeded in keeping their members mobilised in Athens in civilian jobs; meanwhile, the government covered up their violent activities.90 In April the government made another arrest – that of the Venizelist Georgios Papandreou, the former Governor of Lesbos. He was taken into custody on account of an article in Patris91 even though it was less provocative than Papanastassiou’s. The excuse for Papandreou’s arrest was that his article had endangered the discipline and morale of the troops. Some Venizelist leaders approached Theotokis, the Minister of War, and raised the issue of Papandreou’s ill-treatment in prison; orders were at once given for him to be moved to a decent room, suitable for a political prisoner.92 All three cases – the arrests of Lambrakis and Papandreou and the threat against Papanastassiou – showed that the government, for security reasons and in order to keep morale high, had seized the opportunity to suppress inconvenient criticism from appearing in the press. It was a means that every government in wartime could adopt, with legitimate pretexts, in order not to tolerate criticism and to muzzle the press, particularly the opposition. During World War 2 in Great Britain the government, as Gounaris’s government had in 1921, wanted to silence the Daily Mirror, which enjoyed the largest circulation, because it had published sensitive information and a hostile editorial. Winston Churchill and his cabinet were of the opinion that any judgment which they did not like was unpatriotic and treacherous.93 However, in the case of Patris the muzzling of the press was accompanied by ‘mild’ acts of violence, such as arrests and threats in an effort to demoralise the internal enemies and to instil fear as ‘an act of violence became propaganda of the deed.94

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1.The Myth of the Venizelist Plots The anti-Venizelist press continued to invoke the myth of the conspiracy of Venizelos and the Venizelist camp in order to provide an explanation for the failures of the anti-Venizelist government on the diplomatic front and for the unfriendly change in the attitude of the Allies. The myth of the conspiracy determined who were considered to be the enemies of Greece, that is, those who wanted to harm the country’s national interest. The Venizelists were presented as a ‘criminal group’, ‘a band of plunderers and robbers’ and ‘mercenaries and murderers’.95 A powerful image was used to describe their attitude: the Venizelists behaved like ‘unpunished criminals’ do: when arrested, they ‘tremble’ before their ‘just punishment’, but when they are set free they ‘become as bold as brass’ and start accusing others of being ‘robbers’. In the same way the Venizelists who had expected a ‘heavy punishment’ after the overthrow of ‘their tyrannical regime’, when they realised that they were going ‘unpunished’, ‘grew bold’. Metaphors were used to emphasise the Venizelists non-human nature; they were presented as ‘rabble’96, as ‘pitiful corpses’97 and as a ‘poisonous tree’.98 The Venizelists had all the characteristics of ‘rotten personalities’: a ‘mania for disaster and overthrow’ and ‘unscrupulousness’. They conspired to ‘damage the essence of the Greek spirit’ and to ‘divide the Greeks’. Their conspiracy was spread ‘in Smyrna, in Rome, in Paris and in London’ where they sent ‘new agents’ who, with the ‘propagandists and those who fed on the blood of the Greek people’, committed the worst of their crimes: they ‘slandered’ the Greek army. They presented its ‘victories’ as ‘defeats’, its ‘triumphs as pitiable accidents’ and the ‘zeal and dash for the struggle’ as ‘decline and disintegration’.99 The Venizelists’s ‘vile calumnies and constant plots’ were also considered responsible for the ‘abandonment’ of Greece by the Allies, as they had been persuaded by Venizelists that ‘Greece was shattered, defeatist, tired, hostile, dishonest, and ready to give up everything and disintegrate’.100 Venizelos was the conspirator-in-chief, ‘the leader of the butchers and the murderers’101 who was behind all the Venizelist acts of conspiracy. The obsession with individuals, and their use by the press as symbols, avoided serious discussion and explanation of the underlying factors responsible for the situation.102 Rather, Venizelos was the symbol of ‘instability’ in the country: he was the ‘man of insatiable hatred’.103 The ultimate aim of his conspiracy was to ‘overthrow King Constantine’ and to ‘once more enslave his country and chain the people’.104 He was presented as having all the



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characteristics of an ‘unbalanced man’: an ‘insatiable lust for power’, a ‘mania for glory’ and ‘an unquenchable thirst for revenge’.105 Evaluative adjectives emphasised his negative attributes: ‘insulter’, ‘great calumniator’ and ‘devilish slanderer’.106 He was a modern Alcibiades who betrayed his country in the same way as the ‘horrible destroyer’. Metaphors likening Venizelos to dangerous animals were employed to emphasise his ‘nonhuman’ nature: he was presented as a ‘poisonous snake’ which, although cut into pieces, was still alive and could move, and also as a ‘horrible wild beast’ which after its ‘clout on the head’ from the people, had ‘regained its senses’ and started moving again ‘towards the direction of ill-treatment’ of others.107 The myth of the conspiracy is closely connected with the myth of the ‘saviour’ who could save the country from the conspiracy of Venizelos. The role of the ‘saviour’ was played by Constantine, who was invited to protect the country. He was presented as the symbol of unity of the country; his ‘feelings and intentions’ coincided with the ‘feelings and the intentions of the Greek people’. He was considered the only person who had never stopped ‘loving’ the Allies, and therefore in time there was no doubt that they would recognise him as monarch, and co-operate with him to put an end to the Venizelist plots against the monarchy.108 2. The Myth of the Great Powers as Protectors and its Refutation The myth of the protection of the Allies was invoked by the Venizelist press during the London Conference. The idealised image of the Powers legalised their intervention not only in the past but also in the present, and validated the ‘compliance’ of Greece with their recommendations. The myth of the protection of the Great Powers determined who were the friends and the enemies of the country. The friends supported the rights and the interests of the country, but the enemies sapped them, co-operating with the old enemy: the Turks. The myth of the protection of Great Britain legitimised the Anglophile attitude of the Venizelist newspapers, and their support of Venizelos and of his efforts to mould Greek foreign policy. Britain was one of the Great Powers which represented the struggle of united Europe against Germany during World War 1.109 The participation of Greece in that conflict emphasised the strong bond between the two countries.110 Britain was the country of the ‘gentle people’ and a ‘nation that adored honesty and frankness’.111 Lloyd George was not only a ‘great man’ but also a ‘great friend’112 and a ‘protector’ of Greece and the only person who had the power to dissipate ‘the skilfully spread defamation’ that Greece, after ‘taking advantage of the

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co-operation with the Allies’, had turned into their adversary. Special reference was made to the British press for its ‘Grecophile campaign’, an indication of its ‘warm-heartedness’ and ‘favour’ for Greece.113 The myth of the protection was also mobilised in respect of France and Italy by the Venizelist press. They were considered ‘nations which had played a leading part’ in the ‘noble struggle of humanity’ and would never ‘stain their honour’.114 The incident of the French officer who had been found, according to a press telegram, in the Turkish trenches in March was therefore considered to be a ‘stupid rumour’ which was ‘unbelievable’, ‘absurd’ and a ‘monstrous lie’.115 It was considered part of a conspiracy engineered by the Turks to destroy the relationship between Greece and those two Allies: the Turks dressed their own soldiers with French and Italian uniforms in order to ‘deceive’ and ‘confuse’ the Greeks, a tactic that the Germans had used during the Great War. The Turks proved how much they had learned from their ‘German teachers’, many of whom were still on Kemal’s staff.116 The Venizelist press reported on the role of the Germans to revive the negative image of Germany which it had acquired during the Great War, when it had been presented by the Venizelist press as a ‘barbaric nation’ and the ‘source of evil’ in the world, in contrast with the Allies, who had fought for ‘European democracy’.117 Therefore it was impossible for France, the ‘Great Republic’ which had ‘close and strong bonds’ and such a ‘deep friendship’ with Greece and had fought for ‘Greek independence’, to co-operate with the Germans in support of Kemal at a time when ‘the French were fighting against the Turks and shedding their blood in Cilicia’.118 It was impossible for France to support the Turks, who were presented stereotypically as a ‘barbaric nation’: ‘savage irregulars’ who came from the ‘dark core of Asia through which they had marched for centuries’ in order to ‘disgrace humanism’.119 Therefore to allow ‘the Turks to stay in Europe’ was ‘the most serious international irregularity’ and an ‘unheard-of injustice’.120 Even when the Venizelist press admitted that the ‘friendship’ of the Allies was lost, the anti-Venizelists were considered responsible for the loss, and events of the past were used to demonstrate their culpability. For example, on the eve of the great battles of 1918 anti-Venizelist Greek officers had tried to persuade Greek soldiers to desert the army, because by fighting ‘they sacrificed themselves’ for the ‘foreign interests’ of the Allied powers. Even if the anti-Venizelists made efforts to persuade the French and the British that they were ‘friends of the Entente’, it was not possible for their efforts to succeed as the Allies were well aware of the anti-Venizelists’ policies and actions, which showed them to be ‘impudent liars’.121



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The anti-Venizelist press refuted the myth of the protection of France and Italy by demystifying the two countries’ traditional role. The intention was to provide an explanation for the unsuccessful outcome of the diplomatic efforts of the government and the failure of the military undertakings in Asia Minor. France and Italy were presented as ‘leeches’ who wished to ‘re-impose tyranny in Greece’122 and to ‘strangle’ the rights of the people.123 The newspapers’ propaganda was focused on efforts to mobilise the hatred of the Greek people against the enemies, who had betrayed Greece and chose to become friends with the Turks. The French and the Italians were accused of paying ‘no attention’ to the fact that ‘Greece had fought during the war on the Allied side’ and that ‘the Greek people had shouldered several sacrifices’ in supporting the Allied cause.124 The newspapers wondered how in the name of justice and political morality the Allies could decide to amend the Treaty of Sèvres to the disadvantage of the Greeks only six months after its signing, and how they could discount the victories of the Greek army. In their view, there was no doubt about the rights of Greece in Thrace and Smyrna, and the country was determined never to abandon those of its people that it had liberated.125 Yet, powerful images of the present exercised greater influence than the representation of more distant experiences.126 The anti-Venizelist press had the power to present and take advantage of events which raised the indignation of the Greek people, such as the incident where the French officer had allegedly been found in the Turkish trenches. Although initially the government censored the first telegram, from Smyrna, succeeding telegrams retold the story with numerous embellishments, resulting in publication of the episode. This produced a crop of unrestrained articles in almost every anti-Venizelist newspaper attacking France for helping the Turks and for sending French officers to fight on their side against Christians.127 The populist Esperini exaggerated the story. It wrote that not one but two French officers had been found in the Turkish trenches, and that both had been killed by Greek soldiers. Moreover, it alleged that the Turkish trenches had been built by the French officers, who had also directed the defence tactics of the Turks.128 The abuse of France in the government newspapers was such – articles with the most insulting terms appeared almost every day – that the French Minister protested to the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs and insisted on issuing an official refutation; this which was actually issued, although it was half-hearted, and begged him to keep the press in order. This refutation was greeted with contempt and disbelief, and fresh abuse against France appeared in the government press.129 Abusive articles were also published against Italy,130 even though it was

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recognised that it was a ‘Christian and civilised power’. Italy was presented as a ‘kidnapper’ of a child from the arms of its mother, as it wanted to ‘extract Greek land’ from the ‘Greek bosom’ – land which ‘had been liberated with heavy bloodshed’ – and ‘surrender the newly liberated land to Greece’s oppressor’. Italy was also exchanging its money for ‘the blood of the liberators and the liberty of the unfortunate populations’.131 Attacks were also made on the Italian press, which was accused of being responsible for ‘calumny’, ‘intrigues’ and ‘mendacity’.132 Reference was also made to past events regarding both the Italians and the French which proved how badly ‘prejudiced’ the Allies were against Greece and how determined they were to ‘distort the truth’ when they blamed the Greek army for the events in Smyrna when the Greek troops landed in May 1919.133 After the French and the Italians signed agreements with the Kemalists,134 the agreements were considered ‘scandalous and evil’.135 The press campaign against France and Italy became very harsh and was carried so unanimously by the anti-Venizelist newspapers that it was hardly possible to believe that it was not encouraged by the government. Kathimerini and the populist Esperini, which supported Gounaris, ascribed all the misfortunes of Greece to France. France and Italy were both accused of leaving an ally alone to confront the Turks, when they chose to make peace with Turkey.136 However, even the anti-Venizelist press mobilised the myth of protection of Great Britain, in contrast to the attitude that they had adopted towards Great Britain during theWW1.137 The idealised image of Great Britain not only validated its intervention in internal Greek affairs but it was also used to keep the home front united at a time when one government failure succeeded another. Britain was presented as ‘a warm corner’ which was protected by the ‘gentle Welshman’ (Lloyd George) and where the ‘Greek soul’ could find shelter under a ‘secure roof ’. Even if Greece were ‘abandoned’ and ‘injured’ by the other Allies, it could ‘lean on the honest and strong arms of Great Britain’ which would ‘always be offered to Greece’.138 Conclusion The perpetuation of the National Schism determined the role of the newspapers during the period January–April 1921; they were advocates for the parties. They adopted violent and harsh language against their political opponents. The propaganda of the anti-Venizelist newspapers was directed by the government, although several times it pretended that it had no advance idea which material would be published nor, it claimed, did it have the power to prevent newspapers from disseminating abusive articles.



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This propaganda was the only way to divert public attention from the critical situation in which the country found itself after the unfavourable outcome of the diplomatic negotiations and the reversals on the Asia Minor front. The myth of conspiracy was mobilised by the anti-Venizelist press to provide an explanation for these failures. The attitude of the Great Powers concerning the irredentist aspirations of Greece shaped the presentation and often the abuse of the French and Italians in the Greek press. The anti-Venizelist press chose to refute the myth of the protection of France and Italy, in contrast to the Venizelist camp which chose to propagate the myth of the protection of the Allies and remain faithful to its traditional pro-Entente attitude. Although the struggle of the Greek army on the Asia Minor front briefly united the two camps, eventual defeat deepened the rift between the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist press. When the anti-Venizelist newspapers attempted to cover up the extent of the military setback and present the army’s retreat as a matter of no importance, the Venizelist newspapers exposed the true extent of the setback and firmly criticised the government and the anti-Venizelist press. The government’s answer was harsh: it authorised ‘mild’ violent activities to control the situation, using the state of war as the necessary pretext. Rizospastis alone could claim not only to have opposed the Asia Minor campaign during the first months of 1921 but to have taken this position from the outset. Thus, in spite of the adverse outcome of the military undertakings of spring 1921 and the consequent loss of morale within the Greek army, the government insistently pursued new campaigns during the summer. A figurehead, Constantine, would be chosen to rebuild the morale of the Greek soldiers, perpetuating the illusion that victory was still attainable.

6 The Summer Attack

Πού θα σταματήσουμε; Πότε θα τελειώσουμε; Αυτό εξαρτάται από τον Κεμάλ. Έχουμε μεταβληθή σε σίδερα. Ούτε η αφόρητη ζέστη ούτε οι ατέλειωτες πορείες ούτε οι αϋπνίες, ούτε ο διαρκής εκνευρισμός, ούτε η δίψα μέσα στην Αλμυρά Έρημο που περάσαμε ούτε χίλια δυο άλλα μας κάνουν πεια εντύπωσι. Σε ένα αποβλέπουμε. Πότε να τελειώσουμε να θυμηθούμε και μεις πως είμαστε άνθρωποι. Έμμορφη είναι η εκστρατεία, αλλά όχι τέσσερα χρόνια τώρα συνέχεια. Ριχνόμαστε με όλα μας τα δυνατά. Ο εχθρός μάχεται κι’ αυτός πολύ καλά. Θέλουμε να δώσουμε τέλος στην κατάσταση αυτή. Νικολόπουλος Νίκος, λοχαγός, 12 Αυγούστου 1921.1 Morale among the Greek soldiers on the Asia Minor front starting their new preparations for the summer campaign was low because of the setback the army had suffered the previous March. Constantine had been appointed Commander-in-Chief in order to bolster morale and improve fighting spirit, and so it was decided that he should go to the front. On 29 May/11 June he left for the front amid great enthusiasm,2 the intention being for him to assume the role of a victorious military planner and leader, at a time when the ‘Constantinist legend’ had started to lose some of its potency with the troops.3 In substance, the government was using the monarchy and the public’s admiration of the King to remain in power. As its ‘safeguard’, the government believed that Constantine’s presence at the front would have a threefold result: a strengthening not only of the morale of the Greek army, but also of the position of the monarch and consequently that of the government. Metaxas alone objected to the government’s decision to send the King to the front, openly accusing Gounaris of exposing Constantine: for if the military undertakings were unsuccessful, then the King would be held responsible.4



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The news regarding the King’s visit to the front was published in the anti-Venizelist press several days before his departure. The anti-Venizelist titles claimed that the visit would lead to a victorious outcome. His presence at the front, it was suggested, would strengthen morale more than ‘the mobilisation of even 13 classes’, as the troops had wanted this ever since Constantine’s restoration.5 On the day the King left for the front, huge headlines overstated the likely impact of his presence there.6 However, the King himself did not seem to enjoy being at the front7 – conditions there were far from ideal, and the first symptoms of his subsequent illness appeared.8 The Venizelist newspapers, meanwhile, relegated reports of the King’s departure, without comment, to inside pages.9 The present chapter will investigate the role of the press in reporting the relationship of the government with the other political parties at a time when the campaign on the Asia Minor front reached a critical point. The chapter is divided into four sections. A few days after Constantine’s departure for the front the Allies attempted more unsuccessful mediation to find a solution to the Eastern question. The attitude of the press towards the new mediation will be examined in the first section. In the second section, the attitudes of the Greek press towards the new military undertakings of the Greek army and their aftermath will be considered. The failure of the military undertakings would give the opportunity to the opposition, even the opposition within the government itself, to attack the government, which would put it at risk of losing power. The third section will focus on the ‘propaganda of deed’ which was employed by the government to suppress the growing criticism expressed by its political opponents, and how such ‘propaganda’ was perceived by foreign diplomats. The last section will concentrate on the myths that were invoked by the Athenian newspapers in order to justify their own political views. I 1. The Allies’ Offer of Mediation and the Attitude of the Athenian Press On 9/22 June 1922 the Allies sent a message to the Greek government offering to mediate. Curzon and Briand had met in Paris on 5/18 and 6/19 June and agreed that the time for mediation had come. Although the French were not keen on Curzon’s idea of supporting the Greeks, in case the Turks refused to accept the terms, they agreed on the issue of Smyrna and on the necessity for the eventual withdrawal of Greek troops from Asia Minor. They disagreed on Thrace, but finally they decided to set the issue aside until a later date.

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The government newspapers, especially Kathimerini, emphasised that any attempt at mediation would be in vain if Greece were not treated as a victor. The newspaper further claimed that if Kemal refused to accept the Allied terms, he would be treated as an enemy. It was not possible for Kemal to be treated as an equal of Greece, as he was considered the ‘persecutor of Christians and civilisation’, while Greece was their ‘protector’. The newspapers also emphasised the danger of Bolshevism at a time when a strong antiBolshevik feeling prevailed in the country, as Kemal had formed an alliance with the Bolsheviks, whose interests, the paper claimed, he would serve, even if he were satisfied by the peace terms presented by the Powers. Kathimerini presented Greece as the only power in the East with the potential to contain the Bolshevist threat. Therefore Greece was determined to realise its military plans by means of which it would achieve a favourable solution. Then the country would have the power to liberate its offspring from the burden of mobilisation and itself from the burden of the campaign. Greece would accept the peace terms only if they satisfied all the sacrifices it had made. Otherwise, the country was determined to continue its military policy until the defeat and subjugation of the enemy. Only then would it be the right time for diplomatic action.10 The Venizelist newspapers appeared divided on the issue. All blamed the government, agreeing that the Great Powers’ mediation had been the unfavourable consequence of Greek policy since November 1920, and they all used harsh language towards the ‘unwanted’ government. Some newspapers, with Patris in the leading role, recommended the acceptance of the mediation. They suggested it was to the country’s benefit to show the Great Powers that Greece respected their interests and cherished their friendship. However, what they considered unjustified was that the proposals for mediation were sent first to Greece rather than Turkey, as Greece was on the side of the victors and so should be accorded the last word on how the proposals were phrased. However, other Venizelist titles, such as Eleftheros Typos, declared the determination of the Greek people not to abandon Smyrna or to agree to any peace settlement that would leave the Greeks of Asia Minor in the hands of the Turks.11 Smyrna, according to the Treaty of Sèvres, was part of Greece, and the Greek people were determined never to abandon it, wrote Ethnos. It hoped that the government would realise the vital importance of the situation, be worthy of the circumstances and follow the wish of the Greek people in never accepting such humiliating terms.12 Finally, Rizospastis continued to hold strong anti-war sentiments, leading it to attack the government’s war policy, and the Allies, who were only



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interested in promoting their own interests. By summer 1921, SEKE had not managed to gain the support it expected from the Greek people, and hoped to find it in the cause of International Communism. In late June– early July 1921 the Third World Congress of the Comintern took place in Moscow, where it was formally stated that the communist movement had passed from the stage of ‘imminent revolution’ to a period of ‘defence and regrouping of forces’.13 Rizospastis showed the most realistic approach to the issue of the proposed mediation when it accused the government of misleading the Greek people about the Great Powers’ mediation, whose true meaning was to force Greece to comply with Kemal’s claims and then for them to negotiate with Kemal under the new dispensation. The newspaper invited the government to stop its insane war policy in Asia Minor, which could only have disastrous consequences, and follow the demand of the people for peace.14 It also accused the Venizelist newspapers of urging the continuation of the war in Asia Minor in order to take political advantage of the event.15 The Greek government sent a message to the Allies on 12/25 June stating that the offensive could not be suspended for military reasons, but it would always be ready to consider proposals for a peace settlement.16 Venizelos’s recommendation to the Greek government to accept the Allies’ offer was rejected.17 The anti-Venizelist newspapers expressed satisfaction regarding the message to the Allies. Greece, they suggested, did not reject peace, but when it was the right moment, the country would accept the terms, which would not only secure what it had gained by the Treaty of Sèvres but also what was worthy of the sacrifices that the country had undergone.18 The moderate Venizelist newspapers wrote that after the Greek government refused mediation, everything depended on military action. Eleftheros Typos declared that the Liberal Party would only act in a manner which would demonstrate that the nation was united in support of the proposed military action. Ethnos expressed its satisfaction regarding the government’s message, as it gave voice to the feelings of the Greek people, proving that Greece was united and firmly believed in its victorious army.19 Rizospastis considered the government’s answer to the Great Powers a ‘crime’ and proof of its contempt for the Greek people’s desire for peace. The newspaper stated that censorship of newspapers which published unfavourable comments on the decisions of the government was the only means the latter had of suppressing public indignation at the government’s decision to continue the war. It was, Rizospastis claimed, not permitted for the people to express their opinion regarding the government, to comment on or to try to change a ‘stupid policy’. The newspaper was convinced that

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the government would pay the price for its decision to continue the war in Asia Minor.20 Yet the government remained determined to proceed with a military offensive. It expected that the operation would clear up the situation in Asia Minor and greatly strengthen Greece’s position in the negotiations with the Turks – although it knew that there was always a possibility that the military undertakings would fail, as Gounaris conceded to Metaxas of the two secret meetings they had had the previous March.21 What the government did not appreciate was the unbearable hardships that such a huge task involved for the Greek army. II 1. War Correspondents at the Front The military undertakings in Asia Minor received, as was to be expected, the extended attention of the Athenian press. All the titles, both Venizelist and anti-Venizelist, had their war correspondents at the Asia Minor front who telegraphed their reports to Athens via Smyrna or Constantinople, though these reports were censored before being sent. Kathimerini was the newspaper which had dispatched the greatest number of journalists to report from the front. Christos Nikolopoulos, its editor-in-chief, went to Asia Minor in mid-May and covered Constantine’s arrival as well as the military situation until late August. Kathimerini’s other war correspondents were: I. Athineos, Platon A. Metaxas and A. Tsamopoulos, while its permanent correspondent in Smyrna was A. Koutouvalis. E. Pantelidis and Stavros Koukoutsakis represented Eleftheros Typos at the front; the former was with the Northern and the latter with the Southern Army Corps. Th. Daniilidis was the correspondent of Eleftheros Typos and Esperini in Smyrna; he submitted situation reports by special telegram. Angelos Drosos was the war correspondent of Politia in the summer of 1921, while Th. Venopoulos was the Ethnos correspondent. 2. The Attack The beginning of the military undertakings united both the anti-Venizelist and the Venizelist press behind the effort to bolster the spirit of the people and arouse their enthusiasm, as the army needed to have the whole-hearted support of the Greek people behind it. Rizospastis was the only newspaper which continued with an anti-war stance; more than that, it made efforts to reduce the importance of the Greek army’s victories in Asia Minor.



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On 28 June/11 July the Athenian newspapers, both anti-Venizelist and Venizelist alike, were informed that the long-delayed offensive had begun. They published it on their front pages the following day. Although the newspapers recognised it would be a difficult campaign, they were convinced that the Greek army would break the Kemalists and that the King would emerge as the victorious leader.22 Initially events seemed to bear this out, as a series of Greek victories followed. The news of the fall of Koutahia reached Athens late on the night of 5/18 July and the following day the anti-Venizelist newspapers hailed the victory as presaging a bright future for the country.23 The Venizelist newspapers joined in celebrating the ‘triumph’.24 The most intense outburst of enthusiasm followed. Crowds visited the British Legation in the early morning and cheered for Great Britain and the British Prime Minister, who was revered as another Canning. Some newspapers even suggested that Koutahia would be known as one of the most decisive battles in the world.25 It was then that the British Minister asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs whether his government would be prepared to accept a fresh offer of mediation on the part of the Allies. Then came the news of the fall of Eskisehir, published in the Athenian newspapers on 8/21 July. ‘Hymns’ were written in the newspapers praising the Greek army.26 Even Patris urged the government to take advantage of such an ‘extensive’ victory, as it held an ‘invincible weapon’ for the future of the country. After the fall of Eskisehir the Minister of Foreign Affairs told Granville that the Greek army had not yet achieved all its objectives. Further rejoicing followed in Athens, as well as more pro-British demonstrations in front of the British Legation. Such was the enthusiasm of the press that the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres were no longer considered sufficient for Greece, which required a proper strategic frontier. The General Staff in Athens were confident that the Nationalist army had lost the greatest part of its ability as a fighting machine, and the anti-Venizelist press was eager to prove that the victories were due to Constantine’s inspirational presence at the front. The reports recorded that the monarch was acclaimed by the army at Eskisehir with shouts of ‘To Constantinople, Emperor!’.27 Rizospastis was the only newspaper to consider that the news of Koutahia’s fall did not have the importance that the government wanted to attribute to it.28 The newspaper wrote that the articles which had been published abroad did not consider the Greek victory to be as significant as it had been presented in the Athenian press.29 The government censored Rizospastis, and therefore the newspaper appeared with several blank columns. It accused the government of deleting every comment that did

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not agree with the government’s optimism on the outcome of the war in Asia Minor.30 On 12/25 July the anti-Venizelist newspapers reported that the Greek campaign had ended.31 Some articles appeared which urged the seizure of Constantinople. The capture of the former capital of the Byzantine Empire, which had a symbolic meaning for the Greeks, would have been the greatest triumph over the Turks. Constantinople, however, was mainly used by the newspapers for propaganda reasons, to arouse enthusiasm among the Greek people and to unify public support for the war. Kathimerini played the leading role in this propaganda, while the populist anti-Venizelist title Scrip and Esperini devoted several leading articles to the issue.32 Even the Venizelist newspapers declared that whatever the government decided to do, whether to seize Constantinople or to march on Ankara in order to secure the results which the Greek sacrifices demanded, it had their full support.33 The British warned the Greek government that any attempt to seize Constantinople would be disastrous for the country and would not be tolerated by Allied troops. The warning was published in the Athenian press as an alleged Reuters telegram purporting to have come from London. The government did not make a clear statement in the Athenian press about the warning but the Reuters telegram left no doubt about its existence. The British insisted on publicity being given to their point of view, and consequently the telegram was also given extended coverage by the Turkish newspapers in Constantinople.34 The Venizelist press used the telegram to show what was going on behind the scenes, and accused the government of not keeping the public informed. All the Venizelist newspapers considered that the warning had to be taken seriously by the government. The anti-Venizelist titles, however, were dismissive and recalled the fact that Gounaris had been warned not to participate in the London Conference but subsequently invited to attend. Gounaris’s organ stated that it was necessary to occupy Constantinople in order to end the war as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the Venizelist newspapers were divided after the British warning. Eleftheros Typos wrote that the seizure of Constantinople was not deemed necessary,35 but Patris emphasised the importance of seizing Constantinople and claimed that for ‘military, historical and ethnological reasons’ its capture was the aspiration of all Greeks; but it recognised that there was not much that the Greek army could do at the moment in the face of the Allies’ opposition. It proposed diplomatic efforts to win them round.36 Rizospastis considered the hostile attitude of the British regarding the seizure of Constantinople to be a ‘cold bath’ which dampened Greek



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fervour, and gave the lie to the government’s efforts to persuade the Greek people that the British agreed with the seizure of the city. The newspaper considered the tactics of the government to be ‘ridiculous’ and urged it to put an end to a situation which the people could no longer tolerate.37 For the moment, however, it was a voice in the wilderness, as the rest of the Athenian press was swept up in the delusion that the Megali Idea was about to be realised in its full glory. On 1/14 August the Greek army, in three columns each consisting of three infantry divisions, began its eastward advance on Ankara, the bastion of the Kemalists. Their goal was to outflank the Turkish positions by a rapid advance, to which the terrain did not however lend itself. After marching through the Salt Desert with serious supply problems of water and food, the Greek army finally saw the front line of the Turkish army on 10/23 August. The long battle, which started on 13/26 August, ended 15 days later with the retreat of the Greeks to a point east of Eskishehir – the positions they had left a month before – and the plan to march on Ankara was abandoned for good. Despite the fact that the Greek troops had started their advance with high morale because of the July victories, the arduous march through the Salt Desert and the days of fighting immediately after, together with the lack of ammunition and food supplies, exhausted them to the point where they did not have the strength to continue fighting. Moreover, the removal of Venizelist officers and their replacement by Royalists for political rather than military reasons meant that, at critical moments of the battle, opportunities had been squandered and confusion reigned. Although the Greeks were not defeated, crucially they did not accomplish their goal of capturing Ankara. The fact was that anything other than a complete victory amounted to a defeat for the Greek army. Diplomacy, then, was the field in which the Eastern Question would be solved.38 The reportage of the battle and its aftermath will now be considered. At the beginning of August it was announced that the advance of the Greek army had begun. Gounaris himself had already informed the press that the objective of the new operations was the complete annihilation of the remains of the Turkish army, and if this could be accomplished before reaching Ankara, then there would be no need for an advance on the town.39 Both anti-Venizelist and Venizelist newspapers were convinced that the fresh struggle would bring new victories and that Ankara would fall quickly. For a few days there was no news from the front, and no official communiqué was issued by the Commander-in-Chief. Kathimerini’s optimistic explanation for this was that the army was concentrating on achieving its aims and that there was no time for communiqués; nevertheless, the silence would soon

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be followed by the announcement of joyful news which would lead to peace and victory.40 Around the middle of August, the newspapers announced that the fight between the Greek and Turkish armies had begun and considered the Sakarya battle to be the biggest that had taken place in the Asia Minor war. Both the Venizelist and anti-Venizelist newspapers were optimistic about the outcome of the struggle. They believed that the victory would be Greece’s, as it was not possible for the Greek army – which was ‘made of steel’ – to be defeated; the struggle would lead the enemy’s army to one more failure and defeat.41 Also, the news over the following days was good. A ‘hymn’ in praise of the Greek army, which had managed to overcome all its hardships caused by lack of water, food and supplies and had made the enemy flee, was published in every Athenian newspapers bar Rizospastis. Even the most fervent Venizelist titles wrote that, after the victory of the Greek army, Gounaris’s diplomacy would become the means to achieve what they hoped would be a triumph similar to the one in the field.42 The populist pro-government newspapers hurried to praise the expected military triumph.43 However, they accused the Venizelist newspapers of being extremely modest in their declarations regarding the victories of the Greek army. Esperini commented ironically that the greater the victories, the more parsimonious were the announcements in the Venizelist press. In particular, it criticized Estia.44 When an officer of the General Staff arrived in Athens at the end of August, the news that was announced in the newspapers regarding the outcome of the struggle of the army was still very optimistic. Kathimerini even wrote that it was only a matter of time before Ankara was captured.45 It claimed that due to the physical distance and the nature of such an extended and intensive struggle it was not possible to provide daily updates on the activities of the Greek army. The distance was also the reason for the delay in the official communiqués reaching Athens. Gounaris himself made a statement in the press in which he announced that the struggle would continue despite fierce enemy resistance before its capital until victory was attained. Gounaris was clear in his statement: ‘The campaign will continue.’ Kathimerini was convinced that victory would be definite and absolute, and only after the expected victory would Greece reveal its claims, which would be proportionate to the extent of the Greek sacrifices which had been required to win the victory. Every effort was made for the least possible amount of blood to be shed in the struggle. However, the Greek public was informed about the hardships that the Greek army had undergone during the march through the Salt Desert,46 which emphasised even further the importance of a future victory. Even the Venizelist newspapers were convinced that victory would be accomplished.47



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Rizospastis was the first newspaper to break ranks and accuse the government of continuing the war in Asia Minor without informing the people of what was actually happening at the front and of its true intentions.48 The Venizelist newspapers followed suit. On 31 August Eleftheros Typos and on 1 September Patris, in their leading articles, asked the government to end the unsubstantiated rumours concerning the situation at the front.49 A few days later the Patris did not hesitate to re-publish an article which had appeared in The Times of London on 1/14 September 1921,50 and which revealed the outcome of the Greek struggle in Asia Minor. Although a great part of the article was censored, the Greek public was informed that the Greek army had definitely failed to capture Ankara, and had been forced to retreat. The difficulty of communications in the heart of Asia Minor, the limited strategic resources of the invaders and the fierce tenacity of the Turks in defending their homeland repulsed the Greek tide. Psychologically the battle was regarded in the Near East as a victory for the Turks, and the prestige of the Turkish Nationalist leader Kemal was strengthened. In essence, the Greek High Command had aimed at a goal that it failed to reach. The newspaper even accused the government and the anti-Venizelist press of telling lies to the public, and asked the government to decide as soon as possible if it would continue the war or would negotiate peace terms.51 Patris was one of the Venizelist newspapers which played a leading role in attacking the government. On 15 September it accused the government of being ‘impotent’ and ‘unscrupulous’, as it had revealed that the objective of the campaign was Ankara, a fact which should have remained secret.52 The tactic of withholding the truth from the public regarding military defeats had been adopted during WW1 by all the warring nations, in order not to weaken the people’s will to fight. It seems that in the case of Gounaris’s government there were further reasons for the adoption of such a policy, the main one being that it was concerned about the political price it would have to pay if the military campaign failed. Failure could lead it to lose power, as both the Venizelist press and Rizospastis were waiting for the government to make a mistake in order to start their anti-government campaign. 3. The Aftermath The King returned to Athens in mid-September. Despite the best efforts of the government and the anti-Venizelist press to prepare a triumphal reception for him to cover up the failure of the military undertakings, this was not possible. It was not long before news of the crisis exploded in the public domain.

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Before leaving Asia Minor the King had issued a message to the troops, which, the anti-Venizelist press suggested, had made an excellent impression on them. Even the Venizelist newspapers praised the message and seized the opportunity to write an ‘ode’ about the Greek army, which, despite the fact that it had been fighting for eight years, had fulfilled its duty once again without complaint. The newspapers asked the government to undertake further actions that would secure for Greece results worthy of the sacrifices of both the army and the entire Greek people.53 However, the reality was that the King’s popularity with the troops had disappeared: for example, soldiers often hissed at him.54 In Athens fairly large enthusiastic crowds received the King. The government had used the support of the anti-Venizelist press to prepare the ground for Constantine’s welcome. All its newspapers had worked very hard during the previous three days to prepare an enthusiastic reception for Constantine. They maintained the same lie, that the campaign had been victorious, and declared that the victories were chiefly due to the monarch. They even published crude propagandistic stories that after a long tiring march the King had eaten the same food as the common soldiers in order to pre-dispose the public to welcome his return from the front. The newspapers wrote that Constantine had returned to Athens to supervise and direct the political and diplomatic campaign, which all agreed was most urgently needed. They declared that Constantine’s presence and control would ensure success.55 However, the Venizelist newspapers and Rizospastis made no attempt to conceal their belief that the end of the campaign had been anything other than a defeat. They expressed the greatest pessimism as to the future. They did not hesitate to blame the government severely for having continued the campaign at such a terrible cost, and with the only result that they would have to start the ‘diplomatic campaign’ in no better position than two or three months before.56 Patris wrote that the victory was nothing but a ‘fraud’, and that the reception of the King was only an attempt to draw the attention of the Greek people away from matters where the government preferred confusion to prevail. But the Greek people, Patris claimed, were tired and demanded honesty and consistency in the government’s actions.57 Rizospastis, on the other hand, considered Constantine’s reception by the Greek people ‘cold’, and saw it as proof of the end of ‘Constantinism’ as a means of ‘political demagogism’ to cover up the consequences of a disastrous policy, to deceive the people and to exploit their feelings and their weaknesses. The King was no longer the symbol of peace who had managed to defeat the Venizelist warlike policy in the elections.



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The Greek people, it concluded, had started ‘to wake up, to see and to understand’.58 Eleftheros Typos seized the opportunity to criticise the government in harsh terms, and in particular Gounaris. On 19 and 20 September two letters that Venizelos had sent to Danglis during the summer were published in the newspaper. In the first Venizelos wrote that the refusal of the government to accept the Powers’ mediation was its final criminal act against the country. The only option that the government had was to compromise and end the war, to save what could be saved. In the second letter, written during the advance on Ankara, Venizelos condemned the offensive and claimed that it would not lead to victory. Only the capture of Constantinople could have a decisive effect. The letters ‘raised a storm’ and put an end to the unified ‘national’ attitude towards the campaign in Asia Minor.59 Gounaris hurried to reply to Venizelos’s letters, but was harshly criticised by both Eleftheros Typos and Patris.60 Although Patris accused Danglis of handing over two of Venizelos’s private letters for publication without permission, and against his will, it wrote that Gounaris’s reply proved how much he was afraid of Venizelos. A leading article seized the opportunity to compare Venizelos’s policy on the ‘national matter’ with Gounaris’s, which did not stand comparison.61 Eleftheros Typos defended its decision to publish the letters without permission, maintaining that its action was in the public interest. The newspaper accused Gounaris of attempting to put the blame on Venizelos when he himself was at fault. Only by visiting Greek cities would Gounaris understand that he no longer enjoyed public support, being guilty of a deception which had led to disaster. Venizelos, on the other hand, had retired from politics and his only ‘political action’ was recapitulated in two or three letters he had sent to close friends.62 The events in Asia Minor caused great depression and dissatisfaction in the country, which in turn encouraged and brought into the open numerous complaints detailing bad government administration. Rumours that the fall of Gounaris’s government was inevitable became widespread. There was a strong difference of opinion between Gounaris and Theotokis, the Minister of War, with the King supporting the latter. However, Theotokis was very unpopular with the army because of his mistakes and failures at the front with respect to transport and hospital arrangements.63 Gounaris and the government were so unpopular that even their strongest supporters in the press hardly had a good word to say about them – they seemed to find it easier to abuse their political opponents than to defend the government. All the newspapers were full of criticism of the government, mild and veiled

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or open and violent, depending on the individual political views of the particular writer. In some cases the possibility, even the desirability, of the King’s abdication was discussed, or at least hinted at.64 However, despite such popular dissatisfaction Gounaris managed to obtain a large majority in the National Assembly after which, accompanied by Baltatzis, he left for Paris and London. Towards the end of the year, Gounaris remained under attack in the newspapers, and it seemed that if he returned to Greece empty-handed or with a peace agreement unworthy of Greece’s sacrifices, he could not remain in office for much longer. This was the first time that news began to leak out that Greece might have to abandon Asia Minor. However, it was reported that an agreement had been signed by officers and men at the front to refuse to withdraw from Asia Minor. The unpopularity of Gounaris’s government was illustrated by the fact that the circulation of the leading Venizelist newspaper Patris had increased enormously. On the anniversary of Venizelos’s fall, 1 November, its front page appeared with a portrait of Venizelos: the whole edition was sold out by noon. A second edition appeared later in the day, and in total 33,000 copies were sold – a remarkable figure for a Greek newspaper. Henceforth the daily circulation remained high at some 32,000–33,000 copies.65 4. The Relationship of Stratos with the Athenian Press The government was also attacked by some within the anti-Venizelist camp, such as Stratos, who took advantage of the situation to declare war on the government in the early days of October. It was the opportunity he was looking for – a failure for which the government would be held responsible, so that he could offer an ‘alternative’, possibly leading him to the premiership. At first Stratos had considerable hopes of overthrowing the government at the meeting of the National Assembly. He believed that all the independent groups, the Venizelists and even a good many of Gounaris’s own supporters would vote against the government, thus putting it in a minority. However, he soon realised that he had very little chance of success; he was discredited nationally owing to the dishonesty to be seen in the language used by the newspaper Politia, which could be considered his organ.66 He wrote two articles in Politia, a summary of which was also published in the French newspaper Revue de la Presse, and this was regarded as the official statement of his views and policy.67 The Venizelist newspapers seized the opportunity to accuse Stratos of ‘power lust’. After an audience with Constantine on 20 September, Stratos gave an interview to Patris, Embros, Politia and Athinaiki during which he



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insisted on an immediate meeting of the Assembly, as Gounaris could not go to London without a vote of confidence. He declared that if the government did not seek this, he would insist on a vote being taken, and that he and his party were in active opposition to the government.68 The Venizelist titles accused Stratos of only wishing to achieve personal political power, which could not lead to any substantial improvement in the situation.69 Several leading articles were written in the Venizelist press against Stratos, and after he had published his programme in Politia on 25 and 26 September, they argued that there was no difference between this and Gounaris’s.70 The government was furious with Stratos, which was reflected in articles published in the anti-Venizelist newspapers, with the exception of Politia.71 III 1. More Violence against the Opposition During the military undertakings, the political climate in Greece was not good. Its political opponents were harshly criticising the government, with the latter’s answer being attacks by the extreme members of the anti-Venizelist camp on their opponents. A climate of fear was cultivated as acts of violence metamorphosed once more into the ‘propaganda of deed’. There was a considerable increase in attacks against Venizelists and Socialists; disorder was a common phenomenon. The People’s Political Clubs – the ‘Epistrati’ – were almost invariably behind such acts.72 General Constantinopoulos, the Military Governor of Athens, was the real head of the ‘Epistrati’, whose pretensions became more and more outrageous – and this at a time when the licence-fee for carrying arms, which had been increased by the Venizelist government to help disarm the public, had been reduced from 30 drachmas to three, which made it very easy for anyone to buy a licence and to carry a gun. The ‘Epistrati’ did not even hesitate to demonstrate in court buildings to ensure a desirable verdict.73 The resolutions they published had the support of the most fervent anti-Venizelist newspapers, such as Kathimerini.74 Esperini, however, was the chief organ for publishing these resolutions. Petros Giannaros, the Esperini’s editor and a leading antiVenizeliss, had received extravagant compensation from the government for the ‘suffering’ he had to endure under the former regime.75 One of the targets of the government’s extreme organs was Rizospastis, which wrote articles highly critical of government policy and seriously questioned the summer 1921 military undertakings in Asia Minor. The newspaper’s offices were attacked and destroyed, for which Rizospastis did

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not hesitate to blame agents of the government – policemen and members of the ‘Epistrati’. It suggested the government had predicted that public indignation would soon be expressed and so had decided to destroy their party and deprive the people of any means of legal defence.76 Among the attacks which took place in Athens in August was one against the editor and assistant editor of the leading Venizelist title Eleftheros Typos, Andreas Kavafakis and Spyros Melas. This attack was possibly connected with the fact that the newspaper had supported Dimitracopoulos in his outburst against the government.77 The attack was a good example of the prevailing immunity enjoyed by pro-government forces in respect of violent actions. Both Kavafakis and Melas were beaten and threatened at gunpoint by three unknown men, at 9.30 p.m. on 17 August in the centre of Athens, in front of the Ministry of Finance. The assistant editor was also arrested on the pretext that he had been heard insulting the Greek army; the man carrying out the arrest was one of the men who had attacked both Melas and Kavafakis. He presented himself as a secret policeman, under the name Spyreas, and led Melas to the police station for interrogation. Melas was released after the intervention of Gasparis, the head of the police, who announced in the newspapers that, according to his investigation, there was no secret policeman with the name Spyreas and that he connected the attack to the People’s Political Clubs.78 The Venizelist press and the violently anti-Venizelist Politia expressed their indignation over the attack in the strongest language, with Eleftheros Typos leading the protest. Kafavakis wrote its leading article two days after he and his assistant had been assaulted, attacking the government and expressing his sorrow and contempt for the three men who had lain in wait to molest unarmed and innocent men.79 The entire Venizelist press blamed the government for the attack. They suggested it was proof of the ‘abdication of the government from its duties and the substitution of mob rule and terrorism for law and proper administration’.80 The Venizelist press wrote that the motive of the attacks was to frighten them into silence and, if possible, to exterminate the Liberal Party either by fear or, if necessary, literally. However, they represented half the country – and by far the better half – and declared that they were prepared to suffer for liberty and justice to the point of martyrdom if it would help their cause. Politia, on the other hand, pointed out the perpetrators had merely copied and even improved on the methods of the Venizelist tyranny, but blamed the government, as severely as it did the Venizelists, for its surrender to the ‘occult government’ which ruled by ‘the bludgeons of street ruffians’.81



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Most anti-Venizelist newspapers pretended to be horrified by the assault, while reminding their readership of the outrages which had been committed in the past by the Venizelists and by pointing out what iniquitous ‘reactionaries’ and ‘traitors’ the victims were. Kathimerini, on the other hand, loudly approved of the attack, and urged their repetition. It even declared that it had received thousands of letters and telegrams applauding its views, and added that those who had written the letters and telegrams were ‘those who were ready to show the state that it had been too lenient with the Venizelists’. It further stated that ‘those who supported the attack would be joined, if required, by many others’.82 In a leading article on 22 August, Vlachos was even more abusive towards the Venizelists. He commented ironically on the attack on Kavafakis, stating that only his ‘straw hat’ had been destroyed. Furthermore, he did not hesitate to threaten the Venizelists by stating that they would ‘die like brigands’.83 In the leading article in Eleftheros Typos the following day, Kavafakis accused Vlachos of inciting the extremist anti-Venizelists to further attacks and of sanctioning a future assassination attempt on his life. According to Kavafakis, it was a new method that Vlachos had invented in order to ‘rid himself of his powerful professional competitors’.84 The attack against Kavafakis and Melas in August was followed by an attempt on the life of another leading Venizelist: on the morning of 21 December, Admiral Kountouriotis was shot in the stomach.85 The crime seemed politically motivated, and premeditated, as the staff of his office had received a warning ten minutes prior to the attack. The Admiral was taken to hospital where the bullet was removed, and he recovered. Alexandros Pallis, his principal assistant, was also slightly wounded in the head. The anti-Venizelist newspapers once more justified the act. An act of violence again had become ‘propaganda of deed’ and the instrument through which the government wanted to project its power. Two soldiers were arrested but later freed. It seemed that the crime was a political act instigated by ‘the Epistrati’.86 Both Kathimerini and Esperini, Gounaris’s organs, had the liberty to write freely, and they were allowed to incite the extreme anti-Venizelists to commit crimes. On the day the attempt was made Kathimerini falsely accused the Venizelists of being in league with the Kemalists, and claimed to have documentary proof. The article in Esperini was even worse.87 Kathimerini and Esperini endeavoured to condone the attempt on the Admiral’s life; both newspapers justified the attempt because Kountouriotis was involved in the ‘foul story’ regarding distribution of money to the wounded, which had displeased numerous soldiers. Kathimerini wrote that it had repeatedly

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asked the government to pay attention to the situation and had invited the Admiral to shut down his office, but nothing had happened. However, the newspaper declared that it regretted what had happened. On the other hand the Venizelists, according to Kathimerini, were happy as they had the opportunity they wanted to distort events and find a suitable subject to exploit for their narrow party interests.88 The Venizelist newspapers did in fact take advantage of the attempt on Kountouriotis’s life. At first Patris published a headline that the Admiral had been murdered;89 the news shocked the public. The following day the newspaper announced that, fortunately, Kountouriotis had survived, but it drew parallels between the attack and the attempt on Venizelos’s life after the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres. It accused the anti-Venizelist press of trying to cover up the political crime with excuses and justifications,90 and it lambasted the government for having no control over the situation and for allowing the country to be driven to disaster.91 All the Venizelist newspapers became alarmed and feared assassinations, as General Danglis and other leading Venizelists had been seriously threatened. After the attempt, the atmosphere of hostility between the rival political groups greatly increased. The Venizelist press continued to assert that the crime had been instigated and carried out by the People’s Political Clubs, which the government and the anti-Venizelist newspapers emphatically denied. Rumours were heard, in Venizelist circles, that a bogus attempt was about to be made on the life of the King, in order to give the rival party an excuse to attack the Venizelists. Despotopoulos, the public prosecutor in charge of the enquiry into the attack on Kountouriotis, appealed to the press to forget the past, to allay excitement in their articles and to re-establish concord in the best interests of the country. As Despotopoulos himself was one of the worst offenders, this appeal was considered remarkable. However, at the same time General Constantinopoulos, the Military Governor of Athens, was pressing for the further purging of Venizelists from the army. Theotokis, the Minister of War, refused, but the People’s Political Clubs demanded a purge of the remaining Venizelists. As a first step the government dismissed most university professors – a measure which generated a great deal of discontent amongst students, whose resulting protest demonstration was viciously broken up by the police and ‘bravos’.92 By the end of the year it seemed that the government was losing control of the People’s Political Clubs. Despite the fact that Gounaris, after a warning from the British, had promised that he would urge the Athenian press to be more moderate in their language, nothing happened. Indeed, the



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People’s Political Clubs continued their activities undisturbed. Among their plans was to murder 40 Venizelists. The government had already received letters from the People’s Political Clubs accusing it of being too lenient in its treatment of the Venizelists. However, Protopapadakis in his meeting with Bentinck disclaimed all responsibility for articles in the press, over which he declared the government had no control. He claimed that he had sent for the editor of Kathimerini and begged him, in the interests of the country, to moderate the tone of his articles, but to no avail.93 2. Foreign Interference in Cases of ‘Propaganda of Deed’ The attacks on leading Venizelists attracted the attention of British diplomats, who played the role of their ‘protectors’. Granville protested to the Minister of Foreign Affairs about the assault on the editor of Eleftheros Typos and on other Venizelists. Baltatzis insisted, however, that there was no relationship between the People’s Political Clubs and the League of Reservists, as all the reservists were at the front. In fact, several men who ought to have been at the front had obtained exemption for political reasons. Baltatzis maintained that, considering the thousands of people who had suffered the worst indignities, hardships and injuries under the Venizelist regime, it was remarkable that there had been so very few acts of vengeance. When Granville told him that in Great Britain if a newspaper had published an incitement to disorder or murder, it would have been prosecuted, Baltatzis insisted that the government had no power or influence over the press and denied that any pro-government title had published an incitement to assault. Gounaris maintained the same line when Granville met him. He added that the People’s Political Clubs had been founded for the purpose of the elections and had then ceased to exist. Any members who remained had no power or influence over anybody, and he insisted that the government was the absolute master of the country and allowed no one to interfere with it.94 The truth was otherwise. Members of the government had close relations with the editors of the anti-Venizelist press, who in turn also enjoyed similar links with the People’s Political Clubs, whose sole purpose was to threaten and attack Venizelists. The attempt on Kountouriotis’s life led Bentinck, the British Chargé d’Affaires, and the French Minister to warn the Minister of Foreign Affairs that they could not forget that the Venizelists were their allies. The latter could only respond that the government had received letters from People’s Political Clubs accusing the government of being too lenient with the Venizelists. On account of this pressure, the Minister of War ordered many Venizelist officers to leave Athens for the provinces. Bentinck asked

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his government to warn Gounaris. Harold Nicolson, in commenting on the meeting, agreed with Bentinck that ‘the Greek Government should be clearly warned when the proper moment comes, that any recourse to political persecution will forfeit our sympathy and support’.95 A government newspaper stated that Gounaris had telegraphed from London expressing his indignation at the attempt on Kountouriotis’ life, but this was officially denied the same evening.96 IV 1. The Myth of the Saviour King The unsuccessful outcome of the military undertakings in the spring had made the government realise how important it was to conduct a campaign of patriotic propaganda at home, to keep up the morale and incite the fighting spirit of the Greek people and troops. The image of King Constantine was used for this purpose, so the anti-Venizelist newspapers invoked the myth of a ‘Saviour King’ who would rescue the country from all dangers – chiefly from the conspiracy of the Allies and the Venizelists – and who would fulfil his duty in conducting the war as he had done in the past. Each time that the country had been in danger, since WW1, the anti-Venizelist press had taken refuge in the myth of the Saviour, personified by a charismatic monarch such as Constantine. The myth was invoked throughout the summer of 1921, and continued to be employed even after the King’s return to Athens after the unsuccessful military campaign. Attitudes towards Constantine determined who was a friend and who was an enemy of the country. He was considered to be the ‘symbol of the re-establishment of the Greek State’ and those who fought against him and defamed him were ‘disrespectful towards the greatest tradition of the Nation’, had no right ‘to be called Greeks’ and were the ‘most faithful and fervent allies of the defeated Kemal’.97 Efforts were made to invest events of the past with the authority of mythological truth, and to fit new situations into old ones. The version of events concerning the role of the King during the Great War was thus that his policies had not harmed the national interest, as was claimed by the Venizelist camp, but rather that they had managed ‘to keep the military forces of the country intact until the end of the war’. The positive results of that policy were ‘crystal clear for the nation’ and the ‘fruits are today plentiful’.98 Metaphors were used which presented Constantine as a ‘luminous sun’, stronger than the ‘tremendous torch of 13,000 Greek bayonets’, who ‘after liberating the territory of Ionia from the enemies of old’ would ‘revive



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in the city of Constantine the throne of Constantine’.99 The fact that the King had left for the front on the anniversary of the fall of Constantinople and the death of Constantine Paleologos was also emphasised by the anti-Venizelist newspapers, particularly the populist ones. The date of his departure had been carefully picked in order to invest the visit with mythical dimensions. Constantine was presented as the ‘successor to Constantine Paleologos’.100 The use of Constantine as a symbol of a Great Greece, with Constantinople as its capital, avoided serious discussion and explanation of the true conditions afflicting the country. The press played a major role in assisting the process of legitimisation of the situation by citing consensual values. The ideology of consensus101 was therefore used – ‘our King’, ‘everyone agrees’, ‘King Constantine of the Greeks’ and the ‘leader of the Greeks’ – by the press to convince the public of the rightness of the status quo and to ensure that the population held certain specific beliefs regarding the monarchy. At the same time, by using the idea of ‘consensus’, the writer of the article indicated or implied a commitment to the truth. King Constantine was presented as ‘the victorious army commander King’, the ‘crowned victorious army commander’, the ‘soul of the fighting army’,102 in an effort to present topics which were meaningful to the readers, as they displayed interests and experiences that they shared – almost every family had a member in the army fighting at the Asia Minor front. While it supported the King, the Venizelist press did not embrace the myth of the Saviour King. It published without comment the news of his departure for the front. It remained silent about the prospects for the new military operations, as it did not wish to be considered unpatriotic. 2. The Myth of the Conspiracy of the French and the Venizelists The unsuccessful military operations in spring 1921 and the fear of future retreats led the anti-Venizelist press to invoke the myth of the conspiracy of the Allies and the Venizelists. The myth justified verbal attacks in newspaper pages against the Allies, mainly the French, and the verbal and physical attacks – ‘propaganda of deed’ – against political opponents, mainly the Venizelists. Among the Allies the main conspirators were identified as France and Italy, who were accused of signing ‘special agreements with the rebel in Ankara against the Treaty of Sèvres’ and of encouraging Kemal ‘in his obsession’.103 However, the conspirator-in-chief was France. The image of France presented in the anti-Venizelist press gradually worsened, and, despite the fact that the government had forbidden the publication of mili-

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tary details, news which promoted its goal of arousing hatred of the French was published in the government newspapers. Every story which could promote this goal was given extended coverage; such a story, for example, was published after the fall of Koutahia, when an official communiqué announced the capture of six machine-guns of St. Etienne manufacture. It was published in the Francophobe press – especially the populist Scrip and Esperini - and was employed, as expected, to abuse France further. The French were accused of supplying the Turks with weapons with which to kill Greeks. It was proof, Scrip wrote, of the liaison ‘between the butchers and the capitalists’ and the exploitation of the torture of the Christian populations by ‘certain circles’. Emphasis was given to the fact that although the guns had the ‘stamp of St Stephan, the proto-martyr of Christianity’ they ‘took the life of so many Christians’.104 The emphasis on topics that associated religion with conspiracy, in a religious society like that of Greece, resulted in the negative evaluation of the role and the actions of the French and categorised them as the ‘enemy’ and the ‘evil other’ who violated all ‘holy’ values. Behind the ‘fake glove of civilization’, France supported the ‘state of barbarity’ which looked like an ‘ocean of blood’.105 Esperini went further, predicting that in future the French would help ‘all the other enemies of the Greeks, the Albanians and the Bulgarians’. Additionally, it provided retrospective justification for the policy of King Constantine in 1915, which did not want ‘Greece to be crushed in the war’ but to ensure that Greece would keep its ‘bayonets ready’ for the right time, when no other country would offer to stand with Greece.106 There were several credible explanations for the presence of the machine-guns. They could have been taken from Cilicia, or supplied by the Bolsheviks after being seized from General Wrangel;107 or they could have been captured from the Greeks themselves, who were armed with St. Etienne machine-guns during their first attack on Eskisehir. Finally, after a meeting between Granville and Baltatzis,108 a short article was carried by the majority of the Athenian newspapers in which it was announced that it had been proved by prisoners’ statements that the machine-guns in question had come from Russia.109 It was the explanation which most suited the British, whom the government wanted to please, as anti-Bolshevik propaganda was a general phenomenon within Greece and the Allied countries. However, the myth of the conspiracy of the French was retold when the need arose. The image of France became even worse when the disquieting news reached Athens on 7/20 October of an agreement arranged in Ankara



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by Franklin-Bouillon,110 on behalf of France, with Kemal. Thereupon a storm of indignant abuse was hurled at France and everything French by the pro-government Athenian press, which was preoccupied with the safety of its co-religionists trying to flee from Cilicia and escape from the Turks.111 France was abused by the entire anti-Venizelist press for the ease in which it had become Greece’s enemy and for its arrogance.112 The populist Esperini and Scrip played the leading role in this abuse. They wrote that what France had done ‘it had covered up’ in the past, but now it did so openly. It did not hesitate to commit a ‘pathetic betrayal’ and ‘betray its friends, its Allies and saviours in order to fulfil its ambition to assume the position that Germany had had in Turkey during the Great War’. Admiration for Germany was not hidden, particularly in the populist anti-Venizelist press. The Germans were characterised as people who worked with a ‘system’ and had ‘pragmatism’, attributes that ‘the French were not capable of developing’, so they would never attain the power that Germany had reached in the pre-war period.113 In addition any detail which tended to show that the Franco-Kemalist agreement had strained relations between France and Great Britain was eagerly published, with comments approving the attitude adopted by the latter.114 A powerful image was used to encapsulate the relationship between France and Turkey: it was presented as a love affair consummated after a ‘long and passionate flirt’. Turkey was portrayed as a faithless mistress who ‘opened her arms to France’ and started a new affair, which was determined by her interests and not by her feelings. By so doing she had betrayed her old affair with the Soviet Union, of which she had taken such advantage. After a while, when her interests demanded it, she would abandon France for a new affair.115 The Venizelists were also participants in the conspiracy against the Greek army, who fought by their propaganda against ‘Greece’s regime’ both from inside the country and from abroad. Their propaganda showed that they wanted ‘Greece to be ruined’ and subsequently ‘King Constantine to resign’. Therefore they built their hopes on ‘the defeat of the Greek army at the front’.116 They were ‘wretches’ and ‘bawlers’ who committed ‘infamies’ and ‘calumnies’ without realising that ‘after the last victories of King Constantine the regime could be overthrown only by elections’.117 Their recent actions proved their intentions. Reference to the events of 31 July 1920 was provided when the Venizelists ‘were transformed into what they truly were’: people of ‘havoc and terror’, of ‘looting and blood’, ‘ambitious and volatile politicians’ who came to power through ‘impudence and demagogy’ and who tried to remain in power by committing ‘crimes’, ‘slaughters’, ‘prosecutions’, ‘exiles’, ‘imprisonments’, ‘extermination of their

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opponents’, and so on.118 After the unsuccessful outcome of the military undertakings, the anti-Venizelist press invited the Greek people to ‘defend themselves’ against the ‘criminals’ who ‘have designs on their existence and their liberty’, and accused the Venizelists of having ‘an anti-national attitude’ similar to the attitude of ‘the Turks and the Turcophiles of Europe’, of managing to ‘sow the seeds of discord and division’ and of ‘disrupting the unity of the state’.119 The myth of the conspiracy was not invoked in respect of the British by the anti-Venizelist press, but rather of the myth of protection was mobilised. Great Britain was presented as an ‘enlightened’ and ‘moral’ country; evidence for this was that the ‘great clergymen of Britain’s Church’ had given their ‘blessing’ to ‘our crusading army’, as they believed that its struggle was the ‘hope of the Christian people’. While France ‘threatened the Christians’, Britain ‘certainly killed barbarity’.120 The myth of the protection was also employed by the Venizelist press. ‘Our bayonets’ had ‘British support’, wrote Eleftheros Typos.121 However, there was no myth of conspiracy analogous to the one invoked by the antiVenizelist press in respect of France and Italy, published by the Venizelist press. The Venizelist press considered that the government was considered responsible for the loss of the two countries’ friendship, as it was its ‘fatal mistakes which deprived Greece of the invaluable co-operation of France and Italy’.122 The Venizelist newspapers proceeded to an extended denunciation of the violent acts of the anti-Venizelist governments which, they stated, were responsible for ‘party gangs’ which resorted to ‘club and gun’.123 Conclusion After the government managed to survive the defeat of the army’s spring campaign, and faced with the prospect of new summer military operations, it decided to use the image of the King in an effort to raise the morale and incite the fighting spirit of the Greek people and the troops in Asia Minor. In this endeavour the government press invoked the myth of the Saviour King, who would keep the country from all the dangers and fulfil his duty by successfully conducting the war as he had done in the past. The antiVenizelist titles concentrated their propaganda on efforts to persuade their readers of the government’s good intentions, and abused its political opponents who ‘conspired’ against the country. The myth of the conspiracy was invoked to provide an explanation for the unsuccessful military outcome, and possibly to preempt the failure of future military operations. France



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was considered the leading external conspirator, and therefore a dangerous enemy. The Venizelist newspapers, on the other hand, focused their propaganda on severely criticising the government, while Rizospastis maintained its antiwar stance with attacks against the government, the Allies and the antiVenizelists. The military operations on the Asia Minor front united both the government and the Venizelist newspapers, which concentrated on efforts to incite the fighting spirit of the people and to gain public support for the struggle of the Greek army. The negative outcome of the military campaign led the government to violent activities against their political opponents. Acts of violence became ‘propaganda of deed’. The extreme organs of the government, such as Kathimerini and Esperini, were transformed into organs of the violent groups responsible for the ‘propaganda of deed’. The newspapers not only justified these activities but also incited fanaticism. At the same time the military failure of the government created a space within the national political discourse for opposition, not only from the other political parties but from within the government itself. Stratos seized the opportunity to fulfil his personal political ambitions, and was supported by certain newspapers. The government managed to survive the second military failure at the Asia Minor front, and remain in power; however, the issue was whether their position could be maintained after Gounaris and Baltatzis returned to Greece following their trip to the European capitals.

7 Towards the Disaster

… κανείς δεν θα είνε ικανός να ανακόψη την θύελλαν, η οποία από των Μικρασιατικών πεδίων θα ενσκήψη εις την Π. Ελλάδα συντρίβουσα το παν ή ζητούσα κεφαλάς υπευθύνων, θύελλαν την οποίαν θ’αποτελώσιν αι λεγεώνες των ενδόξων, αλλά δυστυχώς ηττημένων, ήτταν την οποίαν υπέστησαν εκ της ανικανότητος εκείνων εις ους ενεπιστεύθησαν την τύχην των εθνικών ζητημάτων μας. Στρατιώτης της Μεραρχίας Μπαλί-κεσέρ, 22 Ιανουαρίου 1922.1 1922 did not begin auspiciously. Gounaris and Baltatzis were still touring the capitals of Europe seeking to create a more favourable atmosphere for a settlement and to persuade the Great Powers to end the war before it led to disaster for Greece. Their tour, which commenced in October 1921, continued, but without producing any encouraging results. The Greek government had accepted the Allies’ proposal to place its case in their hands. The Allies were to consult among themselves and then lay the terms of a peace agreement before Greece and Turkey; however, no agreement between the Turks and the Greeks had been secured by the end of 1921. The anti-Venizelist newspapers loudly proclaimed that the first objective had been attained in London and that popular jubilation was widespread; the Venizelist press held a contrary opinion. However, despite the propaganda disseminated by pro-government newspapers the truth about the outcome of Gounaris and Baltatzis’s tour soon became known in Athens. The failure added to the growing unpopularity of the government, which was expected to fall after the return of the Prime Minister. Meanwhile attacks on the government’s political opponents, which had intensified the previous year, continued unrelentingly during 1922. Gounaris’s government was finally forced to resign and a coalition government emerged in May 1922, which was still in power when disaster struck the country.



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The aim of the present chapter is to explore the attitude of the entire Athenian press towards Gounaris’s government before and after his and Baltatzis’s return to the country. The chapter is divided into five sections. The first part of the first section will present the situation in Greece in January 1922, when the new British Minister arrived in Athens. The second and third parts will focus on the ideological division within the Liberal Party which became evident in 1922 and was reflected within the Venizelist press. The second section will examine the attitude of the press towards the government and the measures the latter took to control the situation. The third section will investigate the attitude of the press towards Gounaris and his government, and show how the press contributed to the spring crisis of 1922, which led to the formation of a new coalition government in May. The fourth section will deal with the intervention of the Allies to find a ‘solution’ to the Asia Minor question. Finally, the fifth section will concentrate on the myths which were propogated by the Athenian press to provide an explanation for the crucial situation in which the country found itself. I 1. The New British Minister in Athens At the beginning of January, Francis Lindley, the new British Minister in Athens, arrived in Greece and found the country in a desperate financial condition. Several strikes, which had broken out during the final months of the previous year, in which SEKE played the leading role, continued into 1922. Rizospastis made efforts to incite workers against the government, which was blamed for the steep rise in the cost of living. The exchange rate of the drachma had been falling since 1920, and prices were rising. The Greek state urgently needed financial aid. The increase in prices eroded public support for the government, as the public was more concerned with the everyday cost of the war in Asia Minor than in the supposed victory.2 The unfavourable climate towards the government had increased the violent activities of the People’s Political Clubs against the Venizelists. The Venizelists, on the other hand, lambasted the government through their newspapers and engaged in intensive propaganda abroad as well as at the front. When Lindley was in Rome on his way to Athens, he met Gounaris and Baltatzis and explained that no settlement with the Turks was possible as long as the Greek army remained in Asia Minor. He also advised them to accustom themselves to the idea of withdrawal. Both Gounaris and Baltatzis asked what would happen to the Greek populations in Asia Minor,

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and Lindley reassured them that the Great Powers would make the necessary arrangements. Lindley gave a similar answer to Protopapadakis, the Acting Prime Minister, when he met him in Athens. He added that those in authority should have time to prepare public opinion for the projected evacuation.3 Lindley was convinced that both the Venizelists and anti-Venizelists would make political capital from the withdrawal. The former would take the position that because of the return of Constantine, Greek aspirations in Asia Minor had not been fulfilled, while the latter would point out that the withdrawal was definite proof of the disastrous results of following Venizelos’s policy.4 The hostility between the two parties was obvious. From the outset Lindley realised the necessity of reconciliation, as the country faced a critical period in its history. He was assured by members of the government that they agreed entirely with him. They promised that they would do everything in their power to prevent the persecution of Venizelists, but stated that they could not restrain the press.5 However, the promises were not honoured: the People’s Political Clubs continued their activities against the Venizelists, as did the anti-Venizelist press. In the propaganda war directed against the Allies when their interests opposed Greek claims, Lindley became the ‘victim’ a few days after his arrival in Athens, making him realise at first hand the climate that prevailed within the country. The Athenian newspapers were used by the Great Powers to promote their own goals. Some carried a report which had been published in the London Daily Express to the effect that Lindley had informed Constantine that in the interests of Greece he should abdicate in favour of the Crown Prince. Great excitement was caused, and many correspondents went to the Legation, only to be told by Lindley that there was not a word of truth in the story. It seemed that the rumour had been deliberately started by a French agency, as the Daily Express was in close contact with Paris and the Athenian newspapers took advantage to promote their own aims.6 This incident was a clear indication of the Powers’ manipulation of the Athenian newspapers to advance their own country’s interests. In this particular case it seemed that the French agency was disseminating propaganda on behalf of the French government. 2. The ‘Republican Manifesto’ and the Attitude of the Athenian Press A strong and unified opposition would have had the power to force the government to resign. But the opposition was divided. The Liberal Party had its own ideological differences, openly expressed in the Venizelist press.



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As a result the government, although it was far from being able to produce ‘new’ policy, was able to maintain some control over the actions and policies of its opponents. The two protests which were published in Venizelist newspapers at the beginning of February showed that there was an ideological division within the Liberal Party between official policy, which was conservative, and that of the party ‘ideologists’, who had socialist inclinations and were represented by Papanastassiou and Papandreou. The division was also reflected within the Venizelist press, with Eleftheron Vima on one side and Eleftheros Typos and Patris on the other. Until then the disagreements within the Liberal Party had been confined to disputes about tactics or to clashes in the pursuit of the party chairmanship.7 On 12 February, a Liberal Party protest to the President of the Assembly was published in the newly-founded Venizelist newspaper Eleftheron Vima. In it 36 party members8 protested against the government’s attitude towards the ‘national matter’. Specifically, that for four months the government had failed to keep the National Assembly informed of the diplomacy of Gounaris and Baltatzis in the European capitals and had kept the Greek people in the dark when ill-omened news had arrived, which had increased the people’s agony.9 Ethnos – which was on the side of the moderate Venizelists under Danglis – considered the protest ‘justified’ and ‘necessary’ considering the crucial circumstances the country faced. It was convinced that the protest was only the beginning of strong opposition to the government, and invited the Liberal Party to vote against the government, which was causing a ‘national disaster’.10 On the same day the two Venizelist newspapers Eleftheros Typos and Patris appeared with several of their columns blanked out due to censorship. The uncensored columns showed that an appeal by some members of the Venizelist party had been published. The appeal, known as the ‘Republican Manifesto’, demanded Constantine’s abdication and was signed by A. Papanastasiou, G. Vilaras, S. Theodoropoulos, P. Karapanos, K. M. Melas, D. Pazis and Th. G. Petimezas.11 On the same day that the Republican Manifesto was published, a threecolumn interview given by General Danglis was also published in Eleftheros Typos in which he claimed that any act which did not agree with the constitution was a ‘revolution against all the public who demanded tranquillity and jobs and who would turn against anyone who wanted to disturb their internal peace while they were conducting a long war’. Danglis attributed the rumours predicting a revolution by the Liberal Party, against the will of the people, to its political opponents, and declared that the socialist ideas of some of its members were only ‘academic opinions’ which had no connec-

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tion with the party’s responsible official policy. Danglis’s attitude revealed that the ideological division within the Liberal Party had started to deepen. 3. Rizospastis and the Republican Manifesto Rizospastis was the only newspaper which did not take the Republican Manifesto seriously. On the contrary, it attacked the republican group of the Liberal Party. It considered the opinion expressed in the manifesto as ‘opportunistic’, alleging that the seven signatories were willing to agree to any compromise, even including the acceptance of the monarchy, which could easily co-exist with their republican beliefs. In substance, the newspaper wrote ironically, they were not republicans but ‘patriots’ who shared all the imperialistic aspirations of the bourgeois Greeks and who considered the presence of Constantine to be an obstacle to the realisation of the ‘national programme’. The only importance of the Republican Manifesto, according to Rizospastis, lay in the fact that the signatories were the only members of the Liberal Party who dared publicly to declare what all other Venizelists were thinking. The newspaper also did not take seriously Danglis’s interview in Eleftheros Typos. The only reason that Danglis had given the interview, Rizospastis maintained, was that he wanted to restore the name of the Liberal Party in European circles by denouncing every rumour which presented it as ‘revolutionary’ or ‘progressive’, in the same way as Venizelos in 1917 when he came to Athens from Salonika and wanted to restore his name and denounce any republican inclinations within his party. Danglis was also depicted as wanting to bridge over the chasm between the Liberal Party and the King, and to remove every obstacle which could stand between the monarch and the party when he invited it to form a government after the resignation of the Gounaris’s administration. In substance, the Liberal Party was ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of power, and was determined to follow a policy which became the starting point for the sufferings experienced by the Greek people.12 II 1. Kavafakis’s Murder and the Arrest of the Republicans The strategy which had been adopted by the government the previous year was a combination of propaganda and violence, reinforcing each other in the effort to intimidate political opponents and thus to prevent them from criticising the government in the pages of the Venizelist press. Despite assurances by members of the government to the British Minister regarding Anglophile Venizelists, the persecutions continued. The anti-Ven-



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izelist newspaper propaganda sought to help the government to remain in power, even by inciting fanaticism against the opposition, which often led to violence. For the government, Venizelists as well as communists were considered to be the internal enemies of the country, dangerous because they were intent on sabotaging the government’s foreign and domestic policies. The pretext of the government was that by defeating their internal enemies, it would overcome any resistance to the fulfilment of the national interests. However, their idealistic aims hid their fear of losing power. The offices of the Venizelist were therefore often the target of the People’s Political Clubs, which continued their violent activities undisturbed as a means of exercising ‘propaganda of deed’. In addition, measures were taken to prohibit the circulation of Venizelist newspapers and propagandist leaflets at the front, since these could weaken soldiers’ morale, which had fallen since August 1921. In mid-January, the offices of a new Venizelist title, Metarythmisis, were wrecked and all issues destroyed; the government had once more connived in the attack. The editor asked for protection from the British Legation, and Lindley was instructed by London to continue offering the support and protection already given to the Venizelists.13 Distribution of the newspaper was prohibited in Asia Minor and many issues were seized by the authorities,14 at a time when the Venizelist newspapers were passionately sought at the front, as there was no confidence in Gounaris’s government among the troops.15 The violent activities of the People’s Political Clubs reached their peak with the murder of Kavafakis the day before Gounaris’s return to Athens. The government wanted to silence the Venizelist press at a sensitive time, when Gounaris was about to present the outcome of his mission in Europe to the Chamber. Kavafakis was murdered on his way home. It seemed that the day of the murder had been carefully selected – just before Gounaris’s return – so that he would be able to deny any responsibility for the crime. Kavafakis was one of the two editors who had published the Republican Manifesto.16 A moderate man had been targeted in order to generate the greatest fear. All newspapers, without exception, expressed their abhorrence of the murder. Even the populist Scrip and Esperini condemned the crime, though arguing that the ultimate reasons for the murder lay with the Venizelist camp. Esperini, the organ of the People’s Political Clubs, wrote that ‘the audacity and the provocation of certain organs of the Liberal press’ had ‘exceeded the limits of decency and legitimacy’ and ‘attacked King Constantine’, in a new attempt by the Venizelists to ‘enslave the people, through the over-

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throw of the Dynasty and the Regime’.17 Scrip blamed the Venizelists, who had begun the tactics of assassinations, and stated that Kavafakis’s murder was in a sense an ‘act of defence’.18 The Venizelist press, on the other hand, used the murder to attack the government and prove its sordid character, which had no respect for human life. The murder, suggested Eleftheron Vima, was evidence that no organised state existed; only a state of horror and immunity in which there was no government and each criminal was free to act as he wished.19 One day after the crime, a protest by the Athenian press was published in all the capitals’ newspapers. The anti-Venizelist Scrip hastened to declare that the protest was proof of the existence of a ‘well-governed state, guardian of political freedom and depositary of the constitution’, when under the previous regime no one had dared to protest against murder.20 However, it seemed that the ‘propaganda of deed’ was not as successful as the government had anticipated, and that despite its sanctioning of the violence it had not managed to instil fear in the Venizelists; on the contrary, it incited rigid fanaticism. The Venizelists used Kavafakis’s funeral to incite the public. It was attended by a great number of people; General Danglis delivered the funeral oration, which was full of bitterness towards the regime and indirect threats regarding the future which excited fanaticism among the congregation in the church and shouted protests, of ‘Down with the murderers!’. However, it was considered most likely that the government would deliberately fail to bring the murderers to justice. The following day, 24 February, only Stemma and Laiki, which were extremely anti-Venizelist titles and organs of the People’s Political Clubs, appeared in Athens as a mark of respect for Kavafakis.21 Later the government carried out a further act of the ‘propaganda of deed’ when it decided to arrest those who were most closely connected with the Republican Manifesto, in order to avoid a situation which might easily have become dangerous. The excuse was that the people were agitated and that a demand for the abdication of the King would provoke a disturbance, which could not be tolerated by the government. In substance, the government wanted to quash every dissenting voice and hold onto power. The arrests led to strong protests by the Venizelist press. It accused the government of violating one of the fundamental articles of the constitution – that which referred to the freedom of thought – at a time when the national interest was paramount. There had been, the Venizelist titles claimed, no intention to insult the King and the accusation of high treason was completely baseless.22 Soon the whole text of the Republican Manifesto was printed and circulated illegally by the Venizelists.



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Even Danglis protested in the Chamber, in April, about the arrest, despite his ideological differences with the republicans. He protested even more strongly in June when the writers of the Republican Manifesto were put on trial in Lamia and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. The conviction of Papanastassiou and the others resulted in the strengthening of the antimonarchical group’s influence within the Liberal Party, and increased the activities of the Republican Clubs, which had formed a ‘Republican Union’ in April 1922. The government’s response was severe, with attacks made by members of the People’s Political Clubs against the Venizelists.23 The anti-Venizelist newspapers, especially Kathimerini, abused the writers of the Republican Manifesto, considering them ‘insolent’ and ‘dangerous’ enemies who wanted to harm the country and jeopardise its internal peace and security. They also seized the opportunity of emphasising the division of opinions between the republicans and those, such as General Danglis, who had denounced them by declaring that there were no ‘republican intentions’ in the Liberal Party. They accused the Liberal Party of using ideological pretexts in order to justify their acts.24 Kathimerini protested at the release of the authors of the Republican Manifesto and claimed that, instead, they should have been put on trial for high treason.25 The communists were the other target of the government. It had taken measures against the Central Committee of SEKE and the management of Rizospastis in November 1921 because they were spreading defeatist messages to the Greek troops in Asia Minor, leading to the imprisonment of many communists. Rizospastis was often published with several blank columns where harsh criticism of the government’s policy had been censored. In addition, the fact that Rizospastis had the support of the workers and propagandised for their rights, at a time when the economic health of the country was going from bad to worse and when strikes had become a daily phenomenon, led the government to take even harsher measures against the communists. SEKE held a party conference in February 1922, where it assessed the political scene and concluded that the reaction of the ruling class against the labour movement, and in particular against SEKE itself, had increased beyond the point that either could endure. Despite the fact that it was declared at the conference that the party would always fight the bourgeois parties, it was also recognised that it needed a long period of lawful existence. The best way to fight the two camps was therefore ‘with the widest possible participation of the party in all the parliamentary struggles and organisations’.26 However, Rizospastis would not stop its insistent criticism of the government’s foreign and internal policies.

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1. Gounaris in the Assembly On 22 February Gounaris returned to Athens, where the crisis quickly exploded. The government had failed on the economic, social and foreign ‘fronts’ and repression and the ‘propaganda of deed’ were not enough to cover up their failure. The Asia Minor campaign, as well as the drain of money from the public purse for allowances to pay the anti-Venizelists, had exhausted the financial resources of the country. There was a lack of social policy; peasants suffered the most, and hence were very dissatisfied with the government. Several political mistakes had been made which put the government at risk of losing power. Finally, negotiations on the diplomatic front had been completely unsuccessful, and the months that Gounaris and Baltatzis had spent in the European capitals had achieved little concrete success in eliciting diplomatic, financial or military support. Venizelist newspapers had already started writing leaders recommending the withdrawal of the Greek army from Asia Minor. They urged Gounaris to present the outcome of his tour of the European capitals to the Assembly. They were convinced that his declaration would satisfy only his ‘party friends’, who confused loyalty to their political party with loyalty to the country. Gounaris’s intention was to create internal entanglements in order to draw the attention of the public away from the failure of his foreign policy.27 Gounaris gave an account of his time in Europe to the Chamber. His strategy was to cover up the defeat through distortion and misinformation. As he could not argue for success, he chose to say that he had made the most of a bad hand.28 It was unconvincing, and he was verbally attacked by Stratos and independent deputies, like Boussios29 and Pop, who declared that they would vote against the government since it had accepted something less than the nation had been allotted by the Treaty of Sèvres, which was the minimum sanctioned by the National Assembly.30 General Danglis made the same point on behalf of the Liberal Party. The division which followed resulted in the government losing the vote of confidence by seven votes,31 as the Muslim deputies also voted against the government.32 Politia, in an effort to support Stratos’s political ambitions, accused Gounaris of not taking into consideration the wishes of the Assembly during his tour of Europe, which would have helped him avoid the mistakes he had made. The fact that Boussios and the other independent deputies failed to support Gounaris reflected the public desire not to have a government which made people feel insecure. The newspaper accused Gounaris of having ‘no dignity’ when he intensified his efforts to reform his govern-



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ment, and it did not hesitate to recommend Stratos as prime minister, a man who, according to his own organ, respected himself and his ‘colleagues’. Politia was against the formation of a reconstructed government, and expressed the belief that the solution lay in a government which represented the ‘national will’.33 The other anti-Venizelist newspapers predictably supported Gounaris, and praised his speech presenting the tremendous struggles that the Greek diplomats had undergone abroad. Gounaris was seen as having done everything that was humanly possible to resolve the national crisis.34 The antiVenizelist newspapers considered the vote against the government to be an ‘unjustifiable act’ whose only clear intention was the promotion of party passions at a time when others were fighting and being killed and when the existence of the nation was in danger.35 The Venizelist newspapers accused Gounaris of not being capable of promoting the national interest, and therefore argued that the Assembly should get rid of him. Eleftheron Vima, in particular, accused him of leaving the national interest completely in the hands of the Allies, who, despite the fact that they were friends, had interests in the Near East which conflicted with Greek claims, of depriving his government of the ability to attend closely to the efforts of the Allies to resolve the national issues of Greece, and also of ignoring the decisions of the Assembly.36 Although the King sent for Stratos37 and Boussios,38 who both failed to form a government, he did not send for General Danglis, the leader of the Liberal Party. The fact that the King had ignored the second-largest party in the Assembly was represented by the Venizelist newspapers as violating the parliamentary form of government.39 Gounaris published an explanation for the omission in the course of which he assumed complete responsibility.40 Thereupon, the Venizelist deputy Exintaris, in the leading article in Eleftheron Vima, accused Gounaris of having ‘rotten arguments’ which could no longer persuade the Greek people. His main goal was to deflect the attention of the public away from the ‘political bankruptcy’ in his handling of the ‘national issue’.41 After negotiations Gounaris managed to reform his government, overcome protests and obtain a vote of confidence in the Chamber. The antiVenizelist newspapers expressed their relief at the outcome of the vote.42 The Venizelist press, on the other hand, accused him of being so ‘fond of power’ that he chose to form another temporary government.43 Rizospastis urged the Assembly to make an effort to gain the respect of the people and support their wish for peace, demobilisation, freedom and tranquillity by denying the government a vote of confidence.44

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Although it managed to regain power, Gounaris’s politically weakened government would again soon be in a difficult position, as the international negotiations over the war in Asia Minor reached a critical point. This time the government would not be in a position to maintain power. The pretext would be ‘co-operation’ with the enemy of old, the Turks, which would turn out to be the issue the government employed to show the way out of the crisis. 2. The Kotzamanis Incident and the Resignation of the Government In May Gounaris was forced to resign after an incident in the Chamber which caused the opposition press to demand the resignation of the government, as it had seriously damaged the national interests of the country. An independent deputy, Kotzamanis, accused the government of compromising with the Turkish government, producing as evidence a letter written by a Muslim deputy from Macedonia, Hamid Bey Zach, who had recently been in Constantinople, to another Muslim deputy, Kemal ed Din Bey. The letter stated that the writer had convinced himself in Constantinople that it was in Turkish interests that Gounaris’s government should continue in power, and accordingly he invited Kemal ed Din to ensure that the Muslim deputies voted for Gounaris. General disorder followed, and members of the Chamber started abusing each other. Admiral Goudas, the Minister of the Interior, protested that, at the request of Hamid Bey he had forwarded the letter to Kemal ed Din without knowing its contents, an explanation which did little to calm the deputies.45 Various rumours started to circulate to the effect that either the letter had been dictated by the government to secure Muslim votes or that the Venizelists, seeking to discredit the government, were at the bottom of the matter. The debate in the Chamber resulted in the government securing 161 votes and the opposition 160. However, the wafer-thin majority of just one vote was insufficient to offer any security of tenure, and after 20 hours, during which efforts were made to come to some understanding with the opposition groups, Gounaris announced in the Chamber that the government had offered its resignation to the King. The letter received great publicity in the Venizelist newspapers, which took full advantage of it in order to attack the government. The whole incident was considered ‘shameful’ and proof that the government consisted of ‘traitors’. The Minister of the Interior was seen as the vehicle who had delivered the letter, or even worse was himself its writer, and this showed that the Chamber was ‘rotten’ and ‘decomposing’ and had to be dissolved at once. However, when Gounaris managed narrowly to win the vote, the



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Venizelist newspapers considered the whole incident a government trick to gain precious votes from the independent Muslims. The Venizelist press lambasted the government as ‘a despotic regime’ which chose to ‘tyrannise’ the people in order to remain in power.46 There could possibly have been an alternative solution if Stratos had been able to form a government which had lasted for more than a day. Finally Protopapadakis, the Minister of Finance in Gounaris’s government, formed a new administration, with a majority of 201 to 30. The Venizelist newspapers declared that the alliance between Stratos and Gounaris was an ‘unholy one’ and would not last long.47 The anti-Venizelist newspapers, on the other hand, supported the coalition government as the best solution to the crisis and as necessary for the national interest, expressing their relief when the new government obtained a vote of confidence.48 IV 1. Foreign Intervention and the Spring Crisis On 9/22 March the foreign ministers of the three Great Powers, Curzon, Poincaré and Schanzer of Italy, met in Paris and invited the Greek and Turkish governments to accept an immediate armistice. The French initially wished to make the Enos-Midia line the frontier and to create a buffer state between the protagonists. The British, on the other hand, concerned with the control of the Straits, wanted the Midia-Rodosto line as the frontier, leaving the Dardanelles under Greek control. Finally, a compromise frontier was agreed: to leave the Greeks in Gallipoli, but exclude them from Rodosto. Simultaneously, a plan for the hwithdrawal of the Greek army was devised based on the recommendations of the Allied generals in Constantinople. This suited the French, who from the outset had declared that they would not accept any settlement without the withdrawal of Greek forces. The procedure was to be as follows: the two belligerents would announce that they had accepted the armistice on the Allied terms, followed by a peace conference which would iron out the details. The Greek military evacuation of Asia Minor would commence only after both sides had accepted the preliminary terms for peace.49 After the armistice proposals were handed to Baltatzis by the three Allied Ministers in Athens he promised to telegraph the Greek High Command in Asia Minor and send a reply as soon as possible. The majority of the anti-Venizelist newspapers supported the armistice proposals, and were optimistic that Asia Minor would remain in Greek hands. They insisted that acceptance of the proposals did not mean that the Greek army had to

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withdraw from Asia Minor,50 which was not the Allies’ plan. The Venizelist newspapers, the anti-Venizelist Politia, Stratos’ organ, and the Communist newspaper Rizospastis all accused the government of not presenting the armistice proposals to the Assembly.51 A few days later the proposals were accepted officially by the Greek government, which suggested certain modifications and asked for explanations of ambiguous points. The proposals were well received by the anti-Venizelist newspapers, but the Venizelist press attacked the government for accepting them. Anti-Venizelist newspapers, in turn, accused all those who insisted that the government should not accept the armistice of being ‘warlike’.52 Rizospastis considered an armistice to be the first step towards not only much improving the standard of living for the poor, the working class and the peasants, but also towards guaranteeing the future of the whole nation. It accused both bourgeois camps of serving British imperialism, and of hoping that by so doing that they would extend their zone of influence and exploitation. It suggested that their determination to follow the Entente’s ‘colonial policy’ had resulted only in the exhaustion of the country’s resources and men.53 On 16/29 March the French Minister in Athens presented the peace proposals which the Powers had agreed to recommend to the belligerents. The Greek government circulated the proposals to the Chamber. For the first time, the Athenian newspapers were unanimous in denouncing the proposals in no unmeasured terms. Their condemnation spoke of ‘the most disgraceful document in the history of the civilised world’ and ‘the most amazing violation not only of sacred rights, but also of the former just decisions’. The Athenian press unanimously urged the Assembly not to forget the thousands of soldiers at the front, the native Greek populations of Asia Minor and Thrace and the many graves of the soldiers who had been killed during the battles. The newspapers suggested that on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Revolution of 1821 that year no one would have been willing to celebrate 25 years after the defeat of 1897 under the cover of the flags of the Allies and the Turks.54 No reply was given by the Ankara government, which knew that it now had the upper hand. Its only response, on 5 April, demanded that the Greek evacuation began immediately after an armistice, and that the Eskisehir line be evacuated within 15 days. By mid-April it was obvious that the Paris Conference would not lead to a settlement. The Greek government considered the possibility of ending the war without the intervention of the Powers. The anti-Venizelist newspapers considered the Turkish reply ‘impudent’, because Greece had no intention of withdrawing.55



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V 1.The Myth of the ‘Traitor’ Allies and the ‘Poisonous’ Venizelists As the government wanted to be absolved from all responsibility after the failure of the Gounaris-Baltatzis tour in Europe and in order to deflect public attention elsewhere, the anti-Venizelist newspapers invoked the myth of a conspiracy which not only provided an explanation for the critical situation in which the country found itself but also validated the oppressive measures which the government had implemented. The ‘anti-national conspiracy’, allegedly organised by the Allies and the Venizelists, revealed the need for a ‘good conspiracy’, a ‘counter-conspiracy’ to legitimise the violent activities of the People’s Political Clubs which terrorised the people. When the crisis exploded the anti-Venizelist press included members of its own camp among the list of the conspirators, especially Stratos, who conspired in order to subvert every effort the government made for peace by condemning the government’s foreign policy. Both France and Great Britain were subjected to public abuse for their alleged conspiracy against Greece. They were accused of having secured all they desired in Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine, and of having left the Greek Christian population to their fate. The Allies’ promises regarding the Christians in Asia Minor were quoted, and compared with Allied actions. The Greeks resented being equated with the Turks with regard to the treatment of minorities.56 The press pointed out, with understandable bitterness, that thousands of Muslims had lived peacefully in Greece during the period when the Turks were massacring Christians. The past, recent and distant, provided events which could exercise a strong emotional appeal on readers. Reference was made to the fact that Greece had participated in the Great War on the Allied side. The vocabulary that was used to describe the Allies and their acts had the casual, familiar bluntness of the ‘plain speaker’. The Allies were dubbed ‘traitors’ and ‘slave-traders’ when they dared to present such ‘unjust, immoral, cheap, pitiful’ proposals, which proved that the epilogue to the Great War did not deserve even one drop of the Greek blood which had been shed on the Allied side. The reward for such Greek sacrifice was that the Christians were ‘sold’ to the Turks. The anti-Venizelist press reminded its readers of 1430, when the Venetians had sold the population of Salonika in a similar way: when besieging Turkish troops outside the walls of Salonika had demanded the surrender of the city, the population wished to surrender peacefully, but were prevented from so doing by the Venetian administration. The city was then conquered by the Turks on 26 March 1430. Although most of the Venetians managed to escape by ship

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the population of Salonika was left unprotected. For three days Turkish troops sacked the city and sold the population into slavery.57 Powerful images were used to depict the French and British as non-human: they were presented as ‘hyenas’ which ‘disinterred corpses’ when they broke the Treaty of Sèvres, and pulled the slab off the tomb where Turkey lay buried, and disinterred its dead body. They were also presented by the newspapers as ‘sirens’ who had misled the people with their ‘song’. The Greek people were deceived into believing they could crush ‘violence’ and ‘organised tyranny’ all over the world if they followed the sirens’ song.58 Finally, the Allies were denigrated as the Roman Emperors Nero and Caligula, who had perpetrated ‘political intrigues’ and ‘prostituted liberty’ by permitting ‘human hunting’ to take place: Greeks were persecuted, Armenians were thrown ‘to the mouth of the wolves’ like sheep and sacrificed for the ‘feast’ of the ‘Turkish tyranny’, Russians were left to die from hunger, people were shot in India, the whole of Germany ‘was brought to a standstill’, and the world was transformed into a ‘hecatomb’ for the victims of ‘deceit, perfidy, heartlessness, deception and the lust for gold’.59 The presentation of the Allies as corrupt Roman Emperors also had a symbolic character, as it drew a dividing line between the people and the men in power which satisfied the stereotypical perception of political power as distant from the people. The French were portrayed as playing the leading role in the conspiracy of the Allies, as they did not hesitate to reach an agreement with the Turks, Greece’s old enemy, who had no respect for ‘treaties, rights and liberties, not even for the life of their minorities’.60 The recent past exercised a stronger emotional appeal on the readers than the most distant experiences of the past. The anti-Venizelist press reminded its readers that in October 1921 France had signed the Franklin-Bouillon agreement with the Turkish Nationalists in Ankara, involving very unpleasant consequences for the Greeks as ‘it freed Kemal from his preoccupation with Cilicia’, which the French had evacuated, thereby permitting him to ‘concentrate his forces against the Greeks on the western front’. More than that, it provided him with ‘large quantities of war material’ which the French had conveniently left behind. Every effort was made by the anti-Venizelist press to demonise the French, whose collaboration with the enemy led to accusations of France ‘having no moral resistance’ and of being a ‘self-interested defender’ of a race which had been rejected by the family of civilised nations because of the violation of written and unwritten laws.61 As Greece was a deeply religious country, a religious example had the power to move the hearts of readers and make them see how serious the crime committed by the enemies was, in order to stir up their hatred. France



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was labelled ‘Judas Iscariot’ because it had betrayed its ally in the same way for its own 30 pieces of silver. For the promotion of its own financial interests, France had surrendered the ‘liberated Christians’ to their ‘Turkish butchers’ and betrayed Christianity and humanity.62 The Venizelists also participated in the conspiracy, both inside and outside the country.63 They were the ‘claimants of power’,64 responsible for the unfavourable climate towards the government with their ‘audacity’ and their ‘poison’. Therefore there was a need for a general ‘cleansing’ of all Venizelist elements from all public services and ministries, and the removal of the ‘last traces of the disgraceful tyranny’.65 Powerful images were used to describe the Venizelists: they were presented as an ‘anti-regime hornets’ nest’ which ‘set up an ambush’ for the government,66 as a ‘poisonous tree’ which wanted ‘to pour its sap into the well of public opinion to poison it’ and as dancers who performed a ‘macabre dance’ on the ‘grave of the Nation’.67 The conspirators-in-chief were the seven ‘Republicans’ who had ‘insulted the King and subverted the regime’. They were ‘anarchists or rebels’ who thought they had the right to ‘talk nonsense against the regime’, and on other occasions, ‘criminals’, ‘unscrupulous and hardened human beings’ as their acts undermined the validity of both the King and the regime.68 In substance the ‘Republicans’ were ‘blind organs of Venizelism’. Their leader, Venizelos, believed that the only way he could ‘sit on the neck of the Greek public’ after ‘being turned out of the country by the Greek electorate’ was to use his ‘tyrannical instincts’ to force the abdication of the King.69 The myth of the conspiracy was also invoked against Stratos by the antiVenizelist press. The government newspapers portrayed him as an internal enemy, a ‘pathologically ambitious man’ who conspired to force the government’s resignation and who used every means to become prime minister.70 He was also a ‘guilty man’ because ‘his methods, his refusals and his lust for power sparked the crisis’, a situation that he took advantage of to ‘overthrow the people’s work, shatter their liberties and violate their rights’.71 In order to succeed in his conspiracy, Stratos did not hesitate to work with the Venizelists, the leading conspirators, and make ‘allies and co-operators’ of the ‘tyrants’ who had ruled the Greek people and who were ‘the murderers of their children’.72 2. The Myth of the Conspiracy of the Bourgeois Parties and the Allies Rizospastis invoked the myth of the conspiracy of the Allies and the bourgeois parties in order to provide an explanation for the situation in the country. A conspiracy needed a ‘saviour’ who would rescue the country, and

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Rizospastis presented Russia as that saviour. The leading conspirators were the bourgeois parties, which shared responsibility for the situation in which the country now found itself – they had a ‘cunning policy’.73 Evaluative adjectives were prominent for both the Venizelists and the anti-Venizelists. Although Venizelos’s policy was considered ‘criminal’ and ‘imperialistic’, Gounaris’s was regarded as ‘beyond all the limits of criminality’ as he had continued a war which he himself, the people and the whole anti-Venizelist camp knew was contrary to the best interests of Greece.74 Supporters of the Venizelist and anti-Venizelist camps alike were presented as a ‘lethargic proletariat’ without the ‘capacity’ to alter the political situation. Powerful images were used to mock the bourgeois parties as ‘clowns’ with a ‘walk-on part’ in a ‘tragi-comedy’: on the one hand ‘rascals’ and ‘pitiable’ human beings who raced to conquer power, and on the other even more ‘miserable’ and ‘unscrupulous’ people who ‘set a trap for themselves on their way to power’.75 Particular importance was given to the bourgeois party in power, as the Venizelist camp had already been ‘convicted’ by the people 17 months earlier, and the ‘wrath’ projected against the Venizelists was thus ‘wrath against a shadow’.76 Several metaphors were used to describe the government and its ‘acts of conspiracy’ against the interests of the country: ‘political gangrene’ which devoured ‘the national organism’,77 the ‘mud’ of Greek society in which the people wallowed, and the ‘Gounarian inferno’.78 The members of the government were described as the ‘vampires of a vicious political past’ who carried with them the ‘spirit of decay’ and were ‘poisoners of the political life of the country,’ 79 and ‘usurers’ who negotiated for the majority of the people but against the people’s interests.80 The past, i.e. the Great War, proved that they were only ‘terrorists and destroyers of the country’ when, at a time when ‘German militarism was still powerful’, they opposed Venizelos’ policy in Asia Minor because of their ‘Germanophilia’.81 The conspirator-in-chief was Gounaris, the ‘inexhaustible alchemist of the old parties’82 who had all the characteristics of a ‘rotten personality’: the ‘idiotic smile of callousness’, ‘shamelessness’, ‘stupidity’, and an ‘unscrupulousness’ that led him to commit ‘crimes both at home and abroad’.83 When a worker named Stavrakis84 committed suicide in Volos prison, the newspaper, in a leader by G.A. Georgiadis, lambasted both Gounaris’s government in particular and bourgeois society in general.85 It considered them responsible for the ‘crime’ and drew an ‘us/them’ dichotomy between, on the one hand, the ministers and bourgeois society in general and on the other the workers. The newspaper made efforts to arouse emotional reactions among its readership: so various terms such as ‘prison’, ‘torture’ and



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‘death’ were used, ideas which the public strongly opposed. The prisons of Greece were described as medieval ‘dungeons’ into which people were led alive but came out dead due to the ‘methods’ employed within the prison walls. Rizospastis even alleged that ‘torture’ forced inmates to commit suicide. Gounaris’s government was also accused of being so preoccupied with national matters, which it equated in substance with its own interests, that it paid no attention to the workers – it was only interested in taking advantage of and of driving them to prison and suicide.86 While other Athenian newspapers saw France as Greece’s arch-enemy among the Allies, for Rizospastis the nation with the prime responsibility was Great Britain, among whose plans was the goal ‘of succeeding Germany’, ‘of securing the inheritance of Tsarism in Constantinople and the Straits’, ‘of installing a vassal Greece on the eastern coastline of the Archipelago’ and then installing itself ‘in Palestine, Armenia and the Gulf ’, and of adding ‘millions of new square metres of the Islamic world’ in the cause of the ‘British mania for conquest’.87 Only Russia could save the country from the conspiracy. According to Rizospastis, Russia ‘moved closer’ to Turkey because of the attitude of Gounaris’s government. For the same reason Greece was abandoned by the ‘capitalist world’. However, in substance Russia was the ‘protector’ of the ‘independence’ of Greece against ‘devious and miserable protectors’. The recent past provided evidence of Russia’s good intentions, notably the way the Russians had treated Greek prisoners of war in 1919, despite the Venizelos’s government involvement in the Ukraine campaign. The only way in which Gounaris’s government could ‘come closer’ to Russia, after Venizelos’s mistake, was to ‘deny Britain’ in the same way that Britain had ‘denied Greece’. Russia was the only ‘true friend’ of the ‘Greek working classes’; all the other countries just wanted to ‘enslave’ Greece.88 3. The Myth of the Loss of the Allies’ Friendship The Venizelist press invoked the myth of the loss of the Allies friendship to provide an explanation for the transformation in their attitude. It held the government responsible because it had harmed the national interests of the country by destroying the friendship between Greece and the Allies. Venizelist titles considered the result of the 1920 elections ‘disastrous’ because it shattered close relations with Great Britain, even though the government pretended otherwise. After the elections, the Allies lost their ‘trust’ in Greece and the ‘Allied bonds’ with Greece, through which ‘great diplomatic victories had been accomplished’ were broken,89 and their attitude therefore changed. Crucially, Great Britain stopped supporting

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the creation of a powerful Greek state which it wanted so passionately to achieve. The decisions of the Great Powers were seen as the outcome of the government’s policy. First, the Venizelist press contended, Greece could have chosen not to accept the Great Powers’ decision, but it was the government which had asked for their intervention; and second, the Great Powers sent Greece to Asia Minor as their ally. From the moment that Greece declared that it did not want their alliance, the Great Powers had every right to ask Greece to leave Asia Minor. Greece’s attempt to stay there with its own forces was unsuccessful. Accordingly Greece had only two options: either to mend its relationship with the Allied Powers, or to evacuate Asia Minor and Thrace and surrender the Greeks domiciled there to the ‘knife of the Turks’.90 The Venizelist newspapers considered the hostile attitude of the Allies to be a ‘punishment’ for the mistakes of the government, which instead of making efforts to make the Allies change their opinion ‘lulled the Greek people’ by ‘unethical talks about tyranny’ and by falsely stating that ‘Britain loves the Greek people passionately and that without the help of Greece Britain would be at a loss in the Middle East’.91 The leading figure in the government deception was Gounaris, presented as Irostratos – the man who, in his desire to become famous, set fire to the temple of Diana in Ephesus. In the same way Gounaris did not hesitate to become the ‘past master of the disaster’.92 His only worry was how to remain in power, even if he were only to govern ‘ruins’.93 Gounaris was labelled a ‘pachyderm politician’; he had emerged as such in 1915, when, despite the fact that he was rejected by the electorate, he clung on to power for months without recalling the Assembly; and furthermore he was the ‘abolisher of the popular freedom’ and the ‘supporter of the infernal clubs in the capital’.94 An image from Greek mythology was used to describe the critical situation that the government had created for the Greek people, who, like Sisyphus, had to ‘carry the stone of their martyrdom’. Although he managed to fool death and Hades, the god of the underworld, he was condemned in perpetuity to push a stone up to the top of a hill, from where it rolled all the way down.95 Conclusion Despite mistakes, until the beginning of 1922 the government had managed to secure the backing of most of the press because of the widespread support for irredentist nationalism, the ideological division within the Venizelist faction and the limits of the socialist/communist alternative. The anti-Venizelist press concentrated its efforts on attacking opponents as



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internal enemies intent on harming the national interest. Every means, even violence, was promoted by these newspapers to ensure that the government remained in power. In effect, they had become organs inciting fanaticism and justified the activities of the People’s Political Clubs. The anti-Venizelist newspapers also attacked the external enemies, the Allies who wanted to harm Greece’s interests by promoting their own agendas and by supporting Greece’s external enemy, the Turks. To explain their attitude, they propagated the myth of the conspiracy of the Venizelists and the Allies. Within this interlocking system of state and press, and despite the government’s failures, there was no room for a powerful opposition to emerge. The attempts of the Venizelist press to prove the inadequacy of the government foundered on the ideological division within the Liberal Party between the moderate Venizelists, who supported the institution of the monarchy, and those republicans who dared to express publicly in the pages of two Venizelist newspapers their demand for the King’s abdication. The traditionally Anglophile Venizelist press disseminated the myth of the loss of the Allies’ friendship, and held the government responsible for the loss of Allied support. Rizospastis continued to operate as a voice promoting a view of the world predicated on class struggle, accusing both the bourgeois parties and the Allies of being responsible for the disaster. The United Opposition government managed temporarily to regain power by forming a coalition. In substance, however, conditions within the country and abroad were so critical that they held out the prospect of disaster for both sides. Propaganda reified into rhetoric in leading articles amidst growing apprehension over developments in Asia Minor, where the Greek army, caught between a rock and a hard place, awaited its catastrophic defeat. And with it the illusions fostered by elements of the Athenian press would finally be shattered.­

8 The Disaster

Τις δάφνες του Σαγγάριου η Ελευθερία φορέσασα, γοργά από μίαν χείρα σ’ άλλην περνά και σύρεται, δούλη στρατώνος.1 Κ.Γ. Καρυωτάκης ‘Εις Ανδρέαν Κάλβον’ Finally the situation reached its critical point. The summer of 1922 was a difficult one both for the anti-Venizelist government and for the army at the front. The former was in a state of desperation as it sought a way out of the country’s economic, political and diplomatic hardships caused by the continuing war in Asia Minor. The government was even reputed to have attempted to conduct secret negotiations with the Turkish Nationalist government during the spring of 1922, probably promising an immediate withdrawal to the line laid down by the Treaty of Sèvres. These attempted negotiations proved fruitless, as the ever-strengthening Nationalists were not willing to make peace unless all their terms were accepted.2 The Greek army, on the other hand, which was in a state of decay, had been reduced to a passive role after the failure of the military operations of 1921, which had strongly damaged its morale. In addition the country was experiencing severe financial difficulties because of the enormous expense incurred in sustaining the Anatolian front. The government’s final attempts to find a solution to the crisis seemed like a last desperate cry before the end, which was to be marked by the two aspects of what is known among Greeks as the ‘Disaster’: the decisive military defeat of the Greek army, and the associated disaster of the Greek population in Asia Minor – their violent uprooting from their fatherland. The burning of ‘Giaur (infidel) Izmir’, as the Turks called the city of Smyrna, was the



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most tragic epilogue to the Greek presence in Asia Minor, and the end of the dream of the Megali Idea. The present chapter is divided into three sections. The first examines the role that propaganda played at the front during the summer of 1922 in cultivating a defeatist mentality. It also investigates conditions on the mainland, and the efforts of the government to distract the public’s attention from the country’s serious financial difficulties by pressing ahead with a political and military gamble. The second concentrates on chronicling the military operations and the defeat in Asia Minor, as reported in the pages of the Athenian press. It examines the individual attitude of Kathimerini during August 1922, which drew a sharp response from the other newspapers. It also focuses on the attitude of the press after the entry of the Turks into Smyrna, which was marked by the burning of the city and other atrocities. The third section investigates the myths that the Athenian newspapers invoked to legitimise their own political discourse. Finally the fourth section will examine briefly the ‘Trial of the Six’ and the Treaty of Lausanne. I 1. Propaganda in the Greek Army A state army has a strict structure, hierarchy and formal organisation, and specific, definite functions. Its principal mission is to protect the broader social group to which it belongs.3 Armies have some common characteristics, such as weaponry, unquestionable acceptance of leadership, order, a hierarchical organisation entailing the strict separation of the role of each rank, the recognition of bravery during battle, social acceptance and a consciousness of its mission.4 The state army cannot be independent of the spirit of nationalism; it is in fact nationalism’s main shield. Organisation and coherence are crucial if it is to accomplish its goals. Several defining characteristics of an army did not seem to be present in the case of the Greek army in Asia Minor in the summer of 1922. Its weapons were not in the best condition. It was under the eccentric leadership of the Commander-in-Chief, General George Hatzianestis. It suffered from a lack of order. There were even doubts as to whether it was conscious of its mission. Demoralisation had set in. The rank and file, mobilised since the Balkan Wars, were more intent on returning home than fighting. The previous summer they had been spurred on by the prospect of a decisive victory. However, after enduring a typically harsh Anatolian winter, they were daily growing weaker, while their enemy grew stronger. Conditions were much better in the Kemalist army, which was receiving

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new armaments and supplies from the Soviet Union, France and Italy, and was under the renowned leadership of Mustafa Kemal. Discipline, while not of a European standard, was good, and there was a resolute determination to drive the hated Greeks out of Anatolia. By the summer of 1922, the Greek army was described as ‘like an apple eaten inside out by insects or disease, superficially whole and apparently firm, but ready to disintegrate at the first sharp blow’.5 Greek soldiers, like all the troops in WW1, were cogs in the machinery of war, but at the same time they were individuals who attempted to reassert their individuality despite the war.6 One of the factors considered responsible for the bad morale of the Greek army – and later for its collapse – was the propaganda exercised by both the enemy and the Greek communists. The former used leaflets and newspapers, and the latter newspapers and brochures, to accomplish their goals. Although propaganda was not the most important factor in the ensuing military disaster it contributed to the disintegration of the Greek army. The morale of the soldiers was made even worse by the propaganda leaflets written in Greek which were dropped on Greek camps by Turkish aeroplanes, calling upon the soldiers to desert and follow the Turks into a ‘better’ life.7 The Greek communist leaflets urged the soldiers to go home and leave the Turks in peace.8 A soldier from Asia Minor wrote about the propaganda leaflets that: ‘. . . he [the enemy] even has the impudence and the impertinent demand to drop proclamations in the various places where our army is, which cause and increase even more the horror and the disgust in everyone who reads them.’ It was obvious that there was decay in the army, although the remainder of the soldier’s letter tried to argue otherwise.9 The Greek communists had profited from the three years of war, and succeeded in creating a network of sympathisers, present in the communication centres, who encouraged defeatist tendencies, and who sent communist brochures and copies of Rizospastis to the front. They encouraged soldiers to question why they were fighting at the front.10 Throughout the summer of 1922 Rizospastis wrote feverish leading articles against the Asia Minor Campaign.11 For the communists there was no difference between the Venizelists and the anti-Venizelists: the first started and the second continued a campaign that the communists considered aggressive and imperialistic, and that had been started in order to safeguard the interests of Great Britain.12 Greece had been at war since 1912, whereas most of the other countries had fought for four years and then been demobilised. Why should Greece, one of the smallest and poorest nations in Europe, which needed tranquillity and peace, continue such a war?13



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Soldiers deserting the army and making their way home had become a daily phenomenon.14 Although it is impossible to estimate accurately the importance of the role Rizospastis’s propaganda and the communist brochures played in leading to the many desertions, it is a factor which cannot be ignored. Propaganda was an important instrument of warfare which, among other factors, damaged the morale of the Greek troops by destroying their hope of victory. The communists themselves helped deserters to escape. However, soldiers who had joined the party were kept at the front in order to be used for propaganda purposes.15 Most deserters were sent back to Greece in requisisioned ships staffed by communist sailors. The same ships16 carried issues of Rizospastis, Kommunistiki Epitheorisi and other communist publications to Asia Minor.17 The number of deserters increased daily.18 They were not only from Greece but also from Asia Minor, and their desertion from the front also took the form of organised escapes to other European countries and even to the United States.19 The deserters from Thrace went not only to Greece but also to Constantinople, and even to Bulgaria.20 Deserters who were caught were arrested and imprisoned, but many soldiers had reached the point where they preferred to be in prison rather than having to endure the deprivations at the front.21 The increasing reluctance of the Greek army leadership to grant leave added to the despondency of the troops, who were forced to remain in what they now considered an Anatolian hell. The other Athenian newspapers were also read at the front, but most of them arrived late. The soldiers did not seem to believe the ‘news’ they read; for example, one soldier, Emmanouil Kefalakis, wrote ‘. . . no one should believe the newspapers, especially during those years when no truth was told and no truth will be told’.22 However, during the summer of 1922 even the leading anti-Venizelist title Kathimerini was publishing defeatist propaganda, which became rather intense during August. The issues of the newspaper were sent freely to the troops,23 and influenced the soldiers as they activated beliefs which already lay dormant. However, as with the Kemalist and communist propaganda described above, it is impossible to quantify the effect Kathimerini had on the morale of the troops. At the same time, counter-propaganda was used at the front by the army itself to strengthen troop morale and counter the defeatist propaganda of the Athenian press, particularly Rizospastis,24 and of the enemy. Counterpropaganda was propagated through the newspaper Synadelfos, the official organ of the Greek army in Asia Minor; it was presented in the form of entertainment. From Smyrna, where Synadelfos had its offices, it was sent to soldiers at the front and for them, as they wrote in their letters, was ‘our favourite paper’25 and ‘our secret pleasure’,26 although there were

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complaints that it failed to ‘arrive on time’.27 Ilias Voutieridis, Embros’s war correspondent in Asia Minor during 1921, started editing Synadelfos in 1922. Officially, Synadelfos was not subject to the rules of censorship imposed on all the other Smyrna newspapers.28 However, as the main purpose of the newspaper was to stiffen soldiers’ morale, letters from them complaining about conditions in the army were not published. Conditions in the field reflected those on the home front, and probably the collapse of the Asia Minor front arose just as much because the home front too had started to break down as a result of the multiplying complaints and criticism against the government, along with the strong anti-war sentiment which spread from the home front to the troops and which lowered the soldiers’ will to fight. 2. Propaganda on the Mainland Within Greece itelf, the dislike felt for the government by the public was growing. Letters sent to soldiers at the front revealed the financial difficulties faced by the Greek civilians.29 Those who wrote these letters were becoming more anti-government because of the daily increase in the cost of living, although they hesitated to express their opinions openly, being afraid of government reprisals. This disquiet was kept out of the anti-Venizelist newspapers. The only people who did not face difficulties were those who were close to the royalist government. The majority, however, were most displeased not only with ministers but also with the King, who, for most of them, was no longer an idol. By the summer of 1922 the embattled government had become desperate. As it could not improve the economic situation, it decided to proceed with the only alternative it had: to press ahead with the political and military gamble. Therefore in July it instigated two measures to try to extricate itself from its difficulties: an attempt to capture Constantinople, and a plan for the autonomy of Ionia. Three infantry regiments and two battalions were redeployed from the Asia Minor front to strengthen the forces in Thrace for the attempt on Constantinople. The Allies were then given a virtual ultimatum to evacuate the city, but when they refused and showed every sign of preparing to resist, the royalist government lost its nerve and backed down. However, the abortive attempt significantly weakened the already over-stretched forces in Asia Minor, since the redeployed forces were never replaced, presenting Mustafa Kemal with a golden opportunity to strike.30 The second plan was to create an autonomous Ionia. The Greek High Commissioner, Stergiadis, planned to relieve the Greek government of the responsibility for Asia Minor, and to prepare the ground for the withdrawal



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of the army. Although his plan seemed similar to that of Amyna31 for an autonomous Ionia, it was not. Stergiadis did not have in mind the creation of a Greek regime by one political faction, as Amyna did. What he contemplated was a multi-national regime which would have the support of the Allied Powers. Stergiadis’s plans were approved by the government. At the end of July Stergiadis issued a declaration which stated that the ‘work of liberation’ should be continued by the people themselves, and promised to reorganise the system of government. However, a few days later the Powers expressed their formal reservation to Greece, on the grounds that any permanent regime in Asia Minor would ultimately depend on a treaty settlement between the Allied Powers and Turkey.32 Both these unsuccessful attempts provoked adverse comments in the Venizelist and anti-Venizelist press; however, such criticism came after the initiative, and not before or during it. The newspapers tried to find out who was responsible for the failure in order to impute blame. In substance, the Venizelist newspapers took advantage of the failure, to promote their narrow party interests. It provided the opportunity they had been waiting for to accuse the government of incompetence, claiming that the attempt was another unsuccessful government ‘experiment’ and another attempt to find a quick solution to the problem of Asia Minor. Subsequently, criticism of ministers by the Venizelist press became even more extreme. It accused them of being incapable of handling any matter, of creating additional impediments to every possible solution, and of not even being brave enough to follow the suggestions repeatedly given to them, which, had they been followed, would not have led to final solutions but would at least have held the country back from the verge of disaster, and would have neither damaged it militarily nor destroyed it financially.33 The anti-Venizelist press, on the other hand, denied that the government was responsible, adopting an attitude similar to that mentioned in previous chapters: they put the blame on the Allies. According to these newspapers, Greece had tried to solve the Asia Minor crisis alone, as its friends did not seem willing to help. The anti-Venizelist press criticised France in particular, and urged the government to take its own initiatives and not let itself be influenced by the promises of the French, as the Venizelist government had been in the past.34 The absent Venizelos was often the favourite subject of abuse by the anti-Venizelist press. It dubbed him an opportunist; whatever he had accomplished was the result of circumstance and not the result of any prudence, foresight, perspicacity or realism on his part, as claimed by the Venizelist press. According to the anti-Venizelist press, Greece was fortunate because it had managed to rid itself of Venizelos.35

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1. The Chronicle of the Attack and Defeat Represented in the Pages of the Athenian Press On 13/26 August 1922 the Turkish Nationalist army attacked the Greek army in the important and vulnerable area of Afyon Karahissar. Initially, news from the front published in the newspapers, from the day the attack became known in Athens, was reassuring; they reported that it was not a serious assault. Indeed, the only goal the Turks had was to make a good but temporary impression on the Allies. Both the Venizelist and anti-Venizelist press stated that the Turks were not capable of achieving more.36 The telegrams sent to the government by the Commander-in-Chief, General Hatzianestis, which were distributed to the press, were even more reassuring. Most of all the unquestionable trust in the Greek army remained undiminished. We read in the leading article in the anti-Venizelist title Scrip: ‘The Greek army remains unshaken in its positions . . . the Greek front remains solid and it is a wall on which the enemy will be broken into pieces.’37 The attitude of the Venizelist title Ethnos was similar: ‘No serious attack against the Greek army is possible; this would be drowned in rivers of blood, as our men at the front have always had their bayonets crowned with victory.’38 The attack was repeated the following day, 14/27 August, and at noon the first line of Greek defences had to be abandoned. On 15/28 August Afyon Karahissar was evacuated.39 A military disaster of the greatest magnitude now began to unfold as the Greek army disintegrated, retreating in chaos towards Smyrna. News of the military debacle could not long be kept out of the Athenian press, whose readership was about to be shocked by the truth of the gravity of the situation in Asia Minor. The retreat became known in Smyrna on the morning of the same day, together with details of the withdrawal from Afyon Karahissar, and was discussed among the Greek civilian population there. The public began to worry for their own safety, as contradictory rumours of many soldiers laying down their arms and fleeing, or of others bravely standing and fighting, only added to their worries and confusion. People went to the Office of Military Censorship in Smyrna to discover the true state of affairs at the front. Families of officials and officers in Smyrna secretly boarded a ship and left. Most people were panic-stricken, especially when the first injured troops arrived with first-hand information about the strength of the advancing Turkish Nationalist army and how many aeroplanes it possessed.40 The news of the evacuation exploded like a bomb in Athens the next day. The panic-stricken government was paralysed, preferring to remain silent



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as rumours spread throughout the city. In the letter Georgios Exintaris41 sent to Venizelos from the offices of Eleftheron Vima on 16/29 August 1922, he expressed the fear that the morale of the army had already been destroyed.42 Most of the Athenian press reported the evacuation on 17/30 August 1922. However, the information was not clear and the Greek people did not seem to trust what they read in newspapers, often derided as ‘rags’.43 The Venizelist press, especially Eleftheron Vima, wrote that it trusted the army and that nothing was final. The first setbacks in the ongoing battle were not enough to show what would be the final outcome of the war. The newspaper invited the Greek people to be brave, as they had been tested in many wars in the past, to be united, to keep their temper and be patient, and to bear in mind that all the sacrifices, all the struggles and triumphs in Asia Minor had not been in vain. It also asked the anti-Venizelist press to support the government and forego its defamatory peacetime policy – it was a moment for ‘absolute national unity’, and the ruling class should set a good example of discipline and understanding to the Greek people.44 However, some antiVenizelist newspapers did not hesitate to hint at another move in the direction of Constantinople.45 Scrip was one such, in vain advising the capture of Constantinople, after the evacuation was known,46 in an effort to revive the fighting spirit of the panic-striken people . The first calls demanding that the government resign appeared in the Athenian press. Embros gave the signal; in its leading article on 18/30 August it characterised the government as ‘dissolute’, ‘stupid’ and ‘lifeless’, and its ministers as ‘unworthy’ and ‘base’. It was a government which did not inspire any trust among the people that it could lead them with faith and enthusiasm in the great national struggle, in which the whole country was involved, and therefore it was time for a new government to take over. It also asked the King to decide which party or parties should form the new government.47 In its leader the following day, it openly called on the government to resign if it had any ‘trace of self-respect, shame and awareness of the meaning of responsibility and patriotism’, and stated that it was time to realise that it ‘lacked the trust of the Nation’, that its position was intolerable. After the diplomatic failure, the complete financial destruction, the administrative dislocation, the misfortune, the disappointments and the grief it had caused it could no longer continue in power, and that it was only ‘the high, glorious and eminent army that the people could trust, as it was the only power and guarantee they had’.48 Ethnos trumpeted a similar message: only with the resignation of the government, which had taken over a powerful country and reduced it to one stricken by crisis, would

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the disgraced regime satisfy the Greek people.49 The Venizelist newspapers complained because the government did not inform them about the true conditions at the front.50 In fact their opposition was on the grounds of deception rather than on the fundamentals of the campaign. On 21 August/3 September, the grave news began to leak out. The unwillingness of the troops to fight came as a most painful surprise, and the fall of the cabinet was now openly discussed in the press. All the titles, with only three exceptions – Scrip and Protevousa, which supported Gounaris, and Efimeris ton Sizitiseon, which supported Stratos – called on the government to resign immediately. The Venizelist press looked beyond the present government, and started to ask for Venizelos’s return, presenting him as the ‘messiah’ who alone had the power to save the country, as he was the only one capable of effective leadership.51 On Sunday evening 21 August/3 September better news arrived, and was published in the press. It was officially reported that General Trikoupis, along with some other officers, had passed that day through Ushak, which, contrary to earlier reports, was still in Greek possession. Confidence began to revive, especially when it was made known on 22 August/4 September that the command of the army had been taken from General Hatzianestis and given to Trikoupis.52 Both Venizelist and anti-Venizelist newspapers, were satisfied by the appointment of Trikoupis, and expressed the belief that under his leadership the army would be able to face the enemy and win.53 The supreme irony in this was that in fact Trikoupis had been in the hands of Kemal Atatürk since 20 August/2 September.54 The High Commissioner at Smyrna, apparently ignorant of Trikoupis’s capture, reported that the two army corps had come together and succeeded in reaching and occupying positions near Ushak. The operation was said to have been executed in complete order, despite the difficulties of the terrain. According to Bentinck’s report, it was an attempt to increase confidence at home, and it was hoped that it would encourage the army in the field and enable it to make a stand and not fold. Kemal’s demands would inevitably increase if the Greek collapse became total. Bentinck’s impression was that the Greek people had taken the grave news well, but that government ministers were pessimists and instead of encouraging the people had begun to spread alarmist reports.55 They recovered their nerve when news arrived that the two army corps had joined together, and on 23 August/5 September they resisted calls to resign and announced defiantly that they would proceed with some new military appointments. General Dousmanis was appointed Chief of the General Staff and General Exadactylos re-appointed to the position of Chief of Staff in Asia Minor, after resigning when General



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Hatzianestis was appointed Army Commander. Colonel Sarigiannis was re-appointed Deputy Chief of the General Staff. The appointments were taken by the press as an indication that the government was determined to face the situation. The Minister of War accompanied Dousmanis and Polymerakos to Smyrna on 23 August /5 September in order to discover the real state of the fighting capacity of the southern army. Although things looked brighter, disconcertingly there were no official reports signed or sent to Athens by the new Commander-in-Chief, General Trikoupis. Government officials were not optimistic at all, and when Bentinck tried to persuade the Minister of Foreign Affairs that the news was fairly good, Baltatzis sent him the text of a telegram he had sent to Curzon in which he stated that the military situation showed no improvement. Only on the morning of 24 August /6 September was General Trikoupis’s capture by the Turks made known, when the Red Crescent conveyed the news to the Greek Red Cross. Thereupon General Polymerakos was appointed Commander-in-Chief. On 25 August/7 September, news of Trikoupis’s capture was published in the press56 – in the anti-Venizelist newspapers, without comment. The news was considered extremely sad by the Venizelist newspapers: it was, they claimed, the end of Greek hopes, and the people could feel only grief and humiliation. The huge irony that Trikoupis had been appointed Commander-in-Chief after being captured by the Turks did not escape comment. The newspapers suggested it was a ‘unique’ event in world military history, and could only provoke bitter laughter. Moreover, Kemalist propaganda would take advantage of it to present the defeat of the Greeks as total.57 However, the following day Kathimerini accused the Venizelist press of doing what Kemal had not in fact done: he did not declare that he had captured the Commander-in-Chief, but the Venizelist newspapers did, by publishing the news under the headline ‘The Commander-in-Chief has been captured.’ It accused Venizelism and its organs of having as their only purpose to cause further problems, which could be piled upon the serious losses the nation had already suffered.58 The news naturally shocked the people. Kathimerini, the one anti-Venizelist title which had already marked out a different position,59 acknowledged the tide of opinion, calling the government ‘the accused’ and demanded its resignation, as public anxiety was high. It called on Stergiadis to take over the premiership.60 Probably after receiving directions from Baltatzis, the Foreign Minister, with whom Vlachos had close relations, the newspaper decided to turn the attention of its readers towards Stergiadis as the possible solution, and to free the government from any responsibility for the situation. Stergiadis was the only possible candidate with the authority and forcefulness to assume office, and with

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the respect of the public.61 Both the Venizelist and anti-Venizelist newspapers attacked Kathimerini for its proposals. Rizospastis accused it of having abandoned the pro-government camp four days before it attempted to approach the Venizelists through Stergiadis; however, this attempt failed.62 Patris considered that Kathimerini had only suggested Stergiadis as the next prime minister because the government needed a scapegoat, on whom they planned to pin the blame for their own crimes in order to escape the fury of the popular outcry. They also wanted him to play the role of Antalkidas63 and sign a treaty in which the evacuation of Asia Minor would be agreed.64 On 25 August/7 September the government, yielding to popular clamour, resigned.65 Next day Nikolaos Triantafyllakos66 assumed the premiership. On the same day the remaining divisions of the Greek army, and Stergiadis, left Smyrna; the following day, on the morning of 27 August/9 September, the Turks entered the city. 2. Kathimerini’s Attitude and the Reaction of the other Athenian Newspapers From early August a leading anti-Venizelist newspaper proved the exception to the rule. Surprisingly, Kathimerini had significantly changed its attitude towards the campaign, claiming that it was time for the ‘adventure’ in Asia Minor to end. Two explanations can be given for the attitude of the newspaper: first, that the government was preparing the public for the defeat, and second, that the government’s internal split was reflected in the split within the anti-Venizelist press. More than that, it was a clear indication that Gounaris’s position had started to become very difficult. From the day that the evacuation became known, the newspaper insisted that no more blood should be shed in Asia Minor and that it was time for the soldiers to return home. In the leading article on 17/30 August the newspaper wrote that, according to the Commander-in-Chief, the army could again take control of the situation, reclaiming whatever it had lost and put an end to the ‘adventure’ victoriously. It also stated that new military undertakings could start, but only if they led to the annihilation of the power of the enemy; and if they did not, then not even one more soldier should be sacrificed. The successes of the Greek army during the past ten years were enough, and they did not need another victory in order to appear glorious. The newspaper recommended that the army should stay where it was, but that if remaining in Asia Minor entailed blood and pain, then it should withdraw. And it concluded: ‘. . . we have no right to ask for the shedding of even more blood in order for the ‘adventure’ to continue, an ‘adventure’ which was imposed by a man who is, unfortunately for Greece,



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still alive’. The villain in question was of course Venizelos, whom the entire anti-Venizelist press held responsible for the Asia Minor campaign67 and a suitable scapegoat to take the blame for the unfurling disaster. The other anti-Venizelist newspapers criticised Kathimerini, considering its attitude defeatist. Politia stated that at a time when the heroic army was fulfilling its duty according to its honour and its history, Kathimerini advised it to move to a position which ‘is neither painful, nor bloody’. It accused Kathimerini of cultivating among the popular masses the idea of abandoning the Asia Minor struggle. These acts were, according to Politia, ‘the most detestable manifestation of defeatism, especially because it comes from within circles which had the power to defame the government’. Finally, in the best interest of the country, it invited all those who had encouraged the army to withdraw from Asia Minor to evacuate Greece.68 The attitude of Kathimerini was also severely commented on by the Venizelist newspapers. They considered that Kathimerini’s attitude went beyond the limits of the betrayal and disaster, and that the withdrawal of the army from Asia Minor, under the conditions then prevalent, would be the most dreadful betrayal of the nation.69 The following day Kathimerini, stung by the criticism, adopted a different attitude, trying to distort the truth and persuade its readers that the evacuation of Afyon Karahissar was an incident of no strategic significance. Rather, its effect was limited to allowing Kemal to make an impression before news of the exhaustion of his own army became known, as the Eastern Question was likely to discussed soon at a conference. So Kemal had decided, with the encouragement of his foreign friends,70 ‘to light a firework in Afyon Karahissar in order to impress the world with uncertain fire and thick smoke’. He wanted to prove that his army was still strong, when everyone knew that it was on its last legs. At the same time, the Greek army was very experienced, having fought so many battles since 1912, with the Turks, the Bulgarians, the Germans, the Austrians, the Albanians and the Bolsheviks.71 3. The Burning of Smyrna In a civilised society war is conducted against a state’s armed forces, and not against civilian populations.72 This is the ideal image of war.73 The razing of cities and the slaughter of non-combatants were not, however, isolated incidents during the twentieth century, which saw violations against the civilian populations of occupied territories – murder, extermination, the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, the plunder of public and private property, and the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages. The burning and pillaging of the Greek and Armenian parts of Smyrna was an early

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example of such wanton destruction. Turkish regular and irregular troops, along with Turkish civilians, reaped the fruits of victory and imposed the consequences of their defeat on their enemy. The burning and the atrocities committed by the victors in war is denounced mainly by the sufferers; the media are used for this purpose. However, the particular events can be used by the media in order to cultivate a particular image of the enemy and to impose a stereotype on collective memory, which determines the attitude of the people who suffer towards those who are responsible for their suffering. Moreover, the atrocities are ‘used’ by the sufferers for propaganda purposes – to prove their enemy’s evilness and to sustain their own morale. Dissemination of news of atrocities results in the condemnation of the enemy by the public, and is used to prove the innocence and moral probity of the sufferers – though in war atrocities are committed by both victors and vanquished. Furthermore, the sufferers use the media as a vehicle for nationalist ideas, when the public is prepared and ready with the proper predisposition and mentality to accept them. In this case nationalist ideas create an imaginary union against the external enemy; this is what happened in the case of the Greek press. Concern over the well-being of the Christian population of Smyrna was expressed, from the beginning of August, in both Venizelist and anti-Venizelist Athenian newspapers; they considered the Greek army to be the only protective shield. Other newspapers reminded their readers of the Turkish atrocities at Pontus.74 Concern intensified when it became known that the last Greek division had left Asia Minor.75 At the same time the final telegrams of the Greek journalists were sent from Smyrna to their Athenian newspapers, as all the correspondents, together with all the Smyrna journalists, shortly afterwards left the city.76 Fears were also expressed in the British press regarding the future of Smyrna and the large number of refugees who were left there unprotected. Three days before the arrival of the Turkish cavalry in Smyrna The Manchester Guardian wrote: ‘Worse things feared in Smyrna’, as the remaining Greek troops refused to make a stand.77 The first news of the entry of the Turks into Smyrna hit the headlines in Greek newspapers on 29 August/11 September, one day after the new government under Triantafyllakos had assumed office. The gravity of the news, received from a foreign news agency, was tempered by reassurance about the peaceful and orderly entry of Turkish forces into Smyrna. However, any such reassurance about Turkish behaviour soon evaporated: on the following day the newspapers carried alarming reports on the critical conditions of the refugees. Worse still, the Turks had arrested, court-martialed and shot many Greeks and Armenians. News was also



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published in the newspapers about atrocities committed by Turks against foreigners.78 At the beginning of September the front-page headlines in most of the Athenian newspapers were dominated by the announcement that Smyrna was on fire and that its citizens had been slaughtered. Kathimerini led the outcry with a leader under the headline ‘The Tragedy’ on 2/15 September 1922;79 ‘Smyrna on fire. Archbishop Chrysostomos has been butchered. The Christians are being massacred’, read the dramatic headlines of Eleftheron Vima the same day. ‘The country in danger – the terrible destruction of Smyrna’ proclaimed Embros on 2/15 September 1922. Its leading article promised that ‘Greece will take revenge!’ The front page carried an emotional outburst mourning the loss of Smyrna.80 Both the Venizelist and anti-Venizelist newspapers mourned what had happened to that ‘Greek’ city left in the hands of the Turks, who had shown once again their violent nature against Greek civilians left unprotected. For most of the Athenian newspapers, the Turks were motivated by revenge. Eleftheros Typos thought them inspired by religious hatred.81 The fire, accompanied by the detailed description of atrocities before and during it, offered the Athenian press an opportunity to continue to disseminate irredentist nationalist ideas, and to predispose their readership to accept blindly the morality of the Great Idea, which had caused the suffering of the Greek people. With its strong irredentist message, the Great Idea offered the people a common Greek identity and reconciled them to the state by demanding their devotion to the national ideal.82 After the fire which ended the Megali Idea in the ashes of Smyrna, the irredentist ideas created an imaginary unity in the face not only of the traditional external enemy, the Turks, but also of all who conspired against Greece and damaged its national interests. The Athenian newspapers were in no doubt that the fire had been deliberately caused by the Turks in order to cover up their crimes. Their regular army, which had followed the orders of Kemal himself, was considered responsible for actually setting the fire. Since there were no correspondents of the Athenian newspapers in Smyrna after the entry of the Turks – they had all taken refuge on ships and were watching from a distance what was happening along the quay – testimonies from eye-witnesses were used in all the newspapers in order to report what had happened in Smyrna and to discover who had started the fire. These eye-witnesses were mainly Greek and American residents of Smyrna who had managed to survive the flames and had been evacuated by ships to the islands of Chios and Mytilene or to Piraeus. The Athenian newspapers sent correspondents and collected these witnesses’ testimonies. Special emphasis was given to testimonies

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from prominent members of Smyrna society, such as the American Consul General, George Horton, the Headmistress of the American School for Girls, Minnie Mills, Richard Eaton, representative of the American News Agency and Dr Dimitris Nikolaidis. Their social position and the fact that most of them were not Greek made their testimony appear more reliable. Several testimonies from unnamed Greeks were also published, and confirmed by those of the other group. Rizospastis was the exception in not printing huge headlines on the Smyrna fire. In fact, it relegated the news to its second page, using eyewitness accounts for an article which did not directly accuse the Turks of starting the fire. Where other newspapers held the Turks without question responsible, Rizospastis was unusually reserved in what it wrote. In its leading article it asked the new government to be very careful concerning the measures it would take to keep order, as terrorism and illiberal measures against the people would only provoke and anger them.83 Evidently such preaching did not go down well with the authorities, for the whole of the Rizopastis leading article the following day was censored.84 The government panicked, but its desperate efforts to prevent the dissemination of the grave news proved impossible – the newspapers were full of it, and it could not be ignored, especially since Piraeus was awash with refugees from Asia Minor bringing with them all kinds of horror stories. The Athenian newspapers had to provide an explanation for such a huge disaster, and to do so they produced coloured, overwhelming myths which could respond to the need for the required explanation, and also be used to justify the political stance expressed by the newspaper in question. III 1. The Myth of the ‘Superior’ Greek Army Throughout the entire summer of 1922 dithyrambs about the Greek army appeared in both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist press. The newspapers were attempting to unite the nation and instil a massive wave of patriotism in their readers, and thus to gain their support for the war effort. The Athenian press invoked the myth of the ‘superior’ Greek army, according to which its morale and fighting ability were excellent while conditions within the Turkish National army were bad – at a time when the situation was actually the complete opposite. Only Rizospastis dared to declare that the Kemalist forces were in excellent fighting trim with a European standard command structure.85 The burning of Smyrna and the atrocities perpetrated by the Turkish army led the Athenian press to mobilise one more myth, that of the ‘civi-



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lised’ Greek army which did not commit atrocities but functioned only as a ‘shield of protection’ and a ‘vehicle of culture’.86 Nothing was mentioned of the Greek army’s atrocities on the day it had landed in Smyrna, nor of those it had committed during its retreat. Before the beginning of the military operations in August 1922, the Venizelist press insisted that the army ‘had a firm battle array’ and claimed that ‘Gounaris’s disappointed psychological state as well as Stratos’s indifference to the conditions of the army had not damaged the psychology of soldiers at the front’, who, it was alleged, ‘held strong feelings regarding their mission’. ‘They had a will of iron and their souls were full of pride and their eyes were not yet tired of exploring the East’.87 The Venizelist newspapers also stated that even though the war had been going on for a long time, the resistance of the army was ‘unbending’ and ‘invincible’, as it was fully conscious that ‘it bore the hopes and the future of the nation as a whole’, and that there was no doubt that it would ‘do its duty as always’, and the enemy would accordingly suffer ‘great disappointments from the very outset of the renewed struggle’, due to the fact that the Turkish army had no capacity to undertake a serious attack.88 The anti-Venizelist press adopted the same attitude.89 Metaphors were used to present the Greek army as the ‘sole powerful and completely necessary shield of our rights and the security of so many populations in Asia Minor’, as a man ‘who risked and still risks his life for the sake of Asia Minor and Greece’, as the ‘foundation of the national building’90 and as ‘the walls on which the enemy will be crushed’.91 Various expressions were used to present the positive attributes of the Greek soldiers – like ‘unparalleled bravery’, ‘self-sacrifice’,92 ‘patriotism’, ‘heroism’93 – and also to emphasise the meaningfulness of their fight and their sacrifice, as well as to draw a dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’(the Turkish soldiers). After the entry of the Turks into Smyrna, the newspapers were full of praise for the Greek army and its ‘excellent behaviour’ during its occupation of the area. ‘The Greek troops went to Smyrna, with one sole purpose, to liberate Asia Minor’. ‘They did not take revenge, they respected the defeated Turks, and they were brave, civilised and generous’.94 To place a fence around the Greek soldiers, metaphors were used to cast ‘them’ (the Turkish soldiers) in a bad light; the latter were portrayed as ‘Asiatic tigers’ or as non-humans, as ‘maniac demons who spread their wings across Asia’.95 These metaphors fed directly into the long-established popular cultural imagery the Greeks held of the Turks, as bloodthirsty barbarians who wantonly committed atrocities. Powerful images were also used in the negative evaluation of the Turkish soldiers’ actions: they ‘tied the most beautiful

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Christian virgins of Smyrna to their horses with the intention of dragging them to disgrace and death’; they ‘kept the people in their houses in order to transform their rage into a holocaust’; they ‘dragged women and children into the interior and bayoneted and killed them’; they ‘massacred the men and threw petrol on the streets of the quay where thousands of refugees were gathered, and set fire to them’.96 2. The Myth of the Conspiracy of the Great Powers Recourse to the myth of the conspiracy of the Great Powers offered the anti-Venizelist press an easy explanation for the Asia Minor disaster – one which did not blame the anti-Venizelist governments, and which determined who the enemies and the friends of the country were. This myth blamed the betrayal of the national interests and the subversion of the national integrity on Greece’s allies, who were transformed into another, external, enemy. The myth of the conspiracy was invoked even before the disaster, when the Allies started to plan a new conference in Venice to find a lasting solution for the Eastern Question and put an end to the dispute between the Greeks and the Turks. The anti-Venizelist newspapers, especially Kathimerini, considered the discussions on a conference in Venice as a French initiative, which sought to protect its protégé, Kemal, exhausted as he was by the hard struggles of the recent past. Although France offered him needed weapons as well as encouragement and advice, it was not enough, as the Turkish forces had been devastated in the fight against the Greek army.97 However, Greece had gained nothing from previous meetings, as ‘the Powers primarily supported their own interests and their decisions were based upon what was best for them’. The Venice Conference could not be an exception. The only option that Greece had was to take its own decisions.98 The myth reached it peak when the Turks entered Smyrna. There was a clamour in the Athenian newspapers about the placid attitude of the Allies while the Turks were committing atrocities and burning the Christian quarters. The Allies were accused of criminal indifference, while Christians who were begging for their help were being slaughtered in front of their eyes.99 The repetition of the word ‘Christians’ offered a religious justification of the duty that the Allies had to protect their co-religionists from the Turks. The Allies’ refusal to do so provided a powerful, emotional and easily understood negative message to the public. The testimonies of refugees arriving at Piraeus who recounted the unhelpful attitude of the Allied fleet were used by the newspapers to shape readers’ perceptions by establishing a negative image of the Allies. Emphasis was given to descriptions of Allied



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actions, for instance when a Christian woman, after swimming from the coast, arrived near an Allied vessel and tried to get on board, she was cruelly beaten by crew members and thrown back into the sea. After she swam back to the coast she was butchered by the Turks who were waiting for her. ‘They forgot that they were powerful and Christians,’ wrote the newspapers. The French were accused of being directly responsible for what transpired in Smyrna as ‘they had supplied weapons to the Turks which enabled the Turks to murder Christians’, and they had not hesitated to sign the ‘Franklin-Bouillon agreement’ as the ‘price for the blood shed by the innocent’.100 The French press was also criticised for announcing to its readers, one day after Smyrna fell into Turkish hands, that ‘Smyrna had been liberated’. The French newspapers wrote nothing about the slaughter, and considered ‘the victims responsible for the burning of Smyrna’.101 The French were also accused, along with the Italians, of ‘permitting only their nationals to board their vessels, and of being apathetic towards the Greeks, the Armenians and the other nationals’.102 The anti-Venizelist press reminded their readers of the events of the past, and gave their own explanation for them when, after Venizelos had formed a provisional government in Salonika in 1916, British and French forces had landed in Piraeus and Athens to enforce neutrality in the areas controlled by the royalist government, an action which proved, according to the anti-Venizelist press, the anti-Greek policy of France and its true intentions. ‘. . . French warships opened fire on Athens because a few French sailors had been murdered in Athens, victims of a naive captain. Greece was condemned by the French and forced to satisfy their demands and suffer the tribulations of a blockade’.103 These previous experiences, coupled with the latest events, determined the negative portrayal of France. At the same time, they legitimised the political ideology contained in the propaganda of the anti-Venizelist press, not only during the years of WW1 but also when they had come to power in 1920. Finally the British were criticised for being ‘an indifferent audience to the unfolding tragedy’104 and for ‘using American testimonies in order to inform the world about Turkish atrocities’, while when British vessels had the power to prevent the atrocities, they took no measures against the ‘butchers’.105 It was also stated in the press that ‘whilst the massacre was going on, strains of music were heard issuing from a band on a British man-of-war’.106 The British were accused of tolerating ‘the Franco-Turkish agreement’, ‘the preparation of the Kemalist army’, ‘the formation of the Kemalist state’, ‘the alliance of the Bolsheviks [with the Turks]’, ‘the [Turkish] propaganda in co-operation with the Bolshevik authorities’, all to demonstrate British involvement in the conspiracy.107

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The Allies’ conspiracy allowed the Turks to carry on with their activities. Accounts of atrocities, in hideous detail, to manipulate the emotions of the Greek public, dominated the reporting of the fall of Smyrna. The image of the Turks was presented in accordance with the stereotypical image of Greece’s traditional enemy, i.e. as cruel, revengeful and bloodthirsty. Moreover they were an enemy from whose barbaric mania no one could escape: Greeks and foreigners, young and old, men, women and children, animate and inanimate, all suffered the Turks’ mania for revenge, and all had to endure looting, plundering, arson, rape, torture and murder. All the Turkish forces took part – Chettes, regular army and native Turks; there were times when the native Turks led the Chettes. The murders were isolated at first, then they became collective. Greek and the Armenian clerics did not escape the Turkish mania for murder. For Greek society, which was deeply religious, the slaughter of the Greek clerics marked the peak of the Turks’ barbarity and the summit of their ferocity. The Archbishop of Smyrna, Chrysostomos, was among the victims. The Athenian newspapers made extensive reference to his cruel death, making him a symbol of martyrdom. The crowd seized him, and after dressing him in the white coat of a barber started beating and reviling him. Knives were drawn, and the Archbishop was horribly mutilated before he died. A Turk from Crete whom Chrysostomos had previously helped put an end to his agony by shooting him four times.108 The newspapers were full of such eye-witness details. There was an imaginative and drastically polarised division between ‘us’ and ‘them’, a framework created mainly by passion and prejudices, such divisions always coming about when one society thinks of another society as different from itself.109 On the one hand, there was the ‘Good Greek’ who was the victim, who went to ‘Greek’ Smyrna, to ‘liberate’ it and, on the other, there was the ‘Vicious Turk’, the enemy, the ‘butcher’, who was bloodthirsty, revengeful, with no moral hesitation, brutal, cruel, inhuman, who went to Smyrna to destroy it. It was ‘we’ who were suffering, who were mourning and it was ‘they’ who were celebrating their victory in the streets of Smyrna and Constantinople. These generalisations applied to stereotypes which had survived many experiences and were capable of adapting to the recent events and confirm the Turks as menacing and murderous aggressors. The high proportion of stories reporting atrocities in Smyrna, which created only negative images of the Turks, merely confirmed the worst Greek suspicions of Turkish barbarity and provided a justification for the newspapers’ general animosity towards the Turks. In addition it made the Allies’ ‘conspiracy’ seem even worse.



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The Venizelist press, though it did not employ the myth of the Allied conspiracy, was against Greek participation at the Venice conference, considering that its timing was not favourable to Greek interests and that the Great Powers involved had their own agenda. This was obvious because the French and Italians had initiated the discussions on the necessity of such a conference. The Venizelist press did not fail to show its support for Great Britain, which had accepted the French and Italian proposals with reservations.110 It suggested that Greece should take advantage of its alliance with Serbia and have it on its side when it claimed its rights at the Venice Conference.111 However, for a short time it also mobilised the myth of the conspiracy when the Allies did not prevent the Turks from committing their atrocities, and when the Allied captains and their officers, instead of intervening to stop the slaughter, just ‘showed simple curiosity’, ‘took photographs of the bloody scenes’,112 and ‘flashed their searchlight on the Asian monsters’.113 ‘The attitude of the victors of the European War towards the Greeks of Asia Minor exposed their callousness to the World’, wrote Patris. They shared the heaviest responsibility for the Asia Minor tragedy. They had to avert it . . . because they set the freedom of the small nations as their goals. More than any other country Greece, that was irredentist until the end of the European war, had the right to be liberated, as it was on the side of the Entente and for this reason it suffered from severe German and Turkish persecution.114 The only people who were not said to be involved in the conspiracy were the Americans. The US men-of-war were highly praised in the Athenian press, and gratitude was expressed for their behaviour towards Greek civilians. They were considered to be the only brave saviours of the innocent, when all the others did not deserve their reputations as defenders of the weak. When the other Powers had abandoned the Christians, the Americans did everything in their power to save them, and thanks to them many Greeks had been saved.115 3. The Myth of the Conspiracy of the Internal Enemies The National Schism mandated that political opponents be labelled as internal conspirators. According to the Venizelist press, the main conspirators were the members of the anti-Venizelist government who were considered a ‘gang’, ‘the most obscene demagogues’, a ‘Pythia of the false and fake optimism for so many months’,116 and the ‘executioners of the country

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and the will of the people’.117 The Venizelist press demanded the punishment of those who were responsible for the disaster. The anti-Venizelists, in power when the Greek army was defeated, were the target.118 The Venizelist newspapers reminded their readers that when the antiVenizelists came to power ‘Greece was great, rich, glorious and ready to capture Constantinople and to create a new Greek state in the Pontus’. What they managed to achieve was to lead the country to ‘mutilation, bankruptcy, the burial of the national hopes, and defeat’. If they remained in power, they would lead the country to its death. Venizelos had suggested solutions which would have saved Greece from the disaster but ministers, blinded by political hatred, had gone in the opposite direction to Venizelos’s policy and led the country into disaster. Even when the disaster was upon them, they remained in denial, seeking instead to impose their will through martial law.119 The Venizelist journalist Exintaris identified the enemy with the rulers: ‘They are the true enemy, the only enemy.’ Exintaris enumerated their crimes: first, ‘they had removed the officers who were most experienced in fighting’; second, ‘they had created discord and incited the enemy’; third, ‘they had charged the army to find a solution which would serve their political interests’; fourth, ‘they had removed troops from Asia Minor to Thrace for the “insane” attempt on Constantinople’; finally, ‘they had put the blame for the national bankruptcy on the army’.120 Behind their actions was a ‘devilish plot’ which they organised ‘with underhand and cowardly methods’ for ‘the sake of their own interests’.121 As the leader of the anti-Venizelist camp, the ‘conspirator-in-chief ’ was Gounaris, who had a devilish, rotten personality which was reflected in his face: ‘a pale man’ who ‘did not feel the need to hide his face, or to withdraw to the half-darkness of a shadow in front of such a great national humiliation’, but who felt a secret pleasure and therefore was ready to ‘hold himself upright’.122 The description of his personality helped the Venizelist press to interpret Gounaris’s political behaviour. His ‘narrow-mindedness’ determined his only concern and interest, which was ‘to remain in power’ despite the condition in which the country found itself.123 His devilish nature and his superficiality ‘gave new life and vigour’ to ‘a crumbling Turkey’.124 Stergiadis, according to the Venizelist press, was also a member of the ‘gang’ of conspirators. The man who Venizelos had appointed as ‘the guardian of Smyrna and Ionia’ had contributed with his ‘blind hatred’ and his ‘unheard-of stupidity’ to the ‘stupidity’ of the ‘horrible November vampires’. Stergiadis was characterised as ‘psychotic’ and ‘pompous’. He had tried to play the role of the ‘creator of Great Greece’ in the same way



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that the ‘frog tried to imitate an ox’125 (in Aesop’s fable ‘The Frog and the Ox’, where the frog’s self-conceit leads to self-destruction). For the anti-Venizelist press, the Venizelists had conspired with the Great Powers. They were the ‘sappers of liberty and the independence of the state’, ‘the anti-regime confederation of all the unscrupulous and malicious elements of Venizelist adventurism’ who took advantage of the ‘good faith and the calm and unsuspecting condition of their victims and conspired against the regime and planned coups, disorders and bloodsheds’, and finally ‘drove Greece to disaster with their own initiatives’, which had started on 2 May 1919.126 The leader of the conspiracy was Venizelos, who was considered to be a great ‘liar’ as he sought’to justify his actions, which had led to the National Schism he had inflicted on the country. Therefore ‘he lied to the people’ about the ‘permanent acquisition’ of Asia Minor, because ‘he needed to pretend to the people that he had succeeded in what he pursued since 1915, when he dragged the country to an internal rending’.127 IV 1. The Trial of the Six and the Treaty of Lausanne The Greek army divisions which had left Asia Minor after their defeat had taken refuge on the islands of Chios and Lesbos. Their morale was low and they were in a state of dissolution. Meanwhile, the most dynamic officers took charge, and the Venizelist Colonel Plastiras and the moderate Constantinist Colonel Gonatas emerged as leaders of the revolutionary tendencies of those younger officers who were demanding action in an attempt to exorcise the shame of their defeat. The ‘Revolution’ assumed a dual role: to strengthen the Greek army in Thrace so as to upset the plans of the Allies to transfer Eastern Thrace to the Turks and to punish those who were considered responsible for the disaster. The establishment of the Revolution in September 1922 and the involvement of the Greek army in the usurpation of political power was the outcome of the failure of the main political parties to control the critical situation in which the country found itself. Although patriotism was considered the main motive of the officers, gradually the Revolution lost its patriotic character, as extreme Venizelist officers managed to dominate it. These officers were more interested in promoting their extremist party goals than in promoting the goals of the Revolution. One of these goals was to get rid of their political opponents, in one of the most extreme acts in the history of the National Schism: the trial and execution of the ‘Six’ – Gounaris, Stratos, Protopapadakis, Baltatzis, Theotokis and Hatzianestis

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were sentenced to death, and summarily executed soon after the verdict was announced at 11 a.m on 14/27 November 1922. During the trial, censorship of the press prevailed. The Revolution merely provided a summary of the proceedings of the trial to the press, exercising as it did control over the domestic and international news published in the newspapers.128 The Venizelist newspapers at first supported the Revolution, for patriotic reasons,129 in contrast with the anti-Venizelist newspapers, which adopted a lukewarm attitude.130 However, from the very beginning some Venizelist titles did not hesitate to connect the Revolution with the Liberal Party, and soon they were transformed from organs of the Revolution into organs of extremist Venizelist officers. Before and during the trial the Venizelist newspapers became part of the trial process. This occurred because, by openly advocating the guilt of the Six, they interfered with the accused’s right to a fair trial. The anti-Venizelist press was strictly censored, and their editors were deeply afraid of retaliation from the extreme Venizelist officers.131 Thus they were restricted to a conciliatory role, making constant appeals for tranquillity, peace and the unification of the country.132 For its part, Rizospastis was suspicious from the outset about the patriotic character of the ‘Revolution’,133 though it adopted the same attitude as the Venizelist newspapers towards the trial of the Six. The trial represented more than the punishment of those who had harmed the national interests of the country. It also expressed the anger of the Socialist/Communist faction towards the old political system, and provided a unique opportunity to punish members of the old establishment. Rizospastis later went further, and called for the punishment of the Venizelists who had started the Asia Minor campaign.134 Stricter censorship was imposed on the newspaper.135 Initially the execution of the Six put Venizelos, who represented Greece in Lausanne, in a difficult position; but in the long term it did not influence the negotiations. The trial and subsequent execution of the Six was one of the major divisive issues between the two leading political camps as the National Schism reached its peak. The Treaty of Lausanne, which was signed in summer 1923 after months of negotiations, officially put an end to the unrealistic dream of the Megali Idea, and to Greek nationalism in that particular guise. Both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist newspapers now agreed that every effort must be made to restore tranquillity in the country. However, the Venizelist press used more sentimental language, and did not avoid reminding its readers of the destruction of the country and how the ‘Revolution’ had saved it from complete disaster.136 In the anti-Venizelist press the Asia Minor disaster was presented as a military accident, after



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which the people had managed to recover and had every right to proceed with their new lives. In Kathimerini’s leader on 27 July 1923, George Vlachos wrote that Greece was interested in the future and concerned with how the nation could restore a stable constitutional and legal government. The leader of the following day was even more optimistic. No reference was made to the Megali Idea.137 Greece now turned inwards to adopt new goals, which aimed to achieve a new, peaceful political life in the territories that had been determined as Greek by the Treaty of Lausanne. Conclusion One of the factors – but not the most important one – which contributed to the decay of the Greek army was the propaganda exercised by the press, particularly the socialist/communist publications. On the mainland the anti-Venizelist titles continued as organs of the state, while the Venizelist press pursued its typical strategy of waiting for the government to fail in its projects and then to attack it. Because the mainstream press, opposition and government, never ceased to be partisans of irredentist nationalism, the final offensive united the majority of Athenian newspapers. Surprisingly the exception was Kathimerini which, while the army was still fighting in Asia Minor, insisted on the soldiers’ returning home. It was criticised by both Venizelist and antiVenizelist newspapers for propagating defeatist propaganda. Kathimerini’s position, whether it reflected the government’s desire to extricate itself from Asia Minor or genuine dissent over the army’s fate, indicated that the attempt to keep up morale at home by both the Venizelist and anti-Venizelist titles could not last long. After the defeat, there was a general clamour in the Greek press for the government’s resignation, which followed a few days later. The burning of Smyrna united the newspapers behind ‘good’ Greek irredentist nationalism. Page after page, day in and day out, was devoted to the details of the atrocities committed by the Turks, especially the deliberate lighting and spreading of the fire. Both the atrocities and the fire confirmed in the Greek people’s mind the necessity of standing together against their old external enemy, the Turks. However, another external enemy was revealed: the Allies, who had conspired against Greece in many ways, especially by giving weapons to the Turks to commit their acts of savagery and by doing nothing to prevent the violence unleashed against Smyrna’s Christian population. The Venizelist and anti-Venizelist press claimed that its political opponents had participated in an internal conspiracy to weaken the nation, and were consequently greatly responsible for the disaster.

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The life of the Triantafyllakos’s government would turn out to be very short. In a few days the remnants of the army, although in a state of dissolution, would assume power and impose a military dictatorship. The Revolution, as it is known, would carry with it the burden of being judge and jury in an effort to exorcise the demons associated with the Asia Minor disaster. The trial of the Six, scapegoats, allowed the press to play a part in determining the course of retribution. For almost a century the Greeks were imbued with the unrealistic dream of the Megali Idea. The most important politicians were its partisans; so too were the most important newspaper owners, editors and journalists. For all of them it was attainable and justified. Events, however, shattered these beliefs, and the triumphant Turkish entry into Smyrna ended them in the most traumatic and obscene way. After the disaster, and especially after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, the goals of the country changed completely, into more realistic and more ‘internal’ ones, and the Megali Idea ceded place to the attempt to restore normal civic life in Greece, and to assimilate the Greek populations of Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace into the bosom of Greek society. The memories of the Asia Minor Greeks were balanced by their need to survive and to get on with their daily lives.

9 Conclusion

This book has demonstrated the close relationship which the government and political parties had with the Athenian press during the years 1919 to 1922. Among the issues examined are: readership and circulation; pressgovernment relations; press and political party relations (including the ‘marginal’ left); propaganda exercised by the press, with particular emphasis on political myths; the accuracy and quality of information published in the press; the connection of the press with nationalism and the National Schism; and the role of foreign intervention. Since the press has a close relationship with its readership, the examination of the press cannot be accomplished without taking into consideration factors such as circulation and readership, which are not independent of the cultural and social make-up of the society in question. Greece was an underdeveloped and largely rural country in the years 1919–22. The majority of the population were peasants: 49.31 per cent in 1920, increasing to 53.56 per cent in 1928 – a trend opposite to that experienced by a country undergoing rapid industrialisation. The social make-up of a population is closely connected with its cultural level. In Greece there was a high percentage of illiterate people – in 1920, 58 per cent of the population; by 1928 this had reduced to 50 per cent, still an extraordinarily high percentage. Included in the illiterate category were not only people who were unable to read, but also others who were incapable of understanding the meaning of what they read. The circulation of the Athenian newspapers was accordingly low, as was confirmed by data derived from six documents held in TNA, covering the years 1920, 1923 and 1924. Similar information was provided in the 1927 census carried out by the Greek National Statistical Service. However, the readership of the newspapers was in fact greater than sales figures suggest, as men read the news aloud in coffee houses for the benefit of those present who were illiterate.

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For the present study 12 newspapers were chosen as a corpus according to the size of their print runs: Kathimerini, Patris, Eleftheron Vima, Estia, Ethnos, Akropolis, Politia, Rizospastis, Scrip, Embros, Esperini and Eleftheros Typos. The Athenian press of the period was as divided as the political forces of the country, into Venizelist, anti-Venizelist and Socialist/Communist. With the exception of Rizospastis, all titles were privately owned, which is elsewhere said to provide a final guarantee of the press’s independence from political pressure and executive interference. In the Greek case, however, the press was far from being an independent ‘fourth estate’. In substance, each newspaper operated as an organised voice promoting the programme of a particular party. The newspapers were the organs through which the political parties propagated their systematic and organised propaganda. More than that, newspaper owners and editors were not only closely allied to politicians but actively involved in politics or, as in the cases of Georgios Vlachos and Dimitris Lambrakis, they were strongly and actively involved behind the scenes. Sometimes personal relations between owners and politicians determined the attitude of the newspaper, e.g. Giannaros’s relations with Venizelos. In the years 1919–22 the Greek state was in crisis. When other countries were trying to recover from the First World War, Greece found itself involved in an ill-conceived campaign in Asia Minor which lasted threeand-a-half years, ultimately resulting in the disaster of 1922, with the catastrophic defeat of the army and the permanent uprooting of the Asia Minor Greeks from their homeland. Throughout the campaign, the press provided the public with the main source of news from the front. It was a method of disseminating modern propaganda against the enemy, both internal (political opponents) and external, by exploiting the public’s prejudices and enthusiasm; it served as a means of raising the army’s morale, and then of maintaining it at a high level; and it provided a mechanism by which the party in office exercised control, withheld information, imposed censorship, and incited fanaticism by justifying extreme acts, e.g. attacks and assassinations against its political opponents. Press propaganda was closely connected with the three major issues of irredentist nationalism, the ethnikos dichasmos and foreign intervention. The third of these issues surfaced in the form of recommendations and warnings to the press and governments, but was not always effective in bending the press and government to the will of the Powers. Even foreign diplomats could be victims of the press, when this served the goals of the government. All the newspapers, both Venizelist and anti-Venizelist (but with the exception of Rizospastis), supported the nationalist vision of the Megali Idea.

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Building on a genuine, popular enthusiasm for irredentist nationalism, there was a systematic instilling of irredentist nationalist ideology through the press, directed by the government. It promoted irredentist nationalism as an ideology of development, which contrasted with ‘bad’ Turkish nationalism, which led to underdevelopment. The former was an ideology of freedom, in contrast to the oppression and violence associated with Turkish nationalism. The press was also used to foster an imagined ‘nation’ amongst the people, a ‘nation’ which provided the justification for sacrifice and even death in the interests of a state ‘protecting’ its citizens. Only Rizospastis opposed this, with an internationalist ideology which subsequently rejected Greek nationalism as imperialistic. It criticised the state version of ‘national unity’ as an illusion, emphasising the daily agony of the working classes’ struggle for self-preservation. The newspapers’ fervent irredentist nationalism allowed for the stereotypical presentation of Greece’s external enemies and friends. Throughout the Asia Minor campaign the Turks were presented as the enemy of old. The description, in gruesome detail, of atrocities committed by the Turks was almost a daily phenomenon, aimed at inciting the hatred of the people and simultaneously serving the government’s nationalist goals. At the beginning of 1919, when the memories of the Great War were still intense, the Bulgarians were also represented as external enemies, and for the same reason their atrocities were reported in the pages of the newspapers. Meanwhile, the newspapers deliberately ignored Greek atrocities, demonstrating a clear lack of balance. The external enemies of the country were not only those who were traditionally the obstacle to the realisation of the national goals, but all who hindered the national destiny of Greece – to become ‘Great Greece’. The Allies, although initially presented as friends who wished to serve Greece’s interests, were gradually transformed into enemies according to the stance they adopted. Thus in 1919, when the Italians endangered Greece’s interests in Asia Minor with their pre-emptive moves, they were presented as enemies, and demonised in both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist press. The preservation of friendship with the Allies, who had originally supported the Greek claims and stood shoulder to shoulder with Greece against the enemy, was the other goal of the propaganda exercised by the press. Cordial relations with the friendly Allies were cultivated in the newspapers, and gratitude for their support was expressed in an effort to stimulate pro-Allied emotions at home. During Venizelos’s premiership, the British and French were considered to be friends of Greece. The anti-Venizelists initially followed suit when

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they assumed power, but their stance was not maintained. While the British continued to be portrayed as friends, attitudes towards the French gradually changed, especially after their underhand dealings with the Kemalists became apparent. Anti-French campaigns became a common phenomenon in the anti-Venizelist press, with France treated as a hateful enemy; indeed, any news which could be used to abuse France was published. In certain cases, all the Allies, including the British, were presented as enemies by the pro-government anti-Venizelist newspapers. On the contrary, the Venizelist press, having a traditionally pro-Entente stance, adopted a more moderate attitude, and avoided abusing the Allies and presenting them as enemies. However, they also attacked them after the defeat of the Greek army in Asia Minor and the burning of Smyrna. The French, in particular, were considered responsible for the disaster, as they had provided economic and material aid to the Kemalists. Both the French and the British were accused in all the newspapers of being completely indifferent to Turkish atrocities committed in front of their eyes at Smyrna. Rizospastis was the only newspaper in which the Allies were presented as the enemies of the country from the very beginning. It accused them of being imperialists and of taking advantage of Greece in order to promote their own interests. On the contrary, for Rizospastis Greece’s friends were considered to be the Soviets, and the best solution for the country would be to achieve an understanding with them. The newspaper which had adopted SEKE’s internationalist orientation became the primary propaganda vehicle in Greece, used to fight the ideological war against capitalism and to promote the struggle for world revolution. The internal enemies were political opponents. In this case the perpetuation of the National Schism during the years of the Asia Minor campaign should be taken into consideration, as it determined how internal enemies were presented in the press. For the Venizelist newspapers, these internal enemies were identified as the anti-Venizelists and the Communists – although at the beginning attempts were made to reach an understanding with the latter. For the anti-Venizelist newspapers, the internal enemies were the Venizelists and the Communists. Finally, Rizospastis gave ‘a class-type interpretation’: its internal enemies were both bourgeois parties. The entire Athenian press invoked myths in order to define those they considered to be the friends and the enemies of the country. Mythology, – such as the myth of the protection, the myth of the conspiracy, the myth of the Saviour, the myth of the tyrant, the myth of the external enemy, the myth of the powerful army, the myth of the Bolshevist threat ,– was constantly repackaged by the press in order to justify the political decisions and acts

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which the newspapers supported and to criticise their political opponents. Much of the power of the myths used was derived from the feeling that the same stories were written or read over and over again. Themes were rearticulated and reinterpreted over time. But the stories were not reinvented every time that the need arose; instead, they drew on ‘the inventory of discourse which had been established over time’.1 There was also propaganda directed towards civilians, with the intention of inciting the fighting spirit of the people by exploiting their prejudices and enthusiasms. A nation with a high morale could perform with enthusiasm and determination all the tasks which had arisen because of the war. However, in the case of the Greek people propaganda directed at civilians was not as successful as expected, especially after the prolongation of the war, which exhausted the country both financially and morally. Propaganda was also invoked within the army, with the intention of strengthening soldiers’ morale; but this also could not be considered successful, judging by the high number of desertions. At the same time, counter-propaganda was disseminated at the front to persuade soldiers to stop fighting. The communists and their newspaper, Rizospastis, played the leading role in promoting such propaganda which, however, although one of the factors that seemed to weaken the morale of the soldiers at the front, was not the only one. The way the Athenian newspapers were used by the enemy for propaganda purposes is another important issue, which could become the subject of a future research project. The Kemalists threw copies of Greek newspapers among the soldiers in the opposing trenches in an intense war of propaganda, as the two armies engaged in military conflict. All the governments adopted some methods in common in order to control the newspapers. The methods of the party in power were the following. The Imposition of a ‘State of Siege’ Venizelos’s government had imposed a state of siege on Athens on 20 July 1917 by royal decree, and this was extended to the rest of the country in the following months, as it was a period of wartime for Greece, belatedly participating in the Great War on the side of the Allies. However, although restrictions were raised in France, Britain and the United States after the end of the conflict, it was not until 1920 that the ‘state of siege was raised in Greece (by the decree of 11 September 1920) to facilitate campaigning for the general election. For Venizelos’s government the war offered the pretext it needed to control what was written in the Athenian press, particularly in the opposition press, when Venizelos himself was absent from the country

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for long periods dealing with the difficult diplomatic negotiations in Paris. However, the government was attacked more and more by the opposition newspapers, particularly regarding censorship and martial law. Nevertheless, when the anti-Venizelists came to power they adopted measures similar to those of the Venizelist regime. The state of siege was partly re-imposed on 1 April 1921 in the Peloponnese, Sterea Ellada, Thessaly, Epirus and Macedonia, and on all the Greek islands. This state of siege included restrictions limiting press freedom: all mention of news and information concerning the army, the navy and events from the front was forbidden. With the royal decree of 6 June 1921 the government imposed a further state of siege on security grounds, as new military operations were about to begin. It was a legitimate pretext by which the government could control not only news from the front but also criticism from its political opponents. In several cases, the press chose to lie and distort events, an issue which closely related to the strict censorship which was in place. By restricting access to information a false picture was built up, and a gap in understanding of what was happening at the front was created among the public. Much of the information that entered the public domain through the Athenian press was exaggerated, distorted and misrepresented. When reverses at the front became known, the pro-government press attempted to cover them up, while the opposition newspapers used the situation in Asia Minor to attack the government and prove its unreliability. They chose to distort the atrocities of the first day of the occupation of Smyrna by the Greek army, which were presented as minor and unimportant incidents. They also covered up the results of the Allied Commission of Inquiry. No details regarding the atrocities committed by the Greek army were published in the press. The truth regarding the outcome of the military operations was not published not only to avoid weakening the home front, but also to avoid endangering the position of the government. However, even when the truth was revealed, it was exposed by the opposition press solely in order to attack the government, e.g. the true picture regarding the military undertakings of the spring and summer of 1921 was revealed by the Venizelist press to prove that the government was lying to the public. In several cases the public was not informed about the outcome of diplomatic negotiations. ‘Propaganda of deed’ This involved acts of violence, attacks, assassinations, the imprisonment of political opponents, and the wrecking of opposition newspapers’ offices. It was initiated primarily for its psychological effect: to cause fear and

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confusion amongst political opponents, to demonstrate strength, or to take revenge. Although ‘propaganda of deed’ was a measure adopted by autocratic regimes as an instrument of state power, both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist governments adopted similar measures in order to demoralise their political opponents. In this case the press played the role of both persecutor and victim – of the former through its leading articles, which incited and then justified the violent acts carried out exercised by extremist members of the relevant political camp. In this way the press became the means of the ‘propaganda of deed’. It became a victim when the editors of the newspapers themselves became the target of the attacks, resulting in assassinations and wrecked newspaper offices. Several cases occurred during the years 1921–2: (a) Venizelos’s government did not hesitate to take harsh measures against its political opponents when articles it did not like were published in the opposition newspapers, for example, in the case of Petsopoulos, editor of Rizospastis, who was imprisoned in February 1919. In summer 1920 the extremists in the Venizelist camp were responsible for the ‘Iouliana’ – riots which included the wrecking of the offices of several anti-Venizelist newspapers, especially those of Kathimerini and Rizospastis, as well as the murder of the anti-Venizelist, Ion Dragoumis. The Venizelist newspapers justified the riots by considering them the ‘natural’ consequence of the attempt on Venizelos’s life, and the revenge of the Greek people on those who had instigated the attack. The ‘Iouliana’ was even considered a divine punishment on the opposition. (b) Several attacks and assassinations also occurred when the anti-Venizelists came to power. Violent groups under the name of ‘People’s Political Clubs’ were responsible for these attacks. These groups, formed during the pre-electoral period to organise the the United Opposition’s election campaign, turned violent after the elections and were responsible for several attacks on the government’s political opponents. Two leading anti-Venizelist newspapers, Kathimerini and Esperini, supported their illegal acts; indeed, the latter was considered the Clubs’ organ. In December 1920 Fatseas’s murder, in ‘revenge’ for the attempt on Alexandros Dragoumis’s life in Constantinople by the Venizelists, was carried out by the Clubs. In spring 1921 the government proceeded to arrest two Venizelists, Lambrakis and Papandreou, for their articles in Patris, the pretext being that the articles endangered the national interest of the country. At the same

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The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath time a threat against Papanastassiou by the People’s Political Clubs was published in an anti-Venizelist newspaper. In August of the same year the editor of the Venizelist newspaper Eleftheros Typos and his colleague Spyros Melas were both attacked in the centre of Athens. Melas was not only assaulted, but also arrested without due cause. In December of the same year an attempt on Kountouriotis’s life was made. Both the attacks and the attempt on Kountouriotis’s life were considered by the most fanatical anti-Venizelist newspapers to be justified. Finally, in February 1922, a few days after the publication of the ‘Republican Manifesto’ in Eleftheros Typos, its editor was murdered. Although even the anti-Venizelist newspapers condemned the crime, they considered the Venizelists responsible since, it was claimed, they themselves had begun the spiral of assassinations. Kavafakis’ murder was even justified as an ‘act of defence’.

Both the Venizelist and the anti-Venizelist governments sought to influence reporting and were selective in news distribution They gave exclusive information and provided special treatment to journalists from their favoured titles. Eleftheros Typos was Venizelos’s favourite newspaper at the Paris Peace Conference, for example, because of the personal relationship he had with its editor, Andreas Kavafakis. Venizelos rewarded the keen support which the newspaper gave his government with exclusive information: thus Eleftheros Typos was the only newspaper to publish the memorandum through which Venizelos officially presented Greek claims at the Supreme Council. It was also the newspaper to which Venizelos granted interviews. The same occurred in February 1921, when Calogeropoulos and Gounaris showed their preference for the journalists of the anti-Venizelist newspapers. Vlachos, the editor of Kathimerini, was the favoured recipient of exclusive information. Giannaros, the other newspaper proprietor with a close relationship to the anti-Venizelist government, attempted to travel to London but was prevented from doing so by the Allies, because he had the ‘worst possible anti-Allied record’. The press is a voice which cannot be ignored, especially in the twentieth century, when the war of propaganda came of age. Propaganda cannot be ignored, even in cases like the Athenian press, where the form it took was very far from ideal. In crucial periods in Greece, such as the years 1919–22, a transition occurred not only in politics, but also in the press. The Athenian press, through the articles it published, mirrored a highly polarised society which sought to overcome its internal problems through irredentist nationalism. The Athenian press supported such nationalism,

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perpetuated the National Schism, and had such close relations with the government and the political parties that it could not be considered in any way independent. By studying the press, we can better understand, explain and evaluate Greek politics, Greece’s relationship with the Great Powers and Turkey, and the modern identity of the country, its modern ideals and its modern orientations.

APPENDIX

More extensive documentation regarding the circulation of newspapers in Greece was found in the TNA in London than in the Greek archives. Specifically, the papers of the British Foreign Office General Correspondence proved to be an invaluable source of information. Six documents were found - one from the year 1920, three from the year 1923 and two from the year 1924 - which provided information regarding the political leanings and the circulation of the Greek newspapers during these years and proved how the upheavals in the political scene of Greece were reflected in the circulation of individual newspaper titles and how close the relationship between the press and the political parties was. Although information regarding the years 1919, 1921 and 1922 was not found, the cases which are available help us to draw conclusions regarding the circulation of the newspapers, as they are based on the ‘theory of sampling’. In the present case the sample was determined by the availability of material. For most cases, the analysis of a small sample can produce as valid a result as the analysis of a larger one.1 In particular, the analysis of the present samples can be as valid as the analysis of samples of the years 1919, 1921, 1922 if they had been found. From the present samples we can make useful comparisons of data: (a) between the circulation of newspapers in Athens and in the provinces, (b) regarding the total circulation of newspapers nationwide and (c) from different time periods and draw conclusions (from the average of each year nationwide) regarding the change of the circulation of individual titles during the 1920s. However, a factor which should be taken into consideration is whether the information that is available is verifiable. In all six cases the source of the information remained anonymous, an element that should make one examine the figures with caution. In the first case, the SIS sent the information to the Foreign Office. In the other cases, members of the British Embassy in Athens sent the information.

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The first document credits Patris in the summer of 1920 with a daily circulation of 23,000, the highest circulation. Rizospastis with a circulation of 4,000 had the lowest. Figure A.1 shows a comparison between the circulation of the Athenian newspapers in Athens and the provinces and Figure A.2 presents a comparison of the total circulation of the newspapers.2 The three other documents were from 1923 and derived, according to Charles Bentinck, the British Chargé d’Affaires in Athens, from a reliable though unofficial and undisclosed source. The first was sent by Bentinck to Curzon, the Foreign Secretary, in March and the second in June of the same year. In the third document brief data regarding the circulation of the newspapers was provided but no figures were given. In the March document there is greater sophistication with the newspapers divided into morning and evening titles and their allegiance given as Venizelist and anti-Venizelist. The three documents showed how the political scene was reflected in the changing circulation of the Athenian press. The first document suggests that among of the morning newspapers Eleftheron Vima, a moderate Venizelist title, enjoyed the highest circulation with 35,000 copies sold daily, thereby supplanting the Venizelist title Eleftheros Typos. Finally, Patris had suffered a significant decline in sales by 1923. In fact all the anti-Venizelist newspapers experienced falling circulation after 1920.3 Figure A.3 presents a comparison of the circulation of the newspapers in Athens and in the provinces and Figure A.4 compares the total circulation of the Athenian newspapers.

Figure A.1 Circulation in Athens and provinces in 1920 according to SIS’s Statement

Appendix

Figure A.2 Total circulation in 1920 according to SIS’s statement

Figure A.3 Circulation in Athens and provinces in March 1923

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Figure A.4 Total circulation in March 1923

In the second document of June 1923 the Venizelist title Eleftheron Vima, attributed daily sales of 38,000 copies nationwide, enjoyed the highest circulation. Generally, the circulation of the Venizelist titles had increased while the circulation of the anti-Venizelist titles had declined. However, the fact that in many cases the figures were estimates rather than based upon actual sales figures should be taken into consideration as well as the fact that some newspapers did not publish their sales figures. The predominant position was occupied by Eleftheron Vima, which, with the Venizelist Eleftheros Typos, accounted for more than half of the total circulation of the morning newspapers. Eleftheron Vima and Eleftheros Typos together with the two evening Venizelist newspapers - Estia and Ethnos – made up three-fifths of the total circulation of the Greek press. However, Bentinck did not consider the circulation of the newspapers to be a safe criterion to evaluate political opinion in the country because the leading Venizelist title was read by a large number of people who did not share its political views.4 According to the third document, in November 1923 the newspaper Eleftheron Vima still headed the circulation figures followed by the newspapers Estia, Embros and Eleftheros Typos.5 The following figures (A.5, A.6, A.7) provide further details on circulation which speak for themselves.

Appendix

Figure A.5 Circulation in Athens and provinces in June 1923

Figure A.6 Total circulation in June 1923

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Figure A.7 Total circulation in March and June 1923

The two other documents were sent out, the first in February 1924 by Bentinck, the second in November of the same year by Sir Milne Cheetham, Ambassador in Athens since February 1924. On the eve of the plebiscite to decide whether the country should be a republic, Bentinck sent details of the circulation of the Athenian newspapers to James Ramsay MacDonald, the British Prime Minister, which, although compiled from an unspecified unofficial source, was regarded by Bentinck as reasonably accurate. According to the figures of the first document, Eleftheron Vima maintained its lead over the other newspapers and Estia, which was considered to also be a moderate Venizelist newspaper, was a good second. These newspapers, according to Bentinck, surpassed the other titles as far as reliability and quality were concerned. The pure republican newspapers did not have a very large circulation, whilst the most fervent title of the Royalist press, Scrip, held first place in circulation among the Royalist newspapers and the most moderate, Embros, one of the lowest places. Eleftheros Typos, formerly considered by Bentinck to be a good Venizelist organ, had so degenerated by February 1924 that it had become the organ through which General Pangalos and his associates expressed their views. As it was against the Venizelist government and on the side of those who desired to rush into a republic, Bentinck considered it doubtful whether it was correct to call the newspaper ‘Venizelist’ any longer. J. H. F. McEwen, a Foreign Office

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Figure A.8 Circulation of Athenian newspapers in Athens and Piraeus in 1924 according to Bentinck’s statement

official, minuted how interesting the circulation figures were as they had the potential to shed some light on the amount of support the political parties had, and also predict the result of the forthcoming plebiscite for the establishment of a republic as newspapers with an anti-Monarchical attitude had a combined circulation one-third larger than that enjoyed by the Monarchist titles.6 In November of the same year Cheetham transmitted another statement, which can be compared with Bentinck’s statement, to Ramsay MacDonald concerning the circulation of the Athenian press. The information concerning sales was compiled from the same unofficial source. The two leading Venizelist republican newspapers Eleftheron Vima and Estia still maintained their positions as the leading morning and evening newspapers respectively in Athens and Piraeus.7 Figure A.9 compares the circulation of the newspapers in Athens and in the provinces in November 1924. Figure A.10 presents the circulation of the newspapers nationwide. Finally, Figure A.11 presents a comparison of the total circulation of the individual newspapers in 1920, in 1923 (average for the months March and June) and in 1924 (Cheetham’s statement).

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Figure A.9 Circulation of Athenian newspapers in Athens – Piraeus & Provinces – in November 1924 according to Cheetham’s statement

Figure A.10 Total circulation in November 1924 according to Cheetham’s statement

Appendix

Figure A.11  Total circulation in 1920, 1923 and 1924

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Notes

Introduction 1 The policy of irredentism and expansionism had dominated the politics of the modern Greek state for a century since its inception. (Mavrogordatos, G., Stillborn Republic: Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922-1936, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1983, p. 28). The policy had the form of the dream of the Megali Idea or Great Idea, the vision of the redemption of the ‘unredeemed’ Greeks of the Ottoman Empire by bringing them within the confines of a single Greek state. (Clogg, R., A Short History of Modern Greece, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 76). For details see Ch. 1, p. 11. 2 Veremis, Th., ‘1922: Political Continuations and Realignments in the Greek State’ In Renée Hirschon (ed.), Crossing the Aegean, An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003, p. 58. 3 Rodas, M. L., I Ellada sti Mikran Asian (1918-1922), Athens: Typografia Klisiouni, 1950. 4 Anglelomatis, C. E., Chronikon Megalis Tragodias, Athens: Estia, 1971. 5 Kountouriotis, F., Exinta Chronia Dimosiografia, Athens: n.p., 1975. 6 Passas, I. G., I Agonia enos Ethnous, 2nd ed., Athens: Typ. Karanasi, 1925. 7 Kitromilidis, P., ‘Symvoli sti Meleti tis Mikrasiatikis Tragodias. Tekmiria tis Katastrofis tou Ellinismou tis Vithynias’, Mikrasiatika Chronika, 1972, 15, p. 372. 8 An invaluable bibliographical source for anyone interested in studying the different aspects of the period is Pavlos Hatzimoysis’s bibliography which lists all 2360 works on the Asia Minor campaign and disaster lemmas and reveals the plethora of publications regarding the period: Hatzimoysis, P. Vivliografia 19191978. Mikrasiatiki Ekstratia-Itta-Prosfygia, Athens: Ermis, 1981. Hatzimoysis subsequently enriched his bibliography to include all relevant works produced

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9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

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up to 1992. It has been available in electronic form since 1997: Hatzimoysis, P., Vivliografia 1919-1992. Mikrasiatiki Ekstratia, Prosfygia, Athens: Ermis, 1997. For the Venizelists there are the memoirs of Generals Paraskevopoulos, Mazarakis-Ainian and Danglis. For the anti-Venizelists there is the diary of General Metaxas and the memoirs of General Stratigos. Of the memoirs only A. A. Pallis’s Greece’s Anatolian Venture and After. A Survey of the Diplomatic and Political Aspects of the Greek Expedition to Asia Minor (1915-1922), London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1937 provides an objective interpretation. The memoirs of George Horton, the General Consul of the United States in Smyrna, are also an invaluable source, although his strong philhellenic stance and hatred of the Turks is apparent. Arnold Toynbee’s The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, London: Constable and Company LTD, 1922, the outcome of his visit to Asia Minor as a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, attempts to provide a serious interpretation of the situation in Asia Minor, but is blemished by some inaccuracies. Indicatively I mention the following inaccuracy in page 344: ‘… the Turks, as a nation, are almost ludicrously innocent of the propagandist’s art’. Other inaccuracies can be found in pp. 226, 243, 272. Llewellyn Smith, M., Ionian Vision. Greece in Asia Minor 1919-1922, London: Hurst & Company, 1998. Anderson, B., Imagined Communities, 2nd ed, London: Verso, 1991, p. 25. Zacharopoulos, T. & Paraschos, M. E., Mass Media in Greece: Power, Politics and Privatization, London: Praeger, 1993, p. 15. Zacharopoulos, & Paraschos, Mass Media in Greece, pp. 15-16. Mager, Istoria tou Ellinikou Typou, Vol. I, Athens: A. Dimopoulos, 1957, pp. 9-10. Ibid., pp. 11-13. Ibid., p. 13. Zacharopoulos & Paraschos, Mass Media in Greece, p. 17. Mager, Istoria tou Ellinikou Typou, Vol. I, pp. 19-20. One of the two Ypsilantis brothers. They had both spent years in Russia and Romania and they played an important role in the movement for independence. Mager, Istoria tou Ellinikou Typou, Vol. I, p. 30. Ibid., p. 129. Ibid., pp. 194, 220, 245 & Vol II, pp. 17, 43, 107, 115, 166, 196. Mazower, M., Greece and the Inter-War Economic Crisis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, p. 6. The full idea is detailed in G. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, on pp. 28, 60, 199.

Chapter 1 1 ‘… before I look at the newspapers every morning I must read something else, because reading newspapers very early in the morning lowers man. I must read something else, as I did in Corsica, and then the newspapers. In Corsica, I was

Notes

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

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happy that newspapers were not available to read or that I did not have the obligation to read them.’ Ion Dragoumis, Athens, April 1920, Dragoumis, I., Fylla Imerologiou, Vol. VI, Athens: Ermis, 1987, p. 144. Le Goff, J. & Nora, P. (eds), To Ergo tis Istorias, Athens: Ekdosis Rappa, 1975, p. 53. Ibid, pp. 50–51, 55, 58. Seymour-Ure, C., The Political Impact of Mass Media, London: Constable, 1974, p. 16. Cited in Jones, A., Powers of the Press: Newspapers, Power and the Public in nineteenthcentury England, Aldershot: Scolar, 1996, p. 59. Balta, N., O Ellinikos Emfylios Polemos (1946–1949) mesa apo to Galliko Typo, Athens: Odysseas, 1993, pp. 28–29. Ibid, p. 28. Svolos, A.I., To Neon Syntagma ke e Vasis tou Politevmatos, Athens: n.p., 1928, p. 93. Balta, O Ellinikos Emfylios Polemos, p. 28. Albert, P., O Typos, Athens: Dedalos-Zacharopoulos, 1987, p. 67. McLachlan, D., ‘The Press and Public Opinion’, The British Journal of Sociology, 1955, VI, p. 163. Mackenzie, J.M., Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion 1880–1960, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984, p.3. Carlyle, T., Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History, London: John Long, 1905, pp. 349–350. Curran, J. & Gurevitch, M. (eds.), Mass Media and Society, London: Arnold, 2000, pp. 121, 127, 12 Mill, J., Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press and Law of Nations, London: Kelley, 1986, pp. 17–25. Curran, J., Media and Power, London: Routledge, 2002, p. 225. Curran, J. & Seaton, J., Power Without Responsibility. The Press and the Broadcasting in Britain,. 3rd ed., London: Routledge, 1988, pp. 1–2. However, much of the debate does not go further than Habermas’s first work which was published in German in 1962, but not translated into English until later. Habermas, J., Between Facts and Norms, Cambridge: Polity, 1996, pp. 360, 379–381. Curran, Media and Power, p. 222. Ibid, p. 148. The system is ‘liberal’ in the sense that the political parties tend to alternate in power, the armed forces are under the control of civil authority and freedoms are not undermined by coercive measures. Curran, Media and Power, pp. 231–232. Ibid. Alivizatos, N., I Politiki Thesmi se Krisi 1922–1974. Opsis tis Ellinikis Embirias, Athens: Themelio, 1995, p. 22–25. The ‘state of siege’ is examined in detail below, under the heading ‘Censorship and the Greek State’.

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27 The Megali Idea was the dominant ideology of the Greek State. The paternity of the term was attributed to the leader of the French Party, Ioannis Kolettis, a Hellenised Vlach who had acquired his early political experience as a doctor at the court of Tebelenli Ali Pasha. Ioannis Kolletis was the first to use the term in its modern meaning, but similar sentiments had been expressed earlier. (Clogg, R., ‘The Byzantine Legacy in the Modern Greek World: The Megali Idea’ In Lowell Clucas (ed.), The Byzantine Legacy in Eastern Europe, New York: Boulder, East European Monographs, 1988, pp. 253–255). 28 For more information about the political, ideological and financial crisis during the inter-war period, see Rigos, A., I Defteri Elliniki Dimokratia 1924–1935, Athens: Themelio, 1992. 29 Dimakis, J., ‘The Greek Press’ In Koumoulides, J.T.A. (ed.), Greece in Transition: Essays in the History of Modern Greece 1821–1974, London: Zeno, 1977, p. 209. 30 Ypourgion Ethnikis Ikonomias, Geniki Statistiki Ypiresia tis Ellados-Tmima VI, Statistiki tou Ellinikou Periodikou Typou kata to Etos 1927, Athens: Ethnikon Typografion, 1931. 31 Newspapers which did not send information and those in circulation for less than three months were not included in the survey, nor were those published by the public authorities. 32 The definition of ‘social-political’ is from the ESY census. 33 Ypourgion Ethnikis Ikonomias, Geniki Statistiki Ypiresia tis Ellados-Tmima VI, Statistiki tou Ellinikou Periodikou Typou kata to Etos 1927, pp. 47–50. 34 Megali Elliniki Engyklopedia Drandakis, Vol. X. Athens: O Finix E.P.E., n. d., p. 567. 35 Seymour-Ure, Political Impact of Mass Media, p. 159. 36 Svolos, To Neon Syntagma ke e Vasis tou Politevmatatos, p. 156. 37 Geniki Statistiki Ypiresia tis Ellados, Statistiki Epetiris tis Ellados 1933, Athens: Ethnikon Typografion, 1934, pp. 41, 54, 58. 38 Ibid, pp. 59–60. 39 Ibid. 40 Dimakis, ‘The Greek Press’ In Koumoulides (ed.), Greece in Transition, p. 214. 41 For details see the Appendix. 42 Mitalis, J. & Mager, C., Elliniki Dimosiografia, Athens: Typis Dion. Petsalis, 1939, p. 37. 43 Papadimitriou, D., ‘Typos ke Dichasmos 1914–1917’, PhD thesis, University of Athens, 1990, p. 14. 44 Ibid, p. 35. 45 Ibid, p. 14. However, when the anti-Venizelists came to power in late 1920 they adopted the same attitude as the Venizelists. 46 Mouzelis, N., Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment, London: Macmillan, 1978, p. 25. 47 Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, p. 74–77, see also Rigos, I Defteri Elliniki Dimokratia, pp. 137, 300. 48 Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, pp. 2–20, 55, 60.

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49 ‘The political myth – more than an ideology – has the power to mobilize, to collectivize and to adjoin by creating a sense of unification and by offering a formed and intelligible interpretation of reality. The intellectual representation of the other, the enemy, prevailing in the myth of conspiracy is a phenomenon which is present in the long span of historical time and creates an emotional opinion, collective reactions and a movement – a current of public opinion – which influences, usually negatively, the development of international affairs.’ Balta, N. & Papadimitriou, D., Simiosis gia tin Istoria tou Typou. I Elliniki and Evropaiki Diastasi, Athens: Odysseas, 1993, p. 38. 50 ‘Political symbols and images can arise from emblems, monuments, posters, sounds, movements and ceremonies. They can also arise from words, myths and accounts-events or even from human relationships.’ (Papadimitriou, D., ‘I Anazitisi Ennion stin Akra Dexia’, To Vima, 7 January 2001). 51 Papadimitriou, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos’, p. 15. 52 Ibid, p. 14. 53 ‘The popular press is uninterested in political journalism and its journalistic mentality is scandal-mongering and “yellow” and its themes are faits divers, crimes and popular literature’. (Balta & Papadimitriou, Simiosis gia tin Istoria tou Typou, p. 26). 54 Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, pp. 25, 64–65. 55 ‘The patron-client relationship is dyadic and personal when it links two individuals or at the most the two nuclear families that they represent. It is contractual and achieved when it is the result of an essentially free choice for both parties and subject to termination by either. It is informal when it lacks legal status and sanction and is distinct from the formal institutional order, even when it parallels it or spills over from it. It is instrumental when it is opposed to affective or emotional, even if a “minimal element of affect”, real or feigned, remains an “important ingredient”. It is reciprocal, when it aims at a wide-ranging and long-lasting exchange of goods and services, for the mutual benefit of the two parties. Finally it is asymmetrical and vertical, when it requires an inequality of status and resources between a superior (patron) and an inferior (client).’ (Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, pp. 25, 64–65.). 56 Giannaros wanted to be the Liberal Party parliamentary candidate for the island of Hydra, but Venizelos wanted Pavlos Kountouriotis as deputy there instead. Following this, Giannaros’s newspaper started supporting King Constantine (Petros Metaxas, Petros Giannaros’s grandson, personal communication). 57 Moraitis, C.E., Andreas Kavafakis, I Zoi ke I Dolofonia Enos Martyra, Athens: Nea Synora-A.A. Livanis, 1993, p. 24. Moraitis published part of a letter that Andreas Kavafakis had written to a friend on 19 May 1919, in which Kavafakis admitted that he had been helped by Venizelos to raise the money. (The letter was in the possession of the adopted daughter of Christos Kavafakis, Andreas Kavafakis’s son.) See also Chapter II. 58 Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, pp. 25, 64–65. 59 Ibid, p. 92.

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60 Ibid, p. 75 61 Ibid. 62 Patris, 3, 5, 8, 12 & 20 September 1920, & 11, 12 & 22 October 1920; Politia, 18, 27 & 29 August 1920, 1 September 1920. 63 P.S. Delta’s published diary, Eleftherios K. Venizelos, Imerologio-Anamnisis, MartiriesAllilografia, Athens: Ermis, 1988, provides information regarding Venizelos’s regular meetings in Benakis’s (Delta’s father’s) house with friends and members of the party; see pp. 40, 58–59. P.G. Danglis’s Anamnisis-Engrafa-Allilografia, Athens: Vivliopolion E.G. Vagionaki, 1965, also provides information about the informal meetings of the party; see Vol. II, p. 433, in which the journalist Georgios Vrachinos described an informal meeting in 1921 between Danglis, the leader of the Liberal Party after Venizelos had left the country, and Venizelist politicians and journalists. The information was published in the newspaper Imerisios Typos in 1931, when Vrachinos gave an account of his memories of the period. 64 Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, pp. 75–76, n. 55. 65 Estia, 19 April 1919. 66 Greek dictator, 1936–40. 67 Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, pp. 72–73. 68 For details see Ch. 4 & Ch. 6. 69 Patris, 26 March 1918. 70 Jeanneney, J.-N., I Istoria ton Meson Mazikis Enimerosis, Athens: Papadimas, 1999, p. 162. 71 Kyriakopoulos, I.G., Ta Syntagmata tis Ellados, Athens: Ethniko Typografio, 1960, p. 205. 72 Ibid. p. 212. Article 5 was about personal security; Article 6, political criminals; Article 10. the freedom of public gathering; Article 11, the freedom of association; Article 12, shelter of residence; Article 20, privacy of correspondence and Article 95 the competence of juries to judge political crimes. 73 FEK 317/6 October 1912. 74 According to Article 5 the court martial had the right to prosecute all offences committed against the security of the state, including the constitution, public order and breaches of the peace, regardless of the position of the instigator or their collaborators. 75 Alivizatos, N., I Politiki Thesmi se Krisi, p. 43. 76 FEK 65/14 March 1914. 77 Bruntz, G.G., Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of the German Empire in 1918, London: Oxford University Press, 1938, p. 85. 78 FEK 133/7 July 1917. 79 FEK 183/2 September 1917. 80 FEK 147/20 July 1917. 81 Public servants and officers (of every rank) were appointed to work at the Ministry. The duty of the office was to censor news material published or intended to be published in the areas under the state of siege’.

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82 FEK 203/19 September 1917. 83 Bruntz, Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of the German Empire in 1918, p. 86. 84 Leon, The Greek Socialist Movement and the First World War. The Road to Unity, New York: East European Quarterly, Boulder, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1976, p. 183, note 41. 85 When information was sent directly from abroad to foreign legations in Athens censorship was impossible. Because of this, information which had been censored in one Athenian newspaper when sent by its own correspondens abroad was later published in another after being provided by foreign legations; therefore there were complaints about unequal treatment. Gradually the Censorship Office made efforts to gain the permission of foreign legations to censor the same information as that censored in correspondents’ private telegrams. (AYE, Γ/102, no 41993, Papanastasiou to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 20 March 1919). 86 Danglis’s interview, in which he criticised the internal policy of the government, was censored and was not permitted to be published in any Athenian newspaper, but it escaped censorship in the provinces and appeared in the newspapers Macedonia of Salonika and Ioannina of Epirus. Although Danglis was a member of the Liberal Party, he did not hesitate to criticise government policy when he believed its members had made serious mistakes. (IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 23, no 2357, Diomidis to Venizelos, 5 November 1919.) See also Danglis, Anamnisis, Engrafa, Allilografia, Vol. II, pp. 376–377. 87 FEK 93/23 April 1920. 88 FEK 113/21 May 1920. 89 For details see Ch.2. 90 High Commissioner in Smyrna, appointed by Venizelos after the Greek occupation of the area in May 1919. He left Smyrna before the burning of the city and retired to the south of France. 91 AYE, Venizelos to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 31 May 1919 & IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 19, no 1480, Venizelos to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 30 May 1919 & no 1481, Venizelos to Stergiadis, 30 May 1919. 92 IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 25, no 2607, Venizelos to the Greek Legation in London, 25 November 1919 & no 2617, Venizelos to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 13/26 November 1919. 93 FEK 53/1 April 1921. 94 Curran, J. (ed.), The British Press: A Manifesto, London: Macmillan, 1978, p. 37. 95 Taylor, P.M., Munitions of the Mind, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, p. 199 Chapter 2 1 The newspaper Kathimerini, one of the most fervent organs of the anti-Venizelists, was published for the first time on 15 September 1919 following the

216

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

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landing of the Greek troops in Smyrna. The newspaper Scrip was also not published until September 1919. Unfortunately it was not possible to locate the volumes from January 1919 to June 1919 of the anti-Venizelist newspapers Politia and Esperini, although they were in circulation during that period. I only found a few issues of the Politia of May 1919 and the volume of the second half of the Esperini which covered the period from October until December 1919. Therefore I consulted the Akropolis (the volume of the first half was luckily available) and two other anti-Venizelist newspapers, the Athinaiki and the Athine, which initially I had not planned to use in my research, as they were newspapers with low circulation. I did this because they provide an alternative indication of the attitude of the anti-Venizelist newspapers. FO 800/206 (Private Papers of the Earl of Balfour). Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 62. Singer, J. D., The Wages of War 1816–1965: A Statistical Handbook, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1972, pp. 66, 31. Howard, H. N., The Partition of Turkey 1913–1923: A Diplomatic History, New York: H. Fertig, 1966, pp. 208–209. Petsalis-Diomidis, N., Greece at the Paris Peace Conference (1919), Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1978, p. 69. Ibid., p. 67. Lasswell, Harold D., Propaganda Technique in World War I, Cambridge (Massachusetts): M. I. T. Press, 1971, p. 10. Carey, James C. (ed.), Media, Myths and Narratives, London: Sage Publications, 1988, p. 68. Sanders, M. L. & Taylor, P. M., British Propaganda during the First World War, 1914–18, London: MacMillan, 1982, p. 102. Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 62–64. Dimitrios Kaklamanos, a diplomat and a journalist, was appointed Greek Ambassador to Washington, St Petersburg, Stockholm and London. Andreas Michalacopoulos, a politician and a diplomat, was elected deputy for the first time in 1910 and then joined the Liberal Party. After 1911 he was repeatedly appointed to various cabinet posts. Nikolaos Politis was Minister of Foreign Affairs in Venizelos’s government until November 1920. Kitsikis, D., Propagande et Pressions en Politique International. La Grèce et ses Revendications à la Conférence de la Paix, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963, p. 245. Although the verb ‘influence’ sounds too strong it is the verb that Kitsikis uses in his book Propagande et Pressions en Politique International. See p. 217: ‘…le gouvernement grec influençait beaucoup le Manchester Guardian’ . Kitsikis, Propagande et Pressions en Politique International, p. 217. Ibid. p. 196. Dimitris Kalopothakis was an enthusiastic Venizelist who wanted to be distinguished from his Royalist cousin Dimitris Kalapothakis, the editor of the Embros. He was nicknamed Bénédict. At the beginning of 1919 he was

Notes

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26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40

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sent by the Greek government to the U.S.A. for propaganda reasons and stayed there until March 1919. Ibid., pp. 216, 218–219. Ibid., p. 232. Les Études Franco-Grecques was a journal which exercised strong pro-Greek propaganda. It was published for the first time in April 1918 and stopped in March 1921 because of the change of regime. Ibid., pp. 226–227. FO 395/267, no 00839, Granville to Curzon, 8 February 1919. Sanders & Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, p. 117. Gianoulopoulos, G., ‘I Evgenis Mas Tyflosis…’ Exoteriki Politiki kai Ethnika Themata apo tin Itta tou 1897 eos ti Mikrasiatiki Katastrofi, Athens: Vivliorama, 1999, p. 249. It consisted of the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, France and Italy, David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Vittorio Orlando plus the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. These were the victors and convened as the ‘Council of Four’. (Roberts, J. M., History of Europe, London: Penguin Books, 1996, p. 521). Ibid. Nicolson, H., Peacemaking 1919, London: Methuen & Co LTD, 1964, pp. 123, 241. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 123–124. The Press Office in the Greek Legation in Paris had been founded by money contributed by Athanasios Vallianos and Nikiforos Likiardopoulos and was mainly organized by Georgios Argyropoulos. (AYE, Γ/ΑΑΚ (4), no 10316, Romanos to Politis, 9 October 1919). Ibid. AYE, Γ/ΑΑΚ (6), no number, Kyriakidis to Politis, 19 April 1919. Legg, K. R., Politics in Modern Greece, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969, pp. 93–95. The memorandum contained Venizelos’s views on a peace settlement with Turkey that he himself had sent to Lloyd George while in London. For details see Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 71. It stated that Kavafakis had tried to telegraph but his telegram had not been accepted by the Paris telegraph office as it was too long, so he decided to send it by post, but the ship by which it was sent was shipwrecked and he was obliged to send a second copy which was belatedly published in the newspaper. (Eleftheros Typos, 27 January 1919). Eleftheros Typos, 28 January 1919. AYE, Γ/ΑΑΚ (6), no 1404, Romanos to Politis, 29 January/11 February 1919. Ethnos, 17 February 1919, leader. Akropolis, 31 January 1919, leader. For details on repressive measures of the government see Leon, The Greek Socialist Movement and the First World War, pp. 119–120.

218 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

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Ibid., pp. 118–119. Rizospastis, 11 February 1919, p. 2. Ibid., 22 February 1919. Kitsikis, Propagande et Pressions en Politique International, p. 211. M. Elianos, the editor of the periodical Ikonomologos ton Athinon, was one of those mobilised by the Greek government to write articles which contradicted the articles which had been written by Greek socialists. In one case he wrote a letter to L’Humanité in which he claimed to present the ‘real condition of the workers in Greece’. His letter contradicted an article that Pournaras had written for the same newspaper. As there was little possibility that the letter would be published in L’Humanité, efforts were made by Kaklamanos der to publish Elianos’s letter in Le Temps or another French newspaper. IEE, Vol. XV, Athens: Ekdotiki Athinon, 1978, pp. 113–114, see also Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pp. 74–75. Estia, 29 January & 7 February 1919, leaders. Embros, 6 March 1919. IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 19, no 1549, Venizelos to Kanellopoulos, 23/6 May 1919. Estia, 1 May 1919, column Teleftee Idiseis, p. 2. IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 19, no 1462, Diomidis to Venizelos, 9 May 1919. Petsalis-Diomidis, Greece at the Paris Peace Conference, p. 125. Ethnos, 2 January 1919 & Estia, 23 January 1919, leaders. Leon, The Greek Socialist Movement and the First World War, pp. 113–115. Rizospastis, 24 January 1919, column ‘Apo tin Apopsi mas’, p.1. Ibid., 16 January 1919, leader. MacMillan, M., Peacemakers. Six Months that Changed the World, London: John Murray, 2003, p. 441. Ibid., p. 443. Kountouriotis, Exinta Chronia Dimosiografia, p.110. AYE, Γ/100, no 17208, The Captain of the Averoff to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 11 May 1919. Ibid. Ibid., no 9927, Lachanokardis to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 22 March 1919. Kountouriotis, Exinta Chronia Dimosigrafia, p. 110. IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 20, no 1589, Kanellopoulos to Politis, 22 June 1919. Ibid., File 23, no 2318, Stergiadis to Venizelos, 31 October 1919. Ibid., File 22, no 2111, Stergiadis to Venizelos, 29 August 1919. Rodas, I Ellada sti Mikran Asia, p. 86. IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 25, no 2577, Stergiadis to Venizelos, 22 November 1919. According to Rodas, the poem was only the excuse for the dismissal. There

Notes

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71 72 73 74 75 76

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were other reasons notably that Stergiadis could not tolerate bureaucrats not chosen by him and who were not from his environment. (Rodas, I Ellada sti Mikran Asia, p. 86). IAMM,Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 19, no 1549, Venizelos to Kanellopoulos, 23/6 May 1919. For revealing details about the incidents of the first day of the occupation on 2/15 May by the Greek army see IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 19, no 1460, Repoulis to Venizelos, 8 May 1919 & File 23, no 2513, Venizelos to Stergiadis, 6/19 November 1919. See also DBFP, First Series, Vol. II, London: His Majesty Stationery Office, Oxford University Press, 1948, p. 240–241. According to Venizelos’s papers, a number of Turkish convicts in Smyrna escaped during the night with the help of Colonel Carossini, the Italian Governor of the Turkish gendarmerie. They managed to arm themselves at a nearby unguarded repository. The incidents began when the 1/38 Regiment of Evzones, which was to disembark at Karantina to the south and proceed through the suburbs to occupy the town, landed in the middle of the quay as a result of mistaken orders. From there they marched southwards along the broad seafront road in front of excited crowds. Then it passed Government House and the barracks in which regular Turkish troops were confined. As the regiment passed the barracks, someone fired a shot. The Greek troops returned fire under the impression that they were under general attack. The ensuing fire fight lasted for half an hour until the Turks surrendered. Then Greek civilians as well as soldiers committed atrocities against the Turks. Estia, 2 May 1919, leader. Ethnos, 2 May 1919. Athinaiki, 2 May 1919. Ethnos, 2 May 1919, Akropolis, 2 May 1919, Embros, 2 May 1919 Politia, 2 May 1919 Athine, 2, 3 May 1919, Athinaiki, 2 May 1919. Rizospastis, 2 May 1919, column ‘Apo tin Apopsi Mas’, p. 1. The rest of the article was censored. The first telegrams which reached Venizelos reassured him of the excellent conditions under which the landings occurred and omitted to mention anything about the events. (IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 19, no 1485 & 1487, Diomidis to Venizelos, 15 May 1919). He was informed thirty-six hours later by Captain Mavroudis. However, the atrocities were not mentioned to him, even by the naval section of the British Legation. He ordered Repoulis to go to Smyrna immediately and act according to his judgement. He also instructed Zafiriou to court martial those who were responsible for the events. (Petsalis-Diomidis, Greece at the Paris Peace Conference, p. 209). However, over the following days none of the naval or military authorities or Stergiadis or Repoulis gave Venizelos the slightest idea of how horrible the events which had occurred were. Venizelos realized for the first time how serious the events were, when the issue was raised in the House of Commons in London by Lieutenant-Colonel Aubrey Herbert. (For details see House of Commons,

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Hansard Parliamentary Debates: Official Report, Fifth Series, Vol. 117, London: Published by his Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1919, columns 303–304). 77 Estia, 3 May 1919, leader. 78 Rizospastis, 4 May 1919, leader. 79 Estia, 8 May 1919. 80 Ethnos, 4 May 1919. 81 The Times, 23 May 1919, p. 11. 82 Estia, 5 May 1919. 83 IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, File 23, no 2313, Venizelos to Kanellopoulos, 14 October 1919. 84 DBFP, Vol. II, pp. 231–232 & Petsalis-Diomidis, Greece at the Paris Peace Conference, pp. 224, 329. 85 Patris, 13, 19, 26, 30 August & 2, 12 September 1919, Kathimerini, 18 September 1919. 86 DBFP, Vol. II, pp. 255–258. 87 Ibid., pp. 230, 233. 88 Carey (ed.), Media, Myths and Narratives, p. 80. 89 Ibid. p. 72. 90 Barthes, Roland, Mythologies, Athens: Ekdosis Rappa, 1979, pp. 214, 217, 227. 91 Papadimitriou, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos’, p. 257. 92 Barthes, Mythologies, pp. 218–219. 93 Ibid., p. 245. 94 Papadimitriou, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos’, p. 257. 95 Ibid., p. 267. 96 Estia, 12 March 1919. 97 Ibid., 7,11, 12 March 1919. 98 Ibid., 10 March 1919. 99 Papadimitriou, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos’, p. 265. 100 Estia, 8 March 1919. 101 Ibid., 12 February 1919. 102 Ibid., 10 March 1919. 103 Ethnos, 25 January 1919. 104 Ibid., 6, 7 February & 2 April 1919. 105 Akropolis, 5 March 1919. 106 The secret treaty is the Treaty of London. 107 Akropolis, 12 March 1919. 108 Ibid., 9 April 1919. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid., 26 March 1919. 111 Petsalis-Diomidis, Greece at the Paris Peace Conference, p. 69. 112 Ethnos, 1 February 1919. 113 Enver Pasha and Talaat Pasha were leading members of the group which formed the Young Turks’ administrative committee known as C.U.P. (Committee for

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Union and Progress). They staged a successful coup in 1908 against Sultan Abdul Hamid. 114 Ethnos, 6 February 1919. 115 Ibid., 21 January 1919. 116 Ibid., 1 February 1919. 117 Papadimitriou, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos’, p. 267. 118 Petsalis-Diomidis, Greece at the Paris Peace Conference, p. 67. 119 It seems that the Italians themselves had arranged an explosion and blamed the Greeks for it in order to have an excuse to land soldiers at Adalia. After the explosion they said to the Turks that the Italians residents of Adalia were afraid and that they intended to provide them with a guard of ten soldiers. However, one hundred soldiers landed and were billeted in a house occupied by Italian missionaries. Later the same afternoon the Italians landed five hundred marines without permission from the Turks. (FO 371/4217, 72758, Webb to Curzon, 24 April 1919). 120 Estia, 20 March 1919. 121 Athinaiki, 24 March 1919. 122 Ethnos, 17 April 1919. 123 Ibid., 21 April 1919. 124 Papadimitriou, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos’, p. 281, 285. 125 Ethnos, 19 & 29 January 1919. 126 Ibid., 2 January 1919, leader. 127 Estia, 5 January 1919, leader. 128 Ibid., 23 January 1919, leader. 129 Pavlos Nirvanas’s real name was Petros Apostolidis. He read medicine but was also a poet, writer, reviewer and columnist. He published s columns under the penname Kyrios Asofos. 130 Personality Cult. 131 Athine, 11 January 1919, leader. 132 Athinaiki, 20 March 1919, leader. 133 Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, p. 204. 134 Estia, 2 April 1919. 135 Akropolis, 6 April 1919. 136 Estia, 2 April 1919. 137 Ibid., 6 February 1919. 138 Akropolis, 7 March & 6 April 1919. 139 Ibid., 6 April 1919. Chapter 3 1 ‘…the collaboration of all the people regarding such a grievous and harmful result for Hellenism is hard to explain as well as worrying. One does not know for which to mourn more, the end of a great ideology or the mental fouling of the people.’ Pinelopi Delta, 20 Νovember 1920, Diary (Delta, P. S., Eleftherios K. Venizelos, p. 71).

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Mavrogordatos, G. Th., Ethnikos Dichasmos ke Maziki Organosi, I Epistrati tou 1916, Athens: Alexandria, 1996, pp. 125–127. 3 The precursor and nucleus of the League of the Reservists was the League of the Reservist non-Commissioned Officers which had been founded in 1913 to protest Venizelos’s proposed bill which excluded the Reservist non-Commissioned Officers of the older classes from the right of promotion to the rank of officer. The League managed to stop parliament voting on the bill. Its leaders were Georgios Kamarianos, Pavlos Giannaros and Dimitris Karonis. Georgios Kamarianos and Pavlos Giannaros were later the leaders of the League of the Reservists. Dimitris Karonis was the President of the Reservists of the district of Kifissia in Athens in July 1916 and again in May 1919. (Mavrogordatos, Ethnikos Dichasmos ke Maziki Organosi, p. 25). 4 In reality the League of the Reservists were extremist groups whose main activities were to terrorize Venizelists, usurp legal authority and pressure opposition leaders who were largely unable to control their growth. (Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, p. 72). The League of the Reservists can be distinguished from other political groupings through their opposition to the expansion of Greece, a sinister anti-western spirit and an aversion to civil modernization. (Ilias Nikolakopoulos, ‘I Ekloges tou 1920’, Efta Imeres, 2–31, Kathimerini,1 September 2002, pp. 10–12). 5 Georgios Ventiris, a journalist and historian, started his journalistic career as editor of the newspaper Tharros in Kalamata in the Peloponesse. After the Balkan Wars he became editor of the Venizelist Athenian titles Ellas and Patris. 6 Mavrogordatos, Ethnikos Dichasmos ke Maziki Organosi, pp. 28, 33. 7 IEE, Vol. XV, p.128. 8 Stergiadis wanted to be involved in military matters but at the meeting it was agreed that he would be responsible only for political issues. (FO 371/3593, no 184517, Granville to Curzon, 2 February 1920 & IEE, Vol. XV, pp. 124–125). 9 On 21 January 1920 Granville informed Curzon of the outcome of the Lawyers’ elections. ‘The results are striking and, at first sight, distinctly disquieting, as in every single town the anti-Venizelist lawyers have been elected.’ (FO 371/3593, no 177289, Granville to Curzon, 21 January 1920). 10 Ibid., no 184517, Granville to Curzon, 2 February 1920. 11 Ellul, J., Propaganda. New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1973, pp. 19–20. 12 Kathimerini, 15 December 1919, leader. 13 Patris, 17 December 1919. 14 Mavrogordatos, Ethnikos Dichasmos ke Maziki Organosi, p. 123. 15 FO 371/3593, no 172253, Granville to Curzon, 6 January 1920. 16 Kathimerini, 2, 28, 29 April and 1 May 1920. 17 Vouros, G., Panagis Tsaldaris, 1867–1936, Athens: n.p., 1955. 18 The Committee consisted of Tsaldaris, Vozikis and Baltatzis, who represented Gounaris’s party in the United Opposition. 19 Mavrogordatos, Ethnikos Dichasmos kai Maziki Organosi, pp. 123–124. 20 Ethnos, 29 April 1920. 2

Notes 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

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Estia, 29 April 1920. Mavrogordatos, Ethnikos Dichasmos kai Maziki Organosi, p. 130. Ethnos, 15 June 1920. To KKE, Ta Episima Kimena (1918–1924), Vol. I, Athens: Synchroni Epochi, 1974. p. 77 & Kordatos, G., Istoria tis Neoteris Elladas, Vol. V, Athens: Ekdosis Ikostos Aionas, 1958, pp. 536–537. Mosse, George L., The Nationalization of the Masses, Ithaka: Cornell University Press, 1996, pp. 168–169. Nineteen months after the Armistice, on 28 July/10 August 1920 the representatives of the Allies gathered in the great room of the Sèvres Town Hall in France to sign the Treaty of Sèvres. Venizelos and the Greek minister in Paris signed for Greece and the deputies Haadi-Pasha, Piza Tevfik Bei and Resat Haris for Turkey. On the same day more treaties were signed. Under the Treaty of Sèvres the Ottoman Empire was seriously reduced in size. An independent Armenian state and an autonomous Kurdistan were created. It was decided that the Smyrna zone should remain under Turkish administration and later be given to Greece if it were so decided by the local parliament or after a plebiscite. The Straits were internationalized, their freedom guaranteed by a Commission in which the Great Powers had the final word. The Treaty was accompanied by a Tripartite Agreement which divided Anatolia into zones of economic influence. It was decided that France should take Cilicia, Italy, Adalia and the southwest and the rights to exploit the coal of Eregli. In another treaty, Thrace was given to Greece. Apart from Thrace, Greece gained most of the Aegean islands including Imbros and Tenedos (except the Dodecanese) and the Smyrna zone. Northern Epirus, Cyprus, Constantinople, the Straits zone and Pontus were not given to Greece. With the annexation of the new territories Greece became the country of the ‘two continents and the five seas’. (IEE, Vol. XV, pp. 139, 142). MacMillan, Peacemakers, pp. 459–460. Embros, Acropolis, Politia, Rizospastis, 30 July 1920. Politia, 30 July 1920. Kathimerini, 31 July 1920, leader. Politia, 30 July 1920, leader. FO 371/4668, C2336/306/19, Granville to Curzon, 17 July 1920. Eleftheros Typos, 30 July 1920, leader. Patris, 30 July 1920. Eleftheros Typos, 30 July 1920. Patris, 30 July 1920. Estia, 30 July 1920, leader. Eleftheros Typos, 30 July 1920, leader. Rizospastis, 30 July 1920, leader. Leon, The Greek Socialist Movement and the First World War, p. 116. Second Mate Apostolos Tserepis and Lieutenant George Kyriakis shot the Greek Prime Minister and slightly wounded him. As a result Venizelos stayed in

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hospital for a few days and only returned to Greece on the battleship Averoff on 17 August 1920. (IEE, Vol. XV, p. 145). 42 The term ‘propaganda of deed’ is used by Qualter, T. H., Opinion Control in the Democracies, London: MacMillan, 1985. p. 169. He argues that ‘An act of violence becomes “propaganda of deed” when it is expected that the effect on attitudes will be highly disproportionate to the immediate objective consequences of the act.’ 43 Ion Dragoumis, the son of the politician Stefanos Dragoumis, read law and followed a diplomatic career. He was exiled to Corsica in 1917 by Venizelos’s government as a leading anti-Venizelist ideologist. He returned to Athens in November 1919 and joined the United Opposition in 1920. 44 FO 371/6096, C 15954/14841/19, Granville to Curzon (Annual Report for 1920), 21 July 1921. 45 Akropolis, 1 August 1920, leader. 46 Eleftheros Typos, 2 August 1920, leader, Patris, 4 August 1920. 47 Eleftheros Typos, 1 August 1920, leader. 48 Akropolis, 30 August 1920, leader. 49 Eleftheros Typos, 3, 4, 9, 13 August 1920, leaders & Patris, 6 August 1920. 50 Vlachos, Georgios A., Arthra stin ‘Kathimerini’(1919–1951), Athens: Zidros, 1990, p. 21. 51 FO 371/4668, C6599/306/19, Granville to Curzon, 2 September 1920. 52 Rizospastis, 11 August 1920, leader. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 12 August 1920, leader. 55 Kathimerini, 13 August 1920, leader. 56 Ibid. p. 1. 57 Politia, 14 August 1920. 58 He announced that he would dissolve the ‘Lazarus’ Chamber, whose life had been prolonged threefold since 1915, and declared elections for 25 October/8 November 1920 under the supervision of his own and not as the opposition demanded a caretaker government. He also announced that martial law and censorship would be lifted and that the political exiles, such as Gounaris, could return freely to take part in the electoral campaign without fear of arrest. The only restriction that he imposed was that no advocacy could be allowed regarding the return of ex-King Constantine as that would be high treason against the reigning sovereign, Alexander. 59 FO 371/6096, C 15954/14841/19 (Annual Report for 1920), Granville to Curzon, 21 July 1921. 60 Patris, 26 August 1920, p.1. 61 Kathimerini, 26 August 1920, leader. 62 Politia, 26 August 1920. 63 Rizospastis, 27 August 1920. 64 Politia, 26 August 1920, leader. 65 Kathimerini, 26 August 1920.

Notes 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96 97

225

Rizospastis, 27 August 1920. Ethnos, 14 September 1920, leader. Kathimerini, 23 September 1920, leader. Rizospastis, 19 August 1920, leader. FO 371/6096, C 15954/14841/19 (Annual Report for 1920), Granville to Curzon, 21 July 1921. Ibid. Ibid. Kathimerini, 21 October 1920, leader. Ibid. 23 October 1920, leader. The term was used by the writer of the article ironically. It was a term which was often used by the Venizelist press and the Venizelist camp, in general, when they referred to the opposition. It referred to the events which occurred in 1916. Kathimerini, 28 October 1920, leader. Akropolis, 1 November 1920, leader. Rizospastis, 31 October 1920. See details about the elections in Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pp. 150–152. FO 371/6096, C 15954/14841/19 (Annual Report for 1920), Granville to Curzon, 21 July 1921. Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 150. See P. Delta’s testimony about Venizelos’s reaction, when he found out about the outcome of the elections in Delta, Eleftherios K.Venizelos, pp. 60–63. FO 371/6096, C 15954/14841/19 (Annual Report for 1920), Granville to Curzon, 21 July 1921. Estia, 2 November 1920, leader. Akropolis, 3 November 1920, leader. Patris, 2 November 1920. Rizospastis, 3 November 1920. Politia, 2 November 1920, leader. Kathimerini, 3 November 1920. Scrip, 4 November 1920, leader. The New English Dictionary, Vol. II- C, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893, defines conspiracy as ‘A combination of persons for an evil or unlawful purpose; on agreement between two or more persons to do something criminal, illegal or reprehensible (especially in relation to treason, sedition or murder) a plot’. See also Coward, Barry & Swann, Julian (ed.), Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, p. 115. Ethnos, 7, 10 September 1920. Ibid., 10 September 1920. Ibid., 15 September 1920. Ibid., 18 September 1920. Ibid., 13 September 1920. Greece surrendered the strategic fort Rupel in Macedonia to the Germans

226

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

and Bulgarians at the end of May 1916 without resistance. The Prime Minister Skouloudis had ordered the surrender as the only way to maintain neutrality. The surrender provided the excuse for the Allied intervention and the overthrow of Skouloudis’s government. The Venizelists accused the anti-Venizelists of being responsible for the surrender of Roupel. (For details see IEE, Vol. XV, pp. 35–36). The Venizelist press recalled the incident whenever it wanted to demonstrate the anti-national intentions of the anti-Venizelist camp. 98 At the end of August 1916 the Italians took advantage of the German-Bulgarian attack in Western Macedonia and started sending troops to Northern Epirus after the consent of the Allies. For details see IEE, Vol. XV, p. 37. 99 In September 1916, on the day that Zaimis’s government resigned, Kavala was surrendered to the Bulgarians. For details see IEE, Vol. XV, pp. 38–39. 100 Eleftheros Typos, 30 September 1920. 101 Ibid. 102 Estia, 18 October 1920. 103 Ibid., 31 October 1920, leader. 104 Towns in northern Greece. 105 Estia, 31 October 1920, leader, Eleftheros Typos, 1 November 1920. 106 Eleftheros Typos, 1, 24 October 1920. 107 Estia, 13, 20, 21, 27 October 1920, leaders. 108 Ibid., 4 October 1920. 109 Patris, 19 October 1920. 110 Ibid., 19 August 1920. 111 Ibid., 15 September 1920. 112 Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, p. 60. 113 Ibid. 114 Kathimerini, 11 September 1920. 115 Scrip, 22 September 1920. 116 Kathimerini, 22 October 1920. 117 Ibid., 20, 31 October 1920. 118 Scrip, 20 September 1920. 119 Ibid., 22 September 1920. 120 Ibid., 28 September 1920. 121 Kathimerini, 7 October 1920. 122 Ibid., 28 October 1920. 123 Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, p. 60. 124 Kathimerini, 28 October 1920. 125 Ibid., 15 October 1920. Chapter 4 1 ‘He was handsome and had a truly royal bearing. The power of his gaze turned soldiers into heroes. His presence exerted a magical influence on the troops. The name Constantine alone lifted the heart of the Greek Nation.’ (Quoted

Notes

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27

28 29

227

in Ventiris, G., I Ellas Tou 1910–1920, Vol. II, 2nd ed., Athens: Ikaros, 1970, p. 359). FO 371/7603, C 3272/3272/19 (Annual Report), Lindley to Curzon, 10 February 1922. The Kathimerini, which supported Gounaris, stated that it was satisfied with the new Prime Minister, and asked readers to embrace the new government and support its efforts (Kathimerini, 5 November 1920). Estia, 4 November 1920. Patris, 6 November 1920. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, p. 60. Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pp. 160–161. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, pp. 60–61 & G. Mavrogordatos, ‘Konstantinos A o “Dodecatos”’, Istorika, 151, Eleftherotypia 19 September 2002, pp.16–21. Mazower, Greece and the Inter-war Economic crisis, p. 6. Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 161. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, p. 61. Clogg, R., A Concise History of Modern Greece, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 86. Politia, 12 November 1920, leader. Ibid., & Esperini, 15 November 1920, leader. Scrip, 18 November 1920, leader. Kathimerini, 22 November 1920, leader. Politia, 12 November 1920, leader. Kathimerini 21, 22 November 1920, leader. Scrip, 14 November 1920, leader. Patris, 8, 15 November 1920, leaders. Estia, 13 November 1920, leader. Rizospastis, 13 November 1920, leader. Ibid., 14 November 1920, leader. Ibid., 15 November 1920, p. 1. Ibid., 21, 22 November 1920. AYE, File 21 (1921), Subfile 2, No 15886, Metaxas to Rallis, 11/24 December 1920, No 204, Metaxas to Rallis, 23 December/5 January 1921, No 205, Metaxas to Rallis, 24 December 1920/6 January 1921, No 308, Metaxas to Rallis, 30 December 1920/12 January 1921, No 813, Metaxas to Rallis, 14/27 January 1921. ‘France could not allow an enemy to obtain the advantages which had been given to M.Venizelos. The present situation in the Near East was not the fault of the Allies, but of the enemies of M. Venizelos, the man who possessed the entire confidence of the Allies and who had been brutally and ungratefully dismissed’ stated Leygues, President of the French Council and French Minister of Foreign Affairs. (DBFP, First Series, Vol. VIII, p. 817). For details see Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pp. 162–163. Ibid., pp. 166–169.

228 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

Politia, 21 November 1920, leader. Kathimerini, 21 November 1920, leader. Esperini & Scrip, 21 November 1920, leaders. Embros, 21 November 1920, leader. Kathimerini, 23 November 1920. Politia, 23 November 1920, leader. Esperini & Kathimerini 23 November 1920, Scrip, 23, 24 November 1920, leaders. Patris, 22 November 1920, leader. Estia, 21, 22, 23 November 1920, leaders. Politia, 22 November 1920, leader. FO 371/6077, C 65/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 24 December 1920. Estia & Ethnos, 23 November 1920, leaders. Eleftheros Typos, 23 November 1920, leader. Rizospastis, 24 November 1920, leader. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, p. 60. FO 371/6077, C64/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 22 December 1920. FO 371/7603, C 3272/3272/19 (Annual Report), Lindley to Curzon, 10 February 1922. Politia, 6, 7 December 1920, leader. Scrip, 7 December 1920. Esperini, 6 December 1920. Rizospastis, 6 December 1920, leader. Patris, 6, 7 December 1920, leaders. Estia & Ethnos, 6 December 1920, leaders. Eleftheros Typos, 6 December 1920, leader. Kathimerini, 23, 24 December 1920. Ethnos, 24 December 1920, leader. FO 371/7603, C 3272/3272/19 (Annual Report), Lindley to Curzon, 10 February 1922. Alexandros Dragoumis was the brother of Ion Dragoumis who was murdered in 1920. Kathimerini, 23 November 1920, column Kathimerina, p. 1. Ethnos, 22 December 1920, column I Zoi, p. 1, & Estia, 22 December 1920, column O Kosmos, p. 1. Ethnos, 23 December 1920, leader & Estia, 23 December 1920, column O Kosmos, p. 1. Esperini, 24 December 1920, column Skepsis kai Gnome, p. 1. Kathimerini, 24 December 1920, leader. Esperini & Kathimerini, 24 December 1920, leaders. Estia, 24 December 1920, column O Kosmos, p. 1, Patris, 24 December 1920, p.1 & Ethnos, 24 December 1920, leader. FO 371/6068, C 2427/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 22 January 1921. FO 371/7603, C 3272/3272/19 (Annual Report), Lindley to Curzon, 10 February 1922.

Notes

229

Scrip, 7 December 1920. Politia, 22 November 1920. Esperini, 15 November 1920. Ibid., 24, 26 December 1920. Politia, 10 November 1920. Ibid., 22 December 1920. Kathimerini, 2 December 1920. Ibid. & Politia, 24 December 1920. Esperini, 20 November 1920. Politia, 17, 26 November 1920. The memorandum can be found in DBFP, First Series, Vol. VIII, pp. 837–840. 78 The French denied any responsibility for the leak as did the British. (DBFP, First Series, Vol. VIII, pp. 828–829). However, it seems that culpability lay with the Foreign Office which had every reason to disclose the memorandum to the Greeks. While the British were secretly proceeding with the revision of their attitude towards the Near East Question they were keeping the Greeks ‘in line’ by promising that if the Greeks continued the war in Asia Minor with Allied approval the British would suggest to their Allies the policy of strengthening the country (morally) to be continued even if Constantine returned to the throne. (Gianoulopoulos, G., ‘I Exoteriki Politiki’ In Hatziiosif, Christos (ed.), Istoria tis Ellados tou 20ou aiona, Vol. A2, Athens: Vivliorama, 2003, p. 132). 79 Esperini, 15 December 1920. 80 Scrip, 19 November & Politia 19, 21 November 1920. 81 Kathimerini, 28 November 1920. 82 Embros, 18 November 1920. 83 Esperini, 15 December 1920. 84 Politia, 18 November 1920. 85 Kathimerini, 1 December 1920. 86 Ibid., 29 November 1920. 87 Politia, 3 December 1920. 88 Ethnos, 18 November 1920. 89 Eleftheros Typos, 21 November & Ethnos, 31 December 1920. 90 Patris, 19 November 1920. 91 Carey (ed.), Media, Myths and Narratives, p. 23. 92 Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, pp. 60–61. 93 Ibid., p. 63. 94 Esperini, 22 November 1920. 95 Ibid., 12 December 1920. 96 Scrip, 5 December 1920 97 Ibid. 98 Embros, 6 December 1920. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid., 2 December 1920. 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

230

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

101 Politia, 18 November 1920. 102 Ibid., 31 December 1920. 103 Kathimerini, 29 November & 1 December 1920. Chapter 5 1 During the period I undertook my research there was no access to the first and second volumes covering 1921 for the Venizelist newspaper Estia. Both volumes, owing to their poor condition, were at the preservation department. Therefore the Estia is not examined in either the present or the following two chapters. 2 DBFP, First Series, Volume XVII, pp. 67–68. 3 Ibid., p. 31. 4 FO 371/7603, C 3272/3272/19 (Annual Report), Lindley to Curzon, 10 February 1922. 5 DBFP, First Series, Volume XVII, p. 37. 6 Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 180. 7 See Ch. 6. 8 Kathimerini, 25 January 1921, leader. 9 Kathimerini, 23 January 1921, leader. 10 Politia, 25 January 1921, leader. 11 Ibid., 26 January 1921, leader. 12 Esperini, 28, 30 January 1921, leader. 13 Embros, 25 January 1921, leader. 14 Ibid., 3 January 1921, leader. 15 Eleftheros Typos, 25 January 1921, leader. 16 Ethnos, 30 January 1921, leader. 17 Eleftheros Typos, 25 January 1921, leader. 18 Ethnos, 23 January 1921, leader. 19 Ibid., 24 January 1921, leader, Patris, 29 January 1921, leader. 20 Ibid., 28 January 1921, leader. 21 Panagiotis Danglis, an artillery officer and military instructor, participated in the Balkan Wars. He was elected as a deputy in 1915 and in 1916 he became Minister of War in Venizelos’s provisional government in Salonika. He assumed the leadership of the Liberal Party in 1920. 22 Georgios Pop started his journalistic career at Akropolis, where he later became the editor-in-chief. He also became the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Kairoi. In 1902 he founded the morning newspaper Athine. He was a close friend and partisan of Venizelos in Crete. After 1910 he had a quarrel with Venizelos and subsequently opposed him. 23 Spyros Dasios started his journalistic career with Akropolis and for many years was co-editor of Estia. 24 IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Correspondence, File 316, Danglis to Venizelos, 6 February 1921. Unfortunately Venizelos’s reply to Danglis was not found in Venizelos’s Papers.

Notes

231

25 FO 371/7603, C 3272/3272/19 (Annual Report), Lindley to Curzon, 10 February 1922. 26 Kathimerini, 5 February 1921, leader. 27 Politia, 5, 10 February 1921, leader. 28 Rizospastis, 13 February 1921, leader. 29 Ethnos, 7, 13 March 1921, leaders. 30 Kathimerini, 17 February 1921. 31 Ibid. 32 Eleftheros Typos, 16 February 1921, leader. 33 FO 371/6078, C 3872/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 21 February 1921. 34 Kathimerini, 8 February 1921, leader. 35 Eleftheros Typos, 9 February 1921, leader. 36 Ethnos, 9 February 1921, leader. 37 Patris, 9 February 1921, leader. 38 Rizospastis, 11 February 1921, leader. 39 As far as Smyrna was concerned it was proposed that an Allied Commission of Enquiry should be sent into the hinterland near Smyrna to investigate the ethnicity of the inhabitants. The Turks accepted the proposal with reservation, but the Greeks rejected it outnight. It was also proposed that the Smyrna area be under Turkish sovereignty with a Christian governor appointed by the Allies or the League of Nations. The Greek delegation wanted the Governor to be appointed by Greece. Finally it was proposed that the Greeks keep a garrison in Smyrna town and that the surrounding districts be policed by gendarmeries under Allied officers. The Greeks accepted the last proposal subject to reservations. As regards Eastern Thrace, an Allied commission of enquiry into the ethnic make-up of the population was suggested but the Greeks did not agree. Finally the withdrawal of the threat regarding Constantinople contained in the Treaty of Sèvres was suggested. It was suggested that the Chairman of the Straits Commission be a Turk with a casting vote. The reduction of the demilitarized zone was also suggested. The last three proposals were not accepted by the Greeks. (FO 371/7603, C 3272/3272/19 (Annual Report), Lindley to Curzon, 10 February 1922). For the proposals in detail see DBFP, Volume XVII, pp. 546–556. 40 Kathimerini, 12, 17 February 1921, leader. 41 Esperini, 14 February 1921, leader. 42 Patris, 18 February 1921, leader. 43 Ethnos, 19 February 1921, leader. 44 AYE, File 16 (1921), Subfile 3, No 1788, Calogeropoulos to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 19 February 1921 & No 1859, Baltatzis to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 20 February 1921. 45 Kathimerini, 21, 23 February 1921, leaders. 46 Ibid., 21 February 1921, leader. 47 Embros, 21 February 1921, leader. 48 Scrip, 24 February 1921, leader.

232 49 50 51 52

53

54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

Patris, 18 February 1921, leader. Ethnos, 21 February 1921, leader. Politia, 18 February 1921, leader. AYE, File 16 (1921), Subfile 3, Calogeropoulos to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 28 February 1921, No 2032, Gounaris & Calogeropoulos to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 26 February 1921 & No 2064, Calogeropoulos to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 28 February 1921. According to Article 36 of the Treaty of Sèvres the rights and the title of the Turkish government over Constantinople were not affected and the government and the Sultan were entitled to reside there and maintain Constantinople as the capital of the Turkish state. However, if Turkey failed to observe faithfully the provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres or the other treaties or conventions which were signed along with the Treaty of Sèvres, particularly regarding the protection of the rights of racial, religious and linguistic minorities, the Allied Powers had the right to modify the above revisions and Turkey had to accept any dispositions which might be taken. (www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/versa/sevres1.html & IEE. Vol. XV. p. 140) AYE, File 16 (1921), Subfile 3, No 2191, Gounaris & Calogeropoulos to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2 March 1921. Ibid., No 2302, Gounaris & Calogeropoulos to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 6 March 1921. FO 371/6080, C 6575/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 21 March 1921. AYE, File 16 (1921), Subfile 3, No 1601, Calogeropoulos to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 12 February 1921 & No 1983, Calogeropoulos to Minister of Foreign Affairs, 25 February 1921. The British encouraged the Greeks but did not promise to support them, as Gounaris claimed. FO 371/6507, E 3595/143/44, Granville to Curzon, 22 March 1921. Kathimerini, 7 March 1921, leader, Embros, 8 March 1921, leader, Ethnos, 7 March 1921, leader, Scrip, 7, 8 March 1921, Esperini, 7 March 1921. FO 371/6507, E 3595/143/44, Granville to Curzon, 22 March 1921. Rizospastis, 8, 9 March 1921, leaders. Kathimerini, Embros, Ethnos 16 March 1921, leaders & Scrip, 15 March 1921. Ethnos, 16 March 1921, leader. Scrip, 15 March 1921, leader, Kathimerini, 20 March 1921, leader. Embros, 21, 22 March 1921, leaders. FO 371/6509, E 4372/143/44, Rumbold (Constantinople) to Curzon, 5 April 1921. Kathimerini, 24 March 1921, leader. Ibid., 31 March & 1 April 1921, leaders. The newly mobilised men criticised the mobilisation and the government and referred to the King in an offensive manner. Kathimerini, 12, 17, 28, 29 April 1921, leaders. FO 371/6510, E 4795/143/44, Granville to Curzon, 23 April 1921. Embros, 23 March 1921, Scrip, 27 March 1921, Esperini, 26 March 1921, leaders.

Notes

233

73 Ethnos, 27 March 1921, leader. 74 Nikolaos Stratos, a lawyer, was first elected deputy (independent) in 1902. Later he joined Venizelos’s party. In 1911 he became President of the Assembly and later Minister of the Marine. In 1913 following a disagreement with Venizelos over accusations of corruption he resigned from the government. 75 FO 371/6080, C 8432/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 16 April 1921. 76 Embros, 31 March 1921, leader. 77 Ethnos, 30 March 1921, leader. 78 Patris, 1 April 1921. 79 Rizospastis, 16 March 1921, leader. 80 Patris, 27 March 1921, leader. 81 Ethnos, 28 March 1921, leader. 82 Kathimerini, 28 March 1921, column Kathimerina, p. 1. 83 Scrip, 28, 29 March 1921, leaders, Esperini, 30 March 1921, leader. 84 Patris, 28 March 1921, leader. 85 FO 371/6080, C 8432/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 16 April 1921. 86 Patris, 29 March 1921, leader. 87 FO 371/6080, C 8432/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 16 April 1921. 88 FO 371/6081, C 10071/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 26 April 1921. 89 Scrip, 30 March 1921, leader. 90 FO 371/6081, C 10071/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 26 April 1921. 91 Patris, 8 April 1921, leader. 92 FO 371/6081, C 10074/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 27 April 1921. 93 Qualter, Opinion Control in the Democracies, p. 147. 94 Ibid., p. 169. 95 Esperini, 26, 28 January 1921. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid., 12 February 1921. 98 Ibid., 30 January 1921. 99 Ibid., 23 January 1921. 100 Scrip, 16 March 1921. 101 Esperini, 28 January 1921. 102 Fowler, Roger, Language in the News. Discourse and Ideology in the Press, London: Routledge, 1991, p. 16. 103 Esperini, 5 January 1921. 104 Ibid., 25 January & 5 February 1921, leaders. 105 Ibid., 25 January 1921. 106 Ibid., 4 February 1921, leader. 107 Scrip, 29 January 1921, leader. 108 Scrip, 24 February 1921. 109 Papadimitriou, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos’, p. 265. 110 Ethnos, 23 January 1921. 111 Ibid., 9, 12 February 1921. 112 Patris, 18 February 1921.

234

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

113 Ethnos, 9 February 1921. 114 Patris, 23 March 1921. 115 Ibid. 116 Patris, 23 March & Ethnos 23 March 1921. 117 For details see Papadimitriou, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos’, pp. 261–264. 118 Ethnos, 23 March 1921. 119 Patris, 13 March 1921. 120 Ibid., 23 March 1921. 121 Ethnos, 23 March 1921. 122 Esperini, 30 January 1921. 123 Scrip, 14 February 1921. 124 Politia, 13 February 1921, leader. 125 Embros, 14 February 1921, leader. 126 Papadimitriou, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos’, p. 278. 127 Scrip, 23 March 1921, leader. 128 Esperini, 23 March 1921, column Skepsis ke Gnome, p. 2. 129 FO 371/6509, E 4601/143/44, Granville to Curzon, 7 April 1921. 130 Esperini, 21 March 1921, leader. 131 Kathimerini, 9 April 1921. 132 Scrip, 7 March 1921. 133 Ibid., 15 February 1921. 134 The French and Italian representatives had signed agreements with Behir Sami, the Ankara delegate. The French signed their agreement with the Kemalists on 26 February/10 March 1921 and three days later the Italians signed theirs. The Franco-Turkish agreement concerned an armistice regarding the Cilicia front. In a similar vain the Turco-Italian agreement concerned the Adalia zone and included extended concessions for Italian companies. 135 Scrip, 6 April 1921. 136 Kathimerini, 28 February, leader. 137 Papadimitriou, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos’, pp. 275–276. 138 Kathimerini, 30 March 1921. Chapter 6 1 ‘Where shall we stop? When shall we reach an end? That depends on Kemal. We have transformed ourselves into steel. Neither the unbearable heat, the endless marches, the sleeplessness and the constant nervousness, the thirst in the Salt Desert through which we marched, nor the thousand other things we suffered can have an effect on us. We have one and only one aim. To reach an end in order to become human again. The campaign is beautiful, but not for four continuous years. We’ve been battling to the best of our power. The enemy fights very well, too. We want to put an end to this situation’. Nikos Nikolopoulos, Captain, 12 August 1921 (Ladis, F., Chere Mesa Apo tin Machi, Athens: Trochalia, 1993, p. 257). 2 He was accompanied by the Crown Prince, Princes Nicholas and Andrew, Prime

Notes

3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

235

Minister Gounaris and the Minister of War and Maritime Affairs Theotokis. The Chief of the General Staff Dousmanis and his deputy, Xenofon Stratigos, also accompanied him. FO 371/6081, C 10078/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 6 May 1921. Kordatos, Istoria tis Neoteris Ellados, Vol. V, p. 553. Kathimerini, 16 May 1921, leader. Ibid., 29, 30 May 1921, leaders. Constantine, King, A King’s Private Letters, London: Eveleigh Nash and Grayson, 1925, pp. 190, 194–196. FO 371/7604, C 6372/5806/19, Lindley to Curzon, 21 April 1922. According to British sources the King suffered from Bright’s disease. The first symptoms, a disorder of the kidneys, appeared during his visit to the front in summer 1921. Patris, 28, 29 May 1921, leaders. Kathimerini, 8, 9, 10 June 1921, leader. Eleftheros Typos, 9 June 1921, leader. Ethnos, 8, 9 June 1921, leaders. Kousoulas, D. G., Revolution and Defeat. The Story of the Greek Communist Party, London: Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 8. Rizospastis, 9 June 1921, leader. Ibid., 10 June 1921, column Apo tin Apopsi Mas, p. 1. DBFP, First Series, Vol. XVII, pp. 276–277. Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pp. 223–224 Kathimerini, 13 June 1921, leader. Eleftheros Typos & Ethnos, 13 June 1921, leaders. Rizospastis, 14, 15, 16 June 1921, leaders. Metaxas, I., To Prosopiko tou Imerologio, Vol. III, Athens: Govostis, 1974, p. 83 & Joachim, Joachim G., Ioannis Metaxas. The Formative Years 1871–1922, Mannheim und Mohnesee: Bibliopolis, 2000, p. 341. Kathimerini, 29 June 1921, leader. Ibid., 6 July 1921, leader. Patris, 6 July 1921, leader. FO 371/7603, C 3272/3272/19, Lindley to Curzon, 10 February 1921. Kathimerini, 8 July 1921 & Patris, 8, 9 July 1921, leaders. FO 371/7603, C 3272/3272/19, Lindley to Curzon, 10 February 1921. Rizospastis, 6 July 1921, column Apo tin Apopsi mas, p. 1. Ibid., 11 July 1921, leader. Ibid., 2 July 1921, leader. Kathimerini, 12 July 1921, leader. Scrip, 11, 13 July 1921, leaders, Esperini, 6, 8 July 1921. Eleftheros Typos, 9 July 1921, leader. Ibid., 25 July 1921, leader. Ibid., 24 July 1921, leader. Patris, 20, 24 July 1921, leader.

236

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

37 Rizospastis, 24 July 1921, leader. 38 For details see Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pp. 232–234 and IEE, Vol. XV, pp. 177–186. 39 FO 371/7603, C 3272/3272/19, Lindley to Curzon, 10 February 1921. 40 Kathimerini, 10 August 1921, leader. 41 Patris, 15 August 1921, column Epikera, p. 1, Kathimerini, 14 August 1921, leader. 42 Patris, 19 August 1921, leader. 43 Esperini, 18 August 1921, leader. 44 Ibid., 22 August 1921, column To Systima, p. 1. 45 Kathimerini, 25 August 1921, leader. 46 Ibid., 27 August 1921, leader & column Kathimerina ‘Fido Ematos’, p. 1. 47 Patris, 28 August 1921, leader. 48 Rizospastis, 29 August 1921, leader & 1 September 1921, leader & column Apo tin Apopsi mas, p. 1. 49 Eleftheros Typos, 31 September 1921 & Patris, 1 September 1921, leaders. 50 The Times, 14 September 1921, p. 9. 51 Patris, 8, 9 September 1921, leader. 52 Ibid., 15 September 1921, leader. 53 Ibid., 16 September 1921, leader. 54 FO 371/6082, C 19451/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 29 September 1921. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Patris, 17 September 1921, leader. 58 Rizospastis, 17 September 1921, leader. 59 Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 235. 60 Gounaris’s reply was published in the Athenian anti-Venizelist press on 20 September 1921 and was harshly criticized by the Venizelist press the following day. See Eleftheros Typos, 21 September 1921, leader & Patris 21 September 1921, leader. See also IEE, Vol. XV, p. 186. 61 Patris, 21 September 1921. 62 Eleftheros Typos, 21 September 1921, leader. 63 FO 371/6082, C 18984/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 23 September 1921. 64 Ibid., C 19844/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 7 October 1921. 65 FO 371/6083, C 23228/20/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 3 December 1921. 66 Ibid. 67 FO 371/6082, C 20259/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 12 October 1921. 68 Ibid., C 19116/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 3 October 1921. 69 Patris, 21 September 1921. 70 Ibid., 28 September 1921. 71 The government was afraid that the Venizelists would vote with Stratos or that even if Gounaris won a narrow vote in the Assembly they feared that they would not be in such a strong position vis-à-vis the Allies. They were particularly angry with Stratos because he attacked them for going to London and appar-

Notes

72 73 74

75 76 77

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

94 95 96

237

ently ignoring Paris and Rome which encouraged the French and the Italians to suspect them of being purely Anglophile. (FO 371/6082, C 19253/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 4 October 1921). Ibid., C 18177/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 8 September 1921. Ibid., C 16814/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 12 August 1921. In a resolution they published regarding Venizelos’s return to Greece they declared that Venizelos would never be allowed to return to Greece in any capacity, official or private. The Kathimerini, when it commented on the resolution, described it as unnecessary and indeed a mistake because were Venizelos to attempt to return to Greece, the public would go down to Piraeus armed with axes and bludgeons to prevent him landing. FO 371/6083, C 20733/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 19 October 1921. Rizospastis, 9 July 1921, leader. Dimitracopoulos had been Minister of Justice in Venizelos’s first government. He left the government after a quarrel with Venizelos over the question of the admission to the Chamber of the Cretan Deputies. He had a reputation of being an honest and valuable statesman with pro-Entente sympathies. (FO 371/6082, C 17832/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 31 August 1921). Ibid. & Eleftheros Typos, 18 August 1921, p. 4. Eleftheros Typos, 19 August 1921, leader. Patris, 20, 21, 22 August 1921, leaders. Politia, 20 August 1921. Kathimerini, 21 August 1921, column Kathimerina ‘Prothymi Chires’, p. 1. Ibid., 22 August 1921, leader. Eleftheros Typos, 23 August 1921, leader. Four soldiers forced their way into the Admiral’s office whose job it was to distribute money sent to him from America for wounded soldiers and when their right to receive any money was disputed they fired several shots one of which hit the Admiral. (FO 371/6083, C 23737/20/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 21 December 1921 & C 24122/20/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 22 December 1921). FO 371/6083, C 23737/20/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 21 December 1921. Ibid., C 24122/20/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 22 December 1922. Kathimerini, 10 December 1921, leader. Patris, 9 December 1921, leader. Ibid., 10, 11 December 1921, leaders. Ibid., 12 December 1921, leader. FO 371/7584, C 358/13/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 30 December 1921. An officer named Spiliotopoulos, under the command of Constantinopoulos was overheard in a tram to say that the attempt upon the life of Admiral Kountouriotis was merely the beginning and that forty others would follow. (FO 371/7584, C 1019/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 7 January 1922). FO 371/6082, C 18177/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 8 September 1921. FO 371/6083, C 23837/20/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 22 December 1921. FO 371/7584, C 87/13/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 23 December 1921.

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97 Esperini, 18 August 1921. 98 Ibid. 99 Esperini, 29 May 1921. 100 Politia, 29 May 1921. 101 Consensus assumes that, for a given grouping of people, it is a matter of fact that the interests of the whole population are undivided, held in common; and that the whole population acknowledges this ‘fact’ by subscribing to a certain set of beliefs. Consensus assumes, and in times of crisis actually affirms, that within the group, there is no difference or disunity in the interests and values of any of the population, or of any institution. (Fowler, Language in the News, p. 49). 102 Esperini, 2, 18 August 1921. 103 Politia, 5 May 1921. 104 Scrip, 5 July 1921, leader. 105 Ibid. 106 Esperini, 5 July 1921. 107 General Petr Nicolaevich Wrangel served in the Russian army during the First World War and was a prominent White anti-Bolshevik leader in 1917–1920. 108 At the meeting Granville told Baltatzis that the publication of the communiqué was ‘an extraordinary piece of stupid tactlessness’. According to him there was no possible gain in mentioning the manufacture of these machine-guns unless it was desired to achieve renewed violent attacks on France and that the publication could only embitter and make Greco-French relations worse. Baltatzis declared that no one could regret the press campaign against France more than he did and promised to do all in his power to check it. As for the communiqué which was sent from General Headquarters, Baltatzis was convinced that there had been no evil intention by General Papoulas, as Granville had suggested, and when Baltatzis himself read the communiqué, it never occurred to him that anyone would suppose that the guns had been supplied to Kemal by the French. (FO 371/6082, C 15581/20/19, Granville to Curzon, 22 July 1921). 109 Ibid. 110 On 20 October 1921 the French diplomat, Franklin Bouillon, signed in Ankara the ‘Franklin-Bouillon Agreement’ by which France agreed to evacuate Cilicia and certain other districts. France was also allowed, under the terms of this agreement, to keep its control over the region of Alexandretta on the condition that it provided a special administrative regime to govern the region. 111 Esperini, 10 November 1921, leader. 112 Kathimerini, 20 October 1921, leader. 113 Esperini, 19 October 1921, leader. 114 FO 371/6083, C 23228/20/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 3 December 1921. 115 Ibid. 116 Esperini, 5 July 1921. 117 Ibid., 7 July 1921. 118 Ibid., 30 July 1921. 119 Ibid., 2, 9 September 1921.

Notes

239

120 Scrip, 5 July 1921. 121 Eleftheros Typos, 9 July 1921. 122 Ibid. 123 Ibid., 19 August 1921. Chapter 7 1 No one will be able to stop the storm which will fall upon Old Greece from the Asia Minor fields, crushing everything or demanding the head of those responsible; a storm formed by the legions of the glorious, but unfortunately defeated due to the incompetence of those who were entrusted with our national issues. (ELIA, Gounaris’s Papers, File 2, Subfile 2.2 (Letters to A. Daskalopoulos), Injured Soldier of the Division of Bali-Kesser to Daskalopoulos, 22 January 1922). 2 Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 242. 3 The idea that it was necessary for the Greek army to evacuate Smyrna was also expressed by the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marquis della Torretta, in a private conversation with Lindley. (FO 371/7853, E 527/5/44, Lindley to Curzon, 6 January 1922). 4 FO 371/7853, E 528/5/44, Lindley to Curzon, 7 January 1922. 5 FO 371/7584, C 239/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 4 January 1922. 6 Ibid., C 1342/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 26 January 1922. 7 Danglis, Anamnisis-Engrafa-Allilografia, Vol. II, p. 419. 8 They were the following: P. Danglis, A. Karapanos, G. Exintaris, S. Simos, A. Miaoulis, E. Tsouderos, V. Skoulas, K. Spyridis, F. Manouilidis (on behalf of Th. Exindaris), K. Melas, Ch. Vasilakakis, K. Filandros (and on behalf of I. Bakalbasis), N. Konstantopoulos, V. Hatzilias, F. Floridis, G. Maras, M. Valmis, A. Marangos, I. Manos, A. Tsanetos, D. Danglis, A. Papathanasis (and on behalf of K. Kourtidis), P. Floros, T. Botsaris, A. Antoniadis, G. Vilaras, Th. Chrysovergis, P. Kourtidis, S. Sarantidis, G. Vrikas, K. Hatzigiannakis, V. Vizirtzis, A. Vezerzoglou, M. Stamoulis, G. Tsagras, M. Papamichalakis. 9 Eleftheron Vima, 12 February 1922. 10 Ethnos, 12 February 1922. 11 IEE, Vol. XV, p. 196. 12 Rizospastis, 13 February 1922, column Apo tin Apopsi Mas, p. 1 & 15 February 1922, leader. 13 FO 371/7584, C 1762/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 28 January 1922. 14 FO 371/7584, C 1762/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 28 January 1922. 15 Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 263. 16 FO 371/7584, C 4148/20/19, Lindley to Curzon, 10 March 1922. 17 Esperini, 23 February 1922, column Skepsis ke Gnome, p. 1. 18 Scrip, 23 February 1922, leader. 19 Eleftheron Vima, 23 February 1922. 20 Scrip, 25 February 1922. 21 FO 371/7584, C 4148/20/19, Lindley to Curzon, 10 March 1922.

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22 Eleftheron Vima, 16 February 1922. 23 Danglis, Anamnisis-Engrafa-Allilografia, Vol. II, pp. 420–422 & IEE, Vol. XV, p. 198. 24 Kathimerini, 13 February 1922. 25 Ibid., 18 February 1922. 26 Kousoulas, Revolution and Defeat, pp. 8–9. 27 Eleftheron Vima, 25 February 1922. 28 FO 371/7584, C 4149/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 11 March 1922 & Efimeris ton Sizitiseon tis Voulis, Vol. II, pp. 1018–1024. 29 Boussios was an Ottoman Greek, formerly a member of the Turkish parliament. 30 Efimeris ton Sizitiseon tis Voulis, Vol. II, Athens: Ethniko Typografio, 1933, pp. 1018–1024. 31 One hundred and fifty-five votes for the government and one hundred and sixty-two against. 32 FO 371/7584, C 4149/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 11 March 1922. 33 Politia, 25 February & 1, 3, 4 March 1922, leaders. 34 Kathimerini, 26 February 1922, column Kathimerina, p. 1. 35 Ibid., leader. 36 Eleftheron Vima, 26 February 1922. 37 Stratos had been negotiating with the Liberal Party, but met with no success. (FO 371/7584, C 4876/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 22 March 1922). 38 It was probable that Gounaris proposed to the King that Boussios should be sent for in order to demonstrate that he could not form a government and to strengthen the hand of Gounaris. (FO 371/7584, C 4876/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 22 March 1922). 39 Eleftheron Vima, 1 March 1922. 40 FO 371/7584, C 4876/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 22 March 1922. 41 Eleftheron Vima, 2 March 1922. 42 Kathimerini, 3 March 1922. 43 Eleftheron Vima, 3 March 1922. 44 Rizospastis, 5 March 1922. 45 Efimeris ton Sizitiseon tis Voulis, Vol. II, pp. 1406–1411. 46 Eleftheron Vima, 28, 29 April 1922, leaders. 47 FO 371/7584, C 7773/13/19, Lindley to Curzon, 18 May 1922 & 8157/13/19 Lindley to Balfour, 25 May 1922. 48 Kathimerini, 10 May 1922. 49 Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pp. 254–255. 50 Kathimerini, 11 March 1922, leader and column Kathimerina. 51 Rizospastis, 11 March 1922. 52 Kathimerini, 12 March 1922, leader. 53 Rizospastis, 9, 10 March 1922, leaders. 54 Kathimerini, 17 March 1922 & Politia, 16 March 1922, leaders. 55 Ibid., 13 April 1922.

Notes 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

241

Scrip, 17, 18 March 1922. Kathimerini & Scrip 17, 18 March 1922, leaders. Scrip, 17 March 1922. Ibid., 18 March 1922. Ibid., 7 May 1922. Kathimerini, 8, 10 March 1922, leaders. Ibid., 28 March, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9 April 1922, leaders. Politia, 13 February 1922. Kathimerini, 25 February 1922. Esperini, 25 February 1922, leader. Scrip, 24 March 1922. Ibid., 15, 16 February 1922. Ibid., 16, 18 February 1922. Ibid., 15 February 1922. Kathimerini, 24 April 1922. Ibid., 30 April 1922. Ibid., 2 May 1922. Rizospastis, 24 March 1922. Ibid., 10 March 1922. Ibid., 4, 5, 6 May 1922. Ibid., 22 March 1922. Ibid., 23 April 1922. Gounarian from the name of Gounaris. Rizospastis, 5 March 1922. Ibid., 28 April 1922. Ibid., 27 February 1922. Ibid., 24 March 1922. Ibid., 5 May 1922. Ibid., 12, 23 February 1922. He was arrested for inciting the people to participate in a mass meeting in Volos on 15 February 1921 to protest the adulterated wheat that the government was sending to Volos, which had caused the death of three people. G. A. Georgiadis became a lawyer in 1912. During 1917–1919 he was the Public Prosecutor in Athens. Then he resigned and became one of the leading members of the SEKE. He supported the SEKE’s membership of the Third International. In 1923 he disagreed with the SEKE and resigned his membership. Rizospastis, 6 March 1922. Ibid., 2 March 1922. Ibid., 31 March 1922. Patris, 18 March 1922. Eleftheron Vima, 7 April 1922, leader. Patris, 17 March 1922. Ethnos, 25 April 1922. Ibid., 19 March 1922.

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94 Eleftheron Vima, 28, 29 April 1922, leaders. 95 Patris, 19 March 1922. Chapter 8 1 ‘Liberty crowned with the laurels of Sakarya, is swiftly passed on, from one hand to the other and dragged alone, like a slave in the barracks.’ Karyotakis, C. G., ‘To Andreas Kalvos’. Ta Poiimata (1913–1928), Athens: Nefeli, 1992, p. 159. 2 CAB 45/108, pp. 88–89. 3 Kaffes, G., Ti Ine Polemos; Kinoniologia tis Vias ke tou Polemou, Athens: Papazisis, 2001, p. 167. 4 Ibid., p. 168. 5 Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 276. 6 Mosse, George L., Fallen Soldiers, Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 114. 7 A tactic which had been known since the years of the Great War, when the Germans dropped leaflets from the air over Allied lines around Nancy during the battle of Grande-Couronne in September 1914, even producing the Gazette des Ardennes for the French troops. Later the British produced sheets in German and dropped them over the German lines. By March 1915 a full scale ‘paper war’ had developed between the German Air Force and the Royal Flying Corps. For details see Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, pp. 188–189. 8 Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision & Angelomatis, Chronikon Megalis Tragodias, pp. 131–132, 178, 191. 9 ELIA, Ilias Voutieridis’s Papers, Letter No 11, Kostas Ziniadis to Ilias Voutieridis, 7 August 1922. 10 Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 276 & Carabott. ‘The Greek “Communists” and the Asia Minor Campaign’, Deltion Kentrou Mikrasiatikon Spoudon, 1992, 9, pp. 99–118. 11 Rizospastis, 24 June, 12, 17, 19, 26, 27 July 1922. 12 Stavridis, E., Ta Paraskinia tou KKE, Athens: Eleftheri Skepsis, 1988, p. 60. 13 Ibid. 14 Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 276. 15 We read in Stavridis’s book, Ta Paraskinia tou KKE, p. 60: ‘As for the soldiers who are Venizelists or anti-Venizelists, let them go, we will help them as much as we can. However, if any of them joins the party, then he will stay here to work’. According to Stavridis, the number of deserters was approximately 60,000. Stavridis’s views (and the figures he presents) should be treated with caution given his subsequent volte-face (Carabott, ‘The Greek “Communists” and the Asia Minor Campaign’. p. 108, footnote 40).

Notes

243

16 One of those ships was Elsi, which was used as a hospital in which there was a Communist doctor and a few Communist nurses. 17 Stavridis, Ta Paraskinia tou KKE, p. 66. 18 Stinas, A., Anamnisis, Athens: Ypsilon, 1985, pp. 58–59. 19 Deas, N., Mesouranima ke Syntrimia, Athens: Atermon, 1976, pp. 330, 346. 20 IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Correspondence, File 317, Kondylis to Venizelos, 8/21 August 1922. 21 Ibid. 22 Ladis, Chere Mesa Apo Ti Machi, p. 236. 23 FO 371/7889, E 9456/27/44, Bentinck to Curzon, 9 September 1922. 24 ELIA, Ilias Voutieridis’s Papers, Letter No. 44, Dionisios Triantafyllopoulos to Ilias Voutieridis, 9 August 1922. 25 Ibid., Letter No 26, Georgios Vrakatos to Ilias Voutieridis, 15 May 1922. 26 Ibid., Letter No. 52, Andreas Skotidakis to Ilias Voutieridis, 25 July 1922. 27 Ibid., Letter No 56, Andreas Logothetis to Ilias Voutieridis, 11 July 1922. 28 Periclis Voutieridis, Ilias Voutieridis’s son, personal communication 29 Stavridis, Ta Paraskinia tou KKE, p. 62. 30 For details see Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pp. 277–281. 31 Amyna was formed in Constantinople by Venizelists and army officers who had resigned or deserted from the army after the elections in 1920. Their main aim was to enlist the active support of Venizelos and the British government for a movement similar to that of Venizelos’s in Salonika in 1916. (Ibid., 237–238). 32 Ibid., pp. 280–281. 33 Eleftheron Vima, 7, 8, 9 August 1922. 34 Scrip, 13 August 1922 & Kathimerini, 14, 15 August 1922. 35 Kathimerini, 1 August 1922. 36 Ethnos & Eleftheron Vima, 14 August 1922, leaders, Politia & Patris, 17 August 1922, leaders. 37 Scrip, 13 August 1922. 38 Ethnos, 14 August 1922. 39 For details see Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, pp. 284–305 & IEE, Vol. XV, pp. 210–229. 40 Voutieridis, I., Mikrasia san Thrylos Tragikos, Athens: Private Publication, 1972, pp. 12–13. 41 Georgios Exintaris was a politician and diplomat. 42 IAMM, Venizelos’s Papers, Correspondence, File 317, Exintaris to Venizelos, 16 August 1922. 43 Ibid., Michalacopoulos to Venizelos, 19 August 1922. 44 Eleftheron Vima, 17 August 1922. 45 FO 371/7889, E 9456/27/44, Bentinck to Curzon, 9 September 1922. 46 Scrip, 17 August 1922, leader. 47 Embros, 18 August 1922. 48 Ibid., 19 August 1922. 49 Ethnos, 20 August 1922.

244 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

Ethnos, 19 August 1922, column I Zoi, p. 1, Patris, 19 August 1922, leader. Ethnos, 22 August 1922, leader. FO 371/7889, E 9456/27/44, Bentinck to Curzon, 9 September 1922. Ethnos, 22 August 1922, column I Zoi, p. 1, Embros, 23 August 1922, leader & Eleftheron Vima, 24 August 1922, p. 4. Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, p. 301. FO 371/7889, E 9456/27/44, Bentinck to Curzon, 9 September 1922. Eleftheron Vima, 25 August 1922, p. 4, Ethnos, 25 August 1922, p. 1, 4, Kathimerini, 25 August 1922, p. 4, Scrip, 25 August 1922, p. 4. Ethnos, 25 August 1922, column I Zoi, p. 1, Eleftheron Vima, 26 August 1922, p. 2. Kathimerini, 26 August 1922, column Kathimerina, p. 1. See below ‘The Kathimerini’s attitude and the reaction of the other Athenian newspapers’. Kathimerini, 22 August 1922. Ibid., 23 August 1922. Rizospastis, 25 August 1922. Antalkidas was an Admiral from Sparta and the leader of the political faction opposing the King of Sparta. He signed an agreement with the Persians in 386 BC which was known as ‘Antalkidios’ agreement named after him or ‘Vasilios’ agreement. Plato considered the agreement a shame and a tasteless act. The term has since been used to label suspicious diplomatic agreements. Patris, 23 August 1922, leader. FO 371/7889, E 9456/27/44, Bentinck to Curzon, 9 September 1922. Nikolaos Triantafyllakos was Minister of the Interior in Gounaris’s government in 1915. Later he was High Commissioner in Constantinople until he resigned in the middle of July 1922. Kathimerini, 17 August 1922. Politia, 18 August 1922. Patris, 19 August 1922, column Epikera, p. 1. The French and the Italians. Kathimerini, 18 August 1922. Hinton, Alexander Laban (ed.), Genocide, An Anthropological Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. p. 28. Dadoun, Roger, I Via. Dokimio gia ton ‘Homo Violens’, Athens: Scripta, 1998, p. 24. Politia, 2, 15, 20 August 1922, Rizospastis, 22 August 1922, Patris, 24 August 1922, Esperini, 16 August 1922. Kathimerini, 27 August 1922. The testimony of an eye-witness, the journalist Ilias Voutieridis, was published on the first and second pages of the paper. There his deep worries concerning the future of the refugees who had gathered in Smyrna with no way of escape were stated. Rodas, I Ellas Sti Mikran Asian, p. 353.

Notes

245

77 Manchester Guardian, 6 September 1922, p. 7 & The Times, 7, 9 September 1922, p. 8. 78 Eleftheron Vima, 29 August 1922, pp. 1, 4. 79 Kathimerini, 2 September 1922, leader. 80 Embros, 2 September 1922. 81 Eleftheros Typos, 2 September 1922, leader. 82 Veremis, Th. (ed.), Ethniki Tautotita ke Ethnikismos sti Neoteri Ellada, Athens: Morfotiko Idryma ETE, 1997, p. 29. 83 Rizospastis, 2 September 1922. 84 Ibid., 3 September 1922. 85 Rizospastis, 11 August 1922. 86 Kathimerini, 2 September 1922, leader and the article ‘Apo Eki Pou Perasan I Ellines. Tria Chronia Mikra Asia’, p. 1. 87 Eleftheron Vima, 14 August 1922, leader. 88 Ibid. 89 Kathimerini, 15 August 1922, p. 4. 90 Politia, 15, 17, 20 August 1922. 91 Scrip, 13 August 1922. 92 Embros, 19 August 1922. 93 Esperini, 21 August 1922. 94 Eleftheron Vima, 31 September 1922. 95 Ibid., 4 September 1922. 96 Ibid. 97 Kathimerini, 9 August 1922. 98 Ibid., 13 August 1922. 99 Kathimerini, 2 September 1922. 100 Scrip, 2 September 1922. 101 Kathimerini, 4 September 1922. 102 Scrip, 2 September 1922. 103 Ibid., 4 September 1922. 104 Politia, 3 September 1922. 105 Kathimerini, 2, 3, 4 September 1922, Politia, 2, 3 September 1922, Scrip, 2 September 1922. 106 FO 371/7888, E 9381/27/44, Bentinck (Athens) to Curzon, 16 September 1922. 107 Scrip, 2 September 1922. 108 Politia & Eleftheron Vima, 2 September 1922. 109 Said, E. W., Covering Islam, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, p. 4. 110 Estia, 10 August 1922. 111 Ibid., 13 August 1922. 112 Patris, 2 September 1922. 113 Eleftheros Typos, 2 September 1922. 114 Ibid.

246

The Greek Media in World War I and its Aftermath

115 Kathimerini, 3 September 1922, column Kathimerina, p. 1, Politia, 3 September 1922, p. 1. 116 Eleftheron Vima, 27 August 1922. 117 Ibid., 23 August 1922. 118 Patris, 2 September 1922, leader. 119 Eleftheron Vima, 23 August 1922, leader. 120 Ibid., 24 August 1922. 121 Ibid., 27 August 1922. 122 Ibid., 26 August 1922. 123 Ethnos, 29 August 1922. 124 Eleftheron Vima, 26 August 1922. 125 Patris, 31 August 1922. 126 Scrip, 6, 7, 10 September 1922. 127 Ibid., 6 September 1922. 128 AYE, File 8, Subfile 1, No 30398, Revolutionary Committee to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Press Bureau), 2 November 1922. 129 Eleftheron Vima, Estia, Ethnos, 15 September 1922. 130 Kathimerini, 14 September 1922 & Politia 15 September 1922. 131 Kordatos, Istoria tis Neoteris Ellados, Vol. 5, pp. 583–584. 132 Politia, 4 November 1922, leader. 133 Rizospastis, 15 September 1922. 134 Ibid., 16 November 1922. 135 AYE, File 8, Subfile 1, No 32818, Pangalos to Department of Preventive Censorship of the Press, 21 November 1922. 136 Eleftheron Vima, 27 July 1922, leader. 137 Kathimerini, 28 July 1922, leader. Chapter 9 1 Carey, Media, Myths and Narratives, p. 72. Appendix 1 Berelson, Bernard, Content Analysis in Communication Research, Clencoe, Illinois: The Free Press Publishers, 1951, p. 174. 2 FO 371/4702, C 4508/4508/19, From SIS, 11 August 1920. 3 FO 371/8838, C 5081/5081/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 6 March 1923. 4 FO 371/8838, C 11901/5081/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 21 June 1923. 5 FO 371/8838, C 20726/5081/19, Bentinck to Curzon, 16 November 1923 (enclosed memorandum by Archley, 14 November 1923). 6 FO 371/9892, C 3576/3576/19, Bentinck to J. Ramsay MacDonald, 18 February 1924. 7 FO 371/9892, C 11721/3576/19, M. Cheetham to J. Ramsay MacDonald, 5 November 1924.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Published Primary Sources

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Diaries, Memoirs

Angelomatis, Ch. E., Chronikon Megalis Tragodias, 3rd ed., Athens: Estia, 1971. Constantine, King, A King’s Private Letters, London: Eveleigh Nash & Grayson, 1925. Danglis, P. G., Anamnisis – Engrafa – Allilografia, Vol. II, Athens: Vivliopolion E. G. Vagionaki, 1965. Delta, P. S., Eleftherios K. Venizelos, Imerologio-Anamnisis, Martiries-Allilografia, Αthens: Εrmis,1988. Dragoumis, Ion, Fylla Imerologiou, Vol. V, VI, Athens: Ermis, 1987. Ηοrton, George, I Mastiga tis Asias, 3rd ed., Athens: Estia, 1996. Kountouriotis, Fokos, Exinta Chronia Dimosiografia, Athens: n. p., 1975. Μetaxas, I., Το Prosopiko tou Imerologio, Vol. III, Athens: Govostis, 1974. Nicolson, Harold, Peacemaking 1919, London: Methuen & Co LTD, 1964. Passas, I. D., I Agonia enos Ethnous, Αthens: Typis Karanasis, 1928. Rodas, Michail L., I Ellada sti Mikran Asia (1918–1922), Athens: Typografia Kliousi, 1950.



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Αlbert, P., Ο Typos, Athens: Dedalos-Zacharopoulos, 1987. Balta, N., O Ellinikos Emfylios Polemos mesa apo ton Galliko Typo (1944–1949), Athens: Odysseas, 1993. Balta, N. & Papadimitriou, D., Simiosis gia tin Istoria tou Typou, I Elliniki and Evropaiki Diastasi, Athens: Odysseas, 1993. Berelson Bernard, Content Analysis in Communication Research, Clencoe, Illinois: The Free Press Publishers, 1951. Carey James C. (ed.), Media, Myth and Narratives, London: Sage Publications, 1988. Curran, James (ed.), The British Press: A Manifesto, London: Macmillan,1978. James Curran & Michael Gurevitch (ed.), Mass Media and Society, London: Arnold, 2000. Curran, James, Media and Power, London: Routledge, 2002. Curran, James & Seaton, Jean, Power Without Responsibility. The Press and the Broadcasting in Britain, 3rd ed., London: Routledge,1988. Dimakis, J, ‘The Greek Press’ In Koumoulides, John A.(ed). Greece in Transition. Essays in the History of Modern Greece 1821–1974, London: Zeno, 1977. Fowler, Roger, Language in the News. Discourse and Ideology in the Press, London: Routledge, 1991. Jones, Aled, Powers of the Press: Newspapers, Power and the Public in nineteenth-century England, Aldershot: Scolar, 1996. Jeanneney, Jean-Noël, I Istoria ton Meson Mazikis Enimerosis, Athens: Papadimas, 1999. Karykopoulos, P., 200 Chronia Ellinikou Typou 1784–1984, Athens: Grigoris, 1984. Kitsikis, D., Propagande et Pressions en Politique International. La Grèce et ses Revendications à la Conférence de la Paix, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963. Μager, C., Ιstoria tou Ellinikou Typou. Vols I, II, Αthens: A. Dimopoulos, 1957, 1959. Mill, James, Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press and Laws of Nations, London: Kelley, 1986. Mitalis, J. & Mager, C., Elliniki Dimosiografia, Athens: Typis Dion. Petsalis, 1939. Moraitis, C. E, Andreas Kavafakis, I Zoi ke I Dolofonia enos Martyra, Athens: Nea Synora-A. A. Livanis, 1993. Seymour-Ure, Colin, The Political Impact of Mass Media, London: Constable, 1974. Vlachos, Georgios A., Arthra stin ‘Kathimerini’ (1919–1951), Athens: Zidros, 1990. Vlachou, E., Dimosiografika Chronia, Peninta ke Kati, Vol. I, Αthens: Zidros, 1991. Zacharopoulos, Thimios & Paraschos, Manny E., Mass Media in Greece: Power, Politics and Privatization, London: Praeger, 1993. Zorbalas. S., Simea tou Laou, Athens: Synchroni Epochi, 1978.

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Web Pages

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Carabott, Philip, ‘The Greek “Communists” and the Asia Minor Campaign’, Deltio Kentrou Mikrasiatikon Spoudon, 1992, 9, 99–118. P. Kitromilidis, ‘Symvoli sti Meleti tis Mikrasiatikis Tragonias. Tekmiria tis Katastrofis tou Ellinismou tis Vithynias’, Mikrasiatika Xronika, 1972, 15, 372–398. Mavrogordatos, George Th., ‘Konstantinos A o “Dodekatos” ’. Istorika, 151, Eleftherotypia, 19 September 2002, 16–21. McLachlan, Donald, ‘The Press and Public Opinion’, The British Journal of Sociology, 1955, VI, 159–168. Nikolakopoulos, Ilias, ‘I Ekloges tou 1920’, Efta Imeres, 2–31, Kathimerini 1 September 2002, 10–12. Papadimitriou, D, ‘I Anazitisi Ennion stin Akra Dexia’, To Vima 7 January 2001.



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Interviews

Kaloumenos Dimitris, journalist, born in Constantinople in 1912 (January 2001). Apostolidis Renos, son of the journalist and director of the newspaper Politia Iraclis Apostolidis (January 2001). Bastias Giannis, son of the journalist Kostis Bastias (January 2001). Metaxas Petros, grandson of the owner of the newspaper Esperini, Petros Giannaros (September 1999). Moraitis Giorgos journalist, director of the newspaper Rizospastis (January 2001). Tsimbidaros Vasos, nephew of the journalist of the Eleftheron Bima, George Fteris (June 2001) Kyrou Adonis, owner of the newspaper Estia, son of A. Kyrou (March 2001). Kapsis Giannis, deputy, son of the journalist Pantelis Kapsis (January 2001). Karantinos Nikos, journalist, 80 years old (February 2001). Mallis Alexandros, journalist, 80 years old (March 2001). Voutieridis Periclis, lawyer, son of the journalist Ilias Voutieridis (December 2001).

Theses

Papadimitriou, Despina, ‘Typos ke Dichasmos 1914–1917’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Αthens, 1990.

Index

Acheloos xviii Adalia 35, 48 Aegean Islands 67 Afyon Karahissar 101, 108–109, 170, 175 Akropolis xvi, xix, 12, 15, 31, 40, 46, 50, 54, 60–61, 66–68, 101, 190 Alexander, King 65, 66, 73 Allies xiv, 45–46, 48, 58, 70–72, 77–78, 82–84, 86, 88, 92, 94, 96, 98–101 American(s) 44, 183 Amyna 169 Angelomatis, Christos xvi Ankara 126–127, 129, 131, 139–140, 156, 158 anti-Venizelism 13 anti-Venizelist camp xiv, xvi, 14, 18, 54, 87, 132 anti-Venizelist press 14, 28, 33, 36, 42, 46–51, 53–59, 61, 63–66, 71–73, 78–79, 83–85, 87, 89–94, 96–99, 105–106, 108, 110–112, 114, 117–119, 121, 123–126, 135–136, 138–139, 141–142, 144, 153, 155–157, 162–163, 169, 170–172, 174–176, 178–179, 181, 185–187, 191–192, 195 anti-Venizelist(s) 13, 43, 52–54, 57, 60–61, 69–70, 73, 78–79, 91–96, 100, 104, 116, 146, 160, 166, 184,

192, 194 Anysios, N. 103 Armenia 161 Armenian(s) 95, 158, 175–176, 181– 182 Asia Minor xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, xix, 8, 21, 23, 27, 30, 35–37, 40, 46–48, 57, 81, 84, 87, 94–95, 101, 104–113, 117, 119–121, 123–124, 126, 128–133, 139, 142–143, 145–146, 149–152, 154–157, 160, 162–169, 172, 174– 176, 178–180, 183–188, 190–191, 192, 194 Astir 38 Astrapi xix Atatürk, Kemal or Kemal, Mustapha or Kemal 57, 97, 102, 104, 107–108, 116, 122, 129, 139, 141, 166, 168, 172, 175, 177, 180 Athanatos, Kostas 38 Athinaiki 31, 38, 40, 132 Athine 31, 40, 101 Athineos, I. 124 Attiki 20 Austrians 175 Aydin 48 Balkan Federation 17 Balkan War(s) 19, 30, 40, 78, 94–95, 165

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Baltatzis, 106, 132, 137, 140, 143–145, 152, 157, 173, 185 Belgium 103 Bentinck, C. H. 137–138, 172–173 Bentoti, George xviii Bolshevik Revolution and propaganda 49 Bolshevik(s) 56, 82, 122, 140, 175, 181 Bolshevism 49, 50–51, 122 Boussios, Georgios 152–153 Briand, Aristide 121 British 30, 37, 39, 44, 82, 92–93, 103, 126–127, 155, 158, 181, 191, 192 British Delegates 34 British press 29, 116 Brussa 109 Bryce, Lord 28 Bulgaria 47, 167 Bulgarians 17, 46–47, 69–70, 92, 140, 175 Burke, Edmund 5 Burrows, Ronald 28 Byzantine Empire 64, 126 Caligula 158 Calogeropoulos, Nikolaos 84, 88, 98–100, 102–106, 109, 196 Canning, George 125 Carlyle, Thomas 5 censorship 18–21, 38–39, 41, 57, 123, 170 Chataldja 53 Chettes 182 Chios 53, 185 Chourmouzios, Ch. 103 Chrysostomos, Archbishop 177, 182 Churchill, Winston 113 Cilicia 94, 116, 140–141 Clemenceau, Georges 30, 35–36, 45 Comintern 56, 123 Communism 123 Communist(s) 56, 149, 166–167, 192 Communist Party 15 Constantine II, King 8, 14, 61, 65–67,

69–73, 77–89, 91, 93–96, 98, 102, 106, 108, 113–115, 119–121, 124– 125, 130, 132, 138–141, 146–149 Constantine XI, Paleologos 139 Constantinople 9, 27, 37, 39, 46, 49, 53, 57–58, 86–87, 89, 92, 95, 105, 107– 108, 124, 126, 131, 139, 154–155, 161, 167–168, 171, 184, 195 Constantinopoulos, General 133, 136 Corfu 34 Council of Ten 34–35 coup d’état 66 Crete 67, 71 Crimea 94 Crosfield, Arthur 29 Curran, James 6, 7 Curzon, Edward, Lord 93, 121, 155, 173 Daily Express 146 Daily Mirror 113 Dalesiou, Eleftheria xviii Danglis, Panagiotis 91, 101, 131, 136, 147–148, 150–153 Daniilidis, Th. 38, 124 Dardanelles 155 Dasios, Spyros 101 Despotopoulos, Alexandros 136 Digenis 95 Dimitracopoulos, Nikolaos 134 Dodecanese 36, 46, 48, 70 Dousmanis, General 172–173 Dragoumis, Alexandros 89, 195 Dragoumis, Ion 60, 62, 63, 64, 195 Dragoumis, Stefanos 89 Drosinis, Georgios xix Drosos, Angelos 124 Eastern Question 97, 127, 175, 180 Eaton, Richard 178 Efimeris xviii, xix Efimeris ton Athinon xix Efimeris ton Sizitiseon 172 Embros xix, 12, 15, 31, 35, 38, 40, 84,

Index 99–100, 106, 132, 168, 171, 177, 190 Eleftheron Vima xix, 9, 12, 15, 17, 110, 147, 150, 153, 171, 177, 190 Eleftheros Typos xix, 9, 12, 15, 16, 31–33, 38, 40, 60–61, 66, 86, 88, 102, 106, 122–124, 126, 129, 131, 134–135, 137, 142, 147–148, 177, 190, 196 Ellinikos Tilegrafos xviii Enos 155 Entente 108, 116, 156 Enver Pasha 47 Ermis o Logios xviii Epirus 67, 69, 194 Eskisehir 101, 107–109, 125, 127, 140, 156 Esperini xix, 12, 15–16, 18, 22, 31, 79, 84, 87, 90, 99–100, 103–104, 112, 117–118, 124, 126, 128, 133, 135, 140, 141, 143, 149, 190, 195 Estia xv, xix, 12, 15, 20, 30–32, 35, 40–42, 48, 50, 58–59, 66–67, 80, 85, 88, 128, 190 Ethnos xvi, xix, 12, 15, 30–32, 34, 38, 40, 47, 56, 86, 88, 100, 103–105, 107, 122–124, 147, 170–171, 190 Etoliki xviii Exadactylos, General 172 Exintaris, Georgios 153, 171, 184 Fatseas, Colonel 89, 90, 195 Filianis, G. 38 Fiume 35 France 20, 29, 43–46, 70, 82–83, 92–94, 102, 105, 107, 116–119, 139–142, 157–159, 161, 166, 169, 180, 192–193 Franklin-Bouillon, Agreement 141, 158, 181 French 34, 38–39, 44, 82, 93–94, 103, 116–119, 140–141, 155, 158, 169, 181, 183, 191–192 French press 29, 34, 45, 82, 92, 132, 181

257

Gallipoli 155 Gare de Lyon 59 Gargalidis, Panagiotis 9 Gasparis, Charalambos 134 Gatopoulos, Dimitris 38 Gaulois 29 Gavriilidis, Vlasis 12, 54 George, Prince 71, 92 Georgiadis, G. A. 32, 160 German(s) 70, 175 Germany 27, 36, 45–46, 50, 70, 103, 115–116, 141, 158, 161 Giannaros, Petros 16, 22, 103, 133, 190, 196 Gianoulopoulos, Giannis xvii Gonatas, Colonel 185 Goudas, Admiral 154 Gounaris, Dimitris xiv, 52, 55, 61, 66, 70, 77, 84, 88, 98–100, 104, 106–110, 113, 118, 120, 124, 127–129, 131– 133, 136–138, 142–145, 148–149, 152–155, 157, 160, 162, 172, 179, 184, 185, 196 Grant, N. F. 29 Granville, Lord 53, 67, 109, 137, 140 Great Britain 20, 37, 43–46, 70, 82–83, 93–94, 102, 105, 108, 113, 115, 118, 137, 141–142, 157, 161, 166, 183, 193 Great Greece 48, 58, 63–64, 70, 86, 104–105, 139, 184, 191 Great Power(s) or Power(s) xiv, 13, 14, 36, 39, 42, 44, 48, 51, 70, 81–87, 92–94, 96, 99, 104–108, 115, 119, 122–123, 131, 144, 146, 155–156, 162, 180, 183, 185, 190, 196 Great War 27–28, 46–48, 57, 70, 83–84, 87, 92–93, 116, 119, 138, 141, 157, 160, 191, 193 Greece xiii, xiv, xv, xvii, 3, 7–10, 13–15, 20, 23, 28–30, 35–37, 39–40, 42, 44–50, 52–53, 56–59, 64, 66–67, 70–71, 77, 79, 81, 83, 87–88, 92–95, 98–100, 103–104, 106–108, 110, 114,

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115–118, 122, 128, 130, 133, 140– 141, 144–145, 153, 157, 161–162, 168–169, 175, 180–186, 188–192, 196, 199 Greek diaspora xviii Greek Legation 31 Greek Red Cross 38 Greek Revolution xviii Gregorian calendar xv Grigoriou, Panagiotis xvii Gwynne, H. A. 29 Gyparis, Captain 60 Habermas, Jürgen 6 Hamid Bey Zach 54 Hatzianestis, Georgios, General 165, 170, 172–173, 185 Horton, George 178 Idea Nazionale 47 Ioannina 70 Ionia 168, 184 Iouliana 59, 61, 63, 195 Italians 35, 47–48, 181, 191 Italy 30, 36, 43, 46–47, 70, 83, 85, 102–103, 107, 117–119, 139, 142, 155, 166 Julian calendar xv Kaiser 70 Kairofylas, Kostas 32 Kaklamanos, Dimitris 29, 31 Kakomanolis, G. 38 Kalamata xviii Kalapothakis, Dimitrios xix Kalapothakis, Pavlos 38 Kalopothakis, Dimitrios 29 Kanellopoulos, High Commissioner 36 Kapsis, Pantelis 38 Karagiannis, A. xvii Karapanos, P. 147 Karvounarakis, T. xvii Karvounis, N. 102

Katerini 70 Kathimerini xix, 9, 12, 15, 17–18, 38, 54–55, 58, 60–61, 65, 68, 79, 84, 89–90, 99–102, 104, 118, 122, 124, 126–128, 133, 135–137, 143, 151, 165, 167, 173–175, 180, 187, 190, 195, 196 Kavafakis, Andreas xvii, 32–33, 103, 134–135, 149, 150, 196 Kefalakis, Emmanouil 167 Kemal ed Din Bey 154 Kemalists 82, 125, 127 Kesaris, Christos 32 kommatarches 18 Kommunistiki Epitheorisi 167 Kommunistiko Komma 15 Kopanos 39 Koromilas, Dimitrios xix Kotzamanis, Independent Deputy154 Koukoutsakis, S. 124 Kountouriotis, Fokos xvi, 38 Kountouriotis, Admiral 65, 91, 135– 137, 196 Koutahia 109, 125, 140 Koutouvalis, A. 124 Kyriakidis, Epaminontas 32 Kyrou, Adonis xv Lambrakis, Christos xvi Lambrakis, Dimitrios xvi, xix, 17, 22, 80, 111–113, 190, 195 Lambridis, G. 32 Lausanne, Treaty xiii, xv, xvii, 165, 186, 188 Law, Bonar 53 Lazarus Chamber 18, 56, 92, 137 League of Reservists or Epistrati 18, 56, 92, 133–135, 137 Laiki 150 Lamia 151 League of Nations 31, 49, 52 Le Figaro 29 Le Journal des Débats 29 Le Temps 29

Index L’Humanité 34 Leonardopoulos, Georgios Les Études Franco-Grecques 29 Lesbos 185 Liberal Clubs 56 Liberal Party xiv, 13, 17–18, 34, 54, 57, 62–64, 66, 68–69, 73, 79, 81, 88, 90–91, 98, 100–101, 103, 109, 111– 112, 123, 134, 145–148, 151–153, 163, 186 Lindley, Francis 87, 145–146, 149 Llewellyn Smith, M. xvii Lloyd George, David 30, 35, 45–46, 53, 83, 101, 102, 115, 118 London 103, 114, 126, 132–133, 138, 149 London Conference 98, 102, 110, 115 London, Treaty 35 Macaulay, Thomas 4 Macedonia 22, 69, 70, 194 Mackenzie, Compton 52 Makkas, Leon 29 Manos, Madame 65 Mavrogordatos, George 13, 15, 16, 52 Mavromichalis, Petros 60 Mavroudis, Alexandros 32 Mazarakis, Alexandros 42 Megali Idea or Great Idea xiv, xiii, xviii, 8, 13, 30, 40, 57, 127, 165, 177, 186–188 Melas, K. M. 147 Melas, Spyros 134–135, 196 Mesopotamia 157 Metarythmisis149 Metaxas, Ioannis 18, 52, 124 Metaxas, Platon A. 124 Michailidis, Kostas xvi Michalakopoulos, Andreas 29 Midia 155 Military League 71 Mill, James 6 Mills, Minnie 178 Moscow 123

259

Mudros, Armistice 27, 47 National Schism or Ethnikos Dichasmos xiv, 13, 14, 23, 43, 48, 59, 63–64, 70, 73, 89, 94, 96, 99, 118, 183, 185–186, 192, 197 Navarino 44 Nero 158 Nicholson, Harold 31, 138 Nikolopoulos, Christos 124 Nikolopoulos, Spyros xix Nikolaidis, Dimitris 178 Nirvanas, Pavlos 49 Nomikos, Constantine 29 Nora, Pierre 3 Northern Epirus 27, 36, 46, 48 Orient Express 59 Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele 36 Ottoman Empire 27, 30 Pallis, Alexandros 135 Palestine 157, 161 Pantelidis, E. 124 Papanastassiou, Alexandros 112–113, 147, 151, 196 Papandreou, Georgios 113, 147, 195 Papathanasiou, Taxiachis 38 Papoulas, General 107, 111 Paris Peace Conference 20, 28–32, 34–35, 44, 46–50, 52–53, 102, 196 Passas, Ioannis xvi Patras 66 Patris 12, 15, 30–32, 38, 60–61, 68, 80, 87, 96, 104–106, 111–113, 122, 125–126, 129–132, 136, 147, 174, 183, 190, 195 Paul, Prince 65 Pazis, D. 147 Peloponnese 22, 194 People’s Political Clubs 18, 52, 55–56, 90, 112–113, 133–134, 136–137, 145–146, 149, 150–151, 155, 163, 195–196

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Petimezas, Th. G. 147 Petsalis-Diomidis, N. xvii Petsopoulos, Giannis 34, 81, 195 Phaireos, Rigas xviii, 178, 180–181 Piraeus 178, 180–181 Plastiras, Colonel 185 Poincaré, Raymond 155 Politia 12, 15, 31, 40, 58, 62, 79, 99, 102, 124, 132–134, 152–153, 156, 175, 190 Politis, Nikolaos 29, 88 Polymerakos, General 173 Pontus 57, 176, 184 Pop, Georgios 101, 152 Pournaras, Dimitris 32, 34 Press Department 21 propaganda 28–29, 34, 38, 41, 46, 53– 54, 165–166, 167, 190, 193, 196 propaganda of “deed” 59, 61, 78, 89– 90, 96, 121, 135, 139, 143, 150–151, 194, 195 Protevousa 172 Protopapadakis, Petros 137, 146, 155, 185 Pseftofyllada tou Galaxidiou xviii Public opinion 4 Revue de la Presse 132 Rallis, Dimitrios 77, 79, 83–85, 88, 100 Rangavis, K. R. 103 Repoulis, Emmanouil 60 Republican Clubs 151 Republican Manifesto 147–151, 196 Republican Union 151 Reuters 126 Revolution 156, 185–186, 188 Rizospastis xiv, xix, 12, 15–16, 22, 28, 32–34, 36–38, 40–41, 49–50, 56–57, 59, 62, 64–65, 67–68, 80–81, 86–87, 96, 102, 104–105, 108, 111, 119, 122–126, 128–130, 133, 143, 145, 148, 151, 153, 156, 159–161, 163, 166, 174, 178, 186, 190–193, 195 Rodas, Michail xvi, 38, 39

Rodosto 155 Rome 114, 145 Rue de Brassano 31 Rupel 69 Russia 36, 46, 140, 160–161 Russian Imperialism 50 Salt Desert 127 Salpigx Elliniki xviii Sakarya 128 Salonika xv, 66, 94, 148, 157–158, 181 Sargint, H. P. 29 Sarigiannis, Colonel 173 Seaton, Jane 6 SEKE 15, 23, 33, 37, 49, 50, 56, 59, 80, 81, 98, 123, 145, 151, 192 Serbia 70, 92, 183 Sèvres, Treaty xv, 57–59, 63, 82, 92, 93, 97, 100–101, 104–105, 107, 117, 123, 136, 139, 152, 158 Schanzer, Carlo 155 Scott, C. P. 29 Scrip 12, 15, 31, 79, 84, 87, 106, 112, 126, 140–141, 149, 150, 170, 172, 190 Sideris, Aristidis 34, 81 Simos, Spyridon xvi Skeferis, P. 39 Smyrna xvii, 21, 28–29, 36–38, 40–43, 46–48, 50, 53, 57–58, 114, 117, 122, 124, 164–165, 168, 170, 174–182, 184, 187–188, 192, 194 Solomonidis, V. xvii Sonnino, Sidney Costantino 36 Soviet Union 141, 166 Spender, Alfred 29 Spender, Harold 28 Steed, Henry Wickham 29 Stemma 150 Sterea Ellada 9, 22, 194 Stergiadis, Aristeidis 21, 39, 168–169, 173–174, 184 St Jean de Maurienne Agreement 35 Stogiannis, Giannis 38

Index Straits 58, 155, 161 Stratigos, Xenophon Stratos, Nikolaos 79, 98, 110, 132–133, 143, 152–153, 155–156, 179, 185 Svolos, Alexandros 4, 10 Switzerland 103 Synadelfos 167 Syria 157 Talaat Pasha 47 Theodoropoulos, S. 147 The Manchester Guardian 29, 176 The Morning Post 29 Theotokis, Nikolaos 113, 131, 136, 185 Thessaly 22, 194 The Times 29, 41, 45, 129 The Westminster Gazette 29 Thrace 8, 27, 35, 46, 48, 53, 59, 67, 84, 105–106, 117, 121, 156, 167–168, 184, 188 Third International 56 Trial of the Six xv, 165, 185–186, 188 Triantafyllakos, Nikolaos 174, 176, 188 Triantafyllou, Kostas 38 Trikoupis, General 172–173 Tsimbidaros, Vasos xvi Tsaldaris, Panagis 55 Tsamopoulos, A. 124 Turkey 82, 94–95, 97, 122, 141, 144, 158, 196 Turks 35, 46–47, 58, 70, 82, 87, 92, 104, 109, 115–116, 118, 121–123, 126, 129, 140–142, 154, 157–158, 165–166, 170, 173–177, 179–183, 187 Ukraine Campaign 161 United Opposition xiv, 54–55, 68, 71, 73, 77, 79, 87–88, 90, 98–100 United States 20, 35, 43–44, 46, 167, 183, 193 Ushak 172 Vafiadis, Achilleas 38 Venetians 157

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Venice xviii, 180, 183 Venizelos, Eleftherios xiv, xvii, 8, 13–14, 16, 20–21, 28–37, 40–43, 45, 48–50, 52–54, 56–58, 60, 62–73, 77–79, 82, 86–88, 91, 93, 99–105, 108, 114–115, 131, 133, 136, 148, 159–161, 169–172, 175, 184–186, 191, 193, 195–196 Venizelism 13, 62, 80 Venizelist camp xiv, xvi, 14, 55, 59, 61, 90, 114, 138, 149, 160 Venizelist press xvi, xvii, 14, 18, 28, 36, 42, 44, 46–51, 53–56, 58, 60–61, 63, 65–67, 69, 71, 77, 79, 80, 84–85, 88– 89, 91, 94, 96–98, 100, 102, 105–106, 108, 110, 116, 119, 121–126, 130, 132, 134, 136, 143–144, 147, 150, 152–156, 161, 163, 169, 170–174, 176, 178–179, 183–184, 186–187, 191–192, 195 Venizelist(s) xvii, xix, 13, 17, 43, 52, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 67, 70, 73, 77, 79, 81, 89–92, 96, 100–101, 104, 110, 114, 133, 135–138, 141, 145–146, 149, 151, 154, 157, 160, 166, 192, 195 Venopoulos, Th. 124 Ventiris, Georgios 52 Vienna xviii Vilaras, G. 147 Vima xvi Viotia 20 Vlachos, Georgios 17, 22, 55, 58, 62, 68, 102, 135, 187, 190, 196 Volos 66, 160 Voutieridis, Ilias xvi, 168 Wilson, Woodrow 30, 44, 57 World War 1 (WW1) 3, 8, 18, 20, 23, 37, 49, 115, 118, 129, 166, 181 World War 2 (WW2) 113 Wrangel, Petr Nicolaevich, General 140 Ypsilantis, Dimitrios xviii Zografos, N. 38