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By Root 751 0

have been speaking of himself: the fighter, orator, iconoclast, the man who held out, as Lloyd George had done in the Boer War, against an unjust policy and his own government. The two men already knew and liked each other; at their first meeting, in 1912, it had been difficult to tell who had charmed the other more. To Venizelos, Lloyd George was like an Old Testament prophet, with “splendid capacities and clear insight of people and events”; to Lloyd George, his counterpart was “a big man, a very big man.” Together they spun entrancing visions of a strong alliance among Greece and France and Britain, controlling the eastern Mediterranean to the benefit of all. Greece would flourish, while Ottoman Turkey would be reduced to a client state.23

During the war, the two men kept in touch. Lloyd George later claimed that he and Venizelos had plotted Constantine’s overthrow together. In October 1918, when the war was in its last stages, Lloyd George took time out from a frantic schedule to discuss Greek claims with Venizelos over lunch. The meeting was friendly, and Lloyd George was encouraging, although at this stage he did not firmly commit himself to supporting all Greece’s claims. Venizelos followed up with a memorandum and a private letter in which he stressed how anxious Greece was to be cooperative. On the one issue where he might have caused trouble for Britain, that of Cyprus, which was about 80 percent Greek, Venizelos was tact itself. If the British wanted to hand it over to Greece, why that would be delightful, and of course Greece would always let British forces use the bases there; if Britain wanted to keep it, that was also understandable.24

When Venizelos made his case to the Supreme Council, he was sure that the British stood behind him. He thought he could probably count on the French as well: Greek troops were fighting with the French against the Bolsheviks. The Americans were sympathetic; the Italians were his only major worry. From time to time Lloyd George prompted him with gentle questions; Wilson asked for minor clarification on Turkish atrocities, Clemenceau said virtually nothing; and Orlando referred delicately to differences between Greece and Italy which, he hoped, would be speedily resolved. (On that, as so much else, Orlando was wrong.) Venizelos wrote back to Athens full of confidence: “I think that the impression created by my exposé was a favourable one. Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and even Orlando reassured me of this when taking leave of them.” The Greek foreign minister, who witnessed the performance, was equally delighted: “In principle we have all the Great Powers on our side—except Italy, who begins thinking of agreement and conciliation herself.”25

The Italians may have been thinking of conciliation but they were also thinking of Albania and Asia Minor, where they had their eyes on some of what Greece wanted. They also hoped to keep the Dodecanese islands, even though their inhabitants were overwhelmingly Greek. Italian newspapers demanded everything that Italy had been promised, and more. Writers inveighed against the barbarous Serbians and their friends the Greeks. The situation in Albania, where Greeks and Italians actually rubbed up against each other, made matters worse. Italy had occupied much of Albania during the war; local Greeks and the Greek government complained repeatedly about the behavior of the Italian forces. The Italians, it was said, were trying to win over the Albanians with extravagant promises, of no taxes for example. In Greece the papers carried lurid stories of Italian brutalities and rapes. “The whole population,” in the opinion of the British ambassador in Athens, “would flock to the colours if mobilisation were ordered against Italy.” 26

During the war, Greece and Italy had talked in a desultory way about coming to a compromise, and early on in Paris, Sonnino and Venizelos, the charmless and the charming, met several times to see whether they could put together a deal. Sonnino suggested that Greece let Italy have all the coast of Albania and about half