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CHAPTER 2 – HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
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inconsistent with the promises regarding Asia Minor made to Greece, which it won 
in April by the agreement of St Jean de Maurienne. Britain and France now had a 
sufficiently united allied front to face down Constantine: on 10 June 1917 the French 
High Commissioner, as the representative of a guarantor power, told him that he had 
to go. He agreed to go but significantly, as it would turn out three years later, did not 
formally abdicate. His second son, Alexander, took the oath as king the next day but 
was not regarded either by Constantine or the royalist faction generally as a 
successor
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. 
Venizelos returned to Athens as prime minister on 27 June 1917 and war was 
declared on the Central Powers on 2 July. His opponents correctly observed that 
Venizelos had been installed by foreigners and he declined to put their or his own 
popularity to an electoral test: for parliamentary endorsement he resorted to a 
constitutionally dubious resurrection of the parliament elected in June 1915 on the 
grounds that the subsequent election of December 1915, in respect of which he had 
urged abstention, should not have been held. Prominent opponents were exiled and 
official positions were filled with supporters. Opponents never ceased to complain, 
not baselessly, of a Venizelist dictatorship
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. Some foreign observers, seeking an 
explanation for the contrast between what they saw as the caution and moderation of 
Venizelos in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and the absence of these qualities in 
the pursuit of Smyrna, thought that they found the clue in the national schism: for 
success in the pursuit weighed even against the turbulence of the schism would have 
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Llewellyn Smith, 58-59; Ventiris, Vol. 2, 335-364 
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Llewellyn Smith 59-60; Stratigos, 44-47 

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