Arrest warrant for Venizelos

On 17 December 1916, or 4 December by the Julian calendar then used in Greece, the authorities in Athens issued a warrant for the arrest of Eleftherios Venizelos on a charge of high treason. This is the date given by the British chronology of the war. The news reached the West a day later: Reuters reported from Athens, and the New York Times repeated on 19 December, that the former Prime Minister was accused of high treason and of defaming the Greek General Staff in newspaper articles from several months earlier. The New York monthly Current History gave 18 December as the day the warrant was issued.

The warrant was a gesture with no practical significance. Since October Venizelos had been at the head of the government of National Defence in Salonika, which on 23 November had declared war on Germany and Bulgaria, and he was beyond the reach of the royal police. For the supporters of King Constantine I, however, he was a rebel, and since the events of early December also the chief culprit for the country’s misfortunes. The British publicist George F. Abbott, sympathetic to the king, wrote that after his departure for Salonika he was called in Athens simply “the Traitor”, and after the events of 1 December he was formally charged with treason.

A conspiracy proved by a letter

The royalists were convinced that the Allied landing in Athens on 1 December was to have been the signal for a Venizelist coup. The king wrote in a telegram to George V that he had “irrefutable proof” that the Venizelists had meant to seize the city at that time and bring Venizelos back in triumph. After the fighting in Athens soldiers and reservists attacked Venizelos’s supporters for two days, looting their houses and filling the prisons. The British biographer of Venizelos, S. B. Chester, writes that within a week between one and two thousand people were arrested, among them the Mayor of Athens, Emmanouil Benakis. The American journalist Paxton Hibben, sympathetic to the king, presents it more mildly: according to him, 268 people were brought before the courts within three weeks, and most were quickly released or given suspended sentences.

According to reports at the time, a letter was found in the house of General Korakas in which Venizelos was supposed to have written to one of his supporters that he had made an agreement with Entente representatives assuring him of a swift takeover of Athens. The Athens daily Nea Imera published it on 4 December together with a photographic copy. Venizelos firmly denied having written it, and the ministers of the Entente states declared that since his departure from Athens they had done nothing to make his return easier. His letter calling the document a forgery appeared in London on 15 December. On 22 December the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, acknowledged in the House of Commons that the legation in Athens was to try to have this denial published in Greece as well, but that only royalist newspapers were now appearing in the Greek capital. Abbott and Hibben treated the letter as proof that a coup had been planned for 1 December.

What came next

The arrest warrant was a prelude to an even harsher demonstration: a few days later the royalists and the clergy of Old Greece pronounced an ecclesiastical anathema on Venizelos. Neither the warrant nor the anathema harmed him, however, as much as his opponents had hoped. On the contrary, the brutality towards the Venizelists in Athens convinced London that it could no longer refuse his government formal recognition. After Constantine’s fall in June 1917 Venizelos returned to Athens as Prime Minister, and the treason case lost all significance.