Greek statesmen, including Premier Krokidas, who had consented to serve under the revolutionary Government, begged that before the sentence was announced there be granted right of appeal to a National Assembly, which was to be elected in the near future. Krokidas resigned when the plea was rejected. On November 25 Colonel Gonatas, unable to get a civilian to take the office, assumed the premiership himself. Three days later former Premiers Gounaris, Stratos, and Protopapadakis, former Foreign Minister Baltazzi, former War Minister Theotokis, and General Hadjianestis were condemned to death and fined sums amounting to the confiscation of their private fortunes. A few hours later they were shot. Prince Andrew escaped the death sentence; but he was banished after military degradation. The execution of the former ministers aroused a storm of protest in Greece and abroad. The British minister left Athens, and the Greek minister at Washington cabled his resignation. But Colonel Plastiras, Chief of the Revolutionary Committee, not only assumed responsibility, in the name of the committee, for what had happened, but declared that all persons, civilian and military, connected with the Asia Minor disaster would be brought to trial. He denied the charge that the court martial was not a proper means of decreeing punishment. He announced, moreover, that the General Election would be indefinitely postponed. It was feared that the political executions, coming at the beginning of the Lausanne Conference, would increase the already unfavorable international situation of Greece. But Venizelos stuck at his task, fought hard to save what he could, and through both periods of the conference, lasting weary months, he watched for every opportunity to profit by the resentment aroused among all the Entente delegates by the unreasonableness and insolence of the Turks. Other patriotic Greeks abroad, following the example of Venizelos, accepted and supported, even where they could not defend, the Revolutionary Committee. They felt that the debacle of Hellenism would be rendered complete if there were a new outbreak of civil war in their unhappy country. There had been too much of political strife during the years of miraculous expansion. The two preoccupations of Greece in 1923 have been the care of refugees and the reorganization and strengthening of the army.