[22] _Journal Officiel_, p. 76. To appreciate the community of sentiments between M. Venizelos and M. Delcasse fully, one must compare the above statement with that in _Orations_, pp. 68-9. The differences are equally instructive. The Venizelist orator, prudently suppresses from a Greek audience the fact that his Chief frustrated the General Staff's efforts to co-operate with Servia; he boldly surmises, on the other hand, that behind the General Staff's stipulations as to the sphere of Greek military action lurked the _arriere pensee_ to confront the Allies with the risk of provoking Bulgaria, whom they still regarded as a potential friend: so the stipulations were, as they were intended to be, unacceptable. Again, while M. Delcasse, addressing a French audience nervous about the Western Front, reckoned that the Entente contingents demanded by the Greek General Staff would amount to at least 600,000 or 800,000 men, M. Politis, less fantastically, estimates them at 450,000 men: this force, which Greece deemed necessary for success, it will be seen, was not far removed from that which France and England eventually wasted in failure. [23]Prince George to King Constantine, Paris, 28 April/11 May, 1915. [24] See M. Poincare's statement to the _Matin_, reproduced in the _Balkan Review_, Dec., 1920, p. 386; Deville, pp. 161, 168-9. {50} CHAPTER V On 23 August, M. Venizelos returned to power as a result of the General Elections held on June 13. The outcome of those elections proved how great his popularity still was. True, in 1910 he had obtained 146 seats out of 182, and now only 185 out of 314. But the majority, though diminished, remained substantial enough to show that he still was, for most people, the man who had cleansed Greece. Nor did M. Venizelos imperil his popularity by revealing his differences with the King. On the contrary, in his own country, his attacks were carefully confined to the statesmen and soldiers opposed to him: the King, M. Venizelos proclaimed, far from sharing their narrow, unpatriotic, pro-German views, "did not exclude exit from neutrality under given conditions, but accepted it in principle as imposed for the serving of the national rights." [1] By his organs, too, the King was described as "a worthy successor of the Constantines who created the mighty Byzantine Empire--imbued with a sense of his great national mission--Greek in heart and mind." [2] So anxious, indeed, was M. Venizelos not to lose votes by any display of ill-feeling against the popular sovereign that he even took some pains to have himself photographed calling at the Palace to inquire after the King's health.