The King replied: "You know I recognize that I am bound to obey the popular verdict when it is a question of the internal affairs of the country; but when it is a question of foreign affairs--the great national questions--my view is that, so long as I consider a thing right or wrong, I must insist that it shall or shall not be done, because I feel responsible before God." At this utterance, M. Venizelos narrates, "I remember that a feeling of distress came over me, and with clasped hands, I shook my head in a melancholy manner, saying: 'Alas! we are before the theory of kingship by the grace of God: poor Greece!'" [7] After a little, he told the King that, in the actual circumstances, he could not undertake a struggle for the Constitution; he could only tender his resignation. The King expostulated: "How can you resign in the face of a Bulgarian mobilization? In these circumstances, as you know, we must not delay even twenty-four hours. After all, who assures us that Bulgaria will attack Servia? It is possible that she may maintain an armed neutrality; in which case our disagreement vanishes, and you can stay in power and carry on your policy." Whereupon M. Venizelos withdrew his resignation. Of course, he was not deluded by the Sofia Government's {55} announcement of "armed neutrality," and he was determined to go for Bulgaria at once. But how? In his own mind, as he had already demonstrated to the King, no doubt existed that, if the Greeks attacked the Bulgars, they had every chance of crushing them and even of taking their capital. But there was that General Staff by whose opinions the King set such store. They objected Servia's inability to contribute, as she was bound by her Military Convention to do, 150,000 combatants. Therefore, in order to meet this objection, he said: "Don't you think we might ask the English and the French whether they could not furnish 150,000 combatants of their own?" "Certainly," replied the King; "but they must send Metropolitan (European) troops, not Colonials." By his own account, M. Venizelos did not take this as meaning that the King had agreed, if the English and the French supplied these reinforcements, to depart from neutrality. He left Tatoi with a clear perception of the divergence between their respective points of view: while they both concurred in the need of instant mobilization, one was for a defensive and the other for an offensive policy; but, as soon appeared, not without hopes of converting his sovereign by some means or other. A busy, ambitious child of fortune never lets the grass grow under his feet: