We have it on his own evidence that he looked for a solution of his difficulties, not to an election, but to a revolution. Further, he has told us that, eager as he might be for a revolutionary stroke, he could not lose sight of the obstacles. To those who held up French revolutions as a model, he pointed out that the analogy was fallacious: in France "long years of tyranny had exasperated the people to its very depths. In Greece the people had a king who, only two years earlier, had headed his armies in two victorious campaigns." [3] So he scouted the idea of intervention at Athens, convinced that any attack on the Crown would spell destruction to himself.[4] His project was to steal to Salonica and there, under General Sarrail's shield, to start a separatist movement "directed against the Bulgars, but not against the king," apparently hoping that the Greek troops in Macedonia, among whom his apostles had been busy, fired by anti-Bulgar hate, would join him and drag king and country after them. This project had been communicated by the French Minister at Athens to General Sarrail on 31 May:[5] but, as the British Government was not yet sufficiently advanced to countenance sedition,[6] M. Venizelos and his French confederate saw reason to abandon it for the present. Thus all concerned were committed to a test of the real desires of the Greek people by a General Election, which they declared themselves anxious to bring off without delay--early in August. This time there would be no ambiguity about the issue: although the Allies in their Note, as was proper and politic, had again disclaimed any {107} wish or intention to make Greece depart from her neutrality, M. Venizelos proclaimed that he still adhered to his bellicose programme, and that he was more confident of victory than ever[7]: had not the Reservists been set free to vote, and were not those ardent warriors his enthusiastic supporters? With this cry--perhaps in this belief--he entered the arena. It was a lively contest--rhetoric and corruption on both sides reinforced by terrorism, to which the Allies' military authorities in Macedonia, and their Secret Service at Athens, whose efficiency had been greatly increased by the dismissal of many policemen obnoxious to them, and by other changes brought about through the Note of 21 June, contributed of their best. But even veteran politicians are liable to error. The Reservists left their billets in Macedonia burning with anger and shame at the indignities and hardships which they had endured. The Allies might have had among those men as many friends as they pleased, and could have no enemies unless they created them by treating them as such. And this is just what they did: from first to last, the spirit displayed by General Sarrail towards the Greek army was a spirit of insulting distrust and utterly unscrupulous callousness.