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Rh enter upon the possession of territory that belonged to her by the award or whether she should postpone such occupation until the boundary line had been fully drawn. The parties agreed that both states should remain, for the time being, in the possession of terri- tories which they held at the date of the treaty. As arbiter they selected the President of Switzerland, who, after pronouncing his decision, was to appoint Swiss engineers to demarcate exactly the boundary where it had not been surveyed. In July 1917, when ratifications of that treaty were exchanged the parties changed the arbiter to the Swiss Federal Council. On June 24 1918, that council made known the regulations which should be followed in the arbitral procedure. Both parties presented their last arguments to the arbiter and a decision was pending at the close of 1920.

International Relations. Although Venezuela did not publish a proclamation of neutrality upon the outbreak of the World War, yet on Aug. 12 1914, the Minister of the Interior sent instructions to officers of custom houses directing them to maintain neutrality in the conflict. Seven days later, at the instance of the Minister of Foreign Relations, the Minister of the Interior addressed to the chief execu- tives of the states, the territories, and the Federal district, circulars informing them that the Venezuelan Government would maintain the strictest neutrality and directing them to prevent individuals from aiding any of the belligerent nations. Upon being informed by the U.S. minister of the rupture of diplomatic relations with Ger- many, on Feb. 23 1917, Igriacio Andrade, Venezuela's Minister of Foreign Relations, informed the envoy of the United States at Caracas that his country would fulfill all her duties as a neutral and would not relinquish any of her rights: " She wishes to preserve her relations of peace and friendship with all of the belligerent nations and to maintain the most perfect neutrality." Although the sym- pathies of many of her intellectual leaders were with the United States, yet Venezuela maintained her neutral policy throughout the struggle. In March 1920, Venezuela's minister at Paris filed his Gov- ernment's adhesion to the League of Nations.

See A ltd Comision International, Section Venezolana (Caracas, 1919); Annual Report of the Council of the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders (London, 1910); Anuano Estadislico de Venezuela (Caracas, 1915); Boletin Comercial e Industrial; Informaciones Consulares y Comerciales publicadas par la Direction de Politico, Comercial del Ministerio de Relaciones Rxteriores (Caracas, 1920) ; Constitution de los Estados Unidos de Venezuela sancionada par el Con- greso de Disputados Plenipotenciarios de los Estados en 1914 (Caracas, 1914); L. V. Dalton, Venezuela (London, 1912); Division Politico- territorial de la Republica (Caracas, 1912) ; J. V. Gomez, Mensaje que el General Juan Vicente Gomez, presidente provisional de la Republica, presenta at Congreso National (1910-1); F. Guevara Rojas, El Nuevo Regimen de la Instruction en Venezuela (1915); Itineraries de Vene- zuela (1914); El Libra Amarillo de los Estados Unidos de Venezuela (Caracas, 1910) ; Memoria que presenta el Ministerio de Obras Publicas d las Cameras Legislativas (Caracas, 1911); Memoria que presenta el Ministro de Relaciones Interiores al Congreso National (Caracas, 1910); Monthly Bulletin of the International Bureau of American Republics (Washington, 1910) ; Proceedings of the first Pan- American Financial Conference (Washington, 1915); Pan-American Union, Venezuela, General Descriptive Data (1909); Recopilacion de Leyes y Decretos de Venezuela (vols. xxxiii., 1913). (W. S. Ro.)

VENIZELOS, ELEUTHERIOS (1864- ), Greek statesman, was born at Mournies, in the island of Crete, on Aug. 23 1864, of a family that emigrated from Mistra (near Sparta) to Crete in 1770. His father, a merchant of Canea, took an active part in the Cretan patriotic movement and was therefore exiled by the Turks in 1866, but returned to the island in 1872. Young Eleutherios was educated in the schools of Syra and Athens, and then studied law at the university of Athens, taking his degree in 1887. Returning to Canea, he took-up the practice of law, but, like most Cretan lawyers of that day, he soon was drawn into political life. In the insurrection of 1889 he was compelled to fly from the island and take refuge in Greece; after tranquillity was restored, he returned and was elected a member for Canea to the Cretan Assembly. It was not till 1897 that Venizelos came into prominence as one of the leaders of the Cretan uprising of that year, which culminated in the removal of Turkish rule from Crete (1898). Venizelos was in command of the insurgents' camp on Akrotiri, which was shelled by the united European squadrons on Feb. 21 1897. A few days later, he received at this camp the British, French and Italian admirals, who came under a flag of truce to negotiate a settlement between the insurgents and the Turks. These two incidents form the first occasion when Venizelos came into official contact with the Great Powers.

In 1898 Prince George of Greece landed in Crete as High Commissioner of the Great Powers, and a few months later, upon Sphakianakis' retirement, Venizelos became the head of the Cretan executive. He soon found himself at variance with

the Prince, who inaugurated in Crete very much the same auto- cratic policy that his elder brother, King Constantine, subse- quently adopted in Greece in 1915-7. Finally, a complete rupture took place in 1904 between the Prince and Venizelos; the Veni- zelist party were defeated at the polls by the personal canvassing of the Prince and the united efforts of the other Cretan party leaders, already jealous of Venizelos' rising star. Venizelos then organized a revolt at Therisso, which was partially successful but which died out after a few months, yet not until it had made the Prince's position in the island untenable. In 1905 the Prince departed, resigning his office as High Commissioner, in which he was succeeded by M. Alex. Zaimis. From 1905 to 1909 Venizelos' activities alternated between those of chief of the Cretan executive and those of leader of the Opposition. More than once during this period the Cretans came into sharp conflict with the four Great Powers; but Venizelos' wisdom and modera- tion prevented any rupture and maintained friendly relations with the Powers.

In 1909 the Military League at Athens, which headed a bloodless revolution against the existing political corruption and Court favouritism in Greece, found itself in need of a sound polit- ical adviser. As such, Venizelos went over to Athens at the invitation of the League three times within four months. He persuaded both the League and King George of the necessity of convening a National Assembly for the revision of the Constitu- tion, as the only safe and satisfactory way out of the dangerous situation. The elections for this Assembly were held in the sum- mer of 1910, and Venizelos himself (who had never ceased to retain his Greek citizenship, while in Cretan political life) headed the poll at Athens. His arrival at the Greek capital in Sept. was greeted with tremendous popular enthusiasm. Such was his unlimited mastery over Greek public opinion at that time, that at a nod from him the Royal family would have been expelled ignominiously. But Venizelos had come to Greece to establish reform and pacific progress; and little as he respected any mem- ber of the Royal family, he was fully conscious of the set-back that Greece's internal tranquillity and foreign relations would receive by a fresh change of dynasty or by the doubtful experiment of a republic. His first great work in Greece was the revision of the Greek Constitution, which was successfully accomplished in 1911. Simultaneously, he was busily reorganizing the public services, especially the army and navy, the former through a French, the latter through a British, mission. Within the short space of a year and a half he prepared the ground for the Balkan League, which had hitherto been universally looked upon as a Utopian project. By May 1912, the League was practically an accomplished fact, but a fact so successfully dissimulated that the outside world knew nothing of the League's existence. Only Russia, as the traditional protectress of the Southern Slavs, was in the secret. Other Greek statesmen, and notably Tricoupis, had worked for a Balkan League but failed, partly, no doubt, owing to adverse circumstances, but partly also because of Greek unpreparedness for war and of the inflexibility of the Greek claims. Venizelos was, it is true, favoured by circumstances the Balkan races just then had been drawn together in self-defence against the newly fledged tyranny of the Young Turks in Macedonia and Thrace, while the military revolt of 1909 had swept the Greek political stage clear of nearly all the corrupt parties, that hitherto had blocked the wheels of the nation's progress. But even so, the Balkan League would never have sprung into being but for Venizelos' higher vision, and his supreme courage in consenting to an alliance with Bulgaria, without a preliminary agreement as to the division of the Turkish spoils in case of victory.

When the World War broke out, Venizelos hastened, in the dark days which preceded the first battle of the Marne, to offer Greece's aid and adhesion to the Entente. This courageous offer, made at a time when the situation in France was so menacing, was never forgotten by the Allies, though declined for the moment on purely military grounds. A few months later (Jan. 1915) the Allies themselves asked for the cooperation of Greece in their plans for the Dardanelles expedition, and promised Greece, in exchange, extensive territory in Asia Minor. But