Smyrna, March 31st, 1928
The ground start shacking. Then it start shacking some more, buildings moving with it. When Enceladus was done with the bride of Ionia, hundreds of buildings were in ruins, more had suffered various degrees of damage and dozens of people were dead. At 6.5 on the Richter scale the earthquake had been the largest the region had suffered in many decades. Venizelos would visit the city the next day to oversee the damage and the relief efforts in person. Within a month a commission, under architect
Constantine Kitsikis, would be established to create a new city plan for Smyrna, while part of the proceedings of a 4 million pound loan, originally intended for railroad and road construction would be redirected to the reconstruction effort.
Scaramanga Navy yard, Attica, April 27th, 1928.
HNS Hydra, the latest destroyer of the Hellenic Navy joined the fleet. Spetsai the second of the class could be seen fitting out in the background, while Psara and Kimon, laid down, the previous year after Hydra and Spetsai had been launched emptying the slipways were projected to complete in 1931. Hydra herself, at 1,360t standard displacement and with a main armament of 4 Vickers 4.7in guns, while modern was hardly exceptional, much like the A class destroyers being built for the Royal Navy and the Dutch Admiralen class she derived from the experimental HMS Ambuscade. Her significance lay elsewhere, she was the first warship actually built in Greece, since wooden warships had become obsolete back in the 19th century. As soon as Spetsai also became operational, the three much older destroyers Velos, Lonchi and Smyrna would be decommissioned and broken up leaving the fleet with two flotillas of 16 destroyers in total along with a dozen torpedo boats and six submarines. Overall the modernization of the navy was steadily continuing, although no great urgency was felt, even with recent additions to the Turkish navy, its Greek counterpart remained dominant in the Aegean.
Following the advice of the British naval mission under admiral Webb, a thorough modernization of Averof had been completed a few months earlier, replacing its old machinery with turbines and oil fired boilers, improving deck armour and torpedo defences and installing new fire control. At 400,000 pounds the modernization had been costly but it had kept Averof relevant at only a fraction of the cost for a new heavy cruiser, at 26 knots post modernization, Averof was notably slower but in exchange was far better armoured and slightly better armed. Planning was underway to ask for tenders for two new cruisers to replace the older pre-dreadnoughts, while the protected cruiser Helli, almost useless as a fighting unit, was being converted to a training ship, with a secondary minelaying capacity, as soon as the conversion was complete she would be renamed to Athena.
Sivas, June 1928
Rauf Orbay, minister of marine read the results of the recent German federal elections with interest if for somewhat non political reasons. The SDP had made its opposition to the construction of so called panzerschiffe, "armoured ships", one of the main planks of its campaign. While it had gained 22 more seats in the parliament, a coalition in support of construction of the ships had emerged from the elections, even though now the communists were asking for a referendum on the ships. But it was the concept of the ships in question which he found interesting. After several years without any new construction he had managed to place orders in Dutch shipyards for 4 modern destroyers, built to the design of the Swedish
Ehrenskold class and a coastal defence ship with 4 of the late Yavuz guns similar to the Swedish Sveriges but faster at 25 knots top speed. But these while improving the situation of the fleet, it would have as many modern destroyers as the Greeks and the new "battleship" was arguably superior to the Greek pre-dreadnoughts did not affect the overall inferiority of his navy. The Greek light fleet was clearly superior, Averof after its modernization probably matched his new heavy unit and intelligence claimed the Greeks were also planning a pair of heavy cruisers. But this new German idea offered opportunitied and he still had half a dozen 283mm guns available at his disposal. He start drafting a letter with his idea to Kemal. Kemal... another problem. Istanbul had returned him to the assembly in a landslide back in April and since then he was increasingly getting directly involved in political affairs. True he was supposed to be on the same side and party with him, but Kemal's idea of this was that everyone had to take his orders. Just one more thing to ponder about...
Athens, September 1928
Back in 1924, the royalist parties had entered the elections split between each other and had been easily defeated by the growing Venizelist tide. In the four years that had passed the three main royalist parties had evolved on their own. Nikolaos Stratos Reform Conservative party was by now the main opposition force. Stratos, a former Liberal, had accepted the results of the referendum on the monarchy, his party as its title might suggest took a position of the centre-right of the political spectrum, broadly more conservative than the Liberals but often enough finding common ground with the more conservative elements of them. Ion Dragoumis National party much like its leader was a mix of some often disparate ideas at the same time being strongly nationalistic but also supporting the demotic language and even socialist ideas on occasion. Dragoumis was often accused of ideas similar to the Italian fascists, which while not entirely correct was not entirely wrong either although Dragoumis himself was virulently against Mussolini after his meddling in Greek affairs and the party was strictly political. It's main appeal was its leader, if Dragoumis chose to leave politics the party was likely to die with him. The populist party was only a shadow of itself after the deaths of Dimitrios Gounaris in 1922 and Petros Protopapadakis in 1927. Its current leader, Panagiotis Tsaldaris, tried to keep it relevant by populist propaganda in support of the throne, making acceptance of the 1924 referendum, the executions of Papoulas and Metaxas and virulent accusations against every single act of Venizelos its main policy planks. But Tsaldaris had neither the influence of Stratos nor the personal appeal of Dragoumis and this was showing. No matter the differences between the three parties though, they agreed on a single matter, that losing yet another election to Venizelos was entirely unacceptable. And thus their leaders came together to agree to a coalition between themselves. The United Opposition of the 1920 elections was back.
Greece, November 11st, 1928
Elections. Venizelos Liberals had every reason to hope to be reelected. They had done a reasonably good job on the economy, completed refugee settlement in Greece, nearly 75 million pounds had gone to the task including a 6 billion drachmas internal loan back in 1926, to be paid by the refugees, and had taken prompt action over the Smyrna earthquakes and had continued to do well in foreign policy, although truth to tell, nothing of much consequence had happened there after 1924. But this did not change that they were nearly continuously in power since 1910. Increasingly more people had start looking for change and with society slightly less polarized than in 1920 and 1924 it was easier for many to think about voting differently. In the and populist appeals over absolving refugees of the payments for the loans they had been given to resettle and earthquake victims in Smyrna over their loans, had swayed a small but significant part of the electorate. Enough for the United opposition to win 49.78% and 136 seats to the Liberals 46.95% and 114 seats. It was time for Nikolaos Stratos to test his abilities as prime minister...
