soul", they were able to "externalise their inner logos". In spite of its success, clerics and conservatives condemned the reform and protested vehemently against the school, which was forced to close in 1911. Germanos Mavromatis, bishop of Demetrias in Magnesia and a leader of the local opposition, declared that: "In the conscience of all the people, demoticism, anarchism, socialism, atheism and freemasonry are one and the same", and Delmouzos was even falsely accused of sexually molesting some of the pupils. In 1914 he and some of his colleagues were brought to trial in Nafplion, accused of spreading atheism, but were quickly cleared of all charges for lack of evidence. The fact that the pupils were girls played a part in attracting opposition. "It is clear that there was a strong anti-feminist feeling behind the accusations against him—a feeling that women should not be too highly educated." Pinelopi Delta's books for children Meanwhile, outside the classroom Pinelopi Delta, Greece's first best-selling children's author, had begun to publish her historical adventure stories written in demotic. In correspondence with Fotiadis, Delta had insisted that children needed not only school readers but entertaining books, and she made a point of writing in the simple demotic used by the children themselves. Her first two books For the Fatherland (Gia tin Patrida (1909)) and In the Time of the Bulgar-Slayer (Ton Kairo tou Voulgaroktonou (1911)) are adventures set among the defenders of the Macedonian frontier in the heroic days of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. With a theme like this she could hardly be accused of spreading atheism or undermining the nation, and she was allowed to publish freely. Her work became immensely popular, and accustomed a generation of Greek children to reading demotic prose for pleasure. The Educational Association In 1910 the liberal reformer Eleftherios Venizelos came to power for the first time, and in the same year the was founded. This had a much narrower focus than the defunct National Language Society: the Association aimed at the introduction of demotic into primary education. One of its declared educational goals was "to render children conscious of the grammatical rules that came unconsciously to their lips ...". Its founding members included Fotiadis, Delmouzos, many prominent literary figures and some promising young politicians; within a year it also included twenty members of parliament. Association members also questioned the value of spending time teaching Ancient Greek in primary school.