Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 Part 15

[5] Guillemin, Elliot, Bosdani, Demidoff, Athens, 8/21 Nov., 1916.

[6] Mirbach, Szila.s.sy, Pa.s.saroff, Ghalib Kemaly, Athens, 8/21 Nov., 1916.

[7] Lambros to Dartige du Fournet, Athens, 9/22 Nov., 1916. Cp. Du Fournet, pp. 192-4.

[8] Du Fournet, p. 187.

[9] Du Fournet, pp. 197-9.

[10] Du Fournet, pp. 201-4.

[11] Du Fournet, pp. 202-3.

[12] Du Fournet, pp. 208-9.

[13] Du Fournet, p. 205.

[14] Romanos, Paris, 15/28, 16/29 Nov.; Gennadius, London, 16/29 Nov.; Panas, Petrograd, 17/30 Nov., 1916.

[15] Zalocostas to Ministers of the United States, etc., Athens, 14/27 Nov.

[16] Lambros to Dartige du Fournet, Athens, 17/30 Nov., 1916.

[17] Du Fournet, p. 204.

[18] Du Fournet, pp. 210-51; Paxton Hibben, pp. 440-80; Resume du Rapport Official sur les Evenements du 18 novembre/1 decembre, 1916.

[19] According to the h.e.l.lenic Government, the losses of the Royalists in this civil strife amounted to 13 soldiers killed and 24 wounded, 6 civilians killed and 6 wounded, besides 5 killed (including 3 women) and 6 wounded (including 4 women) by the insurgents accidentally; the Venizelist losses were limited to 3 killed and 2 wounded.-Zalocostas to Greek Legations abroad, Athens, 27 Nov./10 Dec. 1916.

{162}

CHAPTER XV

By 3 December calm had descended on Athens. But echoes of the storm continued reverberating in Paris and London. In Paris it was a.s.serted, and in London repeated, that the French Admiral had fallen into a cunningly laid trap: King Constantine had promised to hand over his war material; but when the Allies landed to receive it, he caused them to be treacherously attacked and murdered.[1] On the strength of this a.s.sertion, the Entente newspapers demanded punishment swift and drastic: a prince who broke faith deserved no pity. His offer of six batteries was "an atonement" both cynical and inadequate for the "ambush" by which French and English blood had been spilt. Similarly the internecine strife of 2 December and the subsequent proceedings against the Venizelists were depicted as a wanton hunt of harmless and law-abiding citizens. Day by day the stream of calumny, a.s.siduously fed from the fountain-head at Salonica, grew in volume and virulence; and King Constantine was branded with every opprobrious epithet of liar, traitor, and a.s.sa.s.sin.

These were weapons against which the King of Greece and his Government had nothing to oppose. They tried to explain the true nature of the abortive Benazet negotiation, showing that, if there was any breach of faith, it was not on their part; they denounced the falsehoods and the exaggerations relating to the suppression of the seditious outbreak; they asked that a mixed Commission should be appointed to conduct an impartial inquiry on the spot while the events were still fresh and evidence abundant. The French and British Press Censors took care that not a whisper of their defence should reach the French and British publics.[2] Frenchmen and Englishmen {163} might hear of M. Venizelos's deeds through his friends. They were allowed to hear of the King's only through his enemies. It was clear that the policy which had prompted the disastrous enterprise of 1 December had not yet worked itself out to its full issue.

Admiral Dartige could not very well endorse the breach of faith legend. He knew that the engagement about the delivery of arms was reciprocal, and that, as France had failed to ratify it on her part, King Constantine rightly considered himself free from all obligations on his part. He also knew that, far from being lured into landing by false a.s.surances of surrender, he had been emphatically warned against it by categorical refusals and intimations of resistance. Yet, human nature being what it is, the honest sailor, maddened by his discomfiture, called the inevitable collision a "guet-apens" and, even whilst negotiating for release, he meditated revenge.

To him the peace arranged through the instrumentality of the Entente Ministers was but a "sorte d'armistice." He had agreed to it only in order to extricate himself from his present difficulties and to gain time for resuming hostilities under more favourable conditions. He and his men, he tells us with an engaging candour, were at the mercy of the Greeks: had he not accepted the King's offer-outnumbered, surrounded, and without food or water for more than twenty-four hours-they would have been ignominiously arrested. Besides, the configuration of the ground sheltered the Greek troops from the naval fire, while the Legations both of the Entente and of neutral Powers lay exposed to it. Lastly, a continued bombardment might have driven the Greeks to exasperation and perhaps to a ma.s.sacre of Entente Ministers and subjects. It was imperative to give the Allies and neutrals time for flight and himself for serious war preparations. The delivery of the whole stock of arms had been fixed by his Ultimatum for 15 December. In that fortnight he proposed to obtain from his Government the forces necessary {164} for a battle, and permission to bombard Athens in earnest-with or without notice to its inhabitants, but, of course, always with due regard for its monuments historiques.

Such was his plan. General Sarrail embraced it with ardour; the Paris Government sanctioned it; troops began to arrive and French and British residents to flee (3-5 Dec.). But very soon difficulties became manifest. The transports had brought men and mules, but no provisions for either. Greek volunteers and regulars mustered in defence of their capital. The British Admiral declined to take part in any war operations. The French Minister dreaded open hostilities. In the circ.u.mstances, Admiral Dartige found it expedient to "give proof of his spirit of self-denial," by renouncing his heroic dream of vengeance "immediate, retentissante," and by advising Paris not to set up a new front at Athens: after all, the matter was not really worth a war. He now proposed, instead, a pacific blockade; and, Paris a.s.senting, he proclaimed the blockade as from 8 December.[3]

With this act Admiral Dartige du Fournet's career came to a sudden end. A few days later the French Government deprived him of his command and placed him on the retired list. After a decent interval, the British Government decorated him with the Grand Cross of the Bath.[4] Whether his conduct ent.i.tled him to a decoration, his character should certainly have saved him from disgrace; for of all the men engaged in these transactions, he seems to have been the most respectable. No impartial reader of his book can fail to see that he blundered because he moved in the dark: it was never explained to him what political designs lay beneath the pretended military necessities; and the constant incongruity between the avowed aims of his employers and the steps dictated by his instructions tended to bewilder a mind devoid of all apt.i.tude or appet.i.te for diplomacy.

Admiral Dartige gone, the blockade was carried on by his successor, Admiral Gauchet. The Greeks took it as an accustomed evil. "This measure," wrote one of their {165} leading journals, "cannot terrify a population which has faced with serenity and fort.i.tude much greater dangers. The h.e.l.lenic people did not hesitate, when the need arose, to come into collision with four Great Powers in defence of its independence and honour. It did so without hate, without perturbation, but calmly, as one performs an imposed and unavoidable duty. It deliberately chose to risk annihilation rather than see its fatherland disarmed and enslaved. It preferred a hopeless struggle to degradation. To-day it is threatened with the spectre of famine. It will face that spectre with serenity and fort.i.tude. The menace is aimed at its stomach: very well, the people will tighten its belt." [5]

At the same time, Paris, London, and Petrograd were vigorously discussing the demands which were to be enforced by the blockade; but, owing to the wide divergences of opinion existing between the various Cabinets, decisions could only be reached by degrees and dealt out by doses. Not until 14 December did the Entente Governments deliver themselves of the first-fruit of their travail: Greece was to keep the arms of which she could not be despoiled, but she should remove them, as well as her army, from the northern regions bordering on Macedonia. The h.e.l.lenic Government was given twenty-four hours in which to comply; refusal would const.i.tute an act of hostility, and the Allied Ministers would forthwith leave Athens.[6]

To show that they were in earnest, the French and British Ministers embarked on two ships moored at the Piraeus, where they awaited the h.e.l.lenic Government's reply; and, before the time-limit expired, the French Admiral, by a notice put up at the Piraeus town-hall, warned the inhabitants to close their shops and retire to their homes by 4 p.m. in view of an impending bombardment of Athens.

The h.e.l.lenic Government acceded to the contents of the Ultimatum, and immediately gave orders for the removal of troops and war material.[7] This prompt compliance was received by the people of Greece with {166} loud disapproval. They criticized vehemently their rulers' readiness to yield as pusillanimous and injudicious. The Government, they said, instead of profiting by the events of 1 December to clear up the situation, drifts back into the path of concessions which led to those fatal events: it encourages the Entente Powers to put forward increasingly exorbitant pretensions, and, forgetting that it is for us to complain and claim better treatment, it creates the impression that they are in the right and we in the wrong. For some time past such had been the tone even of moderate critics; and upon this fresh submission there was a general outcry of alarm. It is true, the Allies in their Note averred that they demanded the removal of troops and guns simply and solely "in order to secure their forces against an attack." But the Greeks were less inclined than ever to treat the alleged danger to the Allied army in Macedonia as anything more than a pretext: the true object, they maintained, was to secure M. Venizelos's return and the expulsion of King Constantine.

The conduct of the Entente representatives. .h.i.therto had given only too much ground for such bitter suspicions, and the search of Venizelist houses had recently produced concrete evidence, in the form of a letter from the Leader to one of his adherents stating, among other things, that a definite agreement concluded between him and the representatives of the Entente Powers a.s.sured his speedy domination of Athens through the whole strength of the Entente. The publication of this doc.u.ment, with a photographic facsimile,[8] had confirmed the apprehensions which had long haunted the popular mind. Nor did M. Venizelos's indignant denial of its authenticity, or the Entente Ministers' emphatic protestation that never, since the Cretan's departure from Athens, had they done anything to facilitate his return, shake the conviction that the big coup was planned for 1 December.

If any doubts as to the Allies' ulterior aims still lingered, they were dispelled by their Press, the most serious organs of which, on the eve of Admiral Dartige's landing, pointedly referred to the great error committed by the Powers in allowing King Constantine to dismiss M. Venizelos in September, 1915, and urged that the time had come to {167} remedy that error, informing their readers that England, France and Russia were not bound to guarantee the possession of the Greek throne to any individual sovereign, irrespective of his const.i.tutional behaviour. The coup having failed, the same organs, in commenting on the Allies' present Ultimatum, still declared that the true remedy for Greece was to place her under the control of M. Venizelos; but, as such a course was not possible in the presence of a hostile King and an over-excited army, the first necessity was to eliminate the Greek army.[9]

However, the Greeks submitted to it all with sullen resignation: they had learned that the wisest thing for the weak is to control themselves.

The next step remained with the Entente Governments, who were exhorted by their Press organs not to be deluded by King Constantine's concessions. For it was one of the ironies of the situation that, while his own subjects blamed the King for his conciliatory att.i.tude, that att.i.tude was denounced by his enemies as a fresh instance of duplicity. They affirmed-with what amount of accuracy will appear in the sequel-that this great deceiver was making, in concert with the Kaiser, stealthy preparations for war against the Allies, and that meanwhile he intended by a semblance of submission to lull them into a false security. Extreme measures were, therefore, needed, not only to punish him for his past crimes, but also to prevent Greece from becoming a base of hostile operations in the near future.

Thus certain in advance of public support, the Allies, on 31 December, served upon the h.e.l.lenic Government a series of demands divided into guarantees and reparations. Under the first heading, Greece was required to transfer all her arms and munitions to the Peloponnesus, which, being practically an island, could be guarded by the Allied Fleet; to forbid all Reservist meetings north of the Peloponnesus; to enforce rigorously the law prohibiting civilians from carrying arms; to admit the re-establishment of the foreign controls over her police, telegraphs, telephones, and railways. Under the second, all persons detained on charges of high-treason, conspiracy, and sedition, should be immediately released, and those who {168} had suffered indemnified; the General commanding the Athens garrison on 1 December should be cashiered; formal apologies should be tendered to the Allied Ministers and their flags publicly saluted in the presence of the a.s.sembled garrison. On their part, the Powers gave Greece a formal undertaking that they would not allow the forces of the Salonica Government to take advantage of the withdrawal of the Royal troops from Thessaly in order to cross the neutral zone. They ended with the announcement that the blockade would be maintained until satisfaction had been accorded on all the above points, and that they reserved to themselves full liberty of further action should the att.i.tude of the King's Government give them fresh cause for complaint.[10]

Before returning a definite answer to this Note, the h.e.l.lenic Government submitted a Memorandum by which it promised forthwith the reparations demanded, except the wholesale release without trial of political prisoners; and accepted in principle the demand for guarantees on condition that the Powers, on their part, should give an absolute and irrevocable guarantee against the extension of the revolutionary movement, not only across the neutral zone, but over any territories which had not been annexed by the Salonica Committee before 1 December, pointing out that this was an indispensable requisite to rea.s.sure the nation and induce it to acquiesce in total disarmament. In conclusion, the h.e.l.lenic Government expressed the hope that, as total disarmament would put Greece out of all possibility of hurting the Allies, they would renounce the liberty of further action which they had reserved to themselves, and that they would, in justice to the people, raise the blockade.[11]

In reply, the Allies launched another Ultimatum: insisting upon the definite acceptance of their demands. If such acceptance were not forthcoming within forty-eight hours, or if, after an undertaking was given, any obstacles were wilfully placed in its execution, they threatened to have recourse to their military and naval weapons. On the other hand, they promised to respect Greece's resolution {169} to keep out of the War, and pledged themselves not to allow the adherents of the Salonica Government to take advantage of the withdrawal of the Greek troops into the Peloponnesus in order to invade by land or by sea any part whatever of Greek territory thus left defenceless, or to permit the installation of Venizelist authorities in any territories actually in the possession of the Royal Government which they might see fit to occupy hereafter for military reasons. Lastly, they signified their readiness to raise the blockade as soon as special delegates should judge that the evacuation of troops and material had been partly carried out, and that its completion was a.s.sured.[12]

These pledges, which had been the subject of acute discussion between the Allies at the Rome Conference, and were carried in face of strong opposition from France, marked another victory of moderation over consistency. That they lessened the alarm of the Greek people may be doubted; but the Greek people had by this time found that if it wanted, not only to live at peace, but to exist at all, it had to accept the situation on the Allies' own terms.

As to the rulers, they understood the popular feeling, sympathized with it, shared it. But their powerlessness prevented them from refusing terms which their pride compelled them to resent. They could not entertain seriously thoughts of active resistance, unless the Allies were attacked by the Germans; but how little prospect of this there was has been revealed by a number of messages exchanged at that period between Athens and Berlin. From these doc.u.ments it appears that on 6 December the Queen, whose indignation at the long-sustained persecution had been brought to a head by the bombardment of her home and the narrow escape of her children, telegraphed to her brother, anxiously inquiring when the Germans would be ready for a decisive offensive in Macedonia. On 16 December the Kaiser replied to his sister, condoling with her on the ordeal she and her husband had gone through, congratulating them on the courage they had displayed, pointing out that the Entente had once more {170} shown clearly what its real aims were, and expressing the opinion that no other course was left to King Constantine but "to turn openly on his executioners: Tino's intervention with his main forces against Sarrail's left wing would be decisive," he said. The Queen answered, on 26 December, that the solution the Kaiser advised would be possible only if Sarrail, attacked by the Germans, were forced to retire into the parts of Greece occupied by the Royalists: as it was, the distance which separated his left wing from them was too great and their lines of communication would be too much exposed: besides, their provisions and munitions were not sufficient for a prolonged struggle. Under these conditions, she added, only a speedy attack by the Germans could afford Greece the opportunity of fighting for deliverance from a frightful situation. But Von Hindenburg did not see his way to promise an attack. Meanwhile, the pressure of the blockade increased. By 2 January, the Queen, as her indignation cooled, prepared to resign herself to the situation: "We have bread only for a few days more, other provisions are also running short," she telegraphed, "consequently war against the Entente is out of the question now. I consider the game lost." Her husband concurred.[13]

The King and his Ministers also knew that, unless they accepted the Allies' terms, worse would be forced upon them by starvation. Clearly, the first thing to be done was to have the blockade raised. So far the little ship had contended with the gale hardily-in fact, foolhardily-coming out of the contest with scarce a sail. Captain and crew at last decided to give up the unequal struggle: the gale appeared to have almost spent itself: conversations for peace were at that moment in progress between the belligerents: at the worst, things would go on much as they had been going on, until the end of the War put an end to the sorry drama. So, on 10 January, after an all-night sitting of the Crown Council, Greece made her {171} unconditional surrender: she would drain the cup of humiliation to its bitterest dregs.[14]

To all seeming, the pledges given by both sides formed a solid basis for a modus vivendi: the King gave guarantees thoroughly safeguarding the Allies against any danger, real or imaginary; and the Allies gave guarantees equally safeguarding the King against seditious intrigues. All that remained was that the Allies should exact from the King a fulfilment of his engagements, and fulfil their own. They did not fail in the first part of the programme. The transfer of troops and armaments to the Peloponnesus was scrupulously carried out under the supervision of an Allied Military Commission, which counted and examined every man, every gun, every rifle and cartridge both at the point of departure and at the point of arrival. The Reservists' leagues were dissolved, and the people, in so far as such a measure is possible, were compelled to give up the firearms, mostly obsolete, in their possession. The foreign Controls, so far as the h.e.l.lenic Government was concerned, might be re-established at the Allies' discretion. The Venizelist prisoners were set free, and a mixed Commission was in due course appointed to deal with the question of indemnities. The General commanding the Athens garrison was cashiered. Formal apologies were tendered to the Allies' Ministers, and their flags were saluted with all the solemnities prescribed by themselves. In brief, on the unanimous testimony of Entente diplomatists and publicists, Greece loyally fulfilled every one of her obligations, serious and frivolous.[15] Yet, despite her Government's reiterated prayers that the blockade should in accordance with the promise given, be raised, the blockade was not only continued, but, as the months dragged on, was intensified.

[1] See Le Temps and The Times, 4 Dec., 1916.

[2] Zalocostas to Greek Legations, Paris, London, Petrograd, Rome, 24 Nov./7 Dec.; 25 Nov./8 Dec.; 26 Nov./9 Dec. 28 Nov./11 Dec.; Metaxas, Paris, 24 Nov./7 Dec; 2/15 Dec. Delyannis, London, 3/16 Dec., 1916. The doc.u.ments containing the King's promises to M. Benazet were not published until 1918 (see The Times, April 22, 1918); while those containing M. Benazet's promises to the King became known only through the publication of Admiral Dartige du Fournet's book in 1920.

[3] Du Fournet, pp. 226-9, 234, 256-7, 260-2, 266, 269-72.

[4] Du Fournet, pp. 272-4, 284-5. He complains bitterly of the injustice of his treatment: he was condemned unheard-like King Constantine; and for a similar reason: "un debat large et public await etabli toutes les responsabilites."

[5] The Nea Himera, 25 Nov./8 Dec., 1916.

[6] Guillemin, Elliot, Bosdari, Demidoff, Athens, 1/14 Dec., 1916.

[7] Zalocostas to the Legations of France, England, Italy, and Russia. Athens, 2/15 Dec., 1916.

[8] The Nea Himera, 21 Nov./4 Dec., 1916.

[9] See leading articles in The Times, 30 Nov., 16 Dec., 1916.

[10] Guillemin, Elliot, Demidoff, Piraeus, 18/31 Dec., 1916.

[11] Zalocostas to Legations of France, England and Russia, Athens, 23 Dec,/5 Jan., 1917.

[12] Guillemin, Bosdani, Demidoff, Erskine, Salamis Strait, 26 Dec./8 Jan., 1917.