Alexandros Zaimis becomes prime minister of Greece

On 6 October 1915 a new government was being formed in Athens. The day before, King Constantine I had refused to back the policy of Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, who had announced in parliament that Greece would honour its alliance with Serbia even if it meant war with Germany, and Venizelos resigned for the second time that year. The King entrusted the task of forming a cabinet to Alexandros Zaimis. According to the Italian minister in Athens, Zaimis had already been summoned to the palace on the evening of 5 October. The British chronology of the war gives 6 October as the date of his appointment, while Greek lists of governments and the American journalist Paxton Hibben, who was in Athens at the time, take 7 October as the start of the cabinet’s term of office, that is 24 September by the Julian calendar, which Greece then used.

Who the new prime minister was

Zaimis, not quite sixty, was one of the most respected figures in Greek politics. The son and grandson of prime ministers, he had studied law in Athens, in Germany and in Paris, and entered parliament in 1885. He first headed a government in 1897, after the defeat in the war with Turkey, and from 1906 he was High Commissioner of autonomous Crete. In 1915 he was running the National Bank of Greece, together with a second governor. He was neither a Venizelist nor a declared opponent of Venizelos, and was regarded as a friend of the Entente. When in March, after Venizelos’s first resignation, the King was looking for a new prime minister, Zaimis declined. This time he agreed.

A cabinet of former prime ministers

The government, which the Athens press called “all-national”, consisted entirely of heavyweight opponents of Venizelos. Zaimis also kept the foreign ministry for himself. Dimitrios Gounaris became Minister of the Interior, Stefanos Dragoumis Minister of Finance, Georgios Theotokis Minister of the National Economy, and Dimitrios Rallis Minister of Communications. All four had been prime ministers in the past. The war and navy ministries went to military men: General Ioannis Yannakitsas and Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis, who according to Greek sources accepted the portfolio only at the King’s personal request. The Italian minister, Carlo De Bosdari, warned Rome that Theotokis, known for his sympathy for Germany and a personal friend of Emperor Wilhelm II, called for particular attention. He described the cabinet itself as an “overgrown” creation that would not last long.

A minority government

The new government had no majority in parliament. Venizelos’s Liberal Party, which had won the June elections, still had the upper hand, and as recently as 5 October the chamber had backed its prime minister’s policy. Venizelos, however, told the Entente ministers that he would not bring the cabinet down, so as not to provoke a new conflict with the Crown. He also maintained that his departure would stop neither the Greek mobilisation nor the landing of British and French troops at Salonika, which had begun the day before. It was said that the Liberals would merely “tolerate” the Zaimis government.

The most important question concerned the alliance with Serbia, which was attacked that same day by German and Austro-Hungarian troops, while Bulgaria was also expected to strike any day. Venizelos’s British biographer Vincent Seligman later wrote that the Zaimis cabinet had been formed for a single purpose: to repudiate the Greek–Serbian treaty. He quoted the words the prime minister was said to have spoken to ministry officials who wanted to explain the treaty’s provisions to him: he did not intend to waste time on details, since he had taken office precisely in order not to carry out the treaty. Seligman, however, was an ardent supporter of Venizelos, and authors sympathetic to the King portrayed Zaimis as an honest, non-partisan administrator. The government lasted barely a month. At the beginning of November, after a dispute in parliament over the conduct of the war minister, it lost a vote and gave way to the cabinet of Stefanos Skouloudis.