Entente demands expulsion of Central Powers envoys from Athens

On 19 November 1916, or 6 November by the Julian calendar then used in Greece, the French vice-admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet, commander of the Allied fleet lying off Salamis, demanded that the diplomatic representatives of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey leave Greece. The British publicist George F. Abbott, sympathetic to the King, who drew on the admiral’s memoirs, writes that this happened in the evening, at the request of the Entente ministers, and that the diplomats were given three days to depart. Venizelos’s British biographer S. B. Chester writes of 48 hours. The British chronology of the war records under this date that the Entente governments demanded the expulsion of the Central Powers’ ministers and the surrender of Greek war material. The admiral had, however, presented the second demand as early as 16 November, and in the name of France alone.

The pretext: the Angeliki

The pretext was provided by the affair of the Greek steamer Angeliki, which in October was said to have been torpedoed at the entrance to Piraeus. The Greek historian S. P. P. Cosmetatos, a defender of the King, later claimed that the ship had returned to port under her own steam and that the whole affair was a hoax of French propaganda. According to the British official history of the Macedonian campaign (Falls), on 31 October the German legation in Athens issued a communiqué on the matter. The British minister, Sir Francis Elliot, concluded that whether the ship had been struck by a torpedo, a mine or a bomb, the communiqué was an official admission that the Germans intended to sink Greek ships carrying “revolutionaries”, that is, volunteers from the islands sailing to join Venizelos in Salonika, and that they had the means to pass information about them to submarines. Elliot saw in this a unique opportunity to demand the departure of all the enemy legations. Falls stresses that on this matter London and Paris were in complete agreement. It was otherwise with other French steps: on 7 November the admiral, despite protests from Athens, hoisted the French ensign on the Greek torpedo boats seized in October and took over the arsenal on Salamis, and Elliot then declared that the Entente powers bore no responsibility for the acts of the French government alone.

The Greek government protested on 20 November. It recalled that Greece was neutral and maintained peaceful relations with the Central Powers, that the expulsion of the ministers violated their inviolability guaranteed by international law, and that in September, when the Allied fleet appeared off Piraeus, the ministers of France and Britain had assured Prime Minister Alexandros Zaimis that the missions of the states at war with the Entente were in no danger. The next day the ministers of France, Britain, Italy and Russia replied that this assurance had been merely “an act of spontaneous courtesy”, not an irrevocable commitment, and could not protect the diplomats from the consequences of hostile activities contrary to Greek neutrality. They meant espionage and intrigue. Abbott remarked ironically that such activities are an inseparable part of every diplomat’s work.

On 22 November the representatives of the four states, among them the German diplomat Count Wilhelm von Mirbach-Harff, later ambassador in Moscow, sailed on a Greek steamer to Bulgarian-occupied Kavala. On leaving they protested against “the insults inflicted on four diplomatic representatives on neutral territory”. Abbott writes that the expulsion was carried out without any of the customary courtesies, and that the admiral who had to execute it was himself scandalised.

The note on arms

The expulsion of the ministers coincided with a second, far more dangerous matter. On 16 November Dartige du Fournet presented Prime Minister Spyridon Lambros with a note from the French government. According to the British official history of the war at sea (Newbolt), France, wishing to offset the advantages the enemy had gained when the Greeks handed Fort Rupel and the stores at Kavala to the Bulgarians, demanded 16 field and 16 mountain batteries with a thousand shells per gun, 40,000 Mannlicher rifles, 140 machine guns and 50 lorries. Abbott writes of 18 field batteries. As proof of good will Greece was to hand over 10 mountain batteries at once at the Thessalian railway station in Athens. France offered payment or the return of the material after the war.

The idea had come from the King himself. At the end of October and the beginning of November King Constantine I had agreed with the French deputy Paul Bénazet that Greece would hand over arms in return for guarantees: the Allies were not to give them to the Venizelists and were not to allow Venizelist troops to turn against the throne. The note of 16 November was silent about guarantees. According to Cosmetatos, on 19 November the King called a crown council attended by former prime ministers. The majority were inclined to give way, but Stefanos Skouloudis argued that the expulsion of the ministers could be swallowed, because people did not understand the subtleties of international law, but no nation would bear the surrender of its arms: “Were the Entente to declare war on us for it, Greece would undoubtedly fall, but she would fall with honour.” That same day the King received the admiral, courteously but visibly changed, and asked why the demand was being presented by a fleet commander in the name of France alone and what had become of Bénazet’s guarantees. The admiral could not answer.

The road to 1 December

The Lambros government rejected the demand, on 21 November according to Newbolt, a day later according to Abbott and Cosmetatos. Lambros argued that the Allies already had 191 Greek guns in their hands, most of them modern, while the Germans and Bulgarians had only 124, mostly old, and that handing over arms would be an open breach of neutrality. On 24 November the admiral responded with an ultimatum: 10 mountain batteries were to be handed over by 1 December at the latest, and the rest by the middle of the month. Otherwise he threatened “all measures that the situation requires”. Agitation grew in Athens, the officers of the garrison swore to defend the honour of the King and the country, and volunteers flocked to the barracks. Newbolt considers it a mistake to have taken the matter out of the hands of professional diplomats and entrusted it to the commander of a powerful fleet, who had to carry out orders and could neither delay nor negotiate. The consequences were to become apparent in the first days of December.