Entente note to Greece

On 23 November 1915, or 10 November by the Julian calendar, the ministers of France, Britain, Russia and Italy in Athens handed a joint note to the Greek prime minister and foreign minister, Stefanos Skouloudis. Three of these states, France, Britain and Russia, had since 1830 been the formal “protecting powers” of the Greek kingdom. Together with Italy they demanded an official assurance that Greece would neither disarm nor intern the Allied troops if they withdrew from Serbia onto Greek territory. The note was the culmination of a three-week crisis in which the Entente for the first time openly used measures of coercion against neutral Greece.

The words that caused the crisis

It all began with the new prime minister’s conversations with the diplomats. On 10 November, a few days after taking office, Skouloudis told the Entente ministers that if Serbian or Anglo-French troops, pushed back by the Bulgarians and Germans, crossed the Greek border, Greece would have to disarm and intern them in accordance with the Hague Conventions. That was what the law of war required, but to the Allies it sounded like a threat. Their soldiers, who had advanced from Salonika into the Vardar valley, were in a dangerous position: between them and their base at Salonika stood Greek corps, and the Athens newspaper Estia wrote that Germany was demanding that Greece strictly observe its neutrality. The British official history of the Macedonian campaign considers that Skouloudis spoke in this way “probably under German pressure”. Authors sympathetic to the King, such as G.F. Abbott, replied that the prime minister was only repeating the official formula of a neutral state, while at the same time repeatedly giving assurances that Greece did not intend to apply it.

The response was swift. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov, proposed, as the Russian ambassador conveyed in Rome on 12 November, a joint démarche by the four powers, backed by a blockade of the coast and a naval demonstration off Piraeus. France wanted to send warships and to stop supplies and money for Greece. The British held ships carrying supplies for Greece at Malta and in Egyptian ports and withdrew export licences, and on 12 November the British minister, Francis Elliot, warned Skouloudis that if even a single soldier were touched “with a view to disarmament”, the consequences would be serious. The most cautious was the Italian foreign minister, Sidney Sonnino, who warned that threats should not run ahead of the arrival at Salonika of reinforcements capable of facing the consequences of a possible Greek refusal.

The note and the warships

In line with the decisions of the Anglo-French conference in Paris, the note was to be handed over only when the troops at Salonika were secure and the fleet ready for action. A squadron of Allied battleships, cruisers, monitors and destroyers assembled at the island of Milos. According to the British official history of the naval war, it was to destroy the Greek fleet if Greece replied with hostility. The text was prepared by the French on the basis of Elliot’s draft. The British government wanted it to be firm but friendly: with no time limit for a reply and no open threat, so as not to give Athens a pretext for a break. On 20 November Lord Herbert Kitchener, who had arrived from Salonika, held talks in Athens with King Constantine I and with Skouloudis. The King gave him his word that the retreating troops would be neither disarmed nor interned, but protested sharply against the conduct of the British and French.

The note opened with the assurance that the protecting and allied powers were “always animated by the most benevolent intentions” towards Greece, but considered it necessary to end the “equivocal and uncertain situation” in which it found itself towards the Entente. Since the possibility of disarming or interning British, French and Serbian troops had been officially mentioned, the Allied governments demanded a formal assurance that under no circumstances would Greek troops attempt it, and that the promised benevolent neutrality would be maintained “with all its consequences”. The powers did not intend to force Greece to take part in the war. But since, despite its alliance with Serbia, it had stayed on the sidelines, they could not allow it to hamper their movements on land and sea or to endanger the safety of their troops. They demanded every facility, especially in the port of Salonika and on the roads and railways leading to it. They promised that after the war they would return in full all Greek territory they might have to occupy and would pay compensation for damage caused by the occupation. Finally, they announced that they would also consider Greece’s claims with the greatest goodwill.

Athens under pressure

The note was polite, but the circumstances were not. The detention of ships struck at a country that lived largely on imported food and coal, and a full naval blockade threatened it with famine. The Greek minister in Rome, Lambros Koromilas, complained to Sonnino on 21 November that the Allies’ suspicions were “unjust and insulting”, and Skouloudis, irritated by the Entente’s mistrust, even hinted at withdrawing Greek troops from Macedonia or at a demobilisation for whose consequences the powers would be responsible. Neither Kitchener nor the French minister, Jean Guillemin, wanted that at all, however, because the mobilised Greek army covered the flank of the troops at Salonika against the Bulgarians. The Skouloudis government did not delay its reply. It gave it the very next day.