Greece declares armed neutrality

On 8 October 1915, that is 25 September by the Julian calendar, Greece’s new Prime Minister and foreign minister Alexandros Zaimis sent a telegraphic circular to all Greek legations. In it the cabinet, which had only just taken office, declared that after examining the “extremely complicated” international situation its policy would rest on the same principles on which Greece had relied since the beginning of the European war. To safeguard its vital interests better, Greece “will remain in a state of armed neutrality” and would adapt itself to events, which the government intended to follow with unremitting attention. The ministers were to keep to these words in their conversations with diplomats and journalists.

What armed neutrality meant

The formula was short, but its meaning was clear to everyone. Greece did not intend to demobilise the army that King Constantine I had called up two weeks earlier in response to the Bulgarian mobilisation. Nor did it intend to march with it to the aid of Serbia, which German and Austro-Hungarian troops had been attacking for two days and which Bulgaria was about to strike any day. For the King, mobilisation had from the start been only a safeguard against a Bulgarian attack on Greece itself. Now this understanding became the official policy of the state. The irony was that less than three weeks earlier Sofia had used the very same term to explain its own mobilisation, which had turned out to be a preparation for war.

In Paris, as the Italian ambassador Tommaso Tittoni reported, it was already known from the morning of 8 October that the Greek army would not march against Bulgaria. The news caused alarm there. Since the Greek divisions could not be counted on, the 150,000 British and French soldiers promised at Venizelos’s request might not be enough, and even they had not yet arrived. The French began calling loudly for Russia and Italy to take part in the expedition.

Neutrality, but benevolent

What worried the Allies above all was whether the new government would demand the withdrawal of the troops that had been landing at Salonika since 5 October. Zaimis reassured them. In those days he informed the Entente ministers that the landing could continue and that Greece’s neutrality towards their countries would be benevolent. The American journalist Paxton Hibben, who was sympathetic to the King, later wrote that the government’s first step was precisely to renew the declaration of “benevolent neutrality” that Venizelos had made towards the Entente in August 1914. According to the British official naval history, friendly neutrality meant in practice that the Allies could continue to use Salonika as a base, while the Greek army was to remain ready to oppose the Bulgarians at the first sign that they intended to enter Greek territory. The French minister Jean Guillemin made the matter clear as early as 7 October: France would continue to pay Greece the promised subsidy only on condition that the mobilisation continued. Zaimis assured him that it would.

The Italian minister Carlo De Bosdari doubted, however, whether the Greek army would really remain under arms at full strength. He had heard from many sources that the mobilisation of 24 classes was quietly and almost spontaneously shrinking. He believed that the whole of Greek society was opposed to mobilisation, and still more to war, and this explained why the fall of the still popular Venizelos had been received in the country almost with relief. On 11 October Zaimis read a statement in parliament repeating the circular of 8 October almost word for word. Venizelos’s Liberals, who held a majority in the chamber, promised the government their provisional support.