Greece rejects the offer of Entente troops

On 28 September 1915 the British Foreign Office received from Athens a reply which the British official naval historian Julian Corbett called “staggering”. The government of Greece thanked it warmly for the offer to send troops to Salonika, but considered that there was at present no need to make use of it. It cited the declarations of the governments of Bulgaria and Serbia. The Bulgarians gave assurances that their mobilisation meant only armed neutrality, and the Serbs that they did not intend to attack first. Only the day before, Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos had reported that the King had agreed to the arrival of the troops, and had asked for them to come as quickly as possible.

A reply to the British conditions

The Greek telegram was a reply to a British telegram of the previous day. In it London gave assurances that preparations to send the troops were under way, but it did not accept the formal protest with which Greece wished to greet the landing. It demanded a clear statement that the troops would be welcome, and proposed that the Greek navy help to secure the port against submarines. Neutral Greece did not want to make such a statement. Venizelos had stipulated from the start that, as long as the country had not entered the war, the landing of foreign troops could not have the government’s official consent, only its tacit acquiescence, as with the occupation of Mudros on Lemnos in February 1915.

It is not known exactly who drafted the reply of 28 September or in what circumstances. Corbett, who used the British files, wrote only of the “pirouettes” that Athens was forced into by its difficult position. Two policies clashed in the Greek government: that of the Prime Minister, who wanted to help Serbia, and that of King Constantine I, who intended to remain neutral unless Bulgaria attacked the Serbs.

Grey’s speech

On the same day the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, answered a question in the House of Commons about Bulgaria’s intentions. He said that according to Sofia’s official assurances Bulgaria had adopted an attitude of armed neutrality and had no hostile intentions towards its neighbours. In Britain, he said, there was no hostility to Bulgaria, but “traditionally a warm feeling of sympathy” for its people. As long as the Bulgarians did not side with the enemy, there was no question of British forces being used against their interests. If, however, their mobilisation proved to be a prelude to aggression, Britain would give its friends in the Balkans all the support in its power “without reserve”. The aim of British policy was an agreement among the Balkan states in which the “legitimate aspirations” of each of them would be satisfied.

In Athens Grey’s words, arriving in shortened and distorted reports, caused a storm. For months the Greeks had feared that the Entente would buy Bulgaria at their expense by handing it Kavala. Now they began to suspect that the Entente troops were to occupy Macedonia and hand it over to the Bulgarians.

The refusal withdrawn

On 29 September another message came from Athens: the telegram of the previous day was to be disregarded, and the request of 27 September for the allies to act still stood. These twists were felt as far away as Gallipoli, where the generals received orders and counter-orders by turns. In the end the British 10th Division began leaving its positions at Suvla Bay by night, and by the evening of 1 October it had assembled at Mudros, ready to sail for Salonika. Venizelos’s distrust, fuelled by Grey’s speech, had not yet died away. On 1 October he demanded from the Powers an assurance that their troops would in no case be used against the territorial integrity of Greece and Serbia.