London conference on Greece

On 28 May 1917 an Anglo-French conference on Greece met in London. From Paris came the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Alexandre Ribot and the Minister of War Paul Painlevé with their military advisers, and the host was the government of David Lloyd George. The talks went on until the next day and ended, as the British official history of the Macedonian campaign (Falls) puts it, in an almost complete acceptance of the French position: King Constantine I was to give up the throne.

The French plan and British doubts

A few weeks earlier, at the Paris conference of 4 and 5 May, the Allies had decided to secure the harvest in Thessaly, Greece’s only large granary, and had given France the right to speak on Greek matters on behalf of them all. The Ribot government, however, wanted to go further. On 23 May the British Secretary of State for War, Lord Derby, put before the War Cabinet new proposals that he had heard from Painlevé himself: to march into Thessaly, dethrone the king and set up a Venizelist government in Athens. According to Falls, the French felt no personal dislike of Constantine, nor were they particularly devoted to Eleftherios Venizelos, but the king was hostile to them, and Venizelos was the only Greek politician on whom they could rely.

The British military and naval advisers were against it. The First Sea Lord, Admiral John Jellicoe, argued that the danger of German submarines using Greek ports had been exaggerated and was much smaller than the risk of war with Greece. After a long discussion, in which serious differences of opinion came to light, the War Cabinet postponed a decision until Ribot himself explained the reasons for the change in French policy, and instructed Lord Robert Cecil to invite the French ministers and their advisers to London. The British were also influenced by the fact that they themselves intended to withdraw one infantry division and two cavalry brigades from Salonika. The French replied that if their ally was weakening the front against their advice, it should at least allow them to ensure the safety of their own troops.

What was decided

According to Falls, it was agreed that once the Allies had taken control of the Thessalian harvest, the representatives of France and Britain would inform the king that, as guaranteeing powers under the treaty of 1863 which had placed his father on the Greek throne, they would no longer tolerate either his violation of the constitution and rule as an absolute monarch or the continued division of Greece into two camps. Constantine was to abdicate in favour of one of his sons, who would undertake to reign as a constitutional monarch, with Venizelos or a politician named by him as prime minister. Only after the abdication was the harvest to be fairly divided between the two parts of Greece and the Allied armies.

The French wanted to occupy the Isthmus of Corinth from the very start of the Thessalian operation, to prevent organised resistance and to stop the royal army from marching out of the Peloponnese. At a parallel meeting of the military and naval advisers, the Chief of the French General Staff, General Ferdinand Foch, answered British objections by saying that a landing on the isthmus was no more an act of war than the march into Thessaly. In the end it was recorded that General Maurice Sarrail should keep troops ready to be sent to the isthmus “if necessary”, and that the British would then contribute a small contingent, without committing themselves to further military, naval or transport assistance.

The most important decision on personnel was to entrust the whole affair to the French senator Charles Jonnart. He was to become the Allied high commissioner in Greece, representing France and Britain and, if they wished, Russia and Italy too. Falls notes that in the end neither of those two states joined. In political matters even Sarrail was subordinate to him. Jonnart, a former governor-general of Algeria and in 1913 Foreign Minister, was in Falls’s view the best possible choice: a firm, judicious and experienced politician, but also a man who was hard to direct by telegrams from London. By putting the affair in his hands, the British in practice lost influence over the way it was handled.

Two assessments

The British writer George F. Abbott, who was sympathetic to the king, wrote that after “three days of hard talking” the French won over the British ministers, who had scruples and feared bloodshed. They were reassured by the promise that the whole operation would be carried out without war and that force would be used only if the king committed acts of hostility. For Abbott this was yet another injustice to Greece, which had endured a blockade for half a year. Falls admits that the official justification, the king’s violation of the constitution, was a pretext rather than a cause. The real reasons were Constantine’s failure to keep his undertakings, the determination of the new French government, the intransigence of the Venizelists, the Thessalian harvest and the prospect of a weakening of the Macedonian front. Revolutionary Russia, which had formerly defended the Greek monarch, could no longer intercede for him.

The London decisions were put into effect within two weeks. Jonnart left for Greece at the beginning of June, on 10 June Allied troops entered Thessaly, and the next day the French landed on the isthmus and the high commissioner demanded the abdication. The government of Alexandros Zaimis passed this demand on to the king, and on 12 June 1917 Constantine I gave up the throne in favour of his younger son, Alexander.