Paris conference on the Balkans

At ten in the morning on 25 July 1917 an inter-Allied conference on the Balkans met in Paris. It was chaired by the French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Alexandre Ribot. Heads of government and ministers sat at the table, and beside them commanders-in-chief, chiefs of staff and admirals. France was represented by, among others, the War Minister Paul Painlevé, the Minister of Munitions Albert Thomas, the High Commissioner in Greece Charles Jonnart and the Chief of the General Staff, General Ferdinand Foch. From London came the Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, General Jan Smuts, the First Sea Lord, Admiral John Jellicoe, and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson. Italy sent the Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino, the Commander-in-Chief, General Luigi Cadorna, and Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel. Serbia, Romania and Russia were represented at the first session by their diplomats in Paris and by officers, and from the afternoon also by the Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, who a few days earlier had signed the Corfu Declaration. Greece, which for a month had been fighting on the side of the Entente, was also invited, and was represented by its minister in Paris, Athos Romanos.

The British chronology of the war says that the conference was to discuss the situation in the Balkans in military, naval and political committees, as well as plans in case of the probable collapse of Russia. The French had sent out the invitations as early as the beginning of July, initially for 16 July, and had also asked the United States to take part. President Woodrow Wilson declined to send a representative.

The dispute over Salonika

Ribot recalled that at the conference in London at the end of May France and Britain had decided to settle further action in the Balkans together with their allies in July. Much had changed since then: Greece, after the departure of King Constantine, had come over to the Entente, and in Russia the army was just falling apart. According to Painlevé’s figures, the Allied army in Macedonia numbered about 627,000 ration strength, of which the French had eight divisions, the British five, the Italians three brigades and the Serbs about 130,000 men. Cadorna added that there were also about 80,000 Italian soldiers in Albania.

Lloyd George read out the British note. Robertson considered that the Allies were making poor use of their forces in Macedonia, as they had 600,000 men on ration strength there against roughly 400,000 of the enemy. In his view an offensive from Salonika made no sense unless it was accompanied by a great Russo-Romanian attack on Bulgaria from the north, and there was no prospect of such an attack. The British government, whose troops, given the inactivity of the Russians, had to face the Turks alone, wanted to transfer one division and part of the heavy artillery from Salonika to Palestine at once, to increase the pressure on the Turkish front. Further French and British divisions were, as far as possible, to be replaced by Greek Venizelist units.

Foch replied with a French note, with which Cadorna agreed. The Allies had to hold the ground they had taken and cover Greece and the supply routes of the Italian army in Albania, and the new Greek army would not be ready before the beginning of 1918. After the recent German successes in Eastern Galicia, where Tarnopol and Stanisławów had just fallen, the Germans might want to seek an easy victory in Macedonia, so a reduction of forces could be considered in October at the earliest. Cadorna warned that if the army at Salonika were weakened, the Italians would have to withdraw from Valona. The Serbian minister Milenko Vesnić declared that the withdrawal of even a single company would have a bad effect on the remnants of the Serbian army, and the representatives of Romania and Greece supported the French.

Lloyd George agreed to postpone a decision, but only until the next session. At the close of the proceedings on 26 July Ribot stated that everyone recognised the need to keep the army at Salonika, and since the British wished to examine the matter further, the decision would be taken at the conference in London. The British official history by Cyril Falls says that London held to its position, despite the opposition of all the allies and a protest by the Serbian government.

Greece

Much time was devoted to Greece. Romanos presented a plan to build an army of fifteen divisions, numbering 300,000 men together with depot units, and asked for money, equipment and support with the Americans for a loan. The question of finance was referred to a sub-committee of Jonnart, Romanos and Smuts. A sharp dispute arose over the Italian occupation of Greek Epirus. The Italians, who in June had occupied Ioannina, wanted to keep a strip of land along the road from Santi Quaranta to Monastir, needed to supply the troops in Macedonia. According to the American ambassador in Paris, William Sharp, who knew the course of the proceedings from conversations with delegates, Sonnino even questioned Greece’s right to take part in the conference, and Lloyd George appealed to him to suspend judgement and preserve harmony.

In the end three declarations were adopted. In the first the Allies announced that they would not lay down their arms until they had made a repetition of the “criminal aggression” of the Central Powers impossible. In the second France, Britain and Italy undertook to end, simultaneously and as soon as possible, their occupation of the territory of Old Greece, Thessaly and Epirus. Only the triangle by the Santi Quaranta road could the Italians temporarily keep for security reasons, on condition that Greek civil administration was restored there. In the third the three powers reserved for themselves, for the duration of the war, a naval and military base on Corfu, which was to remain under Greek sovereignty.

Russia and other matters

Shipping tonnage, which was in short supply because of submarine warfare, and the transport of the American army to France were also discussed. At the proposal of Thaon di Revel it was agreed that a naval conference would meet in London on 10 August. The final session, enlarged to underline Allied unity, was also attended by representatives of Belgium, Portugal, Japan, Montenegro and Siam. The Belgian Prime Minister Charles de Broqueville stressed that it had been a purely Balkan conference, so that no one would think his country had been excluded from the deliberations. Ribot assured Russia of the Allies’ “complete confidence”, but Sharp reported that the delegates were deeply disappointed by the news from the Russian front and no longer counted on help from the Russians in the near future. Lloyd George wrote in his memoirs that on the afternoon of 26 July he spoke about the possibilities of knocking Austria-Hungary out of the war.

The commanders met on the occasion of the conference. On 24 July Foch, Cadorna and Robertson agreed that the Allied aim should be to defeat Austria-Hungary by simultaneous attacks on the Italian and Russian fronts. According to British Cabinet papers cited by the Romanian historian Valentin-Ioan Fușcan, on 26 July Foch, Philippe Pétain, Robertson, Cadorna and the American General John Pershing considered what Russia’s exit from the war would mean. The dispute over Salonika returned at the conference in London on 7–8 August.