Resignation of the Skouloudis government

The British chronology of the war records under 21 June 1916, or 8 June by the Julian calendar then used in Greece, the resignation of the cabinet of Stefanos Skouloudis. The same day the ministers of France, Great Britain and Russia handed a note in Athens which demanded, among other things, the immediate replacement of the government by a cabinet of officials. The order of events that day is not clear in the sources. According to the British official history of the operations in Macedonia, the prime minister resigned before the note was delivered, and some later accounts add that he knew its contents in advance. The British correspondent in Athens, Crawfurd Price, wrote on the other hand that the ministers handed the note in the afternoon, in the prime minister’s absence, to the director-general of the Foreign Ministry, and that Skouloudis resigned immediately afterwards. The American Year Book dates the resignation to 20 June, while Greek lists of governments end the cabinet’s term on 9 June by the Julian calendar, that is, 22 June, when his successor was sworn in.

The last weeks

Skouloudis, who had taken office in November 1915 as a 76-year-old banker and diplomat, was untenable by June 1916. The Allies blamed him for the surrender of Fort Rupel to the Germans and Bulgarians, which he had known was coming without warning anyone. At the beginning of June General Maurice Sarrail declared a state of siege in Salonika, and the Entente imposed a partial blockade of the Greek coast, which cut the country off from coal and grain. The government tried to ease the tension: according to the Greek official history it decided to send home the twelve oldest classes of reservists. It did not help. On 12 June, as the New York monthly Current History reported, a group of demonstrators escorted by uniformed policemen booed outside the French and British legations, and the Allies concluded that this had happened with the tacit approval of the authorities. For weeks the Venizelist press had been demanding the resignation of the “government of old men”.

Departure

The American Year Book wrote that Skouloudis preferred to resign rather than ask King Constantine I to accept the demands. The king decided to comply with them and entrusted the task of forming a new government to Alexandros Zaimis, who accepted the whole note. The prime minister’s last days in office were also bound up with the Rupel affair. The Greek white book, published later by the government of Eleftherios Venizelos, contains a memorandum of 20 June from the director-general of the Foreign Ministry. In it he reminded the prime minister that he had still not placed on file the documents in which Germany and Bulgaria were supposed to have promised to return the fort. On 21 June Skouloudis sent the ministry the May letters of the German and Bulgarian ministers announcing the entry of their troops, together with his replies, and added that the Germans had lifted the secrecy clause on them. According to the white book, the Bulgarian documents spoke only of respect for Greece’s sovereign rights, not of the return of the fort.

Venizelos laid the whole responsibility for the powers’ intervention on the Skouloudis government, and his supporters greeted the resignation with relief. Skouloudis himself withdrew from active politics. After the king’s abdication and Venizelos’s return to power in 1917 he was charged with high treason, among other things in connection with the surrender of Rupel, and because of his age was held in custody instead of being sent into exile. The trial dragged on until the elections of November 1920, which the Venizelists lost. The charges were dropped, and in 1921 parliament declared the whole proceedings null and void.