Rome conference

On 5 January 1917 the leading politicians, generals and admirals of Britain, France and Italy, together with representatives of Russia, gathered in Rome. The talks were held in the Palazzo della Consulta, the seat of the Italian foreign ministry, and lasted until 7 January. The British official history of the Macedonian campaign (Falls) gives exactly these dates. The official history volume on the Western Front dates the conference from 4 January, and some studies mention only two days of talks, 6 and 7 January. It was the first great Allied conference of the new British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who less than a month earlier had taken office intending to take the first word on strategy away from the generals.

Why Rome

The idea of the conference was born in London. On 26 and 27 December 1916 British ministers had discussed Salonika there with French ones, but had not reached agreement. The British refused to send anything to the Salonika front beyond drafts for their own divisions. It was decided to return to the matter at a conference with the Italians taking part. At first the south of France was considered, but in the end Rome was chosen, partly for the convenience of the Italian ministers and partly because the commanders from Salonika and the Allied ministers in Athens could come there.

Britain was represented by Lloyd George, Lord Alfred Milner of the War Cabinet and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson. France sent its Prime Minister Aristide Briand, the Minister of War General Hubert Lyautey and the Minister of Munitions Albert Thomas; Italy its Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino and its Chief of Staff, General Luigi Cadorna. Russia was represented by General Fyodor Palitsyn and, according to the memoirs of the British ambassador in Rome, Rennell Rodd, also by the Russian ambassador Mikhail Giers. From Salonika came the Allied commander-in-chief in the Balkans, General Maurice Sarrail, and the commander of the British forces, General George Milne. Falls writes that Rome in fact saw a whole series of meetings: political, military and economic. The two main problems were the mounting losses of shipping in the Mediterranean and the disputes over Greece.

Guns for Italy

Lloyd George came with a plan of his own. For months he had believed that offensives on the Western Front cost too much and achieved too little, and that a decision had to be sought on another front. As early as November, at the Paris conference, he had unsuccessfully proposed lending heavy guns to Italy. In Rome he proposed on behalf of the British government that the Allies support an Italian spring offensive on the Karst plateau towards Trieste. According to the British official history, Britain was to lend 250 or 300 heavy guns and France was to do the same. Other accounts speak of as many as 400 guns. Rodd remembered that eight Allied divisions were also in question, and a blow that might reach Ljubljana and shake Austria-Hungary.

The Prime Minister based his arguments above all on the situation at sea. He pointed out that in the second half of 1916 the Allies had lost 256 ships in the Mediterranean, totalling over 662,000 tons, of which a third of the ships and almost two-thirds of the tonnage were British, and that German submarines were operating almost with impunity. Troops and guns travelling to Italy by rail took no space on ships. He added that 15,000 replacements were waiting in England with no means of transporting them to Salonika.

The plan met resistance. Briand observed that a great offensive required long preparation and had become “a great industrial operation”. He also asked what withdrawing the guns would mean for the plans of General Robert Nivelle, who had since December commanded the French armies and was preparing a great offensive of his own on the Western Front. The French were committed to it and had full confidence in it. Cadorna, called in to the talks, showed no enthusiasm. He believed that the arrival of the guns could not be hidden from the enemy, so there would be no surprise, and asked whether the British would not demand them back for their own spring offensive. Lloyd George replied that the guns could stay in Italy until about May. Lyautey at once pointed out that this was too late for Nivelle. Robertson, who, like the commander of the British forces in France, the newly promoted Field Marshal Douglas Haig, regarded the Western Front as decisive, did not support the Prime Minister’s idea. According to Rodd, Lloyd George then remarked that it was extraordinary how much soldiers hated politicians.

The project was diplomatically shelved: the conference deemed it worthy of further study and referred it to the governments’ military advisers. Cadorna later sent London a plan for the use of an Allied corps in Italy, but the matter was soon pushed aside by Nivelle’s project.

Salonika and Greece

The military meeting on Macedonia ended in deadlock. The French and Russians demanded that Britain and Italy send three more divisions to the Salonika front. The British and Italians replied that they had no more troops to send. It was decided to hold Bitola, retaken in November, as long as this could be done without exposing the Armée d’Orient to defeat, and to prepare a shorter line just in case. In the end the British sent only three batteries of 60-pounder guns. It was also agreed that the commanders of the national contingents were to carry out Sarrail’s operational orders, while keeping the right of direct appeal to their own governments. Falls judges that Sarrail made a good impression in Rome and strengthened his position.

Sarrail feared a simultaneous attack by the Central Powers on his front and by Greek troops on his rear. He wanted to move quickly into Thessaly to settle the matter before the enemy stirred. Lyautey supported him. In a separate conversation Sarrail asked Lloyd George for a free hand in Greece, but he refused. The British believed that since King Constantine I had accepted the December ultimatum and was withdrawing his troops to the Peloponnese, it would be madness to embark on a new war with a new enemy. The Italians mostly supported the British, although they themselves feared the ambitions of Eleftherios Venizelos. Robertson later summed up the attitude of the three powers to the Greek politician: “France backed him, Britain admired him, and Italy suspected him”.

It ended with a milder solution, which Rodd attributed to an earlier proposal by Sonnino. The conference drew up a declaration to the Greek government: the Allies had to protect their armies against the threat from Greek troops in their rear, so those troops were to move to the Peloponnese as quickly as possible, in accordance with the notes of 14 and 31 December, and the Allies were to have full control over this movement. If Athens did not accept the declaration within 48 hours, the Allies reserved their freedom of action. Falls bluntly calls it an ultimatum. It was delivered on 8 January, and according to Falls the Greek government accepted it the next day.

Outcome

As often happened, no final decisions were taken in Rome. The British official history regards Britain’s refusal to send more divisions to Salonika as the most important military result of the conference. The conference did, however, commission a detailed study of whether troops for Salonika could be moved through Italy, with a shorter sea crossing. This work later gave rise to the route from the Italian port of Taranto to the Greek port of Itea on the Gulf of Corinth, which greatly shortened the sea passage. Aid to Russia in armaments was also agreed in Rome. Its details were to be discussed at the Allied conference in Petrograd, which had been in preparation since the autumn. In the spring of 1917, however, the Allies staked everything on the Nivelle Offensive rather than on the Prime Minister’s Italian plan.