Stefanos Skouloudis becomes prime minister of Greece

Two days after the Chamber of Deputies brought down the government of Alexandros Zaimis, King Constantine I found a new prime minister. The British chronology of the war and some authors, including the British writer G. F. Abbott in a book published in 1917, give 6 November 1915 as the date of the appointment. Greek lists of governments, the New York monthly “Current History” and the Italian minister in Athens, Carlo De Bosdari, who cabled Rome on 7 November that the “crisis is resolved”, point to 7 November, that is 25 October by the Julian calendar. Most likely Stefanos Skouloudis was given the task on 6 November and the government took office the next day.

A banker from Constantinople

Skouloudis was 76 and one of the oldest men in Greek politics. He was born in 1838 in Constantinople into a merchant family from Crete. He made his fortune in trade and banking: he worked for the great Ralli trading house, and in 1871 co-founded the Bank of Constantinople. From 1876 he lived in Athens. He was a member of parliament, envoy in Madrid, minister of the navy in Charilaos Trikoupis’s government and, in 1897, after the defeat in the war with Turkey, the foreign minister who negotiated with the Turks. In 1912 Venizelos sent him to the London peace conference after the First Balkan War. According to Abbott he had three times declined the premiership and agreed only at the king’s insistent urging, because he considered it his duty.

The same government, a new prime minister

The change in fact concerned only one person. Skouloudis also took the foreign ministry, and Zaimis’s other ministers kept their portfolios: the former prime ministers Dimitrios Gounaris (interior), Georgios Theotokis, Dimitrios Rallis and Stefanos Dragoumis, Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis at the navy, and even General Ioannis Yannakitsas, whose clash with Liberal deputies had caused the crisis. The Venizelist newspaper “Phos” later called his policy “the colourless policy of old men”.

The new prime minister at once assured the Allies of his intentions. In a circular of 9 November, delivered in Petrograd, Paris and other capitals, he declared that the cabinet was pursuing the same policy as the Zaimis government: armed neutrality marked by sincere goodwill towards the Entente powers. He adopted as his own his predecessor’s assurances of a friendly attitude towards the Allied troops at Salonika and asked the powers not to believe “tendentious and malicious” rumours. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Sazonov, took note of these words, and in Paris, as the Russian ambassador reported, they were received with satisfaction.

Dissolution of the Chamber

De Bosdari reported on 7 November that Skouloudis was counting on a vote of confidence with the support of some of Venizelos’s deputies and wanted to avoid dissolving parliament. Venizelos was said to have agreed, having concluded that in new elections the nation, which identified his party with war, would vote almost en masse for peace. No agreement was reached. On 11 November (12 November according to some press reports) the king dissolved the Chamber, for the second time in 1915, and called elections for 19 December. Venizelos regarded this as a breach of the constitution and announced that his party would not take part, calling elections in which most of his supporters were sitting mobilised in barracks a farce.

Calm in relations with the Entente did not last long. As early as 10 November Skouloudis told the Entente ministers that if Serbian or Anglo-French troops withdrew from Serbia onto Greek territory, Greece would have to disarm and intern them in accordance with the Hague Conventions. The Allies regarded this as a threat to their soldiers and in the following weeks responded with pressure on Athens. Skouloudis governed until June 1916, in an ever sharper dispute with the Entente, which deepened the National Schism between the king and Venizelos.