Zaimis prime minister of Greece once more

In early May 1917 King Constantine I dismissed the government of Professor Spyridon Lambros, which since October 1916 had governed the royalist part of Greece, and once again turned to Alexandros Zaimis. The British chronology of the war records the change of government under 2 May, and the same date is given by the British writer George F. Abbott, who was sympathetic to the king and according to whom Zaimis accepted the commission that day. The French writer Auguste Gauvain and The American Year Book write that Zaimis agreed to head the government on 3 May. The British official history of the Macedonian campaign (Falls), John Buchan and the New International Year Book give 4 May, and the Greek lists of governments give 21 April according to the Julian calendar then used in Greece, which is precisely 4 May. It therefore seems that talks went on from 2 May and that the new cabinet was sworn in two days later.

Why Lambros had to go

The Lambros cabinet had carried out, albeit reluctantly, the Entente’s harshest demands: it had moved the army to the Peloponnese and apologised to the Allies for the December fighting in Athens. Even so, in the spring of 1917 the king’s position deteriorated rapidly. According to Falls, the new French government of Alexandre Ribot, formed on 20 March, lacked its predecessor’s indulgence towards the Greek monarch and leaned towards tougher measures, while French public opinion was by now extremely hostile to Constantine. In Salonika the supporters of Eleftherios Venizelos spoke ever more loudly of deposition, and Venizelos himself twice in April argued to the British representative that reconciliation was impossible and that only the king’s abdication could save the dynasty. On 1 May a congress of Greek colonies meeting in Paris declared Constantine and his whole dynasty deposed.

On top of this came the question of Thessaly. Its grain, which was approaching harvest, was the only large food reserve for royalist Greece, worn down by the blockade. General Maurice Sarrail, commander of the Allied armies in Macedonia, had long wanted to occupy the province, and at the end of April, as he himself wrote in his memoirs, he received instructions from Paris to prepare an expedition. Abbott writes that the king, alarmed by this, dismissed Lambros in the hope that Zaimis, the only non-Venizelist whom nobody suspected of pro-German sympathies, would be able to placate the Allies. Gauvain, who was hostile to the king, saw it merely as a manoeuvre: Constantine was sacrificing a minister obedient to him in order to soothe the Entente’s anger.

The king’s last card

The sixty-one-year-old Zaimis had already been prime minister of Greece four times, most recently in the summer of 1916, when at the demand of the powers he had carried out the demobilisation of the army, and in September he had resigned. Since then he had again been running the National Bank of Greece. According to Gauvain he let himself be persuaded only after long talks and agreed to leave the bank to take office again as prime minister and foreign minister. The Greek lists of governments name among the members of his cabinet Georgios Rallis as minister of finance, Fokion Negris as minister of the interior and General Anastasios Charalambis as minister of war. These were men who had already sat in his 1916 government. According to Gauvain almost all the members of the cabinet openly opposed Venizelos, and hardly anyone in the press supported the new prime minister.

Falls calls this government “colourless” and writes that everything in it depended on the skill and prudence of the aged prime minister. Zaimis was a loyal royalist, but he had always sought an understanding with Venizelos and was well disposed towards the Allies, with many of whose politicians he was on terms of personal friendship. The British historian calls him King Constantine’s “last card”, adding that it was played too late, if it could have changed anything at all. The New International Year Book writes that the Allies welcomed the fall of Lambros and hoped that things would be easier with Zaimis. The new prime minister began talks with the Entente ministers and, as Abbott writes, tried to bring about a reconciliation between the king and Venizelos. Meanwhile, on 4 May the British minister Sir Francis Elliot reported the discovery near Athens of 480 hidden new Mannlicher rifles with ammunition, which according to Falls confirmed the French belief that royalist soldiers were hiding weapons.

What came next

The change of government did not halt the course of events. At a conference in Paris on 4 and 5 May the Allies decided to secure the Thessalian harvest and agreed that from then on France would speak for all of them on Greek affairs. In Salonika a Venizelist rally proclaimed Constantine’s deposition, and at the end of May Venizelos publicly rejected any idea of reconciliation with the king. Zaimis remained in office, and in June 1917 it was he who, at the request of the French envoy Charles Jonnart, saw the country through Constantine’s abdication. At the end of June he made way for Venizelos.