The King expostulated: "How can you resign in the face of a Bulgarian mobilization? In these circumstances, as you know, we must not delay even twenty-four hours. After all, who assures us that Bulgaria will attack Servia? It is possible that she may maintain an armed neutrality; in which case our disagreement vanishes, and you can stay in power and carry on your policy." Whereupon M. Venizelos withdrew his resignation.
Of course, he was not deluded by the Sofia Government's {55} announcement of "armed neutrality," and he was determined to go for Bulgaria at once. But how? In his own mind, as he had already demonstrated to the King, no doubt existed that, if the Greeks attacked the Bulgars, they had every chance of crushing them and even of taking their capital. But there was that General Staff by whose opinions the King set such store. They objected Servia's inability to contribute, as she was bound by her Military Convention to do, 150,000 combatants. Therefore, in order to meet this objection, he said: "Don't you think we might ask the English and the French whether they could not furnish 150,000 combatants of their own?"
"Certainly," replied the King; "but they must send Metropolitan
(European) troops, not Colonials."
By his own account, M. Venizelos did not take this as meaning that the King had agreed, if the English and the French supplied these reinforcements, to depart from neutrality. He left Tatoi with a clear perception of the divergence between their respective points of view: while they both concurred in the need of instant mobilization, one was for a defensive and the other for an offensive policy; but, as soon appeared, not without hopes of converting his sovereign by some means or other.
A busy, ambitious child of fortune never lets the grass grow under his feet:
"I returned to the Ministry at 7 p.m.," goes on the curious record, "and telephoned to the Entente Ministers to come and see me quickly. When they came, I informed them that a mobilization Order was being signed at that very moment and would be published that evening; but for our further course I needed to know if the Powers were disposed to make good the 150,000 combatants whom Servia was obliged by our Treaty to contribute for joint action against Bulgaria. They promised to telegraph, and immediately dispatched an extra urgent telegram, adding that they would let me know the answer. This happened at about 8 p.m., and at 8.15 there arrived M. Mercati (the Marshal of the Court) with a message from the King, asking me not to make this démarche to the Entente. I replied that the démarche had already been made." [8]
{56}
Forty-eight hours later arrived the Entente Powers' answer, that they would send to Salonica the 150,000 men asked for. M. Venizelos, on communicating this answer to the King, was requested by him to tell the Entente Ministers that, so long as Bulgaria did not attack Servia, and consequently the question of Greece going to Servia's assistance did not arise, no troops should be sent, as their landing on Greek soil would constitute a violation of Greek neutrality. M. Venizelos tells us that he communicated the King's wish to the Entente Ministers, who telegraphed it to their Governments.
King Constantine, it would seem, was left under the impression that the affair had ended; and the general belief was that the policy of neutrality still held good; when suddenly the report came that Allied troops were on their way to Salonica and that Greece was expected to assist in their landing.
The news would have astonished the Greeks in any circumstances; but the circumstances in which it reached them were of a nature to heighten astonishment into alarm. Just then (28 September) Sir Edward Grey stated in the House of Commons, amid loud applause, "Not only is there no hostility in this country to Bulgaria, but there is traditionally a warm feeling of sympathy;" and he reiterated the Balkan policy of the Entente—a Balkan {57} agreement on the basis of territorial concessions. The inference which the Greeks drew from this coincidence was that the Entente Powers were sending troops to despoil them on behalf of the Bulgars—that they intended to bid for Bulgaria's friendship at the twelfth hour by forcibly seizing the parts of Macedonia which they had endeavoured in vain to persuade Greece to yield.[9]