Mr. Lloyd George was now all eager for instant action.

He urged that the new Joint Note, offering military aid, should be sent at once. He brushed aside for the moment the idea of arriving at a general Balkan agreement on the lines of the proposals brought back by the Buxtons from Sofia. The Bulgarian suggestion that Serbia should make a considerable surrender of territory seemed to him impossible for Serbia after their recent struggles and sufferings. He had already a very deep perception that Bulgaria was hardening against the Entente. He saw definite evidence of it in Germany’s known willingness to lend her money. It did not seem to him conceivable that Germany should be advancing money to Bulgaria without some assurance as to Bulgaria’s action in certain contingencies. The Germans were not such fools.

Besides, Rumania seemed to him now less friendly. All the more need, then, for prompt and energetic action to clinch the friendliness of our most probable ally, Greece.

He felt very acutely at this moment the evil and harm of a dilatory policy. It was on his mind all the time that, if they failed to act in time to save Serbia, their responsibility would be a terrible one. Even days seemed to him to count in the great issues that lay before them.

It was a great design, greatly urged. It is impossible to say now whether it would have fulfilled the hopes of its chief sponsor. He had won over to his side all the chief forces in the West. The expedition that was about to start would have probably forestalled and averted that ill-starred enterprise of the Dardanelles-Gallipoli attack which opened on February 25th.

But just on the eve of fruition other forces intervened. While Mr. Lloyd George had been working in the West of Europe, the Central Powers had been busy in the Near East. On January 26th had come the conditional Greek offer to intervene in the war. On February 6th came their definite refusal.

The crash came suddenly. Russia had just promised 10,000 men towards the new Balkan enterprise. Then, at that moment of apparent success, M. Venizelos suddenly informed the British Minister at Athens that Greece had decided not to join the Allies in the war.

The refusal was abruptly worded, and the grounds given were very definite. They were that Greece found herself unable to obtain the conditions laid down in the reply of January 26th. One of those conditions was that Bulgaria should either join Greece in declaring war, or should promise neutrality. She had refused to do either. Another condition had been that Rumania should join. But Rumania, still hesitating between the two belligerent groups, would give no decided answer. It was at that moment the fear of Greece that, if she sent an army northwards to the help of Serbia, then Bulgaria would move to the south, seize Kavalla, and would strike westwards into Macedonia to drive a wedge between Greece and Serbia. In such a case it seemed more than possible that Greece would be crushed.

It is fair also to say that Bulgaria’s refusal of a promise of neutrality was for Greece an ominous and formidable fact. It is inevitable that Greece should have been looking rather at her resentful neighbour than at those larger aims of European interest which filled the policies of the Western Powers; it was natural and human that their first and possessing fear should be lest the work of the war of 1913 should be undone. For in that terrible war the price of victory had been appallingly high for so small a nation. No less than 30,000 Greek soldiers had been killed within a few days in that tremendous onslaught which had driven back the treacherous Bulgarian attack. Greece, with her small supply of men, could not lightly contemplate the repetition of such a sacrifice, or the loss of the gains which had been so fearfully purchased.

Mr. Lloyd George did not give up hope. He knew enough to foresee, for instance, that the new attack of Bulgaria was bound to come, and that the most prudent course was to forestall it. It was at this moment that the suggestion came from Greek sources,[[66]] that Mr. Lloyd George should himself go out to the Balkans as a Commissioner to bring together the Balkan States. Mr. Lloyd George himself consented; and Mr. Asquith approved. But it was soon found that Mr. Lloyd George was wanted too urgently at the centre to be spared for distant missions.