Dr. Dillon wrote:
"High praise is due to the intentions of Entente diplomatists, which were truly admirable. They did their best according to their lights during the campaign as they had done their best before it was undertaken. That the best was disastrous was not the result of a lack of goodwill. What they were deficient in was insight and foresight. Their habit is not to study the mental and psychical caste of the peoples with whom they have to deal, but to watch and act upon the shifts of the circumstances. Amateurism is the curse of the British nation. Their vision of the political situation in the Balkans was roseate and blurred, and their moral maxims were better fitted for use in the Society of Friends than in intercourse with a hard-headed people whose morality begins where self-interest ends. By these methods, which, unhappily, are still in vogue, the diplomacy of Great Britain, France, and Russia lost the key to Constantinople, and contributed unwittingly to deliver over the Serbian people to the tender mercies of the Bulgar and the Teuton. Turkey is still fighting us in Europe and Asia. Roumania is neutral, and mistrustful, and the war is prolonged indefinitely. The facts on which our statesmen relied turned out to be fancies; their expectations proved to be illusions; and their solemn negotiations a humiliating farce devised by the Coburger, who moved the representatives of the Allied Powers hither and thither like figures on a chess-board."
Mr. Crawford Price, the Balkan war correspondent, writing in the Sunday Pictorial of February 27th, 1916, alleges that the Greeks wanted to join the Allies in active aggression on several occasions, but the Hellens were effectively snubbed by our Diplomats. Although the General Staff and the King were both willing at one time to intercede, they opposed unconditional participation in the Dardanelle enterprise, because they believed our ill-considered plans would end in disaster. Mr. Price says that our Diplomatists refused to consider their matured ideas based upon a lifelong study of local conditions and the adoption of which would probably have given us possession of Constantinople in a month. Again, after we had failed, the Greek Government submitted a plan on April 14th, 1915, for co-operation, but we would have nothing to do with it. Finally, when in May following King Constantine offered to join forces with us upon no other condition than that we should guarantee the integrity of his country (surely the least he could ask!), he received a belated intimation to the effect that we could not do so, as we did not wish to discourage Bulgaria.
After this, it will be remembered, England offered to bribe Bulgaria with the Cavalla district belonging to Greece.
No wonder Greece refused to be bribed with Cyprus when Bulgaria had declined to be moved by the blind and incomprehensible enthusiasm which seems to have dominated English diplomacy in the Near East. Or was a certain Continental wag, well known in Diplomatic circles, nearer the mark when he facetiously lisped, "Your English Government is said to be slow and sure, which is quite true, in that it is slow to act and sure to be too late"?
It is a matter for consideration that the British Minister at Sofia was changed during the war, whilst almost his whole staff were only short-timers in Bulgaria, where such a gigantic failure was proved by the subsequent actions of that misguided and unfortunate country. What small advantages were once obtained in this sphere of action seem all to have been lost through our everlasting and repeated procrastinations and unpardonable delay. Had the permission of Venezelos to land troops at Salonica been immediately acted upon and the proffered co-operation of the Hellens accepted with the cordiality it deserved, and half a million men been marched to the centre of Serbia, that country would never have been conquered by the enemy, whilst Bulgaria and Roumania would have come in upon the side of the Entente, and Turkey would have been beaten at the outset; thereby saving hundreds of thousands of valuable lives, and hundreds of millions of pounds sterling.
What a difference this would have made to the length of the war!
Our diplomacy failed.
Our then Government showed an utter lack of possessing the art of foreseeing. The fruits of its policy, "Wait and see," materialised into muddle, humiliation, slaughter, and defeat.