ken place at any of the times which the Greek General
Staff proposed for Graeco-Servian co-operation--indeed, at any time
except only the particular time chosen by the Entente. When their
troops arrived at Salonica, the Servian army--what had been left of it
after fourteen months' fighting and typhus--was already falling back
before the Austro-Germans, who swarmed across the Drina, the Save, and
the Danube, occupied Belgrade and pushed south (6-10 Oct.), while the
Bulgars pressed towards Nish (11-12 Oct.). On the day on which the
English offer was made (17 Oct.), the Austro-Germans were fifteen miles
south of Belgrade, and by the 2nd of November there was no longer any
Servia to save, the Bulgars having on that day entered Monastir.

The co-operation of Greece might still have been obtained if the Allies
could even then have sent to Salonica forces large enough to assure her
that the struggle would be waged on more equal terms.[3] There had
always been an influential group among the principal military leaders
at Athens who held that it was to the vital interest of their country
that Bulgaria should be attacked, and who, to secure the help of the
Entente Powers against Bulgarian pretensions in the future, were
prepared to run great immediate risks. As it was, the dilatoriness of
the Allies imposed upon M. Zaimis a policy of inaction.

This policy, besides being imposed by circumstances, also accorded with
the new Premier's character.

M. Zaimis stands out in the political world of Greece as a singular
anomaly: a politician who never made speeches and never gave
interviews: a silent man in a country where every citizen is a born
orator: an unambitious man in a country where ambition is an endemic
disease. To find a parallel to his position, one must go back to the
days when nations, in need of wise guidance, implored reluctant sages
to undertake the task of guiding them. This thankless task M. Zaimis
performed several times to everybody's temporary satisfaction. On the
present, as on other occasions, he enjoyed the confidence of the
Entente Powers, {68} as well as the confidence of the King and the
people of Greece. Even the journals of M. Venizelos, and the
Anglo-French Press which M. Venizelos inspired, paid the customary
tribute to M. Zaimis's integrity and sagacity. The homage was due to
the fact that M. Zaimis was neither a Venizelist nor an
anti-Venizelist, but simply a Zaimist. In domestic affairs he be