the Allies in the back. When this
amazing theory--widely popularized by the French and English Press--was
hinted to M. Rallis by "Our Special Correspondent," on 18 November, the
Greek Minister could hardly credit his collocutor's sanity: "It is
mad!" he cried out. "It is senseless to imagine such a thing--when you
could have the guns of your fleet levelled on our cities!" The answer,
however--an answer the conclusiveness of which a glance at the map is
enough to demonstrate to the dimmest intelligence--fell upon
deliberately deaf ears. The very journal which in one page recorded
it, in another wrote: "Bulgaria has gone; Greece is trembling in the
balance. Only a display of overwhelming force on our part can hold her
steady and prevent the accession of another 500,000 men to the enemy's
strength."

That the publicists who argued thus and who, to give to their argument
greater cogency, generously added to the Greek army some 200,000 men,
were persuaded by their own reasoning, it is hard to believe without
libelling human sense. Apart from the ocular refutation supplied by
the map, what had Greece to gain by siding with the enemies of the
Entente? That she would lose all her islands, have her coast towns
pulverized and her population starved, was certain. What she could get
in return, it needed a very robust imagination to suggest. The only
countries at whose cost the Hellenic Kingdom could possibly compensate
itself for these inevitable sacrifices were Turkey and Bulgaria; and
those countries were Germany's allies. A moment's reflection raises a
number of equally unanswerable questions: If the Greeks wanted to join
Germany, why did they not do so when the Kaiser invited them at the
very beginning of the War? Why did they not resist the landing of the
Allies? Why did they not attack them when they had them at their
mercy: 60,000 French and British, with the Germans and the Bulgars in
front of them, and 150,000 Greeks between them and Salonica?[8]

{81}

In this connexion the evidence of an eminent English soldier and an
eminent French statesman who visited Athens at that time to study the
situation on the spot may be cited. To each King Constantine and M.
Skouloudis, in the course of lengthy interviews, declared that the
Allied forces had nothing to fear in Greece. Each was convinced of
their sincerity, and of the true motives of their attitude: "They
both," reported Lord Kitchener, "seem very determined