When Germany violated Belgian neutrality in August 1914 Britain went to war over it, for
neutrality must be guaranteed, right? Well, that seems a bit hypocritical for Britain
at this point, because as far as violating neutrality goes, we can really see that the
Allied position now is “two can play that game”.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week a British relief expedition on the Tigris River failed to reach the army under
siege at Kut. The Russians began an offensive against the Turks and ended one against the
Austrians and Germans, while in the Balkans the Austrian invasion of Montenegro continued.
Here’s what followed.
Well, the rest of the invasion of Montenegro followed.
On the 25th, Montenegro accepted Austrian terms. Two days earlier, Montenegrin King
Nicholas had appeared in Rome and met his son-in-law, Victor Emmanuel III, the King
of Italy. Nicholas then went on to Lyon, France. Back in Montenegro, Austrian forces occupied
Scutari the 23rd and reached San Giovanni di Medua, a seaport in northern Albania, the
26th, and Montenegro was finally overrun, but it was the poorest country in Europe,
and the Austrians didn’t really get much of a reward, other than to some positive headlines,
which I guess they needed most of the time.
They now began their advance into Albania. Meanwhile, the allies were trying to get the
remnants of the Serbian army out of Albania to regroup on the island of Corfu as quickly
as possible. British engineers put bridges across rivers, provision depots were established
along roads for the soldiers and refugees heading for the coast, and by the end of the
month, around 8,000 Serbian soldiers a day were leaving Albania. Another number that
I’ll throw at you here: in November and December when the Serbian army and civilian
refugees were fleeing Serbia through Albania, an estimated 200,000 out of 700,000 perished
The French and British forces that had come up through Greece to try to help the Serbs
were at this point cooling their heels in Salonika, and I’d like to look there for
a minute, just in general.
They had sent those troops there, to Greece’s second city, but the British government didn’t
think the Salonika force served any useful purpose and tried to get the French to agree
to withdraw all allied troops there, but France was in the grip of a little domestic political
crisis. Aristide Briand had replaced René Viviani as prime minister a few months back
and he was very pro-Salonika, and he even made support of the Salonika project a test
of loyalty to himself and his government. Also, a lot of his support came from the Radical
Socialists, and their favorite, General Maurice Sarrail, was in command of the Salonika army.
Withdrawal from Salonika would leave Sarrail without a command and unlikely to get a new
one, since General Joseph Joffre, in charge of the armies in France, couldn’t stand
him and felt threatened by him as a rival. So Briand came out with the somewhat stale
arguments that the Salonika force kept Romania and Greece neutral and was some sort of a
threat to the Austrian rear forces in the Balkans, and once the Serbian army was reformed,
it would also be used in the Balkans. So Briand raised Joffre to command of all the French
forces everywhere, not just in France, which meant that his rival Sarrail was now his subordinate
and Joffre had to support him. So back in December the British, against their better
judgment, were talked into keeping men at Salonika partly by fear of provoking a collapse
of the Briand government, and partly by Russian pleas that they maintain a force somewhere
in the eastern theater of war to hopefully relieve some pressure at some point.
Thing is, it was primarily the British and French who had helped Greece get its independence
from the Ottoman Empire in 1832, and since then they had constantly supported that independence,
but now they really acted like Greek independence was a secondary issue to their own convenience,
and Greece was not happy. Lemnos, the largest island in the Northern Aegean, had been requisitioned
for the Dardanelles campaign, and they had landed tens of thousands of troops at Salonika
without even really asking permission. Over this winter, they transformed Salonika into
an allied military settlement. In an area of 200 square miles, they camped a total of
8 divisions and tons of war material and supplies, but what was it all for? They weren’t putting
any pressure on either the Bulgarians or the Austrians, they were no threat to the Turks,
they weren’t really helping the Russians, and they certainly weren’t pulling any Germans
away from the Western Front. What were they doing?
Well, they were suffering. Malaria is endemic in northern Greece, and just something to
keep in your head in future- malaria caused ten casualties for every one taken in battle
for the Salonika divisions. German journalists even described Salonika as “the greatest
internment camp in the world”, and it was even worse than that, it truly became a giant
military hospital, thanks to malaria, with some units entirely falling victim to the
mosquito.
Of course, disease and suffering weren’t confined just to Salonika; they were everywhere,
including the western front.
The western front had been pretty quiet all month, but this winter saw a terrible outbreak
of trench foot. See, men standing in freezing mud for days on end in field boots or puttees
would first lose all feeling in their toes. Then the feet would begin to swell, then go
totally dead, and then burn like they were on fire. Often, when relief units would come
to the front-line trenches, many of the men being relieved could not even walk away from
the trenches. They’d either have to crawl or ride on someone’s back. This is thousands
of men we’re talking about. Now, a lot of generals and higher-ups thought that this
was because of carelessness or even deliberate malingering. There were, to be fair, a lot
of cases of people wounding themselves intentionally to get out of the trenches, shooting off fingers
or toes, but this was the real thing, and the pain was excruciating. One British battalion,
the 49th, had over 400 cases this winter, far more than casualties from the actual war.
A cure was eventually found, though, and it turned out to be rubbing the feet with oil
a few times a day.
Next door in Germany, this week saw the Kaiser’s birthday on the 27th.
It also saw an escalation of an anti-America campaign. That day the statue of Frederick
the Great in Berlin was covered with an American flag draped in black with these words in gold
letters on a silk banner attached to it, “Wilson and his press are not America.” Photos of
this were sent all over Germany and one paper wrote (Gilbert), “Frederick the Great was
the first to recognize the independence of the young Republic after it had won its freedom
from the yoke of England, at the price of its very heart’s blood through years of
struggle. His successor, Wilhelm II, receives the gratitude of America in the form of hypocritical
phrases and war supplies to his mortal enemy.”
Those sentiments were actually mirrored elsewhere, in Greece.
Greek King Constantine made public statements in the American press that got worldwide attention
after the French occupied Fort Kara Burun near Salonika this week. He said, “It is
the merest cant for Great Britain and France to talk about the violation of the neutrality
of Belgium after what they themselves have done and are doing... Just look at the Greek
territories already occupied by the allied troops... in proportion to all Greece it is
as if that part of the United States which was won from Mexico after the Mexican war
was occupied by foreign troops, and not so much as by your leave... Where is the necessity
for the occupation of Corfu? ... The transportation of the Serbs to Italy would be simpler than
to Corfu. Is it because the Italians are refusing to accept the Serbs, fearing the spread of
cholera, and the Allies are thinking the Greeks want to be endangered by cholera any more
than the Italians?”
It’s not surprising this now made headlines, since what the Allies were doing does reek
of hypocrisy. And every time they occupied a new part of Greece, Lemnos, Imbros, Kara
Burun this week, the Greeks would protest, and nobody took any notice.
And on that note we come to the end of another week. Montenegro fallen, Albania being overrun,
the Italian, Western, and Eastern fronts quiet, but disease stalking the troops pretty much
everywhere.
It’s true, though, Britain guaranteed Belgian neutrality and ostensibly went to war in the
first place when Germany violated it. And look where we are now, 18 months later, Britain
and France blatantly violating another nation’s neutrality. To be fair, the British don’t
actually want to be in Salonika, but not because of anything to do with Greek protests. But
it’s easy to describe- the Germans thought invading Belgium was necessary, the allies
think Salonika is necessary, and in modern war, necessity always trumps morals.
If you'd like to see how the German invasion of Belgium actually took place, you can click right here.
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