1921 in Greece - Resumption of War

Resumption of War

The intention declared in the royal speech at the opening of the Chamber of resuming the war against Kemal was supported by an official report issued on January 10 of a renewal of the Greek offensive to the northeast of Smyrna and in the Brussa area, and the same day the Greeks occupied Belejik. On the following day the Greek Liberal organ Patris published a letter from Nice, where Venizelos was residing at the time, confirming the Greek statesman's final decision to retire from politics. This decision was naturally not displeasing to the supporters of King Constantine, who a little later found another cause for jubilation when the king of Italy received the newly appointed Greek minister to Rome (January 13). Thus Italy was the first among foreign Allied and neutral powers to recognize King Constantine. But the enthusiasm was soon damped by the joint representations made on the 20th to the Greek government by the British and French ministers in Athens on the transformation of the Chamber into a National Assembly. This action by the two Allied governments was declared to be based on the rights of the powers in question as guarantors of the constitution of Greece, rights which they considered as still existent, since the Treaty of Sèvres, in which they were surrendered, had not yet been ratified by all the signatories. Early in February the Allied Supreme Council invited the Greek and Turkish governments to attend a conference to be held in the latter part of the month in London with the object of bringing about peace between the two countries. The invitation was coldly received in Athens, and was the cause of a split in the Dimitrios Rallis cabinet on the score of wounded personal vanities. Dimitrios Gounaris, minister of war, the real leader of the Constantino faction, who, in deference to Allied public opinion, which had stigmatized him as a pro-German, had after the defeat of the Venizelists been compelled to renounce his claims to the premiership in favor of the less compromised Rallis, after being also refused the presidency of the Greek delegation to the London conference, resigned, bringing about a ministerial crisis.