Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II GREECE IN THE FIRST HALF OF 1915 Two days before the war council in London debated the question of an attack on the Dardanelles, Venizelos presented to his sovereign a memorandum, dated January II,1 setting forth certain rather vague inducements held out early in January, 1915, by the Allied powers to Greece to enter into the war by joining the Dardanelles adventure. To guarantee Bulgaria's neutrality (and Venizelos scarcely ventured to hope to secure more than neutrality from Bulgaria) the Greek prime minister proposed that Greece restore to the Bulgars the port and province of Cavalla, recently won from them, and that she urge even greater sacrifices in favor of Bulgaria on the part of her ally, Serbia. An effort was also to be made to secure Rumania's cooperation with Serbia and Bulgaria in joining the Entente's operations against Turkey. The day following the war council's definite decision to undertake a naval attack upon the Dardanelles, Venizelos laid before his sovereign another memorandum, dated January 17,1 revealing Rumania's refusal to take part in the enterprise and forecasting that all concessions he was urging would obtain at most only the neutrality of Bulgaria. Nevertheless, in this as in the first memorandum, Venizelos was eloquent in his insistence that the Allied offers be accepted at once. His original proposal of the cession of Cavalla is enlarged to the cession of the whole of the "Cazas," or districts of Sali-Chaban, Cavalla, and Drama, probably the richest piece of land for its size in the whole world. In return he speaks of vast possessions in Asia Minor of which the most he can say in the way of assurance from the Entente is, "I believe that, if we ask, there may be considerable probability of our request's being granted." In the same...