ABSTRACT
Sir William Robertson, the chief of the imperial general staff, had felt since the beginning o f the expedition that there was ‘something behind the French m ind in regard to their policy in that part of the w orld’. What it was he had never been able to discover,1 but he had learnt that there was ca great deal of Finance as well as Politics mixed up in this French enterprise’, which explained why the French would not come away from Salonica if they could help it .2 As Lord Robert Cecil told the members of the imperial war cabinet in May 19 17 , there seemed to be ca section in France which aimed at utilising the war in order to secure for France some special political or financial position in Greece’ .3 Both the vagueness of Cecil’s charge and the uncertainty with which it was directed merit attention. They reflect the inadequate understanding with which Englishmen viewed the French political structure in the course of the war. No one was really sure where the direction o f French policy lay. As late as July 1918 Maurice Hankey, the secretary to the war cabinet, could only confide to his diary that ‘there are and always have been subtle influences, possibly o f a financial character, behind the French attitude towards the Salonica expedition ’ .4
