ief, from being more or less pliant, the Chief
of the General Staff became rigid: he would no longer submit to rebuffs
and denials. Strategic reasons, perhaps, had brought about this
change; perhaps the Bulgars were the instigators. It is impossible to
say, {98} and it does not much matter. The essential fact is that the
man had power and meant to use it.

There followed a formal communication from the German and Bulgarian
Ministers at Athens to M. Skouloudis, stating that their troops were
compelled in self-defence to push into Greek territory, and assuring
him that neither the integrity and sovereignty of Greece nor the
persons and property of the inhabitants would in any way suffer by this
temporary occupation. M. Skouloudis took note of this decision without
assenting to it, but also without protesting: he felt, he said, that a
premature protest could only lose Greece the guarantees of restoration
and reparation offered. Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof:
confronted with powerful Empires in the height of their military
strength, he had done all that was humanly possible to ward off their
advance, and, though unsuccessful in the end, he had at least obtained
a solemn pledge of their ultimate retreat. The protest came a few days
later, when the invasion actually took place.[7]

On 26 May, a Germano-Bulgarian force appeared at Rupel. The garrison,
in accordance with its instructions of 27 April (O.S.) to resist any
advance beyond 500 metres from the frontier line, fired upon the
invaders and drove them back. But on fresh orders reaching it to
follow the instructions of 9 March (O.S.)--which prescribed that, in
the event of a foreign invasion, the Greek troops should withdraw--it
surrendered the fort.[8]

In Entente circles it had long been assumed that, let the King and his
Government do what they liked, the instant a Bulgarian foot stepped
over the border, soldiers and civilians would fly to arms. Nothing of
the sort happened. However painful to their feelings their orders
might be, the soldiers obeyed them. Among the civilians also the
shock, severe as it was, produced no demoralization. The Greek people
generally understood that the surrender of Rupel was an inevitable
consequence of the landing at Salonica. Nevertheless, the fears of M.
Skouloudis that {99} a Bulgarian invasion would place a powerful weapon
in the hands of his opponents were abundantly fulfilled.

By representing the event a