The task was no easy one. The first thing to be done was to proceed to the cleansing of the officers’ corps. This was indispensable, because nearly all the Staff officers had studied in Germany and, like the great majority of field officers, were imbued with pro-German sentiments. But the result of this process was that the Army was left with hardly any Staff officers at all, and very few officers of superior rank. It thus became necessary to promote large numbers of uneducated junior officers and of still more ignorant N.C.O.’s. A hasty and intensive course of military training had to be imparted to all. Even the troops of the National Defence Army had but scanty notions of modern warfare, trenches, barbed wire, the scientific use of machine guns, hand grenades, camouflage, signalling, etc. As for their supply and transport services, they were even more defective, so that at first everything had to be provided and transported by the Allies, and the latter, even at the end of the campaign, had to supply the Greeks with most of their services. The experience which the Greeks had gained in the Balkan Wars was of no use whatever, in fact they were a hindrance rather than a help; the former had been, so to speak, retail wars, whereas this was a wholesale one. In the former, the armies were small and could live on the country, in the latter, not only were the armies much larger, but the country had been so completely devastated that it could supply practically nothing. The troops of the National Defence Corps were now no longer lacking in military spirit, but it was necessary to infuse it into those of the old regular army. The men on the whole were not bad, but most of the officers were inadquately trained, and it was indispensable to instil into all of them the conviction that intervention in the war was necessary for the salvation of Greece.