2 Drachmai

Greece entered the First World War in deeply fractured circumstances — the "National Schism" between royalists loyal to King Constantine and Venizelists backing the Entente left the country effectively running two rival governments simultaneously. This note was issued under that division, part of an emergency low-denomination series introduced because silver coinage had been hoarded or exported entirely out of circulation by 1917.

Bradbury Wilkinson handled the printing in London, an arrangement only possible because the Venizelist faction had aligned Greece with the Allies by the time production was commissioned. The small physical format reflects a deliberate policy of issuing paper substitutes at coin denominations — a stopgap the Greek treasury never fully intended to make permanent.