EFFECT OF EUROPEAN EVENTS
On the Western Front, the Allied armies were occupied through September in preparing for the combined effort which culminated during the last week of the month in the prolonged battles known by the names of Loos and Champagne. As I before noticed, it was mainly for fear of weakening this effort that British reinforcements were refused to Sir Ian, and that the scheme of advancing on the Asiatic side of the Straits with new French Divisions was abandoned, if ever seriously intended by the High Command in France. The efforts so carefully prepared and gallantly carried out succeeded in gaining valuable positions for future advance, but were not sufficiently successful to break through the German line or to diminish the increasing peril of Near Eastern complications. It would be difficult to compute the exact proportion of the men and explosives thus expended without definite result in France which might have effected a decisive and permanent victory in the Dardanelles; but the proportion would not have been high, and how beneficent the issue for the world’s history! Successive disasters upon the Russian Front continued to encourage the military parties in the Balkan States which trusted to German victory for the furtherance of their national aggrandisement. In August the Russian armies were driven from Warsaw, Kovno, and Brest-Litovsk; in September from Grodno and Vilna. Although their skilful retirement won military praise, and although the exhausted German forces were unable to break the lines beyond their points of advance, or even to occupy Riga, it was evident that from Russia neither danger to her enemies nor assistance to her friends could be expected, even though her unmilitary and vacillating Autocrat assumed command. The encouraging effect of such events as the fall of Warsaw upon the Turkish moral was distinctly marked.
In the Balkan Peninsula, fate was supposed still to hang upon the decision of Bulgaria—a decision secretly taken two months before (July 17), although Ferdinand, with lachrymose solicitude, continued to profess the neutrality of a fox between two packs of hounds. From the first, both belligerents had rightly calculated that, in spite of the strong national sympathy with England and Russia inherited by the Bulgarian people, their Tsar, if not their representative Government, could be won by the highest bidder for alliance, and each side attempted to outbid the other with profuse offers of other people’s territory. But when, in mid-September, England and her Allies proposed the cession of Serbian territory at Monastir (a mainly Bulgarian district), Doiran and Ghevgheli (mainly Turkish in race), and part of the Dobrudja, then occupied by Roumania, they had been forestalled by more tempting promises from Turkey and the Central Powers. To the force of such temptation was added the animosity rankling in all Bulgarian hearts against the neighbouring states which two years before (August 1913), by the Treaty of Bucharest, had torn from their country the reward of her decisive victories over the Turk in 1912. Especially against Serbia was this animosity directed, and one might have supposed that even a slight acquaintance with the Balkan States would have warned the Allied Governments of Serbia’s extreme and imminent peril. Yet up to September 20 they continued to hope.
ATTITUDE OF BULGARIA AND GREECE
On that day, M. Radoslavoff announced that Bulgaria had signed a treaty with Turkey, but would maintain an armed neutrality for the protection of her frontiers. No one, except perhaps the British Government, was deceived as to the real intention. On September 19 a large German-Austrian army under Field-Marshal von Mackensen had renewed the attack upon Serbia’s capital, and Bulgaria after mobilising her 350,000 rifles could strike at Serbia’s exposed eastern flank almost without opposition from the exhausted Serbian army. Serbia’s one poor chance was to attack her hereditary enemy at once, before the Germans had crossed the rivers in the north. But from this course England discouraged her, and, with unfounded confidence, she awaited the assistance due from Greece according to her treaty of 1913. But Greece, always so justly apprehensive of warlike risks, was presented with a passable means of escape by her own warrior King, that “Bulgar-slayer” and “Napoleon of the East,” whose titles belied his earlier reputation as a leader of panic-stricken flight at Larissa in April 1897.
As a result of the Greek elections in June, when his supporters were returned to power by a two-thirds majority, Venizelos had resumed the Premiership in the middle of August. Clearly perceiving the enemy’s intention of overwhelming the relics of the Serbian forces by armies converging from the north and east, he imagined that Greece was bound by honour and treaty to hasten to her ally’s protection. Greece could nominally mobilise eighteen Divisions, but their fighting strength was probably not over 200,000, for the most part ill-equipped, ill-instructed, and averse from war. Of the Serbian army probably little over 100,000 organised and disciplined troops was left after the struggles of a year. The German-Austrian invaders were estimated at 200,000; the Bulgarians at 300,000, or perhaps not more than 250,000, since the Roumanian frontier needed watching. Attacked on two fronts, Serbia’s strategic position, in any case perilous, became desperate with such inferior numbers. In his zeal for the Serbian alliance, which he recognised as the ultimate defence of Greece herself, Venizelos called upon the Entente to furnish 150,000 men (September 21), and two days later induced King Constantine to mobilise.
On September 28 Sir Edward Grey spoke in the House of Commons, the most significant part of his speech being the sentence:
“If the Bulgarian mobilisation were to result in Bulgaria assuming an aggressive attitude on the side of our enemies, we are prepared to give to our friends in the Balkans all the support in our power in the manner that would be most welcome to them, in concert with our Allies, without reserve and without qualification.”[218]
BRITISH & FRENCH DIVISIONS FOR SALONIKA
Our friends in the Balkans can only have been Serbia and Greece. The support most welcome to them was men, but arms, money, and equipment were welcome. To provide the men, Lord Kitchener asked Sir Ian if he could spare two British Divisions and one French for Salonika. Sir Ian replied by offering the 53rd (Welsh) and the 10th (Irish) Divisions. The French offered their 2nd Division on the Peninsula (156), and the veteran General Bailloud, anxious for fresh fields of youthful ambition, claimed command.