The collapse of Russia in 1917 had released vast bodies of German troops for service in France, but the calamities that overtook them on the French front were so destructive that insufficient man power was left to take care of the southeastern fronts, so that Serbia was enabled to institute a new offensive, and with the aid of Greece, in a few days cut Bulgaria out of the German horde, pressed forward in Serbia, and pushed ahead through the Balkan regions. Meanwhile American strength was greatly augumented in the west and at the same time American troops appeared on the Murman coast in the north and Siberia on the Pacific east, on the Piave front in Italy, and at every other point where hostile strength was greatest or strategic advantage was to be gained by their presence.
Concurrently, the United States navy swept the western seas of Europe free of German submarines. Our naval forces were combined with those of Great Britain as the sea arm of a united command, under the joint name of the Grand Fleet; and American troop ships landed newly trained American soldiers in France at the average number of about 250,000 a month—over 2,200,000 in little more than a year; at the same time helping to reopen in safety the lanes of ocean commerce by which the trade of our European allies was fully restored, German ports corked tight, and Germany thereby thrown back absolutely upon her own interior resources. Out of this vigorous and abundant American action emerged the conditions that insured a "Peace of Justice."
These things were the quick work of the latter part of 1917 and the campaigns of 1918. The achievement was gigantic, but it had no effect in taking attention or diverting action from those movements that offered at once an advantage to our common cause, while disintegrating the hoary tyrannies of Central and Eastern Europe.
CHANGES COME FAST AND FURIOUS
Events in the field reacted with powerful effect upon autocratic Austria. The Austrian throne was built upon the backs of vassal states, all of which had yielded thousands of emigrants to this country; and these transplanted peoples, having found freedom, proceeded to incite the countries of their origin to throw off their burdens and like Americans, be free to govern themselves.
The moment had come for Bohemia, Poland, and all Czecho-Slav and Jugo-Slav peoples to rise. The United States Government, in full sympathy with their yearnings, had received their representatives at Washington, had furnished funds as well as moral support to their provisional governments, had supported an independent Czecho-Slav army in Russia with American reinforcements, with clothing, arms, munitions, and supplies, and now, at exactly the right juncture, in August, 1918, recognized the Czecho-Slav as a cobelligerent power lawfully at war against the central empires.
FERDINAND FALLS FROM THE WAR WAGON
This was the push that brought the break. Germany still had her armies intact on the soil of other countries, and was a consolidated force, tired though not beaten. But the fat and filthy "Czar" Ferdinand of Bulgaria sat in voluntary exile, eating like bread the ashes of repentance, and mingling his drink with weeping; so that his country, yellow at best, and frightened by the fear of being done to as it had done by Serbia, quit abruptly, without shame, almost without firing a shot. With that defection the last wisp of Germany's long cherished dream of a boche Middle-Europe and a boche empire stretching from Berlin to Bagdad, faded forever. In October, 1918, Austria consented to a reconstituted independent Bohemian state, and with apparent readiness granted self-government to Hungary.
Meantime, in September and October, 1918, the American and allied armies chased the Germans from the coast and far into the interior of Belgium, the Belgian army, financed by the United States, taking part in that operation. Town after town, city after city in Belgium and France fell to the American and allied forces, so that the German government (October 27) addressed a note to the President of the United States asking him to intercede with our allies for an armistice and a conference for discussion of terms of peace. This led to four exchanges of notes, in which Germany's expressions were specious, and assumed a right to negotiate. The last of these notes was submitted by President Wilson to the allied council at Paris; and the council answered by referring the whole question of armistice to Marshal Foch and the allied military chiefs.
THE "CROOKED KAMERAD"