Saloniki was one of the mysteries of the war. News from that city was brief and unsatisfying in the main. Great things, however, were done there, and none greater than those accomplished by the British. Some of these accomplishments are told in the pages that follow.
BRITISH OPERATIONS AT
SALONIKI
OFFICIAL REPORT OF GENERAL MILNE
Reinforcements needed north of Saloniki.
Italy to send 300,000.
Since the conference at Rome the situation in Macedonia has been radically changed. The weakness of General Sarrail's position lay in the fact that neither England nor France felt free to send from the critical western front the large reinforcements of men which the situation north of Saloniki called for. Italy had the men, but was unwilling to send them and to incur the heavy additional expense of maintaining them in Macedonia. The conference at Rome, in which Premier Lloyd George was the dominant figure, overcame that reluctance, probably promising Italy parts of the Turkish Empire that had been earlier assigned tentatively to Greece and guaranteeing the cost of the new expedition. The result has been immediate and of the highest importance. Rome dispatches indicate that Italy has sent, or is sending, a force of not less than 300,000 men; that these troops, to avoid the danger of submarines, are being dispatched, not to Saloniki, but to Avlona, which is within forty miles of the Italian coast; and, finally, these Italian forces have not only built an excellent highway through the Albanian mountains but have already joined forces with General Sarrail's right wing at Monastir. All these facts indicate early activity in the Macedonian sector.
General G. F. Milne's report.
This glimpse of present conditions will serve to introduce the following report of General G. F. Milne, commanding the British Saloniki Army in Macedonia, on last Summer's operations in that sector. His report, submitted to the British War Office early in December, 1916, covered the army's operations from May 9, 1916, to October 8, 1916. The official text of the report is here reproduced, with a few minor omissions: