The Story of the Great War (Vol. 1-8). Various Authors

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СКАЧАТЬ actually break the line must be considered a failure. And against their will, no doubt, the French and British undertook another offensive on September 25, 1915.

      On many sections of the western front the nature of the ground makes an attack absolutely unfeasible. The place chosen by the French was the Champagne region, in the neighborhood of the great army review ground of Châlons. It is a rolling, sterile country, dotted with sparse roads. There is a thin loam over a subsoil of chalk—excellent for the defensive, but also permitting the rapid movement of artillery troops in dry weather.

      So far as can be learned the Germans had already given up their offensive in Russia before the French began theirs. At least they were well advised that the French offensive was under way, and they needed to know it only a week beforehand, in order to transfer reserves from their eastern front, which they brought to the number of 300,000, concentrating them mostly in the Champagne region, where they were to be needed. Coincident with the Champagne attack, the British, who are for command purposes a part of the French army, launched one in the region of Loos.

      In northern France the country was extremely difficult, and as unsuited for offense as the rest of the ground occupied by the British. Aside from their object in assisting the Russians, the French hoped to break the line. In this they failed. Over a twelve-mile front they gained depths varying from one-half to three miles; and altogether, with the British, they took some 25,000 prisoners and 160 guns. Both the numbers of prisoners and of guns were small compared with the "bags" on the eastern front. But the character of the fighting, the heavy volume of artillery fire and extraordinary coordination of the first-class fighting units by the most skilled armies in history, make this action memorable in military annals in the same way as the German attack on Verdun in the following February. The ground lost in no wise endangered the German tenancy of their line.

      Along the Italian front the summer had developed something of the same kind of stalemate that had existed in France. Fighting in the Alpine country so favored the defense that the Austrians did not have more than three or four hundred thousand troops engaged in holding the Italians in position. Therefore it had been easy for anyone taking a superficial view to exaggerate the military value of Italy's entry into the war. The Austrian troops had fought with extreme tenacity, for naturally the Austrian staff had sent against the Italians all those troops in Franz Josef's heterogeneous empire who had any racial antagonism against the Italians, including those who had been lukewarm in fighting against the Slav.

      Unquestionably, honors at the end of the campaign in 1915 were with Germany. She had held her line solidly in the west. She had stripped the country of northern France and Belgium of all the machinery of its factories which would be useful to her. She had been relieved of any necessity of feeding the Belgian population, or of the menace that would have come from the threat of a famine in either Belgium or northern France by the American Food Commission which at first had received supplies from America to carry on their work, and later had depended almost altogether upon grants from the French and English Governments and upon large voluntary contributions from England. In the east she had gained territory almost equal in area to that of Prussia itself. All Poland was hers. Her governor general ruled Warsaw. Her situation as to food supplies was improved by the occupation of immense productive areas. She had made war with all her energy, and in want of able-bodied men to gather her own harvests, she had used the hosts of prisoners which she had taken from Russia. But, despite her victories, bravely and skillfully won, she was still a nation in siege, with no communication with the outside world, except through neutral countries.

      In the second winter with uninterrupted energy she again turned toward the southeast for another military adventure. Rumania still held fast to her neutrality. In Bulgaria the Central Powers were to succeed in gaining a fourth ally, which in sheer military advantage was probably worth more than the accession of Italy to her enemies. Though Russia had won her freedom for Bulgaria in '76, no sentiment drew her to Russia's assistance when Russia was losing. No statesmanship is more matter of fact than that of the Balkans. Bulgaria had an old score to settle with Serbia, which had joined Rumania and Greece against her in making the Second Balkan War, after she had borne the brunt of the first against Turkey. Then, besides, the military temptation offered the Bulgarian staff was irresistible. Serbia had been through two wars before the heavy drain of this one. A country of swineherds and miserable villages, dependent for munitions upon England and the Allies—she was caught in a wedge, with Bulgaria on the one side and the Austro-Hungarian advance on the other. At the most the Central Powers had probably no more than 300,000 troops—about the same number that the Bulgars had. Against such a combination, Serbia, caught between the blades of a pair of scissors, could make no successful resistance unless assistance came from England and France, which the British and French public demanded should be sent. There was no hope of sufficient allied forces reaching Serbia in time to rescue her, but the Allies, particularly the British, could not afford to see Saloniki occupied by the Austro-Germans or by their friends, the Bulgarians. Up to the Balkan War Saloniki was Turkish; then it became Greek. This excellent port had long been the goal of Austrian ambition, which sought an outlet to the Mediterranean, no less than the traditional policy of Russia was aimed at the occupation of Constantinople.

      In the Crimean War France and England fought to thwart Russia's designs on Turkey and now France and England were prepared to oppose Austria's designs on Saloniki.

      In order to defend Saloniki British and French troops must land on the soil of Greece and march across the Greco-Serbian frontier, which was no doubt one of the reasons that had kept the Allies from sending forces before, in order to assist the Serbians on the Danube and Save in closing "the ring of steel."

      Venizelos, the Greek statesman, who had been the Greek Bismarck in the extension of the Greek domain in the Balkan War, had taken sides with the Allies; and he favored concessions by Greece as well as Serbia to Bulgaria, in order to satisfy Bulgarian ambitions and keep her from striking hands with the Central Powers, while the King of Greece, with the Queen, a sister of the kaiser, had decidedly pro-German leanings. The Greeks had a most difficult part, even for Levantine diplomacy, to play. If they cast their fortunes with the Allies and the Teutons won, then they could count upon the Central Powers not only taking Saloniki away from them, but bringing themselves practically under Germanic domination. If they openly espoused the German side, then as the country depended upon the sea, their ports would be blockaded, if not bombarded by the allied fleets. In the event of an allied victory over the Central Powers they were certain that Saloniki would not be annexed by the Allies, bitter as they were against Greece because she was supposed to have broken her pledged word to assist them in the Gallipoli expedition. Following a policy of drift and protest, the Greeks consented to the British and French landing troops at Saloniki and to their making it a base of action.

      Certain forces were sent into Serbia before the Serbian army had been completely driven back, and whatever the public thought, certainly with no expectation of gaining a victory over the Bulgarians. This obvious movement was only for the purpose of gaining time for fortifying a line around Saloniki and bringing sufficient men and guns to defend it.

      German diplomacy and staff work had not in all of the war gained a more important technical advantage for less cost in time, money, and troops, than it had in the fall of 1915 in the Balkans when they made the Bulgars to serve as they had the Turks, to secure their ends. At last the British withdrew from Gallipoli with such small losses that the evacuation of this position on an exposed coast is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant pieces of military maneuvering of its kind in all history. No credit is ever given for retreats. But this was a good deal more than a retreat. It was withdrawing from a beach in face of a well-armed enemy. The story of it—as yet unwritten—will some day bring a tribute to British military skill from professional soldiers, if not from the lay public.

      The Bulgarians decided not to invade Greece; the Greeks made no attack. Those who looked forward to the war being settled in the Balkans, and to Saloniki becoming another Port Arthur, had missed their calculations. But every gun and every man that the Allies had to maintain at Saloniki might СКАЧАТЬ