* A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook *

This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the eBook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the eBook. If either of these conditions applies, please contact a https://www.fadedpage.com administrator before proceeding. Thousands more FREE eBooks are available at https://www.fadedpage.com.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

This eBook was produced by: John Routh & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

Western Theatre of the War.

Eastern Theatre of the War.

BULGARIA ENTERS THE WAR.

By the 22nd of September the evacuation of the Vilna salient was complete, and the great German effort to force a decision in that quarter had failed. Ivanov’s counter-offensiveSept. 22. in the south had already developed, and the armies of von Pflanzer and von Bothmer were being pushed back from the Sereth. We have seen that it was Germany’s merit that when she was foiled in one direction she struck quickly in another. The Great General Staff had always a number of alternate plans prepared in every detail, and when one miscarried another was taken from its pigeon-hole. Many reasons combined to make a campaign in South-Eastern Europe desirable. Turkey was hard pressed for munitions, and could not use her man-power to the full unless she received equipment from her allies. More, there was a risk that, unless she received substantial help without delay, the elements in Ottoman life which had no heart for the war and detested the German dominance might assert themselves against Enver and his camarilla. Again, the conquest of the road to Constantinople would release for Germany supplies of food, cotton, and metals, and, conceivably, of men. Bulgaria was by this time secretly committed to the Teutonic League, and Bulgaria could put at least 300,000 trained soldiers in the field. The local situation was promising. Twelve British divisions were held up in the Gallipoli peninsula, where they could neither advance nor easily retreat. The Serbian army was depleted in numbers, and had no store of supplies to see them through a fresh campaign. With Bulgaria friendly, only a little effort would free the Danube route to Constantinople, and a further thrust would give Germany the Ottoman railway. With that in her hands, firmly guarded by the southern wall of mountains against attacks from the Ægean, Germany, if need be, could rest content for the winter. The difficulties of Greece and Rumania, great at the best of times, would be many times multiplied by the situation thus created. Whatever their sympathies or their fears, with the Central Powers driving a solid wedge towards the Bosphorus, with the Serbians pushed into the inhospitable Albanian hills, with the Western Allies held fast in Gallipoli, and with Russia unable to do more than maintain her long front from the Dniester to the Gulf of Riga, there would be small temptation for either to leave the path of neutrality.

It is probable that even if the Vilna struggle had gone in Germany’s favour, and Dvinsk and Riga had fallen, the Balkan expedition would have been undertaken. For there was a shrewd strategic purpose behind it all which the Western world was inclined to overlook. The German plan which sought a speedy decision had long ago gone to pieces. Her losses were immense, and the day was approaching when they could no longer be made good. She was compelled to keep her main armies on the Western and Eastern fronts, and on the first she was already much inferior in numbers of equipped men, and on the second was rapidly passing to the same case. A decision in the true sense could only be got on these main fronts, and if the Allies concentrated their efforts there it was not likely that the result could be long delayed. Her aim was, therefore, to draw off her enemy’s strength to a remote and irrelevant terrain. She knew our passion for divergent operations. Fears for India and Egypt would, she argued, cause us to forget the essentials of strategy. Already we had given hostages to fortune by locking up our troops in Gallipoli. With a little trouble she might induce us to divert to the Balkans many of the new divisions which were destined for France and Flanders, and even to strip our Western front of troops already there. She observed with approval that British statesmen talked rhetorically of the Near East as the nerve centre of the war, and she was ready to indulge this curious fancy. Her Balkan incursion, if the fates were kind, would postpone the final offensive in the West till the winter was past and she could get her last levies—the classes of 1916 and 1917—ready for the field.

The adventure was entrusted to Field-Marshal von Mackensen, the ablest soldier whom Germany had yet produced. Reports began to arrive, chiefly from Bucharest, as early as the middle of August that some kind of concentration was going on north of the Danube. Goods traffic between Rumania and Austro-Hungary was suspended. Units began to disappear from the Russian front, to the confusion of Russian staff officers, who could not fathom the reason for corps going suddenly into reserve. The Army of the Balkans was being formed, and its constituents were mainly drawn from the armies of the Centre. Before the end of August at least six divisions had gone southward. The fierce battles of early September for a little held up further reinforcements, but by the middle of the month ten divisions seem to have been assembled north of the Danube and the Save. They included the army of von Gallwitz, which had won the line of the Narev, and was mainly German in character, and the Austrian corps of von Koevess, which had been with von Woyrsch, and had taken Ivangorod. Western Serbia was neglected, owing to the difficulty of the country, though an Austrian detachment watched the banks of the Drina. The main forces were disposed opposite Belgrade, and alongSept 19. the Danube towards the Bulgarian frontier. On the 19th of September, about two in the afternoon, the first enemy batteries opened against the Serbian capital.

We must leave the details of the campaign for another chapter, and consider the events which brought in Bulgaria on the Teutonic side. We were not aware at the time of the secret treaty of 17th July, but by the end of August there was ample ground for suspicion. Peripatetic German agents—Prince Hohenlohe-Langenburg in July, Duke John of Mecklenburg and Dr. von Rosenburg in August—were welcomed at Sofia. In September General Liman von Sanders paid a visit from Constantinople. For some reason the Allied Governments were loth to trust the evidence of their experts. They had talked themselves into believing that Bulgarian interests must be hostile to the Powers which meditated a Drang nach Osten, and on the face of it there were good reasons for this belief. They received all rumours, therefore, with incredulity, and, in spite of Serbia’s warnings, continued to cultivate the goodwill of Sofia, and believe the protestations of King Ferdinand. Had the activity in the Bulgarian army about this time been realized in the West it might have broken into our pleasant dreams.

The Bulgarian military system demands a brief notice. Its working unit was a strong division of sixteen battalions, or about 24,000 men. There were nominally fifteen divisions, ten of the first line and five of the second, but two new divisions of volunteers had been raised from the districts acquired in Macedonia and Thrace, bringing the field army up to about 300,000 rifles. She was weak in reserves, for behind this force she had only a Territorial reserve of some 20,000, and the recruits of the 1916 class—all told, about 60,000 men. She could thus mobilize approximately 360,000 men, much the same strength as she had raised for the war of 1912-13. Her infantry—the first line at all events—was of excellent quality, and she possessed a General Staff of the most approved German pattern. Her weakness lay in her artillery. To each of her fifteen divisions nine batteries of field guns and one of 4.7-inch howitzers were attached, too small a complement for modern war. There was reason to believe that not all her field-batteries were of the quick-firing type, and in any case they were of two separate patterns—Creusot “75’s,” and the Krupp “77’s,” which she had captured from the Turks in the Thracian campaign. This lack of uniformity of type was conspicuous also in her heavy pieces. The Bulgarian army was therefore a force which might be to some extent handicapped if engaged in open country with a well-equipped enemy, but which, owing to its veteran character, was well fitted for warfare in a blind and pathless mountain region.

The Balkan Railways and Frontiers.

The full tale of the intrigues of Sofia during the summer will not be told till the war has become a memory. We cannot yet solve the mystery of the currents and cross-currents which pulled the ship of state hither and thither, and finally swept it towards the cataract. Only a few events stood out clear to the world in the mist of rumour which hung over the Balkans during September. Some time between the 14th and 20th of the month a treaty was signed between Bulgaria and Turkey. It purported to be no more than the settlement of the Dedeagatch railway question, of which we had heard in July, but it is certain that it provided for the military alliance now perpending, and gave to Bulgaria territorial rewards for her assistance. On 21st September,Sept. 21. after the German advance on Serbia had begun, M. Venizelos, the Greek Premier, who believed that his country, owing to the terms of her alliance with Serbia, must enter the fray, asked France and Britain for 150,000 troops. That day the first steps seem to have been taken in Bulgaria’s mobilization, though the official order was dated two days later. On the 24th the WesternSept. 24. Allies acceded to M. Venizelos’s request, and that same day Greece began to mobilize, the order having been signed by the King at four o’clock the afternoon before. On the 25thSept. 25. Bulgaria, following the precedent of Turkey in the previous November, issued an explanation of her mobilization. She declared she had no aggressive intentions, and mobilized, like Holland and Switzerland, only to defend her rights and independence. Her position was that of armed neutrality. The mobilization order affected four of her first-line divisions—the 1st (Sofia), the 2nd (Vidin), which was at Vratza, the 7th (Rilo), at Dubritza, and the 10th (Tatar-Pazardjik). That same evening came the news that Bulgarian cavalry were massing on the Serbian borders.

Rumania, much agitated by the new situation, announced that as yet she would take no decisive step. Her army was already mobilized, and her troops remained concentrated on her frontiers. The Greek mobilization was calculated to produce a strength little less than Bulgaria’s. In 1912 the Greek army had consisted of four weak divisions; in 1913 it had risen to ten divisions; and after peace it remained at eleven divisions. The new war strength was six corps, each of three divisions, giving a total of about 240,000 men, with half that number in reserve. Each division—numbering about 12,500 rifles—had eight field or mountain batteries, and in many cases a heavy battery as well, giving an average of three pieces per thousand as compared with the Bulgarian two per thousand.^[1] The whole of the Greek artillery was composed of modern quick-firing Creusot guns.

Meanwhile there were protests from within Bulgaria against the obvious trend of her action. A deputation of ex-Ministers—M. Gueshov, M. Danev, M. Zanov, the leader of the Radical Democrats, M. Malinov, the chief of the Democratic party, and M. Stambuliviski, the leader of the Agrarians—sought an interview with the King. If rumour is to be trusted, King Ferdinand heard some plain speaking that day. M. Malinov demanded the immediate convocation of Parliament, since the country at large was opposed to any adventure in Germany’s company. He warned his sovereign that the enterprise would be more disastrous for Bulgaria than the Second Balkan War. The Agrarian leader, a peasant by origin, was frankness itself. “This policy,” he said, “will lead to fresh disasters, and will ruin not only our country, but your dynasty, and may cost you your head.” King Ferdinand endeavoured to turn the conversation on to autumn crops, and dismissed his mentors.

The skies were darkening over Serbia, but there were still gleams of light. Von Mackensen’s advance was making little progress, and neither Save nor Danube was yet crossed. It was believed that Greece would be true to her alliance, and that the Western Allies were sending adequate reinforcements. The main danger was Bulgaria, for a sudden attack on flank would gravely compromise the situation, and might cut off the Serbian army from its communications with Greece and the Allies on the seaboard. On 27th September, accordingly, Serbia informed the BritishSept. 27. Government that she considered it wise to attack Bulgaria before the mobilization there was complete. Beyond doubt it was the correct military policy, for the Bulgarian menace was far greater than that of the weary divisions of von Mackensen, and if Serbia fought on a front running north and south she would be in a favourable position to join hands with any reinforcements sent by her Allies. Except that a formal declaration of war was lacking, there could be no doubt about Bulgaria’s intentions. If Serbia delayed, Bulgaria would strike the first blow. The Serbian mobilization was complete, the Austro-Germans were not yet across the rivers, and the true centre of gravity was the Eastern front. In the event of failure she could retire upon Salonika, but if Bulgaria once got round her flank she would be driven into the difficult Albanian hinterland and cut off from her friends.

The British Government discouraged Serbia’s proposal, declaring that the diplomatic and political arguments were against it. Apparently at that late hour we still cherished the vain hope that Bulgaria might stay her hand. It was a fatal decision. It compromised Serbia’s plan of campaign, and could only have been justified if the Western Allies were in the position to fight the campaign on their own account and protect Serbia with ample armies. But this assistance, as we shall see, the Allies were not in the position to afford in time. We crowned our diplomatic failure of the summer by a grave error in military judgment.^[2]

Next day, 28th September, the British ForeignSept. 28. Minister made an important statement in the House of Commons. As Sir Edward Grey’s words led to much future controversy, they deserve to be quoted in full.

This statement left something to be desired in fullness; but as expounded by Sir Edward Grey in a later debate on 2nd November it was sufficiently clear, and it cannot have been misunderstood by Serbia. It was based on the promise, made along with France, to M. Venizelos to send 150,000 men to Salonika to enable Greece to fulfil her treaty obligations. The words “without reserve and without qualification” referred to the fact that so long as there had been a hope of Balkan unity the Allied Powers had urged upon Greece and Serbia certain territorial concessions to Bulgaria. But if Bulgaria joined the Teutonic League, then all question of concessions disappeared, and the help that the Allies would be prepared to give to Greece and Serbia would be granted without reserve or qualification.

On that day the Greek Parliament met. M. Venizelos explained that mobilization was a necessary precaution, and declared that in certain contingencies Greece was bound by treaty to assist Serbia, though he sincerely hoped that the casus foederis would not arise. A bill was introduced for a loan of six million sterling, and M. Goumaris, on behalf of the Opposition, tendered his support to the Government.

On 1st October word came that many GermanOct. 1. officers were at Sofia in consultation with the Bulgarian Staff. This piece of news, which was no novelty, seems to have convinced the Allied Governments at last of Bulgaria’s intentions. That evening the British Foreign Office issued a statement announcing the fact, recalling the precedent of Turkey the year before, and declaring that the situation must now be regarded as “of the utmost gravity.” Next day, M. Venizelos formally protested against the projected Allied landing at Salonika. It was the kind ofOct. 2. protest which diplomacy demands from territorial sovereigns, and was intended by the Greek Prime Minister to be regarded as an assertion of sovereignty for the purpose of record rather than as a warning or a threat.

At this point Russia took up the tale. On 3rdOct. 3. October the Russian Minister at Sofia, M. Savinsky, was instructed to hand to M. Radoslavov the following note:—

The note seems actually to have been presented on the afternoon of Monday, the 4th. ToOct. 5. this Bulgaria replied at 2.40 p.m. the next day. The reply was unsatisfactory, and the Russian Minister notified M. Radoslavov that diplomatic relations were at an end, a step in which he was presently followed by his French and British colleagues.

From this day, 5th October, we may date Bulgaria’s formal entrance into the war. She took some pains to justify her course in a long official pamphlet, of which she distributed copies broadcast throughout her towns and villages. It is a curious document. Russia, she declared, was fighting for Constantinople and the Dardanelles; France for Alsace-Lorraine; Britain to ruin Germany; Italy, Serbia, and Montenegro for plunder. The Teutonic Alliance, on the other hand, fought only to maintain the status quo, and to ensure peace and progress for the world. Neutrality in the early stages had been advisable. “Neutrality has enabled us to bring the military and material preparedness of our army to such a pitch as has never before been reached.” The document then embarked on economics. Bulgaria’s trade interests were inseparably bound up with Turkey, Germany, and Austro-Hungary. Germany had lent Bulgaria money after the Treaty of Bucharest, and would in future give her financial support. She would be faced with economic collapse unless she took the part of the Central Powers. Serbia was discussed in a strain of lurid malevolence. She was the eternal enemy, and, since she was Russia’s darling, Russian and Bulgarian policy must stand in conflict. The Western Allies had offered no real advantages. They had demanded that Bulgaria should place her army unreservedly at their disposal in order to take Constantinople and hand it over to Russia. In return she was to receive some paltry territories in Thrace, and some vague compensations in Macedonia—these latter only on the understanding that Serbia got all she wanted from Austria. The rewards for adhering to the Teutonic League were not specified, but we can gather their general character from the terms of the secret treaty of 17th July.

These appeals were skilful enough, being directed purely to immediate self-interest and to the very real soreness with Serbia. They prove that King Ferdinand and his advisers were by no means certain of the temper of the country, which still looked to Russia as her traditional ally. The effect in Russia of this treason to the Slav cause on the part of a nation for which she had fought many battles was to arouse a bitter and sorrowful resentment. Radko Dmitrieff, the most distinguished living Bulgarian, returned to King Ferdinand his Bulgarian orders and renounced his allegiance. A fortnight later, onOct. 19. 19th October, an Imperial Manifesto issued in Petrograd gibbeted the treachery.

Meanwhile the Allied troops were arriving atOct. 3-7. Salonika. The first seem to have landed on 3rd October, and on 7th October two divisions were on shore. The Greek commandant made a formal protest, and then directed the harbour officials to assist in arranging the landing. Greek officers took charge of the Salonika railway, and displaced the former German and Austrian employees of the company. On Monday,Oct. 4. 4th October, M. Venizelos made a speech in the Greek Chamber. He explained that in his view Greece’s engagements to Serbia under her treaty of alliance, as well as the vital interests of the country, imposed on her the duty of going to Serbia’s aid without awaiting a declaration of war by the Central Powers. If Bulgaria were suffered to win it would be farewell to Greece’s hopes of the future. “I can only say that I should feel profound regret if, in the performance of my duty in safeguarding the vital interests of the country, I should find myself brought into opposition with nations with whom I have no direct quarrel. The danger of conflict is great, but we shall none the less fulfil the obligations imposed on us by our treaty of alliance.”

These manly and honourable words were the last which M. Venizelos was destined to utter as head of the Greek Government. They could have only one meaning—that the Greek army, in concert with the Allies at Salonika, would take the field at once against Bulgaria on Serbia’s behalf. But next morning the Prime Minister was summoned to the Palace, and told by King ConstantineOct. 5. that his policy had not the royal sanction. That afternoon he announced his resignation in the Chamber, to the surprise of his countrymen and the consternation of the Allies. M. Zaimis, the Governor of the National Bank, was entrusted with the task of forming a Cabinet. The new Ministry proclaimed its policy as the maintenance, as long as events permitted, of a state of armed neutrality, but a neutrality, so far as concerned the Western Allies, “to be characterized by the most complete and sincere benevolence.” Of this benevolence the tacit sanction given to the Salonika landing might be regarded as a proof.

Events now moved swiftly. On 7th October vonOct. 6-9. Mackensen forced the line of the rivers, and on Saturday, 9th October, Belgrade fell to General von Koevess. Two Bulgarian armies, the 1st under General Bojadiev, and the 2nd under General Teodorov,^[3] were on the Serbian frontier. Turkish troops were moving over the Thracian borders, and around Dedeagatch. On Monday, theOct. 11. 11th, the Bulgarian advance guards crossed the marches, and next day the Government of Sofia formally declared war upon Serbia. On 15th October Britain declared warOct. 15. upon Bulgaria. The situation at this date was that 200,000 Austro-Germans under von Mackensen were pressing southward from the Save and the Danube against the Serbian front; a quarter of a million Bulgarians were moving eastwards against Serbia’s exposed right flank; far to the south 13,000 French and British troops in the vicinity of Salonika were preparing to march inland against the Bulgarian left; while Greece and Rumania, fully mobilized, were watching their frontiers and waiting upon fortune. The curtain had rung up on the tragic drama of Serbia.

Such is the summary of the events which preceded the new Balkan campaign. Two questions deserve further consideration, though at present the data are too scanty for a full understanding. One is the attitude of Greece, and the other the policy of the Western Allies. It is the duty of the historian to look behind the facile condemnations and criticisms of the man in the street, and attempt to envisage the difficulties which faced the Governments concerned. That most of these difficulties were due to prior blunders did not make them the easier to surmount. Men of the most undoubted honour and goodwill may find themselves faced by a puzzle to which there is literally no solution, a quandary from which there is no outlet except by way of some kind of disaster.

The dominant motive in Greek policy was fear. On a broad survey of the situation there was no answer to the arguments adduced by M. Venizelos in his speech in the Chamber on 10th October after his retirement. He declared his conviction that war between Greece and Bulgaria was inevitable in the near future. If to-day Greece allowed Serbia to be crushed, in three years’ time she herself would fall an easy prey. He pointed out, too, the results of a Teutonic victory. It would mean the eradication of the Hellenic element in Turkey, however loud the German assurances to the contrary, and it would be the end of Greece’s hopes of expansion on the Ægean littoral. Indeed it would in all likelihood be the end of Greek nationality altogether. Every reason of policy was in favour of Greece’s adherence to the cause of the Allies. There was, further, the obligation to Serbia under the Treaty of 1913, but when on 11th October Serbia formally asked Greece for the help for which that treaty provided she was refused. The Greek argument seems to have been that since Serbia had shown herself willing to concede certain tracts of Macedonia to Bulgaria, the purpose for which the treaty was made had disappeared, and that in any case the treaty referred only to an attack on Serbia by Bulgaria, and not to an invasion by other Powers. These were obviously quibbles, and that they should have been used by the Greek Government showed the strength of its determination to cling to neutrality.

The motive of that determination was fear. The King, himself allied by marriage with the Kaiser, was oppressed by the evidence of German power. The General Staff had seen their advice in the spring neglected, and the futile result of the summer campaign in the Dardanelles. It had witnessed Russia being driven from post to pillar, while the French and British armies were held in the West. Had the Western offensive of 25th September been pushed to an indisputable victory things would have been different, but that advance seemed now to have reached its limit. Greece knew the strength of Bulgaria’s fighting force; she knew the weakness of the Serbian remnant, and she could not tell what reinforcements von Mackensen would yet bring to the Balkans. Besides, there were Turkish reserves who, equipped by Germany, could threaten her north-eastern marches. She saw her army of at the most 350,000 faced by enemies who might presently be twice or three times that number. Serbia, with 150,000 men, was strategically so placed that she must soon be put out of action. As for the Western Allies, they were committed to send 150,000 men, but that contingent would not turn the balance in her favour. She had acquired a not unjustifiable distrust of Allied strategy and leadership after witnessing the summer’s events in Gallipoli. It was useless to attempt to bribe her with Cyprus or promises of Turkish territory. Before those gifts could materialize the enemy must be conquered, and the provision for his conquest was not apparent. Her only course, she argued, was to remain neutral, and wait upon events. She did not fear the vindictiveness of the Allies, should they be victorious, but she considered that the Teutonic League, if it won the campaign, would exact from her the uttermost vengeance if she had taken action against it.

These were not exalted or very far-sighted considerations, but they determined the decision of her Government, sorely perplexed about the future. They were not the views of the greatest Greek, M. Venizelos, and probably they were not the views of the majority of the Greek people. But, as has already been pointed out, it was idle to expect from the Governments of the little Balkan States any prescient or continuous policy. Like all lately-born peasant democracies, they tended to cultivate the immediate advantage, and to be obsessed by the immediate peril.

The question of Allied policy falls under two heads—the diplomacy before the crisis, and the military plan when diplomacy had failed. In any criticism it is fair to remember the extraordinary difficulties which faced the Foreign Offices of France and Britain. Since May the successes, the definite, tangible successes, had been all on the German side. They could point to nothing to set off against the triumphant sweep from the Donajetz to the Sereth, from the Vistula to the Drina. In dealing with hesitating neutrals they were heavily handicapped. It was like a game of bridge in which a player has never in his hand a card which can take a trick. Again, in the case of the Balkan States, there was this special difficulty—that each state was at heart as jealous of its neighbour and prospective ally as of the Power which we sought to persuade them was the common enemy. Undoubtedly, before the Russian débâcle began, Bulgaria might have been brought in on the Allied side. Had Serbia been willing, say, in April 1915, to cede to Bulgaria with immediate occupation the disputed territory in Macedonia, Bulgaria would have been won over. But this Serbia obstinately refused to do; in reply to their appeals the Allies were told that the Serbians would sooner fight the Bulgarians than the Austrians; so the blame for some part of Serbia’s misfortunes must rest on her own shoulders.^[4] When she proved amenable to persuasion it was already too late. Russia had suffered her disaster, and the glamour of German prowess had fallen upon Sofia.

It may fairly be said, therefore, that the Allied diplomacy was confronted with a most intricate problem. It is easy to be wise after the event; but, looking back over the course of twelve months, it would seem that its solution, though hard, was not impossible. The importance of the Balkans was recognized too late, and a strong and consistent policy was not adopted in time. It is difficult not to believe that prior to 1st May Bulgaria could have been won, if the Allies had insisted clearly upon certain concessions from Serbia and Greece. They had the power to insist if they had had the will. After that date we failed to recognize that Bulgaria was lost, and persisted up to 1st October in efforts at conciliation which were doomed to failure. From May onward there was only one argument which could prevail upon King Ferdinand, and that was fear. Since we could not make Bulgaria our ally she must be isolated. Had we in July, when there was ample evidence of Bulgarian intentions, sent to Salonika the six divisions which went later to Gallipoli, it is more than likely that Bulgaria would have yielded, and, at the worst, we should have been able to attach Greece to our side and give Serbia adequate assistance in the hour of invasion. We underrated the importance of the Balkans from the first. We did not enforce our policy of conciliation strongly enough while there was yet time. When the day for it had passed we did not recognize the changed situation, and adopt a different plan. History will record that our difficulties were great, but that they were surmountable, and that they were not surmounted.

The question of military policy raises once again the old subject of divergent operations. The initial blunder, it will be generally admitted, was the landing in Gallipoli, which drained our men from more vital theatres for a hopeless task. Our preoccupation with that fateful peninsula blinded our eyes to what was happening farther west on the mainland. Had we been able to place a force of 300,000 men at Salonika early in September we should have been in a position to help Serbia effectually, and wage a campaign with some chance of success. That chance had gone utterly by 6th October. Why, then, was the expedition persisted in? It was idle to talk about our prestige in the East. That could not be served by a second disaster on the Ægean shores, and it would be served by a defeat of the German main armies in the West. Nothing that could happen in the Near East would bring the end of the campaign closer. The Allies could only win by destroying the great German forces, and for that purpose they must seek them where they were to be found. Germany could not win by occupying Constantinople and annexing Serbia, but only by beating the main Allied armies. In any case a small force of 150,000 was of no value. To achieve anything we must send at least three times that number, and they could only be got by depleting the Western front. There we had successfully embarked on a great offensive, an offensive which to succeed must continue without intermission till the enemy’s lines were broken. But if we took away sufficient troops to achieve anything in the Balkans, that offensive must be suspended; and if we did not send an adequate force to the Near East it would be far wiser to send nothing. It was the worst kind of vicious circle.

Every military consideration pointed to a continuation of the Western offensive and the abstention from any further divergent adventures. Such in the end of September was the view of the French General Staff, and on 9th October the British General Staff drafted a memorandum against the Salonika expedition, since it was then too late to help Serbia. This led to Sir Edward Carson’s resignation on 12th October, on the ground that we were not fulfilling our debt of honour. Next day M. Delcassé resigned for the opposite reason, believing that any expedition to the Balkans was indefensible. Of the two distinguished statesmen, M. Delcassé from a military point of view had the better argument. With far too few men, in a country where transport difficulties were great and demanded a complete re-equipment, we proposed to make a diversion on behalf of a gallant ally, whom no diversion could save. The true blow for the re-creation of Serbia could only be struck on the Western front.

But no war can be conducted solely by military science. There were reasons which made some effort on Serbia’s behalf, however belated, a political necessity. We had promised assistance to that little nation, and every Serbian counted on our aid. Even if we were too late to save her, public honour seemed to demand that we should try. That, at any rate, was the view of the ordinary man in France and Britain, and in addition there were responsible statesmen in both countries who believed that French and British prestige in the Moslem world was at stake, and that, however disadvantageous the enterprise on purely military grounds, some kind of attempt must be made to check the German sweep to the Bosphorus. The latter view was rather a sentiment than a reasoned opinion; but the former—the point of honour—had real substance. An act of public disloyalty might be more damaging in the long run to the Allied cause than a rash adventure. A man who refrains from rushing to the help of a friend who is attacked in a street row is scarcely justified by the plea that he had followed the wiser course of going off to fetch the police. This view—to the credit of our hearts—soon obtained a great predominance among the Western Allies. In France and Britain there was much criticism—often bitter and unfair—of our diplomatic failure. The French Government became strong converts to the necessity of a Balkan expedition, and the French General Staff followed suit. The ordinary man in both nations, if we may judge from the Press, was a stout partisan of intervention.

In these circumstances it was inevitable that the correct military view must be overridden. The great Western offensive slackened, for, apart from the fact that divisions must be taken from that front, the mind of the High Command was compelled to divide its interests. In the beginning of October the Allies were resolved to do something, but they had no very clear idea as to what that something should be. Few undertakings in history have been started in so complete a fog of indecision. The situation in the Near East, already sufficiently tangled, was to be complicated by a new sporadic effort, not undertaken as part of a considered plan, but the offspring of a sudden necessity. We must examine briefly the character of the military position in October on the Ægean shores.

THE NEW SITUATION IN THE NEAR EAST.

After the victories of Platæa and Mycale, as may be read in the ninth book of Herodotus, an Athenian expedition sailed to the Dardanelles and laid siege to the town of Sestos, which was in Persian hands. The place was the strongest position in the peninsula, and during the hot summer months it resisted stoutly. Autumn came, and the Athenians began to murmur, but their leader Xanthippus declared that there could be no return till Athens recalled her army or Sestos fell. Then one morning the enemy disappeared. The garrison had been in desperate straits for supplies, the Persian Artaÿctes drew off his men by night, and the gates of Sestos were opened to the conquerors. Such was one result of the strife between Europe and Asia at the sea-gates of the Marmora.

But if the story of Herodotus offered a good omen for the Gallipoli adventure of the Allies in 1915, there was another tale of an overseas expedition told by a greater historian which could not but recur to men’s minds. Sixty-two years after Xanthippus took Sestos, Nicias the Athenian led a mighty expedition to the siege of Syracuse. It was largely inspired by Alcibiades, a brilliant but erratic politician. It was conducted by the chief naval Power of the day and the chief protagonist of democracy. Its ablest soldier, Lamachus, found his plans overridden by instructions from home. The Syracusans had formidable defences, but they must have fallen, had they not been aided by Sparta, then the chief Power by land and the exponent of oligarchical government. On the part of Athens it was an amphibious expedition, involving a landing of an expeditionary force in co-operation with a great fleet. At first various small victories were gained, but soon the besiegers became the besieged, and the campaign dragged aimlessly on till that tragic autumn when Nicias and Demosthenes laid down their arms and the flower of the youth of Athens perished in the quarries. This, wrote Thucydides, was the greatest disaster that ever befell a Greek army. “For being altogether vanquished at all points, and having suffered in great degree every affliction, they were destroyed, as the saying is, with utter destruction, both army and navy and everything; and only a few out of many returned home.”

The Syracusan expedition was the death-blow of the Athenian Empire. It was easy to make of it a parable, putting modern names for those of Nicias and Alcibiades, Lamachus and Gylippus, Athens and Sparta, and find a score of striking parallels. Such historical apologues, whether they cheer or depress, are to be sparingly used, for the data they provide are too loose for a fruitful deduction. But by the beginning of October it was clear to observers in the West that our position in the Eastern Mediterranean, never strategically good, was about to be complicated by that very event which we had hoped to frustrate. The Turks, depleted in men, and with their stock of munitions running low, were about to receive dangerous reinforcements. Gylippus had come to the aid of the Syracusans.

After the second failure at Suvla on 21st AugustAug. 21. there could be no question of a renewed offensive. Sir Ian Hamilton on 16th August had asked for large reinforcements from home, and they had been refused him. For some weeks the peninsula saw the ordinary routine of trench warfare like the preceding winter in the West. Local attacks and counter-attacks kept the fronts from stagnation, but there was no plan of advance on either side. By the third week of September the new menace in the Balkans was apparent, and the Gallipoli campaign became only a part of the highly complex strategical situation. It was clear that we should presently be compelled to operate on another part of the Ægean littoral, and it was not clear where the troops were to come from.

About this time we may date the complete surrender of the original Gallipoli plan. The Allied scheme was in the melting-pot, and we were back in the position of the end of March, but faced with the results of failure and a far more intricate military problem. The time has not yet come for a final judgment on the adventure, but our knowledge is sufficient to see the main reasons for our lack of success. The original idea of landing on the peninsula was, as we have argued elsewhere, open to serious criticism. It proposed to gain ends clearly desirable by means which at the best must be costly and slow. But, admitting that the plan was feasible, the troops allotted to it were manifestly insufficient. It is almost certain that Krithia would have been won if sufficient men had been forthcoming by the end of April. But as time went on the Turkish defence developed. Soon Krithia did not involve Achi Baba, nor Achi Baba the Pasha Dagh. What had been the key-points of the citadel soon became no more than outworks. It may be questioned whether even a complete success at Suvla and Anzac in August would have really given us what we desired. The failure there was not to be blamed upon the general strategy; it was a disaster which must occur now and then to a nation which has to improvise armies, and has no great area of choice among its commanders. But the root of error was in the original plan, and the blame for it must be laid upon the Government which, without due consideration, embarked upon so hazardous an enterprise, and allotted for it such an inadequate fighting strength. Nor can Sir Ian Hamilton be relieved of responsibility for consenting to carry out a plan, of the imperfection of which any trained soldier must have been convinced. It is the business of a general to resign rather than be a party to the waste of gallant men. On this point Napoleon’s example is worthy of imitation. In 1796 he tendered his resignation when the Directory wished him to execute a futile scheme, and conversely in 1800 he cancelled his orders to Moreau when he was unable to make him understand their advantages.

When a plan has failed and a campaign is brought to a stalemate in one terrain it is common sense to try to break it off and employ the troops more fruitfully elsewhere. But it is not always easy to retrace one’s steps. We had landed great forces in Gallipoli at a heavy cost. The question was—could they be withdrawn without a far greater cost? This was obviously a matter for experts, and the experts differed. There were those—and among them Sir Ian Hamilton may be reckoned—who believed that to move the Allied forces from the peninsula would involve a higher casualty list than the April landings. There were others who maintained that with the support of the ships’ guns only a comparatively small rearguard need be sacrificed. Some argued that to leave Gallipoli would be a fatal blow to our prestige in the East—a weak contention, if the same troops were destined to pursue the Gallipoli objective, an attack on the Turks, in some other Near Eastern theatre. One school maintained with much force that it was a case of Hobson’s choice. Winter was coming, when contrary winds would make the task of supplying the Gallipoli lines extraordinarily difficult. The Turks were about to receive from Germany a great new munitionment, and in that case we must decide between abandoning our positions and being blown out of them. They did not minimize the difficulties of withdrawal, but they insisted upon the greater difficulties of remaining. On the purely military side, it was clear that if we were to fight a campaign in any part of the Balkans, and if speed was the essence of the undertaking, then the only troops which could be put in the field soon were those drawn from Gallipoli. But, on the other hand, it was urged that soldiers who had fought for months in cramped trench battles should not be forthwith used for a manœuvre campaign in an open country. They must be given an interval for rest and reorganization. Finally, there was a natural reluctance to leave the old battle-ground which had cost us so dear. This was especially felt by the Anzac corps, who regarded the Gallipoli heights as sacred ground, the burial-place of their friends, which it was a point of honour to redeem from the enemy.

Such were a few of the difficulties to be faced in any decision. On 16th October Sir Ian Hamilton was recalled to London to “report,” and General Sir Charles Monro, commanding the British Third Army, was appointed to the command of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. General Monro had won a great reputation in the West, first in command of the 2nd Division, and then of the First Corps. He is a soldier somewhat after the Peninsular type, with admirable nerve, great sagacity and judgment, and the gift of inspiring confidence in all who serve with him. No better man could have been found for this responsible and arduous task. Meantime, about the middle of September two divisions were withdrawn from Gallipoli—the 10th British, under Sir Bryan Mahon, from Suvla, and a French division from Cape Helles. This was the force whose landing at Salonika we have already seen beginning. It was destined to be placed under General Sarrail, who had formerly commanded the 3rd French Army at Verdun, and had been for some months the designated successor of General Gouraud in the command of the French Corps Expéditionnaire.

We must leave the military operations in the Balkans for later chapters, and consider here the general situation in the Near East. Assuming that in some way or other, with greater or lesser loss, the Gallipoli problem could be solved, what were the dangers to be feared from the new German and Bulgarian move? If it succeeded wholly, if Serbia were vanquished, and Germany won the river and railway routes to Constantinople, then, apart from the advantages she would gain in regard to her own supplies, she might be able to equip an offensive against Britain in two localities. One was Egypt and the other Mesopotamia. It was unlikely that she could send troops of her own, but she could send officers and munitions, and do precisely what she had already done at the Dardanelles. If she were once placed firmly at Constantinople with an open road behind her, it was conceivable that she could inspire an offensive against Egypt more serious than the fiasco of the preceding February. Following Bismarck, who described Egypt as the “neck of the British Empire,” German political thought had always looked to the banks of the Nile as the quarter where the power of England could be most vitally crippled. There was a railway from the Bosphorus to Aleppo, with two short breaks, and the roads of the Central Anatolian plateau were suitable in dry weather for motor transport. From Aleppo the Syrian and Hedjaz railways would carry troops to within a short distance of the Egyptian frontier. Was not von Mackensen’s force known in Germany as the “Army of Egypt”? She could also—though here the transport problem was more difficult—send assistance to the hard-pressed Bagdad corps in Mesopotamia. These things were conceivable, but they involved a great effort, and at the time it was hard to believe that Germany, compelled in common wisdom to husband her strength, would regard such an effort as worth making. The approach to the Suez Canal was the most difficult conceivable, and Britain, with her command of the sea, could strengthen the defences of Egypt long before the threat materialized. Again, even if reinforcements were sent to Bagdad, all that would happen would be that Sir John Nixon’s advance would be stayed. The British there had the river and the sea behind them, and no immediate cause to be anxious about their communications. It seemed, therefore, fair to conclude that the German threat to Egypt and the road to India was a threat rather than a plan. She hoped to make Britain anxious for her Imperial communications, and thereby to distract her effort in more vital theatres. Too much, perhaps, was made at the time of the danger of Germany in Constantinople to our Eastern prestige. Germany had in substance been for a year on the Bosphorus. The situation so far as that was concerned was in no way changed. All the prestige that she could gain from an alliance with the Sultan of Roum had already been won. A descent in force into Syria might increase it, but prestige is an incalculable thing, and the approach of Germany to the Holy Land of Islam might have an effect contrary to her anticipations. It was hard to resist the conclusion that at its inception the Teutonic Drang nach Osten had for its principal aim to raise doubt and hesitation in the Allies about the future developments of the war, and in particular to complicate for them the already difficult situation in the Ægean. It was also true that certain elements in Germany, which still believed that a crushing victory was possible, desired to “peg out claims” in the Near East against the day of peace. The Allies were rarely clear about their general plan, and there is no reason to believe that the German objective was always simple, luminous, and precisely calculated.

Routes and Railway Communications available for an Advance against Egypt from the Turkish Empire.

There was another factor in the situation—Russia. Apart from her main Eastern front, she had an army in Transcaucasia, and, till the unfortunate reappearance of the Goeben at the end of October, she had a virtual control of the Black Sea. We last saw her Caucasian army in the spring faced with the remnants of three Turkish corps. Throughout the summer this wardenship of the marches continued, and there were many battles of which no news came to the West. In especial a brilliant action was fought in the beginning of May at Dilman, north-west of Lake Urmia, and inside the borders of the Persian province of Azerbaijan, which Russia had been compelled to occupy. The better part of the 12th (Mosul) Corps, under Halil Bey—15,000 regular infantry and 5,000 Kurdish cavalry—attacked a weak Russian force of 3,000, supported by a few hundred Cossacks. After two days’ heroic resistance on the Russian side the Turkish ammunition gave out, and Halil retired across the frontier with a loss of over 4,000. He was again in action later, and succeeded in reducing his army to a quarter of its strength. The battle of Dilman was opportune, for it prevented the Turks in Mesopotamia receiving reinforcements which might have checked the British advance, and turned the tide at Kut-el-Amara five months later.

Northern Persia (Azerbaijan), showing the Scene of the Fighting near Lake Urmia.

The Turkish military failure on the Transcaucasian border was followed by one of the most wholesale and cold-blooded massacres in the distracted history of Armenia. That unhappy race, industrious and pacific, had long been the whipping-boy on which Constantinople had taken revenge for its defeats and fears. This is not the place to discuss the causes of the Armenian persecutions. In the two years between 1895 and 1897 Abdul Hamid had destroyed little less than half a million. In 1909, the Young Turks, not to be outdone in this honourable activity, had instituted the Adana massacres. The atrocities which filled the first eight months of 1915 were carefully organized and represented the fulfilment of a long-cherished policy. Their instigators were Enver and Talaat, the Bulgarian gipsy, ably seconded by the Jew Cavasso and by other members of the Committee of Union and Progress. Now that Turkey was at war with the West, she need listen to no more pratings about humanity, what the Grand Vizier described as “nonsense about Armenian reforms.” She could make a manly effort to extirpate a race she had always detested. She was in alliance with Germany, who had shown by her doings in Belgium that she possessed a robust conscience. Talaat was perfectly frank. “I am taking the necessary steps,” he told the American Ambassador at Constantinople, “to make it impossible for the Armenians ever to utter the word autonomy during the next fifty years.”

He was as good as his word. In the early spring, while the Turkish regulars seem to have behaved with some moderation, the irregular bands round Bayazid and Erzerum and on the Persian frontier slaughtered mercilessly, and drove the miserable remnants into Russian territory. From April onward the whole of Eastern Anatolia, from Trebizond to Alexandretta, was the scene of systematic massacres. In a military history it is needless to dwell on a tale of horror which had no military significance, but a few instances will reveal the Turkish methods. At Angora, Bitlis, Mush, Diarbekr, at Trebizond and Van, at Urfa and Jebel Musa, even at distant Mosul, many thousands were butchered like sheep, partly by the gendarmerie, and partly by the mob. Women were violated, and they and their children sold to Turkish harems and houses of ill-fame. Hundreds of wretched creatures were driven into the deserts and mountains to perish miserably of starvation. In Urfa, where were interned many of the Allied residents arrested in Syria, we had the evidence of Occidental eyes for the most unheard-of barbarities. Talaat did not spare even the Armenian supporters of the Young Turk party. Aghmani, the leader of the Dashnakists, Haladjian, the ex-Minister of Public Works, the Deputies Vartkes and Zohrab, all disappeared, and though only Zohrab’s fate can be traced, there was little doubt that they were put to death. Not always was the attack unresisted. Ten thousand Armenians were serving as volunteers with the Russian army of the Caucasus, and they gave a good account of themselves at Van. At Shaban Karahissar, near Trebizond, 4,000 Armenians held back the Turkish troops for a fortnight, till reinforcements reached the enemy and all were put to the sword. The same thing happened at Jebel Musa. West of Lake Van 15,000 Armenians banded together, and held out in the mountain tops. Near Antioch many of the Cilician Armenians withdrew to the hills, and made good their defence till they were rescued by a French cruiser. For the rest, about a quarter of a million refugees found haven in the Russian Caucasus, a few reached Bulgaria, and in one or two places the humanity of the local authorities gave them protection. But it was estimated that well over half a million perished, and great numbers of women and children were sold into slavery.

Sketch Map of Eastern Anatolia, showing the places (underlined) where the Armenian Massacres occurred.

The protesting voices were few and ineffective. The Sheikh-ul-Islam resigned, and Ahmed Riza and Djavid declared their disagreement when it was too late. Only the Vali of Smyrna refused to be party to the crimes, and carried out his refusal by protecting the Armenians in his province. The Pope made remonstrances through the Latin Patriarch. The American Ambassador in Constantinople did his best, but his Austro-German colleagues declined to join him, declaring that they could not interfere in the internal affairs of Turkey, though on 31st August they made a half-hearted protest, and asked the Grand Vizier for a written guarantee that they had had no connection with the massacres. Meanwhile the German Baron von Oppenheim in Syria was openly preaching persecution, and Count zu Reventlow in Germany was defending Turkey’s action, on the ground that Armenians were rebels who deserved all they had received.

The Turco-German pupils of Abdul Hamid were busy in another province. In Northern Persia they and their agents were carrying on what can only be described as a campaign of assassination. With wholesale bribery they tried to corrupt the gendarmerie and the Persian officials. The strange spectacle was seen of the stout and elderly Ambassadors of Turkey and Germany hurried about the land in the company of the sweepings of two nations. There was small military significance in these escapades, but they contrived still further to unsettle a land which had never been very famous for peace. It seemed to be the aim of the Central Powers to kindle all the sporadic fires they could compass, in the hope that by some happy chance the smoke and sparks might incommode the enemies in the main theatres.

The only military question in Eastern Anatolia was the position of the Russian army of the Caucasus. It had held the frontiers during the summer, and guarded Russia’s south-eastern gate. But the accession of the Grand Duke Nicholas to its command in the beginning of September had suggested to observers in the West that a diversion might come from that quarter to ease the situation in the Ægean. Apparently the Turkish Command shared the same view, for in September they did their best to increase their forces on the Transcaucasian borders. During that month they seem to have had not less than 200 battalions on the front from the Black Sea to the south of Lake Van—eighteen from the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Corps north of the Chorak valley, one hundred and twelve from the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th Corps in the centre, and seventy from the 13th Corps north and south of Lake Van, where also they had the support of Kurdish irregulars. These battalions were, of course, greatly depleted, and probably did not yield a fighting strength of more than 100,000 men, while, owing to the activities of the Russian Fleet in the Black Sea, they were poorly fed and badly supplied with clothing and munitions. Yet they represented a force by no means negligible, and the prospects of an advance westwards through the central plateau of Anatolia were not alluring. Unless it was made with large armies on a broad front, it would be strategically dangerous, for an attack on the left flank and rear was always possible. Again there were no railways on the Turkish side, and no possibility of striking a blow at a vital part till the shores of the Bosphorus were reached. The Russian commander would have his farthest railhead short of the frontier at Sarikamish, and that point was already many miles from his main bases of supply. A move westward in force could scarcely be justified in the circumstances; it would be a subsidiary operation, which might presently develop into a difficult major operation. All that the Grand Duke would do was to detain as many Turkish troops as possible in that area to prevent reinforcements being sent to Bagdad or the Dardanelles. In the event of a Turkish embarrassment elsewhere, his army of the Caucasus was well placed to strike a blow from behind.

The urgent question of the moment was the possibility of Russia moving a force from her southern Black Sea bases against Bulgaria. There was much talk of a landing at Varna, on the Black Sea coast, a step against which Bulgaria had prepared; but the Russian fleet, especially since the reappearance of the Goeben, was not in such a position of dominance as to make the naval side of the operation secure, and in any case recent experience of landings in the face of a prepared opposition had not been encouraging. The real point was whether Russia could mass in Bessarabia an army strong enough to give adequate support to Rumania in the event of her entering the war on the Allied side. The situation of the latter Power was one of immense and increasing difficulty. She had south of her a Bulgarian army watching the Danube, and north the main Austro-German right wing in the Bukovina. If she entered the campaign unsupported she would be in danger of being caught between two fires. The western Bulgarian armies, with von Mackensen’s assistance, would in all likelihood be able to crush Serbia and contain the small Franco-British force to the south; and though Ivanov was winning successes against von Pflanzer and von Bothmer north of the Dniester, he was still far from making that flank secure. Two conditions seemed essential before Rumania could move. There must be an adequate Allied force on the shores of the North Ægean to occupy the attention of the main Bulgarian army, and Russia must be able to send sufficient troops to counteract the danger of an Austro-German movement from the Carpathians. Of these two conditions the second was the more important. Rumania was at the moment neutral, with a leaning towards the Allies. But it was clear that in certain events she might be compelled, even against her will, to join the side of the Teutonic League.

Sketch Map showing the Avenues into Bulgaria from the Ægean Coast. (Vardar and Struma valleys to the west of the Rhodope mass, and east of it the fairly open country along the Lower Maritza and the Ergene and between the Rhodope and the Istranja Dagh.)

There are three routes into Bulgaria from the northern Ægean. The most westerly runs from Salonika up the valley of the Vardar and down the Upper Morava to Nish, whence the valley of the Nishava takes it eastwards towards Sofia. It is throughout followed by a railway. Farther east the valley of the Struma is open to troops advancing from Kavala. It goes through the heart of difficult mountains, and has no railway and but one road suitable for heavy traffic in winter. The most easterly is the route by the Maritza valley from the port of Dedeagatch, which has a good railway, and turns the flank of the Rhodope range. It leads through Turkish territory by Adrianople. If the Allies, assuming they were present in sufficient force, desired to strike at Bulgaria, the middle route by the Struma valley was clearly the worst. The best, so far as purely military considerations went, was probably that by the Maritza valley. The western route by the Salonika railway was long, and had the disadvantage that against it the enemy was massed in his chief strength. Had an advance there been possible before the end of September, while Serbia was still unbroken, it was obviously the best course, but if Serbia should be put out of action it had little to recommend it. The Allies’ object was to cut the Austro-German communications with Constantinople, and it is common wisdom, if you are too late to cut a line some distance from its objective, to make an attempt on it, if possible, nearer the goal. These considerations seemed to point to a campaign in Western Thrace.

But no such simple solution was possible. In the first place, the Allies were already at Salonika, sent there for the reasons we have recounted. If they re-embarked they left Greece open to the persuasions or the threats of the advancing Bulgarians and Austro-Germans, and the Greek situation at the moment was too delicate to take any risks. In the second place, an advance in Thrace demanded an army of at least 300,000 men, and that would not be forthcoming for weeks, probably months, unless the troops could be removed from Gallipoli. We may therefore sum up the situation in the beginning of October somewhat as follows: Some 200,000 Austro-Germans and rather more Bulgarians were pressing in on Serbia with every chance of occupying that country and driving the remnants of the Serbian army into the Albanian hills. A small force of 13,000 Allies was at Salonika, moving northwards against the Bulgarian left wing, but without any hope of succouring Serbia or stemming the tide of invasion. The most they could do would be to protect the coast end of the Salonika railway. In Gallipoli an Allied force of nearly a dozen divisions was held fast, and their future had not been decided. Greece and Rumania were mobilized and watching events, no doubt benevolent to the Allies, but waiting for some proof that the Allies had a chance of success. The one strategic plan which offered good hope was a joint attack from north and south on Bulgaria’s rear—a plan of which we have outlined the difficulties. The two possibilities which might solve the puzzle were the ability of Russia to provide in Bessarabia an army sufficient to quiet Rumania’s fears and encourage her to move against the Danube, and the providing by France and Britain, from Gallipoli or elsewhere, of an adequate field force to advance from the south by whatever route proved most practicable.

The Northern Coasts of the Ægean.

Such were the elements of the Allied situation in the Near East. The first act of the drama was played in Western Macedonia and Serbia, and closed, as we shall see, with the expulsion of a heroic army from its native land. The one blow struck elsewhere during October was the bombardment of the Bulgarian coastOct. 21. on 21st October (Trafalgar Day) by Admiral de Robeck’s squadron. The whole enemy seaboard was shelled from Port Lagos to Dedeagatch, and at the latter place all the barracks and Government buildings were destroyed. The troops took refuge in the neighbouring hills, the civilian population fled, and the British efforts were confined to the destruction of property. The railway station, the line, rolling stock, the harbour buildings, oil stores, coal depôts, warehouses, and factories were methodically obliterated. As the campaign then stood, such a bombardment could have no serious strategical effect. It was rather to be regarded as a timely hint to other maritime nations that the British navy was a factor to be reckoned with.

THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN FRANCE AND BRITAIN.

The beginning of October saw a recrudescence in France and Britain of that uneasiness with the conduct of the war which had been noticeable in May. The purport of recent events was writ too large for the most casual to miss. The situation in the Near East was ugly, and the Allied Governments seemed to speak with an uncertain voice. The first exhilaration after the September advance in the West had been succeeded by a doleful reaction, in which the results gained were unduly depreciated. Germany seized the occasion to revive the preposterous peace talk of early September, and this put the finishing touch to French and British impatience. The ordinary man, whose resolution was now fortified by genuine anger, began to look askance at his Government. The British losses alone, as announced up to 9th October, were close on half a million, or five times theOct. 9. strength of our original Expeditionary Force. On the Western front they amounted to 365,000, of whom over 67,000 were dead. Thirteen months of incessant fighting had shown a glorious record for our men, but could the same thing be said of our leaders? All our actions had been like Albuera and Inkerman, soldiers’ battles; people were beginning to suggest that Vittoria and Salamanca were better examples to follow, and that a generals’ battle would be a welcome change. For the first time criticism of our leadership in the field began to be heard in responsible mouths, while the Government in general suffered considerable discredit for the calamitous results of their Balkan policy.

A whipping-boy was discovered in the Censorship. Upon the Censorship we visited for a little the irritation and doubt which had been engendered in the popular mind by the obvious difficulties into which we had blundered. That institution from the beginning had had few friends, and it had not been conducted with much consistency or reason. It had sanctioned the publication of news which seriously hampered our diplomacy, such as the offer of Cyprus to Greece, or exasperated our Allies, like the South Wales strike; while it repressed for weeks all information about the work of our battalions—information necessary both to encourage recruiting at home and to give our troops in the field the confidence that their work was not neglected. Such reticence was in no way imposed by military requirements, and it led only to a crop of wild rumours and the loss of that national quickening which would have been gained by a full story issued while the interest was still keen. This secrecy was not the work of the much-criticized Press Bureau, which acted mainly as a post office, but of the military authorities themselves, who were inclined to forget what was needed by a country whose armies were still volunteers. A consequence was that for some time after Loos, till Sir John French’s dispatch appeared, the land was full of gossip about the failure of the new divisions, gossip which did cruel wrong to some of the most gallant troops on the British front.

Ministers, too, showed a disposition to shelter themselves behind the Censorship, and claim immunity from criticism. The speeches of Lord Curzon, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Buckmaster in a debate in the House of Lords a month later seemed to demand for the actions of the Government a protection from hostile comment which was manifestly inconsistent with our constitutional practice. Britain was not a bureaucracy. Her Ministers were not experts but amateurs, who had won their positions as exponents of popular opinion, and held them on the condition that the people could scrutinize their work and, if necessary, ask for their dismissal. Such a system was meaningless unless popular opinion had a chance of making itself felt. Stupid attacks upon Ministers were highly objectionable, but even stupid attacks were better than compulsory silence. Our political system gave us no guarantee for administrative capacity in our Ministers. They might possess it, but, if so, it was by accident; they had reached their position by being good politicians, by their skill in dealing with words and formulas and not with facts. It was the nation’s business in a life-and-death struggle to make a zealous search for competence, and for this free criticism was essential. Ministers were responsible to the nation, and the nation was responsible for Ministers. Failure should be met by dismissal, for the nation was partly to blame. The other way, the old way, when the nation had no responsibility, was to send blundering statesmen to the scaffold. That was the logical culmination of the policy of suppressing criticism and disowning the nation’s partnership.

In this atmosphere of unsettlement fell the 110th anniversary of Trafalgar. As in 1805, that day came in the midst of a great war. The name served to recall to men’s minds that at other times in her history Britain had been beset with enemies, and had eventually triumphed. On October 21, 1805,Oct. 21, 1805. Pitt was within three months of his end. Napoleon, after meditating the invasion of England, was turning east to win the greatest of his victories. Never had the power by land of our adversaries been greater, and it had not yet reached its summit. But Trafalgar was the death-blow to the French Emperor’s hopes of world domination, and, though it took years to finish the war, his cause was lost when on that autumn afternoon the shattered navies of France and Spain fled in the teeth of the rising gale. Trafalgar Day was a reminder, too, of what the British Fleet had already accomplished. Germany had imitated Napoleon’s Berlin and Milan decrees by her barbarous and futile submarine warfare, but she had failed, as Napoleon had failed, to relax the economic pressure of Britain. Our mercantile navy was increasing under her threats. To our Fleet alone we owed it that we could wage war at will in any part of the globe, and continue that sea-borne commerce which was the breath of our life. Our sea power could not by itself bring about the victory we needed, but it had compelled Germany to fling her armies madly about Europe in the effort to win a military decision while yet there was time.

It was fitting that, following on Trafalgar Day, the King should have issued an appeal to his people. The royal proclamation in its gravity and candour was the true corrective to the restlessness of the hour.

But it was the death of one Englishwoman in Brussels which did more than any other incident of the war—more than the sinking of the Lusitania or the tragedy of Belgium—to key the temper of Britain to that point where resolution acquires the impetus of a passion. Miss Edith Cavell, a lady of forty-three, and the daughter of a Norfolk clergyman, had been since 1906 the head of a nursing institute in Brussels. When the war broke out she was in England, but she returned at once to Belgium, and transformed her institute into a hospital for wounded soldiers. There she nursed without discrimination British, French, Belgians, and Germans. During her year’s work she succeeded, with the help of friends in Brussels, in conveying many of the wounded Allied soldiers into Holland, whence they could return to their armies, and also in assisting the escape of Belgian civilians of military age. Her activities were discovered by the German authorities, and on 5th August she wasAug. 5. arrested and lodged in the military prison of St. Gilles.

Here she was kept in solitary confinement, and no word of her arrest reached her friends till three weeks later. On 26th August Sir EdwardAug. 26. Grey asked the American Ambassador in London to request Mr. Brand Whitlock, the American Minister at Brussels, to inquire into the case. Mr. Whitlock took up the matter energetically, and on 31st AugustAug. 31. addressed an inquiry to Baron von der Lancken, the chief of the political department of the German Military Government in Belgium. He waited ten days without receiving an answer, and then wrote again. On 12th September he was informedSept. 12. that Miss Cavell by her own confession had admitted the offence with which she was charged, that her defence was already in the hands of a Belgian advocate, and that as a matter of principle no interview could be permitted with accused persons. Upon this M. de Leval, the legal adviser to the American Legation, took action. With admirable assiduity he endeavoured to get in touch with Miss Cavell and her so-called advocates, but found endless difficulties in the way. It was not till 4th October that he was informedOct. 4. that the trial was fixed for the following Thursday, 7th October. On that date—nine weeks after the arrest and without the production to the defence of any documents of the prosecution—the trial of the thirty-five prisonersOct. 8. began. Miss Cavell by frankly admitting the charge had given the prosecution evidence which could not have been otherwise obtained. Under the German Military Code, paragraphs 58, 90, and 160, the offence was treason and punishable by death, and the penalty was applicable to foreigners as well as to German citizens. The Court rose next day, and judgment was reserved.

During the week-end M. de Leval tried in vain to find out what was happening. On Monday Mr. Hugh Gibson, the young Secretary ofOct. 11. the American Legation, spent the whole day interrogating the German authorities, and as late as 6.20 p.m. he was officially informed that the decision of the Court had not been pronounced. At 8 p.m. M. de Leval heard by accident that sentence had been passed at 5 p.m., and that Miss Cavell was to be shot at 2 a.m. on the following morning. The American Legation made a last gallant effort. Two pleas for mercy were drawn up, addressed to Baron von der Lancken and to Baron von Bissing, the German Governor-General. Mr. Whitlock was ill in bed, but he wrote a personal letter to von Bissing, and Mr. Gibson, M. de Leval, and the Spanish Ambassador, the Marquis de Villalobar, called on Baron von der Lancken about 10 p.m. The only power to grant a reprieve belonged to Baron von Bissing, a military pedant of the narrowest type, and the deputation, after an earnest appeal, was dismissed about midnight.

That night at ten o’clock a British chaplain, Mr. Gahan, was admitted to Miss Cavell’s cell. From him we have an account of her last hours. She asked him to tell her friends that she died willingly for her country, without fear or shrinking, and in the true spirit of Christian humility she forgave her enemies. “This I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards any one.” At two in the morning she died, her courage and cheerfulness, on the admission of the German chaplain, being unweakenedOct. 12. to the end. Some difficulty was found in providing her executioners, and there is reason to believe that a number of German soldiers were put under arrest for refusing to assist in the barbarity.^[5]

Miss Cavell’s execution was a judicial murder. It was judicial since, on the letter of the German military law, she was liable to the extreme penalty. But in the case of a woman and a nurse who had ministered to German sick and wounded the pedantry which exacted that penalty was an outrage on human decency.^[6] That the German authorities were uneasy about their work is shown by the secrecy which they insisted upon, and which Sir Edward Grey in his letter to Mr. Page rightly denounced. There was little comment in the German Press, and there is evidence that the incident was by no means applauded by Germany at large. Herr Zimmermann, the German Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, could only defend it by a legend of a “world-wide conspiracy,” and by the familiar plea of the necessity of “frightfulness” in a crisis “to frighten those who may presume on their sex to take part in enterprises punishable with death.” In France and Britain, in Holland and America, the murder woke a profound horror, and revealed as in a flashlight the psychology of that German “culture” which proposed to regenerate the world. Von Bissing and his colleagues stood clear in all their lean and mechanical poverty of soul, cruel by rule, brutal by the textbooks, ruthless after a sealed pattern, but yet without the courage of their barbarity, for their policy was furtively pursued and safeguarded with deceit.

Against that dark background the spirit of the lonely Englishwoman shone the brighter. We would not tarnish so noble a deed with facile praise. Her heroism had led captivity captive, and for her death was swallowed up in victory. She was not the least of the sisterhood of great-hearted women who have taught the bravest men a lesson in courage. M. Clemenceau spoke the tribute of the people of France. “The profound truth is that she honoured her country by dying for what is finest in the human soul—that grandeur of which all of us dream but only the rare elect have the chance of attaining. Since the day of Joan of Arc, to whose memory I know that our Allies will one day seek to erect a statue, England has owed us this return. She has nobly given it.”

Apart from vague popular uneasiness there was one specific criticism which had slowly been forming itself in the public mind. We lacked a consistent and fully thought-out strategic policy. We had made adventures without counting the cost. We had drifted into impossible situations, and had suffered Germany to dictate our line of conduct. The words which Demosthenes long ago addressed to his countrymen were singularly applicable at the moment to Britain. “In the business of war and its preparation all is confused, without method or programme. The time to act is lost in preliminaries; the favourable occasions do not wait on our slowness and our timidity. The forces that were judged sufficient reveal themselves insufficient on the day of crisis. . . . These are truths, unfortunately, and without doubt disagreeable to hear. If we were assured that in suppressing all the facts that displease us we should succeed in suppressing them in reality, we would give the people only pleasant news. But if smooth speeches cannot do away with the ugly facts, it would be criminal to delude you by concealment. Learn, therefore, that for the war to be well conducted we ought to put ourselves not behind, but at the head of, events. Wisdom lies in directing events, as a general ought to direct his troops, in order to impose his will on them, instead of being reduced to follow the fait accompli. Now you, Athenians, who have the greatest resources in cavalry, infantry, revenue, it is not right that you make war against Philip in the way a barbarian boxes. A barbarian, as soon as he is hit, catches hold of the sore place, and if you hit him on the other side, there go his hands. He knows not and wishes not to cover himself in advance, or to foresee the attack. Thus do you. If you learn that Philip is in the Chersonese, you decide on an expedition to that country; if he is at Thermopylæ you race there; if he is elsewhere, no matter where, you follow him there. Here or there, it is he who leads you. You never take an advantageous military initiative. You never foresee anything till you learn that it is either accomplished or about to be accomplished. These tactics have been good enough in other times, but now the crisis has come, and they are no longer tolerable.”^[7]

Reasonable men were beginning to look askance at schemes for mere political change, and to direct their attention to some reform of our military machine, especially as concerned its higher control. That, and not a shuffling of Ministers, was the vital need. It had long been evident that the uncertainty in our policy was largely due to the absence of a competent General Staff at home. We had possessed such a Staff, thanks largely to Lord Haldane, in connection with our pre-war army, but the dispatch of the Expeditionary Force carried off that Staff to the front in the West. No attempt had been made to replace it. For fourteen months Lord Kitchener had acted as his own General Staff, an arrangement which was the worst conceivable. It is the business of a General Staff to advise the Cabinet on questions of military policy, and to frame strategic plans. Since we were fighting in Europe in alliance with five Powers, the task was highly complex and laborious. The whole immense theatre of operations had to be brought under view, and the work of not one British force but half a dozen had to be directed. The absence of a General Staff in London meant that the burden of the work fell upon the Secretary of State for War. As the most prominent British soldier, he was the sole military adviser of the British Cabinet. In addition, he had the tasks of raising and organizing the new armies, and for many months of arranging their munitionment—each more than enough to fill the time of the ablest man. There was the further difficulty that Lord Kitchener’s great career had scarcely fitted him for the direction of a European strategy. He had been engaged all his life in laborious undertakings in extra-European fields, and could not be expected to be closely in touch with all the most recent developments of military science. The arrangement was obviously one which could only end in failure. The Cabinet were uninformed, and there was no machinery to provide them with that knowledge on which alone a coherent national strategy could be based.

Early in October a beginning was made with the construction of a better machine. The General Staff at Whitehall was reconstituted, with Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Murray, who had formerly been Sir John French’s Chief of Staff in France, at its head, and Major-General Kiggell as his deputy. General Murray, whose health had brought him back from the field, was the best type of British Staff officer, sound in judgment, untiring in industry, and deeply learned in his profession. This was the first of a number of changes and experiments. Lord Kitchener was dispatched to the Eastern Mediterranean on a mission of inquiry, and visited the lines in Gallipoli as well as Athens and Rome. It was fitting that the man who above all other Englishmen was familiar with military problems in the Near East should be asked to provide a first-hand view of the situation. In a lengthy speech by the Prime Minister on 2ndNov. 2. November, a new Committee of the Cabinet was announced, which should act as a War Council,^[8] but should communicate its findings before final decision to the Cabinet at large. In the same speech it was made clear that the Dardanelles expedition was not the venture of any one Minister, but a decision of the whole Cabinet. Mr. Churchill, thus exonerated from the wild charges with which for months he had been assailed, took the opportunity soon afterwards of making his own vindication in the House of Commons, and then resigned the sinecure of the Chancellorship of the Duchy, and joined his regiment in France. The controversy as to the apportionment of the blame for the Dardanelles awakened little interest in the country at large, and need not be recounted here. The responsibility for the naval adventure was with the whole Cabinet, acting under the advice of various naval experts. Mr. Asquith laid the burden for the land campaign upon the military authorities in charge of it, but for the appointment of these authorities the Cabinet was itself responsible. A Government shares in the glory of a victory in war, and it must bear the chief weight of a failure.

Meanwhile a vigorous effort was being made to solve the recruiting problem without adopting legal compulsion. The National Register had been compiled in August, and in September a conference of Trade Union representatives decided to organize throughout the country a special Labour Recruiting Campaign. On 11th October LordOct. 11. Derby, who had served as Postmaster-General in the last Unionist Ministry, and was the most popular and influential figure in the north of England, was appointed Director of Recruiting, and a vast activity was set agoing. The campaign was regarded as the final trial of the “voluntary” system. If before a date in the beginning of December sufficient recruits were not forthcoming, the Prime Minister in his speech of 2nd November had foreshadowed—with many qualifications—a conscriptive method as the only alternative.

The conduct and the results of the Derby campaign must be left for a later chapter, but we may note here the main lines of the proposal. Men were to be recruited in forty-six groups, according to age, the married men filling the second twenty-three, and these groups were to be called up as occasion required. Local committees were empowered to “star” men who were required for indispensable industries, and men who registered under the scheme could bring their claims for exemption later before a special tribunal. The machinery, in short, was that familiar under conscription, save that it was a little more cumbrous and lacked the driving power of legal compulsion.

In his speech on 2nd November the Prime Minister had referred to the financial position as serious, but as affording no grounds for pessimism. A short review at this point is desirable if the reader is to grasp the precise nature of the British problem. Our peculiar difficulties have been sketched in earlier chapters, and they may be briefly recapitulated. A mere speculation as to the staying powers of the rival belligerents was a barren enterprise, unless the difference between the demands on their endurance was realized. On the general question the Prime Minister was right. “I do not our position compares unfavourably with that of the Governments who are opposed to us. The consumption of the German Government and the German nation has been far in excess of what they have been able to produce or import, and their stocks of available commodities are, from all we hear, rapidly diminishing and dwindling. Further, the standard of life of the greater part of the population of Germany has been depressed to a point at which there is little or no margin of reserve. We in these respects apparently and ostensibly stand in a better position.” But he was no less right when he went on to insist that if Britain were to sustain the burden there was need of sacrifices and of a universal retrenchment unparalleled in her history. For the German difficulty was one of gradual pinching and embarrassment, but in Britain’s problem there were elements which might bring the whole economic machine to a sudden standstill.

Germany was virtually a complete economic unit, self-sustained and self-sufficing. She had little foreign trade, and for her the business of foreign exchanges and foreign credits had practically ceased. She had so organized her production of food and war stores that she could provide all her actual staple requirements from within her own borders. That is to say, she was only concerned with internal payments, and these, so long as her people believed in the certainty of victory, could be made with ease. She could increase paper currency indefinitely so long as she had printing presses to make the notes. The “goods” were in Germany; she had only to manufacture the “money” to facilitate their transference to the hands of the Government; and while her people trusted to the credit of the state there would be no trouble about the transfer. No doubt it was a perilous foundation to lay for the future, but the wheels of war have never stopped in deference to an economic purism.

Britain had this problem also. She had to raise money internally to pay her troops in the field and the sailors on her fleets, and her own producers for that part of the war material which was manufactured at home. But she had to do more. She, like France, was still an open country, with commercial relations throughout the entire globe. She had to import for herself and her Allies large quantities of war stores, and she had also to import great amounts of raw material and food to keep her civilian life going. But for these imports she must make payments which the foreign exporters would accept. She could pay her own subjects with her War Loan stock, but that was our kind of money, not the kind that was current in foreign countries. The British financial problem was therefore twofold—to raise funds internally for domestic payments, and to provide some means of meeting our liability to foreign exporters.

The first problem was the simpler. In the last resort an indefinite amount could be raised, even if we were compelled to inflate our currency or resort to forced loans. No belligerent Government which retains the confidence of the nation need ever be stopped short by any domestic payments. The aim of Britain was so to manipulate her levies as to produce the minimum of economic dislocation. The cost of the war had steadily risen. In June it was estimated at £2,660,000 a day; in September it was £3,500,000; in November it was £4,000,000; and for the year 1916-17 it was calculated at £5,000,000. For the year 1915-16 the Chancellor of the Exchequer put the total British expenditure at close on £1,600,000,000, of which £190,000,000 was allocated to the Navy, £715,000,000 to the Army, and £423,000,000 as loans to our Allies and Colonies.

In an earlier chapter we have seen the results of the two loans of November 1914 and July 1915. Borrowing on a still vaster scale was in the near prospect, but when the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced the second great War Budget in the House of Commons on 21st September he didSept. 21. not specify fresh loans. He confined himself to dealing with the amount to be raised by new taxation—over £300,000,000, leaving nearly £1,300,000,000 to be met by borrowing. The details of the new taxation may be roughly sketched. The income tax was increased by adding 40 per cent. to the existing rates. As this increase was not accompanied by any revision of the complicated system which had grown up during the preceding seventy years, the result was an exceedingly intricate and difficult scale of charges. Generally speaking, the effect was to assess large unearned incomes at about 3s. 6d. in the pound, and earned incomes under £1,500 at a fraction over 2s. 1d. All incomes in excess of £130 were made liable to taxation, and the amount allowed to go free was reduced to £120, though the deduction for each child was increased from £20 to £25. The tax, so far as employees were concerned, was to be paid quarterly, and employers were allowed to deduct it from salaries. The super-tax, too, was increased on incomes over £8,000.

There were a number of other financial expedients. The Customs dues on commodities already taxed were increased, and a new 33⅓ per cent. ad valorem duty was imposed on certain foreign articles of luxury, such as motor cars, cinema films, clocks, and musical instruments. The aim of this impost was restrictive as well as revenue-producing, in order to lower our imports from abroad of non-essential commodities. An Excess Profits tax of 50 per cent. was imposed on all business profits made during the war, excess profits being defined as those in excess of an average of recent years, allowances being made for any extra capital employed. Post office charges were increased, but the rigour of the first proposals was slightly abated. These most substantial imposts, which bore very heavily on the middle and professional classes, were accepted without murmuring, even with alacrity, by the nation. “It has been my duty,” said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, “to ask the country to assent to taxes on a gigantic scale. Surely it must have been a subject of congratulation to every member of the House that the country has accepted these burdens with almost unanimous willingness, and it is without precedent in a great war of any country that the nation has come forward and literally asked to be taxed.”

Far more complex, and at the same time far more urgent, was the question of how to pay for our foreign imports. In the case of an importing country like Britain there is usually an excess of imports over the value of her exports. This balance is normally liquidated partly by our earnings from freights, partly from our banking commissions, and partly from the interest on foreign securities in British hands. In time of war it was obvious that the first two sources would greatly decline, since so much of our mercantile marine was being used for war purposes, and since the usual financial activity of the London market was restricted. Moreover, by the import of war stores the balance against us was hugely increased. If we put the debit balance at £200,000,000, which was certainly an under-estimate, and add the £400,000,000 we were lending to our Allies and Colonies, we reach a figure of some £600,000,000 which could not be met by any of the means used to finance our internal effort. These figures are speculative; but in the case of the United States we could get a calculation approximately exact. For the year ending June 30, 1914, the excess of American exports over British imports was £60,000,000. For the year ending June 30, 1915, it was £131,000,000. If we take the figure of £60,000,000 as the excess which could be met in the normal way of trade, then £71,000,000 had to be met by extraordinary measures—that is, by other means than freight earnings or the interest on British-owned American securities. The result of this abnormal situation, which the Government appeared to be slow in recognizing, was that the American exchange went steadily against us. Early in November it was as much as thirty-six cents below the normal. This meant that to settle our debts to America we must pay considerably more than the amount of the debts. One result, partly attributable to this fact, was a great inflation of prices. For the nine months ending September 1915 we imported 17,000,000 cwts. less of grain and flour than for the same period in 1913, but they cost us £20,000,000 more. We imported 2,300,000 cwts. less meat, but at an increased cost of £26,000,000.

To meet this grave situation there were various possible expedients. One was to increase our civil production, and, therefore, our exports, but war conditions forbade this. Another was to reduce our imports of all non-essential commodities, and the thrift campaign in Britain and the import duties of the September Budget were steps to this end. A third was to export capital—gold and foreign securities. A fourth was to induce foreign exporting countries to make us a loan and grant us commercial credits.

Both the third and fourth plans were adopted. Some gold was exported, how much it was not known; but there were obvious limits to this method. The Government took steps to prepare a register of American securities in British hands, an easy task so far as the chief holders—the banks and insurance companies—were concerned. The amount so held was believed to be between £500,000,000 and £700,000,000. It was proposed that they should be sold to the Government, who would pay for them with War Loan stock and use them to pay our debts in the United States. Meantime early in September an Anglo-French Commission arrived in New York to attempt to arrange an American loan. In spite of the furious opposition of the German sympathisers in America, a 5 per cent. loan for £100,000,000 was arranged, a large figure when we remember the aversion of American investors to foreign securities, and the huge rate of interest to which they had been accustomed. There seems little doubt that the loan was floated by pro-Ally sentiment rather than by purely business considerations. The proceeds were to be employed exclusively in America for the purpose of steadying the exchange. At the same time, private commercial credits were arranged in the United States for the same end to the amount of some £30,000,000. These various expedients did not clear the situation, but they greatly eased it, and they pointed a way to a continuous policy on the subject based upon the frank co-operation of American business men.^[9]

One further proposal must be noted, for it had immense significance for the future of the British Empire. The whole Empire, and not Britain alone, was at war, and the resources of the whole Empire, if they could be pooled, were greater than those of any other state in the world. Hitherto Britain had been the lender, and the Dominions the borrower; but men began to ask whether the position could not be reversed. The practical form of the proposal was that the greater Dominions, from whom Britain was purchasing large quantities of food and war stores, should not be paid immediately by Britain for such purchases, but that the Colonial producers should be paid by their respective Governments, who would float for the purpose a loan or create a currency, which would be secured by the whole Imperial credit. The Dominions had already given most generously their manhood; they were now asked to advance to Britain for a time the money to buy the food and war stores which they could export to her. The proposal, in short, was to make of the Empire a unit for finance, as it had become a unit for the other aspects of war.^[10]

In France the month of October saw the formation of a new Ministry. M. Delcassé’s resignation on the 13th had made that inevitable.Oct. 13. Reasons of health, combined with disagreement with his colleagues on their Balkan policy, forced from office the man who of all living French statesmen had rendered the most conspicuous services to his country. M. Delcassé had never been strong, and he was one who habitually worked at high pressure, and drew most of the activities of his department into his own hand. He combined a bold imagination with great tenacity of purpose, and, like Joffre, his fellow-Southerner, he was a man of few words. Along with King Edward and Lord Lansdowne, he had been the architect of the Anglo-French entente, and for a decade he had been the man in all France most feared by Berlin. In the war he saw the justification of his policy, and since its start he had laboured without rest. It was generally believed that he played a main part in the negotiations which preceded Italy’s entrance into the contest, and we shall probably be right in attributing to him those conventions by which all the Allies bound themselves to entertain no proposals for a separate peace. His resignation was not free from mystery; but from his past record it may be confidently assumed that he took the step wholly in his country’s interests.

Ten years before, in June 1905, he had been driven from office, and the event had been regarded as a portent in every capital in Europe. His last resignation could have no such effects, for the centre of gravity had moved away from Chambers and Chancelleries. But it had one instantaneous result. The Ministry must be reconstructed. The National Cabinet formed during the German sweep on Paris had been a coalition of parties, and it had aimed at representing all the groups rather than at being a mobilization of the best available talent. Administratively it had done well, though M. Millerand’s handling of the War Office had been the object of much criticism from the Army Committee of the Chamber, but it was weak in deliberative talent. In Britain Ministers seemed to be embedded in office, and wholesale changes were looked upon by those who professed to be versed in political affairs as a disaster too grave to be envisaged. In France Ministries dissolved with ease if for any reason they found themselves out of tune with the nation. The superior elasticity of the group system as it obtained in France came as a painful surprise to those who had extolled the merits of the British party arrangement. The plain truth seems to have been that in France the people’s eyes were not on the Chamber, and a change of Ministry produced only a slight impression. It was the same in Britain; but our statesmen—less wise than the French—were unwilling to admit the unpalatable fact. They continued to believe that the continuance of each in office was indispensable to the country.

A new French Ministry was formed, with M. Briand as Premier. It was interesting as representing an effort to secure the highest administrative efficiency combined with the advisory value of the men most experienced in public life. It was, therefore, a blend of experts and elder statesmen. M. Briand was, perhaps, the most magnetic figure in French politics. Though only fifty-four, he had changed violently many times in his career. He had been a revolutionary, and he had crushed the great railway strike. He had been a bitter anti-Clerical, and he had been also the peacemaker between Church and State. But his very adaptability inspired confidence in a crisis. He was a “swallower of formulas,” with an eye for facts rather than a memory for dogmas, and the situation needed a man who could bring to the instant need of things an alert and unshackled mind. He took the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, with the assistance of M. Jules Cambon, formerly French Ambassador at Berlin, and the diplomatist who of all others had emerged with distinction from the stormy negotiations preceding the war. General Galliéni succeeded M. Millerand at the War Office, and Admiral Lacaze went to the Ministry of Marine. Some of the representatives of extreme groups which had been included in the former Cabinet retained their positions. Such was M. Jules Guesde, the revolutionary Socialist, and M. Denys Cochin, the leader of the Right, was also included. M. Painlevé, the President of the Army Committee of the Chamber, and famous as a mathematician, had a seat, as had M. Albert Thomas, who had done brilliant work in the Munition Department. But apart from the experts like M. Jules Cambon, General Galliéni, and Admiral Lacaze, the most remarkable feature of the new Ministry was its strength in that deliberative talent which comes from ripe experience. There were no fewer than eight men who had already held the office of Premier—M. Briand himself, M. Viviani, and M. Doumergue among the younger men, and among the elder M. Combes, M. Ribot, M. Méline, M. Léon Bourgeois, and M. de Freycinet. It was a Ministry which not only represented every phase of opinion, like its predecessor, but contained the highest practical talent which the nation could show. France, turning her eyes for one moment from the enemy lines, approved the change.

In October the relations between America andOct. 5. Germany were slightly eased by the announcement made by Mr. Lansing on the 5th that Germany had disavowed the sinking of the Arabic, and was prepared to pay an indemnity for American lives lost. Following upon this modest success, the American Government caused to be prepared a Note of protest against the Allied maritime policy which was communicated to the French and British Governments on 5th November.Nov. 5. The text of the document will be found in an Appendix to this volume. In earlier chapters we have seen that the British Declaration of March 1, 1915, went in more than one respect beyond the current doctrines and practices of international law. Our blockade of Germany could not be “effective” in the strict sense of the old textbooks. Enemy merchandise, even when not contraband of war, was made liable to capture in neutral bottoms, and this involved the rejection of the Declaration of Paris, to which, by the way, America was not a signatory. The definition of contraband, too, was enormously widened. Our defence was that the changes were made necessary by the new conditions of maritime warfare, that international law was not a fixed Sinaitic body of dogma, but, like all human law, must change with changing circumstances, and that this had been the view and practice of America herself during her own Civil War. Further, though we claimed wide powers of restriction, we had endeavoured in the use of them to bear as gently as possible upon innocent neutral trade.^[11]

The American Note came as a painful surprise to the British people. Of all Mr. Wilson’s many Notes it was the narrowest in argument and the most captious in spirit. There was nothing judicial in its tone; it was the kind of brief which a competent lawyer can prepare on either side of any question, without breadth of view or balance, a series of meticulous arguments on details. It laid down as settled law many views which were notoriously in dispute. It ignored the changed circumstances, and argued from the books like an old-fashioned conveyancer. The precedents to which it appealed were enumerated, not weighed. It tried, but failed, to explain away some of the embarrassing judgments of the Supreme Court in the Civil War. It complained that American vessels were detained on suspicion, an obvious right of any belligerent with regard to ships or individuals. In its attempt to make the flag decisive proof of the nationality of a merchant vessel it disregarded the most patent facts of a condition of war. It dwelt incessantly upon the inadequacy of our blockade, though it was clear that the work of British submarines in the Baltic was far more effective than had been the efforts of the Federal Navy off the Confederate coasts.

The Note was written in that strain of acid rhetoric occasionally found in legal documents. It was the kind of protest which can be manufactured on any subject by men who refuse to look beyond the formal aspect of the question. It was the claim of a commercial people to be exempt from all consequences of a world war, their “general right,” in the words of the Note, “to enjoy their international trade free from unusual and arbitrary limitations”—as if a man during an earthquake should protest that he had leased his house with a covenant that provided for quiet enjoyment. As such, it did violence to the common sense of the American people.

But in its concluding words it offended against more sacred canons than good sense and good taste. As we have already argued, America was perfectly entitled to consult only American interests and refrain from an unprofitable quixotry. But those responsible for that policy were not entitled to claim for it a loftier motive. “This task,” the Note concluded, “of championing the integrity of neutral rights, which have received the sanction of the civilized world, against the lawless conduct of belligerents arising out of the bitterness of the great conflict which is now wasting the countries of Europe, the United States unhesitatingly assumes, and to the accomplishment of that task it will devote its energies, exercising always that impartiality which from the outbreak of the war it has sought to exercise in its relations with the warring nations.” Championing the integrity of neutral rights! The world had seen every principle of international law and decency shattered to pieces among the smoking ruins of Belgium. Then Washington had been silent, as she was justly entitled to be. But so soon as commercial interests were touched came the clarion challenge of that trustee of neutrals, that champion of international law. It was an anomaly which all friends of America viewed with deep regret. They could have wished that James Russell Lowell had been alive with his honest scorn to prevent this unseemly rhetoric.

THE STRUGGLE FOR DVINSK AND RIGA.

The German failure to cut off the Vilna salient marked the real end of the great summer offensive. When von Lauenstein’s cavalry raiders were flung back from the Polotsk railway, and the Russian right centre retook Vileika and Molodetchna, the immediate danger of a catastrophe in the field was averted. Presently came Ivanov’s offensive in the south, and on its heels the Allied advance in the West. Von Mackensen with his ten divisions was already on the Danube. In consequence von Hindenburg had to revise his plans. The old scheme of pushing in two adjacent sections of the enemy’s front, creating a salient, and striking at its roots, had to be abandoned. Winter was approaching, and the marshes and forests of Eastern Poland do not make for mobility even in the case of an army equipped with every device of modern science.

Von Hindenburg was compelled to turn his attention to the northern sector, the line of the Dvina from Riga to Dvinsk. The motive as expounded to his troops was to win a vantage-point from which to launch an attack on Petrograd in the spring. We may safely assume that nothing was further from the thoughts of the veteran Field-Marshal. His aim was safety and comparative comfort during the dreary business of the winter campaign. If he could gain the line of the Dvina he would free himself from the medley of bogs and forests in which the German left wing was now entangled. He would have a strong defensive position, which could be held with fewer men. For it was becoming very clear that the trans-Vistula venture had been a blunder. It had not won a decision, it had involved huge losses, and it promised endless troubles unless a front could be obtained which offered some reasonable ease to the holders. The right wing in Galicia was clamouring for reinforcements, the need in the West for more men was already great and might soon become urgent, and the Balkan campaign was a gamble which involved unknown liabilities. Accordingly von Hindenburg shifted his attack from his left centre to his left, and pushed against the Dvina—less as part of a calculated offensive than because he could not stay where he was, and Riga and Dvinsk, if they could be mastered, would appreciably alleviate his position.

The Lower Dvina Front. The country is wooded and there are extensive marshes along the Dvina and the Aa and its tributaries.

At the beginning of October we must regard the German front in the East as made up of strong wings and a very weak centre. Ivanov must be held in the south, and against him were seven German corps and the bulk of the Austrian army. The centre had been depleted by the dispatch of von Mackensen to the Balkans and by the sending of the Guards Reserve Corps some weeks earlier to the West—a reinforcement speedily followed by the dispatch of other divisions as the Allied offensive developed. On the left wing, under von Hindenburg’s own eye, were thirteen corps, besides von Lauenstein’s cavalry. To these large reserves were brought from Germany, mainly from the latest class of the Landsturm, so that the total force arrayed against the Dvina was nearly double that with which von Below had operated in August and September.

To understand what followed we must grasp the nature of the Russian plan of defence. Riga and Dvinsk as fortresses did not rank high. At the best their strength was far below that of Grodno, or Kovno, or Novo Georgievsk, or Ivangorod, which had crumbled before the German siege trains. The defences of the Dvina line lay in nature, not in art. The first of the Russian advantages was that their right flank rested on the sea. This point demands some notice, for it was too little appreciated at the time by Western observers. The Russian Baltic Fleet, assisted by British submarines, was powerful and brilliantly handled. The German attempt to land in the Gulf of Riga in August had failed disastrously, the German transports coming to Libau and Windau had been constantly threatened by submarines and occasionally destroyed, and it is fair to say that in October the sea between Windau and Domeness was held by the Russian Fleet. This meant that the coast road to Riga on the narrow strip of dry land between the meres and the sea was at the mercy of the Russian warships. Such a state of affairs could not continue once the winter frosts set in. The freezing of the Eastern Baltic is erratic. Usually the Gulf of Bothnia is ice-bound as early as November, the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Riga by the end of December, while Windau is closed for only about three days, and the Dago Islands for twenty-four. But by the beginning of December it might fairly be said that no fleet could operate safely east of Libau. In October, however, there was no such obstruction. Against any German advance during that month the Russians had their right flank securely protected by the sea.

The second defence lay in the nature of the country west of the Dvina. Through Dvinsk ran the great Petrograd line from Vilna by Sventsiany, and at the junction it received the line from Libau by Shavli, and the line from Riga, which followed the right bank of the Dvina. Three main roads also converged at Dvinsk, one from the north following the left bank of the Dvina, one from Novo Alexandrovsk in the south-west, and one from the south through the wide region of lakes and marshes which stretched towards the villages of Widsy and Drysviaty. These roads and railways were carried on embankments and necks of hard ground through a country which was as generally impassable for guns and troops as the lake district of Masurenland.

In the same way Riga and the line of the Dvina south of it were defended by a tangle of natural difficulties, which the map will reveal. The river above the city is broad and studded with “matted rushy isles.” Numerous small streams strain through the marshes, and enter it on the left bank. As if this was not enough, the considerable river Aa, with its tributaries the Eckau and the Misse, sweeps in a half-moon to the westward, and curls round along the coast till it reaches the Dvina delta, enclosing in its loop the Babit Lake with its reedy shores and three great areas of bogland. Through the middle of the half-moon runs the road and line from Mitau to Riga, and the line from Mitau to Dvinsk gave the attack a lateral railway. But this configuration limited the assault to certain well-defined routes. Riga could only be approached along the coast or by the Mitau line, which made possible an attack upon the river position where Dahlen island cuts the channel in two. Dvinsk must be attacked by one of the three roads leading from Illukst, from Novo Alexandrovsk, or through the lakes from Widsy. The narrowness of these approaches greatly simplified the problem of the defenders. They knew the route of the enemy. They could not be outflanked. The situation was now totally different from that of August or September. Ruzsky’s Army of the North had to face a direct frontal assault along certain known and definite avenues. Von Below in August had tried to turn Riga and Dvinsk by cutting the Dvina line at Friedrichstadt. Von Eichhorn in September had hoped by swinging to the rear of Vilna to make Dvinsk the apex of a salient. Both plans had been foiled. The Russian front in the north was now straightened, and there was no alternative for von Hindenburg but to attack in front and batter down the defence by sheer weight of guns and men.

Ruzsky’s defence of Dvinsk was like Sarrail’s defence of Verdun. He was determined that the great guns should not be brought too near, and he flung his lines west of the town in an arc, of which the radius was not less than twelve miles. The points Schlossberg, Novo Alexandrovsk, and Drysviaty may be taken as defining that sector. The first big attack was made on 25th September.Sept. 25. The German airmen dropped bombs on Dvinsk, and the German artillery kept up for hours a hurricane of fire upon the advanced Russian trenches. On the front due west some progress was made. After the artillery preparation, assisted by asphyxiating shells, the enemy infantry attacked in mass and pushed along the Novo Alexandrovsk road to within eight miles of the city. But von Hindenburg was held on the more important routes—the road from the north, the railways from Mitau and Vilna, and the great road from the south. He failed to take Schlossberg, he was checked west of Lake Sventen and in the wide marshes beside the Vilna railway, and he was not allowed to approach the narrows between Lakes Drysviaty and Obole, through which ran the southern highroad.

On the same day the Riga front was violently bombarded, and an attempt was made to advance along the coast road from Kemmern, between the Aa and the sea. It never had a chance of success. The Russian Fleet with their guns swept the ribbon of hard land, and what must have been a comparatively small Russian force held the pass in the neighbourhood of Kemmern. This operation, however, must be regarded rather as a reconnaissance than as an action. Von Hindenburg’s main interest was still at Dvinsk.

The Approaches to Dvinsk.

On 3rd October he made his next great effort.Oct. 3. The action may well be called the Battle of the Lakes, for in the Russian front these meres played the part of fortresses, and protected the flanks of the different sections. It was a series of thrusts, now at one point, now at another, supported by a great mass of heavy artillery. General von Morgen commanded the centre, which moved along the Novo Alexandrovsk road, and attempted to bring the city under howitzer fire at close range. For this purpose he had received ten of the largest sized howitzers. The operative German force amounted to six divisions of infantry and two cavalry brigades—not less than 80,000 men, which was increased by the arrival of a Landwehr and Landsturm corps from East Prussia. But the real menace was the artillery, including the great siege trains from the East Prussia fortresses which had already succeeded at Kovno and Grodno.

The fighting of the next week is hard to describe in detail. On the left wing there was a desperate thrust at Illukst, which took the ridge of Schlossberg and the ruins of Illukst, but failed to cross the little river of that name which flows to the Dvina. South of the Mitau line there was fierce fighting around Garbounovka, and the village of Chikovo, north of Lake Sventen. On the right, on the line of the Lakes Demmen, Drysviaty, and Obole, there was a heavy artillery battle. The real danger was on the flanks, for if the Germans had been able to push south from Illukst, or north from Drysviaty, the defence would have been at the mercy of a cross-fire. These flank attacks failed, and von Hindenburg was confined to the movement along the Novo Alexandrovsk road, where von Morgen got no nearer the city than the hamlet of Medum, south of Lake Medumskoi, and to an attempt along the Mitau railway. No progress was made, and Russian counter-attacks south of Lake Drysviaty so alarmed the enemy for the safety of his flanks that he cut short some sporadic efforts he was making against Ewarts’s right wing, and stood himself on the defensive.

In these operations the German losses were immense. By the middle of October the army which had hoped to take Dvinsk in three days had lost at least 50,000 men, and was no nearer its goal. The prisoners taken were bewildered, and complained that while they had been told that Kovno and Brest and Grodno would entail a heavy toll nothing had been said of Dvinsk, though Dvinsk had cost them more than all the others. The truth seems to have been that Russia had learned the lesson of Verdun, and held Dvinsk with a field army flung far out from the city. Moreover, it was a well-munitioned army. Though still short of rifles, it had ample stores of shells for the defence, and could check an attack otherwise than by the breasts of its soldiers. At Dvinsk was seen a portent of infinite encouragement for the Russian people, a thing not seen before in her campaign—German bombardments silenced by Russian guns, and infantry rushes checked and broken by fire alone.

By the third week of October the resistance in the Dvinsk section had convinced von Hindenburg that here was no chance of that speedy success he desired. So, according to his custom, he shifted his main attack to another section, and struck hard at Riga. The Russian defence, as we have seen, followed roughly the half-circle of the rivers Aa and Eckau, the right resting on the sea in the vicinity of Kemmern, and the left on the Dvina. Von Hindenburg’s plan involved two lines of attack. One was from Mitau junction along the railway and road to Riga—a movement exactly parallel to the attack on Dvinsk by von Morgen from Novo Alexandrovsk. The other was an advance across the Dvina from a base on the railway Mitau-Neehut, so as to turn the defence of Riga in the south-east. The scheme was a classic one, for it had been Napoleon’s favourite manœuvre—a turning movement followed, when the enemy was nonplussed and distracted, by a sharp frontal assault.

Six weeks before von Below had won Friedrichstadt on the Dvina, but had not made a landing on the farther shore. Presently Lindau was taken, also on the left bank, nearly opposite Lennevaden. It was now the enemy’s object to win points on the same bank nearer Riga. Already the railway from Riga to Dvinsk was under the fire of his big guns, which handicapped reserves in reaching the city. By 19th October he had taken Borkovitz, where a small affluent enters the Dvina, and by the 24th had pushed northwards to the vicinity of Kekken, which lies east of where the little river Brze enters the main stream opposite Dahlen island. He had now set the Russian command a difficult problem. He was only ten miles from Riga, and had one of its chief lines of communication under fire. If he intended to cross the river he had the choice of two good points, one near Borkovitz and one at Kekken. At both places islands split the broad stream into comparatively easy and narrow channels.

The Approaches to Riga. A great part of the country south of Riga and along the Dvina is swampy woodland.

At the same time von Hindenburg pressed hard with his centre from Mitau. He crossed the Eckau, and his left wing crossed the Aa north of Mitau and took Kish. Presently Ruzsky was forced back from the Lower Misse, and by the 22nd the enemy was at Olai, a place on the Mitau-Riga railway, only twelve miles from the city.

On that same day the Russians took a curious step. Under cover of their fleet, they landed a detachment of men on the Courland coast near Domeness, the cape which is the western limit of the Gulf of Riga. After a short skirmish the landing-party captured a German fort and a quantity of material, held their ground for two days, and then quietly sailed away again. Observers in the West at first took this enterprise for an attempt to take the German army facing Riga in flank, but it is clear from the facts that it could have had no such purpose. The most probable explanation is that it was a naval operation connected with mine-laying in the Dirben Channel, which is the best means of access from the west to the Gulf of Riga. To lay mines to blockade the channel it was necessary to prevent any coast batteries from firing upon the vessels thus engaged. If this was the explanation, the enterprise was wholly successful. To hold the coast for two days would permit the creation of a deadly mine-field.

Gulf of Riga.

Till the end of the month the Germans struggled fruitlessly to advance nearer Riga. On their extreme left they made one further attempt to move from Kemmern along the strip of land between the Aa and the sea, failed signally, and gave up the enterprise. On the centre they found that Olai was the limit of their advance. The great belt of marsh north of the railway prevented a forward movement from Kish, and the line of the Middle Misse was held in such strength that they failed to pierce it. One great effort was made at Palanken, where there is a kind of causeway across the bogs. Some troops crossed the stream, but were made prisoners. In that country it was all but impossible to bring up sufficient guns to give the infantry proper artillery support. On the right at least six attempts were made to cross the Dvina. Kekken, at the mouth of the Brze, still resisted, but about theOct. 28. 28th of October the enemy managed to cross one channel of the Dvina, and effect a lodgment on Dahlen island. But he could not get his guns over in any strength, nor could he silence the concealed artillery on the eastern shore. He made a futile effort to cross the main channel, which was easily repulsed, and presently he was blown off the island itself.

By the end of October the great assaults onOct. 31. Dvinsk and Riga had come to nothing. The Germans were left with no better front on which to endure the rigours of the coming winter. Indeed, their position was the worse, for they were now entangled in the marshes of the Misse and the lakes west and south of Dvinsk. Small wonder that after this failure the Russians noted a growing depression in the prisoners and deserters who reached them. The wearied armies of the East, having been promised a comfortable winter after their heroic exertions of the summer, had found themselves condemned to a prospect compared to which the East Prussian and Polish lines of the year before had been a life of ease.

We must glance briefly at the general situation at the end of October on the Russian front. We have seen that Ivanov’s counter-attack of September had recaptured Kovno and Dubno in the Volhynian Triangle, had taken for a moment Lutsk, and had pushed back von Pflanzer to the Strypa. Throughout October he maintained the ground won, and in the Tarnopol region and on the Styr he continued his attacks, taking large numbers of prisoners, and preventing any thinning of the German right wing for the Balkans or for the northern front. In one day’s action, for example, on 22nd October, north of Tarnopol, near Novo Alexinetz, he captured 148 officers and 7,500 rank and file, two howitzers, and a number of machine guns. This offensive, combined with the enforced stagnation on the German centre and the stubborn resistance on the Dvina line, showed not only that the operations were controlled and conducted by a single master mind, but that the Russian army had recovered its strength, and maintained—what it had never lost—its confidence. For six months on a front of 700 miles blow after blow had been rained on it. Its one defect had been munitionment; that was now partially remedied, and if it had not yet the weapons for offence on the grand scale, it had enough for defence. The first stage of the war in the East had ended at the beginning of May with the check to the Russian movement on Cracow. The second most critical stage closed at the end of October with the definite stoppage of the torrential German invasion. The third stage was now beginning—the interregnum between defence and offence during which Russia was mustering and organizing her strength. No great blow could be struck till the spring, and then it must be no isolated attack, but part of a concerted advance by all the Allies. The winter might see local offensives, but they would be preparatory and partial, and not the great premeditated stroke.

The Russian Front at the end of October 1915.

To appreciate the situation at the end of October we must remember that Russia was holding enemy forces scarcely less than those in the field a month before. Divisions had indeed been sent to France and Serbia, but the loss had been made good by Landsturm formations. If the centre had been weakened, the wings had been strengthened. Von Linsingen, for example, who had temporarily succeeded von Mackensen in command of the southern group, had at least five more divisions under him, though he had lost Puhallo’s army. His own army had been more than doubled, and those of Boehm-Ermolli, von Bothmer, and von Pflanzer had been substantially increased. In the same way the northern group operating against the Dvina had grown to the extent of some nine divisions. The Germans, though they had not won the lateral railway they sought, had yet far better communications behind their line than Alexeiev, and could reinforce a section for resistance or attack at least twice as quickly as their opponents. But their mobility was of no avail against so stubborn an army, and in a country where the approach of winter gave the odds to the defence. Von Below might boast that his men were eating bread baked the day before in Berlin, and that fifty miles of asphalted road could be laid in two days. The claim was true for the early stages of the invasion, but it broke down in the later. No engineering talent, no industry, could lay railways and construct roads in a sponge, and the first rains and snows blocked the elaborate transport system. The Russian command had judged rightly. Science might bring the invader far inside their borders, but in the end science must fail, as Napoleon had failed, against the unbending facts of nature. The great attack must thin and slacken till it became a stagnant defence. It was an ill day for Germany when her armies followed the flaming track of the Russian retreat which, like a will o’ the wisp, led them to the inhospitable mires of the Dvina and the Pripet.

The lesson which Russia had learned from the six months of desperate conflict was not unlike that which had been written across Manchuria in letters of blood. It is worth repeating, for it is the prime lesson of modern war. In four words it may be defined as the importance of fire. On paper, indeed, it had been already learned. Every member of the Russian Staff would doubtless, if interrogated in July 1914, have given the most orthodox answers. But the true recognition, which involved the determination at all costs to provide an adequate fire, came only after months of disaster. Bold and martial races have a predisposition for shock action, an instinct for the hand-to-hand struggle. It is the fruit of self-confidence and courage. But the wise soldier knows that for “in-fighting” he must first get to close quarters, and that for this it is necessary to beat down the enemy’s fire. A battle will always be won or lost at long range so long as the fire equipment of one force is less than the other. It was a lesson which the French learned by bitter experience in the Peninsula, when their advance was broken up before the point of shock by the steady volleys of the British infantry. Forgetfulness of this truth lost Austria Sadowa, and held Skobelev for long before the lines of Plevna. In South Africa it was the cause of our initial disasters, and it was the main source of Russia’s Manchurian defeats. To some extent all the Allies sinned in this respect, though all their textbooks enforced the doctrine. No better statement of it could be found than in the words of a great French military critic: “In all times the struggle with cold steel has been the final phase, that which confirms the decision, the expulsion of the enemy from his position, and the conquest of the ground; but in all times, likewise, this final consummation has come to those who willed the means before willing the end. Attack with pike, sword, or bayonet gives the last shock to the enemy’s morale; but to shake the morale and put him at the mercy of shock action, the losses inflicted by bow and sling, by rifle and gun, are needed.”^[12] It was no less a soldier than Napoleon who wrote, “Battles to-day are decided by fire.”

COUNTER-STROKES IN THE WEST.

We have seen that the Germans in the West had definitely adopted the defensive. But since a passive defence was repugnant to their whole conception of war, the Allies after every assault might look for a vigorous counter-stroke, which, according to a great authority, is the soul of the grand tactics of the defensive. In a campaign of open warfare a counter-stroke may take many forms, but when both antagonists are entrenched it is limited, generally speaking, to one type. When the breaching assault has reached the limit of its strength the reserves of the defence are suddenly thrown in, and, finding their enemies exhausted by a supreme effort, hurl them back, rob them of the fruits of their advance, and may even inflict a tactical defeat. The classic instance is Lee’s counter-stroke at Spottsylvania, when the Federals drove in the Confederate salient and captured a division, only to be brought up short against Lee’s second line, and to be forced back by Lee’s reserves to the position from which they had started.

In modern war the counter-attack is more difficult than before.^[13] The power of the local defensive is stronger, and there are few instances in recent wars of the successful counter-stroke after the old pattern. It demands a body of fresh troops who can be flung in precisely at the point where the assailing force has drawn most heavily upon its strength. But it is clear that the Germans in the West had reckoned upon its possibility. They professed themselves ready to surrender their first line in a great bombardment, and to invite the enemy to an advance where every yard would thin out his effectiveness till a stage was reached when he would be at their mercy. The plan was sound in theory, but it demanded a mobile surplus of men which Germany did not possess. Had a serious counter-attack been launched at any time between noon on Saturday, 25th September, and the following evening, there was every chance of all the ground gained at Loos being recaptured and the British being driven back with enormous losses to their old line. But the Germans had no such body of intact reserves. What they had were required for the ordinary work of resistance to prevent the whole front crumbling before the impact of the hostile wedges. Their counter-attack must be delayed for days till fresh troops were collected, and by that time the chance had gone. The Allies had consolidated their new positions, and the revanche had lost the advantage of surprise. It was now no more than a fresh attack on the familiar plan against a prepared enemy. It was the game which the Allies had already played, but in German hands it lacked vigour and drive, for it was played by tired men who had lost the initiative.

Such was the nature of the counter-strokes in which the great battles of September died away. They were varied by further Allied efforts, but the fury of the first assault had gone from the Western front. The entanglement in the Balkans had distracted the energies of the High Commands, and bade fair to weaken their armies. The second combined blow on the German fortress, which it was hoped would follow before the autumn’s end, must now be postponed to the new year. Yet the series of lesser actions during October was full of interest, for it illuminated the whole German position and the mind of their General Staff. The Allies were enabled to judge with some fairness the offensive capacity left to the laboured German defence.

It is not yet possible to state exactly what reinforcements at the end of September reached the Germans in the West. At least six divisions were brought from the Russian front, and as many more were collected from the German depôts. Most of these reserves went to Champagne, where the strategical menace was greatest. But the northern section was also strengthened, and on the afternoon of Sunday, 3rd October, while our monitorsOct. 3. were busy shelling the Belgian coast, two attacks were launched against our front between Loos and the La Bassée Canal. One was directed against the line between the Quarries east of Cité St. Elie and the Vermelles-Hulluch road, where our position formed the side of a salient. This was beaten off with heavy losses to the enemy, who did not succeed in reaching our firing trenches. But a simultaneous attack farther to the north had better success. Our front at the Hohenzollern was precarious at the best. We held the redoubt, but not the trenches connecting it with the original main German line, and the enemy’s recapture of Fosse 8 exposed our defence to a galling enfilade. On this day we were driven out of most of the redoubt, and left with no more than its western rim, a situation which meant that the opposing lines were in some places only a few yards apart.

Little happened during the next two days except an artillery duel and some bombing encounters at Loos and Vimy. But on Wednesday, theOct. 6. 6th, the French in Champagne made a great effort against Hill 192, called the Butte of Tahure, north of Tahure village, and commanding the Bazancourt-Grand Pré railway. The village itself was a mass of ruins, but elaborate underground defences had been constructed in its cellars which connected with the German trench lines on the Butte. The French front was curiously placed. From the Navarin Farm in the west it ran nearly straight across the Butte de Souain to just south of Tahure village, where it fell back owing to the sharp salient made by the German defence on the Butte of Mesnil. Between Tahure and the latter hill were patches of timber, all jagged and broken with months of fire, which were known from their shapes by such names as “The Dagger,” “The Toothbrush,” and “The Comb.” The Butte of Mesnil represented a relic of the German second line; elsewhere the enemy had been driven back upon his third and final line. The strength of this position was largely due to the fact that the entanglements and defences were constructed just below the crest on the reverse or northern side of the ridge, and the French gunners could not operate against them by direct observation.

The Butte de Tahure.

In the last week of September the French artillery had been moved forward, a work of great labour in those days of persistent rain among the chalky mud. On Wednesday, 29th September, as we have already seen, a violent attack, which for the moment was successful, was made against the German final line in the vicinity of Navarin Farm. The next effort was directed against Tahure and the Butte beyond it. The Normandy regiment had constructed a line of trenches racing the Butte to the west of the village, and just north of the Souain-Tahure road. Ground was won at the same time to the south-east in the Toothbrush Wood, and it was possible to devise from three sides a converging bombardment of the village and the Butte. On 6th October, after a heavy preparation by the massed guns, the Picardy division from the west of the village carried the crest of the Butte, and looked down on the valley of the Py and the lateral railway. This meant that the defence of the village was now taken in the rear. From the west and from the south through the Toothbrush Wood, where the Germans had seven parallel lines of trenches, the French pressed in on Tahure, and the village fell. Over 1,000 prisoners were taken, many of them starving, for the curtain of fire on the Butte had cut them off from their supplies, and the piles of dead were proof of the fatal work of the 75’s. The result of the day’s fighting was to give the French Tahure and all the country half a mile northwards up to the summit of the Butte. It was the farthest point reached in the autumn advance in Champagne.

That same day, too, progress was made against another section of the German final line, that north of the Navarin Farm, where the great trenches named “Vandal” and “Kultur” cut at right angles the Souain-Somme-Py road. There the Moroccan infantry carried the “Vandal” trench and took many prisoners, but were checked by the machine guns hidden in the patches of wood to the northward. The troops against them belonged to the 10th (Hanover) Corps, who had been hastily brought from the Eastern front, and, like the defenders of Tahure, had been reduced almost to starvation by the preceding bombardment.

The position won in their final line drove the Germans to desperate efforts. A thrust or two more, and there was every chance that the whole of their laborious defence would crumble. They began feverishly to construct new lines on the heights north of the Py valley, and on the night of 8thOct. 8. October they counter-attacked east of the Navarin Farm and against the Butte of Tahure, after a preliminary bombardment with asphyxiating and lachrymatory shells. No progress was made, and the French improved their position by the capture of another trench south-east of Tahure village. The German position on the Butte of Mesnil was now becoming a thin and perilous salient.

Meanwhile, on Friday, 8th October, a counter-stroke had been levelled against the British position north of Loos. For several days the Germans had been shelling our new trenches south of the La Bassée Canal, and had made violent bomb attacks on that portion of the Hohenzollern which was still in our hands. We had steadily been pushing forward our front between Hulluch and Hill 70, gaining in places as much as 1,000 yards. On the morning of the 8th, about 10.30, the enemy opened a heavy bombardment with high explosives and shrapnel against the whole front, but especially against the section between the Hohenzollern and Hulluch—the scene of his attack on the 3rd—and against the Chalk Pit north of Hill 70. The bombardment lasted for five hours, and but for the skilful disposition of our men might have been deadly, for we were holding a new line where the defences had not been perfected. At 3.20 p.m. rifle and machine-gun fire began, and just after four o’clock the infantry advanced. At the Chalk Pit they had been assembled 500 yards from our front behind what remained of the Bois Hugo, and in their attack they had to move over a slope and cross 150 yards of open. On they came in four great waves, marching shoulder to shoulder in perfect discipline. None of our guns had suffered from the bombardment, and as the infantry appeared they were mowed down in swathes by our field artillery and the French 75’s, and by the machine guns and rifles of the men in the trenches. In a few seconds the attack was shattered to pieces. Not a man approached within forty yards of our line. The masses broke up into small groups, who endeavoured to take shelter, but were caught and destroyed by our fire. North of Hulluch the counter-stroke fared no better. It was instantly checked, and our troops advanced and took a German trench west of Cité St. Elie. At two points only in that long front was there the slightest German success. A small lodgment was made at the Double Crassier, now held by the French, and the Guards Division lost for a few hours a trench at the Hohenzollern, but retook it with bombs before midnight. As a result of the day from eight to nine thousand German dead were left on the battlefield.

This, the most serious German movement in the northern section, was a model of all that a counter-stroke ought not to be. It was no more than an abortive frontal attack against a prepared enemy. According to Sir John French’s dispatch, twenty-eight battalions were used in first line, and there were large supports. Twelve battalions advanced at the Chalk Pit, from eight to ten against the French at Loos, and six or eight against the Hohenzollern. Such an attack—made by more than two divisions with full reserves—did not suffer from lack of men, and the preliminary bombardment endured long enough to embarrass our defence. But the bombardment seems to have been ill-directed, and the tactics of the stroke were ill-conceived. It was no more than a demonstration, foolish, futile, and costly, and that it should have been undertaken pointed to an infirmity of purpose in the German northern command which might well give the Allies hope.

On 13th October the British themselves attacked.Oct. 13. Our object was to ease the position at the Hohenzollern, where our line was commanded by the German trenches and redoubts to the north. The morning broke in a Scots mist and driving rain, but before midday, when the bombardment began, it had cleared to a bright autumn day. The area selected was from the Hohenzollern to a point 600 yards south-west of Hulluch—roughly, the area which the 9th, 7th, and 1st Divisions had operated in on 25th September. At one o’clock a gas attack was launched from our front trenches, a dense cloud, pure white on top, and mottled with red and green below. It muffled the German lines, while our artillery continued the “preparation.” At 2 p.m. the infantry crossed the parapets.

The Germans had not been idle during the past days, and their machine guns chattered along their front, while their guns sprayed the British advance. On the right we captured 1,000 yards of trenches south-west of Hulluch, but the artillery fire, exactly ranged, forbade us to remain in them. Farther north we took and held the section of German trenches south-west of Cité St. Elie, in the angle between the Vermelles-Hulluch and the Hulluch-La Bassée roads, carried the south-western edge of the famous Quarries, and won a trench on their north-western face.

The Loos-Hulluch Front and the Hohenzollern Redoubt.

But the heaviest contest was on the left, where General Stuart-Wortley’s 46th (North Midland) Division of Territorials were engaged at the Hohenzollern, and showed themselves not less resolute in attack than the Londoners at Loos a fortnight earlier. At the moment we held only the western and southern rims of the Redoubt. The communication trenches, Big Willie and Little Willie, were in German hands, and the whole of Fosse 8, the houses behind it, and the Fosse trench, running east of the Redoubt, were one nest of machine guns. The 137th Brigade was directed to attack from the eastern end of Big Willie against the Redoubt and the Fosse, while the 138th Brigade on their left moved against the west of the Fosse and the cluster of cottages. Both brigades, as soon as they left their parapets, came under a deadly cross-fire from the two Willies, the Redoubt itself, the Fosse and its adjoining buildings, and the German trenches running from the Redoubt to the Quarries.

The first rush gave us the main trench of the Hohenzollern. But swift progress was impossible under the machine-gun fire, and the attack resolved itself into a struggle of bombing parties. On the right the North and South Staffords fought their way along Big Willie, while on the left the Leicesters and the Lincolns wrestled for the possession of Little Willie. The Monmouths and the Sherwood Foresters were brought up in support, and far into the night this soldiers’ battle continued, for it had become an affair of individual gallantry and endurance rather than of any battle plan. Early on theOct. 14. morning of the 14th the Sherwoods had to face a dangerous counter-attack, and there it was that Captain C. G. Vickers, of the 1/7th Battalion, won the Victoria Cross for a deed of most conspicuous bravery. Nearly all his men had been killed or wounded, and only two remained to hand him bombs, but he held the barrier for hours against bomb attacks from front and flanks. “Regardless of the fact,” says the official account, “that his own retreat would be cut off, he had ordered a second barrier to be built behind him in order to ensure the safety of the trench. Finally he was seriously wounded, but not before his magnificent courage and determination had enabled the second barrier to be completed.”

The fight for the Hohenzollern, which lasted for three days, till the 2nd Guards Brigade relieved the North Midland men, resulted in the gain of the main trench of the Redoubt and no more. The artillery preparation had been insufficient to make progress possible across that sinister ground. An observer has described the formidable German defence. “The slag heap had been pierced by timbered galleries, and from tiny loopholes, which had entirely escaped artillery observation, the storm of bullets swept the lines away as they emerged from the trenches. Beyond and about the Fosse the muzzles of machine guns were thrust out from openings in the cellars, only a foot or so above the ground, the houses having been pulled down over them to make a bomb-proof shelter which only the biggest shells could pierce. These, like a scythe of fire, literally mowed the men down and checked the attack.” In such circumstances the performance of the Midlanders must rank high among the records of British gallantry.

For the next week there was no action of the first importance, but on 16th October the FrenchOct. 16. in the Vosges won back the summit of the Hartmannsweilerkopf, which had already changed hands several times, and was to continue the performance. The situation on the spur was curious. Till the French won the eastern slopes they could not master the German communication along the Ill valley, and unless the Germans held the western slopes they could not win security. Both sides found their real objective unattainable, and the fight resolved itself into a grim see-saw struggle for the crest of the ridge above the ragged pine trees.

On the 19th there was another sporadic GermanOct. 19. effort in the Loos area. In the afternoon an attack was made against the front from the Quarries to Hulluch. It was of the usual type—first a bombardment, then an infantry advance across open ground, which was stopped dead by our machine-gun and rifle fire. It was followed by a number of bombing attacks against the Hohenzollern, which had a better chance, since the enemy held the maze of communication trenches east of the main trench of the Redoubt. These, too, failed, and the Germans suffered heavy losses without the gain of a single position. Sir John French’s report on that day gave an interesting sketch of the British lines. “The new front,” he wrote, “leaves our old line at a point about 1,200 yards south-west of the southern edge of Auchy-La Bassée, and runs thence through the main trench of the Hohenzollern Redoubt, in an easterly direction 400 yards south of the southern buildings of Fosse 8, to the south-western corner of the Quarries. We also hold the south-eastern corner of the Quarries, our trenches running thence south-east, parallel to and 400 yards from the south-western edge of Cité St. Elie, to a point 500 yards west of the north edge of Hulluch. The line then runs along the Lens-La Bassée road to the Chalk Pit, 1,500 yards north of the highest point of Hill 70, and then turns south-west to a point 1,000 yards east of Loos Church, where it bends south-east to the north-west slope of Hill 70 and runs along the western slopes of that hill, bending south-east to a point 1,200 yards south of Loos Church, whence it runs due west back to our old lines. The chord of the salient we have created in the enemy’s line, measured along our old front, is 7,000 yards in length; the depth of the salient at the Chalk Pit is 3,200 yards.”

But in Champagne on that day a counter-stroke was attempted far better judged than the futile efforts in the north. The veteran von Heeringen did not make the mistake of the Bavarian Crown Prince. The French advance in September had left on the west a German salient between Auberive and Rheims. If this salient could be advanced, then the Rheims-Châlons railway might be cut, and the French forces forced back behind the river Vesle and the Vesle Canal. Such a success would be followed by a combined attack on Rheims, which would then be in danger of envelopment. Observers in Britain throughout the campaign were inclined to forget the strategic significance of Rheims, that great junction of road, railway, and water communications. It was not less important than Verdun. Had Germany in these months adopted a serious offensive in the West it is likely that Rheims would have been the point chosen at which to break the French line. As it was, that area offered the best chance for a counter-attack which might nullify all the gains to the eastward.

On the night of the 18th the Germans began aOct. 18. great bombardment upon the six miles of the French front which lay roughly along the road from La Pompelle, one of the Rheims forts, to the village of Prosnes. For three hours high explosives rained on the French front lines, while a curtain of asphyxiating shells was dropped behind them. Under cover of the bombardment several divisions from von Heeringen and von Einem’s corps—amounting to 60,000 men—were concentrated on the German side. Early on Tuesday morning the “preparation” was renewed, and a wave of gas was loosed. Just afterOct. 19. dawn German infantry attacked in four successive lines with an interval of some 300 yards between them. The first two lines were blotted out before they reached the French trenches. The third gained a momentary footing, but was driven out by bombs. The fourth succeeded better, and managed to effect a lodging in some parts of the advanced trenches. In the afternoon, however, the French reinforcements pushed through the curtain of fire, counter-attacked, and drove back the assailants with enormous losses. Next day another effort was made farther to the west, betweenOct. 20. the village of Prunay, seven miles south-east of Rheims, and the hillock of Tire. The front was much the same, a little over five miles. After a long bombardment and a gas attack the infantry three times tried to rush the French lines, and three times were driven back. No man got farther than the wire entanglements in front of the trenches. At one point on a front of a kilometre more than 1,600 dead were found, all of the same regiment. Near Prunay a battalion of the 137th Prussian Regiment crossed the railway line, but was wholly wiped out. It was believed that in the two days’ battle two German divisions were destroyed.

The German Counter-attack near Rheims—the Prunay Region.

On Sunday, 24th October, it was the turn ofOct. 24. the French. We have seen that after the capture of Tahure the German salient north of Le Mesnil, and including the Butte of Mesnil, remained unconquered, though the French had bitten into its sides. In the south-west part of this salient, which we may regard as a redoubt in advance of the German final position, lay a work called La Courtine. It was a typical German fortress, 1,200 yards long, 250 yards deep, and embracing three or four lines of trenches connected by subterranean tunnels—another such redoubt as the Hohenzollern in the north. On Sunday, after desperate fighting, the French carried La Courtine, and found it choked with German dead. On Monday they had to face a counter-attack, which failed. On the Tuesday night there was another German attack, which was also beaten off, and the action left the French with their front in this section appreciably straightened, and a dangerous redoubt on their flank obliterated.

The last incident of the month, the last counter-stroke of the autumn battles, came on Saturday, the 30th. The Germans, strongly reinforcedOct. 30. from the Russian front, attacked all along the Tahure section on a front of four miles, but especially at La Courtine and at the Butte of Tahure. The La Courtine effort, four times repeated, failed, but at the Butte their artillery preparation drove the French from the crest, and the Germans retook the summit, capturing 21 officers and 1,215 men. This forced the French back to the southern side of the hill just below the summit, where they had the advantage of the kind of position which the German reserve lines had enjoyed in the September battles. The German movement was a resolute attempt to break the French line at Tahure by a frontal advance, combined with a flanking attack from the Mesnil salient. It failed in its main purpose, but by driving the French from the top of the Butte it gave a further lease of life to the Bazancourt-Grand Pré railway, and eased the German position in the coming winter stagnation.

We have said little of the fighting of D’Urbal’s 10th Army in the Artois, because in that section there was no incident which stood out from the local attacks and counter-attacks on the Vimy Heights and their wooded fringes. The situation at the end of October did not differ materially from that of the end of September. But from the Artois struggle we may select one episode which is a proof, if proof were needed, of the stoical gallantry of the armies of France. On the morning of the 30th ofOct. 30. October, in the Labyrinth area, the Germans exploded a mine between the two fronts, thereby blocking a sap which the French were digging towards the German trenches, and entombing two French sappers. These men—their names were Mauduit and Cadoret—were at first stunned by the shock. Their candles still burned, and the watch of one of them showed that it was five minutes to ten. They tried to dig back along the sap, but the earth, packed by the explosion, was hard to pierce, so they resolved to cut a gallery obliquely towards the surface in the direction of the French lines. Presently the air became so bad that their candles went out, and matches would not burn. In black darkness they struggled on, encouraging each other with Breton songs, and after an eternity they felt a whiff of fresh air which eased their bursting lungs. A few more strokes, and they saw the sky and one or two stars. They had been working for twenty hours, and it wasOct. 31. now just about dawn, though still dark. They stopped and listened, and a German voice was speaking just at their ear. They found that they had come out close below a loophole of the German front parapet. Determined at all costs not to be made prisoners, they slipped back into the tunnel, and began to dig a new sap horizontally towards where they believed the French were. All that day of 31st October they worked like moles, and in the night suddenly emerged into the mine crater which had been the cause of all their troubles. Unfortunately the sky was clear, and there was a bright moon, so they did not dare to cross the crater, which was watched both by their friends and foes. They lay in the tunnel the whole of 1st November, with no food or water,Nov. 1. with bombs and grenades bursting all around the mouth of their sap. They found a few roots to chew, and managed to suck some moisture from the wet herbage. That night at eleven o’clock the sky became overcast, and they crawled from their hole, staggered across the crater, and scrambled over the French parapets, under heavy German fire. For three days and two nights they had had nothing to eat and drink, and for a large part of the time they had been labouring feverishly in fetid air. Their feat was a triumph of resolution and endurance, most deservedly recognized by the grant of the Médaille militaire.

The German counter-attacks of October won nothing back. Indeed they greatly served the Allied purpose, for they used up lavishly the shrinking German reserves. For example, apart from prisoners taken, the Prussian Guard Corps left more than half its effectives on the battlefields of the Artois. A counter-attack, if it is to be called successful, must either recover the ground lost or at any rate bring the enemy’s advance to a standstill. But the German counter-attacks achieved neither end. The Allied line at the end of October was a little farther forward than a month before. The immense sacrifice of life which the German commands were ready to face had been fruitless. How great was that sacrifice it is as yet impossible to determine. Casualty figures are the hardest things to discover with any accuracy during the progress of a campaign. By the end of September the Germans claimed—and they secured the assent of various critics among the Allies, but not of the French Staff—that the losses of the attack had been considerably greater than those of the defence. The claim was almost certainly false. But by the end of October there could be no question on which side the debit balance lay. From the beginning of November we may date a growing pessimism, which reflected itself in the tone of Ministers and army commanders and in a vast stifled popular discontent, and which the apparent successes in the Balkans did little to soothe.

In the October fighting the British losses had fallen again to the normal scale of trench warfare.^[14] But on the 24th of the month we lost from a chance rifle bullet a soldier who seemed destined to high command, and who possessed in aOct. 24. unique degree the confidence and affection of all who served with him. Brigadier-General the Hon. J. F. Trefusis, who had served with distinction in South Africa, had begun the war as a captain in the Irish Guards. He attained command of his battalion in December 1914, and seven months later, at the age of thirty-seven, succeeded General Heyworth in command of the 20th Brigade, becoming the youngest brigadier in the British army. His cheerfulness and keenness made him an ideal leader both in trench warfare and in the September attack, and his great mental powers and complete devotion marked him out for the highest military tasks. He had both the incommunicable ardour of youth and the balance and tenacity of experience. Like Hugh Dawnay and John Gough, it was his fate to die before his work was well begun, not the least of those “inheritors of unfulfilled renown” whose names brighten and sadden the chronicle of war.

THE OVERRUNNING OF SERBIA.

The military situation which confronted Serbia in the second week of October was simplicity itself. There were no elements of hopeful doubt to relieve the darkness of her outlook. In modern war, unless the difference of quality is immense, it is numbers that win, and her numbers were few. Her great losses in the battles of 1914 had brought down her armed strength, allowing for the use of every available man, to not more than 200,000, and her enemies already in the field could more than double her maximum. Moreover, her successes had impaired her defensive power. Thrice she had been invaded, and three times in heroic battles she had flung back the invader. But her country had been devastated, and she had been hard put to it to restore the common machinery of life. Then had come pestilence and famine, and throughout the spring of 1915 she had been fighting a sterner enemy than the Austrian. She must have lost 150,000 men in action, and at least 50,000 from disease. Her peasant soldiers had been compelled to go home to prevent their farms going out of cultivation, and throughout the summer it is fair to say that she was singularly unprotected for a state at war with mighty neighbours. She was unable to take that offensive which is often the best method of defence, and was compelled perforce to put her trust in her Allies. The earlier invasions she had repelled unaided, but now she had to look beyond her borders for security. She was better munitioned than before the Battle of the Ridges; but in other military assets she was weaker. Her soldiers were very tired, and her generals were in the difficulty that, cognisant of great dangers, they simply could not frame an adequate plan to meet them. Her victories had given her a noble self-confidence; but her position forbade her to reap the fruits of it, and compelled her to rely on others.

To this weakness from the depletion and the disorganization of her armies was added the far greater danger of a hopeless strategic position. A glance at the map will reveal its impossibilities. Being a salient, she had the enemy on three sides of her. Her northern front of some 150 miles was held, by the decision of the British Government, by her main armies. Her eastern flank of nearly 300 miles marched through most of its length with Bulgaria. Her western flank for more than 100 miles adjoined unfriendly Bosnia; then for a little came the protection of Montenegro; but the southern part was bounded by Albania, which was at least potentially hostile. If the Serbian army were forced back in the north it could retire by the valleys of the Morava and the Vardar towards Salonika. By these valleys, which are followed by roads and railways, Serbia could receive supplies from the Allied base on the sea. If the only force was von Mackensen’s, she might well hope to stand on the ridges behind the northern plain, as she had stood nine months before, and hold the invader.

But with Bulgaria on her flank the situation was wholly changed. The Bulgarian right, moving against the Timok valley, must sooner or later join hands with von Mackensen, and force the Serbians south and west of the Constantinople railway. Such a position would be serious, but not desperate, for a stand might still be made on the hills of the Upper Morava, and communication kept open with Salonika. But in the south the Bulgarian frontier comes very close to the vital railway from the sea. Vrania is only twenty miles off. Strumnitza station is less, and the nodal point of Uskub is only fifty. It would be an easy task for the Bulgarian southern armies to cut the line. Once that happened there was no way of provisioning the Serbian forces except by the difficult hill paths of Albania and the Black Mountain. There was no way of retreat for them except into the wild recesses of the coastal mountains and the gorges of the Black and White Drin. Once such a retreat was compelled, Serbia would be overrun and the Serbian army put out of action.

The one desperate chance was that the Allies at Salonika might be able to turn the Bulgarian flank, and protect the railway at any rate as far as Uskub. That would have allowed of a stand on the line of the Ibar and the Upper Morava. The Serbians were confident that this would happen. Indeed, in the early days of October they looked for Allied assistance even on their northern front. At Nish the town was decorated, and the school children waited outside the station with bouquets to present to the coming reinforcements. But the Allies could not come. They were too few and too far away.

The Serbian campaign therefore falls into two sections wholly distinct and unrelated. The first is the expulsion from their native land of the Serbian army. The second is the contest of the Allied army of Salonika against the Bulgarian left wing for the hundred miles of line northward from the port, and their ultimate retirement to an enceinte on the sea. The stand of the Serbians, it may fairly be said, was in no material sense aided by the Franco-British operations. They fought their hopeless battle alone, and in that fact is found the failure of the Allied strategical plan.

The Invasion of Serbia.—Map showing the situation early in October 1916, on the eve of the Austro-German advance—position of the armies—intended lines of Invasion—strategic features of the country.

Let us consider briefly von Mackensen’s immediate objective. It was both strategically and tactically simple. The motive was to win a way to Constantinople, and two routes were possible—the Danube and the Ottoman railway. To secure the first it was necessary to cross the river on the front from Belgrade to Orsova close to the Rumanian frontier, and to master that narrow neck of North-Eastern Serbia about forty miles wide between Milanovatz, on the Danube, and the mouth of the Timok. That would give him the whole length of the river now commanded by Serbia. The advantage of the river route was inadequately appreciated at the time in the West. Before the Ottoman railway could be used there must be a considerable amount of campaigning; the great bridge over the Save must be repaired, which had been blown up by the Serbians a year before; and bridges and embankments must be restored between Belgrade and the Bulgarian frontier. But to master the river was an easy task. Once Belgrade was taken the operations of the British Naval Mission would be at an end. As soon as the Serbians were driven from their position on the southern shore, the mines could be swept up, and there could be a clear waterway to the Bulgarian railheads connecting with the Constantinople line. On the northern bank there were a number of Austrian railheads, all provided with sidings, quays, and loading gear. For the river transport there were available flotillas of Austrian passenger steamers and tug-boats and thousands of barges. The Danube Steam Navigation Company alone could supply more than a hundred passenger steamers and over six hundred tugs. The concentration of von Mackensen’s army was largely effected by waterways, since a river convoy could load up wherever a railway touched the Danube or the Theiss. Again, the Danube was connected by excellent canals with the Elbe and the Rhine. In forwarding supplies by canal the slowness of transit, as compared to railways, was of little consequence once a steady stream of barges had been started. As much stuff as could be handled would be delivered each day at the farther end. It was possible for barges to be loaded at the great munition factories of the Middle Rhine and pass through to the Lower Danube without breaking bulk. While von Mackensen was clearing the Serbian bank thousands of loaded freighters were accumulating between Semlin and Budapest, ready to go forward as soon as the river was open. There was the further gain in using the riverway that the convoys would not return empty, but would bring back to Austria and Germany supplies of Bulgarian and Rumanian meat and corn.

The second route to the Bosphorus would be slower to win. It involved the capture of Belgrade and the ridges to the south of it, and an advance to the south-east which would clear the Morava valley up to Nish and the tributary Nishava valley as far as the Bulgarian frontier. To secure both routes the German plan of campaign was one of converging attacks. On the south-west Albanian bands would threaten the Prishtina and Prisrend region on the Serbian left rear. On the west an Austrian force, operating from the Bosnian bases, would assault the line of the Drina. On the north were von Mackensen’s two armies. Von Gallwitz lay on the left from Orsova to a point opposite Semendria, and von Koevess on the right, facing Belgrade and the Lower Save. The eastern Serbian frontier was entrusted to the Bulgarians. Bojadiev’s army group covered the country from the mouth of the Timok to the Ottoman railway; Teodorov’s from that railway to the neighbourhood of Strumnitza. The Bulgarian attack had five main objectives. The extreme right was directed across the Timok to enable von Gallwitz to clear the Danube. The right centre moved on Zaichar and Timok, and was intended to follow the branch line to Parachin, on the Constantinople railway. The centre advanced on Pirot and Nish. The left centre moved from Kustendil against Vrania and Uskub—the most vital points in the Serbian communications. On the extreme left there was an advance from Strumnitza to cut the railway in the Vardar valley, the point at which during the past year Bulgarian bands on at least two occasions had made attempts on the line. The Bulgarian left and left centre had also the task of opposing any movement of the Allies from Salonika.

A plan which involved at least nine converging lines of attack demanded a very great numerical superiority and an enemy incapable of a dangerous offensive. These conditions were, unfortunately, realized. General Putnik, the old Serbian field-marshal, could muster less than half the strength of his enemy. The poverty of Serbia’s communications prevented him following the natural strategy of a defence on interior lines, and striking at one or more of the widely separated invaders. He was compelled to remain rigidly on the defensive, and on a partial defensive. His main forces were strung along the river front in the north—thin in the centre, where Belgrade was held by less than two divisions, but stronger on the wings, where a turning movement was feared. Mishitch commanded the 1st Army, as he had done in the December Battle of the Ridges, and held the angle of the Save and the Drina. On the right the 3rd Army, under Yourashitch, protected the valley of the Morava, and faced von Gallwitz and the Bulgarian right. A small detachment lay at Ushitza to watch the menace from Bosnia against the left rear. On the eastern frontier there was a force facing the Timok valley, and protecting Nish was the 2nd Army, under Stepanovitch. It is obvious that such a disposition was in no way adequate to meet all the converging dangers. Serbia was compelled to leave the defence of the eastern frontier, which was threatened by far the most formidable foe, to her Allies, in the hope that they would be in time. If that hope failed, the most heroic stand in the north would be futile.

Life in Belgrade during the spring and summer was curiously peaceful for a frontier city in time of war. Admiral Troubridge’s Naval Mission with its armed launches did much destructive work at night against the Austrian monitors, issuing from the river quays as in old days the Illyrian pirate galleys issued from the screen of the Dalmatian Islands. The city was bombarded methodically at long range from the northern shore, but there seems to have been a clearly defined danger zone. Belgrade lies on a ridge which slopes up from the Save and the Danube, and, while in the riverside streets shells dropped and the houses were in ruins, in the upper thoroughfares life went on and the citizens took the air as usual. In those fantastic days it was possible for a visitor to dine at his hotel, drive in a cab to the quays, embark in a launch, spend the midnight hours in a spirited naval action, and return to his bed before morning.

On the afternoon of 19th September von Koevess’sSept. 19. batteries opened against Belgrade, and battle was joined all along the river line. At first the invaders made little progress. Their big guns had not yet come up, and the Serbian artillery and the guns of the British sailors prevented a crossing. But in the first days of October the situation changed. Bulgaria was getting ready, the guns had arrived from Poland, and on 3rdOct. 3. October the first shots were fired in the real bombardment. It was such a “preparation” as had preceded the May onslaught on the Donajetz, or the September advance in the West. The Serbians had nothing of the same calibre with which to reply, and their positions on the south bank were slowly pounded into dust. Under cover of the guns both von Gallwitz and von Koevess attempted crossings—the former at Semendria, Ram, and Graditze; the latter at Shabatz, Obrenovatz, and especially at Ciglania Island, in the Save, just above Belgrade. Von Gallwitz was aiming at the Morava valley, von Koevess at the capital.

On the 7th both Save and Danube were crossed,Oct. 7-8. the latter at Belgrade itself. The immense weight of artillery fire made the city untenable, and on the 8th the Serbians began to evacuate it. During the day fierce fighting continued at the quays and the lower part of the town, but by the evening the Citadel and the royal Palace had been taken. There was a desperate guerrilla struggle in some of the streets, and it was not till the morning of the 9th that von KoevessOct. 9. had the whole place in his hands. He found little booty, except some old guns, for the pieces of the British Naval Mission were either destroyed or got away in time. His artillery had played havoc with the capital, and the German flag floated over a desolation. But it had been a calculated destruction, for the railway station was left intact.

The Invasion of Serbia.—The Crossing of the Danube and the Save above Belgrade. Army of von Koevess.

On the left Mishitch, who had the best troops of the Serbian army under his command, managed to check any torrential crossing of the Save. At Shabatz, at Prograrska Island, and at Zabrej, he held the enemy for several days. But von Gallwitz by this time had overcome the resistance of the Serbian right. He crossed at Semendria, at Ram, and near Graditze. Here, on the south bank, at the mouth of the valleys of the Mlava and Morava, for a little there were stubborn encounters. But the Serbians were gradually driven back to Pojarevatz, and on Oct. 11.the 11th Berlin announced that one hundred miles of front from Shabatz to Graditze, on the south bank of the Save and Danube, had been won.

Next day Bulgaria formally entered the war, having waited till she was assured of von Mackensen’s ability to force the line of the rivers, and with that event von Gallwitz’s left wing in the neighbourhood of Orsova came intoOct. 12. action. The Serbian position was now somewhat as follows. Mishitch, on the left, was being forced slowly back from the Save towards the foothills of the Tser range, where a year before the Serbian army had made their first stand against the third Austrian invasion. His communications were bad, and he was in danger of having his flanks turned by the Austrian crossing of the Drina, and by the drive of von Koevess’s centre. The Serbian centre had fallen back from Belgrade to the foothills in the south, and had taken up position on the ridge called Avala, seven miles from the capital. The Serbian right, under Yourashitch, was being forced across the riverside plain from Semendria to Graditze, up the valleys of the Morava and the Mlava. For some days von Mackensen moved slowly. It was not the lack of heavy artillery as had been the case two weeks before, because he had now his full complement of guns. It was in pursuance of a sound strategical plan. He must not press the Serbians too far south till Bulgaria had time to take them in flank and rear.

The Invasion of Serbia.—The Crossings of the Danube below Belgrade. Army of von Gallwitz.

On the 12th Bojadiev attacked in two columns against Zaichar and Kniashevatz, while his right moved against Negotin in the Lower Timok valley. At first the Serbian army of the Timok held the invaders, but two days later Pojarevatz fell to von Gallwitz, and Bojadiev took the heights east of Kniashevatz. Next day von Koevess drove the Serbian centre from the hills of Avala. On Sunday, the 17th, there was a concertedOct. 17. attack all along the eastern frontier. The day before the Salonika line had been cut by cavalry raiders at Vrania, and on the Sunday Teodorov’s centre from Kustendil captured Egri Palanka, while Bojadiev forced a crossing on the Lower Timok. The enemy now commanded Vrania, and communications between Nish and Salonika were suspended. The last train which ran, conveying the property of the Serbian National Bank, passed through a battlefield, and arrived at the coast pock-marked with rifle bullets. Meanwhile Stepanovitch was being forced down the Nishava valley from Pirot by the Bulgarian centre. On the north Obrenovatz had fallen, and the line of the Save was clear for the invader.

Events now moved fast. The Allies were fighting their own battle in the south, which we shall presently consider. They were cut off from the Serbians altogether, though twenty miles north of them a Serbian detachment was falling back before the Bulgarian advance on Veles. In the week beginning Monday, the 18th, the chiefOct. 18. effort was made by Teodorov’s Army of the South. Veles, or Kuprulu, fell on the 20th,Oct. 20-22. and on the 22nd, late in the afternoon, the Bulgarians entered Uskub, the nodal point of all the routes of Southern Serbia. This was a swift advance, for the simple reason that there was nothing to stop it. All the considerable Serbian armies were in the north, and the Allies from Salonika were too late to do more than check the extreme left of the Bulgarian movement. Had they been earlier on the scene the long narrow gorge through which the railway runs north of Vrania would have given them a strong position in which to hold the enemy.

The loss of Uskub was a misfortune of the first magnitude. It cut off all communication between the Vardar and Morava valleys. It blocked the routes to Prilep and Monastir in the south, and the access to Kossovo and Novi Bazar in the north by the Katchanik Pass. The outlook for Serbia was black indeed, and she made a last despairing appeal to the Allies for aid. Throughout the land a mass of fugitives of every age and condition was fleeing distractedly by the few routes left open to the south-west. Nish was a beleaguered city. Food was scarce, and vehicles could hardly be obtained for love or money. By Tuesday, the 26th, disaster hadOct. 26. followed disaster. On the Saturday von Gallwitz’s left had forced the passage of the Danube at Orsova, on the Rumanian border, the western opening of the defile known as the Iron Gate. The Germans crossed by the island below the town, and took the steep wooded heights on the southern shore which commanded all the bend of the river. That same day Negotin fell to Bojadiev’s right, and the town of Prahovo, where the Bulgarians seized large quantities of supplies which had come up the river for the Serbians. These victories opened to Germany the Danube route to Constantinople. Von Gallwitz had also pushed some way up the Morava, and was in line with von Koevess, who had occupied Valjevo. In the west the Austrians had forced the Drina at Vishegrad, and were threatening Ushitza.

There was no chance of the Serbians retrieving their fortunes, as they had done a year before, by a stand on the ridges of Maljen and Suvobor. That position was already turned, with the Bulgarians pressing westward from Timok and Pirot. The line of the Upper Timok still held, but it, too, was outflanked on south and west. The only route for withdrawal, if the army was to be saved, was by the long valley of the Ibar for their northern forces, and for the southern detachments the ancient roads to the Adriatic from Prisrend and from Monastir. But there was little time to lose, for the Austrians moving on Ushitza, and the Bulgarians pushing west from Vrania and Uskub, might cut at the roots of the salient. Moreover, the army of Stepanovitch, on the Upper Timok, was in an ugly salient of its own.

The Invasion of Serbia.—Situation after the Fall of Uskub. (The shade shows the extent of country occupied by the Invaders.)

On Tuesday, the 26th, the Austrians from OrsovaOct. 26. and the Bulgarians from Prahovo joined hands, and the whole north-east corner of Serbia was in the enemy’s possession. Next day Zaichar and Kniashevatz fell at last after a heroic defence, and the line of the Timok was gone. The main Serbian position now lay roughly through Kragujevatz, the arsenal, and Parachin, on the railway, and encircled Nish, with its right at Leskovatz. On the 28th Pirot fell, and von Gallwitz,Oct. 28. advancing up the Morava valley, made many prisoners. The Austro-Germans in their progress distinguished themselves by their brutality to the civilian population—brutality which had a direct military object. If they could produce a panic among the inhabitants, and cause a wholesale flight, the few roads would be encumbered with fleeing households, and the retreat of the Serbian army and guns would be hopelessly impeded.

On Saturday, the 30th, Kragujevatz was taken.Oct. 30. There was little left in it for the victors, only half a dozen old field guns and some thousands of damaged rifles. We may now regard the Serbians as forming two forces. One, the remnant of the Armies of the North, lay from south of Kragujevatz to the north and east of Nish. The second and lesser was in the hills north of Monastir. The two were hopelessly isolated by the Bulgarian advance from Uskub towards Prishtina. The retirement of the first was by the hill roads and the Ibar valley into Montenegro, that of the second into the mountains of Central Albania. Had they been faced by Germans alone with their heavy ordnance they would have had a reasonable chance of escape, for von Mackensen had taken forty days to cover an average of forty miles; but in the Bulgarians they had opponents as skilled as themselves in marching and fighting in a mountain country. On the last day of October the main SerbianOct. 31. force was for a moment out of danger, for the Austrians seemed unable to advance towards Ushitza; but Stepanovitch’s army defending Nish was in an acute and dangerous salient.

Stepanovitch got clear, but by the narrowest margin. The final attack on Nish began on 3rd November, and after three days ofNov. 3-6. severe fighting, it fell on the 6th. The Serbians retired on Leskovatz, and north of Nish, half-way between Parachin and Zaichar, the Germans and the Bulgarians again joined hands. The Northern Army was now in full retreat, for the enemy had enclosed it in a half-moon, of which the horns were hourly bending inwards. There was no more fighting for Mishitch, Yourashitch, and Stepanovitch. The last action before the complete conquest of Serbia was fought by the small forces in the south in a despairing effort to stem the Bulgarian advance from Uskub upon Prisrend and Monastir. These Battles of the Passes were for King Peter’s remnant the Kossovo of the campaign.

The Invasion of Serbia.—Situation after the Fall of Nish. (The shade shows the extent of country occupied by the Invaders.)

North-west of Uskub, crossing the low Katchanik Pass, a railway runs to Mitrovitza. Already the Serbian main army on the Ibar was getting desperately short of ammunition. They had shot away most of their stocks, and if any supplies were to reach them it must be from the south by way of Monastir, Prisrend, and Prishtina, for even if there had been stores at the Albanian ports the Albanian roads were too long and difficult. Moreover, if the Bulgarians advanced beyond the Katchanik and reached the railhead at Mitrovitza, there would be a good chance of enveloping and cutting off the army on the Ibar. If the retirement was to be made at all, it was necessary to hold the Katchanik till the latest possible moment. Five thousand men, the remnant of the Uskub garrison, in the last days of October made a stand on the hills at the Uskub end of the pass. The Serbians had their guns on the heights, and enough ammunition for a battle of several days. Three regiments had been sent down by Putnik from the north to act as reinforcements, and the order ran at all costs to break the enemy. The Bulgarians advanced on a fifteen-mile front with a strength of two and a half divisions. They were in the form of a crescent, with their left in the plain of Tetovo, and their right across the Uskub-Mitrovitza line.

At first the Serbian bombardment drove back the enemy several miles from his advanced position. On the third day their infantry attacked with the bayonet and bombs. All night the battle raged, and after a struggle of twelve hours the Bulgarian front was pierced by one division. But by that time the enemy had more than doubled his strength. He reformed behind the gap, and the horns of his front began to envelop the small Serbian force. It was the situation of the Romans at Cannæ, and the Serbian centre was slowly driven back, till the peril on the flanks compelled a rapid retreat. Fighting desperately, and taking a heavy toll of the enemy, they retired across the pass to join the retreating Army of the North. But their stand had given Putnik the respite he had sought, and before Mitrovitza was threatened the retreat was moving up the hill roads to the Montenegro plain of Ipek.

The stand at the Babuna Pass was of a different kind. Its primary aim was to bar the way to Monastir, for once the Bulgarians were at Prilep the roads from Monastir northward would be shut to possible supplies. But it had also an offensive purpose. If the Allies could retake Veles, Uskub would be threatened, and the dangerous Bulgarian operations towards Mitrovitza would be checked. The Babuna Pass, a little over 2,000 feet high, is on the road from Uskub to Prilep. Some 5,000 Serbians held the heights commanding the northern approach, where in the first days of November they repulsed the assault of a Bulgarian division, and drove it back as far as Izvor, which is about a dozen miles on the road from Veles. But only an advanced guard of the enemy had been checked. Teodorov’s main force poured down from the Veles front, and presently the Serbian handful had the better part of six divisions before them. For a week and more the crest of the Babuna Pass was still held, but the failure of the Allies farther south, and the Bulgarian capture of the Mitrovitza line, made the position untenable. The Serbians fell back towards the Albanian borders, and the campaign, so far as that valiant army was concerned, was over. They had fought most gallantly a losing fight, in which they never for one moment could hope to succeed. They had lost greatly in guns and men, and it is not likely that more than 150,000 weary and famished warriors sought the shelter of the highlands. It was an army still in being, but only a shadow of that heroic force which had flung the Austrians a year ago across the Danube. Before the middle of November the paths which climb from the upper glens of the Vardar, the Morava, and the Ibar were littered with the bullock-carts of the transport and plodding soldiers, who halted now and then to take a last look behind them at their hills of home.

The landing of the Allies at Salonika, which beganOct. 5. on 5th October, was completed in three days, largely by the assistance of M. Diamantidis, the Greek Minister of Transport, whose co-operation was the last administrative act of M. Venizelos’s Government. The French 2nd Division from Cape Helles arrived first, and encamped a mile and a half from the town. Then came the British, Sir Bryan Mahon’s 10th Division from Suvla. General Sarrail arrived on the 12th; but at this time command at SalonikaOct. 12. was not unified, the British and French forces being under their own generals. The French were the first-comers, and, apparently, the most ready for the field, so without delay they were moved up country.

The aim of General Sarrail was to make contact with the Serbian force in the Uskub neighbourhood before the Bulgarians completely outflanked and isolated it on the south. For this purpose he must secure the railway, if possible, as far as Veles. The line, a single grass-grown track which followed the windings of the Vardar, showed one point of especial danger. Ninety miles from Salonika, north of Strumnitza station, the Vardar flows through a narrow gorge, called Demir Kapu, or the Iron Gate. At the mouth of the pass the railway crosses to the left bank of the river, and follows it on that side through the ravine, returning to the right bank, where the valley widens out beyond the narrows. The Iron Gate thus involved two bridges, a tunnel a hundred yards long, and ten miles where there was no space to spare between the river, the railway, and the precipitous walls. If the Bulgarians seized this point all access from the south into Central Macedonia was barred.

Bulgarian raiders had early in the month cutOct. 19. the railway at Strumnitza station, which was six miles from the frontier, and about twenty-five from the Bulgarian town of that name. On 19th October the French advanced guards reached the place, and drove out the enemy. Four days later, on 23rd October, the rest ofOct. 23. the division began to arrive, and detachments were ferried across the swollen Vardar, and seized positions on the left bank. On 27th October the French occupied Krivolak withoutOct. 27. difficulty, and pushed posts farther up the line towards Gradsko. Sarrail now held a position from north of Krivolak to south of Strumnitza station, while the British 10th Division extended on the French right to Lake Doiran, to guard the flank against a Bulgarian attack from the Struma valley.

Across the Vardar from Krivolak rises a steep wall of mountain, called Kara Hodjali. The height commanded this whole section of the valley, and its possession by the enemy would make the railway useless. Accordingly it was resolved at all costs to occupy it at once. The Vardar was in roaring flood; there were no bridges, and no time to get up pontoons. But there was an old ferry-boat by which with much labour a French detachment was ferried over. The enemy on the heights were only advanced guards, and without much trouble the French scaled the steeps and established themselves on the summit. Two days later the Bulgarians, recognizing the value of the point they had lost, attacked in force, and were only beaten off after a fight with grenades at close quarters. On 4th and 5th November they againNov. 4-5. attacked, but the position proved too strong, and they were reduced to entrenching themselves over against the French on the flat crest.

The Serbian position at the Babuna Pass and the Allied entrenched camp around Kavadar.

While the command of the Krivolak-Strumnitza section of the valley was being secured, the French had turned to the main object of their advance. Veles and Uskub were now held by the enemy, and he was pushing northwards over the Katchanik Pass, and southwards against the Serbians, who at the Babuna Pass guarded the road to Monastir. The Babuna Pass lies twenty-five miles due west of Krivolak, and the country between is rugged and difficult. The map will show the details. The only road is one which runs from Krivolak to Prilep, by Negotin and Kavadar. The Tcherna, or Black River, deep and strong, which joins the Vardar between Gradsko and Krivolak, is spanned by a wooden bridge at Vozartzi, and a few miles farther a similar bridge crosses the Rajetz torrent. North of the Rajetz, between it and the Babuna Pass, is a wild tangle of mountains, which rise in the peak called Archangel to a height of nearly 4,000 feet.

Early in November, after the first Serbian success at the Babuna had been nullified by the arrival of Bulgarian reinforcements, and the defenders had been driven back to the crest of the pass itself, the French column from Krivolak attempted to join hands with them. On 5th November it carried theNov. 5. Vozartzi bridge, and attempted to escalade the heights. The Serbians at the Babuna were, as the crow flies, only ten miles distant. The French moved ten miles down the left bank of the Tcherna, and then, turning westward, pushed half-way up the slopes of Mount Archangel. But by this time the Bulgarian army of Uskub numbered some 125,000 men, and the French had behind them a difficult and precarious line of communication—a crazy wooden bridge, twenty miles of bad road, and a hundred miles of a single line railway—by which their supplies had to travel. The first attack failed. Meantime the Serbians had been driven from the Babuna Pass, and all hope of effecting a junction was at an end. The Bulgarians by a turning movement were threatening to cut the French off from the Vozartzi bridge, and pin them against the unfordable Tcherna. The French commander did the only thing possible in the circumstances. He fell back across the Tcherna, and took up a position in what was called the “entrenched camp of Kavadar,” in the triangle bounded by the Tcherna and the Vardar. In addition, he held a bridge-head at Vozartzi, and opposite Krivolak, where pontoons had now been constructed, he occupied the heights of Kara Hodjali.

Such was the situation by the end of the second week of November. The Allies had failed to bring help to the Serbian army. They wereNov. 14. now themselves upon the defensive, in vastly inferior numbers. The triangle of Kavadar was a good position so far as it went, but it had the drawback that its only internal means of transport was the single and very bad Krivolak-Vozartzi road. Moreover, its sole line of communication with the base at Salonika was exposed through a considerable part to the fire of the Bulgarian artillery, and if the enemy chose to advance against it in force he must compel a retreat. It could only be a matter of days till Teodorov’s Southern Army, all Serbian resistance being at an end, turned its attention to enveloping the far-strung Allied front. Once Monastir was taken, the left flank could be easily turned, and the right flank at Lake Doiran reposed on no natural defence against a movement from the Struma.

The Allied endeavour had come to nothing. It had brought no shadow of relief to Serbia,^[15] and it had found itself in serious strategical difficulties. The task set General Sarrail was hopeless from the start, as hopeless as the task set General Putnik. Indeed, it may fairly be said that the constant expectation of Allied help had gravely compromised the Serbian resistance. We have seen that the refusal of the British and French Governments to approve of an attack upon Bulgaria meant that the chief Serbian effort was made on the wrong front. Further, the presumed necessity of keeping the army for a joint effort with the Allies prevented the stand which the soldiers longed for. The fighting at Katchanik and the Babuna proved the prowess of Putnik’s army; but they were never allowed to show it in a major action. Defence and then withdrawal were the order of the day, tactics little suited to the Serbian genius. It is probable that the Bulgarian conquest would have been far longer delayed, and might even have grievously miscarried, if Serbia had been allowed to follow her instincts and had relied upon her own mettle.

After the fall of Nish von Mackensen’s interest in the campaign slackened. He had got what he set out to get—the Danube route and the Ottoman railway. The campaign was now in Bulgarian hands, a campaign of long-cherished and bitter revenge. Through the mud of the plains and valleys and the rough roads of the foothills the Serbian troops struggled on. Their motor transport broke down at the hair-pin bends on the slopes, and soon, as they moved into the mountains where the peaks were now powdered with the first snows, they were forced to rely on ox-waggons and country carts. With them in a pitiful procession, often lagging and breaking down, went the civilian refugees and their scanty belongings. With them went the British Naval Mission and its batteries of guns. The staffs of the hospitals, who for nine months had been fighting the manifold diseases, were scattered far and wide. Some by circuitous roads reached the Allies at Salonika; some got to the Adriatic coast; some, including the heroic wife of the former British Minister, chose to remain, and were taken prisoners by the Bulgarians. With the army, too, went the Serbian Court and Government—from Belgrade to Kragujevatz, to Nish, to Novi Bazar, to the Montenegrin hills. In a rude Macedonian cart the King journeyed, old, crippled with rheumatism, but as undaunted as on that day ten months before, when he had given thanks for victory in the cathedral of his capital while the Austrians were still fighting in the streets. In his Army Order of 2nd October he had lamented that his age prevented him fighting in the ranks with his people; but if he could not share his soldiers’ tasks he could share their suffering. That lonely old figure resting in the roadside snow was a proof that true kingship had not yet vanished from the world.

THE EXECUTION OF MISS CAVELL.

I.

Report for the Minister.

American Legation, Brussels,

October 12, 1915.

Sir,

Upon learning early yesterday morning through unofficial sources that the trial of Miss Edith Cavell had been finished on Saturday afternoon, and that the prosecuting attorney (“Kriegsgerichtsrat”) had asked for a sentence of death against her, telephonic enquiry was immediately made at the Politische Abteilung as to the facts. It was stated that no sentence had as yet been pronounced, and that there would probably be delay of a day or two before a decision was reached. Mr. Conrad gave positive assurances that the Legation would be fully informed as to developments in this case. Despite these assurances, we made repeated enquiries in the course of the day, the last one being at 6.20 p.m. Belgian time. Mr. Conrad then stated that sentence had not yet been pronounced, and specifically renewed his previous assurances that he would not fail to inform us as soon as there was any news.

At 8.30 it was learned from an outside source that sentence had been passed in the course of the afternoon (before the last conversation with Mr. Conrad), and that the execution would take place during the night. In conformity with your instructions, I went (accompanied by Mr. de Leval) to look for the Spanish Minister and found him dining at the home of Baron Lambert. I explained the circumstances to his Excellency, and asked that (as you were ill and unable to go yourself) he go with us to see Baron von der Lancken and support as strongly as possible the plea, which I was to make in your name, that execution of the death penalty should be deferred until the Governor could consider your appeal for clemency.

We took with us a note addressed to Baron von der Lancken, and a plea for clemency (“requête en grâce”) addressed to the Governor-General. The Spanish Minister willingly agreed to accompany us, and we went together to the Politische Abteilung.

Baron von der Lancken and all the members of his staff were absent for the evening. We sent a messenger to ask that he return at once to see us in regard to a matter of utmost urgency. A little after 10 o’clock he arrived, followed shortly after by Count Harrach and Herr von Falkenhausen, members of his staff. The circumstances of the case were explained to him and your note presented, and he read it aloud in our presence. He expressed disbelief in the report that sentence had actually been passed, and manifested some surprise that we should give credence to any report not emanating from official sources. He was quite insistent on knowing the exact source of our information, but this I did not feel at liberty to communicate to him. Baron von der Lancken stated that it was quite improbable that sentence had been pronounced, that even if so, it would not be executed within so short a time, and that in any event it would be quite impossible to take any action before morning. It was, of course, pointed out to him that if the facts were as we believed them to be, action would be useless unless taken at once. We urged him to ascertain the facts immediately, and this, after some hesitancy, he agreed to do. He telephoned to the presiding judge of the court-martial, and returned in a short time to say that the facts were as we had represented them and that it was intended to carry out the sentence before morning. We then presented, as earnestly as possible, your plea for delay. So far as I am able to judge, we neglected to present no phase of the matter which might have had any effect, emphasizing the horror of executing a woman, no matter what her offence, pointing out that the death sentence had heretofore been imposed only for actual cases of espionage, and that Miss Cavell was not even accused by the German authorities of anything so serious. I further called attention to the failure to comply with Mr. Conrad’s promise to inform the Legation of the sentence. I urged that inasmuch as the offences charged against Miss Cavell were long since accomplished, and that as she had been for some weeks in prison, a delay in carrying out the sentence could entail no danger to the German cause. I even went so far as to point out the fearful effect of a summary execution of this sort upon public opinion, both here and abroad, and, although I had no authority for doing so, called attention to the possibility that it might bring about reprisals.

The Spanish Minister forcibly supported all our representations, and made an earnest plea for clemency.

Baron von der Lancken stated that the Military Governor was the supreme authority (“Gerichtsherr”) in matters of this sort; that appeal from his decision could be carried only to the Emperor, the Governor-General having no authority to intervene in such cases. He added that under the provisions of German martial law the Military Governor had discretionary power to accept or refuse acceptance of an appeal for clemency. After some discussion he agreed to call the Military Governor on to the telephone and learn whether he had already ratified the sentence, and whether there was any chance for clemency. He returned in about half an hour, and stated that he had been to confer personally with the Military Governor, who said that he had acted in the case of Miss Cavell only after mature deliberation; that the circumstances in her case were of such a character that he considered the infliction of the death penalty imperative; and that in view of the circumstances of this case he must decline to accept your plea for clemency or any representation in regard to the matter.

Baron von der Lancken then asked me to take back the note which I had presented to him. To this I demurred, pointing out that it was not a “requête en grâce” but merely a note to him transmitting a communication to the Governor, which was itself to be considered as the “requête en grâce.” I pointed out that this was expressly stated in your note to him, and tried to prevail upon him to keep it; he was very insistent, however, and I finally reached the conclusion that inasmuch as he had read it aloud to us, and we knew that he was aware of its contents, there was nothing to be gained by refusing to accept the note and accordingly took it back.

Even after Baron von der Lancken’s very positive and definite statement that there was no hope, and that under the circumstances “even the Emperor himself could not intervene,” we continued to appeal to every sentiment to secure delay, and the Spanish Minister even led Baron von der Lancken aside in order to say very forcibly a number of things which he would have felt hesitancy in saying in the presence of the younger officers and of Mr. de Leval, a Belgian subject.

His Excellency talked very earnestly with Baron von der Lancken for about a quarter of an hour. During this time Mr. de Leval and I presented to the younger officers every argument we could think of. I reminded them of our untiring efforts on behalf of German subjects at the outbreak of war and during the siege of Antwerp. I pointed out that, while our services had been rendered gladly and without any thought of future favours, they should certainly entitle you to some consideration for the only request of this sort you had made since the beginning of the war. Unfortunately, our efforts were unavailing. We persevered until it was only too clear that there was no hope of securing any consideration for the case.

We left the Politische Abteilung shortly after midnight, and I immediately returned to the Legation to report to you.

Hugh Gibson.

II.

Report by Mr. Gahan, British Chaplain in
Brussels.

On Monday evening, the 11th October, I was admitted by special passport from the German authorities to the prison of St. Gilles, where Miss Edith Cavell had been confined for ten weeks. The final sentence had been given early that afternoon.

To my astonishment and relief I found my friend perfectly calm and resigned. But this could not lessen the tenderness and intensity of feeling on either part during that last interview of almost an hour.

Her first words to me were upon a matter concerning herself personally, but the solemn asseveration which accompanied them was made expressly in the light of God and eternity.

She then added that she wished all her friends to know that she willingly gave her life for her country, and said: “I have no fear nor shrinking; I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me.”

She further said: “I thank God for this ten weeks’ quiet before the end.” “Life has always been hurried and full of difficulty.” “This time of rest has been a great mercy.” “They have all been very kind to me here.”

“But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards any one.”

We partook of the Holy Communion together, and she received the Gospel message of consolation with all her heart.

At the close of the little service I began to repeat the words “Abide with me,” and she joined softly in the end.

We sat quietly talking until it was time for me to go. She gave me parting messages for relations and friends. She spoke of her soul’s needs at the moment, and she received the assurance of God’s Word as only the Christian can do.

Then I said “Good-bye,” and she smiled and said, “We shall meet again.”

The German military chaplain was with her at the end and afterwards gave her Christian burial.

He told me: “She was brave and bright to the last. She professed her Christian faith and that she was glad to die for her country.” “She died like a heroine.”

H. Stirling T. Gahan,

British Chaplain, Brussels.

III.

Sir E. Grey to Mr. Page, United States Ambassador in
London.

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs presents his compliments to the United States Ambassador, and has the honour to acknowledge the receipt of his Excellency’s note of the 18th instant, enclosing a copy of a dispatch from the United States Minister at Brussels respecting the execution of Miss Edith Cavell at that place.

Sir E. Grey is confident that the news of the execution of this noble Englishwoman will be received with horror and disgust, not only in the Allied States, but throughout the civilized world. Miss Cavell was not even charged with espionage, and the fact that she had nursed numbers of wounded German soldiers might have been regarded as a complete reason in itself for treating her with leniency.

The attitude of the German authorities is, if possible, rendered worse by the discreditable efforts successfully made by the officials of the German civil administration at Brussels to conceal the fact that sentence had been passed and would be carried out immediately. These efforts were no doubt prompted by the determination to carry out the sentence before an appeal from the finding of the court-martial could be made to a higher authority, and show in the clearest manner that the German authorities concerned were well aware that the carrying out of the sentence was not warranted by any consideration.

Further comment on their proceedings would be superfluous.

In conclusion, Sir E. Grey would request Mr. Page to express to Mr. Whitlock and the staff of the United States Legation at Brussels the grateful thanks of His Majesty’s Government for their untiring efforts on Miss Cavell’s behalf. He is fully satisfied that no stone was left unturned to secure for Miss Cavell a fair trial, and, when sentence had been pronounced, a mitigation thereof.

Sir E. Grey realizes that Mr. Whitlock was placed in a very embarrassing position by the failure of the German authorities to inform him that the sentence had been passed and would be carried out at once. In order therefore to forestall any unjust criticism which might be made in this country, he is publishing Mr. Whitlock’s dispatch to Mr. Page without delay.

THE AMERICAN NOTE OF NOVEMBER 5, 1915.

Mr. Page, United States Ambassador, to Sir
Edward Grey.

American Embassy, London,

November 5, 1915.

Sir,

Under instructions from the Secretary of State in Washington, I have the honour to make to you the following communication:—

1. The Government of the United States has given careful consideration to the notes you were good enough to address to me on the 7th January, 10th February, 22nd June, 23rd July, 31st July (2), 13th August, and to a note verbale from His Majesty’s Embassy in Washington of the 6th August, relating to restrictions upon American commerce by certain measures adopted by His Britannic Majesty’s Government during the present war. My Government has delayed answering the earlier of these notes in the hope that the announced purpose of His Majesty’s Government “to exercise their belligerent rights with every possible consideration for the interest of neutrals,” and their intention of “removing all causes of avoidable delay in dealing with American cargoes” and of causing “the least possible amount of inconvenience to persons engaged in legitimate trade,” as well as their “assurances to the United States Government that they would make it their first aim to minimize the inconveniences” resulting from the “measures taken by the Allied Governments,” would, in practice, not unjustifiably infringe upon the neutral rights of American citizens engaged in trade and commerce.

It is, therefore, a matter of regret that this hope has not been realized, but that, on the contrary, interferences with American ships and cargoes destined in good faith to neutral ports and lawfully entitled to proceed have become increasingly vexatious, causing American shipowners and American merchants to complain to their Government of the failure to take steps to prevent an exercise of belligerent power in contravention of their just rights. As the measures complained of proceed directly from orders issued by the British Government, are executed by British authorities and arouse a reasonable apprehension that, if not resisted, they may be carried to an extent even more injurious to American interests, the Government of the United States is obliged to direct the attention of His Majesty’s Government to the following considerations:—

2. Without commenting upon the statistics presented by His Majesty’s Government to show that the export trade of the United States has increased in volume since the war began, further than to point out that the comparative values fail to take into account the increased price of commodities resulting from a state of war, or to make any allowance for the diminution in the volume of trade which the neutral countries in Europe previously had with the nations at war, a diminution which compelled them to buy in other markets, I am instructed to pass directly to the matters which constitute the specific complaints of my Government.

DETENTION OF VESSELS.

3. First: The detentions of American vessels and cargoes which have taken place since the opening of hostilities have, it is presumed, been pursuant to the enforcement of the Orders in Council, which were issued on the 20th August and the 29th October 1914, and the 11th March 1915, and relate to contraband traffic and to the interception of trade to and from Germany and Austria-Hungary. In practice these detentions have not been uniformly based on proofs obtained at the time of seizure, but many vessels have been detained while search was made for evidence of the contraband character of cargoes or of an intention to evade the non-intercourse measures of Great Britain. The question, consequently, has been one of evidence to support a belief, or in many cases a bare suspicion, of enemy destination, or occasionally of enemy origin, of the goods involved. Whether this evidence should be obtained by search at sea before the vessel or cargo is taken into port, and what the character of the evidence should be which is necessary to justify the detention, are the points to which I venture to direct your attention.

4. In regard to search at sea, an examination of the instructions issued to naval commanders of the United States, Great Britain, Russia, Japan, Spain, Germany, and France from 1888 to the beginning of the present war shows that search in port was not contemplated by the Government of any of these countries. On the contrary, the context of the respective instructions shows that search at sea was the procedure expected to be followed by the commanders. All of these instructions impress upon the naval officers the necessity of acting with the utmost moderation, and in some cases commanders are specifically instructed, in exercising the right of visit and search, to avoid undue deviation of the vessel from her course.

5. An examination of the opinions of the most eminent text-writers on the laws of nations shows that they give practically no consideration to the question of search in port, outside of examination in the course of regular Prize Court proceedings.

6. The assertion by His Majesty’s Government that the position of the United States in relation to search at sea is inconsistent with its practice during the American Civil War is based upon a misconception. Irregularities there may have been at the beginning of that war, but a careful search of the records of this Government as to the practice of its commanders shows conclusively that there were no instances when vessels were brought into port for search prior to instituting Prize Court proceedings, or that captures were made upon other grounds than in the words of the note which my Government had the honour to address to His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador in Washington on November 7, 1914, “evidence found on the ship under investigation and not upon circumstances ascertained from external sources.” A copy of the instruction issued to American naval officers on 18th August 1862, for their guidance during the Civil War, is appended.

7. The British contention that “modern conditions” justify bringing vessels into port for search is based upon the size and seaworthiness of modern carriers of commerce and the difficulty of uncovering the real transaction in the intricate trade operations of the present day. It is believed that commercial transactions of the present time, hampered as they are by censorship of telegraph and postal communication on the part of belligerents, are essentially no more complex and disguised than in the wars of recent years during which the practice of obtaining evidence in port to determine whether a vessel should be held for prize proceedings was not adopted. The effect of the size and seaworthiness of merchant vessels upon their search at sea has been submitted to a board of naval experts, which reports that:—

EVIDENCE OF CONTRABAND.

8. Turning to the character and sufficiency of the evidence of the contraband nature of shipments to warrant the detention of a suspected vessel or cargo for prize proceedings, it will be recalled that when a vessel is brought in for adjudication Courts of Prize have hitherto been bound by well-established and long-settled practice to consider at the first hearing only the ship’s papers and documents, and the goods found on board, together with the written replies of the officers and seamen to standing interrogatories taken under oath, alone and separately as soon as possible, and without communication with, or instruction by, counsel, in order to avoid possibility of corruption and fraud.

9. Additional evidence was not allowed to be introduced except upon an order of the Court for “further proof,” and then only after the cause had been fully heard upon the facts already in evidence, or when this evidence furnished a ground for prosecuting the inquiry further. This was the practice of the United States Courts during the war of 1812, the American Civil War, and the Spanish-American War, as is evidenced by the reported decisions of those Courts, and has been the practice of the British Prize Courts for over a century. This practice has been changed by the British Prize Court rules adopted for the present war by the Order in Council of the 5th August. Under these new rules there is no longer a “first hearing” on the evidence derived from the ship, and the Prize Court is no longer precluded from receiving extrinsic evidence for which a suggestion has not been laid in the preparatory evidence. The result is, as pointed out above, that innocent vessels or cargoes are now seized and detained on mere suspicion, while efforts are made to obtain evidence from extraneous sources to justify the detention and the commencement of prize proceedings. The effect of this new procedure is to subject traders to risk of loss, delay, and expense so great and so burdensome as practically to destroy much of the export trade of the United States to neutral countries of Europe.

10. In order to place the responsibility for the delays of vessels and cargoes upon American claimants, the Order in Council of the 29th October 1914, as pointed out in the British note of the 10th February, seeks to place the burden of proof as to the non-contraband character of the goods upon the claimant in cases where the goods are consigned “to order” or the consignee is not named, or the consignee is within enemy territory. Without admitting that the onus probandi can rightfully be made to rest upon the claimant in these cases, it is sufficient for the purpose of this note to point out that the three classes of cases indicated in the Order in Council of the 29th October apply to only a few of the many seizures or detentions which have actually been made by British authorities.

11. The British contention that in the American Civil War the captor was allowed to establish enemy destination by “all the evidence at his disposal,” citing the Bermuda case (3 Wallace 515), is not borne out by the facts of that case. The case of the Bermuda was one of “further proof,” a proceeding not to determine whether the vessel should be detained and placed in a Prize Court, but whether the vessel, having been placed in Prize Court, should be restored or condemned. The same ruling was made in the case of the Sir William Peel (5 Wallace 517). These cases, therefore, cannot be properly cited as supporting the course of a British captor in taking a vessel into port there to obtain extrinsic evidence to justify him in detaining the vessel for prize proceedings.

12. The further contention, that the greatly increased imports of neutral countries adjoining Great Britain’s enemies raise a presumption that certain commodities, such as cotton, rubber, and others more or less useful for military purposes, though destined for those countries, are intended for re-exportation to the belligerents who cannot import them directly, and that this fact justifies the detention for the purpose of examination of all vessels bound for the ports of those neutral countries, notwithstanding the fact that most of the articles of trade have been placed on the embargo lists of those countries, cannot be accepted as laying down a just or legal rule of evidence. Such a presumption is too remote from the facts, and offers too great opportunity for abuse by the belligerent, who could, if the rule were adopted, entirely ignore neutral rights on the high seas and prey with impunity upon neutral commerce. To such a rule of legal presumption my Government cannot accede, as it is opposed to those fundamental principles of justice which are the foundation of the jurisprudence of the United States and Great Britain.

SHIPMENTS TO NEUTRALS.

13. Before passing from the discussion of this contention as to the presumption raised by increased importations to neutral countries, my Government desires to direct attention to the fact that His Majesty’s Government admit that the British exports to those countries have also materially increased since the present war began. Thus Great Britain concededly shares in creating a condition which is relied upon as a sufficient ground to justify the interception of American goods destined to neutral European ports. If British exports to those ports should be still further increased, it is obvious that, under the rule of evidence contended for by the British Government, the presumption of enemy destination could be applied to a greater number of American cargoes, and American trade would suffer to the extent that British trade benefited by the increase. Great Britain cannot expect the United States to submit to such manifest injustice or to permit the rights of its citizens to be so seriously impaired.

14. When goods are clearly intended to become incorporated in the mass of merchandise for sale in a neutral country it is an unwarranted and inquisitorial proceeding to detain shipments for examination as to whether those goods are ultimately destined for the enemy’s country or use. Whatever may be the conjectural conclusions to be drawn from trade statistics, which, when stated by value, are of uncertain evidence as to quantity, the United States maintains the right to sell goods into the general stock of a neutral country, and denounces as illegal and unjustifiable any attempt of a belligerent to interfere with that right on the ground that it suspects that the previous supply of such goods in the neutral country, which the imports renew or replace, has been sold to an enemy. That is a matter with which the neutral vendor has no concern and which can in no way affect his rights of trade. Moreover, even if goods listed as conditional contraband are destined to an enemy country through a neutral country, that fact is not in itself sufficient to justify their seizure.

15. In view of these considerations, the United States, reiterating its position in this matter, has no other course but to contest seizures of vessels at sea upon conjectural suspicion and the practice of bringing them into port for the purpose, by search or otherwise, of obtaining evidence for the purpose of justifying prize proceedings, of the carriage of contraband or of breaches of the Order in Council of the 11th March. Relying upon the regard of His Majesty’s Government for the principles of justice so frequently and uniformly manifested prior to the present war, the Government of the United States anticipates that the British Government will instruct their officers to refrain from these vexatious and illegal practices.

BLOCKADE MEASURES.

16. Second: The Government of the United States further desires to direct particular attention to the so-called “blockade” measures imposed by the Order in Council of the 11th March. The British note of the 23rd July 1915 appears to confirm the intention indicated in the note of the 15th March 1915 to establish a blockade so extensive as to prohibit trade with Germany or Austria-Hungary, even through the ports of neutral countries adjacent to them. Great Britain, however, admits that it should not, and gives assurances that it will not, interfere with trade with the countries contiguous to the territories of the enemies of Great Britain. Nevertheless, after over six months’ application of the “blockade” order, the experience of American citizens has convinced the Government of the United States that Great Britain has been unsuccessful in her efforts to distinguish between enemy and neutral trade. Arrangements have been made to create in these neutral countries special consignees or consignment corporations, with power to refuse shipments, and to determine when the state of the country’s resources requires the importation of new commodities. American commercial interests are hampered by the intricacies of these arrangements, and many American citizens justly complain that their bona fide trade with neutral countries is greatly reduced as a consequence, while others assert that their neutral trade, which amounted annually to a large sum, has been entirely interrupted.

17. It makes this practice even more harassing to neutral traders that the British authorities require a consignor to prove that his shipments are not bound to an enemy of Great Britain, even when the articles are on the embargo list of the neutral country to which they are destined, and that notwithstanding the assertion in the last British note that interference with such trade by a belligerent can only take place “provided of course that he (the belligerent) can establish” that the commerce is with the enemy.

18. While the United States Government was at first inclined to view with leniency the British measures which were termed in the correspondence, but not in the Order in Council of the 11th March, a “blockade,” because of the assurances of the British Government that inconvenience to neutral trade would be minimized by the discretion left to the Courts in the application of the Order in Council, and by the instructions which it was said would be issued to the administrative and other authorities having to do with the execution of the so-called “blockade” measures, the Government of the United States is now forced to the realization that its expectations, which were fully set forth in its note of the 30th March, were based on a misconception of the intentions of the British Government. Desiring to avoid controversy, and in the expectation that the administration of the Order in Council would conform to the established rules of international law, the Government of the United States has until now reserved the question of the actual validity of the Order in Council of the 11th March, in so far as it is considered by the Government of Great Britain to establish a blockade within the meaning of that term as understood in the law and the practice of nations; but in the circumstances now developed it feels that it can no longer permit the validity of the alleged blockade to remain unchallenged.

LAW AS TO BLOCKADE.

19. The Declaration of Paris in 1856, which has been universally recognized as correctly stating the rule of international law as to blockade, expressly declares that “blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective, that is to say, maintained by force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.” The effectiveness of a blockade is manifestly a question of fact. It is common knowledge that the German coasts are open to trade with the Scandinavian countries and that German naval vessels cruise both in the North Sea and the Baltic and seize and bring into German ports neutral vessels bound for Scandinavian and Danish ports. Furthermore, from the recent placing of cotton on the British list of contraband of war, it appears that His Majesty’s Government have themselves been forced to the conclusion that the blockade is ineffective to prevent shipments of cotton from reaching their enemies, or else that they are doubtful as to the legality of the form of blockade which they have sought to maintain.

20. Moreover, it is an essential principle which has been universally accepted that a blockade must apply impartially to the ships of all nations. This was set forth in the Declaration of London, is found in the Prize Courts of Germany, France, and Japan, and has long been admitted as a basic principle of the law of blockade. This principle, however, is not applied in the present British “blockade,” for, as above indicated, German ports are notoriously open to traffic with the ports of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. So strictly has this principle been enforced in the past that, in the Crimean War, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on appeal laid down that, if belligerents themselves trade with blockaded ports, they cannot be regarded as effectively blockaded. (The Franciska, Moore P.C. 56.) This decision has special significance at the present time, since it is a matter of common knowledge that Great Britain exports and re-exports large quantities of merchandise to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Holland, whose ports, so far as American commerce is concerned, she regards as blockaded. In fact, the British note of the 13th August itself indicates that the British exports of many articles, such as cotton, lubricating oil, tobacco, cocoa, coffee, rice, wheat, flour, barley, spice, tea, copra, etc., to these countries have greatly exceeded the British exports of the same articles for the corresponding period of 1914. The note also shows that there has been an important British trade with these countries in many other articles, such as machinery, beef, butter, cotton waste, etc.

BLOCKADE OF NEUTRAL PORTS.

21. Finally, there is no better settled principle of the law of nations than that which forbids the blockade of neutral ports in time of war. The Declaration of London, though not regarded as binding upon the signatories, because not ratified by them, has been expressly adopted by the British Government without modification as to blockade in the British Order in Council of the 29th October 1914. Article 18 of the Declaration declares specifically that: “The blockading forces must not bar access to neutral ports or coasts.” This is, in the opinion of this Government, a correct statement of the universally accepted law as it exists to-day, and as it existed prior to the Declaration of London. The meaning of this statement is elucidated by M. Renault in the report of the Drafting Committee upon the convention, in which he states:—

As the Conference assembled at London upon the invitation of the British Government, it is important to recall your own instruction to the British delegates, “setting out the views of His Majesty’s Government founded on the decisions of the British Courts,” in which you say:—

You added:—

In support of this announcement you referred to several decisions of British Prize Courts, among which an early one of 1801 held that goods shipped from London to Emden, thence inland or by canal to Amsterdam, then blockaded by sea, were not subject to condemnation for breach of blockade. (Jonge Pieter, 4 C.R. 79.) This has been the rule for a century, so that it is scarcely necessary to recall that the Matamoras cases, well known to the British Government, support the same rule, that neutral ports may not be blockaded, though “trade with unrestricted inland commerce between such a port and the enemy’s territory impairs undoubtedly, and very seriously impairs, the value of a blockade of the enemy’s coast.”

22. Without mentioning the other customary elements of a regularly imposed blockade, such as notification of the particular coast-line invested, the imposition of the penalty of confiscation, etc., which are lacking in the present British “blockade” policy, it need only be pointed out that, measured by the three universally conceded tests above set forth, the present British measures cannot be regarded as constituting a blockade in law, in practice, or in effect.

23. It is incumbent upon the United States Government, therefore, to give His Britannic Majesty’s Government notice that the blockade which they claim to have instituted under the Order in Council of the 11th March cannot be recognized as a legal blockade by the United States.

24. Since the Government of Great Britain has laid much emphasis on the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Springbok case, that goods of contraband character seized while going to the neutral port of Nassau, though actually bound for the blockaded ports of the South, were subject to condemnation, it is not inappropriate to direct attention to the British view of this case in England prior to the present war, as expressed by you in your instructions to the British delegates to the London Conference in 1908:—

It may be pointed out also that the circumstances surrounding the Springbok case were essentially different from those of the present day to which the rule laid down in that case is sought to be applied. When the Springbok case arose the ports of the Confederate States were effectively blockaded by the naval forces of the United States, though no neutral ports were closed and a continuous voyage through a neutral port required an all-sea voyage terminating in an attempt to pass the blockading squadron.

BRITISH PRIZE COURTS.

25. Third: It appears to be the position of Great Britain that, if, as the United States alleges, American citizens or American interests are directly and adversely affected by the British policies of contraband and non-intercourse, resulting in interference with ships and cargoes, they should seek redress in the Prize Courts which the British Government have established, and that, pending the exhaustion of such legal remedies with the result of a denial of justice, the British Government “cannot continue to deal through the diplomatic channels with the individual cases.”

26. It is declared that this was the course followed by the United States during the American Civil War and the Spanish War, and that both countries have supported the practice by allowing their Prize Court decisions, when shown to be unjust or inadequate, to be reviewed by an international tribunal, as was done under the Treaties of 1794 and 1871. The ground upon which this contention is put forth, and the results which would follow, if the course of procedure suggested were accepted, give the impression that His Majesty’s Government do not rely upon its soundness or strength. Nevertheless, since it has been advanced I cannot refrain from presenting certain considerations which will show that the proposed course embodies the form rather than the substance of redress.

The cases which the British Government would have claimants present to their Prize Courts are essentially different from cases arising wholly within the jurisdiction of a foreign country. They result from acts committed by the British naval authorities upon the high seas, where the jurisdiction over neutral vessels is acquired solely by international law. Vessels of foreign nationality, flying a neutral flag and finding their protection in the country of that flag, are seized without facts warranting a reasonable suspicion that they are destined to blockaded ports of the enemy or that their cargoes are contraband, although the possession of such facts is, by international law, essential to render a seizure legal. The officers appear to find their justification in the Orders in Council and regulations of His Majesty’s Government, in spite of the fact that in many of the present cases the Orders in Council and the regulations for their enforcement are themselves complained of by claimants as contrary to international law. Yet the very Courts which it is said are to dispense justice to dissatisfied claimants are bound by the Orders in Council. This is unmistakably indicated to be the case in the note you were so good as to address to me on the 31st July, which states that:—

This principle, the note adds, has recently been announced and adhered to by the British Prize Court in the case of the Zamora. It is manifest, therefore, that if Prize Courts are bound by the laws and regulations under which seizures and detentions are made, and which claimants allege are in contravention of the law of nations, those Courts are powerless to pass upon the real ground of complaint, or to give redress for wrongs of this nature. Nevertheless, it is seriously suggested that claimants are free to request the Prize Court to rule upon a claim of conflict between an Order in Council and a rule of international law. How can a tribunal fettered in its jurisdiction and procedure by municipal enactments declare itself emancipated from their restrictions, and at liberty to apply the rules of international law with freedom? The very laws and regulations which bind the Court are now matters of dispute between the Government of the United States and that of His Britannic Majesty. If Great Britain followed, as she declares that she did, the course of first referring claimants to local remedies in cases arising out of American wars, it is presumed that she did so because of her knowledge or understanding that the United States had not sought to limit the jurisdiction of its Courts of Prize by instructions and regulations violative of the law and practice of nations, or open to such objection.

27. Your note of the 10th February states that His Majesty’s Government in the American Civil War:—

The Government of the United States recalls that, during the progress of that war, Great Britain in several instances demanded, through diplomatic channels, damages for seizures and detentions of British ships alleged to have been made without legal justification. Among these may be mentioned the cases of the Magicienne, the Don Jose, the Labuan, and the Saxon. Two of these cases were, at the time the demands were made, before American Prize Courts for adjudication. It is understood also that during the Boer War, when British authorities seized the German vessels, the Hertzog, the General, and the Bundesrath, and released them without prize proceedings, compensation for damages suffered was arranged through diplomatic channels.

DAMAGE TO TRADE.

28. There is, furthermore, a real and far-reaching injury for which Prize Courts offer no means of reparation. It is the disastrous effect of the methods of the Allied Governments upon the general right of the United States to enjoy its international trade free from unusual and arbitrary limitations imposed by belligerent nations. Unwarranted delay and expense in bringing vessels into port for search and investigation upon mere suspicion has a deterrent effect upon trade ventures, however lawful they may be, which cannot be adequately measured in damages. The menace of interference with legal commerce causes vessels to be withdrawn from their usual trade routes and insurance on vessels and cargoes to be refused, while exporters for the same reason are unable or unwilling to send their goods to foreign markets, and importers dare not buy commodities abroad because of fear of their illegal seizure or because they are unable to procure transportation. For such injuries there can be no remedy through the medium of Courts established to adjust claims for goods detained or condemned. For specific injuries suffered by private interests Prize Courts, if they are free to apply the law of nations, might mete out an adequate indemnity, but for the injury to the trade of a nation by the menace of unwarranted interference with its lawful and established pursuit, there can manifestly be found no remedy in the Prize Courts of Great Britain to which United States citizens are referred for redress.

ILLEGAL EXERCISE OF FORCE.

29. There is another ground why American citizens cannot submit their wrongs arising out of undue detentions and seizures to British Prize Courts for reparation, which I cannot pass over unnoticed. It is the manner in which British Courts obtain jurisdiction of such cases. The jurisdiction over merchant vessels on the high seas is that of the nation whose flag it rightfully flies. This is a principle of the law and practice of nations fundamental to the freedom of the high seas. Municipal enactments of a belligerent Power cannot confer jurisdiction over or establish rules of evidence governing the legality of seizures of vessels of neutral nationality on the high seas.

International law alone controls the exercise of the belligerent right to seize and detain such vessels. Municipal laws and regulations in violation of the international rights of another nation cannot be extended to the vessels of the latter on the high seas so as to justify a belligerent nation bringing them into its ports, and, having illegally brought them within its territorial jurisdiction, compelling them to submit to the domestic laws and regulations of that nation. Jurisdiction obtained in such a manner is contrary to those principles of justice and equity which all nations should respect. Such practice should invalidate any disposition by a municipal Court of property thus brought before it. The Government of the United States has, therefore, viewed with surprise and concern the attempt of His Majesty’s Government to confer upon the British Prize Courts jurisdiction by this illegal exercise of force in order that these Courts may apply to vessels and cargoes of neutral nationalities, seized on the high seas, municipal laws and orders which can only rightfully be enforceable within the territorial waters of Great Britain, or against vessels of British nationality when on the high seas.

30. In these circumstances the United States Government feel that it cannot reasonably be expected to advise its citizens to seek redress before tribunals which are, in its opinion, unauthorized by the unrestricted application of international law to grant reparation, nor to refrain from presenting their claims directly to the British Government through diplomatic channels.

31. My Government is advised that vessels and cargoes brought in for examination prior to prize proceedings are released only upon condition that costs and expenses incurred in the course of such unwarranted procedure, such as pilotage, wharfage, demurrage, harbour dues, warehouseage, unlading costs, etc., be paid by the claimants or on condition that they sign a waiver of right to bring subsequent claims against the British Government for these exactions. My Government is loth to believe that such ungenerous treatment will continue to be accorded American citizens by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, but in order that the position of the United States Government may be clearly understood, I take this opportunity to inform you that my Government denies that the charges incident to such detentions are rightfully imposed upon innocent trade, or that any waiver of indemnity exacted from American citizens under such conditions of duress can preclude them from obtaining redress through diplomatic channels, or by whatever other means may be open to them.

32. Before closing this note, in which frequent reference is made to contraband traffic and contraband articles, it is necessary, in order to avoid possible misconstruction, that it should be clearly understood by His Majesty’s Government that there is no intention in this discussion to commit the Government of the United States to a policy of waiving any objection which it may entertain as to the propriety and right of the British Government to include in their list of contraband of war certain articles which have been so included. The United States Government reserves the right to make this matter the subject of a communication to His Majesty’s Government on a later day.

SUMMARY OF OBJECTIONS.

33. I believe it has been conclusively shown that the methods sought to be employed by Great Britain to obtain and use evidence of enemy destination of cargoes bound for neutral ports and to impose a contraband character upon such cargoes are without justification; that the blockade, upon which such methods are partly founded, is ineffective, illegal, and indefensible; that the judicial procedure offered as a means of reparation for an international injury is inherently defective for the purpose; and that in many cases jurisdiction is asserted in violation of the law of nations. The United States, therefore, cannot submit to the curtailment of its neutral rights by these measures, which are admittedly retaliatory, and therefore illegal, in conception and in nature, and intended to punish the enemies of Great Britain for alleged illegalities on their part. The United States might not be in a position to object to them if its interests and the interests of all neutrals were unaffected by them, but, being affected, it cannot with complacence suffer further subordination of its rights and interests to the plea that the exceptional geographic position of the enemies of Great Britain require or justify oppressive and illegal practices.

34. The Government of the United States desires, therefore, to impress most earnestly upon His Majesty’s Government that it must insist that the relations between it and His Majesty’s Government be governed, not by a policy of expediency, but by those established rules of international conduct upon which Great Britain in the past has held the United States to account when the latter nation was a belligerent engaged in a struggle for national existence. It is of the highest importance to neutrals, not only of the present day but of the future, that the principles of international right be maintained unimpaired.

35. This task of championing the integrity of neutral rights, which have received the sanction of the civilized world against the lawless conduct of belligerents arising out of the bitterness of the great conflict which is now wasting the countries of Europe, the United States unhesitatingly assumes, and to the accomplishment of that task it will devote its energies, exercising always that impartiality which from the outbreak of the war it has sought to exercise in its relations with the warring nations.

Pursuant to my instructions I have the honour to enclose as supplements to this note the United States Navy Order of the 18th August 1862, and a statement regarding vessels detained by British authorities.

I have the honour to be,

With the highest consideration,

Sir,

Your most obedient humble servant,

Walter Hines Page.

THE BRITISH BLOCKADE POLICY.

(The following statement was issued on January 4, 1915,
as a White Paper.)

1. The object of this memorandum is to give an account of the manner in which the sea power of the British Empire has been used during the present war for the purpose of intercepting Germany’s imports and exports.

I.—Belligerent Rights at Sea.

2. The means by which a belligerent who possesses a fleet has, up to the time of the present war, interfered with the commerce of his enemy are three in number:—

3. The second of these powers has been cut down since the Napoleonic wars by the Declaration of Paris of 1856, under which enemy goods on a neutral ship, with the exception of contraband of war, were exempted from capture. Enemy goods which had been loaded on British or Allied ships before the present war were seized in large quantities immediately after its outbreak; but for obvious reasons such shipments ceased, for all practical purposes, after August 4, 1914, and this particular method of injuring the enemy may, therefore, for the moment, be disregarded.

No blockade of Germany was declared until March 1915, and therefore up to that date we had to rely exclusively on the right to capture contraband.

II.--Contraband.

4. By the established classification goods are divided into three classes:—

5. Under the law of contraband, goods in the first class may be seized if they can be proved to be going to the enemy country; goods in the second class may be seized if they can be proved to be going to the enemy Government or its armed forces; goods in the third class must be allowed to pass free. As to the articles which fall within any particular one of these classes, there has been no general agreement in the past, and the attempts of belligerents to enlarge the first class at the expense of the second, and the second at the expense of the third, have led to considerable friction with neutrals.

6. Under the rules of prize law, as laid down and administered by Lord Stowell, goods were not regarded as destined for an enemy country unless they were to be discharged in a port in that country; but the American Prize Courts in the Civil War found themselves compelled by the then existing conditions of commerce to apply and develop the doctrine of continuous voyage, under which goods which could be proved to be ultimately intended for an enemy country were not exempted from seizure on the ground that they were first to be discharged in an intervening neutral port. This doctrine, although hotly contested by many publicists, had never been challenged by the British Government, and was more or less recognized as having become part of International Law.

7. When the present war broke out it was thought convenient, in order, among other things, to secure uniformity of procedure among all the Allied forces, to declare the principles of International Law which the Allied Governments regarded as applicable to contraband and other matters. Accordingly, by the Orders in Council of August 20 and October 22, 1914, and the corresponding French Decrees, the rules set forth in the Declaration of London were adopted by the French and British Governments with certain modifications. As to contraband, the lists of contraband and free goods in the Declaration were rejected, and the doctrine of continuous voyage was applied not only to absolute contraband, as the Declaration already provided, but also to conditional contraband, if such goods were consigned to order, or if the papers did not show the consignee of the goods, or if they showed a consignee in enemy territory.

8. The situation as regards German trade was as follows: Direct trade to German ports (save across the Baltic) had almost entirely ceased, and practically no ships were met with bound to German ports. The supplies that Germany desired to import from overseas were directed to neutral ports in Scandinavia, Holland, or (at first) Italy, and every effort was made to disguise their real destination. The power which we had to deal with this situation in the circumstances then existing was:—

9. On the other hand, there was no power to seize articles of conditional contraband if they could not be shown to be destined for the enemy Government or its armed forces, or non-contraband articles, even if they were on their way to a port in Germany, and there was no power to stop German exports.

10. That was the situation until the actions of the German Government led to the adoption of more extended powers of intercepting German commerce in March 1915. The Allied Governments then decided to stop all goods which could be proved to be going to, or coming from, Germany. The state of things produced is in effect a blockade, adapted to the condition of modern war and commerce, the only difference in operation being that the goods seized are not necessarily confiscated. In these circumstances it will be convenient, in considering the treatment of German imports and exports, to omit any further reference to the nature of the commodities in question as, once their destination or origin is established, the power to stop them is complete. Our contraband rights, however, remain unaffected, though they, too, depend on the ability to prove enemy destination.

III.—German Exports.

11. In carrying out our blockade policy great importance was from the outset attached to the stoppage of the enemy’s export trade, because it is clear that to the extent that his exports can be stopped, and his power to establish credits for himself in neutral countries curtailed, his imports from such neutral countries will more or less automatically diminish. The identification of articles of enemy origin is, thanks to the system of certificates of origin which has been established, a comparatively simple matter, and the degree to which the policy of stopping German and Austrian oversea exports has been successful can best be judged by looking at the statistics of German and Austrian imports into America.

12. The normal imports into the United States of America from Germany and Austria, before the war, for the seven months March to September inclusive, are valued approximately and in round figures at $124,000,000 (£24,800,000). From March to September inclusive, this year’s imports into the United States of America from those countries were valued at approximately 22,000,000 dollars (£4,400,000). This sum includes the goods which were already in neutral ports in the way of shipment or in transit when the further measures adopted by the Allied Governments were announced in March, and also a considerable proportion of those which have been allowed to pass in the circumstances mentioned in paragraph 14. A certain amount is also to be accounted for by goods received from Germany and Austria by parcel post, which it was not originally possible to stop effectively. Steps have now been taken to close this channel to enemy exports. The latest returns available, those for September, show that over 92 per cent. of the German exports to the United States of America have been stopped.

13. The above figures allow of but one conclusion: the oversea exports of Germany and Austria are very near extinction. It is of special interest to note that in the main these exports have not been merely diverted to the neutral countries adjacent to Germany. The imports which those countries have received from Germany have not in fact exceeded the normal quantities of previous years.

14. The object of the policy being to injure the enemy, the Allied Governments have in certain cases permitted the export of goods which had been ordered before March 1, and had been either paid for prior to that date or ordered before that date on terms which rendered the neutral purchaser liable to pay whether the goods reached him or not. It is clear that in these cases no harm would be done to the enemy, or pressure put upon him, by not allowing the goods to pass. On the contrary, he would, if that were done, both receive his price and retain the goods and their possible use. The total value of the goods with which the Allied Governments have undertaken not to interfere in such cases up to the end of 1915 is approximately £3,000,000. If the goods allowed to pass under this arrangement were deducted from the total enemy exports to the United States of America, it would be seen that the amount of German exports which serve to increase the resources of the enemy is almost negligible.

IV.—German Imports.

15. As regards German imports, however, the problem is much more complicated. Its central difficulty is that of distinguishing between goods with an enemy destination from those with a genuine neutral destination. A belligerent who makes use of his naval power to intercept the commerce of his enemy has to justify his action in each particular case before a Prize Court, which is bound by international law and not by the ordinary law of the country in which it sits. It is not sufficient for him to stop a neutral vessel and remove from her such articles as he may believe to be intended for his enemy; it is necessary subsequently to demonstrate in a court of law that the destination of the goods was such as to justify the belligerent in seizing them. If this is not proved, the goods will be released, and damages may be awarded against the captor. It must also be remembered that, in order to justify the seizure of a particular consignment, it is necessary to satisfy the Prize Court of the enemy destination of that consignment, and evidence of a general nature, if unaccompanied by proofs directly bearing on a particular case, is not enough. All this applies as much to goods seized as contraband as it does to those seized for breach of blockade.

16. In earlier wars the production of the necessary proof was a comparatively simple matter. Owing to the difficulties of inland transport before the introduction of railways, goods for the enemy country were usually carried to ports in that country, and the ship’s papers showed their destination. When, therefore, the ship had been captured, the papers found on board were generally sufficient to dispose of the case. In the old cases of contraband, the question at issue was usually not where the goods were in fact going to, but whether their nature was such as to make them liable to condemnation in view of the destination shown on the ship’s papers. Even in the American Civil War the difficulty of proving destination was usually not serious, because the neutral harbours through which the supply of goods for the Confederate States was carried on were in normal time ports of comparatively small importance, and it could be shown that in normal times there was no local market for goods of such quantities and character.

17. The case has been far different in the present war. The goods which Germany attempts to import are consigned to neutral ports, and it need hardly be said that the papers on board convey no suggestion as to their ultimate destination. The conditions of modern commerce offer almost infinite opportunities of concealing the real nature of a transaction, and every device which the ingenuity of the persons concerned, or their lawyers, could suggest has been employed to give to shipments intended for Germany the appearance of genuine transactions with a neutral country. The ports to which the goods are consigned, such as Rotterdam and Copenhagen, have in peace time an important trade, which increases the difficulty of distinguishing the articles ultimately intended to reach the enemy country from those which represent importation into the neutral country concerned for its own requirements. If action had to be taken solely on such information as might be gathered by the boarding officer on his visit to the ship, it would have been quite impossible to interfere to an appreciable extent with German imports, and the Allied Governments would therefore have been deprived of a recognized belligerent right.

18. In these circumstances, unless the Allied Governments were prepared to seize and place in the Prize Court the whole of the cargo of every ship which was on her way to a neutral country adjacent to Germany, and to face the consequences of such action, the only course open to them was to discover some test by which goods destined for the enemy could be distinguished from those which were intended for neutral consumption.

19. The first plan adopted for this purpose is to make use of every source of information available in order to discover the real destination of sea-borne goods, and to exercise to the full the right of stopping such goods as the information obtained showed to be suspect, while making a genuine and honest attempt to distinguish between bona fide neutral trade and trade which, although in appearance equally innocent, was in fact carried on with the enemy country.

20. For this purpose a considerable organization has been established in the Contraband Committee, which sits at the Foreign Office, and works in close touch with the Admiralty, Board of Trade, and War Trade Department. Nearly every ship on her way to Scandinavian or Dutch ports comes or is sent into a British port for examination, and every item of her cargo is immediately considered in the light of all the information which has been collected from the various sources open to the Government, and which, after nearly a year and a half of war, is very considerable. Any items of cargo as to which it appears that there is a reasonable ground for suspecting an enemy destination are placed in the Prize Court, while articles as to the destination of which there appears to be doubt are detained pending further investigation.

21. If, however, this were all that could be done, there is little doubt that it would be impossible to effect a complete cutting off of the enemy’s supplies. For instance, there are many cases in which it would be difficult to establish in the Prize Court our right to stop goods, although they or their products, perhaps after passing through several hands, would in all probability ultimately reach the enemy. To indicate more plainly the nature of these difficulties would obviously be to assist the enemy and the neutral traders who desire to supply him; but the difficulties exist, and, in order to meet them, it has been necessary to adopt other means by which neutral may be more easily distinguished from enemy trade, and the blockade of Germany made more effective than it would be if we relied solely on the right to stop goods which could be proved to be intended for the enemy.

V.—Guarantees by Importers.

22. Importers in neutral countries adjacent to Germany have found that the exercise of our belligerent rights to some extent impedes the importation of articles which they genuinely need for the requirements of their own country, and consequently they have in many cases shown willingness to make agreements with this country which on the one hand secure their receiving the supplies which they need, while on the other guaranteeing to us that goods allowed to pass under the terms of the agreement will not reach the enemy. The neutral Governments themselves have as a rule considered it inadvisable to make agreements on such points with His Majesty’s Government; they have on the whole confined their action to prohibiting the export of certain articles which it was necessary for them to import from abroad. Inasmuch, however, as in most cases they reserved the right to grant exemptions from such prohibitions, and as trade between the Scandinavian countries themselves was usually excluded from the scope of such measures, the mere fact of the existence of such prohibitions could not be considered a sufficient safeguard that commodities entering the country would not ultimately reach Germany.

23. In some neutral countries, however, agreements have been made by representative associations of merchants, the basis of which is that the associations guarantee that articles consigned to or guaranteed by them, and their products, will not reach the enemy in any form, while His Majesty’s Government undertake not to interfere with shipments consigned to the association, subject to their right to institute prize proceedings in exceptional cases where there is evidence that an attempt has been made to perpetrate a fraud upon the association, and to pass the goods ultimately through to Germany. The first of these agreements was made with the Netherlands Oversea Trust, and similar agreements, either general or dealing with particular commodities of special importance, such as rubber and cotton, have been made with bodies of merchants in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland. The details of these agreements it is impossible to give more fully, but the general principle is that the associations, before allowing goods to be consigned to them, require the would-be receivers to satisfy them, by undertakings backed by sufficient pecuniary penalties, that the goods will not leave the country, either in their original shape or after any process of manufacture, and notwithstanding any sales of which they may be the subject.

In some cases these agreements provide that the associations shall themselves be bound to detain or return goods believed by His Majesty’s Government to be destined for the enemy; so that it does not follow that cargoes allowed to proceed to a neutral port will necessarily be delivered to the consignees.

24. The existence of such agreements is of great value in connection with the right of seizure, because the fact of articles not being consigned to or guaranteed by the association, or being consigned to it without the necessary consent, at once raises the presumption that they are destined for the enemy.

VI.—Agreements with Shipping Lines.

25. Delays caused by the elaborate exercise of the belligerent right of visit and search are very irksome to shipping; and many shipping lines who carry on regular services with Scandinavia and Holland have found it well worth their while to make agreements with His Majesty’s Government under which they engage to meet our requirements with regard to goods carried by them, in return for an undertaking that their ships will be delayed for as short a time as possible for examination in British ports. Several agreements of this kind have been made; the general principle of them is that His Majesty’s Government obtain the right to require any goods carried by the line, if not discharged in the British port of examination, to be either returned to this country for Prize Court proceedings, or stored in the country of destination until the end of the war, or only handed to the consignees under stringent guarantees that they or their products will not reach the enemy. The companies obtain the necessary power to comply with these conditions by means of a special clause inserted in all their bills of lading, and the course selected by the British authorities is determined by the nature of the goods and the circumstances of the case. In addition to this, some of these companies make a practice, before accepting consignments of certain goods, of inquiring whether their carriage is likely to lead to difficulties, and of refusing to carry them in cases where it is intimated that such would be the case. The control which His Majesty’s Government are in a position to exercise under these agreements over goods carried on the lines in question is of very great value.

VII.—Bunker Coal.

26. Much use has been made recently of the power which the British Government are in a position to exercise owing to their ability to refuse bunker coal to neutral ships in ports in the British Empire. Bunker coal is now only supplied to neutral vessels whose owners are willing to comply with certain conditions which ensure that no vessels owned, chartered, or controlled by them trade with any port in an enemy country, or carry any cargo which proceeds from, or is destined for, an enemy country. The number of owners who accept these conditions increases almost daily. The use of this weapon has already induced several shipping lines which before the war maintained regular services between Scandinavian and German Baltic ports to abandon their services.

VIII.—Agreements in respect of Particular Commodities.

27. Special agreements have been made in respect of particular articles the supply of which is mainly derived from the British Empire or over which the British Government are in a position to exercise control. The articles covered by such agreements, the object of which is to secure such control over the supply of these materials as will ensure that they or their products will not reach the enemy, are rubber, copper, wool, hides, oil, tin, plumbago, and certain other metals.

IX.—Rationing.

28. Though the safeguards already described do much to stop entirely all trade to and from Germany, yet, in spite of all of them, goods may and do reach our enemies, and, on the other hand, considerable inconvenience is caused to genuinely neutral trade. It is to avoid both evils that His Majesty’s Government have for months past advocated what is called rationing, as by far the soundest system both for neutrals and belligerents. It is an arrangement by which the import of any given article into a neutral country is limited to the amount of its true domestic requirements. The best way of carrying this arrangement into effect is probably by agreement with some body representing either one particular trade or the whole commerce of the country. Without such an agreement there is always a risk that, in spite of all precautions, the whole rationed amount of imports may be secured by traders who are really German agents. These imports might go straight on to Germany, and there would then be great practical difficulty in dealing with the next imports destined, it may be, for genuine neutral traders. If they were to be stopped, there would be great complaint of injustice to neutrals, and yet unless that be done the system would break down. Accordingly, agreements of this kind have been concluded in various countries, and His Majesty’s Government are not without hope that they may be considerably extended in the future. Even so the security is not perfect. An importer may always let his own countrymen go short and re-export to Germany. The temptation to do so is great, and as our blockade forces prices up is increasing. But the amount that gets through in this way cannot be large, and the system is in its working so simple that it minimizes the delays and other inconveniences to neutral commerce inseparable from war. Of the details of these arrangements it is impossible to speak. But their principle appears to offer the most hopeful solution of the complicated problems arising from the necessity of exercising our blockade through neutral countries.

X.—Results.

29. As to the results of the policy described in this memorandum, the full facts are not available. But some things are clear. It has already been shown that the export trade of Germany has been substantially destroyed. With regard to imports, it is believed that some of the most important, such as cotton, wool, and rubber, have for many months been excluded from Germany. Others, like fats and oils and dairy produce, can only be obtained there, if at all, at famine prices. All accounts, public and private, which reach His Majesty’s Government agree in stating that there is considerable discontent amongst sections of the German population, and there appear to have been food riots in some of the larger towns. That our blockade prevents any commodities from reaching Germany is not, and under the geographical circumstances cannot be true. But it is already successful to a degree which good judges both here and in Germany thought absolutely impossible, and its efficiency is growing day by day. It is right to add that these results have been obtained without any serious friction with any neutral Government. There are obvious objections to dwelling on the importance to us of the good will of neutral nations; but any one who considers the geographical, military, and commercial situation of the various countries will certainly not underrate the value of this consideration. There is great danger when dealing with international questions in concentrating attention exclusively on one point in them, even if that point be as vital as is undoubtedly the blockade of Germany.

XI.—Conclusion.

30. To sum up, the policy which has been adopted in order to enforce the blockade of Germany may be described as follows:—

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN.

Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

Maps have been moved to the nearest paragraph break.

Some regimental names of the form “1/x”. The “1” signifies a first line regiment. “2/x” indicates a second line regiment.

A cover was created for this eBook which is placed in the public domain.

[The end of Nelson's History of the War Vol. XI by John Buchan]