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THE IMPORTANCE OF SALONICA

has never had numerical superiority, or anything like it, in fighting men. On paper we have nursed one illusion after another. In sober fact, the Bulgarians have always been able to hold their own because our forces have been "starved" politically; and the only real exploit has been that of the Serbs, but for whose capture of KajmakĨalan (heights of 8,000 feet) in the teeth of every strategic and physical disadvantage even Monastir would still be in Bulgarian hands. Our present tactics place an unduly heavy burden upon the most sorely tried of all our Allies, and if pursued indefinitely, threaten the Serbian army with extinction before the end of the war.

It is his knowledge that there is powerful opposition in the West to placing the Salonica Expedition on a sound footing that lies at the root of King Constantine's attitude to the Entente, and has produced chaos in Greece. But the "starvation" policy of extreme Westerners (we repeat, we are all of us Westerners) is also very largely responsible for the "Roumanian blunder." Roumania's entry into the war was sheer insanity unless the Russians were ready to pour masses of troops through the Dobrudja and General Sarrail to make a simultaneous advance in force from Salonica. The fact that neither of these two elementary and essential steps was taken reflects equally upon the political and the military policy of the Entente, and proves that an entirely new outlook upon the war is needed in very high quarters if victory is to be assured. When at length there was a Balkan advance, it came two whole months too late, and lacked from the first the means necessary for success. A strong offensive from the South might have prevented Mackensen from pushing home in Roumania; but he was, of course, acting upon full knowledge of its impossibility in view of the limitations imposed upon Sarrail.

Now that prolonged neglect has prevented the Salonica Expedition from achieving much more than a negative success, those who have hampered and opposed it at every turn are now adding insult to injury by advocating its com- plete withdrawal. Such a proposal is the very culmination of that inability to take wide views and envisage Europe as a whole which has been the secret of our failure hitherto. The life-interests of our Allies make abandonment unthinkable, and as Austria Hungary's exhaustion progresses, the presence of a Southern army, ready to create a diversion when the

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