These tragic events as they swiftly developed produced emotion in the British Cabinet. Ever since the end of September there had been an intense desire among many of its leading members to save Serbia. Greece was by treaty bound to come to the assistance of her neighbour against a Bulgarian attack. But Greece, torn between the diverging sympathies of King Constantine and the Prime Minister, Venizelos, had no mind to plunge into the storm. The Greco-Serbian agreement had stipulated that the Serbians should assign 150,000 men to defend their southern province, and as these were all engaged against the Germans in the north, it was easy to declare that the casus fœderis had not arisen. The British and French Cabinets, animating each other, now saw the means of breaking off the attack upon Gallipoli and using the troops landed at Suvla Bay to stimulate Greek resolution and rescue the Serbs. At the end of September one French and one British division were shipped from the peninsula. After tangled negotiations they were landed at Salonica on October 5 upon the withdrawn invitation of Venizelos and the forthcoming protest of King Constantine. General Sarrail arrived from France to take command in this new theatre.
From the moment the Serbian government had realized the extent of their danger M. Pashitch had been ceaseless in his cries for help. The western Allies must send him 150,000 men or all was certainly lost. At the very least, he urged that the Allies should clear the railway-line and secure the escape of the Serbian army. The politicians then in the ascendant in London were eager to comply; but the General Staffs of Britain and France proved decisively that such an operation was not physically possible. The rolling-stock and capacity of the Salonica railway could not carry an army of such numbers and its supplies into Serbia within six or seven weeks. A single French regiment was for a moment to be sent to Nish and the streets were pathetically decorated to welcome them. Less sentimental counsels soon prevailed, and the western Allies declared they could only move northwards when they had concentrated an adequate force. The Bulgarians who had cut the railway at Veles caused the precipitate retreat of a French detachment which had ventured across the Greek frontier.
At first, during these painful days, the General Staffs had assured their governments that the real relief for Serbia would come from the great offensives of Artois and Champagne. They could not believe that in the face of such a threat, still less during the actual battle, the Germans could find any serious force to attack Serbia. Once the conflict was joined in the west, they were sure everything else would fade into insignificance. When this hope proved visionary, the only course which was considered was the breaking off of all offensive operations at Gallipoli, in order to reinforce Salonica. Whatever this policy might, or might not achieve, it obviously could bring no aid to Serbia in time.
The only chance of preventing the Bulgarians from declaring war was the use of the British fleet and French squadron to force the Dardanelles. The defences of the Straits had not only not been replenished with heavy shells and ammunition, but a large proportion of their mobile armament had been drawn into the fighting on the Gallipoli Peninsula. At any time during September a resolute attack on the forts, and the sweeping or breaking of the mine-fields, offered good prospects of success. The entry of the fleet into the Marmara would have destroyed the communications of the Turkish army in Gallipoli, and would almost inevitably have entailed their surrender. Failure would have meant heavy losses in the old and obsolete ships of which the fleet was solely composed, as well as the deaths of several thousand sailors. In spite of the vehement appeals of Admiral Keyes, Chief of the Naval Staff at the Dardanelles, who actually resigned his position and proceeded to London to plead his cause, the Admiralty would not face the responsibility of ordering the attempt.
I marvelled much in those sad days at the standard of values and sense of proportion which prevailed among our politicians and naval and military authorities. The generals were so confident of breaking the line in France that they gathered masses of cavalry behind the assaulting troops to ride through the huge gaps they expected to open on the hostile front. To sacrifice a quarter of a million men in such an affair seemed to them the highest military wisdom. That was the orthodox doctrine of war; even if it did not succeed, no error or breach of the rules would have been committed. But to lose one hundredth part as many sailors and a dozen old ships, all of which were in any case to be put on the Mother Bank in a few months’ time, with the possibility of gaining an inestimable prize—there, was a risk before which the boldest uniformed grey-head stood appalled. The Admiralty and Generals had their way. The fleet continued idle at the Dardanelles. The armies shattered themselves against the German defence in France. The Bulgarians carried an army of 300,000 men to join our enemies; and Serbia as a factor in the war was obliterated. I found it unendurable to remain participant in such crimes against truth and reason.
No hope remained to the Serbian army and government but escape. Nish fell on November 5. The left of the Bulgarian Second Army was now advancing northward from Veles along the railway. At the other extreme an Austrian division invading from Bosnia had approached Vishegrad. The three armies of Mackensen now in one line drove all before them. The Serbian forces pressed together, retreated to the south and west carrying with them Prince Alexander, now become Regent, the civil government, the prostrated Voivode Putnik in a litter, a multitude of women and children and the 24,000 Austrian prisoners—hostages perhaps—they had captured from Potiorek in 1914. By the middle of November they had reached Kosovo Polye, the Field of the Blackbirds, where the earlier agony of their race had been endured. Although the valiant defence of the defile of Kachanik by two Serbian divisions had prevented the Second Bulgarian Army from making a complete encirclement, all chance of cutting a way out to the south was gone. The sole resource was flight in the depth of winter across the mountain tracks of Albania to the Adriatic and to the fleets of the Allies. At Prishtina the women and children were left behind and the remnants of the army, and as it seemed of the nation, ragged, exhausted, almost starving, with their last cartridges, plunged into the savage Albanian defiles, where dwelt a race their equal in fierceness and hunger.
The Germans and Austrians disdained to follow these remnants farther; but the Bulgarians, spurred by racial vengeance, pursued the melting columns like ferocious wolves. After harsh privations and the deaths of thousands from famine and exposure, 150,000 men, half of whom still preserved their military formation, arrived on the seacoast at the port of San Giovanni di Medua. They were still in possession of 100 guns and of their 24,000 prisoners. Out of 425,000 men comprising the entire manhood of the country, borne on the ration-strength of the Serbian army at the beginning of October, over 100,000 had been killed or wounded. One hundred and sixty thousand more together with 900 guns had been captured by the enemy. The survivors had still a hard pilgrimage before they found sanctuary. San Giovanni di Medua was too near to the Austrian fleet at Pola to serve as a port of embarkation. During the whole of December the Serbians were toiling down the Adriatic coast painfully, and ultimately the survivors were transported to the island of Corfu.
To celebrate these triumphs King Ferdinand entertained the Kaiser at a banquet in Nish. It was January 18, the 215th anniversary of the coronation of Frederick I as King of Prussia and of the institution of the Order of the Black Eagle. It was the 45th anniversary of the foundation of the German Empire. The guest, the scene and the occasion stirred the romanticism by which King Ferdinand was so often moved. Twice in the hopes of aggrandizement had he staked the Bulgarian Crown and people. Now, sure that victory had been won, he pronounced in the language, pomp and ruthless spirit of the Roman age, the following invocation:
‘Ave Imperator, Caesar et Rex. Vicor et gloriosus es. Nissa antiqua omnes Orientis populi te salutant redemptorem, ferentem oppressis prosperitatem atque salutem.’
‘Hail Emperor, Caesar and King. Thou art victor and glorious. In ancient Nish all the peoples of the East salute thee, the redeemer, bringing to the oppressed prosperity and salvation.’
CHAPTER XXII
FALKENHAYN RETURNS TO THE WEST
Christmas had come again and Falkenhayn and Conrad surveyed the results of a crimson year. They had good cause to be thankful. The situation was transformed: Russia was broken, the Eastern Front stood almost everywhere on Russian soil. The whole strategic apparatus of the Russian defences, fortresses, railways and river-lines had passed into German hands. The enormous armies which a year before threatened East Prussia, Silesia and Hungary with invasion, had recoiled in awful slaughter and defeat. Austria, her territory freed, her armies sustained by German interpolations, had been able not only to play her part against Russia, but to ward off with considerable ease the once-dreaded Italian attack. The danger of a hostile Balkan confederacy was at an end. Serbia had been physically destroyed alike as a military factor and as a state. Bulgaria, showing herself convinced of German victory, had become an ally. A road had been opened to Turkey. A train could run from Hamburg to Baghdad across 2,200 miles of the earth’s surface all under the control of Germany. The mere prospect of munitions streaming to the Dardanelles and Gallipoli had been sufficient to induce the British to evacuate the Peninsula in the ruin of all their hopes and sacrifice. The powerful force they had sent to the Mediterranean could now be contained by the Bulgarians in front of Salonica. Twenty divisions of the Turkish army released from the struggle upon Gallipoli were now free to threaten Egypt, to turn the tables in Mesopotamia, and to press the Russians in the Caucasus and Galicia. Fifteen British and five French divisions were for more than six months virtually out of action on the one side, and an almost equal reinforcement had been gained by the other. The balance between the opposing forces had been altered in Germany’s favour to the extent of nearly 40 divisions or half the army of a first-class power. ‘The year 1915,’ says the Austrian writer Tschuppik, ‘had opened gloomily, but it ended with the spectacle of military successes on a scale such as Europe had not seen even in Napoleon’s time. The great change in the situation on the fronts roused a warlike spirit in Austria.’
Meanwhile in the West all the French and British attacks had been repulsed decisively with ghastly loss to the assailants, and 2¼ million Germans seemed able to hold in a deadlock nearly 3½ million Allied enemies. The will-power of the two Western democracies was still undaunted; the military strength of the British Empire still continued to grow steadily; the British command of the seas was still unchallenged; but it was not easy to discern how their purposes could be achieved. Victory seemed as far from their reach as peace from their resolves. Great strategic manœuvres against the Teutonic flanks in the Mediterranean or the Baltic were no longer open to them. There remained only gigantic frontal attacks upon the German fortified lines in France, and even for this many months of preparation must be required. When Falkenhayn contrasted this situation with the plight of Germany and Austria after the battles of the Marne and Lemberg, he had reason to be proud of his fifteen months’ supreme command.
Moreover, in the personal sphere his position had been entirely restored. He had reasserted his authority over HL. He had matched their tactical victory of Tannenberg with the far greater strategic consequences of Gorlice-Tarnow. His successes in the south-east against Serbia, rallying Bulgaria and frustrating the enterprise against the Dardanelles, had more than met the political requirements of the German Chancellor and Foreign Office. Bethmann-Hollweg had been detached from Hindenburg, and HL were in eclipse. The power to take the great point of view no longer lay with them. They were condemned to local operations against a frozen Russia, already in German opinion adjudged defeated. Their suggestions in the field of general war direction could now be regarded with the smile of superior achievement and knowledge, as well as with the hard stare of superior authority. They might brood on this in their winter quarters at Kovno. They might complain that the great opportunity to finish with Russia once and for all in 1915 had been lost. But Falkenhayn was lord of the ascendant. He alone held the baton and wore the laurel.
GENERAL VON FALKENHAYN
However, Falkenhayn rated his good fortune and services lower than did his Imperial Master, his own staff or the German people and their allies. He had been drawn to the East against his will. He had prospered beyond his hopes. He had been forced to quit the decisive theatre. He had been over-ruled into success. He was ‘vainqueur malgré lui.’ The brilliant operations which had restored the Teutonic cause were to his eye only of a secondary and even a meretricious character. As he had always said, they could never produce final results. The Russian army had escaped, as he had always predicted, that general encirclement at which Hindenburg would have aimed. Russia was still a first-class military factor. Her munitions crisis was passing, her front was everywhere maintained, and behind it lay indefinite distance and unlimited man-power. The Grand Duke dismissed, Warsaw taken, Serbia crushed, Bulgaria rallied, the Dardanelles expedition wrecked, and the British and French repulsed in Artois and Champagne—all these together could not compare in his mind with a successful German offensive in the West. There alone, in his conception, lay the hope of victory. Thither, now that he had regained his authority, would he return with all his strength. Unchanged in his convictions alike by his disasters at Ypres and on the Yser in 1914, or by his victories in the east and south-east in 1915, Falkenhayn now without apparent hesitation resolved upon a grand attack in France.
Those profound misunderstandings of the character of the war and misjudgments of its moral and technical factors, which led this soldier of genius but convention into so fatal an error, deserve closer examination. Between armies of anything like equal fibre an offensive requires superior numbers. Germany in 1916 could not hope to marshal superior numbers. On the contrary, she could never exceed in the West two-thirds of the forces of the Allies. Even with moderately superior numbers the strength of the defensive was at this time invincible. The French had found in Champagne that no massing of divisions and guns, no resources of valour, training or preparation could prevail. Even two German divisions, when attacked by nearly twenty French, had resisted long enough for reinforcements to be brought to prevent the threatened breach. Falkenhayn had seen the magnitude of their efforts and of their failure, yet he was unchanged in his view. German troops and German methods would succeed where others had failed, and succeed even in the teeth of equal weapons and more numerous armies. He woefully underrated the morale and fighting qualities of his French and British opponents. He imagined political reactions in Paris and London as the result of a German onslaught, almost the reverse of those which were in fact produced. He ignored the unfavourable impression which the failure of Germany to gain complete success would produce upon an increasingly adverse world. He does not seem to have appreciated how easily even a most successful attack would be brought to a standstill after a few miles, nor that those who had lost ground would nevertheless be the victors if the battle were prolonged for several weeks. Anything less than absolute victory would count as a failure for Germany; but as long as the French and British fronts remained coherent the Allies would be the victors. Only one result, and that the most difficult, could achieve his purpose. A hundred variations would meet the modest requirements of his antagonists.
Such an adventure in the West even by itself was forlorn. But what opportunities and what dangers was he not leaving behind him in the East! The first and immediate opportunity was to bring Roumania into the German system. The collapse of the Allies at the Dar
danelles, the accession of Bulgaria, the grisly fate of Serbia, and above all the weakness of Russia and the retreat or her armies from Galicia, left Roumania in a posture of almost intolerable isolation. Very little more pressure was required to compel from her the decision to which she had been formerly pledged, and on the verge of which she had trembled so long. To gain Roumania would, apart from distracted Greece, consolidate the whole of the Balkan Peninsula. It would add her army of twenty divisions to the forces against which Russia was contending in so much distress. It would place large resources of corn and oil at the disposal of the Central Powers. The very enterprise which above all others Germany should undertake in the south-east would at a single stroke draw in Roumania and afford her a fruitful and important field of action. The advance by German and Austrian troops into the Ukraine with Odessa as its main objective would open immense feeding-grounds to the blockaded Central Empires, would convert the Black Sea into a German lake, and with some German stiffening might carry the Turkish armies of the Caucasus almost to the oil-fields and broad waters of the Caspian basin. Germany, cut from the oceans by the British Navy, would regain in the vast continental spaces the means of continued life and power. Persia, Afghanistan and India would all in succession be violently excited by the rumour and fame of distant but steadily approaching legions. Great Britain, whose war-direction had now sunk to its lowest ebb, would be thrown on the defensive throughout the East and forced to divert to the plains and frontiers of India divisions now preparing for the fields of France. Nor were these great results to be achieved only by the employment of numerous forces. A dozen German divisions, far less than were to be consumed in a Western offensive, would have been sufficient to animate and guide the whole of the eastward march of Austrian, Turkish and Roumanian armies. Meanwhile Hindenburg in the north would pin the Russians to the desperate defence of their remaining railways.
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