December 4, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
r,unning-up-to and more or less parallel with the 
new. Greek frontier. 
.Now these positions, 100 miles long, held .by, 
let, lis. say, a little over a hundred thousand men 
at the most, are susceptible to attack by BuIt 
garian and Austro-German forces from the north, 
which forces number , all told (supposing the 
Austro-German units to have been kept • at f, iiH 
strength- and the Bulgarians to have losjt even as 
much as 60,000 men during the rccgnt .fighting) a 
body nearer five than four^dmes as numerous as 
that which the Allies can parade in opposition. 
That is why the position is called a simple one. 
Taking only the rnilitary elements in the situation 
statically — that is not allowing for possible poUtical 
changes— a vigorous enemy offensive against the 
allied line could not be successfully met. The 
country is mountainous, the base ;is not very distant, 
'the line held is not very long — but the disproportion 
of forces is almost ridiculous. Nor is it easy to 
see how that disproportion can be materially 
remedied. Even if the Allies are prepared to send 
a very much larger force int_o Macedonia, that 
much larger force' would still be wholly dependent 
for its supply upon the one ill-equipped port of 
Salonica and it could not possess in missile weapons 
or their munitionment anything like what the 
enemy from the riorth could bring against it. 
So long as there was any question of Serbia's 
co-operation upon a large scale it was another 
matter, but that was, in its turn, a question of 
supply — and supply fa.iled. Perhaps half the 
original Serbian force remains intact. The artillery, 
with the exception of the mountain guns, now 
hardly exists. It is clear that food and even small 
arm ammunition are lacking. If these be supplied 
from the Adriatic in time it might cause some 
slight menace of a guerilla warfare to exist con- 
tinuously, upon the fiank of the enemy, but it 
would be a wild misjudgment to expect that 
.diminished and utterly under-gunned force in the 
western mountains to affect the campaign seriously 
in the immediate future. 
The only thing that would redress the balance 
would be a really pronounced attack in force from 
the north and east by Russia through Rcumania, 
or Russia and Rcumania combined. 
Here at once enters that political factor 
which is the great unknown factor in the whole 
problem. No Russian force can act without some 
sort of aid from Rciimania. i 
Call the threatened allied force in Macedonia 
1 as in this sketch III. Then there is up against it 
in the Balkans to the North 5. Far off in Bess- 
arabia is a Russian 2, but between this and the 
Allies is a Roumanian 6 — and this last fresh, long 
.trained, and fully officered. 
The best informed of those who are following 
the development of that factor, the men who are 
at the very centre of the diplomatic effort it 
involves, cannot forecast the action of that 6- 
The mere student and observer of the military 
side of the campaign must necessarily eliminate' for 
the moment the chances of this attack from the 
north', and east upon the enemy positions in the 
Balkans.-- He must study, the problem asjhough 
it were what I have called a " static " problem, 
that is, one in which the existing forces alone 
