LAND AND WATER 
October 16, 1915. 
TheB Danube Fronir 
I 
(Nishm 
SKSofta) 
SiSdlonikd) 
Even if the full complement of five corps, 
with ample munitionment and supplies for 
moSTlis were at this moment disembarked at S, 
the handicap would be heavy. As it is, the actual 
handicap is far heavier than this hypothetical one. 
No such force is landed at Salonica, still less is 
full provision and munitionment. If the problem 
were merely the stiffening of the Serbian forces 
against an attack from the north from Belgrade 
and from the Danube front, while those forces 
offered a definite resistance in their mountains, the 
question of time would not be of such acute im- 
portance, for the enemy would be making a 
difficult • and fighting advance, the Allied 
reinforcement would be coming up through 
Nish unimpeded. But with the Bulgarian 
•frontier lying roughly parallel to, and no- 
,where more than 50 miles from the line of 
supply and reinforcement (in places not more 
than 12 miles from it), and with a Bulgarian 
army mobilised against us the problem is very 
different indeed. 
But even supposing the factor of time to be 
settled in our favour, and full reinforcements to 
liave arrived before the enemy had achieved his 
object in this field, there remains the problem of 
supplies. 
I do not propose for one moment to suggest a 
solution. The conditions are known only to those 
men who do the staff work, they only are in a posi- 
tion to calculate even in the roughest fashion the 
opportunities for the supplying of so large a force 
by a single line railway from over sea and at this 
short notice, but I do beg the reader to remember 
that this question of supply is an essential to the 
whole policy of the Balkan expedition. It is 
not enough to call for men, one must have 
the men. It is not enough to find the men, 
they must arrive in time. It is not enough for 
them to arrive in time, they must be con- 
tinuously munitioned without check or interrup- 
tion and upon a scale which modern warfare has 
discovered. 
CONCLUSION. 
We mav sum up and say that this new move 
of the enemy in the Near East bears the following 
fill Vil Of^f*l* ' 
1 It is the enemy's last effort to create a 
diversion before his effectives begin to fail. That 
he can keep his effectives at their full strength six 
weeks more is doubtful. That he can keep them 
two months more is improbable, that he can keep 
them three months more is mathematically im- 
possible. Ti- 1 
2. The enemy's effort has mainly a political 
object. That is, it aims at an effect upon public 
opinion among the Allies, and especially m Great 
Britain, and upon an effect on Governments still 
neutral, which would be produced by a linking up 
of the territory held bv Austro- Germany and its 
Allies with Constantinople. The presence ot 
German and Austrian forces in Constantinople, 
or of direct German control there, with full oppor- 
tunities for munitioning and equipping such 
forces as the Turks can command, would have a 
very great effect throughout the Near East, and 
throughout all hither Asia and the Moham- 
medan world. It is a calculation of the enemy's 
that the dread of such an effect would be suf- 
ficient to compel Britain and France to drain 
off great numbers of men to this subsidiary field. 
He calculates that the elements of time and 
supply are against us, but it is well arguable 
that such a diversion would be worth the Allies' 
while. 
3. But the enemy is compelled to make this 
attempt with such insufficient forces through the 
rapid exhaustion of his effectives, now nearing 
their limit, that he would never have undertaken 
the policy without the aid of Bulgaria. As it is, 
he has suffered very heavily in an attempt, pro- 
longed over four days, to cross the Danube in 
several points he had failed by Sunday night 
to advance beyond the suburbs of Belgrade, 
one of which he had allowed to be recaptured 
from him, and such of his forces as crossed 
on Sunday at Semendria were on that same 
day destroyed or forced back across the 
stream. In other words, though his superiority 
in heavy guns makes his final passage of the 
broad river frontier probable, it is proving 
exceedingly costly and lengthy, and this is 
a further proof of his dependence upon Bul- 
garian aid. 
4. Therefore we may be certain — and this is 
the most important point of all— that the aid 
Bulgaria will give him is given only at a price; 
we may conjecture that it is given only for a time. 
Bulgaria holds the door to Constantinople. It is 
immensely to the advantage of her King and even 
of her people, that she should continue to hold 
that door. It is of no advantage to either that she 
should be merely absorbed in the German scheme. 
Therefore we shall not fully understand this 
treasonable, and probably doubly treason- 
able, Bulgarian plan until we have seen 
what form it will take when the Austro- Ger- 
man decline in the number available for the 
field begins, as it must begin in the very near 
future. 
) 
