October 30, 1915. 
LAND AND WATER 
I^ 
_1_ 
160 
r 
i_ 
10 
Kilometres 
boundary of Serbia, while south of Nish Bul- 
garian forces coming down the valleys from the 
frontier ridge in three columns, and evidently 
finding but small Serbian forces to oppose them, 
have along the arrow 1 entered Varnia, along the 
arrow 2 entered and occupied Uskub, and along 
the arrow 3 have occupied Veles. All these three 
points are, as can be seen on Sketch I., upon the 
line from Salonica whereby alone the Serbian 
troops of the North can be munitioned and rein- 
forced by the Allies. That avenue of communica- 
tion is therefore now gone, and can be restored 
only by forces as or more considerable than those 
the Bulgarians ha Ye thus brought into the southern 
portion of Serbia. 
Such is the general position. The north- 
ea.stern corner of the State, with its main rail- 
way line, cannot hold much longer. The Danube 
corner is already gone, and the enemy are hence- 
forth free to communicate by water with the Bul- 
garians and so with Constantinople. 
There remains for the further delaying of the 
enemy in the north one factor alone, the import- 
ance of which will appear in the near future, 
though in what degree only that future can tell. 
This factor is the factor of the mountain fighting. 
The points the enemy has already reached 
roughly correspond to the points he reached last 
December, before his signal defeat on the slopes 
leading up to the Malien ridge just south of 
Valjevo. 
Mountain country, as distinguished from 
liilly, rolling country, occupies nearly the whole 
State south of the^ line which, on Sketch I., is 
the boundary of the shaded portion. 
Now, in that mountain country, with winter 
coming on, the Serbian forces would have a very 
great advantage, were they fighting the Austro- 
Germans alone. They might hold up the com- 
paratively weak invasion wnich the enemy has not 
yet pushed up to the foot of the wilder land, and 
they might check it until the weather in the high- 
lands had made further progress impossible. 
But with the Bulgarian forces from the cast 
close to and now across their principal line 
of supply, a-nd such forces in larger numbers by 
far than the whole of their own forces, the power 
of the Serbians to hold the north-eastern corner 
of the State is gone. 
Meanwhile we should do well to note the 
character of the northern invading force, for it 
instructs us not a little upon the quality of the 
enemy's new levies. 
It is perfectly clear from the nature of the 
advance that it has relied entirely upon heavy, 
artillery. The Serbians having nothing wortn 
speaking of wherewith to meet guns of large 
calibre, those guns act in complete safety and can 
prepare a position at will. They can be brought 
up at the rate of several miles a day, their ammu- 
nition follows them, and if the infantry which is 
launched when they have done their work were of 
the same quality as the troops that marched 
through Galicia last June (supported by exactly 
the same sort of preponderance in heavy guns and 
their munitionment) the Austro-German force 
should have been at the foot of the mountains ten 
days ago. Instead of that it failed for a full fort- 
night to make good a single day's march. 
Nothing could account for that save a de- 
terioration in the quality of the troops the enemy 
has here brought forward. 
It ia inevitable that it should be so in any, 
case, and even if we had not the proof before us it 
would be clear from a mere consideration of num- 
bers that the incorporation of doubtful material 
would already have begun. Such material need 
not be present in any great proportion to have a 
considerable effect upon the value of a whole body. 
And though one must not exaggerate this ele- 
ment in the situation, it is important to grasp it 
because it is clearly affecting the campaign in 
every field, not only here in the Balkans, but on 
those two main fronts in Russia and France where 
alone the great war can be decided. 
With the Bulgarian forces it is very different. 
You have here not only an army admirably 
organised and suffering only from a certain lack 
of heav}' munitionment which it can now increase 
by the Danube route, but also one fresh for its 
task with tAVO years of the younger contingents 
incorporated and trained. 
And it is true to say that so far as this 
theatre of operations is concerned, the backbone of 
the Balkan war is the Bulgarian Army, not the 
mixed forces which Austria and Germany have 
been able to send forward. 
There is one further point which the reader 
must grasp if he is to understand the future of the 
campaign in Serbia. That tangle of mountains 
which forms the State, once one has got a few 
days' march soutli of the Danube, suffers from 
extremely bad communications. The railways 
which, in their present develo})ment, are marked 
on Sketch I., follow the river valley, the torrents 
and deep trenches between the hills. The only 
roads of any sort useful for the munitionment of 
a great armv accompany those railways and are 
to be found nowhere else save in a few rare excep- 
tions, the more important of which are shown 
upon Sketch I. in donble crossed lines. 
It is by one such road that the Bulgarians 
have come with the largest of their columns over 
the mountains from Kustendil through Egri 
Palanka to Kumanova, and so to Uskub. 
There is another from the Danube lowlands 
and Valjevo southward across the Malien Ridge, 
and there are one or two more such in the mass of 
