September 28, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
railway, that is the railway Belgrade-Nish-£ofia-Adria- 
nople. 
The force upon which the enemy relies for the mainten- 
ance of this line intact is the mixed body of the Bulgarian 
army with Turkish reinforcement ; with some small — very 
small — elements, perhaps, of (German and Austrian In- 
fantry, but certainly with a large provision of Austrian 
and German heavy artillery. And this armed strength 
relies for its continued power of resistance against pres- 
sure from the north and from the south, that is from 
the Roumanian side and from the Salonika side, upon 
two main obstacles. The Danube in the north, with the 
nature of which we have just dealt, and the mass of the 
Balkan mountains in the south. 
Let us see what this second obstacle means under the 
conditions of the present Salonika offensive. 
The advantage which the Salonika command enjoys 
strategically is the possession of lines of communication 
radiating from its base east, north and west. Eastward 
there is the high road to Seres and Kavalla, serving right 
up to the Struma line. Northwards there is the railway 
to Doiran, which also turns eastward and leads towards 
the Struma valley, and there the main line up to the Vardar 
valley, which is connected with the Doiran line by a 
lateral branch coming in at the junction of Karasuli. 
Westward there is the railway leading to Monastir by way 
of Vodena and Fiorina, and the two main roads also con- 
verging upon Jlonastir north and south of the Ostrovo 
Lake. To have radiating lines thus at one's disposal 
is to possess every advantage for alternative action. You 
ean reach any point upon your circumference quickly ; 
you can concentrate where you will and your enemy 
does not know where your main blow will fall. The enemy 
upon his side has no such advantage. Supposing he is in 
doubt, for instance, as to \\hether your main effort is 
going to be north along the Vardar valley or eastward 
towards Monastir, he must divide his forces to watch 
either sector and he has no good lateral communications 
between one and the other. A force called from, say, 
the neighbourhood of Doiran to Monastir must either 
march for ten days by rough tracks across difficult 
country, much of it mountainous and wooded, or be sent 
right up north along the Vardar valley to come down 
agam by road to the Monastir Plain. ' These radiating 
communications, of which Salonika is the centre, are the 
great -advantage of that base against an enemy situated 
to the north. 
On the other hand, a success obtained anywhere along 
the great crescent depends for its ultimate result upon 
the power of the victors to make their way thrqugh the 
mass of mountains lying between them and the Belgrade- 
Nish-Sofia Railway, which is their ultimate objective. 
The avenues of approach to that line from the south 
are few, very restricted, and the lateral communications 
between them of the greatest difficulty. From the 
beginning of history the one main avenue has been the 
Vardar valley continued over the low watershed of 
Kumanovo by the trench of the Morava valley to Nish. 
The only serious alternative is the Struma valley leading 
to Sofia, and between the two lie heavy and difhcult 
mountain country. The Vardar line of advance is helped 
in this earlier portion by an alternative approach from 
the west. A force working up the Vardar river and rail- 
way would be supported in its action bv any force working 
round from Monastir by the Prilep road. A force which 
should have successfully occupied the Monastir Plain 
and advanced in front of Prilep would find in front of it the 
Babuna Pass, where a detached body of Serbians held 
out so long last year against the Bulgarian flood. If this 
pass were successfully carried, however, the whole of the 
Lower Vardar line is turned. 
It is clear from the most elementary examination of 
the map that the value of the mountains as an obstacle 
would depend upon the scale of the resistance offered to 
the south of them. A strong resistance offered south of 
the mountams resulting in a defeat of the resisting bodies 
Would so weaken it that it would be unable to offer a 
sufficient resistance in the mountains themselves to pre- 
vent the Allied advance. But if the enemy should prefer 
to treat everything south of the mountain mass as sub- 
sidiary to his plans and to reserve his main strength for 
, the defence of that mass and of the two trenches of the 
Vardar and the Struma, by which alone it can be 
traversed, the problem at once changes in character and 
becomes graver for the Allies. i 
It is here that the great political importance of Monastir 
comes in, and that the political character of the whole 
Bulgarian intervention also appears. Ferdinand of Bul- 
garia would not have been able to bring his forces into the 
field, whatever his private intrigue might have been, 
had not he been able to work upon the purely local and 
j)olitical ambition of the Bulgarian people who occupied 
those districts of Macedonia which, as they had main- 
tained, were wrongfully taken from them by the Treaty 
of 1913. It will be remembered that the Balkan States 
had agreed amongst themselves, in case of success against 
Turkey, to make a division of the spoil upon national 
lines ; Serbia extending mainly to the west and obtaining 
access to the Adriatic : Greece obtaining what she has 
obtained, and Bulgaria getting possession of all the 
Bulgarian speaking or partly Bulgarian speaking districts 
of Macedonia. By an accident which bears to-day a 
singularly ironic aspect, it was the intervention of Austria 
which upset this plan. Austria forbade the Serbian 
extension westward. That extension took place over the 
territory coveted by Bulgaria, hence the second Balkan 
war and the Treaties of 1913, by which Bulgaria lost a 
strip of the Dobrudja to Roumania, and this Macedonian 
territory which she regarded as hers by right. Macken- 
sen's advance has reoccupied the lost strip of the Dobrucija, 
and that is the political side of what still remains a mainly 
strategical move upon his part. For the Macedonian 
strip at the other end of the field Monastir stands as 
the one great symbolic name. Strategically it is a weak- 
ness. Pohtittally it is a necessity. And that strategical 
weakness depending upon that political necessity is the 
opportunity of the Allies. 
COMBLES 
The Somme offensive, though the most important of 
the great operations now in train, affords no material 
for further analysis. The news which has come in up to 
Tuesday evening, the moment of writing this, is exactly 
and (happily) monotonously upon the same model as that 
which we have learnt to regard as normal in this great 
battlefield. The weather permits good observation. 
The Allied command of the air (how amazing it is, by the 
way, to recall to-day the political attack which was 
allowed to be made upon the Air Service a few short weeks 
ago !) permits of the most accurate artillery preparation. 
At its conclusion the sector of enemy trenches marked 
down is seized, the quota of prisoners is passed through. 
In the particular case of this week's methodical success 
the general effect is, as has everywhere been noted, the 
almost complete isolation of Combles. The British 
have taken Morval, and are already well down the southern 
slope of the height on which those ruins stand ; the 
French hold the outskirts of Fregicourt, and look north- 
ward down into the valley in which Combles stands, 
more than a hundred feet below ; Combles communicates 
with the German lines behind it by communication 
trenches dug in a belt of land only just over a mile wide. 
