November 
-J' 
I9I6 
LAND & \VATER 
qnilc blioiL range of guns established just behind and tu 
the cast of the rounded moor of Velyesolo. It is a 
range of 5,000 to 6,000 yards from gun-positions beliind 
the rise of Velyesolo at X. • 
It is clear that under such circumstances the lines of 
Kenali were no longer tenable. And the occupation of 
the Chuke Ridge three days before was now beginning to 
bear its full fruit. 
It was in the course of the Tuesday, November 14th, 
that the guns were brought up on to this western ridge 
(11) hidden somewhere behind the Velyesolo rise, as at X 
and began to imperil the Kenali lines, while the infantry 
were pressing forward still further to the north, and had 
reached Chegal. 
That was the moment for the strongest pressure to be 
applied to the Kenali lines from in front just as they woke 
up to the peril upon their left flank from the guns just 
arrived on the Tepavtsi — Velyesolo Ridge. The pressure 
was applied by French and Russian troops backed by a 
powerful artillery in the plain. The Bulgarians (who in 
the plain appear to have had but small German contingents 
with them — for most of these were contined to the hills, 
the critical point) left a rearguard which maintained 
itself during most of the day, aided in its defence by a 
blinding rainstorm which grievously hampered the French 
and Russian advance. Before night, however, that 
adxance had mastered the whole of the Kenali trenches. 
During the darkness the remaining defenders rapidly 
evacuated the Kenali lines, and in the morning of Wed- 
nesday, November 15th. tlie Russians, feeling just under 
the moimtains at dawn the trenches which had withstood 
them the day before in front of Lujets (see Sketch III), 
found them i'mpt\'. The French beyond the road had a 
similar experience in front of Kenali, which they occupied', 
and all that day, Wednesday, the 15th, was taken up in 
reaching the line to whicli the enemy had retired. It was 
that of the Bistritza River (see sketch III), which runs 
immediately in front of Monastir and covers that town 
at a range of no more than j.ooo or 4,000 yards. The 
I'rench and Russians on that Wednesclay night reached 
the line of the next parallel stream, the Viro and there 
was some speculation in Paris and in London, when the 
news reached those cities on Friday morning, whether 
the enemy would not make a last stand even so close to 
the city. That stand could not have been prolonged, 
and would have involved great destruction within the 
town. But still it might have been made had the 
enemy after his experience of the last few days retained 
the power to rally. 
He had not that power. There hardly seems to have 
been a good second position prepared. Everything had 
been staked upon the main Kenah lines, wfiich under 
German direction had been drawn up in the leisure of many 
mcmths as the main defence of the Plain of Monastir. 
Last Thursday and the Friday (i6th and 17th of Novem- 
ber) gave us little news, though the afternoon of that 
day still saw the Serbians advancing. They carried 
(see Sketch IV) the lower summit of the main mountains 
(hill 1212, which is rather more than i.qoo feet above the 
I)lain), and were nov>- masters of the whole mass of hills 
v.hich hlls up the great bend of the Cerna. They had 
passed the line due east of Monastir and were slightly to 
the north of it at a range of 22,000 yards, but with full 
observation. They hacl but to come down westwards 
towards Novak (Sketch III.), which was at their mercy, 
and by the time the guns could be got up on to these 
newly captured heights, the line of the Bistritza itself 
would be tinned. 
So much news had reached London and Paris by Sunday 
last. Upon Monday we learnt of the enemy's evacuation 
of Monastir and of the occupation of that town by the 
.Vllies. It was in the night between Saturday and Sunday 
that the enemy troops marched out of the city by the 
northern road and began a general retreat, the last rear- 
guard field battery leaving just before the Allies entered 
on the Sunday morning. The limits of this retirement 
are not yet defined at the moment of writing (Tuesday 
night in London, with news cairying one to Sunday night 
at Monastir), but the high land to the north permits a 
standstill near the city. 
Such is the story of the ten days fighting which con- 
stitutes the last phase .in General Sarrail's plan and 
which, as I have said, closes the first chapter in the 
Salqnika offensive. 
As to the nature of the success, the Press has done 
well to emphasise the truth that it is, so far as its inune- 
diate consequences are concerned, rather pohtical than 
strategic. 
Monastir, as has been repeatedly pointed out in these 
columns, is geographically attached to the system of the 
Grecian Plains. It lies south of the main Balkan moun- 
tain mass. Its possession, therefore, does not strategically 
threaten the forces defending those hills or lying beyond 
them. But though the value of the town is political rather 
than strategic, it would be a false judgment to belittle 
the political consequences involved in its evacuation. 
It is true of Monastir, as it is not true of any other 
continental point in the whole of the European war, that 
one separate belligerent government regarded it as the 
main objective of all its efforts. Russia did not accept the 
German challenge, nor did Germany throw down that 
challenge, for the possession of Warsaw. The French 
defensive plan of two years ago was not even a plan for 
the defence of Paris, but solely for the defeat of the in- 
vaders. The occupation by the enemy of such centres as 
Lille, Brussels, Antwerp and Vilna, are a steady asset in 
his favour, but none of them were principal objectives 
either of his action or of his opponents'. 
With Monastir it is otherwise. Monastir and all that 
Western Macedonian district which it commands,was the 
Bulgarian objective upon their entry into this war. It 
was the promise of its occupation which gave King 
Ferdinand the power to fulfil his secret promises to Berlin. 
The opportunity of recovering from Serbian control this 
disputed territory lost in the Second Balkan War moved 
the mass of Bulgarian opinion to support the Crown. 
In this limited field the loss of Monastir is something very 
nuich more to the Bulgarians than the loss of any conti- 
nental point whatever would be to the Allies, to which 
point we must add the capital coni^ideration that Monastir 
has been lost upon an advancing wave. There is all the 
difference in the world between a loss which can bo 
regarded as temporary upon the one side and is ad- 
mittedly of uncertain duration ujwn the other, and one 
which occurs in a moment of declining force. The 
Bulgarian people know by this time that they have 
failed to recover the territory for which they set out to 
fight. They have held it only for a year, and that because 
the Western Allies required such an interval in order to 
develop a material superiority %vhich was potentially 
never in doubt, but took very long to realise. 
Had the Central Empires still the reserves of men in 
the field (and in the factories) to have supported Bul- 
garia, Monastir would not have fallen. As it was they 
had to choose between the Roumanian offensive and the 
support of the Bulgarian throne. They were not strong 
enough for both. They decided for the first and neces- 
sarily abandoned, in tliat degree, the second. 
Such considerations lead us to the causes of the whole 
affair which, as I have said, illuminate not only this, but 
every other theatre of the war. Monastir, I say, would 
not have been occupied by the Allies had the C'entral 
Empires been able to send round to this field, by roads and 
1-ailways which are fully at their command, the reinforce- 
ment in men and guns and the mass of munitions which 
the situation demanded. The Salonika offensive is 
hampered by insufficient communications between the 
base and the front ; by the breaking of the weather ; 
by the difficulty of accumulating a great head of munition- 
ment under the conditions of prolonged oversea transport. 
It is an extreme example of action upon exterior lines. To 
support Salonika from the factories and mines of Britain 
is an operation more remote than would be one in support 
of action upon the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. 
Even the support coming from the French littoral has 
to cover a distance comparable to that between the Eng- 
lish ports and Newfoundland. 
Under such conditions the offensive from Salonika has 
succeeded in this the first chapter of its effort because, 
and only because, the enemy has not the reserves of man- 
power which some months ago would have sufficed to 
meet it. Among the 4,600 prisoners taken, 1,000 
wen.' German, but the German contingents were not in 
anything hke that proportion to the whole Bulgarian 
army present. They were reduced to a very small 
number — ^not more than a division ; probably, in- 
cluding the Austro-Hungarian contingents, they were 
