M 
LAND & WATER 
Deccniber 28, 1916 
would ha\-c been cqtiallv advantageous from tin- jxiint of 
\icw of strategy if it had fultiiled the two following 
indispensable conditions — weakening the Allies in the 
principal theatres of hostilities without recpiiring the 
Clerinans to weaken themselves proportionatel\' ; and of 
providing for the campaign in Asia means commensurate 
witli the end to be attained. 
These conditions were not fulfilled by the Ottoman 
alliance. The military object to be attained was the 
weakening of Great Britain, to be effected by the in- 
vasion of Egypt and by the march to the Persian (iulf. 
The Turks did not secure these advantages for the Ger- 
• mans. Their means were not commensurate with their 
object. On the contrary, the Germans were obliged to 
provide them with supplementary resources and ihese, 
too, proved inadequate. Thus not only did the means 
remain insufficient to the requirements, but the principal 
theatres of the struggle for permany were depri\ ed of 
resources >vhich were placed, uselessly, at the service ot 
the Turks. Without having seriously weakened the 
Allies the Germans have weakened their own forces 
opposed to them. 
The Bulgarian Alliance 
The mistake was even more serious. Tn a region where 
tlie German concentrations failed to deal the enemy any 
decisive blow — where they never could have done so 
without chf^iculty and now never can — they induced the 
enemy to meet them with concentrations which might 
ha\e resulted in decisive blows if things had turned out so. 
\\'e know why they did not. The Dardanelles business 
and the campaign in ^Mesopotamia were planned badly. 
But the German mistake, in concentrating as a result of 
the Ottoman alliance, endured and endures, for the checks 
in the Dardanelles and at Kut-el-Amara were not so 
serious as to drive the Allies from the Balkan theatre. 
.They merely compelled them to work out otlur plans of 
o]>erations. 
The result has been a modification of the i\ I;iu\c values 
of the Balkan front. From being a relati\ ciy subsidiary 
defensive front for the Allies, it has shown a tendency to 
become a relatively essential offensive front . since it was 
favourable to the delivery of more or less decisive blows 
at the Central Empires. Conversely, from being an 
indirect offensive front for the Germans, it has shown a 
tendency to become an essential defensive front, since 
it compelled them to parry there blows which thicatened 
to weaken them decisively. 
The ne.xt thing was the alliance with Bulgaria The 
Bulgarians have been exceedingly ingenuous. They did 
not see that Germany was throwing them into the cockpit 
at the precise moment when her High. Command was 
recognising the impossibility of buttressing up Turkey's 
deficient credit by a subsidy from German resources. 
Finding themselves unable to parrv the blows they had 
provoked in Asia, the German High Conmiand induced 
the Bulgarians to take on the risky job. 
It is cpiite arguable that even at that date, and while 
they still perhaps cherished some brighter hope, they 
contemplated the possibility of a shortened south-eastern 
front, an Asiatic front veplaced by a Balkan front before 
which the Turkish arm}', gradually abandoned to its own 
devices, would lie as a mere advanced guard. That is 
what it is at the present moment. The Ottoman Fmpire 
is now merely a region outside the theatre of German 
operations. The south-eastern defensive front is the 
Bulgarian front. The Bulgarians' have succeeded the 
Turks in the duty of covering the Central Empires. 
The offensive against Serbia was the consequence of the 
alliance with Bulgaria. This alliance was a graft on the 
initial strategic mistake of the alliance with Turkey. It 
compelled the German Empire to furnish vet another 
large contingent of its troo])s to assist the Bulgarian army 
in its conquest of !\Iaceclonia, which was the stii>uluted 
price of the alliance, and generally to assume the risks 
of the Balkan war. 
The intervention of Koumania brought one of these 
risks prominently into evidence. The last of the German 
troops in Serbia had haidly left the Balkans when they 
were obliged to return to meet the l^J^;nlanians and 
supiiort the Bulgarian army. 
And here we come to the second of the two (pieslions 
referred to above : \\aiy should they support the Bul- 
garians when the Balkan campaign can now be only a 
source ot weakness to (jermany ? For two reasons, 
apparently, one political and moral, the other strictly 
military in its scope. 
The military mistake of the Austro-German offensive 
in the Balkans originated in the desire to place the region 
of the Straits and of Turkey in Asia under (ierman 
supremacy. This desire induced the German High Com- 
mand to strain the normal application of strategy. The 
object of strategy is the destruction of the enemv with a 
view to the attainment of a political object. This 
result is subordinated to the necessary antecedent 
destruction. 
The Imperial High Command reversed the order of 
these two things. It meant to secure the political result 
without the preliminary condition of destruction ; it 
sent forces into a region where it was impossible for them 
to destroy anything of vital importance. 
I'pon this fundamental error it grafted another, in 
showing too soon that to take possession ot the coveted 
regions vyas one of the essential objects of the war and 
announcing to the German people, who believed what it 
told them, that the invasion of Serbia and the opening 
of communications with Constantinople were a definite 
guarantee that possession would be taken of them. The 
consequence was that it could not, and cannot, withdraw 
further in the Balkans without seriously shaking public 
confidence and without disillusioning the public to a 
degree that would be no less serious. Ketreat would 
destroy the precarious nature of the victories that were 
celebrated too soon and also would betray the failure of 
the essential object of the war which the victories were 
supposed to have achieved. The scaffolding of the 
Imperial poHcy would begin to fall before the eyes of all. 
f ip ig! V # 
Hence the obligation on the German High Command to 
assume the offensive against Roumania in order to 
protect Bulgaria and preserve its ally, as it had to assist 
in the Turkish offensive against Egypt and the Caucasus 
in order to pay the price of the Ottoman alliance, and in 
the offensive against Serbia in order to pay the Bul- 
••rarians. Everything is connected in this succession of 
bargained offensives and sacrilices in the Balkans, draining 
resources which would have been invaluable on the 
-Russian front and especially in the West. 
'I he question which arises now is whether the Germans 
will be able to collect new forces of s'.ifficient strength to 
destroy the .\Uies in the West and in Russia, in which 
case the treaty of peace would lectify the mistake of the 
premature offensive in the south-east, or whether, failing 
such destruction, their new forces will enable them to 
resist long enough to e.xtort from a wearied enemy 
recognition of the fait accompli. 
It is this final hand for which the cards are being dealt 
now and which will be i)laycd out' in .T'ji7. 
To Belgium 
Will it be ever thine no more tu weep 
For lives, for glories vilely snatched away, 
And only as a vanished horror keep 
'ihc. memory and the anguisii of to-day : 
Odn Art restore the centuriis and the thought 
Of generations mangled tlius and crushed, 
The hopes which soul to soul in myriads brought, 
Now, hke thy chimes, in i)iercing silence hushed ? 
No! But that seinilchre of heretofore 
Which now thou art, a resurrection dream 
Of beauty may embosom ; and once more 
Thine may be hopes and glories even supreme, 
Through ages which as yet are dream to last, 
And hold lit place beside the unsurpassed. 
F. W. R.\GG. 
The ]>ernicious pro]xiganda with which Germany deluges 
the world is well illustrated in a tri-weekly Fnglish jjaju'r 
called The ]\'ar, now printed and ciiculated in Shanghai. 
A correspondent has sent us a copy of this broadsliect. 
Most of its contents arc extracts from pro-German American 
papers. Its V^ading article is headed " Meine Marine Katin 
Allcs " — which is the Kaiser's boast, " Nothing is impossible 
to my Navy." On the strength of the German torpedo- 
destroyers Channel raid, it argues that the <ierman Fleet 
can do what it pleases and go where it pleases. It asks 
sneeringly : "Is there no Nelson left in the Pliiglish ^'avy, 
have all turned Baralong men ■! " 
