12 
LAND &> WATER 
September 26, 1918 
Some Aspects of the Balkan Front : 
By H. Collinson Owen {Etiitor of the Balkan News) 
NOW that the Balkan Front has come into 
prominence again — and for such happy reasons — 
it will be well to try to give a more just idea 
of conditions out there than is generally held 
at home. 
To begin with, it has been quite wrong and misleading to 
talk of it as the Salonica Front ; just as wrong as it would 
be to talk of the front in France as the Verdun. Front. The 
Balkan Front is really an extension, via the Italian Front, 
of the Western Front, and it now runs right across the Balkan 
Peninsula from the Adriatic to the ^Egean— a distance, 
roughly, on the map of 250 miles. The whole of this long 
front is extremely mountainous, and practically all the 
Allied assaults on the enemy positions have taken place on 
very rugged ground at all heights from 2,500 feet up to 
8,000 and more. In general, and in spite of the present 
Allied successes, it is 
fair to talk of the 
Bulgar positions as 
constituting an "im- 
pregnable front." 
There are presumably 
few positions in war- 
fare which cannot be 
carried, given suffi- 
cient strength and 
determination on the 
part of the attackers. 
The point is whether 
the attackers are will- 
ing or able to pay 
the cost, and the 
Allies in the Balkans 
have . never had a 
sufficient reservoir of 
man-power to enable 
them to be lavish in 
their manner of draw- 
ing upon it. Why 
spend men and hero- 
ism in capturing one 
line of formidable 
heights if, at the end 
of it, you find your- 
self with depleted forces, faced by another line just as formid- 
able, which will need an equal expenditure of effort to carry 
it— with yet another line behind that ? To a large extent 
this is the position which has had to be faced in contemplating 
the great mountain barrier held by the Bulgars. 
The experience of the Greeks in their short and sharp 
campaign against the Bulgars in July, 1913, is instructive. 
With admirable dash they cleared the surprised enemy from 
their strong positions in lower Macedonia, bustled them 
away beyond Doiran, where the British front at present 
runs, chased them over the high Belashitza Range, and 
then, after over three weeks of incessant marching and 
fighting, found themselves victorious, but breathless, attack- 
ing a hardening enemy in the mountainous country near 
the Bulgarian frontier. T-he armistice of Bucharest found 
the Greeks extremely glad of the respite, in spite of their 
continuous successes. They had done much ; but it is by 
no means certain that they could have gone on and finished 
the job. 
The present Allied armies are, of course, much stronger 
than the Greeks and Serbs of 1913, but, on the other hand, 
the Bulgar is also much stronger ; and in the close of 1915 
was able to settle down tranquilly on mountain positions 
of enormous strength, held with a plentiful supply of heavy 
artillery and backed by the power and organisation of Ger- 
many. But, all the same, his front has its sectors which 
are less formidable than others, and the Serbs and French 
are now exploiting to the utmost what possibilities are 
offered. The Balkan Front is a complicated military pro- 
blem, and I do not pretend to throw any light on it beyond 
what is obvious to anybody who knows the ground. But 
any great "turning movement" certainly had to be done 
in the direction in wliich the Serbs and their Allies are now 
advancing so brilliantly. The present advance might have 
happened in the autumn of 1916, when the heavy and vic- 
torious fighting in the loop of the River Tserna resulted in 
the fall of Monastir ; but for various reasons it was not 
THE 
possible at the time to push that victory home and send 
the Bulgars back on to the Babuna Pass. But the present 
success is only possible because of the hard and costly 
fighting of that time, when, principally owing to the magni- 
ficent efforts of the Serbs, one strong mountain position 
after the other Was wrenched, each one like a wisdom- 
tooth, from the enemy. The Southern-Slavs, who have 
helped so greatly this time, are a splendid new body of 
troops (once soldiers of Austria) who were able to leave 
Russia and get to Salonica before the Bolshevists made 
their escape impossible, as in the case of their cousins, the 
Czecho-Slavs. The Yugo-Slav division was reviewed some 
months ago by Prince Alexander of Serbia, just outside 
Salonica, and looked as fine a body of troops as could be 
found anywhere. Each man had got out of Russia with 
one sole purpose — to fight his real enemies. 
No troops have an 
easy time in attack- 
ing Balkan positions 
defended by modern 
methods, but the 
British have certainly 
had a very difficult 
task. Speaking gener- 
ally of their work 
during the past two 
and a half years up 
to the present offen- 
sive, the British ha-^e 
been confronted on 
their left by the mas- 
sive Belashitza and 
Beles ranges (in the 
sector east and west 
of Lake Doiran) and 
on the right have 
disputed with the 
enemy the possession 
of the broad and 
malarial Struma 
Valley. We have had 
heavy and unproduc- 
tive fighting against 
the Doiran heights ; 
but in the Struma Valley, in the autumnjof 1916, we inflicted a 
number of heavy defeats on the'enemy. This Struma plain is 
one of the most striking battle-grounds to be found in the 
whole area of the war. The situation has long been a curious 
blend of position and open warfare. The Bulgar has never 
attacked our strong hill positions, and we have never directly 
assaulted his infinitely more formidable strongholds on the 
mountains. Only on the plain (varying from ten to fburteen 
miles wide, and with the River Struma running mid- way) have 
we been able to meet him, and since his defeats of 1916 the 
Bulgar has fought shy of the open warfare which the Struma 
plain offers. There has been a good deal of patrol work, in 
which we have always been the aggressors. We look over to 
the Rupel Pass, but know what the cost of forcing this gate- 
way to Bulgaria would be. On a clear day it seems as though 
one might walk into the white town of Serres in an hour or 
more ; but it is a death-trap dominated by the mountains 
and artillery behind. Perhaps the present successes to the 
west may do what no amount of frontal attacks could hope 
to do. 
The Balkan Front wants to be seen to be believed. There 
are signs that the Bulgar is at last to be made to realise that 
treachery does not pay in the long run. But unless the 
Bulgar moral weakens very much (and we are told that it is 
weakening) any sweeping victory will have to be well earned. 
And in an army which comprises French, British, Italians, 
Serbs, and Greeks it is easy to see what a nice adjustment 
there must be of all sorts of considerations — military and 
otherwise. Many reasons may be looked for to account for 
the present advance, after such a long period of what has been 
called stagnation. But there has never really been any 
stagnation, either political or military, and one of the main 
new factors which will bring success is that the Greek Army 
instead of being a very possible source of danger to us, as in 
the earlier days when Constantine reigned and plotted, is now 
at last solidly in line with us. This is a greater political and 
military revolution than most people at home realise. 
STRUMA VALLEY 
By H. T. Wood 
