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A Short History of the Great War

A >> A.F. Pollard >> A Short History of the Great War




Early in August Sarrail, who was now commander-in-chief, ordered a
French attack on Doiran, and Doldjeli was taken. Probably this was no
more than a feint, for the real design was farther west, where the
Serbians under Prince Alexander were looking forward to Monastir.
Their offensive was anticipated by the Bulgars, who after some
pourparlers with Rumania, were induced or constrained by their German
masters to attack on the 17th. In the west Florina and Banitza were
seized on Greek territory, and on the east the whole of new Greece,
including Seres, Kavalla, and Demirhissar, as far as the Struma; the
Greek garrisons surrendered and were sent to Germany as the Kaiser's
guests (see Map, p. 151).

This was the last straw for the better part of Greece. Venizelos
addressed a mass meeting of protest at Athens on the 27th, and on the
30th a revolution broke out at Salonika under Colonel Zimbrakakis, the
Venizelist deputy for Seres. Regiments were enrolled for service
against Bulgaria, and one of them set out for the front on 22
September. On the 24th a similar movement swept over Crete; Mytilene,
Samos, and Chios and smaller Greek islands followed suit; and
Venizelos left Athens to form with Admiral Condouriotes and General
Danglis a provisional government of insurgent Greece at Salonika. It
was grudgingly recognized by the Entente and at once declared war on
Bulgaria. The mainland, south-west of Salonika, however, remained
under Constantine's control, and added to its hostility to the Entente
a murderous vendetta against the Venizelists. The militarist party
engaged in the curious campaign of forming leagues of reservists to
oppose a war which would involve their call to the colours, and a
succession of embarrassed phantoms was established in office to enable
the king to evade the demands of the Allies. They increased in
severity from the surrender of the fleet to that of the army's
batteries and then to its disbandment; but they were backed by
inadequate force and bungling diplomacy. On 1 December detachments of
Allied troops, landed at the Piraeus, were driven back with bloodshed,
and well into the new year the King continued to defy the Entente and
push Greece deeper into anarchy. On its side the Entente wished to
avoid a civil war, which would be almost worse than united enmity,
because it would preclude a naval blockade; but the principal cause of
its blunders was its own divided counsels. France and Great Britain
were stoutly Venizelist; but the Tsar had personal reasons for
dreading revolutions, particularly one against his cousin, and Italy
had no liking for that greater Greece which was represented by
Venizelos, might become a rival in the eastern Mediterranean, and
would certainly reclaim the Dodecanese from its Italian masters.

The Rumanian Campaign

Amid these scenes of Hellenic turmoil Sarrail strove to prosecute his
offensive in aid of Rumania. The die had been cast by the northern
kingdom on 27 August, and on the 28th Rumanian troops poured over the
Carpathian passes into Transylvania. This direction of Rumanian
strategy was severely criticized because it did not suit our Balkan
plans. Bulgaria was the foe we had in view, and Rumania, it was said,
should have launched her armies across the Danube in an effort to cut
the corridor and join hands with Sarrail. The criticism was unjust for
other reasons than the fact that in the treaty signed on 16 August it
was stipulated that the principal aim of Rumanian action should be in
the direction of Buda-Pesth. Sarrail's objective was Monastir, an
eccentric route to Sofia or the Danube, and the British troops along
the Struma were not cast for the part of an advance towards Rumania.
Bulgaria, moreover, was not yet Rumania's enemy, and had shown signs
of remaining neutral. Nor is a strategical motive ever an adequate
reason for making war; there must be a political justification, and
the grounds for Rumania's intervention was the injury suffered by the
Rumanian population in Hungary and Transylvania. She had no quarrel
with Bulgaria on the score of national rights; indeed, it was rather
she who ruled over Bulgars in the Dobrudja, and a Rumanian war could
only be defended in principle as a crusade to redeem the Rumania
irredenta north of the Carpathians. Even had it been her business to
pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the Entente, it might be urged
that she did her part in opening the door for a Russian attack on
Bulgaria. In 1915 the Russian reason for non-fulfilment of the threats
of punishment for Bulgarian treason to the Slav cause had been the
obstacle of Rumanian territory. That was now removed; and a Russian
advance through the Dobrudja would not only have saved Rumania from
Mackensen's envelopment, but have given effect to Russia's menace
against Bulgaria, facilitated Sarrail's operations, cut the corridor,
and isolated Turkey. Of all the strategic failures in the war none was
more tragic than this which was imposed upon Russia, partly by her
internal weakness and partly by her divergent ambitions in Asia Minor.
The Rumanian advance across the Carpathians would have been sound
enough strategically as well as politically, had it been properly
supported by her huge but unreliable neighbour.

The Central Empires were preparing but unprepared, and the Rumanian
attack prospered brilliantly at first. Apart from the political
object, there was the strategic purpose of improving Rumania's
defences. Her own frontier--over 700 miles in length--was even worse
than Italy's because of its circular configuration; the enemy, with
the interior lines, military railways, and easier approaches to the
passes, could strike from the centre at any one or more of a dozen
alternative points and could shift his attack from one to another
flank in a fraction of the time it would take Rumania to transport her
forces to meet it. She had no lateral lines for her northern frontier,
and of the vertical lines only two went up to the passes. If, however,
she could reach the Maros, she would not only straighten her line and
shorten it by half, but deprive her enemies of their railway and other
strategic advantages. On that line she might hope to resist the
Teutonic counter-offensive and protect her territory, which would have
been left defenceless if her armies had gone south to invade Bulgaria.
For a fortnight all went well; the enemy troops in Transylvania were
few, inferior, and unreliable, and one Czech battalion went over to
the invaders. By 10 September Kronstadt and Orsova had been taken,
Hermannstadt evacuated, and Hatszeg was in danger; at points the
Rumanians had advanced some fifty miles, and the Maros line seemed
almost in their grasp.

The appearance was delusive. Germany declared war on 28 August, Turkey
on the 30th, and Bulgaria on 1 September. But the real danger did not
come from Bulgaria, and it would have been at least as serious if
Rumania had invited attack by declaring war on Bulgaria herself, and
thus exceeding the requirements of the treaty of 16 August. It came
from Germany, and was as little foreseen by Rumania's critics as by
her Government. That Germany should have divisions to spare for
another Balkan campaign after Verdun, and while the battle of the
Somme and Brussilov's offensive were at their height, amazed the
Entente Powers, and was, indeed, quite inconsistent with the versions
of those campaigns to which they had given currency. Yet it was true:
besides an Alpine corps of Bavarians, Germany sent no fewer than eight
divisions to the Carpathians, and put Von Falkenhayn at their head.
She also sent a lavish supply of guns, munitions, and aeroplanes to
which Rumania had not the wherewithal to reply. The promised Russian
supplies fell short, eaten up perhaps by Brussilov's requirements, and
partly, it was said, surreptitiously withheld in the interest of
Stuermer's treacherous design of a separate peace with Germany at
Rumania's expense. The first blow was struck by Mackensen, whose rapid
concentration of the German forces south of the Danube had not been
disturbed by the promised offensive from Salonika. The treaty had
fixed it for 20 August, but Sarrail's plans were betrayed by two of
his officers and conveyed through a Spanish diplomatist to the enemy;
possibly this was the cause of the Bulgar attack on the 17th, and
Sarrail did not move until 7 September. He did, however, detain the
three Bulgarian armies on the Salonika front, and Mackensen only had
the help of the fourth, which had all along watched the Rumanian
frontier.

On 1 September his forces invaded the Dobrudja and seized Dobritch,
Balchik, and Kavarna on the coast. On the 5th they captured Turtukai
on the Danube with an infantry division and a hundred guns. Silistria
farther down the river was thereupon evacuated, and on the 16th
Mackensen stood on the line Rasova-Kobadinu-Tuzla, a dozen miles from
the important railway running from Bukarest across the Tchernavoda
bridge to Constanza; Tchernavoda was the only bridge across the Danube
in the Balkans, and Constanza was Rumania's only Black Sea port. Here
the stipulated Russian three divisions, composed partly of Serbs who
had escaped into Rumania in 1915 and of Jugo-Slavs taken prisoners by
the Russians from the Austrian forces, came to Rumania's assistance;
and Mackensen was not only held, but driven back some fifteen miles.
Falkenhayn, north of the Carpathians, disposed of greater strength,
and during the latter half of September the Rumanians were steadily
driven out of their conquests. A great feat of the Bavarian Alpine
Corps was the capture on the 26th of the Roterturm Pass in the rear of
the First Rumanian Army; elsewhere the retreat was carried out with
skill, valour, and comparatively slight losses, and Falkenhayn found
it no easy task to break the Carpathian barrier despite the advantages
he possessed in every kind of equipment and in the experience of his
men. But for the paralysis which overcame the Russian effort in the
Carpathians he would have had the tables turned upon him, for no
advance would have been possible against the Rumanian frontier had his
flank been seriously threatened by the Russians from Jablonitza to the
Borgo. Indeed, with a little more energy on the part of the Russian
Government the Central Empires might have encountered in Transylvania
a greater disaster than had yet befallen them. The Russian excuse was
that their liabilities to Rumania involved an awkward extension of
their front, yet it was Russia which had put most pressure on Rumania
to intervene; and no account was taken of the huge extension of the
Teutonic front achieved by that intervention, nor of the fate which
Russia might have suffered if Falkenhayn and Mackensen had
concentrated in the north the forces they led against Rumania. The
relief which Russia secured thereby almost seems to support the
sinister view of Stuermer's policy.

It was not until 10 October that the northern Rumanian armies were
forced back to the Moldavian border; and all Falkenhayn's efforts to
debouch from the central passes towards Bukarest were defeated by
Rumanian valour. Nor was he more successful against Moldavia, and
November arrived with its promise of snow to block the mountain-routes
before he had advanced more than four miles into Rumanian territory.
Mackensen, too, was held up in the Dobrudja, and a month's inactivity
was only relieved by rival raids across the Danube. But by 20 October
he had received reinforcements in the shape of two Turkish divisions
and one German. The Russo-Rumanian line was broken, and on the 21st
the railway between Constanza and Tchernavoda. Constanza was abandoned
on the 22nd, its stores of oil and wheat being burned, and on the 25th
a span of the great bridge at Tchernavoda was blown up by the
retreating Rumanians, while the Russians hastily withdrew thirty-five
miles to Babadagh. Here on 1 November Sakharov arrived to take the
command with several new divisions, for Alexeiev did his best to
redeem the failings of his Government, and a counter-offensive was
begun. On the 9th Sakharov recaptured Hirsova, and by the 15th he had
advanced to within seven miles of Mackensen's lines defending the
Constanza railway. But he was too late, for the Rumanian defence which
had held north and south in the central zone was crumbling fast in the
western salient.

Having failed along the direct route to Bukarest, Falkenhayn now
concentrated his efforts on the passes west of the Törzburg; but he
had little success in October. Two columns which crossed the mountains
east of the Roterturm Pass and made for Salatrucul were flung back
with heavy losses on the 18th, and Falkenhayn transferred his main
attack to the Vulcan Pass still farther west. But he kept up his
pressure from the Roterturm down the Aluta valley in order to detain
there the Rumanian reinforcements which the extension of Lechitsky's
line into Moldavia had released for service in the West; and in the
first week of November his troops were threatening Rymnik. But south
of the Vulcan they had come to grief at Targul Jiu, where on 27
October General Dragalina, with inferior numbers and artillery, won
the most brilliant success of the campaign. Unfortunately he died of
his wounds on 9 November, and with fresh reinforcements and guns the
Germans under Falkenhayn's eyes resumed their advance on the 10th.
Their progress was stubbornly contested, but on the 21st they entered
Craiova on the main Rumanian railway, thus cutting off the western
part of Rumania from the capital and isolating the army defending
Orsova and Turnu Severin. Presently it was surrounded, but for nearly
three weeks of gallant effort and romantic adventure it eluded its
fate and only surrendered at Caracalu on 7 December after the fall of
Bukarest.

Craiova was bad enough, but almost worse was to follow; for on 23
November Mackensen succeeded in forcing the passage of the Danube
beween Samovit and Sistovo, and by the 27th he effected a junction
with Falkenhayn's armies which had swung east and were now across the
Aluta advancing on Bukarest. The Rumanians' flanks were thus both
turned by the crossing of the mountain passes and of the Danube, and
they had no option but a rapid retreat to a line where those flanks
held firm. That line did not cover the capital, and its elaborate
forts would have been merely a trap for the Rumanian army.
Nevertheless, a brave and skilful attempt was made to save it by a
manoeuvre battle, and hopes were entertained in allied countries that
Rumania was about to repeat the success of the Marne. The success
could only come later when Averescu had flanks as secure as Joffre's.
Still a wedge was for the moment driven between Mackensen and
Falkenhayn's centre, and the movement might have succeeded had the
reserves been up to time. Bukarest fell on the 5th, and for the rest
of the year the Germans continued their progress eastwards until the
Russo-Rumanian forces were able to stand on a line formed by the
Danube, the Sereth, and the Putna ascending to the Oitos Pass.
Sakharov had been forced to withdraw from the Dobrudja, and all that
was left of Rumania was its Moldavian province, less than one-third of
the kingdom, with its capital near the Russian frontier at Jassy.

Sarrail's campaign in the south provided inadequate compensation. The
part assigned to the British contingents under General Milne, which
had taken over the front from the Vardar eastwards past Doiran and
down the Struma to the sea, was the somewhat thankless one of pinning
the Bulgars to that sector and preventing them from reinforcing the
threatened line in the west. The various British attacks on villages
east of the Struma, such as Nevolien, Jenikoi, Prosenik, and
Barakli-Djuma, were thus merely raids, and the ground gained was soon
evacuated for tactical or sanitary reasons. The serious offensive was
towards Monastir, and the lion's part was played by the Serbian army
with assistance from the French and a moderate Russian contingent;
Italians from Avlona also fought occasionally. The Bulgarian offensive
from Monastir in August had penetrated far into Greek territory,
patrols even reaching Kailar, and it threatened, indeed, to turn
Sarrail's left wing by an advance to the shores of the Gulf of
Salonika when Sarrail began his attack on 7 September. The first
serious fighting took place to the west of Lake Ostrovo, where on the
14th the Serbians captured Ekshisu. On the 20th they stormed Mount
Kaymakchalan and recovered a footing on Serbian territory, while the
French and Russians drove the Bulgars out of Florina. On the 29th,
after furious Bulgarian counter-attacks, the Serbian general Mishitch
descended the mountains towards the bend of the Tcherna river, and
turning the left flank of the Bulgar-Germanic army forced it back to
the lines at Kenali beyond the Greek frontier. These had been selected
by Mackensen and strongly fortified, and a frontal attack by the
French and Russians on 14 October broke down (see Map, p. 151).

Better success attended the Serbian efforts to turn the enemy flank.
By 5 October they had secured the crossing of the Tcherna at Brod, and
slowly they pushed across it. Bad weather delayed them for a month,
but by 15 November Mishitch had mastered the river bend from Iven to
Bukri; and, thus outflanked on their left, the enemy yielded to the
Franco-Russian attacks on Kenali and retreated to the Bistritza, four
miles from Monastir. On the 16th and 17th the Serbians again attacked
on the mountains in the Tcherna bend, carried the Bulgar positions,
and by the 19th had reached Dobromir and Makovo whence they threatened
the line of retreat from Monastir to Prilep. On that day the Germans
and Bulgars moved out of and the Allies into Monastir. Their position
was further improved before the end of the year, and it is said that
had Mishitch been allowed the use of reserves, Prilep would also have
fallen and Monastir been spared the annoying bombardment which it
suffered at intervals for nearly two years. For its capture marked the
limit of Entente success in that sphere until the closing months of
the war. The campaign had not been fruitless, for Greece had been
saved as a brand from the burning, and presently did her part in the
Allied cause. But the Balkan corridor had been expanded by the
Rumanian disaster into a solid block, and revolution in Russia soon
put an end to all threats from the north. The hopes that were built on
Salonika were destined to remain in abeyance until events in September
1918 justified the faith of those who refused to abandon the Balkans.

The Rumanian disaster was, however, a severe trial to the confidence
and the patience of public opinion. Some critics held that the war had
been lost in that campaign; but it was a worthier sentiment than
pessimism that gave edge to popular feeling against the Government.
Official optimism had not concealed the indecisiveness of the Somme,
and few had the vision to discern the deferred dividends which accrued
as a bonus to other ministers in the spring. But disappointment with
the achievements on the Somme was not so bitter as resentment at the
failure in Rumania. Was friendship with the Entente doomed always to
be fatal to little peoples? One more trusting nation had gone the way
of Belgium, Serbia, and Montenegro, and the blow to our self-respect
was keenly felt. The public had little knowledge of the real
responsibility, but where knowledge is rare suspicion is rife; and a
vicarious victim is always required when the actual culprit is out of
reach. Englishmen could exact no responsibility for whatever befell in
the war except from their own responsible Government; and few paused
to reflect that if Russia could not protect her immediate neighbour,
England and France could not save a State from which they were
completely cut off both by land and sea. Nor was it open for those who
knew the facts to make public comment on the conduct of an ally, and
compulsory silence on the part of truth made all the more audible the
malicious tongue of slander. Belgium may have been our affair, but the
Balkans were that of Russia; and not the wildest of Jingoes before the
war had dreamt of British forces protecting Rumania. It was indeed the
very distance of the danger that induced and enabled us to indulge in
recrimination against the Government; for when eighteen months later a
greater and far more preventable disaster threatened us nearer home,
public sense rose superior to the temptation and temper of 1916, and
instead of attacking ministers the nation bent its undivided and
uncomplaining energies to the task of supporting and helping them out
of their dilemma.

In the autumn of the Rumanian reverse there was no peril so imminent
in the West as to impose unity upon public opinion, the press, or
aspiring politicians. The advance on the Somme had been slow, but it
was the Germans who were in retreat; the German Navy had been
demoralized at Jutland; and Germany's only retaliation had been the
judicial murder of Captain Fryatt on 27 July on a charge of having
defended himself against a submarine. Nine-tenths of Germany's last
and greatest colony had been overrun, and German forces oversea
reduced to hiding in unhealthy swamps in a corner of East Africa;
while across the Sinai desert and up the banks of the Tigris were
creeping those railways which were to lead to the conquest of Syria
and Mesopotamia. Two German raids in the dark on the Channel flotilla
and the recrudescence of German submarine activity had, indeed,
provoked some criticism of the Admiralty, and the substitution of
Jellicoe for Sir Henry Jackson as First Sea Lord had been already
decided. But the menace of the Zeppelins, which had earlier stirred
indignation in breasts unmoved by dangers at the front, had been met
when on 2 and 23 September, 1 October, and 27 November successive
raiders were destroyed with all their crews by incendiary bullets from
aeroplanes; and the Zeppelin had ceased to worry the public mind. The
aircraft policy of the Government had been vindicated by a judicial
committee in the summer, and the German mechanical superiority in the
air which was foreshadowed by the advent of the Fokker had not
survived the subsequent improvements in British construction; while
the exploits of Captain Ball put those of every German airman into the
shade.

Impatience and pinpricks were, indeed, the causes of popular
irritation, rather than any such crisis as those of the autumn of 1914
or the spring of 1918. Such irritants are, however, apt to provoke
more resentment and provide more scope for recrimination than the
stunning blows of national disaster; and in the autumn of 1916 the
people felt less need of restraint than in the more perilous moments
of the war. The discontent was not due to any particular causes, nor
was it confined to any particular country. It was a malaise produced
by the fact that the war was lasting longer and costing more than
people had expected, and by popular reluctance to believe that Britons
could not have beaten the Germans sooner but for the feebleness of
their leaders. The public needed a stimulant other than that which
mere prudence could provide; and catch-penny journals, having hunted
in vain for a dictator, found at least a victim in the Cabinet of
twenty-three. It was not an ideal body for prompt decision, and its
chief seemed almost as slow at times to take action that was necessary
as he was to commit the irretrievable blunders urged on him by his
journalistic mentors, who thought the wisdom of a step immaterial
provided it was taken at once. He had other qualities which
disqualified him for popular favour in a time of popular passion. He
was not emotional, and did not respond to the varying moods of the
hour with the versatility demanded by the experts in daily sensation.
He belonged to an older school of politicians who suffered, like our
armies in the field, from the newer and possibly more scientific
methods of their foes. He was scrupulous in his observance of accepted
rules of conduct, and the charge which was pressed against him most
was that of excessive loyalty. He did not intrigue against his
colleagues for newspaper support, nor publicly criticize his
Government's commanders in the field. He put what success his Cabinet
achieved to its common credit, and took the chief responsibility for
its failures himself. He was staid in adversity but slow in
advertisement, and he did not figure in the cinema.

Mr. Lloyd George was the antithesis of his former leader, a Celt of
the Celts, with all their amazing emotion, versatility, and intuition.
There is a true story, which has even found its way into French
literature, of how the Welshmen were stirred to defeat an
all-conquering New Zealand football team by the strains of the "Land
of my Fathers." That was the sort of tonic the British public found in
Mr. Lloyd George, and it would not have been so much to their taste at
a less emotional time. He was the very embodiment of an emotion that
was not overburdened with scruples, and of an impulse which hardly
troubled to think. He imported the temperament and the methods of the
religious revivalist into the practice of politics, and he enlisted
strange allies when he found a vehicle for his patriotic fervour in
the language of the prize-ring. He prided himself on his aptitude for
political strategy, and professed a sympathy with the mind of the man
in the street which was keener even than that of Lord Northcliffe. His
views were always short-sighted, and he had the most superficial
knowledge of the deeper problems of war and politics. Before the war
broke out he had complained that we were building Dreadnoughts against
a phantom; in August 1914 he estimated our daily expenditure of
three-quarters of a million as a diminishing figure; in the following
April he was as much in the dark as Mr. Asquith himself about
munitions, and denied that conscription would assist our success in
the war. According to one of his colleagues, he was the only member of
his Cabinet who favoured British participation in the Pacifist
Conference of Stockholm; in the November before the great German
offensive in the West he quoted with approval a plea for concentration
at Laibach; and the views he expressed on the Salonika expedition
varied with the fortunes of war and the fluctuations of popular
favour. His remark after the armistice that we had achieved nothing in
the time of his predecessor except two defeats at the hands of the
Turks, was an epitome of his own intellectual limitations; and the
intensity of his convictions was discounted by the infirmity of his
principles.

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