Nelson's history of the war. Vol. XI., The struggle for the Dvina, and the great invasion of Serbia

BULGARIA ENTERS THE WAR. I1

Bosphorus, with the Serbians pushed into the inhospitable Albanian hills, with the Western Allies held fast in Gallipoli, and with Russia unable to do more than maintain her long front from the Dniester to the Gulf of Riga, there would be small temptation for either to leave the path of neutrality. It is probable that even if the Vilna struggle had gone in Germany’s favour, and Dvinsk and Riga had fallen, the Balkan expedition would have been undertaken. For there was a shrewd strategic purpose behind it all which the Western world was inclined to overlook. The German plan which sought a speedy decision had long ago gone to pieces. Her losses were immense, and the day was approaching when they could no longer be made good. She was comelled to keep her main armies on the Western and Et fronts, and on the first she was already much inferior in numbers of equipped men, and on the second was rapidly passing to the same case. A decision in the true sense could only be got on these main fronts, and if the Allies concentrated their efforts there it was not likely that the result could be long delayed. Her aim was, therefore, to draw off her enemy’s strength to a remote and irrelevant terrain. She knew our passion for divergent operations. Fears for India and Egypt would, she argued, cause us to forget the essentials of strategy. Already we had given hostages to fortune by locking up our troops in Gallipoli. With a little trouble she might induce us to divert to the Balkans many of the new divisions which were destined for France and Flanders, and even to strip our Western front of troops already there. She observed with approval that British statesmen talked