Vol. LIX, No. 1

Whole Number 1485

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HE DESPAIRING CRY to Baal for help that rose from the false prophets on Mount Carmel in ancient days is now duplicated by an equally wild cry to Berlin, and unless all our editorial seers are mistaken, the call of Turk and Bulgar for aid will be answered only by the roar of Allied guns. We are supposedly at peace with Turkey and Bulgaria, but every bag of Moslem and Bulgarian prisoners is trumpeted through the land like an American victory and their futile appeals to the war-lord of Berlin are treated as delicious reading. The Bulgarian "Czar" at Sofia begs a German Field-Marshal to come and take command of his shattered armies, while another German Field-Marshal, who had promised the Sultan an easy conquest of Egypt, flees in ignominious haste after a crushing defeat on the old battle-field of Armageddon. The war-lord in Berlin can spare no aid from his own beleaguered frontier, and our editors believe that Teutonic prestige in the East has been forever shattered by the events of this September. Each new British victory, writes one correspondent, spurs the Arabs' determination to free themselves from the Ottoman yoke, and the power of the pro-German Young Turks in Constantinople is daily becoming more precarious. Besides the two smashing blows against the prestige of the Central Empires, the evidence that neither Germany nor Austria is any longer able to offer effective support to their subordinate accomplices, Turkey and Bulgaria "the minor Beelzebubs," as some one calls them— must be shaking the Quadruple Alliance to its very foundation, in the opinion of another writer. Truly have the French called the present season "the Autumn of Vengeance," says a Paris correspondent of the New York Times, noting these facts:

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Austria pleading for peace and confessing that only enough flour is left to last till January; the Bulgarian armies hopelessly cut in two and in disorderly retreat; Turkey disastrously defeated, with the loss of two of her best armies and two of her richest provinces; Germany suffering the accumulated bitterness of ten consecutive weeks of continuous defeats along the whole extent of what she regarded as the most impregnable part of her front at the hands of armies she believed at her mercy, and looking forward with ever-growing terror to the vengeance for all her crimes that awaits her at the hands of an American army stronger than her own."

Germany's military might on the West Front, in Palestine, in Macedonia, is at last beginning to crumble, the New York World believes. And while Berlin trembles, the reverberation of Allied blows "thrills the enemies of Germany with joyous expectation." These simultaneous successes in Palestine and Macedonia, "with their prolonged, patient, silent but consummate preparation," continues the New York Evening Sun, "constitute a wonderful feat of generalship and they vindicate climactically the principle of unified command." Marshal Foch, as the Philadelphia Press notes, has kept almost every sector of the Western Front busy, "and now one by one he is raising the curtain on the several 'side shows." The Foch plan of hitting

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the enemy "hard in quick succession at point after point" is now triumphantly in action, other editors point out, even on the outer edges of the conflict.

The steady envelopment of St. Quentin and the drives in Lorraine and Champagne were almost driven from the popular mind by the dramatic and thrilling operations in Macedonia and Palestine, with "Palestine regained" by Allenby. In the words of the Newark News, "with one of the great cavalry rushes of history" Allenby "swept north over the plains of Sharon to Nazareth, from Judea across Samaria into Galilee, and, in three days, pocketed the Turkish main army between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee." If Allenby makes the most of his brilliant success, continues The News, "Damascus will fall, opening the road to Aleppo and making it possible to effect a junction with General Marshall in Mesopotamia, which would put the British on the frontier of Asia Minor from the Mediterranean to the Persian frontier." Turkey, other editors note, is also threatened by the Allied advance in Macedonia, where the Bulgarian armies have been divided and much of southern Servia recaptured. Further progress to the north and east would here cut off Constantinople from Berlin, Vienna, and Sofia. This would mean, says the Washington Post, the complete defeat of both Bulgaria and Turkey, the opening of the Black Sea to Allied navies, an opportunity to bring Roumania back into the war, control of the lower Danube, and an open path into Hungary. Germany, it adds, can only defeat this program "by weakening the Western Front, where she is already outnumbered.”

Allied military and political objects are the same in Palestine and Macedonia, says the military critic, Mr. Sidebotham, in a London Times dispatch to the New York Sun

"They are, first, to redeem for the rightful owners countries opprest by alien domination. Secondly, to defeat the enemy's Oriental policy and discourage his people, as well as to take in time guaranties for future peace and freedom which, if left to the final peace conference, might be skimped. Thirdly, if possible, gain fresh points of attack against our enemies."

The Eastern victories naturally revive the old debate between the "Easterners" and the "Westerners." A distinguished representative of the latter, General Maurice, asks us, in one of his dispatches to the New York Times, not to make too much of these successes. He observes that large forces must be kept in the East for defensive reasons and they must occasionally take the offensive, both for the sake of their own morale and to stir up the enemy and to keep troops away from his main front. Within these limitations, General Maurice thinks that "offensive operations in secondary theaters are justifiable, even while we are seeking to decide the war on the West Front." But the danger, as he sees it, is that we go too far afield after initial successes. And he warns us:

"Let us have no illusions. We can not defeat Germany, Turkey, and Bulgaria decisively in the field at one and the same

which argues that successes in Palestine and Macedonia were made possible by Foch's offensive in France, and observes:

"It is not minimizing the importance of the victories in the East to say that the Allies are working for a swifter victory than could be obtained by the crushing of Turkey and Bulgaria and their separation from the Central Alliance. If we were content to stand for two years on the defensive in France, the war might be so won. But that is precisely what the great Allied effort, and principally America's effort, is intended to avoid. If the war were to be won by negotiation the Allies would be justified in concentrating on the policy of piecemeal Eastern conquest and the break-up of the Teuton alliance. But as it is, Foch will still prepare himself to break the German. line once for all between the North Sea and the Vosges."

On the other hand, it seems to the military expert of the New York Times that these successes in the East have certainly "justified in full measure the British judgment in continuing their forces in what would on the surface appear to be but subsidiary fields." The Washington Post laments the long ascendency of the "Westerners" in Allied councils. It believes them largely responsible for the fact that the Central Powers were enabled "without let or hindrance" to consolidate their positions in Roumania, Asia Minor, and the Russian Black Sea littoral. The results in Macedonia and Palestine have, in the opinion of this newspaper, more than justified the expectations of the "Easterners," and "the only pity is" that their views "were so long opposed and that the present success was not obtained eighteen long months ago, which, in the opinion of competent observers, could have been done." The Brooklyn Eagle is of much the same opinion and declares that "a destroyed Turkey, an emancipated Servia, a revived Roumania, and a Greece infused with new vitality and power are objects that can and ought to be secured while the waning strength of Germany is concentrated for the defense of her menaced frontiers."

The Macedonian campaign, as the Philadelphia Inquirer points out, began on August 14, when Servian artillery opened

fire on the strongest Bulgarian positions along the Saloniki front. Two weeks later some of these positions were carried by assault with the capture of 800 prisoners and considerable booty. On September 15, after several days' bombardment, the great advance was begun by the French and the reconstituted Servian Army. The first day's fighting saw the Bulgarians driven back nine miles with a loss of a thousand prisoners. Day after day the offensive went on, the front broadening, the spear-head thrusting further north into Servia. In a week the fighting was general from Monastir to the Struma. On the left the Italians helped against the first Bulgarian Army. On the right the British and the new Greek Army struck north, driving the second Bulgarian Army beyond its own frontier. By the 26th there was continuous fighting on a 150-mile front, and the Allied center had advanced until Prilep and Ishtib were taken and the Bulgarian armies on either side of the Vardar were in grave danger of being cut off from each other and encircled in turn. The first week's fighting brought in as many as 10,000 prisoners and hundreds of guns. The Bulgarian positions were strong, being well fortified and situated in a land of steep mountains, but fell easily before the irrepressible Servians who were reconquering their fatherland. At some points, particularly near their own frontier, the Bulgarians held well, but on many sectors, according to the dispatches, they retreated helter-skelter, abandoning guns, supplies, and wounded soldiers; several regiments mutinied. The Servians, says the London Daily Mail, "performed one of the most difficult military feats, a deed comparable to the breaking of the Wotan line." A Jugo-Slav division also gave a good account of itself in the early part of this campaign. The immediate purposes of the Macedonian campaign are set forth by Mr. Frank H. Simonds in the New York Tribune:

"First, to exert upon the Bulgar Army, weakened by transfer of divisions to the West Front, such pressure as will recall the divisions sent away, produce defeat before the divisions can be recalled, and add to the discontent and apprehension already existing in Bulgaria; secondly, by thrusting up the Cerna Valley, to cut the Bulgar communications in the lower Vardar Valley, compelling a withdrawal from all the strong positions near the Greek