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the hostile front trenches, but only on the left were they able to maintain the ground won, and nowhere was progress made beyond the first enemy system. Heavy fighting, which only died down on the 28th, was necessary to consolidate the new line, and meanwhile for "climatic and other reasons" to use the words of Milne's despatch the rest of the front remained inactive. It was only on May 5 that the other secondary elements of the battle (W. of the Cerna, Cerna bend, Lyumnitsa- Mayadag front) began their artillery preparations. At last, on the pth in the case of the British the evening of the 8th the infantry went forward on all fronts. The British, attacking between the Petit Couronne and Lake Doiran, were repulsed, but they made good an advance further W., where 500 yards in depth were gained over a frontage of two miles; these gains were held and consolidated. On the Lyumnitsa front the French izand Div., aided for the first time by Greek forces, carried out methodical advances by fractions at a time, and even for a moment held the Srka di Legen. Elsewhere all holding attacks were repulsed after the usual momentary successes. But the serious feature of the situation was the fact that the Serbians, who were to have been the shock element of the attack and to have begun their advance on the pth, like the rest, came to a standstill on the nth after engaging only one of the three divisions between Kaimakchalan and the Cerna. More, they asked to be taken out of the line, and with this the offensive scheme practically collapsed. Sarrail did, indeed, induce them to engage again with two divisions, and on the isth attacks in aid were delivered or threatened at other points. 1 This time, after some loss, they demanded that the offensive should be abandoned altogether. Already Sarrail had received authority from Paris to suspend operations and establish his defensive line (May 15), and on the 23rd, after the second Serbian disappointment, he issued orders accordingly. It could be claimed, with justice, that these operations had pinned the Bulgarian Armies to their ground, and indeed only one Bulgarian division remained in the Danube theatre, all the rest having been drawn into the Balkans by the developing threat of the offensive. But Sarrail had hoped for much more. His object had been Veles and Dcmir Kapu at the least, instead of which only slight advances on the Struma, Doiran, Lyumnitsa and Monastir fronts without exception secondary elements in his scheme had resulted. The offensive was, in short, a failure, and one, moreover, in which it was palpable that disunity had played the major part.

The reasons are to be sought partly in the Serbian breakdown and partly in the general war situation. Allusion has already been made to the fact that the Serbian Army had for some time been passing through an internal crisis, and to the demands made by the Serbian Government and higher command for tangible evidence that all the Allies would frankly engage their forces in the battle. The engagement of the French and Greeks on the Lyumnitsa front, and above all that of the British on the Doiran front, where attacks were made in earnest, local gains secured, and heavy losses incurred 2 in aid of the projected main attack, might have been supposed to be an effective answer to this last demand, even though the Italians and French in the Cerna bend showed no great vigour. 3 But in fact it is premature to enquire how far a sense of having been left in the lurch in the autumn battle and how far internal troubles respectively contributed to the Serbian refusal. In any case a strong motive at the back of all others was that expressed in the phrase, " What is the use of delivering Serbia if no Serbs are left to inhabit it? " But there were other elements of discouragement. Exalted hopes of a great general advance to victory on all fronts had been dashed to the ground by the Aisne battle and its tragic consequences, and they were followed by a revulsion in which the war-weariness, soldiers' grievances,

1 The British on the Struma took Kupri and Ernekeui on this day.

1 According to Sarrail the British losses in the two offensives were 8,000.

fort bien conduit, according to Sarrail (p. 257).
 * The Russian brigade in the Cerna bend on the contrary s'est

and the tremors of revolution produced alarming mutinies. The Russian contingent was affected not only by the revolu- tion, 4 but by rumours of what had happened to their comrades in France, and they in turn affected the Serbs. When, on the main front and in the presence of the main enemy, the moral of a homogeneous army was shaken to its foundations, it was not to be expected that on this secondary front a patchwork of contingents, every one of which was exiled from its homeland, would fare any better.

In the midst of these conditions of exasperation the Greek question at last came to a head. M. Jonnart was sent out as Allied High Commissioner, and Sarrail was authorized to invade Thessaly (June 10). He had already begun to prepare a force for this purpose immediately the offensive was abandoned, and, to make certain, other troops went to Athens, to Corinth, and to Itea in the Gulf of Amphissa, whence a line of supply for the Thessaly force was opened via Bralo. Except for a skirmish at Larisa on June 12 no fighting took place. The dethronement of Constantine and the succession of King Alexander, with Venizelos as his first Minister, were successfully accomplished and most of the troops withdrawn again during July.

But the settlement of the Greek problem came too late to have any influence on operating against Bulgaria. The events of the Spring had affected governmental policies as well as common men's passions. Thus, the British War Office began to withdraw troops for the forthcoming Syrian campaign; the Italian Government began similarly to press for the withdrawal of their 35th Div. for operations in Albania; and the French Government, reconstituted after the Aisne crisis, had made it a definite policy to economize the reduced man-power of France by avoiding battle. Meantime, the Italian advance into Epirus, made concurrently with the French operation in Thessaly, antagonized Greek opinion, the relations of Greeks and Serbians were little better, and those of the French and Italians at the margin of the respective spheres of occupation in Albania none too good. The personalities of the Venizelist, and those of the regular Greek Armies, now to be amalgamated, were inevitably opposed. Finally, Essad Pasha reappeared, with a national Albanian policy and the nucleus of an Albanian contingent.

Sarrail, nevertheless, attempted to maintain a certain mili- tary activity; in particular, an enterprise on the extreme left was carried out by a French force under Gen. Jacquemot, 6 which captured Pogradets (Sept. n) and thence advanced N. almost to Lin. In Oct. a further advance was made into the upper Skumbi valley, but this was suspended, owing to represen- tations by the Italian Government, and the French then with- drew to Pogradets, leaving Essad's bands to operate in the Skumbi region independently. Finally, the whole front relapsed into practical stagnation.

On Dec. 10 Sarrail was relieved of his command by the new Clemenceau ministry on the renewed demand of the British and Italian Governments, and of General Foch in his capacity as chief of the staff of the French Army. This put an end to a situation which had become impossible. The proximate cause of his dismissal, so far as the French Government was concerned, had nothing to do with Salonika, but was Sarrail's relation to . the p'arties of the Lef t, who, in the troubled summer of 1917, had become pacifist in character, and were suspected, rightly or wrongly, of dealings with similar elements on the enemy's side. 6 So far as the Allies were concerned, it was due partly to the personality of Sarrail, and partly to the insistent and thrust- ing policy of France in dealing with Greece. In effect, the over-

4 It is only just to record, however, that to the end of the year they continued to take their share in duties in the line. The evidence of Sarrail, especially p. 289, is emphatic as to this.

' The superintendence of this operation was the last service of Gen. Grossetti, who left Salonika on Sept. 24 suffering from poison- ing, like his predecessor Cordonnier. He died a few months later.

M. Clemenceau in his explanation before the army commission late in Dec. 1917 seems to have laid stress principally on the fact that unless satisfaction was given to the Allies in respect of their complaints against Sarrail, they would not accept a French Com- mander-in-Chief on the western front. (Mermeix.)