the Serbs had evacuated Monastir in their now frankly' west-
ward retirement.
The reassembly- of the Allied Salonika forces around their port of origin naturally raised the question were they to remain there? Their locus standi had been the fact that they were Allies of Serbia using a line of communications to which Serbia was by treaty entitled. This part of the case no longer existed, Serbia being wholly in the hands of the enemy, and could only be revived if and when the Serbian Army were trans- ferred from the Adriatic ports on which it had retreated to Salonika. Another part of the justification for the Allies' presence was the admitted fact that they had come at the re- quest of Venizelos, and for the purposes of common action with the Greeks, but since Venizelos's fall even the Zaimis cabinet, representing " benevolent " neutrality, had given way to a cabinet representing at least strict neutrality, 1 which gave the Germanophil element at Salonika all the official justification it needed to pursue the policy of obstruction that it had already initiated in the Zaimis period. On the other hand the factor of prestige was one of great weight, especially in view of the pend- ing abandonment of the Dardanelles compaign, and although Sarrail suggested that evacuation followed by a dramatic offensive at some other point would more than restore the lost prestige, it was decided that Salonika should be held. Beyond that decision, however, no clear military or political intention was at that time formed. The policies of the British, French and Russian Governments were in unison as to the problem of Greece, and it seems to have been thought that, by remaining, the Salonika force would confront the enemy with as difficult a diplomatic problem as its own. This was, indeed, the case. The policy to be followed by the Central Powers, both towards Greece and in occupied Serbia and Albania, was wholly unsettled. " While the troops of the two Imperial Armies were hastening from victory to victory," says General von Cramon, the German military commissioner at Austrian headquarters, " behind the scenes, at the two general head- quarters, the clouds were gathering of that conflict which in the end brought about the reverses of 1916." Although on Nov. 6 it had been agreed that operations were to be pushed with all energy towards Salonika, Falkenhayn almost immediately began to check the further south-westward advance of German troops, and though Conrad succeeded in bringing the German command to renewed cooperation, this was obviously to be limited to a minimum, both on account of supply difficulties in the Balkans and of the pressing requirements of the two main theatres in particular those of the forthcoming attack on Verdun, of which only a few men in the German headquarters and none in the Austrian had the secret. Falkenhayn's view was that the Bulgarians alone should undertake the campaign in southern Serbia. But, whatever the attitude of Greece towards Germany, it was so hostile towards Bulgaria that to cross the frontier in pursuit of Sarrail without a large proportion of German troops being included in the advance was politically impossible. Aus- tria herself was absorbed in Montenegrin-Albanian enterprises, and could give no direct assistance in the advance to Salonika that her general staff advocated. Moreover, Conrad had his secret as well as Falkenhayn he was planning to carry out his offensive of Asiago, with or without the aid of Germany.
At the end of 1915 therefore, though the Central Powers had succeeded in their purpose Serbia being conquered and the railway to Constantinople reopened whereas the Entente had failed, the outlook was no clearer for the former than for the latter. The pursuit was accordingly suspended at the frontier, partly perhaps in the hope that the Entente would itself take the initiative in closing down the operations. If they did not do so Falkenhayn was determined that eventually
1 The first act of the Skoulpudis ministry had been to announce that any of the Allied forces in Serbia which retreated into Greece would be disarmed and interned. A prompt note from the British and French Governments closed this incident, but the indication of policy was unmistakable. About the same time Skouloudis noti- fied the Bulgarian Government that it would not permit the latter's troops to cross the frontier.
the Bulgarians alone should remain on this front. They were, by the terms of the military agreement, unavailable for any other, and if they succeeded in containing even a smaller force of Entente troops that was not so limited, something was gained for nothing. On the other hand this idea implied a defensive position short of the Greek frontier, as a purely Bulgarian advance into Greece was impossible. Thus, at the beginning of 1915, the opposing forces stood roughly 20 m. apart, each limited against its own will to a strict defensive by political conditions and each regarded by its own superior authorities as a " commitment."
At the end of the year two incidents occurred to illustrate the complexities of the Salonika front. On Dec. 30, though Bulgarian and German forces were forbidden to cross the frontier, German aircraft, by order, bombed the city of Salonika itself, where nine out of ten of their possible victims were neutrals and the tenth an agent of their own side. Sarrail promptly retaliated by arresting the German, Austrian and Bulgarian consuls, hitherto left unmolested. Another air raid took place on Feb. i 1916, to which the Allies replied by bombing the village of Petrich, just within the Bulgarian frontier, but as the village contained Greek and Serbian as well as Bulgarian in- habitants, a complaint was made, and Sarrail received orders not to repeat such raids. A few days before this another in- cident showed that the personal estrangements of Joffre and Sarrail were still operative. The army of the Orient had been brought under Joffre's command 2 early in December, and Joffre had taken the opportunity to send out Castelnau to report on Sarrail's management of the situation. Castelnau, however, pronounced himself satisfied with what he saw, and only issued a few instructions as to details. Nevertheless, in various ways the friends and the enemies of Sarrail alike busied themselves with accusations and counter-accusations, out of which a regular affaire was growing up to complicate an already confused situa- tion. Relations between Sarrail and Mahon on the other hand were excellent, and although each was independent of the other, and the British general was himself under the command of General Sir C. Monro, commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, no important divergencies of policy developed during the phase of passive .defence in the precincts of Salonika.
With the Greeks, naturally, all possible causes of friction existed. Army commanders operating under war conditions are not prone to sacrifice realities to appearances, and what seemed to them plain military common sense was, from the point of view of the Greeks, high-handed conduct to be resisted by all safe means of obstruction. Amongst the major questions at issue were the disarmament of the coast defences of Salonika, the use of the Salonika-Doiran railway for the British con- tingent, the feeding of the Greek forces E. of Salonika who were dependent for supply upon railways seized by the Allies, and the continuance or non-continuance of the Greek garrison in Salonika city. Minor questions of an administrative character were naturally innumerable. Most of the energy of the staffs in Salonika and the legations at Athens was devoted to finding solutions for conflicts which the equivocal position of the Allies made inevitable. 3 During these conflicts the Salonika lines,
' Joffre was Commandant en Chef of the " North-Eastern group of Armies," no other formations having been contemplated before the war. On being sent to the E. Sarrail was appointed Commandant en Chef also. But, in Dec., Briand placed Sarrail's forces under Joffre's supreme command
8 On Jan. 12 1916 the bridge of Demir Hissar on the Struma was blown up by a special force sent out by Sarrail in the presence of the Greek forces stationed there a high-handed act which could only be excused or justified by the necessity of preventing the Bulgarians and Germans from deploying heavy artillery against the N.E. part of Salonika in case of siege. On Jan. 28 1916 another problem re- ceived an enforced solution, after negotiations had failed to find an " elegant " one. Anglo-French forces by a coup de main occupied the Greek coast-defence batteries on the Gulf of Salonika. These inci- dents naturally intensified the hostility of the Greek officers and officials to the Allied occupation, or at least gave them tangible grievances. In particular, the feeding of the Greek forces isolated by the cutting of the Struma railways caused difficulties, and from it, in part at any rate, arose the critical question of demobilizing the Greek Army in the Spring of 1916.
