Even a clergyman of Germany blindly paid tribute when he said: "Many wounded men are coming back to our Church from the dreadful Western Front. They have been fighting the British, and they find that so ignorant are the British of warfare that the British soldiers on the Somme refuse to surrender, not knowing that they are really beaten, with the result that terrible losses are inflicted upon our brave troops."

Gueudecourt, Lesboeufs, and Morval, with the final reduction of Combles and Thiepval. October added Eaucourt l'Abbaye and Le Sars, leading up to the final brilliant record of November when Beaumont Hamel, Beaucourt, and St. Pierre Divion yielded up their strength before the last bold assault of the year.

These are the fortified villages through which the advancing British. lines were pushed. We have seen how

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Let us look back across the months of conflict among the hills and woods of Picardy. In the first week of July the first line of the German rampart was broken through, and Mametz, Montauban, Fricourt, Contafmaison and La Boisselle were reduced. MidJuly brought the second crashing stroke, that yielded Longueval, the two Bazentins, Ovillers-la-Boisselle, and Pozières. Through August there was steady, hard, up-hill fighting under burning heat to gain the top, of the ridge. This was followed in September by the seizure of Guillemont, Ginchy, Flers, Martinpuich, Courcelette, Courcelette,

numbers of separate contests were fought over many a farm and woodland, fortified valley and sunken road, a windmill, a redoubt, a trench, a cemetery. So this battle which was in truth more than fifty battles, each of which would have been counted as an important engagement judged by the standards of warfare in earlier days, had altered the lines on the Western Front. For the first time since settling there, the Germans had lost the initiative. It had been taken over into the hands of the Allies. At one point the strong wall of defense had been battered through and laid in ruin-a thing of shattered, splintered, crumbling fragments.

under General Sir Bryan Mahon from Suvla were hurried from the Dardanelles and the first detachments landed at Saloniki October 5. That was an eventful day. In the morning King Constantine informed Venizelos that he had gone beyond his rights and demanded his resignation, which was given just two hours before the French troops began to disembark.

K'

ING CONSTANTINE BEGINS TO QUIBBLE.

By this act the king gave the plainest possible avowal of sympathy with Germany, and the Saloniki expedition from the outset was doomed not only to Greek hostility, but laid open also to the charge of violating Greek neutrality, for the king quickly proceeded to repudiate the treaty with Serbia on the ground that it held good in case of Bulgarian aggression alone. "Come over into Macedonia and help us" is a cry repeated down the ages, but the helpers when they came were no more welcome in this latter day than in earlier times. Nevertheless the Allies stayed, and strove, by_avoiding occasion of strife, to make Constantine forget that the neutrality of Greece no longer existed save in theory.

General Sarrail left for Saloniki October 7, and arrived on the twelfth. So hurried was the whole undertaking, that his orders were changed twice on the way and once again within fortyeight hours of his arrival, when the French Government gave orders to move up the Vardar in a desperate effort to join hands with the Serbian army. In those few days much had happened. On the seventh of the month, von Mackensen had forced the line of the Save and Danube; on the ninth, Belgrade had fallen, and on the eleventh the Bulgars had crossed the Serbian marches. Soon 200,000 AustroGermans under von Mackensen were pushing south from Save and Danube against the Serbian front, while 250,000 Bulgars were moving east against the Serbian right flank. Far to the south a small Franco-British force was preparing to go against the Bulgarian left, fearing that already it was too late to succor Serbia or hold up the retreat.

The Serbians had hoped that the Allies, using the railway from Saloniki, would rush up to Nísh, and houses were decorated with flags in their fronor, a crowds waited for them at the station. But General Sarrail had decided against this plan. Nish was 200 miles from Saloniki and connected only by a single railway line. If troops were sent it would mean that they would be flung into the battle unit by unit as they arrived, that they would pass under the Serbian High Command and cease to exist as a separate force, and that they must share in the inevitable Serbian retreat. Moreover, the Greeks by this time were showing themselves SO hostile that Sarrail judged it unwise to expose himself to being cut off in the rear. Accordingly, he decided to protect the Vardar valley with the forces at his disposal, and thereby secure for the Serbians one line of retreat to the sea. The French troops were hurried to secure the railway and join hands if possible with the Serbians before the Bulgar thrust had cut communications. The British force was to hold Saloniki, and protect the communications.

The advance began on October 14, and in five days General Bailloud had established headquarters at Strumnitza station, and started to drive back the Bulgars in the hilly region on the east of the line towards their own frontier. The position on the crest of these hills was secured and taken over by the British division, which began to arrive on the 26th. Meanwhile the French left and more mobile wing had pushed further north and captured the Demir Kapu gorge, a point of special danger where river and railway are penned up for ten miles in a ravine, whose entrance is, a gap so narrow that only the river can force a passage between its high walls and, where the railway has to burrow into the rock itself. This defile was seized only just in time, for the Bulgars were advancing from the east.

in landing. Uskub fell on the 22nd and Veles on the 28th of the month. The Bulgarian invasion had accomplished its first great purpose; it had driven a wedge between retreating Serb and advancing Frenchman. Was it possible to cut through this wedge by fighting? Two attempts were made, both of them doomed to failure. The first was the so-called "manoeuvre of Katshanik" in which from November 4-8 the Serbians took the offensive in the hope of cutting through to Uskub. But they were tired out and short of guns and so after five hard days the attack was called off, and in its place on the twelfth the tragic

Strumnitza station, and at Krivolak the Kara Hodjali mountain commanding the railway was taken by the French who called it Kara Rosalie in token of the bloody bayonet fighting around its slopes. In order to begin the attack, the swollen Vardar had to be crossed and re-crossed many hundreds of times in an old Turkish punt and the height was secured only just in time, for two days later the Bulgarians realizing its importance attacked in force and were only beaten off in a fierce close fight (November 4 and 5), and still remained intrenched over against the French on the flat crest of the mountain.