ported Russia in this demand. Bulgaria did not reply within the time specified and the Russian minister was reported too ill to move from Sofia, thus indicating that the diplomats of the great contending powers were still at work in an effort to secure the important support of Bulgaria in the Balkan campaign which was imminent.

On October 6, when Bulgaria was said to have sent an ultimatum to Serbia demanding the territory ceded after the recent Balkan wars, the envoys of the Allies at Sofia requested their passports, and Bulgaria became an active participant in the war. The Bulgarian minister at Nish, the Serbian capital, received his passports on October 8, and on the same day the Bulgarian minister at Paris was handed his passports. On the following day, October 9, Belgrade, the former Serbian capital, was occupied by Austro-German forces and the invasion of Serbia by Austria and Germany from the north and by Bulgaria from the east began in earnest. The Serbian capital was removed the same day to Ishtib, in the south.

THE SERBIAN CAMPAIGN.

When the great army of Germans and Austrians entered Serbia at Belgrade and other points along the Danube and began to drive the Serbian forces to the south, they met with immediate and continued successes. Bulgarian troops meanwhile pressed the Serbians on the west and by the end of November it seemed as if the entire territory of Serbia was doomed to the fate of Belgium. But on the south, allied troops, including a great body of French who had been landed at Saloniki in Greece and made their way northward, disputed the advance of the invaders and at several points drove back the Bulgarians, thus holding the southern territory of Serbia for their ally in the same manner that Flanders was being held by the Allies for Belgium.

CHAPTER XXV

SECOND WINTER OF WAR

In all the arenas of the great struggle, the winter campaign of 1915-16, the second winter of the war, was accompanied by unparalleled hardships and sufferings. It was, in fact, described by Major Moraht, military expert of the Berliner Tageblatt and the best known German military critic, as "the most terrific campaign in the world's history." Hundreds of thousands of men of all classes, in all the armies stretched along the battle fronts east and west, struggled against wind, weather, and winter amid conditions of the most extreme self-denial. Speaking for the Teutonic forces in January, Major Moraht said: "On our western and eastern fronts and along the lines held by our Austro-Hungarian allies, the conditions under which we must stubbornly hold out are such as never in the history of the world's most terrible campaign had to be endured before." The winter was exceptionally severe and men were invalided by the thousands, owing to frost-bites, despite ingenious precautions and the fact that their spells in the trenches were reduced considerably.

The conditions faced by the Austrians and Italians in the Alps and on the Isonzo were especially appalling. Thus a detachment of Austrian and Alpine troops, engaged in patrol duty, met its doom in an avalanche in southern Tyrol. Only one out of twelve was rescued alive, and he lay buried under snow for fourteen hours before he was rescued.

Added to the sufferings of the fighting men during the winter the sum total of human misery in Europe when 1916 dawned was vastly increased by the awful conditions prevailing in Poland and in Serbia. Poland, a land long recognized as given over to sorrows, had been crossed and recrossed by hostile armies. It had been harried, almost destroyed. Towns and food supplies, fields and granaries, were obliterated. The cattle had been driven off by the invaders and the people were left starving. The misery of Belgium a year before was as nothing compared with the misery of Poland amid the rigors of winter, and the unhappy country clamered for the help of happier peoples. It had become a land of graves and trenches, of ruin and destruction on a scale that had been wrought nowhere else by the war. Many of the abandoned trenches were the temporary "homes" of countless refugees, mostly women and children, who had been driven from their homes in the burned and ruined villages that dotted the land. And there was little or no relief in sight for the

stricken Poles, innocent victims of a ruthless war and pitiful playthings of Fate.

ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Artillery fighting with mortars and long-range cannon was a continuous performance during December and January in nearly every section of the western battle line. Every day tens of thousands of shells, both high explosive and shrapnel, were hurled at the trenches and men were killed or wounded by the score at a time. To the war-hardened men behind the guns on both sides this business of slaying and running the risk of being slain or crippled became so prolonged and monotonous that they thought no more of it than of cutting down a forest or building a pontoon bridge.

Early in January the city of Nancy, just behind the French lines, was bombarded for three days by German 15-inch guns. Much damage was done and a number of the inhabitants were killed and wounded. As a consequence there was an exodus from the city, safe conducts being issued to more than 30,000 persons.

Estimates made in Vienna of the total booty of the Teutonic allies during the first seventeen months of the war, up to January 1, 1916, were as follows: Nearly 3,000,000 prisoners, 10,000 guns, and 40,000 machine guns, while 470,000 square kilometers of enemy territory had been occupied.

About the same time the German losses, as compiled from official lists, were estimated at 2,588,000, including over 500,000 killed and 350,000 taken by the Allies as prisoners of war.

CONSCRIPTION IN ENGLAND

After every effort had been exhausted in the British Isles to raise troops by voluntary enlistment, first under Lord Kitchener and then under Lord Derby, the British government was finally compelled to resort to conscription, although nearly 3,000,000 men had voluntarily responded to the call to the colors. A bill was presented in the House of Commons by Premier Asquith on January 5, 1916, providing for compulsory service by "all men between the ages of 18 and 41 who are bachelors or widowers without children dependent on them." Ireland was excluded from the terms of the measure, which finally passed the Commons on January 20, the opposition having dwindled to a meager handful of votes. Four members of the Cabinet, however, resigned as a protest against conscription.

BRITISH BATTLESHIPS SUNK

On January 9 the British battleship King Edward VII foundered at sea as the result of striking a mine. Owing to a heavy sea it had to be abandoned and sank shortly afterward. The entire crew of

nearly 800 men were saved. The vessel was a predreadnaught of 16,350 tons and cost nearly $8,000,000. A week previously the British battleship Natal, a vessel of similar character, was sunk by an internal explosion.

The main battle fleets of both Britain and Germany remained "in statuo quo" up to March 1, 1916. British cruisers and patrol ships maintained a constant watch upon the waters of the North Sea, and visitors permitted to see the battle fleet at its secret rendezvous reported efficiency and eternal vigilance as its watchwords. The German fleet lay in safety in the Kiel Canal, still awaiting orders to put to sea and enjoy "der Tag," after nineteen months of inactivity.

RUSSIA'S WINTER CAMPAIGN

After several months of comparative inactivity Russia launched a forward movement against the Austro-German forces late in December. This winter drive was not unexpected, as the Russian armies had had time to recover from their reverses of the summer and autumn of 1915 and had received much-needed supplies of guns and ammunition.

The fact that Russia was vigorously on the offensive again was soon demonstrated. The first week of 1916 was marked by a progressive development of a forward Russian movement extending along the Stye and Strypa rivers from the Pripet marshes to Bessarabia. The main attack seemed to be directed against Bukowina and Eastern Galicia, and for some time the pressure of the Russian attacks forced back the lines of the Austro-German right along the eastern front.

During January the Russians were also actively engaged against the Turks in the Caucasus, where the battle front was over 100 miles long, and against the Turks, aided by Germans in Persia. They began a general offensive in the Caucasus on January 11 and made steady gains over the Turks, while similar successes attended their efforts in Persia, where revolutionists had entered the field against the Russians and British.

THE BALKAN CAMPAIGN

The month of December saw the end of the Austro-German and Bulgarian drives through Serbia. By the end of the year the remnants of the Serbian army had been driven across the frontiers and some 50,000 of them found refuge in January on the Greek island of Corfu, which was seized by the Allies for that purpose. King Peter found an asylum in Italy; Belgrade and Nish were occupied by Austrians and Germans, and the Bulgarians halted at the Greek border. The small British and French forces in Serbia, greatly outnumbered, retired before the enemy's advance from north and east,

but saved the Serbian army from total annihilation by protecting its retreat to the southern frontier. Then the British and French retreated across the Greek border to Saloniki, where they were largely reinforced and proceeded to fortify themselves against possible German or Bulgarian attacks. King Constantine of Greece, brother-inlaw of the Kaiser, feebly protested against the proceedings of the Allies on Greek soil, saying that he wished his country to remain neutral-but his protest was offset by the facts that the great majority of the people of Greece were favorable to the Allies and that their landing at Saloniki was for the purpose of aiding Serbia, Greece's friend and ally, which Greece had notably failed to do. Frequent threats of the bombardment of Saloniki by the Germans or by the Bulgars were made during January, but up to February 10 the threatened attack had failed to materialize and the Allies were strongly intrenched in a 30-mile arc around the town, while the guns of a powerful fleet of British and French warships commanded the approaches and protected transports and landings.

SINKING OF THE PERSIA

On December 30 the Peninsular & Oriental liner Persia was torpedoed by a submarine, probably Austrian, in the Mediterranean about 300 miles northwest of Alexandria, and sank in five minutes. One hundred and fifty-five out of the 400 passengers and crew were landed at Alexandria on January 1, and eleven others were subsequently reported safe. Among those lost was Robert N. McNeely, who was on his way to take up his duties as American consul at Aden.

FROM BERLIN TO CONSTANTINOPLE

By the middle of January German engineers had succeeded in repairing the railroad bridges and roadbed destroyed during the Serbian campaign and thus reopened direct communication between Berlin and Constantinople.

CANADIAN PARLIAMENT BUILDING BURNED

On the night of February 3 the beautiful Gothic structure which housed the Canadian Parliament at Ottawa-the architectural pride of the Dominion-was wrecked by a fire which started in a reading room adjacent to the chamber of the House of Commons. Six persons, two of them women friends of the Speaker's family, lost their lives. The House was in session when the fire broke out, and many members and other occupants of the building escaped narrowly and with great difficulty. The money loss from the fire was enormous, and priceless paintings, books and national documents were destroyed.

Opinions diffiered as to the causes of the fire, but the occurrence about the same time of several highly suspicious fires in Canadian munition factories and the unexplained rapidity with which the