World's War Events Volume III Part 6

[Sidenote: Germany's stubborn defense of her African colonies.]

The enemy's stubborn defence of his last colony has not only been a great feat in itself, but is also a proof of the supreme importance attached by the German Government to this African colony both as an economic a.s.set and as a strategic point of departure for the establishment of the future Central African Empire to which I have referred. At the conclusion of peace our statesmen will be bound to bear in mind these wider and obscurer issues, fraught with such consequences to the world and to the British Empire in particular. Perhaps I may be allowed to express the fervent hope that a land where so many of our heroes lost their lives or their health; where, under the most terrible and exacting conditions, human loyalty and human service were poured out lavishly in a great cause, may never be allowed to become a menace to the future peaceful development of the world. I am sure my gallant boys, dead or living, would wish for no other or greater reward.

Greece, as a result of the intrigues of the pro-German king and queen, was a thorn in the flesh to the Allies for the first years of the war.

The deposition of King Constantine, and the resumption of power of Premier Venizelos, brought Greece back to the place where her people wished to be.

GREECE'S ATONEMENT

LEWIS R. FREEMAN

[Sidenote: A meeting with Venizelos.]

The Venizelists had been having a bad time of it from the first, but the blackest hours of all were those toward the end of last April, when Constantine was still strong in Athens, and before the Saloniki Allies had found it practicable or expedient to welcome them to a full brotherhood of arms. It was during this "dark before the dawn" period that I had my first meeting with M. Venizelos, a conventional half hour's interview in the suburban villa, midway along the curve of Saloniki Bay where the Provisional Government had established its headquarters.

[Sidenote: The att.i.tude of Constantine.]

I had just come up from Athens, where I had found the Allied diplomats still smarting under the memories of their ignominious experiences following Constantine's spectacular coup of the previous December, and it was by no means the least of these who had told me point-blank that he could not conceive how it would be possible that Saloniki should be returned to Greece after the war. Of course it was the Royalist Government that my distinguished friend had had in mind when he spoke, but there was not much to indicate at this time that the Greece of Constantine and his minions was not also going to be the Greece of after the war.

It was with this state of things in mind, and recalling his well known ambitions to found a Greater Greece--by extending Epirus north along the Adriatic, and bringing the millions of Greeks of Asia Minor at least under the protection of the Government at Athens--that I mustered up my courage and asked M. Venizelos offhand if he felt confident of being able even to maintain the integrity of his country as it existed before the war.

[Sidenote: What Greece must do for the Allies.]

"Not unless those of us Greeks who have remained faithful to the cause of humanity and our honor are ultimately able to lend the Allies material help in a measure sufficient to counterbalance the harm the action of the Royalists has caused them," was the prompt reply; "and by material help I mean military aid. We must fight, and fight, and keep on fighting, for it is only with blood--with Greek blood--that the stain upon Greek honor can be washed away. It is only our army that can save us, and that is why we have been so impatient of the delay there has been in equipping it and getting it to the front. The one division we have in the trenches now, and the two others that are ready to go, are not enough, but they are about all we have been able to raise so far.

Thessaly is for us (as you may have seen in traveling across it), and would give us two more divisions at least; but our Allies have not yet seen fit to allow us to go there after them."

[Sidenote: Venizelos determines to aid the Allies.]

M. Venizelos spoke of a number of other things before I left him (notably of the extent to which the Russian revolution and the entry of America had helped him in his fight to save Greece), but it was plain that the problem uppermost in his mind was that of wiping out the score of the Allies against his country by giving them a substantial measure of a.s.sistance in the field.

"Do not fail to visit our force on the ---- sector before you leave the Balkans," was his parting injunction. "There may be a chance of seeing it in action before very long, and if you do, you will need no further a.s.surance of the way in which we shall make our honor white before our Allies and all the world."

[Sidenote: Unenviable position of the Venizelists.]

[Sidenote: Elaborate precautions against treachery.]

The Serbian and two or three other Armies have been worse off in a physical way, but no national force since the outbreak of the war has been in so thoroughly an unenviable position on every other score as was that of the Venizelists at this time. The Serbs and the Belgians had at least the knowledge that the confidence and the sympathy of the Allies were theirs. Also, they had chances to fight to their hearts' content.

The Venizelists had scant measure of sympathy, and still less of confidence; and when their first chance to fight was at last given them, they were allowed to face the foe only after elaborate precautions had been taken against everything, from incompetence and cowardice on their part to open treachery. That this was the fault neither of themselves nor of their Allies, and had only come about through the perfidy of a King to whom they no longer swore fealty, did not make the shame of it much easier to bear for an army of spirited volunteers who had risked their all for a chance to wipe out the dishonor of their country.

[Sidenote: Spies sent in the guise of deserters.]

The thing that for a while made it so difficult for the Allies to know what to do with the Venizelist army was the almost ridiculous ease with which, under the peculiar circ.u.mstances of its recruitment, it lent itself to spying purposes. All the Royalists, or their German paymasters, had to do to establish a spy in the Saloniki area was to send over one of their Intelligence Officers in the guise of a deserter from the Greek army to that of Venizelos, and there he was! To send back information, or even to return in person, across the but partially patrolled "Neutral Zone" was scarcely more difficult, and it was the wholesale way in which this sort of thing went on that made it so hard for the Allies to decide just who the bona fide Venizelists were, and just how far it would be safe to trust a force to which the enemy still had such ready means of access.

[Sidenote: Tact and common sense used.]

There was nothing else for the Allies to do but "go slow" and "play safe" in dealing with the Venizelist army, and, under the circ.u.mstances, there is no doubt that a difficult situation was handled with a good deal of tact and common sense. Just how trying the situation of the Venizelists was, however, I had a chance to see one day when I happened to be at their Headquarters arranging for my visit to the Greek sector of the Front. Their troops had acquitted themselves with great credit in some gallantly carried out raiding operations, which must have made it doubly hard for them to put up with a new restrictive order just promulgated by the Supreme Command as a further precaution against the leakage of information to the enemy.

Just as I was about to take my departure, a copy of the new order was delivered to the Staff Officer with whom I had been conferring about my visit to the Front. He read it through slowly, his swarthy face flushing red with anger as he proceeded.

[Sidenote: A series of humiliations.]

"Have you heard of this?" he said, handing me the paper, and controlling his voice with an effort, "No man or officer of our army is to cross the ---- bridge without a special permit from General Headquarters. It is only the latest in the long series of humiliations we have had to put up with. Just look at the way we stand. In Athens our names are posted as traitors who can be shot on sight. Here it isn't quite like that, but--well (he raised his hand above his head and let it fall limply in a gesture of despair), all I can say is that the only officers of the Venizelist army to be envied are those whose names are recorded here (indicating a file at his elbow). It's the death-list from day-before-yesterday's fighting."

[Sidenote: Venizelist troops succeed in big attacks.]

Owing to the delay in issuing my pa.s.s in Saloniki, I did not arrive at Greek Headquarters until the evening of the day on which the big attack had taken place, and it was day-break of the morning following before I was able to make my way up to the advanced lines. The Venizelist troops had taken all their objectives, and held them with great courage against such counterattacks as the surprised Bulgars--who, not expecting an attack from the Greeks, had made the mistake of ma.s.sing too much of their strength against the British and French attacks to east and west--were able to organize against them. They had been busy all night "reversing" the captured trenches in antic.i.p.ation of a determined attempt on the part of the reinforced enemy to retake them in the morning.

[Sidenote: Movement carried out without confusion.]

The hilly but well-metaled cartroad, along which by the light of the waning moon I cantered with an officer of the Greek staff, had been thronged all night with the surging current of the battle traffic--an up-flow of munition convoys and reinforcements, and back-flow of wounded and prisoners--but I could not help remarking the comparative quiet and absence of confusion with which the complex movement was carried on.

[Sidenote: The Greeks seem to understand the game of war.]

"Somehow this doesn't seem quite like the transport of a new army just undergoing its baptism of fire," I said to my companion. "I've seen things on the roads behind the western front in far worse messes than any of these little jams we've pa.s.sed to-night. These chaps are as businesslike as though they'd been at the game for years."

[Sidenote: Veterans of the Balkan wars.]

"So they have," was the quiet reply. "Our army, as recruited so far, is a new one only in name. The men who attacked yesterday were of the famous S---- Division, which fought all through the last two Balkan wars and gained no end of praise from all the foreign military attaches for its great mountain work. It was this Division which scaled the steep range beyond Doiran and drove the Bulgars out of Rupel Pa.s.s."

[Sidenote: The Battle of "Rupel Pa.s.s."]

"The S---- Division," "Rupel Pa.s.s." Instantly I recalled how a British General, over on the Struma a few days previously, had pointed out to me a steep range of serried snow-capped mountains towering against the skyline to the northwest, and told me that the feat of the Greeks in taking a division over it at a point where even the wary Bulgar had deemed it impossible was one of the finest exploits in the annals of mountain warfare.

"The Italians have fought the Austrians at a greater alt.i.tude in a number of places in the Alps, and in our wars with the Himalayan tribesmen we have sent our Gurkhas twice as high. But all of that was after more or less preparation. Here, the Greeks simply started off and went over that range with only their rifles and the packs on their backs. I know of nothing to compare with it save the taking of Kaymakchalan by the Serbs last November in the operations which freed Monastir. Not many in Saloniki have had much good to say of the Greek as a soldier of late, but you may be sure that we can do with more men of the kind that crossed that mountain range, and there is no reason why Venizelos should not be able to bring them to us."

[Sidenote: A favorable position for observation.]

The hill from which we were to follow the action jutted out of the mountains into the plain like the bow of a battleship. So favorable was its position for observation--from its brow a wide expanse of mountain and valley was spread from twenty to sixty miles in three directions--that the British and French as well as the Greeks maintained posts there. We found the officers in both of the Allied "O. Pips"

[signal corps talk for O.P., meaning observation post] highly enthusiastic over the work of the Greeks in their attack of the preceding day.

[Sidenote: The evening bulletin.]

We found two officers in the British Observation Post chuckling over the evening bulletin, which had just been delivered to them. "You have to read between the lines of Sarrail's 'Evening Hope' if you want to get at the real facts," said one of them. "It's what it fails to tell you, that you really want to know. Now, you might be able to gather from this that all the Balkan Allies have been doing quite a bit of attacking during the last day or two at various parts of the Front from Doiran west to Albania, but you have to go between the lines to find that our shifty Bulgar friend over there gave most of them as good or better than they gave him all the way. It's sad but true that in this, our 'Great Spring Offensive,' as the papers at home have talked of it, the whole lot of us--French, British, Russian, Italian, and even the Serb--have been fought to a standstill by the Bulgar. Far as I can see, the only gain we have to show for it is in the casualty lists."

I failed to see just what there was to chuckle about in such an interpretation of the glowing lines of the evening bulletin, and said as much.

[Sidenote: Successes of the little Venizelist army.]

"It isn't funny in the least," was the reply, "and it would seem still less so if we could see at close range some of the things that are lying out on a hundred miles of these accursed mountain sides as a consequence of what has happened. But what _did_ strike us as a bit rich was the fact that, of all the Allies, this little piece of the Venizelist army, which we have held in leash all winter while we made up our minds as to whether it would be safe to slip or not, is the only one of the whole lot of us that has taken all the objectives set for it."

A sporting instinct and a grim sense of humor--the readiness to admire a brave foe and the ability to extract amus.e.m.e.nt from discomfiture--are the two things that have conspired to make the British soldier so uniformly successful in treating those "twin impostors," Triumph and Disaster, "just the same."

[Sidenote: The view across the Vardar.]