Serbia

On Oct. 6 the rupture with Bulgaria was complete. The fatal delays in sending the promised troops, coupled with Allied in sistence that the Serbs should hold back Mackensen to the last moment, belong to military history ; but their results were emi nently political. At the critical moment of the Bulgarian menace to the Nig-Salonika railway there were at Salonika not i5o,000 Allied troops ready for action, but 35,000 French and 13,000 British, the latter under strict injunctions from London not to cross the frontier into Serbia (see General Sarrail, Mon Com-_ mandement en Orient, p. 27). Nig was decorated to welcome Allies who never came. The whole Serbian plan of campaign collapsed, and the armies, losing control of the railway south wards, retired precipitately through the passes leading to the plain of Kosovo. General Sarrail, informed that he must not expect reinforcements, was forced to arrest his belated offensive northwards (Nov. 12) and soon to withdraw to the west of the Vardar. The Serbs were thus cut off from Allied help, lost Skoplje and only just escaped being cut off between the converging Austro-German and Bulgarian armies.

The final retreat of the Serbian Army and Government across the inhospitable snowy mountains of Albania and Montenegro stands out as one of the great tragedies of the war. After dreadful sufferings the fugitives were conveyed by Allied transports to Corfu, which for the remainder of the war became the seat of the Serbian Government and a base for the convalescence and reorganization of the army. Notable assistance was rendered by British voluntary units, and some idea of the generous response of the British public to Serbia's need may be gathered from the fact that the Serbian Relief Fund from first to last collected over LI,000,000, in money and material, and employed over 700 work ers in Serbia, Albania, Corfu, Salonika, Corsica, Biserta and France; while the Scottish Women's Hospitals, under Dr. Elsie Inglis, performed notable services for the Serbs both on the Balkan and the Russian fronts.

Conquered Serbia was divided for administrative purposes be tween Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria; all that remained to the Serbs was a fragment of territory south of Monastir. Bulgaria, officially declaring the Serbian State to have ceased to exist, en rolled all men of military age throughout the occupied territory, and in Feb. 1917 extended this to include the whole male popula tion. It refused to recognize the Serbian Red Cross and seized the Serbian Legation in Sofia; all Serbian schools, law courts and in scriptions were Bulgarized, libraries and collections were either destroyed or removed to Bulgaria, the Serbian clergy were evicted or executed. A formidable rising in the mountains behind Kur sumlje was brutally repressed, with over 2,000 executions (March 1917). The war aims now repeatedly avowed by Sofia were the

annexation not only of Macedonia, but of Kosovo, Prizren and the whole upper Morava and Timok valleys ; a common frontier with Hungary ; and the prevention of Yugoslav unity. Radoslavov more than once proclaimed Bulgaria's resolve to keep all her con quests (see V ossische Zeitung, Oct. io, 1916), and his official organs declared that Serbia's reconstitution, "no matter under what form, would be a perpetual menace to Balkan peace." Aus tria-Hungary showed much greater reserve, airing from time to time various alternative schemes for a vassal Southern Slav State under the Habsburgs, keeping Prince Mirko of Montenegro as a possible candidate for its throne and employing agents in Switzer land to sow dissension among the exiles.

The Serbs in Exile.

Soon after the establishtnent of the Ser bian Government at Corfu party rivalries began to revive. The deputies were scattered, an independent press was impossible and regular Allied subsidies made the Government virtually immune from serious democratic control. The supersession of the Voivode Putnik and almost all his staff caused great indignation ; and though the whole Serbian Coalition must bear the responsibility, it was known to be the work of Pagie and his colleague Proti6, then still out of office. In Aug. 1916 an attempt is alleged to have been made upon the life of the prince regent at the front, and the Government proceeded in the winter—while the joint advance under Sarrail was crowned by the capture of Monastir from the Bulgarians—to order numerous arrests on a charge of conspiracy and murder. The conspiracy trial which opened in Salonika in Jan. 1917, and was conducted behind the shelter of a strict military censorship, resulted in a death sentence upon nine Ser bian officers, and notably of Colonel Dimitrievie (q.v.), head of the "Black Hand." There is no doubt that DimitrieviC favoured a military coup d'etat against his Radical enemies, and that he had his hand in the Sarajevo murder; but the evidence for a plot against Prince Alexander was clearly inadequate, and he was the victim of rival military and political cliques. This trial revived all the old party dissensions : the reactionaries had triumphed on the very eve of the collapse of their chief support, the Tsarist Government. Pagie found himself between two fires—the need for a more democratic restatement of foreign policy, and the demand of the Young Radical and Progressive parties for a revision of the Salonika trial. Refusal led to their withdrawal from the Cabinet, and its reconstruction on a purely Old Radical basis under Pagi6 and ProtiC.