RESOURCES

The first great campaign on the southeastern battle grounds of the Great
War began on July 27, 1914, when the Austrian troops undertook their
first invasion of Serbia. They crossed the Serbian border at Mitrovitza,
about fifty miles northwest of Belgrade, driving the Serbians before
them. The first real hostilities of the war opened with the bombardment
of Belgrade by the Austrians on July 29, 1914--six days before the
beginning of the campaigns on the western battle fields.

We are now familiar with the theatre of war as described in the
preceding chapters, and will now follow the first Austrian armies into
Serbia.

A stubborn fight excites the admiration of all observers, regardless of
the moral qualities of the combatants. So, wherever our sympathies may
lie, considering the war as a whole, there can be no doubt that the
defense which the Serbians made against the first efforts of the
Austrians to invade their country will stand out in the early history of
the war as one of the most brilliant episodes of that period of the
general struggle. Like a mighty tidal wave from the ocean the Austrian
hosts swept over the Serbian frontier in three furious successive
onslaughts, only to be beaten back each time. Naturally, there were
material and moral causes, aside from the mere valor of the Serbians,
which combined to create this disaster for the Austrian forces, but
enough of the human element enters into the military activities of
these campaigns to make them easily the most picturesque of the early
period of the war.

Before entering into a description of the actual events in 1914, it is
well to consider the forces engaged. From a material point of view the
Serbians entered into these campaigns greatly handicapped. They had
lately been through two wars. In the First Balkan War they had not, it
is true, been severely tested; the weight of the fighting had been borne
by the Bulgarians in Thrace. The real test, and the great losses, came
only with the second war, when the Serbian army threw every fiber of its
strength against the Bulgarians in the Battle of the Bregalnitza, one of
the most stubborn struggles in military history. The result was a
Serbian victory, but it was very far from being a decisive and
conclusive victory. The Bulgarians were forced back some fifteen miles
into their own territory, but had it not been for the intervention of
Rumania there can be no doubt that the Serbs would have entere