is an
island, my general," he remarked to me; "you have not had the eastern
frontier always to think of like France. How could we devote attention
to Macedonia?" It was not here a question of reconnaissance work or of
costly backstairs methods in a carefully watched fortified area of
prime strategical significance like the environs of the Hellespont.
Getting information about Macedonia had merely been a matter of
sending out experienced military observers to look about them and to
report.

When I left the General Staff at the War Office at the end of the
year, the position of affairs at Salonika was a thoroughly
unsatisfactory one, although the General Staff could fairly claim that
for this it was not responsible. A great Allied army was collected in
this quarter, inert and virtually out of the game. Our antagonists had
very wisely abandoned all idea of attacking, and of thereby justifying
the existence of, that great Allied army. The Bulgars had, with some
assistance from German and Austro-Hungarian troops, secured possession
of the mountainous region of the Balkans; and the Central Powers had
thus acquired just that same advantageous strategical and tactical
position on the Macedonian Front as they had for a year and a half
been enjoying on the Italian borders--the advantageous position of
having roped in Nature as a complaisant ally. The Entente had had an
uncommonly difficult hand to play in the Near East, but, as things
turned out, the Governments concerned had played it about as badly as
was feasible.

Except in the matter of equipping the Greek forces at a very much
later date, I was not directly concerned in what followed for weary
months on the Salonika Front. During the few weeks when I was acting
temporarily as Deputy C.I.G.S. in 1917, things happened to be pretty
well at a standstill in Macedonia, except that just at that time one
British division was transferred from that theatre to Palestine, where
there was some prospect of doing something. I remained in touch with
the General Staff, however, until the end of the war, and throughout
was to a great extent behind the scenes.

Only one valid military excuse can be put forward for imprisoning a
great field army for three years in the Salonika area, a plan to which
the General Staff was consistently opposed from the outset. It enabled
our side to employ some 150,000 Serbian and Greek troops, whom it
might have been difficult to turn to good account elsewhe