re; at the
very end the Greek contingents were, moreover, being substantially
increased. In what was to a great extent a war of attrition this was a
point of some importance. But that great field army was for all
practical purposes immobilized for the whole of the three years. It
was immobilized partly by inferior bodies of troops--mainly Bulgarian,
whom the German Great General Staff would have found it hard to
utilize in other theatres. It was immobilized partly by having before
it a wide zone of rugged uplands which were in occupation of the
enemy, and which forbade the employment of masses of men. That great
field army never at any time pulled its weight, and its presence in
Macedonia threw a severe and unwarranted strain upon our naval
resources owing to the difficulty of safeguarding its communications
against submarines in a water area exceptionally favourable for the
operations of such craft.

At the end of the three years that great field army did carry out a
remarkably successful offensive, in which the Serbs played a gallant
and prominent part. But, without wishing to disparage the fine work
performed by the various contingents in that offensive of September
1918--British, French, Italian, Serb and Greek--the fact remains that
the Bulgars were defeated not in Macedonia but in Picardy and Artois.
Exhausted by years of hostilities--they had been at it since
1912--they knew that the game was up before the offensive ever
started, knew that their side had lost the war, knew that there was no
hope of succour from Germany. Considering the hopelessness of the
situation from the point of view of the Central Powers, it is
surprising that the Sofia Executive did not throw up the sponge at a
somewhat earner date.

The Macedonian side-show is a typical example of the kind of side-show
which cannot be justified from the broad point of view of military
policy. In the next chapter a number of other side-shows which had
their place in the Great War will be touched upon. In it the fact will
be pointed out that side-shows are sometimes unavoidable, and it will
be suggested that most of those on which the British Government
embarked between 1914 and the end of the war were justifiable, even
when they were not absolutely unavoidable.

CHAPTER IX

OTHER SIDE-SHOWS

Three categories of side-shows -- The Jackson Committee -- The
Admiralty's attitude -- The Pacific, Duala, Tanga, Dar-es-Salaam,
Oceania, t