his passports on October 8, and on the same
day the Bulgarian minister at Paris was handed his passports. On the
following day, October 9, Belgrade, the former Serbian capital, was
occupied by Austro-German forces and the invasion of Serbia by Austria
and Germany from the north and by Bulgaria from the east began in
earnest. The Serbian capital was removed the same day to Ishtib, in the
south.

THE SERBIAN CAMPAIGN.

When the great army of Germans and Austrians entered Serbia at Belgrade
and other points along the Danube and began to drive the Serbian forces
to the south, they met with immediate and continued successes. Bulgarian
troops meanwhile pressed the Serbians on the west and by the end of
November it seemed as if the entire territory of Serbia was doomed to
the fate of Belgium. But on the south, allied troops, including a great
body of French who had been landed at Saloniki in Greece and made their
way northward, disputed the advance of the invaders and at several
points drove back the Bulgarians, thus holding the southern territory of
Serbia for their ally in the same manner that Flanders was being held by
the Allies for Belgium.

CHAPTER XXV

SECOND WINTER OF WAR

In all the arenas of the great struggle, the winter campaign of 1915-16,
the second winter of the war, was accompanied by unparalleled hardships
and sufferings. It was, in fact, described by Major Moraht, military
expert of the Berliner Tageblatt and the best known German military
critic, as "the most terrific campaign in the world's history." Hundreds
of thousands of men of all classes, in all the armies stretched along
the battle fronts east and west, struggled against wind, weather, and
winter amid conditions of the most extreme self-denial. Speaking for
the Teutonic forces in January, Major Moraht said: "On our western and
eastern fronts and along the lines held by our Austro-Hungarian allies,
the conditions under which we must stubbornly hold out are such as never
in the history of the world's most terrible campaign had to be endured
before." The winter was exceptionally severe and men were invalided by
the thousands, owing to frost-bites, despite ingenious precautions and
the fact that their spells in the trenches were reduced considerably.

The conditions faced by the Austrians and Italians in the Alps and on
the Isonzo were especially appalling. Thus a detachment of Austrian and
Alpine troops, engaged in patrol duty, met its doom