nd, and Russia were ready to pay back Serbia for
the loss of Macedonia, by promising her Bosnia and Herzegovina in case
they won the war from Austria. In like fashion, Austria and Germany
promised Bulgaria some Turkish territory and also the southern part of
the present kingdom of Serbia, in case she entered the war on their
side.

Now the king of Bulgaria, or the czar, as he prefers to call himself,
is a German. (As these little countries won their independence from
Turkey, they almost always called in foreign princes to be their
kings. In this way it had come about that the king of Greece was a
prince of Denmark, the king of Roumania was a German of the
Hohenzollern family, while the czar of Bulgaria was a German of the
Coburg family, the same family which has furnished England and Belgium
with their kings.)

The Bulgarians themselves are members of the Greek Catholic Church,
and they have a very high regard for the czar of Russia, as the head
of that church. Czar Ferdinand had no such feeling, however. He wanted
to be the most powerful ruler in the Balkan states, and it made no
difference to him which side helped him to gain his object.

[Illustration: A Bomb-Proof Trench in the Western War Front]

About this time, the Russians had been forced to retreat to a line
running south from Riga, on the Baltic Sea, to the northern boundary
of Roumania. The French and English had been pounding at the
Dardanelles for some months, but the stubborn resistance of the Turks
seemed likely to hold them out of Constantinople for a long time to
come. The checked Italians had not been able to make much headway
against the Austrians through the mountainous Alpine country where the
fighting was taking place. In the west, the Germans were holding
firmly against the attacks of the British and French. The czar of
Bulgaria and his ministers, thinking that the German-Austrian-Turkish
alliance could win with their help, flung their nation into its third
war within four years. This happened in Octoher, 1915.

Now at the close of the second Balkan war, when Serbia and Greece
defeated Bulgaria, they made an alliance, by which each agreed to come
to the help of the other in case either was attacked by Bulgaria.
Roumania, too, was friendly to Greece and Serbia, rather than to
treaty Bulgaria, for the Roumanians knew that Bulgaria was very
anxious to get back the territory of which Roumania had robbed her, in
the second Balkan war. In this way