, the Serbs, one hundred thousand strong (that is,
the army of their first line), moved on Kumanova among the hills, where
the forty thousand Turks defending the city of Uskub would make their
stand as inevitably as a board of army engineers would select Sandy
Hook as a site for some of the defenses of New York harbor.
Confidently, the Turkish commander staked all on the issue.

The Serbs did not depend alone on mass or envelopment by flank. They
murderously and swiftly pressed the attack in the front as well as on
the sides; and the cost of victory was seven or eight thousand
casualties. Two or three fragments of the Turkish army escaped along
the road; otherwise, there was complete disintegration.

Uskub was now undefended. It was the ancient capital of Servia; and the
feelings of the Serbs, as they marched in, approximated what ours would
be if our battalions were swinging down Pennsylvania Avenue after a
Mexican proconsul had occupied the White House for five hundred years.
Meanwhile, at Monastir were forty thousand more Turks. So far as
helping their comrades at Kumanova was concerned, they might as well
have been in jail in Kamchatka. You can imagine them sitting
cross-legged, Turkish fashion, waiting their turn. They broke the
precedent of Plevna, which the garrisons of Adrianople and Scutari
gloriously kept, by yielding rather easily. There must have been a
smile on the golden dome of the tomb of Napoleon, who thrashed the
armies of Europe in detail.

A Servian division, immediately after Kumanova, started southwest over
the mountain passes in the snow and through the valleys in the mud to
clinch the great Servian object of the war with the nine points of
possession. To young Servia, Durazzo, the port of old Servia, is as
water to the gasping fish. It stands for unhampered trade relations
with the world; for economic freedom. When that division, ragged and
footsore, came at last in sight of the blue Adriatic--well, it may
safely be called a historic moment for one little nation.

Now we turn from the side lines, where the Serbs and the Greeks were
occupied, to the neck of the funnel through which the Turkish
reenforcements from Asia Minor were coming. There the Bulgars had
undertaken the great, vital task of the war against the main Turkish
army.

The Bulgarian army was little given to gaiety and laughter, but sang
the "Shuma Maritza" on the march. This is the song of big men in
boots--big white men with s