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BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY
DELAWARE PARK BUFFALO, N. Y.
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POPULAR HISTORY OF THE WAR
BY MERTON M. WILNER
ASSISTANT EDITOR, BUFFALO EXPRESS
(MEMBER BUFFALO HISTORICAL SOCIETY)
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
THE MATTHEWS-NORTHRUP WORKS
BUFFALO •• CLEVELAND •• NEW YORK
CHRONOLOGY
1914
June 28 — Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Aus- tria-Hungary assassinated.
July 23 — Austrian ultimatum to Serbia.
July 28 — Austria declares war on Serbia.
July 29 — Russia calls reserves to colors.
July 29 — Bombardment of Belgrade.
Aug. 1 — Germany declares war on Russia.
Aug. 1 — France orders mobilization.
Aug. 2 — Germans enter Luxemburg.
Aug. 2 — German ultimatum to Belgium.
Aug. 2 — First skirmish between Germans and Russians.
Aug. 2 — First skirmish between Germans and French.
Aug. 3 — Germany declares war on France.
Aug. 4 — Germany invades Belgium.
Aug. 4 — Great Britain declares war on Ger- many.
Aug. 4 — Italy proclaims neutrality.
Aug. 5 — Germans attack Liege.
Aug. 6 — Austria declares war on Russia.
Aug. 8 — Montenegro declares war on Austria.
Aug. 7-8-^-French invade Alsace (taking Alt- kirch and Mulhausen).
Aug. 9 — Germans take Liege.
Aug. 9 — Serbia declares war on Germany.
Aug. 10 — France declares war on Austria.
Aug. 11 — Germans enter France through Lux- emburg.
Aug. 11 — French driven from Mulhausen.
Aug. 12 — Great Britain declares war on Aus- tria-Hungary.
Aug. 12 — Montenegro declares war on Ger- many.
Aug. 16-23 — Serbians defeat Austrians in bat- tle of the Jadar.
Aug. 19 — Belgians defeated before Lou vain.
Aug. 20 — Germans enter Brussels.
Aug. 20-21 — Russians defeat Germans at Gumbinnen.
Aug. 22 — Germans take Namur.
Aug. 23 — British and French defeated at Mons and Charleroi.
Aug. 23 — Japan declares war on Germany.
Aug. 23-Sept. 6 — Retreat of British-French, Mons to the Marne.
Aug. 23-26 — Austrians defeat Russians at bat- tle of Krasnik.
Aug. 25 — Austria declares war on Japan.
Aug. 26 — Germans surrender Togoland.
Aug. 26 — First bomb .dropped frcjn £epp«Kn on Antwerp.
Aug. 27 — Surrender df Lor.*;
Aug. 27 — Burning of Louvain.
Aug. 28— Naval battle off Helgoland. • Aug. 28 — Austria declares war on Belgium.
Aug. 29-31 — Germans defeat Russians in battle of Tannenberg.
Sept. 2 — Japanese land on Shantung peninsula.
Sept. 2 — Russians take Lemberg.
Sept. 4-8 — Russians defeat Austrians, Rawa- ruska and Tomaszov.
Sept. 5-10 — Battle of the Marne.
Sept. 9 — Surrender of Maubeuge. ' Sept. 7-13 — Germans defeat Russians in East Prussia.
Sept. 12-15 — Battle of the Aisne.
S -pt. 13 — French retake Reims.
Sept. 16 — Germans bombard Reims cathedral.
Sept. 22— British cruisers "Aboukir," "Cressy", and "Hogue" sunk by submarine.
Sept. 26— Germans take St. Mihiel.
Sept. 27-Oct. 3— Battle of the Niemen and Augustowa.
Sept. 29-30— Battle of Tarnow.
Oct. 9 — Capture of Antwerp.
Oct. 10-12— Battle of Lille.
Oct. 12 — Germans- capture Ghent.
Oct. 13— Germans take Lille.
Oct. 14 — Germans take Bruges.
Oct. 15 — Germans take Ostend. ,X>ct. 15-23— Battle of Warsaw.
Oct. 17-Nov. 1 1— Battle of Ypres and the Yser.
Oct. 18 — Battle of destroyers off Dutch coast.
Oct. 26 — Italians occupy Avlona, Albania. s Oct. 29 — Turkey begins hostilities against Russia.
Nov. 1— Sea battle off Coronel, Chili.
Nov. 4 — British attack on Tanga, German East Africa, defeated.
Nov. 5 — Great Britain declares war on Turkey.
Nov. 7 — Japanese take Tsing-tau.
Nov. 9 — German cruiser "Emden" destroyed.
Nov. 16 — German success on Plock-Warthe line, Poland.
Nov. 19-28— Battle of Lodz. =" Nov. 23 — Portugal joins the Allies.
Dec. 2 — Austrians take Belgrade.
Dec. 6 — Germans take Lodz.
Dec. 6-14— Serbians defeat Austrians; retake
Belgrade.
" Dec. 8— Naval battle off Falkland Islands. HDec. 9 — British take Kurna, Mesopotamia. ''Dec. 16 — German raidon Scarborough, England.
Dec. 17 — British proclaim protectorate over Egypt.
Dec. 18 — Germans take Lowicz.
Dec. 25 — British sea and air raid on Cuxhaven.
1915 "Jan. 3-4 — Turkish defeat in the Caucasus.
Jan. 3— French take Steinbach.
Jan. 14 — French defeated at Soissons.
Jan. 17 — Russians take Kirlibaba pass. -Jan. 24 — Naval battle off Dogger Bank.
Feb. 4 — Germans proclaim submarine block- ade of British Isles to begin February 18th. ~Teb. 2-3— Turks attack Suez Canal.
Feb. 10 — President Wilson's strict accounta- bility note to Germany.
Feb. 1 1-12 — Russians driven from East Prussia.
Ft b. 16— French take Perthes.
Feb. 18 — Austrians take Czernowitz.
1 9 — Naval attack on Dardanelles forts.
Feb. 25 — Second naval attack on Dardanelles.
Feb. US-Mar. 1 — Russian offensive in Northern Poland.
Mar. 10 — German cruiser "Prinz Eitel Fried- rich " enters Newport News.
Mar. 10-12— Battle of Neuve Chapelle.
Mar. 18 — Third naval attack on Dardanelles forts repulsed; three battleships sunk.
Mar. 20 — Russians take Memel.
Mar. 22 — Surrender of Przemysl and Austrian army.
Mar. 28 — Passenger steamer "Falaba" sunk by submarine; 111 lost.
'Apr. 4 — Russians through the Beskid range, Hungary.
Apr. 4-9 — Battle of Les Eparges
Apr. 11 — German cruiser Kronprinz helm " enters Hampton Roads.
Apr. 22-24— Second battle of Ypres (St. Julien); first use of gas.
Apr. 23 — British victory at Shaiba, Mesopo- tamia.
Apr. 25 — British and French land on Gallipoli.
Apr. 30 — Germans advance into Kovno and Courland.
Wil-
IK-
May 2 — American ship "Gulflight" torpe- doed.
May 2 — Germans take Shavli.
May 2 — Battle of Gorlice; Russian front
broken in Galicia. *^May 7 — "Lusitania" sunk.
May 11 — French take Carency and Notre Dame de Lorette.
May 13 — President Wilson protests Lusitania sinking.
May 15-17— Battle of the San.
May 16 — Four Zeppelins destroyed in air raid on England.
May 16 — Battle of Festuoert.
May 23 — Italy declares war on Austria.
June 2 — Germans retake Przemysl.
June 9 — Second American note on submarine sinkings.
June 20 — German victory at Rawaruska.
June 22 — Austrians retake Lemberg.
June 28 — United States protests sinking of the "Frye."
July 2-4— Battle at Krasnik.
"^July 9 — German Southwest Africa surren- dered to Anglo-Boer force. - July 14 — German offensive in North Poland.
July 23 — Third American note on submarines.
Aug. 4 — Russians evacuate Warsaw.
Aug. 10 — Allied attack in Gallipoli fails.
Aug. 15 — American reply to Austria-Hungary protest on arms traffic.
Aug. 18 — Germans take Kovno.
Aug. 19 — "Arabic" torpedoed.
Aug. 19 — Germans take Novogeorgievsk.
Aug. 21 — Italy declares war on Turkey. .-.Aug. 26 — Germans take Byalystok and Brest- Litovsk.
Sept. 1 — Austrians take Lutsk.
Sept. 2 — Germans take Grodno.
Sept. 8 — Grand Duke Nicholas removed from command of Russia armies.
Sept. 9 — American note on "Arabic" sinking.
Sept. 9 — United States demands recall of Austrian Ambassador Dumba.
Sept. 9 — Russian success on Sereth River.
Sept. 9 — Austrians take Dubno. - ' Sept. 18 — Germans take Vilna.
Sept. 22 — Bulgaria orders mobilization.
Sept. 25 — Battle of Loos.
Sept. 25 — Battle of Champagne.
Oct. 3 — Russian ultimatum to Bulgaria.
Oct. 5 — German reply in "Arabic" case con- cedes American points.
Oct. 6 — German-Austrian offensive against
Serbia; Danube crossed. » Oct. 8 — Belgrade taken. ' Oct. 12 — Bulgarians invade Serbia.
Oct. 13 — Execution of Edith Cavell.
Oct. 14 — Bulgaria declares war on Serbia.
Oct. 15 — Britain declares war on Bulgaria. ^X)ct. 22 — Greece refuses offer of Great Britain to cede Cyprus.
Oct. 24 — Bulgarians take Uskup.
Oct. 28 — Viviani resigns as premier of France.
Oct. 29 — Italian attack on the Isonzo.
Nov. 5 — Bulgarians take Nish.
Nov. 9 — Italian liner "Ancona" torpedoed.
Nov. 22-24 — Battle Ctesiphon, Mesopotamia.
Nov. 30 — Second Italian attack on the Isonzo.
Dec. 3— United States demands recall of Boy-Ed and Von Papen.
Dec. 3-12 — Anglo-French troops defeated on Vardar.
Dec. 5 — Bulgarians take Monastir.
Dec. 6 — British retreat to Kut-el-Amara.
Dec. 11 — United States protests "Ancona" sinking.
Dec. 15 — Sir Douglas Haig succeeds Sir John
French in command of British. Dec. 20 — British withdraw from Gallipoli. Dec. 21-22— French take Hartmans - Weiler-
kopf. Dec. 27— British defeat Arab revolt in West
Egypt. Dec. 30 — Liner "Persia" sunk.
1916
Jan. 13 — Austrians take Cettinje, Montenegro. Uan. 16 — Russians begin drive in Caucasus. Jan. 19 — King Nicholas of Montenegro flees. Feb. 16 — Russians take Erzeroum. -Feb. 18 — Allied conquest of Cameroons. Feb. 20 — German offensive at Verdun begun. Feb. 26 — Germans take Fort Douaumont. Mar. 15 — Von Tirpitz retires as head of German
navy.
Mar. 24 — Steamer "Sussex" torpedoed. Mar. 26 — British naval air raid on Jutland. Mar. 31 — Russian hospital ship "Portugal"
sunk.
Apr. 18 — Russians take Trebizond. Apr. 19 — President Wilson's "Sussex" note. Apr. 21 — Arrest of Sir Roger Casement. —Apr. 24 — Irish rebellion. Apr. 28 — General Townshend surrenders Brit- ish force at Kut-el-Amara. May 1 — Dublin rebels surrender. May 5 — Germany promises to stop sinkings
without warning.
May 15 — Austrian drive in Trentiiuo begun. May 23 — British Commons adopt conscription. May 27 — Austrians take Asiago. May 31 — Naval battle off Jutland. June 1-7 — German drive on Douaumont- Vaux. June 2-16 — Third battle of Ypres. June 4-Aug. 15 — Russian offensive Pripet to
Roumania. June 6 — Lord Kitchener drowned by sinking
of cruiser "Hampshire." June 6 — Russians take Lutsk. June 7 — Germans take Fort Vaux. June 10 — Russians take Dubno. June 13 — Shereef of Mecca revolts from
Turkey.
June 17 — Russians take Czernowitz. June 25 — Russians complete conquest of Bu-
kowina.
July 1 — First battle of the Somme begun. July 9 — German merchant submarine
"Deutschland" arrives at Baltimore. July 11 — British take Contalmaison. July 26 — Russians take Erzingam. Aug. 4 — Roger Casement executed. Aug. 4 — French retake Fleury and Thiaumont. Aug. 9 — Italians take Gorizia. Aug. 11 — Italians take Carso plateau. —Aug. 18 — Bulgarians invade Northern Greece. -Aug. 27 — Italy declares war on Germany. Aug. 27 — Bulgarians enter Greek Macedonia -?Aug. 28 — Roumania declares war on Austria. Aug. 29 — Hindenburg becomes German chief of
staff.
Aug. 30 — Roumanians take Kronstadt. Sept. 2 — Roumanians take Hermanstadt. Sept. 2-8 — Bulgarians defeat Roumanians in
Dodrudja.
Sept. 6 — Russian victory near Halicz. Sept. 15 — First use of British tanks. Sept. 19-23 — Roumanians defeated at Vulcan
Pass.
Sept. 26 — British take Combles and Thiepval. Oct. 7 — German submarine "U-53" enters
Newport.
t)ct. 8 — "U-53" sinks six ships off Massa- chusetts coast.
Oct. 11-13 — Italian advance on the Carso. Oct. 17 — Allies take over Greek fleet and land
forces.
Oct. 23 — Roumanians lose Canstansa. Oct. 24 — French retake Fort Douaumont. Nov. 1 — Merchant submarine " Deutschland "
arrives at New London. Nov. 15-17 — Roumanians defeated in battle of
Tirgu-Juil.
Nov. 19 — Serbians take Monastir. Nov. 21 — Emperor Francis Joseph dies; Carl
succeed.
Nov. 25 — French retake Fort Vaux. Nov. 29 — Sir David Beatty succeeds Sir John
Jellicoe in command of British fleet. ^7 Dec. 2 — Entente troops move on Athens. Dec. 3 — Roumanians beaten in battle of
Argechu.
Dec. 5 — Asquith resigns as premier of Britain. Dec. 6 — Teutonic allies take Bucharest. Dec. 10 — Lloyd George forms ministry. Dec. 11 — Nivelle succeeds Joffre in command
of French. Dec. 15 — Brilliant French victory north of
Verdun.
1917
Jan. 11 — Entente reply to President on aims. Jan. 11 — British take Rafa, Sinai Peninsula. Jan. 31 — Germany announces resumption of
submarine ruthlessness after Feb. 1st. Feb. 3 — President announces severance of
diplomatic relation with Germany. Feb.3-5 — British advance on the Ancre. Feb. 7 — "California" torpedoed. Feb. 24 — German withdrawal on Somme de- tected.
Feb. 24— British take Sanna-y-Yat. Feb. 25 — "Laconia" sunk.
• Feb. 25 — British take Kut-el-Amara.
Feb. 26 — President asks authority to arm
merchant ships.
Feb. 28 — Zimmermann's Mexican plot ex- posed. Mar. 9 — President orders arming of merchant
ships.
Mar. 9-11 — Revolutionary riots in Petrograd. Mar. 11— British take Bagdad. Mar. 15 — Czar Nicholas abdicates; republic
organized, Lvoff premier. Mar. 17 — British take Bapaume and Chaulnes;
French Roye and Lassigny. Mar. 17 — Briand cabinet resigns. Mar. 18 — Peronne and Nesle Uken. Mar. 19 — French take Chauny and Ham. Mar. 24 — French before LeFere. Mar. 31 — British before Hindenburg line. Apr. 1 — French take Vauxaillon. Apr. 2 — American armed steamer "Aztec"
torpedoed, 11 drowned. Apr. 2 — President asks Congress to declare
war.
Apr. 4 — Senate passes war resolution. Apr. 4 — Germans defeat Russians on the
Stokhod. Apr. 6 — House passes war resolution.
- Apr. 6 — President proclaims war. Apr. 7 — Cuba declares war.
Apr. 9 — Austria-Hungary severs diplomatic relations with United States.
Apr. 9— British take Vimy ridge.
Apr. 10 — Brazil severs diplomatic relations with Germany.
Apr. 14 — British take Lievin.
Apr. 14-17 — Congress passes $7,000,000,000 war bond bill.
Apr. 16 — Nivelle's offensive begun.
Apr. 18— French take Vailly.
Apr. 19 — French take Fort de Conde.
Apr. 22 — Hospital ships "Lanfranc" and
"Donegal" torpedoed.
Apr. 28 — Congress passes conscription bill. May 4 — French take Craonne. May 4 — First squadron U. S. navy reaches
England.
May 5 — French take Chemin des Dames. •*May 7 — Greek Venizelist troops first go into
action beside Allies.
May 12-31 — Italian offensive on the Isonzo. May 14 — President calls for forty-four new
regiments of regulars.
May 29 — Hospital ship "Dover Castle" torpe- doed. June 5 — First conscription registration day
in United States.
June 7 — British take Messines ridge. June 9 — President's note to Russia on war
aims.
- June 12 — King Constantine of Greece abdi- cates.
June 12 — Congress passes espionage act. June 13 — General Pershing arrives in France. June 13 — Root commission reaches Petrograd. June 26-27 — First United States contingent
lands in France.
June 28 — Brazil revokes neutrality. July 1 — Russians begin offensive in Galicia. *July 2 — Greece declares war. July 9 — Mobilization of national guard
ordered.
July 8-10 — Russians win battle of Dolina. July 11 — British reverse on Yser. July 14-21— Congress passes $640,000,000 avi- ation bill. July 19 — German counter-offensive breaks
Russian front in Galicia. July 20 — First draft drawing. July 22 — Kerensky succeeds Lvoff as premier
of Russia. July 22 — Russian soldiers in Galicia refuse
obedience and start flight. July 23 — Germans take Tarnapol. July 23 — Council of workmen and soldiers
makes Kerensky dictator. July 25 — Roumanians take offensive. July 31— Allies begin Fourth battle of Ypree. Aug. 2 — Brusiloff and Dimitrieff resign. Aug. 7 — Liberia declares war on Germany. Aug. 10-11 — Second British advance at Ypres. Aug. 14 — Pope makes peace proposal. Aug. 14 — China declares war on Germany and
Austria-Hungary. Aug. 15-16 — Third advance at Ypres; Lange-
marck and Hill 70 taken. Aug. 18-24 — Italian offensive on Isonzo; take
Bainsizza plateau, Monte Santo and
Monte San Gabriele. Aug. 19-20 — Fourth advance at Ypres. Aug. 20 — French take Dead Man's hill. Aug. 24— French take Hill 304, Verdun. Aug. 25-27 — Moscow conference. Aug. 28 — President rejects Pope's peace plan. Sept. 3 — Germans take Riga. Sept. 8 — Luxburg sink-without-trace dispatch
disclosed.
Sept. 8 — Korniloff rebels against Kerensky. Sept. 15 — Korniloff surrenders to Alexieff. Sept. 20 — Fifth British advance at Ypres. Sept. 22 — Germans take Jacobstadt. Sept. 26 — Sixth advance at Ypres; take Zon-
nebeke and Polygon wood. Oct. 4 — Seventh advance at Ypres; Poelca-
pelle taken.
Oct. 9 — Eighth advance at Ypres. Oct. 12— Ninth advance at Ypres.
Oct. 13 — Germans land on Oesel Island, Baltic Sea.
Oct. 18 — Battle of German and Russian fleets in Moon Sound.
Oct. 20 — Five Zeppelins destroyed in raid on London.
Oct. 22 — Tenth advance at Ypres.
Oct. 23 — French take Fort de Malmaison.
Oct. 21-23— Battle of Caporetta; Italian front broken.
Oct. 25 — French drive Germans across the Ailette.
Oct. 26 — Brazil declares war on Germany.
Oct. 26-30 — Eleventh advance at Ypres.
Oct. 28 — Gorizia retaken by Austrians; Bain- sizza and Carso lost.
Oct. 30 — Austrians take Udine.
Oct. 31 — British take Beersheba, Palestine.
Nov. 3 — First American trench fight on Rhine-Marne canal.
Nov. 6 — British take Passchendaele.
Nov. 6 — British take Gaza.
Nov. 7 — Kerensky overthrown by Bolsheviki.
Nov. 8 — Italians defeated on the Tagliamentp.
Nov. 9 — General Diaz succeeds Cadorna in command of Italians.
Nov. 10 — British advance on Passchendaele ridge.
Nov. 10 — British take Askalon.
Nov. 16-17 — Kerensky forces defeated by Bol- sheviki.
Nov. 17 — British gain on Passchendaele ridge.
Nov. 18-19— Battle of the Piave; Italians hold.
Nov. 18 — British take Jaffa.
Nov. 19 — Death of General Cyril Maude.
Nov. 20 — Battle of Monte Tomba.
Nov. 20 — British attack at Cambrai.
Nov. 30-Dec. 7 — German counter-attack at ^ Cambrai.
Dec. 7 — United States declares war on Aus- tria-Hungary.
Dec. 7 — Roumania agrees to armistice.
Dec. 8 — Trotzky announces suspension of hostilities.
Dec. 8 — U. S. destroyer "Jacob Jones" tor- pedoed.
Dec. 10 — British take Jerusalem.
Dec. 14 — Germans and Bolsheviki signarmiatice.
Dec. 19-21 — Battle of Monte Asolone.
Dec. 28 — Provisional peace agreement between Bolsheviki and Germans. 1918
Jan. 8 — President's speech stating fourteen peace articles.
Jan. 20 — Bolsheviki dissolve Constituent As- sembly.
Jan. 20 — Breslau sunk in naval battle off Dar- danelles.
Jan. 24-28 — Italian success on Asiago plateau.
Feb. 6 — "Tuscania "torpedoed; 212 Ameri- can soldiers lost.
Feb. 9 — Ukraine government signs separate peace.
Feb. 11 — Bolsheviki declare end of the war.
Feb. 16 — Sir Henry Hughes Wilson succeeds Sir William Robertson as British chief of staff.
Feb. 17 — Germans announce end of armistice with Bolsheviki.
Feb. 18 — Germans advance across the Dvina.
Feb. 19 — Germans take Dvinsk and Lutsk.
Feb. 20 — Germans enter Esthonia.
Feb. 22 — British take Jericho.
Feb. 23 — New German terms to Bolsheviki.
Feb. 25 — Germans take Reval and Pskov.
Feb. 27— Hospital ship "Glenart Castle" tor- pedoed; 164 lost.
Mar. 1 — Austrian armies enter Ukraine.
Mar. 3 — Bolsheviki agree to German terms.
Mar. 7 — Peace treaty with Roumania.
Mar. 10 — Germans land in Finland.
Mar. 13 — Austrians take Odessa.
Mar. 21 — German drive on Cambrai-Saint Quentin front begins.
Mar. 23— Germans first shell Paris with 76- mile gun.
Mar. 24 — Germans take Ham and Chauny.
Mar. 25 — Germans take Bapaume.
Mar. 26 — Germans take Noyon and Roye.
Mar. 27 — Germans take Albert.
Mar. 28 — Germans take Montdidier.
Mar. 28 — Germans repulsed before Arras.
Mar. 28 — British defeat Turks at Hit, Meso- potamia.
Mar. 29 — Foch appointed Allied generalissimo.
Mar. 30 — Germans take Grivesnes, Moreuil and Demuin.
Mar. 31 — Moreuil and Demuin retaken.
Apr. 5 — Japanese land at Vladivostok.
Apr. 6-7 — Germans advance from Chauny; take Folembray and Pierremonde.
Apr. 9 — German drive at Armentieres begun.
Apr. 11 — Germans take Armentieres.
Apr. 12 — Haig's back-to-wall order.
Apr. 14 — British and French land on Kola Peninsula.
Apr. 16 — Germans take Bailleul and Wytsdh- aete; British retire from Passchen- daele.
Apr. 17 — French reinforce British on the Lys.
Apr. 20 — Americans repulse German raid at Seicheprey.
Apr. 23 — British naval raid on Zeebrugge and Qstend.
Apr. 25-26 — Germans take Mont Kemmel.
Apr. 26 — Americans in line on Picardy front.
Apr. 27-28 — Battle at Locre and Voormezeele; British again withdraw before Ypres.
Apr. 29 — General German attack on Lys sector repulsed.
May 10 — Second British naval raid on Ostend.
May 16 — Italian naval raid on Pola sinks battleship.
May 27 — Germans take Chemin des Dames.
May 28 — Germans advance to the Vesle.
May 28 — First American offensive; take Can- tigny.
May 29 — Germans take Soissons.
May 30 — Germans cross the Ourcq.
May 31 — Germans reach the Marne.
May 31 — "President Lincoln" sunk; 26 lost.
May 31 — German counter-attacks on Cantigny repulsed by Americans.
June 2 — Germans take Chateau Thierry.
June 2 — American marines reach front at Chateau Thierry.
June 3 — Submarine off American coast sinks "Carolina" and other ships.
June 6-7-10-11 — American marines take Bel- leau Wood.
June 9 — German drive, Montdidier to Noyon.
June 15-23 — Austrian drive on Piave.
June 25 — Austrians driven across Piave.
June 26 — Americans take Belleau ridge.
June 30 — Italians take Monte de Valbella and Monte del Rosso.
July 1 — Hospital ship "Llandovery Castle" sunk; 234 lost.
July 1 — Americans take Vaux. *• July 4 — Czecho-Slovaks take Vladivostok.
July 6 — Italians clear Piave delta.
July 7 — German ambassador at Moscow as- sassinated.
July 7-12 — Italians advance in Albania.
July 15 — Germans begin Marne-Champagne
drive. July 18— Allied counter-attack on Anne and
Marne. July 19— Cruiser "San Diego" sank c
July 20— Germans recross the Marne. July 21 — Chateau Thierry recaptured. July 27 — Germans retire to the Ourcq. July 28— Allies take Fere-en-TardenoH. July 23-30— Battle of Sergy. Aug. 2— French take Soissons. Aug. 3 — Germans retire across the Vesle. Aug. 4 — Americans take Fismes. • Aug. 5— Allies land at ArchangeL Aug. 6— Foch made marshal. Aug. 7— Allies cross Vesle. Aug. 8— Allied drive on Amiens front begun. Aug. 9— Americans take Fismette. Aug. 10— Montdidier retaken. Aug. 11— Nine fishing boats sunk off Mas-
Aug. 14 ^Aug. 14 Aug. 14— Briti
s land at Vladivostok.
begin drive south of the Ohm. Aug. 21— French take Lassigny. Aug. 21— British attack Albert to Arras. Aug. 21— Germans driven across Oise.
Aug. 22— British take Albert. Aug. 22— BobheTfld
United States. Aug. 24— British take Bray and TbiepvaL Aug. 24— Austrians retake Berat.
Aug. KT— AM* take Rnyoand T
Aug. 28-29— Americans attack Juvigny
Au 31— British retake Mont Kemmel. '
\ retreat to 1
Sept. 7— French take Fort de Coniis. Sept. 12— Americans take St. Missel • Sept. 14— Drive on Macedonian front I
. ..
Sept. 18— British attack Cambrai-St. Quentin
Sept. 20— Turks defea
Sept. 22— British take Nazareth. Sept. 23— Serbians reach the \ar__ Sept. 24— British take Haifa and Acre. Sept. 26— American campaign on the Me
drive _ _
27— Bulgarians ask ar^ 27— British attack on Hindenburg fine. 2*3*— 27th American division goes through Hindenburg tine near Le GMsK
take Fort de Malmaison.
«-ait««ir drive: **• Hou-
Sept. 30 — Messines ridge retaken.
Sept. 30 — Turks surrender west of Jordan.
Oct. 1— British take Damascus.
Oct. 2— St. Quentin taken.
Oct. 3— British go through Hindenburg line north of St. Quentin.
Oct. 3— French take Challerange.
Oct. 3— Le Catelet taken.
Oct. 3— Lens and Armentieres retaken.
Oct. 4 — Naval attack on Durazzo.
Oct. 6-19 — American advance on the Meuse.
Oct. 5 — King Ferdinand of Bulgaria abdi- cates.
Oct. 6 — Germany asks peace on Wilson's terms.
Oct. 7 — Germans retreat north of Reims.
Oct. 7— Battle of St. Soup let.
Oct. 8 — Cambrai-St. Quentin front smashed.
Oct. 10 — Le Cateau taken.
Oct. 12 — Germany again offers to accept Wilson's terms.
Oct. 12— French take Craonne and Vouziers.
Oct. 13— Serbians take Nish.
Oct. 14— Roulers taken.
Oct. IS— Menin and Thourout taken.
Oct. IS— Americans break Kreimhilde tine.
Oct. IS— Americans take Grand Pre.
Oct. 17— Ostend. Courtrai and Lille retaken.
Oct. 18 — Bruges, Zeebrugge and Thielt taken.
Oct. 18 — Turcoing. Roubaix and Douai take
Oct. 21—
take Hill 299 and BOM de
Oct. »— British reach the Scheldt.
Oct. 23— Wilson's reply to Germany.
Oct. 23— Americans take Brieulles, Hflb 297. 299 and 281.
Oct. 25— Italian* begin offensive on the Piave.
Oct. 27— German note; await Allies' terms.
Oct. 27— Ludendorff resigns.
Oct. 27— Italians cross the Piave.
Oct. 27— British take Aleppo.
Oct. 28— Austria sends note to Wilson accept- ing terms and asking armistice.
Oct. 30— Italians take Vittoria.
Oct. 30— British defeat Turks on the Tigris.
Oct. 31— Turkey surrenders.
Oct. 31— Austria sends i imimissiimi i • to Diaz.
Nor. 1 — Americans again attack on the
Nov. 3— Iti
Trieste. NOT. 3— Au
r Trent, Rovereto and
NOT. 3— British take Vi
NOT. 3— Serl
NOT. 3— Count Tissm
NOT. 4— Allied
NOT.
Nor. 4— Italians take Scutari. NOT. 4— Americans cross the Me
Dsm
NOT. 7 — Rebellion in German navy. Nor. 7 — Americans reach Sedan. NOT. 9— Kaiser abdicates. NOT. 9 — British take Tournai and Maubeuge. NOT. 11— British take Mons. NOT. 11. 11 A. M.— ARMISTICE. NOT. 12 — Republic proclaimed in Berlin. Nov. 19— French enter Metz. Nov. 21— German fleet suuendeis.
1914-WHEN THE LID BLEW OFF
ON June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir-apparent to the throne of Austria-Hungary, visited the city of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, to take part in a public ceremony. As he was driving through the town a Bosnian named Cabrinoyicz threw two bombs at his automobile. Both fell short. Despite this warning and the supposed excellence of the Austrian police system, that same afternoon a young Bosnian named Gabrilio Prinzip succeeded in reaching the steps of his automobile and fired two shots from an automatic pistol. His aim was only too good. Both the Archduke and his wife, a Czech countess whom he had married morganatically, were killed.
AUSTRIA'S ULTIMATUM
Prinzip was seized, but was later given the comparative immunity of a prison sentence, while several political leaders of the pro-Serbian faction were held as the real principals and three of them were executed. The Serbian government immediately expressed its horror, and was assured that the affair would not disturb the relations between Austria and Serbia. The world in general assumed that the incident would end where it had begun — in Bosnia. Nearly a month passed. Then on July 23d, to the amazement and consternation of all Europe, Austria-Hungary sent to Serbia the most startling ultimatum ever addressed by one free nation to another. It demanded:
Prohibition of publication hostile to Austria-Hungary; suppression of societies engaged in propaganda against Austria-Hungary; elimination from the schools of teaching opposed to Austria-Hungary; removal from the Serbian military service of officers whom Austria-Hungary should thereafter name; acceptance of Austrian military and judicial commissions to carry out Austrian demands.
Press, public meetings, education, military service and the administration of justice in Serbia must all be turned over to Austrian dictation. And Serbia must accept these terms within 48 hours!
Serbia accepted! The terrified little nation quibbled on only two of the demands, conceding the others unreservedly, and concluded with an offer to refer any point not satisfactorily answered to The Hague tribunal or to the powers.
And then, on July 28th, Austria declared war, and on July 29th the great world war was begun by the shelling of Belgrade.
HAND OF GERMANY
The alliance between Germany and Austria was defensive only, as Italy, the third member of the league, later showed. Even had it been otherwise, disre- gard of its obligations for the purpose of preserving peace could have presented no moral difficulties to a nation which was soon to violate equally-binding treaties in order to carry out her plans of war. The slightest word from Germany would have compelled Austria-Hungary to settle her quarrel. As a matter of fact, the Austrian government was at one time on the point of yielding to rea- son, but Germany compelled it to go on. The assassination of the Archduke was to be made the pretext for carrying out plans of military aggression which the German imperial leaders had long been preparing. These plans contemplated nothing less than the conquest of a large part of Europe, if not of the world.
Evidence of this accumulated during the progress of the war.
August Thyssen, a leading German steel manufacturer, published in 1917 a pamphlet telling about several meetings of German business men between 1912 and 1914 at which the Emperor promised them great financial rewards for supporting him in the projected war. Thyssen was "personally promised 30,000 acres in Australia." Other firms were to have "special trading facilities in India, which was to be conquered by Germany, be it noted, by the end of 1915." "A syndicate was formed for the exploitation of Canada,"
Prince Lichnowsky, who was German ambassador to Great Britain when the war began, wrote for his family archives in 1916 a record, which later gained publication, in which he said that Serbia had accepted almost the whole ulti- matum "under Russian and British pressure" and that "Count Berchtold was even prepared to satisfy himself with the Serbian reply." Lichnowsky added that he had to support in London a policy, "the heresy of which I recognized" and suggested that the German people were dominated by "the spirit of Treitschke and of Bernhardi, which glorifies war as an end in itself."
The United States army intelligence service learned from German agents, arrested in this country, that on July 10, 1914, a corps of German propagandists had been sent to neutral countries to develop sentiment for Germany in the war which was about to begin.
Henry Morgenthau, United States ambassador to Turkey, was told, a few weeks after the war started, by both the Austrian and the German ambassadors at Constantinople that war had been decided on at a conference in Berlin early in July.
RUSSIA AND FRANCE
This was why when Russia called her reserves to the colors on the day fol- lowing Austria's declaration of war on Serbia, Germany immediately began to mobilize and on August 1st declared war on Russia. It was not on the Russian frontier, however, that Germany massed her troops. France was bound to Russia by a treaty of alliance; and, before sending her ultimatum to Russia, Germany demanded of France whether she would remain neutral. France ordered mobilization, but directed her troops to keep ten miles inside the French border. Nevertheless, cavalry skirmishes occurred on both the French and Russian frontiers on the following day, August 2d, and on the same day German troops entered the neutral duchy of Luxemburg, which could only protest. The formal declaration of war on France was made on August 3d.
BELGIUM IN THE WAY
The first and greatest horrors of war, however, were to fall, not on Serbia or Russia or France, but on a nation which was absolutely inoffensive and uncon- cerned in the quarrel. On July 31st, before any declaration of war except that of Austria had occurred, three German army corps started for the Belgian border, and on August 2d the amazed and frightened government of Belgium received an ultimatum demanding the right of passage for the German army through Belgian territory. The particular wickedness of this note lay in the concluding paragraph, which read: "Should Belgium oppose the German troops, and particularly should she throw difficulties in the way of their march by a resistance of the fortresses on the Meuse, or by destroying railways, roads, tunnels or other similar works, Germany will, to her regret, be compelled to consider Belgium as an enemy."
Germany was not content to ask the privilege of sending troops through Bel- gium and to offer alliance and protection against invasion by France, which she professed to believe was threatened, though France had just given the most posi- tive assurance to the contrary. She was not even satisfied to announce her purpose to move through Belgium and leave the question of Belgium's attitude for the future. She placed Belgium at the outset in the position of a subject province to be subdued if it dared to resist. In view of the later attitude of the German leaders, there can be little doubt that this note was written in the expectation and hope that Belgium would resist, since that would further the project of annexation.
Germany's course violated written as well as moral law. The perpetual neu- trality of Belgium had been solemnly guaranteed by a treaty between the five great powers, including Prussia, as early as 1831 and had several times been reaffirmed. Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg frankly admitted in his speech to the reichstag on August 4th that Germany had acted "contrary to the dic- tates of international law." The excuse offered was "military necessity."
BRITISH LION AROUSED
When the British ambassador at Berlin gave warning of the consequence of violating Belgium's neutrality, the German foreign minister, Von Jagow, heatedly referred to the treaty as a "scrap of paper." Great Britain's attitude up to this time had been that of a mediator seeking to avert the general calamity. She had a friendly understanding with France and Russia, but was not allied with them by treaty. It is probable that even when Premier Asquith and his associates sent an ultimatum to Germany demanding that Belgium's neutrality be respected, they cherished a strong hope that their threat would compel Ger- many to pause. But if so, the hope was disappointed, and on August 4th the war became general with Germany and Austria-Hungary on one side and Great Britain, France, Belgium, Russia and Serbia on the other. Montenegro came to the aid of Serbia four days later.
"FORTISSIMI SUNT BELGAE"
The Belgians were able to bring a garrison of 25,000 men and a field army of 120,000 men to the defense of Liege, and with this force they held off superior numbers of Germans for four days. The first German assault was completely repulsed. They were unable, however, to protect their flanks, and to avoid being surrounded they fell back to a line running through Tirlemont and Namur. The forts of Liege were not reduced until the Germans brought up heavy siege guns nearly two weeks later. Although the Belgians held their ground successfully in several local combats, their flanks were still in the air and their line much too thin to be maintained. They withdrew behind the forts of Antwerp, abandoning Brussels and leaving a garrison in Namur, which was attacked and reduced by heavy siege artillery after a ten hours' fight on the 22d.
"WHERE ARE THE FRENCH?"
The French mobilization plans concentrated the bulk of their army on their eastern frontier, since they could not anticipate an attack through neutral Belgium. General Joffre evidently hoped that a strong movement directly against German territory might force the Germans to abandon the Belgian invasion. He was able to move by the 7th, when a French army entered Alsace, taking Altkirch and Mulhausen and advancing nearly to Colmar. A second French army penetrated Lorraine as far as Saarburg and a third moved toward Luxemburg. The Germans claimed that all three were badly beaten. At least, they failed to inflict the necessary defeat on the Germans, and the danger from the north made it impossible to continue the movement. All three retreated, and Saarburg, Mulhausen and Altkirch were again left in German hands.
THE "CONTEMPTIBLE LITTLE ARMY"
The British had a regular army of about 370,000 men, scattered in all parts of the world, with some 100,000 reserves and 240,000 Territorials, similar to the American National Guard. Lord Kitchener was made minister of war with almost dictatorial powers. With great energy he succeeded in landing in France about 90,000 infantry and cavalry with 400 guns by the 13th and by the 22d, Sir John French, who commanded, had thrown four weak divisions of infantry and five brigades of cavalry across the path of the Germans at Mons, near the southern border of Belgium. They were attacked on the 23d by greatly superior forces of Germans under Von Kluck, but held their ground steadily throughout the day. Probably they could have maintained their position longer, but Sir John French received word that the French on his right at Charleroi had given way, while his left, which was in the air, was also being enveloped. The retreat from Mons and Charleroi occupied eleven days and carried the British, who were on the outer rim of the great backward- wheeling line, 140 miles into the heart of France. Fighting was almost continuous during these eleven days, though it slackened into detached skirmishes of small proportions toward the
last. The general plan of the retreat was to withdraw, usually at night, by the north-and-south roads and to deploy and fight along each of the east-and-west roads. The most severe action for the British was on the Le Cateau-Cambrai road on the 26th. General Smith-Dorrien's Second corps was here joined by the Fourth division, fresh from England. It went into shallow ditches which had been dug in advance by local labor, mostly French women, but with so little military supervision that through long stretches the earth had been thrown out on the wrong side of the trench. The weary soldiers had to spend most of the night reversing these parapets with only their mess tins for tools, for they had not yet learned the vital importance of carrying spades. All the next day they held off three German corps with a fourth working around their flank and they succeeded in withdrawing safely during the night. A French force had a similar action near Guise.
BATTLE OF THE MARNE
If General Joffre ever had a hope that the Germans could be held on the Belgian frontier till his main army could get up, it could not have existed after the 23d. From that date his obvious policy was merely to retard the German advance until he could bring back his army from Alsace and get into position before Paris. The capital was hastily provisioned for a siege and the govern- ment was removed to Bordeaux, but there was no intention of giving up without a fight. The line ran along the Great Morin River, rather than the Marne, from Langy through Sezanne to Vitry-le-Francois, whence it looped to the north around Verdun, which had not, like Reims and Chalons, been abandoned. Stretching down the heights of the Meuse, the front was continued by General de Castlenau's army of Lorraine along the hills just east of Nancy, known as the Grand Couronne. Here the Kaiser came in person to witness a battle which was to lay all France at his feet. In seven days of hard fighting, however, from August 31st to September 6th, De Castlenau completely repulsed the German attack. Meanwhile, Joffre, on September 5th, ordered his troops south of the Marne to take the offensive. In order to give better support to the armies east of him, Von Kluck turned eastward, marching directly across the British front. He thereby exposed his flank to the British, who promptly attacked. A more serious blow was dealt by the Sixth French army under General Man- oury, which, marching out of Paris, struck the German flank north of Meaux. Von Kluck turned back to meet this danger, trusting to his associates to extend westward and fill the gap. Near Le Fere Champenoise the movement missed connection. General Foch, in command of the Ninth army, threw his Moroccans and French into the gap, and the Kaiser's one chance for crushing France and attaining world empire ended right there.
"WE BEAT THEM ON THE AISNE"
The pursuit recovered Chalons, Reims and Soissons, but Soissons and Reims remained under the fire of the German artillery and were ruthlessly battered to ruins. The Germans even shelled and destroyed the beautiful Reims cathedral to the horror of civilization, though at the time the first shells fell it was being used as a hospital for German wounded.
The British, although their public thought otherwise at the time, had but a small part in the battle of the Marne, being called on for little more than to follow up the retreat. They had only about 80,000 men on the field as com- pared with 800,000 French and more than 1,000,000 Germans. The victory was due to the attacks of Manoury and Foch and the stand of De Castlenau east of Nancy, so far as it can be attributed to any part of the Allied army more than to another. The British, however, bore the principal burden of the battle of the Aisne, which followed on September 12-14th. They crossed the Aisne on a twenty-mile front and forced back the German line from the region of Missy to Troyon on the Chemin des Dames. The taking of Troyon on the 14th by the First corps under General Sir Douglas Haig was a particularly brilliant achievement.
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But the Germans had reinforced their front by calling in the garrisons from Amiens and other points west of the Somme, thereby relinquishing the open gateway to the Channel ports, for the recovery of which they were to fight desperately during the succeeding years. The surrender on September 9th of Maubeuge after a siege of ten days also released a considerable force, which was rushed at once to the Aisne. By the 17th the Allies had concluded that the German positions were too strong to be forced by frontal attack, and thereafter the armies on the Aisne began to settle down into trench lines which were maintained with slight changes for the next four years.
BELGIUM'S MARTYRDOM
Meanwhile, terrible things had been happening in Belgium. The first con- siderable town entered by the Germans after crossing the Belgian border was Vise, a place of 4,500 population. They did little damage when they passed through on August 4th, but on the 15th, after the capture of Liege, they re- turned and systematically burned the entire village and scattered the inhabi- tants. When Hugh Gibson, the American consul at Brussels, visited the spot four months afterward, he found there only two or three houses, one old man, two children and a cat. There was no excuse for this atrocity. It was the first act in the German policy, later to become familiar, of making war, not on armies alone, but on the entire population of the countries which opposed them. The people of Vise were punished because the Belgian army had dared to resist the Germans at Liege. It was the application to civilized Europe of the same terrible methods which the Germans had employed to subdue rebellious negroes in their African colonies.
What happened to Vise, however, was but an introduction. The atrocity which aroused the greatest horror was the burning of Louvain, a university city of 45,000 inhabitants. On August 24-2 5th, the Belgian army made a sortie from Antwerp and drove the Germans back some distance. It is said that Ger- man troops retreating into Louvain were fired on erroneously by the German garrison. The Germans said they were sniped by citizens. Whichever story was true, on the 27th the Germans began to pillage and destroy the town. The population was driven out, old men, women, children and lunatics from the asylum. Many were crowded into railroad cars and carried off into Germany under conditions which entailed appalling suffering. Many were murdered in the town. It was a savage, drunken orgy, which continued for eight days. The cathedral and university library were destroyed and about one-third of the city. Similar scenes were enacted all over Eastern Belgium during the latter days of August and early September. On September 10-14th, the Belgian army made its last and most successful sally from Antwerp, hoping to menace the German flank sufficiently to affect the position on the Aisne. The Belgians recovered Malines, Aershot and Diest only to find them reduced to ruins. Tamines, Dinant and Andenne were among the other most important places that suffered. Antwerp on August 26th was the victim of another kind of atrocity when a German Zeppelin dropped bombs on the heart of the city — the first example of the use which the Germans were to make of their dirigible balloons.
WORK OF MR. HOOVER
The Belgians had not only been subjected to fire and sword, as in the ancient days of savagery, but they were in danger of starvation from the stoppage of industry and absorption of food supplies by the invaders. Measures of relief, largely financed at first by Great Britain and later by the United States, were organized under the direction of an American engineer, Herbert C. Hoover. For the next four years the people of Belgium and Northern France lived mainly on supplies distributed first under American and later under Spanish direction, suffering indescribable horrors to the very last. Their wrecked cities were still in the condition to which the Germans had reduced them in 1914, or worse, when the country was recovered in 1918.
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THE CZAR'S STEAM ROLLER
Although the mobilization of the Russians had been treated by Germany as a danger which would admit of no further time for debate, they were two weeks behind the Germans in getting into action. Their first success was at Gum- binnen, about thirty miles inside the border of East Prussia on the railroad from Koenigsberg to Vilna. Here on August 20-2 1st they won a battle, small in itself, but very important in its effect, for it opened East Prussia to invasion and caused the German staff to detach several corps from the west front to protect the east. This undoubtedly was a most important contribution to the Allied success on the Marne.
The Germans had their revenge, however, at Tannenburg on August 29-3 1st when General von Hindenburg laid the foundation of his great reputation by entrapping and annihilating two Russian army corps, taking 70,000 prisoners. The blow was not a vital one to Russia, but the remainder of the Russian army in the north, after a battle on the line of Augerburg-Allenburg-Wehlau, September 7-1 3th, was driven out of East Prussia and across Siwalki to the Niemen River.
In the south the Russians were more fortunate. The Austrians were ready first and, advancing from Lemberg, crossed the border into Poland and won a battle near Krasnik on August 23-26th, advancing nearly to Lublin. %They had not, however, found the main Russian concentration, which, advancing from the fortress triangle of Lutsk, Rovno and Dubno, seized Tarnopol and, pushing forward to the east and south of Lemberg, broke the Austrian defense and captured, first Halicz and, on September 2d, Lemberg itself. The Aus- trian army was thus left in the air, with its base in enemy hands. Its plight was made worse by an immediate attack on September 4-8th along the line of Rawaruska and Tomasov. The defeat of the Austrians was so overwhelming that they probably would have been forced to make peace at once, if they had not had Germany to lean on. They were driven back in the ensuing months to the outskirts of Cracow and far into the Carpathians. Russian Cossacks raided well into Eastern Hungary, but unfortunately they were not in sufficient force to hold the mountain passes when the reaction came.
German cavalry had raided almost to the gates of Warsaw, but retired to the German border after the Austrian defeat, and in the latter part of September the Russians resumed the offensive in the north, defeating the Germans along the Niemen and at Augustowa and recovering the province of Siwalki.
Hindenburg countered by a movement across the ill-defended Polish frontier, and by the middle of October he was before Warsaw in force. There he was defeated in a battle lasting from October 15-23d. He retreated out of Poland, drawing the Russians after him in the direction of Cracow and Czenstpchowa. But this retreat was rather strategic than forced. Transferring his army swiftly to the West Prussian front, he again entered Poland in November from the northwest. A series of desperate battles followed. The Russians, moving up from the southwest, at one time completely surrounded a considerable de- tachment of the German army under General von Morgen, but the Germans fought their way out and the Russians in early December were forced to give up Lodz and Lowicz and to retire to the line of the Bzura and Rawka rivers before Warsaw. PLUCKY SERBIANS
No help could be sent to the Serbians without violating neutral territory, and they had little but stout hearts to depend on. They were promptly invaded by 200,000 Austrians, but rallying along the Jadar River, on August 16-23d they amazed Europe by defeating this powerful army and driving it back across the Danube and the Save. The Austrians renewed the attempt in November with the same initial success as before. On December 2d, they captured Belgrade, but once more the Serbians rallied, and between December 6th and 14th they again won a complete victory, recovering Belgrade and restoring the line of the Danube and the Save, which they maintained for a year.
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MASTERS OF THE SEA
The German army was not better prepared for instant action on land than was the British navy for war at sea. While its greatest work throughout the war consisted in keeping open the sea routes for the transport of troops and commerce, it continually challenged the powerful fleet of Germany to come out and fight. The first of these challenges was on August 28th. A British subma- rine came to the surface off Helgoland, pretending to be in trouble, in the hope of decoying the German vessels from the bay. A swarm of German light cruisers and destroyers rushed out, whereupon a British squadron, just out of sight below the horizon, dashed up and in the ensuing fight three German light cruisers and eight destroyers were sunk or badly^crippled with small loss to the British.
The Germans had their revenge on September 22d, when the British cruisers "Aboukir," "Cressy" and "Hogue" were caught unguarded off the coast of Holland and sunk by the submarine "U-9," with the loss of most of their crews.
Several German cruisers were on stations in remote seas. The "Karlsruhe" was off the Atlantic coast of the United States. After being hunted for some weeks, she mysteriously disappeared, supposably by an internal explosion. The "Koenigsberg," after one successful action with a lighter British vessel at Zanzibar, was chased up the Rufiji River in German East Africa, where she was later destroyed. The "Emden" had a brilliant career of three months in the Indian Ocean as a commerce destroyer and actually raided the harbors of Madras and Rangoon, but was, finally, destroyed on November 9th by the Australian cruiser "Sydney" off Cocos island.
The largest detached German squadron, however, was in the Pacific. Starting out from Tsing-tao at the beginning of the war, the armored cruisers " Gneise- nau" and "Scharnhorst" were soon joined by the light cruisers "Nurnburg," "Leipsic" and "Dresden" and crossed the Pacific without molestation. Off Coronel, Chili, on November 1st, the Germans encountered the British armored cruisers "Monmouth" and "Good Hope" and the light cruiser "Glasgow." The British guns were outranged and both the "Monmouth" and the "Good Hope" were sunk with all hands. The British hastily dispatched a large fleet of superior vessels and on December 8th they met the Germans again off the Falkland Islands and destroyed the entire squadron.
DRAGGING IN TURKEY
The battle cruiser "Goeben" and the light cruiser "Breslau" were at Naples. Forced to leave by Italy's declaration of neutrality, they eluded the British squadron, which was watching for them, and reached Constantinople. There they were nominally transferred to the Turks, though they remained under German command. As a matter of fact, the Germans had probably long since reached an understanding with the Germanizedjleaders of the Young Turk party that Turkey was to join them in the war. It caused small surprise, therefore, when the recent German cruisers in late October raided Russian shipping at Odessa. The Russian ambassador at once asked for his passports and on November 5th Great Britain and the other Allies declared war on Turkey.
POLITE JAPAN
The one punctilious nation was Japan. She had a treaty of alliance with Great Britain for mutual defense in the East. While it did not bind her to enter the European war, the opportunity to even scores and remove a menace was not to be neglected. Promptly on August 16th she sent an ultimatum to Ger- many, demanding the evacuation of the Shantung peninsula, and, after allowing the prescribed week to pass, on August 23d declared war. Within four days a blockade of Tsing-tao was established. By September 2d an army had been landed, and on November 7th, after some hard fighting, Tsing-tao surrendered.
Except for naval work in the Pacific and the Mediterranean and by sending supplies to Russia, Japan took no further part in the war until called on to land troops in Siberia in 1918.
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ANTWERP AND YPRES
The Germans made one more attempt to break the French front in late Sep- tember when a force, advancing from Metz, reached and took Saint Mihiel. They got no farther, but the Saint Mihiel salient remained as a dagger in the side of France for four years.
Meanwhile, after the Germans had taken their stand on the Aisne, the French armies under Foch began a movement northward around the German flank. Battles were fought before Saint Quentin and Peronne, the French being driven back across the Somme. There were other actions at Arras and Lens. It was a case on each side of racing and fighting for the exposed flank of the other army.
The Germans, recognizing the menace of the Belgian army at Antwerp, brought up siege guns and, after the Belgian sortie of September 10- 14th, began to press the city closely. The British sent up 6,000 naval reserves from Ostend — a puny force — and on October 7th landed the Seventh division of infantry and some cavalry at Zeebrugge with the purpose of further reinforcing the city. They were too late. On October 9th, the Belgians were forced to evacuate, withdrawing toward the coast.
Meanwhile, the main British army was transferred from the Aisne front to extend General Foch's line in Flanders. The First corps arrived in time to take part in the battle for Lille, but too late to save the city, which the Germans occupied on the 18th.
The broken Belgian army had abandoned Ghent, Bruges, Ostend and all Western Belgium down to the Yser River, where it checked the Germans by flood- ing the country. The British Seventh division from Zeebrugge aided the retreat of the Belgian army and then took position on its flank before Ypres. The remaining six divisions of British filled the gap down to the French sector, and the continuous front from the Channel to Switzerland was formed.
The first battle of Ypres lasted from the middle of October till well into November and included heavy attacks by the Germans against the Belgians, particularly at Dixmude. The British at first attempted to advance and thereby gave to the Ypres position its bulging form. They were forced to recognize the superior numbers and equipment of the Germans, however, and held themselves fortunate to maintain a successful defensive.
There were, in fact, eventually as many as 750,000 Germans facing these first seven divisions of the exhausted British regular army. A reinforcement from an unlooked-for source, however, was obtained in October when a corps of the British-Indian army was landed in France. The first of the Indian troops went into action near Festubert on October 21st. They remained in France during the winter and performed good service, but the following spring were sent back to Egypt.
On November llth the Germans made their supreme effort to break through to the Channel ports, using the redoubtable Prussian Guard. Though they gained some ground, they were repulsed.
Happily the French brought up a heavy reinforcement in time to discourage the Germans from making another attack, and the lines settled down into muddy and frozen trenches for the winter.
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1915-FROM HOPE TO GLOOM
THE Allied cause at the end of the 1914 campaigns looked more hopeful than it again appeared until the final turn of the tide in 1918. The Ger- mans had been beaten in open battle on the Marne and had been blocked at Ypres and Saint Mihiel. The Russians had completely broken the Austrian army and, despite some serious disasters, had fought the German armies to a standstill. The Serbians had driven back two Austrian invasions and held their country intact. The general plan of campaign devised by the Allies for 1915, was to occupy as large a force of Germans as possible in the west, while the Russians with their great numbers and wider field for maneuvering should attempt either to carry the war into Hungary and Germany or, at least, to draw increasing numbers to the eastern front until the German line in the west had been sufficiently weakened to admit of a successful assault. But the Allies were counting too much on the Russians.
DISASTER AT MAZURIAN LAKES
The Grand Duke Nicholas continued his offensive throughout the winter in the Carpathians and by spring had fairly passed the Beskid range and was looking down into the plains of Hungary. The Turks were defeated on the border of Transcaucasia. A second invasion of East Prussia was undertaken and was pushed well into the region of the Mazurian lakes. There on February 12th a Russian army was again trapped and routed even more disastrously than at Tannenburg in the preceding August. The pursuit, which lasted till the 22d, drove the Russians into Grodno and across the Niemen. The Germans claimed 100,000 prisoners and more than 300 cannon.
FALL OF PRZEMYSL
The blow was offset and Russian hopes raised to the highest point that they ever reached during the war when on March 22d the fortress of Przemysl, in Galicia, which had been under siege since the preceding November, was sur- rendered with an Austrian army of 130,000 men.
RUSSIA'S DEBACLE
But the Germans, who had brought the Austrian armies under the German general staff and were now intermingling Austrian and German troops throughout the eastern front, were preparing a terrible revenge. On May 2d the blow fell along the Dunajec River, being concentrated particularly at Gorlice. The heaviest artillery fire which had yet been felt in the war shattered completely the Russian front. The Russians attempted to stand along the San two weeks later, but were again overwhelmed. The armies in the Carpathians had to retreat precipitately and narrowly escaped capture. Przemysl and Lem- berg were recaptured during June, and by July the Russians were driven back into Poland. All the results of the victories in the preceding September were lost, and the Russians had been dealt a blow from which they never fully recovered.
NIBBLING
The Allies watched these events without attempting a serious diversion in the west, but they undertook a series of minor operations, which General Joffre described as "nibbling." The taking of Steinbach and Thann early in January gave the French a hold on Alsace, which they maintained throughout the war. An attempt to advance from Soissons in January was repulsed disastrously, but the French fared better in the Champagne, where they made considerable gains in the region of Perthes. There was another success at Les Eparges, on the heights of the Meuse, in April. Still more important were a series of opera- tions near Carency in May and June which resulted in the capture of an elabo- rate system of trenches, known as the Labyrinth. This was the first development of a method of taking trenches and was due to General Foch.
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DOGGER BANK
The second naval battle in the North Sea occurred on January 24th. Two or three times during the fall of 1914, German cruisers had appeared off the British coast, dropped a few shells on unimportant places and fled back to their base before they could be overhauled. One such raid on Scarborough in December aroused particular indignation among the British. On January 24th a raiding squadron of this character, consisting of four battle cruisers, was overtaken off Dogger Bank. One German ship, the "Bluecher," was sunk, and the other three were damaged. The British had little trouble from such raids thereafter.
NEUVE CHAPPELLE
An operation in support of the French "nibblings," but somewhat more ambitious, was begun by the British north of La Bassee on March 10th. In an attack lasting three days the village of Neuve Chappelle and adjoining ter- ritory were captured, but the hope of breaking through the German lines failed, and the British losses were out of proportion to the results achieved. It was the first British offensive against trench lines. It was followed in April by a suc- cessful attack on Hill 60.
FIRST USE OF GAS
The Germans countered by introducing a new horror — the most dastardly weapon ever employed in civilized warfare. On April 22d, French and Canadian troops holding the line from Bixschoote to Langemarck, north of Ypres, saw a strange yellow cloud rise from the German trenches and roll slowly toward them. It was the first sight of poison gas. The effect on those who inhaled it was frightful — a slow death by torture in most cases. The Moroccan con- tingent with the French fled in panic. The Canadians tied their handkerchiefs and coatsleeves over their faces, closed the gap and somehow held on. Out of three brigades they lost 197 officers and 5,403 men. British and Indian units were hurried up, and the Germans gained only about two miles.
GALLIPOLI
The special purpose of the Germans in dragging the Turks into the war was to cut the Suez Canal and invade Egypt. The British declared Egypt independent of Turkey. An ambitious campaign in November brought a column of some thousands of Turks straggling across the desert. They were easily repulsed.
Partly as a punishment, but more with the hope of taking Constantinople and crushing the Turks at once, a squadron of British and French ships on February 19th shelled the forts guarding the entrance to the Dardanelles. The attack was repeated on the 25th, and had the ships been accompanied by an adequate landing force, the forts might have been taken. The Turks were very ill supplied with guns and were almost without ammunition. The Germans rushed supplies to them, however, and when, on March 18th, the Allied fleet delivered what was intended to be the final blow, the Turks sent floating mines down the channel, sinking three battleships and badly damaging two others.
It was then recognized that the straits could not be forced by naval attack alone, and an expedition of 130,000 men under General Sir Ian Hamilton was organized at Alexandria. It arrived late in April and a landing was made after hard fighting on the point of the peninsula on April 25th. A series of hard battles was fought during May and early June, but the Turks could not be dislodged. The Germans sent submarines into the Mediterranean and the British lost three more battleships from this cause. British submarines two or three times ran the straits and raided shipping in the Sea of Marmora and the port of Constantinople itself — an enterprise, which, if tried in the first attack, might have demoralized the Turks and gained the victory. On August 10th another desperate assault was made by Australian and Indian troops. It failed and after hanging on for the remainder of the summer, the army was with- drawn in December and the following January.
16
ITALIAN, BALKAN, PALESTINE AND MESOPOTAMIAN FRONTS
COPrRIGHT, 1919, BY J.N. MATTHEWS CO. BUFFALO, N.Y.
WESTERN FRONT
WESTERN FRONT
EASTERN FRONT
^TH^
E ASTKRN FRONT
Farthest advance of Russians : Germans and (. ^^^^
Austrian- Hungarians^
Railroads thus:
Forts thus:
Lonftitude East 25° fi
COPYRIGHT. 1»1
I. MATTHEWS CO,, BUFFALO, fl.r.
ENTER ITALY
The moral effect of the Russian defeats was largely offset among the Allies by Italy's declaration of war on Austria-Hungary on May 23d. Italy had declared neutrality on August 4, 1914, thereby contributing to the success at the Marne by releasing the French from the necessity of guarding the Italian border. The Germans made desperate efforts to secure Italy's alliance or, at least, her continued neutrality, but the Italians were fired by the Garibaldian spirit for the redemption of Italian lands still held by Austria. Moreover, they distrusted the German word. They took the field at once and pushed their lines across the boundary, but gained no important success during 1915.
GERMANY'S COLONIES
In addition to taking Tsing-tao, the Japanese quickly occupied the Caroline* Marshall and Marianne islands. Australian and New Zealand forces seized German Samoa, the Bismarck archipelago, the Solomon islands and New Guinea in August and September, 1914. Togoland on the Gulf of Guinea was taken by forces from the adjoining British and French colonies also in August, 1914. An attack by a British naval force on Tanga, a port of German East Africa, on November 3-5, 1914, however, met disaster.
The conquest of German Southwest Africa was undertaken by the Union of South Africa under the Boer premier, General Louis Botha. He led a brilliant campaign across the deserts, where the Germans had poisoned every well as they retired, and on July 9, 1915, he received the complete surrender of this entire colony.
Late in 1915, the British prepared to take revenge for their defeat at Tanga by organizing a strong expedition against German East Africa. It was made up of British and Boer troops under command of the Boer General, Jan Christian Smuts. The attack was made from British East Africa and had the support of a Belgian force moving from the Congo. During the spring of 1916 the Ger- mans were driven from the settled parts of the colony, but they continued to keep up guerrilla warfare in the remote jungles until the end of the war.
The Germans in the Cameroons also offered strong resistance. Colonial troops from the adjoining British and French possessions carried on a difficult jungle campaign during most of 1915, and on February 18, 1916, gained the complete conquest of the colony.
CONQUEST OF POLAND
The Germans were not content with their success in merely driving the Russians out of East Prussia and Galicia. Their pursuit into Southern Poland was temporarily checked by the Russians near Krasnik on July 2-4th, but on July 14th the Germans began a new invasion from the north, at the same time renewing their attack in the south. Przasnysz, fifty miles due north of Warsaw, was quickly taken. Lublin and Cholm, southeast of Warsaw fell. A third Ger- man-Austrian army, driving up through southwest Poland, crossed the Vistula between Warsaw and its protecting fortress of Ivangorod.
The Russian soldiers were resisting with splendid courage, but their govern- ment had failed them. They were so short of rifles that men were sent unarmed into the trenches to take up the weapons of fallen comrades. In some sectors the troops were allowed to fire only eight or nine cartridges per day.
With both flanks turned, the troops which had stopped the Germans on the Bzura-Rawka line the preceding fall, and held it ever since, had no choice but to retreat. Warsaw was taken on August 4th. The Russians foolishly left a large garrison in the fortress of Novogeorgievsk, a little northwest of Warsaw, and after a short siege it fell to the German 42-centimeter guns on the 19th, with 90,000 men and 1,200 cannon. Brest-Litovsk, with an enormous accumu- lation of stores which had never reached the front, was blown up and burned by the Russians, and the Germans occupied the place on the 26th.
Turning to the fortresses along the Niemen, the Germans captured Kovno
21
on the 18th with 800 guns, Ossowietz, Bialystok and Olita in rapid succession and Grodno on September 2d. Lutsk and Dubno, two of the triangle of fort- resses protecting Vplhynia, fell early in September. On September 18th the Germans entered Vilna. The retiring Russians were actually surrounded east of Vilna, but fought their way out.
The retreat never halted until it brought up against the Dvina River from Riga to Dvinsk in the north, running thence south in a nearly straight line through the Pripet marshes, a little east of Pinsk, and on through Volhynia into Galicia. In the southern sector, however, the Russians made an encouraging rally in September and October, and after defeating the Austrians along the Sereth, advanced to the Stripa River, where they established a stationary front.
The Grand Duke Nicholas was, somewhat unjustly, removed from command and was succeeded nominally by the Czar in person, with the capable General Alexieff actually directing the armies as chief of staff.
THE BIG PUSH
Urgent as was the need for a diversion in the west, the Allies were not able to attempt any large-scale movement till late in September after the Russian debacle was virtually complete. On September 25th, following a prolonged bom- bardment along the entire front, simultaneous attacks were delivered by the British a little north of Lens and by the French on a 25-mile front in the Cham- pagne. The British gained the town of Loos and other immediate objectives, but were unable to hold their more advanced ground. The French carried a stretch of territory some miles deep. At one point the Moroccans actually broke entirely through the German line, but the great object of starting a German retreat failed. The battle of Loos was noteworthy, however, as the first big test of the new British volunteers, Kitchener's First Hundred Thou- sand.
CRUSHING OF SERBIA
Having disposed of Russia for the time being and feeling secure in the west, the Germans now turned their attention to the punishment of Serbia. They were relying, however, not so much on their own forces as on a new ally, whom their diplomacy had won to their side. The Entente nations had taken it for granted that Bulgaria, owing to her historic debt of gratitude to Russia, would sympathize with them. They misjudged the character of Czar Ferdinand and the bitterness of the Bulgarians toward the Serbians on account of the war of 1913. When it was realized that Bulgaria was drifting into German hands, frantic efforts were made to avert the peril. They were too late. As soon as a German-Austrian force under Mackensen appeared on the Danube in late September, Bulgaria began to mobilize. The Serbians fought gallantly against the invaders from the north for two weeks, but when, on October 14th, Bulgaria declared war on them and began an invasion from the east, they were outflanked and helpless.
Greece had a treaty of alliance with Serbia against Bulgaria, and the Allies exerted great pressure to induce her to go to the rescue. The British offered the immediate cession of the island of Cyprus as a consideration. Premier Venizelos was pro-Ally and readily gave the British and French permission to occupy Salonica, where troops which had been intended for Gallipoli were landed and hurried into Southern Serbia. King Constantine, however, was married to the Kaiser's sister and strongly under German influence. He dis- missed Venizelos, who eventually organized a revolutionary government at Salonica and declared war on Bulgaria, but Greece as a whole did not enter the war until the abdication of Constantine was forced in June, 1917.
The occupation of Salonica enabled the British and French to advance up the Vardar valley as far as Gradsko, but they were too weak and too late. The Italians also attempted a diversion in Serbia's favor by attacking strongly along the line of the Isonzo, but diversions were the only aid that could be given and they were not enough. The Serbians, fighting desperately and with no thought of sur- render, could do no more than to beat off flanking movements which attempted to
encircle them. A part of their army retreated into Greece, but their main body made a frightful march across the mountains through Albania. Thousands died of starvation and exposure. The famishing remnant, after reaching the coast, was transported by the Italians to the island of Corfu, where the troops were reorgan- ized and eventually taken back to the Macedonian front to write a new and glorious chapter in Serbian history. The country itself remained in the grip of the Austrians and Bulgarians for nearly three years, enduring frightful oppres- sion.
The British and French troops, when attacked by the Bulgarians in Decem- ber, retired to the Greek border.
Montenegro and Albania were in turn quickly overrun by Austrian forces.
THE SERPENT OF THE SEA
The events of 1915, which had most influence on the outcome of the war, though not in the way which the Germans expected, were the operations of sub- marines. On February 4th, the German government declared all the waters around the British isles a war zone and gave notice that neutral as well as enemy shipping was liable to be sunk. This aroused the United States. The President immediately notified Germany that she would be held to "strict accountability. ' '
The seriousness of the submarine threat soon became apparent when the British steamer "Falaba" was sunk on March 28th in Saint George's Channel, drowning 111 of the passengers and crew, including one American. Soon afterward the Amer- ican steamer "Gushing" was attacked and damaged by a German airplane in the North Sea and a little later the "Gulflight" was torpedoed off the Scilly islands.
The climax came on May 7th, however, when the great passenger liner "Lusitania" was torpedoed off the south coast of Ireland with a loss of 1,153 men, women and children, of whom 114 were Americans. Indignation blazed to a white heat. It was thought that the United States would declare war at once. The President called on Germany to disavow the act, adding that the United States would not "omit any word or any act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty" of maintaining the rights of its citizens. The Germans, how- ever, made a conciliatory answer, and although the steamer "Nebraskan" was soon afterward torpedoed, but not sunk, the incident was allowed to dwindle into a series of inconclusive diplomatic notes, only to flame up again when, on August 19th, the liner "Arabic" was sunk off Ireland with a loss of 44 pas- sengers and crew, including two Americans.
More notes followed, culminating on October 5th in a disavowal by the Ger- man government of the act of the submarine commander, an offer to pay indem- nity and a promise that no similar incident would occur again.
Little more than a month afterward, the "Arabic" tragedy was repeated in the Mediterranean when the Italian liner "Ancona" was sunk with a loss of more than 200 lives, including nine Americans. The responsibility for this act, however, was assumed by the Austrian government, which, after another series of notes, duplicated the German promise and then broke it on December 30th by sinking the liner "Persia" with a loss of 392 lives, including an American consul.
Public indignation was further aroused by the discovery of indisputable evi- dence that, while this controversy was going on, plots to foment strikes, destroy munition plants and commit other acts against the peace of the United States were being directed from the German and Austrian embassies. The recall of the Austrian ambassador, Dr. Dumba, was demanded in September, and the German military and naval attaches, Captain Von Papen and Captain Boy-Ed, were similarly sent home in December.
Nevertheless, the government accepted the German word, and the country was kept out of war for the time being, even refraining from beginning any active preparation. The "Lusitania" sinking, however, had turned against the Teutonic powers a greater force than cannon or armed battalions. It had aroused the conscience of civilization. Their every word and act thereafter were faced by the silent, accusing fingers of drowned children.
23
1916-THEY DID NOT PASS
IF 1914 had raised the hopes of the Allies to a high pitch, the campaigns of 1915 had left them at the lowest stage of depression. While Germany was as far as ever from overwhelming France, she had shattered the power of Russia, con- quered Serbia and defeated British attacks on Turkey. Any compromise peace which she might secure would now give her the domination of the entire East, and it was natural that German diplomatic efforts henceforth should be directed toward compromise. m ARMENIA
The opening of 1916, however, brought an Allied success in a remote field which revived the hope of Russian recuperation. The Grand Duke Nicholas, after his removal from the chief command, was assigned to the Caucasus front. He organized a brilliant campaign in which he defeated the Turks near the foot of Mount Ararat, captured Erzeroum in February, Trebizond in April and by July had advanced as far as Erzingam, occupying all of Eastern Armenia.
The Armenians during 1915 had been the victims of an almost unbelievable campaign of extermination by the Turks with the Germans looking on. Out of a population of about 4,000,000 more than 1,000,000 perished. The Russians were too late to save them, out at least a safe dwelling place was provided temporarily for those who had escaped.
BRITISH IN MESOPOTAMIA
The Russian diversion was also insufficient to save the British force which had been under siege at Kut-el-Amara, on the Tigris, since December 6, 1915. The British had occupied the head of the Persian Gulf early in 1914 and con- tinued to advance with light forces up the Tigris, emboldened by repeated victories, until by November, 1915, they were within 25 miles of Bagdad. Near the ruins of ancient Ctesiphon, on November 22-24th, they met a large Turkish army and were obliged to retreat 100 miles to Kut-el-Amara, where they had established an advanced tase. A narrow pass between the river and the swamps, a few miles farther down the stream, was fortified by the Turks, and repeated efforts of the British relief expedition during the winter failed to break through this obstacle. His troops being reduced to starvation, therefore, General Townshend, on April 28, 1916, was obliged to surrender with 10,000 men.
What had been the British relief army remained before Sanna-y-Yat until the latter part of February, 1917, when at last the drying of the flooded areas enabled it to outflank and defeat the Turks. Bagdad was taken two weeks later, and the Turks were driven back 100 miles farther, all of the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys falling into possession of the British.
"THEY SHALL NOT PASS"
Relieved from any immediate danger from Russia and with Serbia conquered and Turkey secure, the Germans planned to open the campaign of 1916 in the west with a blow which, if it did not repeat the success against the Russians, would, at least, force the French and British to compromise. The point selected for attack was Verdun, and the chief command was given to the Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm that the expected victory might reflect more glory on the Hohenzollern house. The offensive began on February 20th and in the opening days made alarming progress. Fort Douaumont was taken on the 26th. The attack then shifted to the district west of the Meuse and during much of March raged around Dead Man's Hill and Hill 304, shifting again to the east in the latter part of the month, when Fort Vaux was taken. The French, however, resisted so stubbornly that the Germans had only a few square miles of shell- wrecked ground to show for their enormous losses, and this territory was mostly recovered in two or three swift blows during the fall and the following spring.
THE FAITHLESS WORD
Doubtless the German belief that Verdun would force the French and British to accept peace inspired the determination to resume frightfulness at sea. On
24
March 24th the Channel steamer "Sussex" was torpedoed without warning. There were 25 Americans on board, and, though the ship did not sink and all passengers were saved, this was so direct a violation of the promise given to the United States in the preceding October that it rekindled the American war fever, especially when it was followed by the sinking of several freighters by which American seamen were lost or endangered. President Wilson threatened to sever diplomatic relations unless the German government should at once abandon these methods of warfare, but by the time Germany was ready to reply the Verdun enterprise had ceased to look encouraging, and Germany once more promised to observe the principles of visit and search and not to sink ships "without warning and without saving lives." Again the United States- kept out of war for the moment by accepting the German word.
BATTLE OF JUTLAND
It was not merely on land, however, but also at sea that Germany undertook to force a conclusion in the spring of 1916. In the afternoon of May 31st a squadron of six British battle cruisers under Vice Admiral Beatty sighted Ger- man ships on the horizon. Sending word to Admiral Jellicoe, who was 50 miles astern with the main fleet, Beatty rushed forward and soon found himself con- fronting the entire German high seas fleet of 20 armor clads and more than 100 light cruisers, destroyers and submarines. Only the Fifth British battle squadron of four dreadnoughts under Rear Admiral Evan-Thomas got up in time to give Beatty much assistance. Darkness and the danger of mines enabled the Ger- mans to draw off. The British lost three battle cruisers, including the 27,000- ton dreadnought " Queen Mary," three armored cruisers and three destroyers. The Germans admitted the loss of one battleship, the 28,000-ton battle cruiser "Luetzow," four light cruisers and five destroyers. While in tonnage and lives the British loss was the greater, the actual damage to the German fleet and its morale was evidently much more severe than was acknowledged. In its results this battle was certainly decisive in favor of British sea power, for the German fleet never again emerged into the North Sea until it came out to surrender.
A STAB IN THE BACK
The most unreasoned incident of the entire war was the outbreak on April 24th of a rebellion in Dublin, Ireland, under the direction of the Irish independence society called the Sinn Fein. Much damage was done and many lives were sacri- ficed in the week that the uprising lasted. Sir Roger Casement, who had been in Germany from the beginning of the war and had evidently inspired his friends in Ireland with the German belief that Verdun was to win the war, was arrested soon after landing from a German submarine. He was later executed, as were fifteen of the Sinn Fein leaders. The others after a short imprisonment were granted amnesty.
THIRD BATTLE OF YPRES
Probably with the purpose of preventing the British from aiding the French at Verdun, the Germans on June 2d opened an offensive southeast of Ypres. The sector attacked was held mainly by the Canadians, who suffered very heavy losses. They gave some ground at first, but at the end of two weeks had entirely recovered it. The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was virtually annihilated in this action.
BATTLE OF THE SOMME
The British, however, under Sir Douglas Haig, had been preparing a blow which should not only end the pressure on Verdun, but should turn the tide of war in the west. On July 1st, after a bombardment of nearly two weeks they, with the co-operation of a French army on their right, assaulted the German lines on both sides of the Somme Canal. Both the British and French broke through along the canal and then, facing to the north, began a gruelling drive against the exposed end of the German line. The campaign
25
lasted till well into the fall. Every village, wood and farm had been converted by the Germans into a fortress. These had to be taken inch by inch.
September 15th marked the introduction of a new invention — the "tank," a heavily armored traction engine which climbed over ditches and lumbered across any ordinary obstacle, spraying death from its machine guns as it advanced. In the first tank attack the British took the villages of Flers, Mar- tinpuich and Courcelette. This engine became the most important new inven- tion for use on land that was developed during the war, and the Germans never were able to match it.
The battle was drowned out by the mud of late November with the British in possession of Combles and Thiepval and the French commanding ruined Peronne. If it had not forced a general retreat, it had reversed the high hopes with which the Germans had begun the year in the west.
BRUSILOFF'S OFFENSIVE
The confidence that the Russians could recover from the disasters of 1915 was supported early in June by the opening of an offensive from the Pripet marshes to the Roumanian border. The fortresses of Lutsk and Dubno were recovered, Czernowitz was taken, all of Bukowina was occupied, the Austrian line in Eastern Galicia was shattered and driven back, and by early September the Russians were before Halicz, triumphant, with nearly half of Galicia again in their possession and Lemberg in imminent danger. Here, however, the cam- paign stopped, probably because the supplies which had been accumulated for it were running low. GQRIZIA AND TRE CARSO
The German offensive plans for the spring included a drive by the Austrians against the Italians in the Trentino. It opened on May 15th and by the 27th had taken Asiago. Here it was stopped.
In August, the Italians countered on the Isonzo, taking Gorizia and the Carso plateau, a formidable obstacle, the assault on which was like scaling the walls of a five-story house. ROUMANIA.S HOPE AND SORR0W
Encouraged by these successes and by the promise that a large Russian army would support her, Roumania, on August 28th, declared war on Austria- Hungary. Roumania's case was much like Italy's. She sought the redemption of the Roumanian population which made up most of the inhabitants of the Hungarian province of Transylvania. Concentrating on their western front, the Roumanians swept across the mountains and captured Kronstadt and Hermanstadt. Meanwhile, however, their southern front was left weakly guarded. Hindenburg had become chief of the German staff. He sent Falken- hayn, his predecessor, to command the Austro-Hungarians on the Roumanian western front and Mackensen to direct a blow from the Bulgarian side. The promised Russian army, which was to have swept into Bulgaria, amounted to only a few weak divisions, and they arrived late. This was the first evidence of Russian treason. The Roumanians were beaten in the Dobrudja and by late October had lost their seaport, Constansa. Falkenhayn drove them back across the mountains, defeated them first at the Vulcan pass, then at Tirgu-Juil and, finally, in December, along the line of the Argechu River. Bucharest was taken on December 6th. The campaign closed with the Roumanian army, shattered but still plucky, holding a short front along the southern border of Moldavia.
MONASTIR RECOVERED
To aid the Roumanians an attack on the western part of the Macedonian front was delivered, mainly by the Serbian troops. Monastir was taken on November 19th, but the Teutonic forces could not be driven far enough back to put the city out of range of their guns, which continued to shell it for the next year and a half.
The death of Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary on November 21st and the succession of Lloyd-George as premier of Britain in place of Mr. Asquith were two important governmental changes that closed the year.
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1917-THE YANKS ARE COMING
THE battle cry of the French poilus at Verdun, "They shall not pass," was descriptive of the entire war in 1916. Not only at Verdun, but at Ypres, in the North Sea and in the Italian Trentino, they did not pass. And the successful counter-blows on the Somme, in Galicia and the Caucasus and on the Isonzo gave offensive emphasis to the power of the Allies. Nowhere except in the detached campaign against Roumania had the Germans been able to repeat their successes of 1915. If the Russians could have continued to develop the recuperative strength which they had shown in 1916, the campaigns of 1917 might well have brought a decisive Allied victory. But intrigue and treachery had been at work in Russia.
THREE TIMES AND OUT
It was probably a knowledge of the successes of their agents in Russia and an expectation that the betrayal of Roumania was to be followed by a separate peace with the Czar's government which gave the Germans confidence to break their word to the United States for the third time. On January 31st, they gave notice that after February 1st they would resume submarine ruth- lessness. This was a contemptuous violation of both the " Sussex" and the "Arabic" pledges as well as of a special pledge, given in the "Frye" case, not to sink American ships. The Germans may have believed that the influence of their friends in American politics and the strong pacifist sentiment in the Southern and Western parts of the country, which in the winter of 1916 had nearly put through Congress the McLemore resolution forbidding Americans to travel on foreign ships and had made a powerful appeal for an embargo on the export of munitions, would prevent the United States from entering the war under any provocation. They undoubtedly thought that, in any event, the United States, having made no preparation, would be unable to send troops to Europe in time to give effective help to the Allies, and that might well have hap- pened, if a separate peace with Russia in the spring of 1917 had permitted Germany to make the concentration on the western front which she effected a year later.
This time the Germans did not attempt to hold off the United States with diplomatic notes and new promises, although given ample opportunity to do so. President Wilson, when he severed diplomatic relations on February 3d, still declared his unwillingness to believe that the Germans would actually do as they threatened. The sinking of 'several ships, including two American merchantmen and the liner "Laconia," by which three American lives were lost, removed all doubt on that point. Feeling was further intensified by the discovery of a secret message from the German foreign minister, Zim- mermann, to the German minister to Mexico, directing him to propose to Mexico an alliance with Germany against the United States and that Mexico should conquer Texas, Arizona and New Mexico and should attempt to draw Japan into the plan. The President then, on February 26th, proposed a resort to "armed neutrality," asking authority to arm American ships for defense, but again expressed the hope that it would "not be necessary to put armed forces anywhere into action." The opposition of twelve senators prevented the granting of this authority before the expiration of Congress on March 4th, but the President proceeded to arm merchant ships under his general powers and called a special session of Congress to meet on April 2d. More ships had been sunk in the meantime, and there was no further hesitation. When the President asked Congress to declare war, however, he based his action, not alone on the special grievances of the United States, but on the general course of the German government, which he called a "challenge to all mankind." He denounced the German autocracy as "the natural foe of liberty" and asked for action because "the world must be made safe for democracy."
The declaration of war was adopted on April 6th with six opposition votes in the senate and 50 in the house.
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In addition to providing for a large increase in the Regular army and National Guard by voluntary enlistment, a general conscription of all men between the ages of 21 and 31 was ordered. Money was raised by popular bond issue, and war activities began on an enormous scale. A naval contingent reached Great Britain on May 4th and at once began patrol work against submarines. General John G. Pershing was appointed to command the army. He landed in France with his staff on June 13th. The first contingent of regular troops arrived on the 26th. More than a year passed, however, before the United States began to take an active part at the front.
OUR INFECTIOUS EXAMPLE
Cuba followed the course of the United States at once. Brazil immediately severed diplomatic relations, but did not declare war till October. Bolivia, Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador and Santo Domingo either severed diplomatic relations or otherwise indicated their sympathy with the United States. Siam declared war in July, and China in August. Panama, Hayti, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua all declared war. Even the little negro republic of Liberia came in. The world was at war.
A FLASH AND DARKNESS
Meanwhile, startling events had been happening in Russia. The extent to which the ministers who controlled the Czar had committed themselves to a separate peace with Germany is uncertain, but there is no question that the government had fallen into the hands of a reactionary group of bureaucrats and that German intrigue had made great headway with them. It is equally certain that the leaders of the army and the douma were strongly patriotic. The army was being supported mostly by the organization of zemstvoes. The government, from incompetence or treachery or both, had completely broken down. The people were starving and were becoming riotous.
The Czar was summoned from his staff headquarters at Moghileff. When the meeting of the council at which he presided adjourned, he had given his royal word that before he slept that night he would sign edicts granting to Russia a responsible ministry and a constitution. That night he was privately visited by Protopopoff, minister of the interior and credited with being the head of the German influence since the murder of the mystic monk Rasputin a few weeks before. He had as an ally the Czarina, a German woman and relative of the Kaiser, who was probably chiefly responsible for what followed. Instead of the promised edicts, there was published a decree dissolving the douma and order- ing General Ivanoff, a staunch imperialist, to Petrograd "to take over all power of administration as dictator."
There was no further attempt at compromise. The douma refused to dis- perse. A provisional government was organized. The populace raged in the streets, but the soldiers, in the main, refused to oppose the people, as did their commander, General Korniloff. It was not by resolutions of the douma poli- ticians or by demonstrations of mobs, however, that revolution was really effected, but by the decision of the army chiefs. Brusiloff at once telegraphed his adherence to the revolutionary government, Korniloff placed the Czarina under arrest, and it was Ruzsky, commander of the northern front, who stopped the Czar's train at Pskoff, where, on March 15th, the autocrat of all the Russias, was compelled to sign his abdication. To these three brilliant leaders of the 1914-16 campaigns, the Allied world owes a debt of gratitude which it has ill appreciated. Their adherence and that of Alexieff, the chief of staff, gave to the revolution the physical power which made resistance useless. They may have had little interest in internal reforms, but they knew that the army was being betrayed to the enemy. Whatever motives may have inspired others, theirs were the acts of men devoted to the Allied cause. It is a melancholy reflection that, like many other Russian army officers, they soon afterward became martyrs.
The Russian revolution delayed for nearly a year the separate peace on which the Germans undoubtedly had counted, but the new regime afforded fertile
28
ground for the Germans to work in a different way. The minister of justice was an impractical Socialist orator named Kerensky. One of his first decrees, which was distributed directly to the soldiers without the knowledge of the officers, broke down discipline at a stroke. Fraternization opened wide the doors to German agents, and from the tenements of New York and Chicago and the exile colonies of Switzerland came a horde of still more dangerous enemies, mysteriously risen from poverty to comparative affluence, who were soon to take the name, Bolsheviki.
Nevertheless, Brusiloff opened an offensive in Galicia in July, and at the start made encouraging progress. Only a few of the troops, however, were reliable. Most of them began to hold meetings of soldiers' committees to debate whether they should obey commands. The counter-blow gave the Germans, for the first time in the war, the satisfaction of seeing an army flee before them in disor- ganized rout, abandoning cannon and supplies. All Galicia was lost. Brusiloff resigned, broken-hearted.
Korniloff, who was appointed to succeed him, within a month attempted to overthrow Kerensky, who had now become dictator. His soldiers would not support him and he was arrested. Two months later it was Kerensky's turn to fall before the forces which his folly had developed, and the Bolsheviki under Lenine and Trotzky were in power.
Documentary evidence was afterward published by the United States bureau of information showing that the Bolshevist leaders were receiving German money and directions from the German staff. The situation was now in the hands of the Germans, but they chose to play with it for a time. Even after an armistice was signed and the Bolsheviki had proclaimed the end of the war, the Germans attacked them and drove them from the Baltic provinces. The Ger- mans might have entered Petrograd had they chosen. They imposed new peace terms which provided for the break-up of Russia into a number of states, the sur- render of the western part of the country and the payment of a large indemnity.
The Ukrainians, who had been subjected to an independence propaganda directed from Germany since the beginning of the war, anticipated the Bol- sheviki by a few days in making their separate peace and were rewarded by having their entire country immediately occupied and plundered by German and Austrian troops under pretense of protecting them from the Bolsheviki.
Deserted Roumania had no choice but to sign such terms of peace as she could get. Finland accepted the Germans.
Siberia was saved by some thousands of Czecho-Slovaks, who had gone over from the Austrian to the Russian side early in the war and who now successfully resisted the attempt of the Bolsheviki to deliver them to Austria. To aid them, the Japanese with small American and British contingents landed at Vladi- vostok and during August and September, 1918, occupied Eastern Siberia. A small British and American force was also landed at Archangel in August, 1918, to prevent supplies, accumulated there, from falling into the hands of the Ger- mans. Although no insult, aggression or appeal of self-interest had been able to induce the Lenine-Trotzky government to offer any resistance to the Ger- mans, they met these moves by promptly declaring that a state of war existed with the Entente governments and the United States, and in the north they organized under German officers a strong resistance, which was continued even after Germany had given up.
These later events in Russia, however, had little effect on the war as a whole. From the day of the accession of the Bolsheviki Russia ceased to be a factor in the war for human liberty, except as she became a hostile factor.
"THE EMPIRE OF DEATH"
The battle of the Somme had been brought to a halt by rain and mud in the fall of 1916, but it had pierced the German front so far as to make the line between Arras and the river Oise no longer tenable. During the winter Hinden- burg caused a new line of trenches and entanglements to be built, mostly by the
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forced labor of Belgian and French civilians and of prisoners. It curved south- east from Arras, running a little west of Cambrai, Saint Quentin and La Fere till it joined the old line on the Ailette. Before retiring, the Germans syste- matically devastated the entire country between their old and new fronts — a strip six to eight miles wide. Every village and farm were burned or blown up, wells were poisoned, even the fruit and shade trees were cut down. The able- bodied inhabitants of both sexes were carried off into slavery and only a few starving old men, women and children, pillaged even of the scanty supplies which the Allied relief commission had given them, were left behin'cl. It was a Ger- man correspondent who gloatingly described this region as" the empire of death."
VIMY RIDGE
The Allies detected the German withdrawal late in February, but the devas- tation was such that more than a month was required to occupy the abandoned country and all of the following summer to reconstruct it sufficiently to permit military operations against the Hindenburg line. The British preparation for a spring offensive, however, had not been on the Somme sector, but farther north, between Arras and Lens. Here they opened a brilliant attack on April 9th. carrying Vimy ridge in a single magnificent rush and towns farther east in the succeeding days, including the city of Lievin, the western suburb of Lens.
NIVELLE'S OFFENSIVE
At about the same time the French began the second battle of the Aisne. The chief command of the French armies had passed in the preceding December from General Joffre to General Robert Nivelle, who had won great fame at Verdun. It was he who directed this battle. The entire German first line was taken in the opening rush, and in the succeeding three weeks the French cap- tured such strong points as Vailly, Fort de Conde, Craonne and, finally, the greater part of the Chemin des Dames, driving the Germans back to the Ailette River. Although his success had been brilliant and he appeared on the eve of still greater triumphs, Nivelle was removed from command, nominally because his losses had been so heavy as to alarm the government lest his rashness should exhaust French man-power. He was succeeded by the very competent General Petain, who, after resting and reforming his armies during the summer, resumed the attack in October, taking Fort de Malmaison and completing the conquest of the Chemin des Dames. With these exceptions, no important operations were attempted by the French during 1917.
MESSINES AND YPRES
Marshal Haig continued the tactics which had proved so successful at Vimy by attacking Messines ridge, north of Armentieres, on June 9th. The German positions had been mined and the explosion was so tremendous that it was heard as far away as London. The ridge was easily carried.
The British then shifted their concentration still farther to the north and on July 31st began the fourth battle of Ypres. The plan here followed was to strike for limited objectives, organize the positions gained, advance the artillery and after a sufficient interval repeat the operation. No less than twelve of these separate attacks were made along the great curving front of the Ypres salient between July and November. The British invariably gained ground and by November 6th they had taken Passchendaele, the last high ground remaining to the Germans in Belgian Flanders, but the season was now too late to admit of further progress.
DEATR smps op TRE
An epochal incident occurred on October 20th, when five German Zeppelins, returning from a bombing raid on London, were brought down by British and French airplanes. This marked the inglorious end of an instrument of warfare on which the Germans had counted greatly at the beginning of the war, since it appealed particularly to their hope that they could gain the submission of their enemies by ruthless destruction of non-combatant life and property. The
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Zeppelins did frightful work among civilians, but they were merely murder machines of little military use, and the chances of a terrible death for the crews soon became greater than the prospects of gaining any advantage by using them. The exact number destroyed is uncertain, but the Allies had records of at least sixteen prior to this sensational event of October 20th.
ITALY'S GREAT TRIAL
If the Russian revolution delayed German plans for an offensive concentra- tion in the west, the triumph of the Bolsheviki came early enough to enable the Germans to spare forces for an attempt to crush Italy. The Italians had begun an offensive on the Isonzo in May, which gained some ground, and heavy fighting occurred all along the Italian front during most of the summer. In August they made their greatest effort of the war up to that time. They crossed the Isonzo above Gorizia . and in six days of terrific fighting expelled the Aus- trians from the supposedly impregnable Bainsizza plateau, taking the dominat- ing peak of Monte Santo. Monte San Gabriele was taken three weeks later, and it appeared that the Italians not only had Trieste in their grasp, but would break completely through to Laibach.
The Germans, however, were preparing a terrible counter-stroke. It fell on October 21st at Caporetta, near Tolmino. Not only had the Italian leaders failed to detect the concentration of German troops on this sector, in place of the less formidable Austrians who had hitherto opposed them, but they had also been unable to prevent the undermining of their own morale by the same kind of Socialist propaganda which the Germans had employed with such suc- cess in Russia. It was said that the fraternizing soldiers had reached a compact that neither side would obey orders to fight the other. Only the Italians kept the agreement, and some 2 50,000 of them paid the penalty by death or imprisonment.
The disaster appeared overwhelming. Not only were the Italians forced to abandon the Bainsizza and Carso plateaus and Gorizia, but they were driven back across the Venetian plain, first to the Tagliamento River, and then to the Piave. It appeared that Italy must suffer Russia's fate. Yet, without assistance, in a battle on the Piave only three weeks after their rout, the Italians brought the invaders to a stand. This was one of the most marvelous rallies in military history. It was Italy's battle of the Marne, but in some respects an even greater achievement, since the Italians had suffered a much more serious defeat than the French and British had endured prior to the Marne.
Following this event, the United States, on December 7th, came to the sup- port of Italy by declaring war on Austria-Hungary.
ALLENBY'S CRUSADE
The most brilliant campaign of the year was fought in Palestine. After the conquest of Serbia and the withdrawal of the British from Gallipoli, the Ger- mans entertained high hopes of carrying the war into Egypt. Adopting the maxim that the best defense is a strong offensive, the British moved out into the desert of Sinai and after several sharp actions crossed it. They were obliged to construct a railroad and water-supply system as they advanced, but by the end of October they had accumulated a sufficient force under General Allenby to attack Gaza and Beersheba. Both places were carried. Jaffa fell soon after- ward, and on December 10th Jerusalem was occupied. The task which had baffled the Lion-hearted Richard seven centuries before was accomplished.
CAMBRAI
To offset the Italian disaster, the British on November 1st made their first attack on the Hindenburg line before Cambrai. The line was fairly pierced, but by counter-attacks during the next two weeks the Germans rebuilt their front, leaving the British in a sharp salient.
The accession of Georges Clemenceau to the premiership of France in No- vember brought new vigor to the conduct of the French government.
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1918— IT'S OVER, OVER THERE
Italian disaster had been the only reverse to Allied arms in 1917, but the I peace with the Russians now enabled the Germans to mass their forces on the -*- western front, as they had expected to do the year before. There appeared still to be ample time, as the United States had sent less than 300,000 men to France and had not even produced enough rifles and machine guns to arm its levies, while it had hardly begun to turn out cannon, airplanes and other impor- tant material. The actual direction of the German armies now passed to the Quar- termaster General, Von Ludendorff, although Hindenburg remained chief of staff.
DISASTER IN PICARDY
The great offensive, of which the Allies had received only the vaguest warning, started on March 21st against the Fifth British army under General Gough near La Fere. Gough's army broke under the blow. Its retreat forced it toward the north and opened a steadily widening gap between the British and French. But the British General Carey rallied a nondescript force of army workmen, cooks, attend- ants and others, including an American battalion of railroad track-layers, who became the first American troops actually to get into battle. With the co-opera- tion of the French General Fayolle, the gap was thus closed, but the Germans in seven days had swept over the entire territory abandoned the year before and had passed the old front of 1914-16, taking both Albert and Montdidier.
BATTLE OF ARRAS
The salient into which they had entered, however, was too narrow. For the purpose of widening it they faced toward the north and on the 28th struck heavily south of Arras. If the British had given way there, the entire front must have collapsed, and the Germans could have driven on to Amiens, if not to the sea, separating the French and British armies. But the British held.
A successful attack by the French between Lassigny and Noyon further narrowed the salient, and while the Germans made more attacks on both its sides and its apex, they could not enlarge it.
GENERALISSIMO FOCH
The disaster had the effect of bringing the Allies at last to adopt the plan, long under discussion, of putting all their armies under a unified command, and the French General Ferdinand Foch was chosen for this leadership. Henceforth the armies of all the Allied nations were handled strategically as a single force.
BACKS TO THE WALL
After a short advance against the French south of Chauny, intended probably to deceive the Allies as to where the next blow was to fall, the Germans on April 9th struck again on the front before Armentieres. The Portuguese division, which was the first to receive the blow, broke. Armentieres and the Messines ridge were taken, and on the 12th, Marshal Haig told his troops that they were fighting with their backs to the wall and must hold at all costs. Nevertheless, the Germans took Mont Kemmel and Bailleul, driving a salient fifteen miles deep up the valley of the Lys River, before they were, finally, brought to a halt on the 29th. The arrival at a critical moment of a French reinforcement demonstrated the value of the unified command.
To shorten their front and protect their flank, the British were obliged to retire from all the ground before Ypres which they had won in the preceding fall, but they still held the ruined city.
ZEEBRUGGE AND POLA
A brilliant naval raid by the British on the 23d, which blocked the harbor of Zeebrugge and partially blocked Ostend, and a similar enterprise by the Italians on May 16th, by which an Austrian battleship was sunk in the harbor of Pola, demonstrated that the Allies were still masters of the sea, at least.
DARKEST DAYS OF ALL
But the worst blow fell on May 27th along the Chemin des Dames, when the Germans in a single rush, not only carried the whole of that position, but swept on across the Aisne and the Ourcq. In five days they were again on the Marne. Chateau Thierry was taken on June 2d and the Marne was crossed in force. The road to Paris had apparently been opened. Never before or afterward during the entire war were French troops so completely broken.
THE "DEVIL DOGS"
But the events of the spring had at last aroused the United States to a realiza- tion of what it had to do, and there had been rushed into France forces on which the Germans had little reckoned. France was furnishing cannon and airplanes; Britain was supplying ships. As many as 300,000 American troops per month had been landing in France, and the reserves and replacements necessary to enable the units which had been longest trained to take the field were at last available. The Americans had repulsed several German trench raids, notably at Seicheprey on April 20th, and on May 29th the First American division had delivered a successful local offensive at Cantigny, near Montdidier.
The time had come to put them to the supreme test. On June 2d the Fifth and Sixth regiments of marines arrived before Chateau Thierry and on the 6th and 7th they sustained and repulsed an attack by the Prussian Guard. Taking the offensive on the 10th and llth, they drove forward into Belleau Wood, and by the 13th the Germans realized that for the moment, at least, their road was blocked. The open gateway to Paris had been closed.
DOWN THE OISE VALLEY
Following his plan of scattering his blows, Ludendorff now turned to a new sector, and on June 9th attacked on a 20-mile front between Noyon and Mont- didier. This stroke, however, was comparatively weak, and although the Ger- mans gained some ground, they were brought to a halt within three days without succeeding in their purpose of widening the Marne salient.
AUSTRIA'S LAST EFFORT
Ludendorff now called on his ally to attempt a diversion. On June 15th the Austrians attacked along the entire line of the Piave and in the adjoining mountain sector. They crossed the river at several points and for some days made progress, particularly on the Montello ridge, but the Italians showed the same spirit that had stopped the enemy the fall before, and by the 25th the Austrians had been driven back across the river. The Italians followed up their success by clearing entirely the Piave delta, thereby relieving Venice from bombardment. This was the least successful of any of the Teutonic drives of the year except the one which was immediately to follow.
TURN OF THE TIDE
The Germans were still confident. Only advanced forces had been stopped about Chateau Thierry in June, and a position had been gained from which one more lunge as successful as any of the four which had been made since the season opened would certainly put Paris in German hands. The city had been intermittently shelled since March 23d by a marvelous new gun located in the Saint Gobain forest, seventy-six miles away, but like most other German sur- prises, the weapon proved to be more an instrument of murder than of war. From the Marne salient Paris could be more effectively reached by long-range cannon and all the area between the front and the capital could be shelled. During the month that he allowed his troops to rest, Ludendorff accumulated an enormous amount of material in the salient and massed reserves as thickly as the ground would permit.
On July 15th the supreme effort began, not only on the Marne, but also on the Champagne sector between Reims and the Argonne. General Gouraud in
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the Champagne adopted the plan of withdrawing his front line at the first attack to prepared positions from which a withering fire was opened on the Germans as they advanced to occupy the abandoned ground. The attack here, which many critics believed to be the main one, failed completely.
About Chateau Thierry the German advance gained some ground at first. Here the Third American division was in line. This was, however, a battle of all nations, for, besides the main body of French, there were British and Italian divisions between Chateau Thierry and Reims and more American contingents with Gouraud. Three days of desperate attack left the Germans virtually in their old positions. This time the Ludendorff tactics had failed.
And now Foch was ready for a counter-blow. Massing his reserves along the west side of the salient between Chateau Thierry and Soissons, he delivered an attack on the 18th which turned the tide of the war. Four American divisions — the First, Second, Third and 26th — took part in this battle, making it the first in which American troops had fought in the proportions of an army. They were, however, all brigaded with the French.
The success of Foch's attack on the west side of the salient compelled the Germans to retreat from the Marne to the Ourcq. Chateau Thierry was re- occupied on the 21st. On the 29th and 30th the French and Americans fought another severe battle in the region of Sergy. By August 3d the Germans had recrossed the Vesle, leaving behind or blowing up a great part of the enormous store of munitions which they had piled up in the salient. The loss of this material probably affected them seriously for the remainder of the war.
ON THE SOMME AGAIN
And now was revealed the advantage of a unified command and the greatness of Marshal Foch as a strategist. Allowing the Germans no time for recovery, the British under General Rawlinson and the French under Debeney attacked the front bef ore Amiens on August 8th. M on tdidier was recovered and the advance swept for- ward for several days until it was halted temporarily before Chaulnes and Roye.
On the 12th, Humbert's French army attacked the great massif south of Lassigny, which had been lost a month before. By the 21st, Lassigny had been retaken, and the Germans were occupying their old front between Lassigny and Noyon. Meanwhile, on the 17th, the attack had been extended east of the Oise by Mangin's army, which was soon in position to face east and hammer against the flank of the German position on the Aisne and the Chemin des Dames. On the 21st Byng's British army struck between Albert and Arras, regaining in one day much of the ground for which the British had fought six months the year before. By the 29th the British were again across the Somme and the Germans were in full retreat for the Hindenburg line.
THE DROCOURT-QUEANT SWITCH
On September 2d the first great outwork of the Hindenburg line fell when the British smashed through the Drocourt-Queant switch line, against which they had hammered in vain the fall before. This was one of the great feats of the war. These successes along the Somme and the Oise and the Marne left the Germans unable to support the troops in the Lys salient. Mont Kemmel and Bailleul were recovered and the remainder of the salient was gradually eliminated with little effort. American troops of the 27th and 30th divisions took part in these operations.
SAINT MIHIEL
Staggering under this succession of reverses, the Germans on the 12th received another blow in an unexpected quarter when General Pershing with an army, all American, except a single corps of French, attacked both sides of the Saint Mihiel salient. Saint Mihiel was retaken, the salient straightened out, and the Americans found themselves before Metz, having taken 16,000 prisoners and 443 guns with only 7,000 casualties in their own ranks.
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SERBIANS TAKE REVENGE 1
And now the Bulgarians were to learn that they had picked the wrong side. On September 14th, General Franchet D'Esperey, who had succeeded General Serrail in command of the Macedonian front, loosed the reorganized Serbian army in a flank attack across supposedly impracticable mountains east of Monastir. The Serbians penetrated the Cerna valley and swept on to the Vardar. Part of the Bulgarian troops, with their supporting Austrian con- tingent, were driven northwest toward Albania, where the Italians and French fell upon them. The main Bulgarian positions in the Vardar valley about Lake Doiran were attacked, and the British, French and Greek troops swept over them. Only sixteen days after the drive began, the Bulgarians sent commis- sioners to General D'Esperey and surrendered at his dictation. The first of the four Central Powers was done for.
The German and Austrian troops in Serbia and Albania continued to offer some resistance, but by November 3d Belgrade and all Serbia had been recovered.
TURKEY'S TURN NEXT
But the Macedonian front had become only a sector of this great Allied line from the North Sea to the Tigris River. On September 20th General Allenby attacked the Turks north of Jerusalem. Breaking through with his cavalry along the coast he cut the Turkish communications at Nazareth on the 22d. Those of the Turks who did not surrender were driven across the Jordan into the desert, where they fell into the hands of the Arabs. Virtually all of their material in Palestine was captured. Damascus and Aleppo were occupied without opposition, and on October 31st, after seeing the surrender of what was left of her army in Mesopotamia, Turkey followed the example of Bulgaria by throwing herself on the mercy of the Allies.
BREAKING THE HINDENBURG LINE
On September 27th the British began the preliminary bombardment of the Hindenburg line. Brigaded with them were two American divisions — the 30th, from North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, and the 27th, made up of the New York National Guard and including the 108th regiment, formerly the 74th of Buffalo. It fell to the 30th, with the 27th supporting on the left, to be the first to pierce the Hindenburg line. Australians and British pressed the attack, and by October 8th the entire German front between Cambrai and Saint Quentin had been smashed.
BELGIUM'S HOUR OF TRIUMPH'
On September 29th the Belgian army was unleashed. With British, French and American contingents co-operating, the Belgians quickly recovered the ground before Ypres which had been abandoned by the British in the spring, and by October 18th Ostend, Zeebrugge and Bruges had been recaptured and the advancing line was before Ghent.
These successes forced the Germans to evacuate the entire Lille-Lens district and to fall back on Courtrai and Valenciennes.
AMERICANS' GREATEST BATTLE
The echoes of Saint Mihiel had hardly died out before General Pershing again attacked on a new sector. There were now more than 2,000,000 American troops in France out of 3,665,000 that had been raised, and the battle of the Meuse was fought entirely by American forces, with no Allied contingents, though the French co-operated by attacking vigorously west of the Argonne. There were twelve American divisions in line between*the Argonne forest and the Meuse River when the attack began on the morning of September 26th, with three more in reserve. The German first line was carried in the opening rush. On October 4th a second general attack was made and by the 10th, the Argonne forest had been entirely cleared. The Kreimhilde line, on which the Germans had
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depended for their final stand on this sector, was penetrated on the 14th. On November 6th, the Americans had reached a point on the Meuse opposite Sedan, but the honor of reentering that historic city was fittingly left to the French.
The 77th division, made up of National Army troops mostly from New York and Buffalo, had the left of the line, actually in the Argonne forest, from Sep- tember 26th until after the capture of Grand Pre on October 15th, when the 78th division, also New York troops, took position on its left. The 77th remained in line until the armistice on November llth.
Forty German divisions had been used and used up against 2 1 American divisions, many of them composed of troops which were entering battle for the first time.
The Americans then turned eastward, forced the passage of the Meuse and began an advance toward the Briey coal fields, but meanwhile the British had taken Valenciennes, Tournai and Maubeuge and the French had made big advances on the Aisne-Champagne front. The Germans had had enough.
ITALY'S FINAL VICTORY
The war was not to end, however, without one last success by the Italians. On October 27th they crossed the Piave and shattered the Austrian front. The Austrian government frantically sent an appeal to President Wilson, asking an armistice and peace. Failing to receive an encouraging response, it sent com- missioners direct to General Diaz. The Italians occupied Trent, Rovereto and Trieste before they accepted the Austrian surrender on November 3d.
SUBMISSION
As early as October 6th Germany had asked President Wilson to ascertain what peace terms might be obtained, but it was not believed that she seriously meant to surrender. Continued Allied victories forced her to repeat the over- ture. The breaking of the Kreimhilde line and approach to Sedan threatened to cut off entirely the retreat of her armies in France and Belgium. On the 27th came a note saying £ hat Germany awaited the Allies' terms. The Allied war council on November 4th, agreed on the conditions which it would impose; the Germans signed, and on November llth at 11 A. M. the armistice went into effect. The Kaiser had abdicated two days earlier and fled to Holland. The great war was ended. German imperialism had been crushed forever.
THE TERMS
The Germans evacuated Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine and Luxemburg, agreed to Allied occupation of the three principal Rhine crossings at Mayence, Coblenz and Cologne with bridgeheads east of the Rhine opposite these cities, surren- dered the best of their cannon, machine guns, airplanes and a great quantity of railroad and other transportation material and turned over the bulk of their fleet, including all their submarines.
"LET US HAVE PEACE"
The American losses reported up to January 29, 1919, were 43,697 killed in action, 18,644 by disease and 2,602 from other causes, 140,878 wounded, 2,163 prisoners and 12,82J. missing.
The total British casualties were 3,049,991, of whom 658,665 were killed.
The French had 1,327,800 killed and more than 3,000,000 wounded.
The Italians lost 460,000 killed and 947,000 wounded.
The Russian casualties were roughly computed at 9,150,000 men of whom 1,700,000 were killed.
The German casualties were above 6,000,000, with 2,000,000 killed, and the total Austrian casualties were above 4,000,000.
The losses of the smaller states were also enormous.
The total direct cost of the war was estimated at above $200,000,000,000.
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