and then on another, always ready at a moment to take advantage of a new opening, and giving the enemy no chance to withdraw their forces without imperiling key positions. Before the end of August the Allies had won back all the ground lost in the spring.

The Germans had made their last throw - and lost. Foch's pressure never relaxed. In September American divisions began an offensive on a third part of the front (to culminate in a drive toward Sedan), distinguishing themselves especially in taking the St. Mihiel salient and forcing back the Germans to refuge under the guns of Metz. At the same time the British were wrenching great sections of the "Hindenburg Line" from the foe. In the opening days of October the German commanders reported to Berlin that the war was lost.

884. This result had been determined largely by events in the East. In September, the Allied force, so long held inactive at Saloniki, suddenly took the offensive, crushing the Bulgarians in a great battle on the Vardar. Political changes had made this move possible. In 1917, now that there was no Tsar to interfere, the English and French had deposed and banished King Constantine of Greece; and Venizelos, the new head of the Greek state, was warmly committed to the Allied cause. Foch's pressure made it impossible for the Germans to transfer reinforcements to the Bulgarians from the West. The Saloniki forces advanced swiftly. Tsar Ferdinand abdicated, and (September 30) a provisional Bulgarian government signed an armistice amounting to unconditional surrender opening also the way for an attack upon Austria from the South.

Another series of events put Turkey out of the war. The preceding year a small British expedition from India had worked its way up the Tigris to Bagdad; and another from Egypt had taken Jerusalem. Now this last army had finally been reinforced, and in September, in a brilliant campaign it freed Syria from Turkish rule. October 30, Turkey surrendered

§ 886]

THE GERMAN COLLAPSE

743

as abjectly as Bulgaria. The Dardanelles were opened, and Constantinople admitted an Allied garrison.

885. Austria too had dissolved. - In June her army was sharply repulsed in a great attack on the Piave; and it was never fit for another offensive. At home the conglomerate state was going to pieces. Bohemia on one side, and Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnians on the other, were organizing independent governments - with encouragement from America and the Allies. Then, October 24, Italy struck. The Austrian army broke in rout. Austria called frantically for an armistice, and when one was granted (November 4) the ancient Hapsburg Empire had vanished. The Emperor abdicated. Fugitive archdukes and duchesses crowded Swiss hotels. And each day or two saw a new revolutionary republic set up in some part of the former Hapsburg realms.

886. Germany had begun to treat for surrender a month earlier, but held out a week longer. October 5, the German Chancellor (now the liberal Prince Max of Baden, who had been a severe critic of Germany's war policy) had asked President Wilson to arrange an armistice, offering to accept the Fourteen Points as a basis for peace. The reply made it plain that America and the Allies would not treat with the old despotic government, and that no armistice would be granted at that late moment which did not secure to the Allies fully the fruits of their military advantages in the field. Meanwhile the fighting went on, with terrific losses on both sides. The French and Americans, pushing north in the Argonne and across the Meuse, were threatening the trunk railway at Sedan, the only road open for German retreat except the one through Belgium. The British and Belgians pushed the discouraged invaders out of northern France and out of a large part of Belgium. The pursuit at every point was so hot that retreat had to be foot by foot, or in complete rout. As a last desperate throw, the German warlords ordered the Kiel fleet to sea, to engage the English navy; but the common sailors, long on the verge

of mutiny, broke into open revolt, while everywhere the Extreme Socialists all along opposed to the war

preparing revolution.

were openly

Late in October the War Council of the Allies made known to Germany the terms upon which she could have an armistice preliminary to the drafting of a peace treaty. Germany could save her army from destruction, and her territory would not suffer hostile conquest. But she was to surrender at once Alsace-Lorraine, and to withdraw her troops everywhere across the Rhine, leaving the Allies in possession of a broad belt of German territory. She was to surrender practically all her fleet, most of her heavy artillery, her aircraft, and her railway engines. Likewise she was at once to release all prisoners, though her own were to remain in the hands of the Allies. In March, Germany had treacherously and arrogantly set her foot upon the neck of prostrate Russia in the Brest-Litovsk treaty November 11, she made this unconditional surrender to whatever further conditions the Allies might impose in the final settlement- though they did pledge themselves to base their terms, with certain reservations, upon Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points.

Germany had already collapsed internally. None of the revolutionary risings could be put down; and November 7, Bavaria deposed her king and proclaimed herself a republic. In Berlin the Moderate Socialists seized the government. State after state followed. November 9, the Kaiser fled to Holland, whence he soon sent his formal abdication. German autocracy and militarism had fallen.

FOR FURTHER READING. - Hayes' History of the Great War; Dodd's Woodrow Wilson; Spencer's Our War with Germany.

CHAPTER LXIX

WAR TIMES AWAY FROM THE TRENCHES

served in arms

66

887. THE war was a world war." Fifty-nine million men nearly all the physically fit of the leading peoples on the globe. These suffered thirty-three million casualties, of which fourteen millions were deaths or irremediable mutilation and ruin, besides an incalculable number of vitiated constitutions. Almost as many more non-combatants were victims of famine and pestilence. And the evil runs over into future generations. In all the European warring countries the birthrate has declined alarmingly and the human quality has deteriorated. As to material wealth, a huge portion of all that the world had been slowly storing up for generations was gone and in many districts all machinery for producing wealth was in ruins.

Indeed the world had used up its prospects for long to come. Future generations are mortgaged to pay the war debts. England suffered less than the continent; but in England, merely to keep up the interest on the debt, along with her old annual expenditure, the nation must raise five billions of dollars a year

which means a taxation per family of about twenty times that which an average American family paid before the war. The totals of French and German indebtedness are so huge as to have little meaning to us.

888. The United States entered the war late, and our borders were remote from the struggle. Comparatively, we were called upon for small sacrifice. Still eighty thousand American boys gave their lives, and as many more were irreparably maimed. As to money, aside from huge sums raised at the time by two years of war taxes, our debt is twenty-five billions, without counting the nine billions that our government bor

rowed from our people to lend to England, France, and Italy.1 This is more than the total receipts of our national government in all its century and a half of history. The annual interest upon it exceeds the total yearly expenditure of the government for all purposes before the war. This means (considering also the increased cost of living for the government, and our wise determination to pay off the principal within a generation or two) that for the next twenty-five years we must raise three or four times as much money each year for the national government as we did before the war.

889. Still there is another side. No war was ever so hideously destructive; but neither did any other ever give birth to so many healing and constructive forces. It is for us to learn now how to utilize these forces in peace.

To our surprise, and that of the world, America proved that a great democracy, unready for war and unmilitaristic, could organize for war efficiently and swiftly. That America gave lavishly of our best manhood has been made clear. Here it remains to note the method. At the declaration of war, eager volunteers pressed forward for army and navy; but what was needed was a wise use of the whole nation's resources, each man being assigned the job he could do best. And so, May 18, 1917, the "selective draft " became law. Every man and youth from 18 to 45 (by the first law only from 21 to 31) was required to register in his county seat, giving, in answer to a questionnaire, full information about his character, training, health, and ability. All were liable for service; the President was to lay down principles upon which to select for service in the ranks those best fitted, or most easily spared from other service.

Before the end of the year, half a million soldiers were training in fifty swiftly built camps - each camp a new city - largely

1 England is the only one of these debtors who will, for many years at least, begin to pay the interest on her debt to us. Her government has announced her intention to pay a half year's installment of interest in the fall of 1922.