For months, von Bulow argued and pleaded, first trying to induce Italy to accept a small part of the disputed territory and then, when he found this impossible, doing his best to induce Austria to give it all.  Austria was stubborn.  She did not take kindly to the plan of giving away her cities.  She offered to cede some territory if Italy should wait until the end of the war.

This did not satisfy Italy.  She was by no means certain that Austria and Germany were going to win the war and was even less sure that Austria would be willing, in case of her victory, to give up a foot of territory.  It seemed to the Italian statesmen that it was “now or never” if Italy wished to get within her kingdom all of her own people.  In the month of May 1915 Italy threw herself into the struggle by declaring war on Austria and entering an alliance with Russia, France, and England.

[Illustration:  Russian peasants fleeing before the German army]

Meanwhile, the Russians were having difficulties.  They had millions and millions of men, but not enough rifles to equip them all.  They had plenty of food but very little ammunition for their cannon.  Austria and Germany, on the other hand, had been manufacturing shot and shells in enormous quantities, and from the month of May, when the Russians had crossed the Carpathian Mountains and were threatening to pour down on Buda-Pest and Vienna, they drove them steadily back until the first of October, forcing them to retreat nearly three hundred miles.

In the meantime, the Balkans again became the seat of trouble.  You will recall that Bulgaria, who had grown proud because of her victory over Turkey in the war of 1912, was too grasping when it came to a division of the conquered territory.  Thus she brought on a second war, in the course of which Greece and Serbia defeated her, while Roumania took a slice of her territory and the Turks recaptured the city of Adrianople.  The czar of Russia had done his best to prevent this second Balkan war, even sending a personal telegram to Czar Ferdinand of Bulgaria and to King Peter of Serbia, begging them for the sake of the Slavic race, not to let their quarrels come to blows.  Bulgaria, confident of her ability to defeat Greece and Serbia, had disregarded the Russians’ pleadings, and as a result Russia did not interfere to save her when her neighbors were robbing her of part of the land which she had taken from Turkey.

It will be recalled that Macedonia was the country which Bulgaria had felt most sorry to lose, as its inhabitants were largely Bulgarian in their blood, although many Greeks and Serbs were among them.  Therefore, just as Italy strove by war and diplomacy to add Trentino to her nation, so Bulgaria now saw her chance to gain Macedonia from Serbia.  Accordingly, she asked the four great powers what they would give her in case she entered the war on their side, and attacked Turkey by way of Constantinople, while the French and English were hammering at the forts along the Dardanelles.[7]