[7] England and France needed wheat, which Russia had in great quantities at her ports on the Black Sea.  On the other hand France and England, by supplying Russia with rifles and ammunition, could strike a hard blow at Germany.

The four powers, after much persuasion and brow-beating, finally induced Serbia to agree to give up part of Serbian Macedonia to Bulgaria.  They further promised Bulgaria to give her the city of Adrianople and the territory around it which Turkey had reconquered.  But Bulgaria was not easily satisfied.  She wanted more than Serbia was willing to give; she wanted, too, the port of Kavala, which Greece had taken from her.  This the allies could not promise.

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

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

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

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

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